Offspring of Satan

I was accused, along with the heretical Kent, of being an offspring of Satan on a forum a few days ago :)

So beware, any who read here. I will try to lure you away to the dark side, from where God shall have no option or creative licence but to send you all to hell, forever and ever.

What seems funny to me these days is how irritated and upset I used to get at such comments previously. Maybe because I wasn't sure if they weren't right? Because whenever people would flame-throw me, in God-related areas, it would so easily throw me into the giant vat of shame that lived inside me. If someone made accusations about my character and using God to proof-text that, I would crumble and fall because hey, they were right, right?

Well, I suppose they were in one way. But they can't touch me that way anymore. That's the miracle.

I guess the problem is that most often the sort of person who flame throws in this way has hundreds of scriptures to back themselves up, and their righteous, wall-watching anger, their holy desire to purge from the ranks of Christianity the defiling agents to fuel them along. And while I can understand how they can see that in scripture, I just don't identify that way of looking at things any more with God I have come to experience in my own mind and heart and body. There are many other ditches for me to fall in, but the "turn yourself into a hate-filled hypocritical moron in the process of upholding God's integrity" is not one that lures me in any more.

I still get irritated at people in those situations. 'Cause really, some of the ugliest people in the world are Christians who are convinced they are right, who are convinced that they are God's elect, on God's holy road, being the mouthpiece of God's righteous requirements, the grace-filled beauties through which he shall impart to wayward believers the way back onto the narrow path.

That sort of person still irritates me, sure. But somehow, along the way, this big wall of anger and defensiveness is being dismantled brick by brick. It's a scary sort of dismantling, the walls you've built up. Each brick that comes down, you begin seeing in yourself horrendities that you really would prefer weren't there but which you have known have been there, simmering away inside. And you also recognise (somehow, at some point, without disintegrating under the slamming ball of shame) that inside of you is the very same propensity towards self-righteousness. So where do you end up standing in your irritation at that person? Looking at yourself in the mirror :) There is nowhere left to stand. The cross takes away that option for you. Another irritation :)

"It burns, it burns!" scream the wicked witches of your soul, melting into the ground :)

Cindi wrote yesterday about the protein molecules found in our bodies which are literally what is holding them together. This molecule basically glues our bodies together. Like Christ, who is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Most interesting is the shape of this lamin substance. Cool, huh? :)

The Child World and the Child Within

Sometimes I think the world is like a child who has been hit by a semi trailer and our parent is holding our hand and unable to explain in a way we will understand why it is that the doctor is digging the scalpel in and twisting and causing us even more pain.

Spiderweb thread is very strong indeed. I read ages ago that if it was magnified 10 times it could hold the weight of a jumbo jet. This is how my above perspective on God in a suffering world feels. My faith hangs on it, and I cannot help but believe that, somehow, along with Julian of Norwich, all shall be all and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. That belief looks so fine, like spiderweb thread. Sometimes it feels like a strong wind could blow it away. It shimmers and threatens to break, but for all of that it has remarkable staying power.

Today is Australia Day. It feels so very, very wrong to be celebrating our country on the anniversary of the day the First Fleet sailed into harbour and displaced the oldest culture in the world. I concur with Mick Dodson, the Australian of the Year, who said yesterday it alienates the indigenous population. Is that what we want to happen, every Australia Day? I agree with Dodson. If we change it to another day, it totally changes everything, gives it a forward-focussing thrust straight away.

Dodson was realistic that any dialogue to change the day would be a long-running one so, despite K-Rudd's emphatic no, hopes that the conversation continues. I do too. It is a worthwhile conversation for us to have, not simply for the leader of a fallible political system to make, but for us, the people, to make. It is an idea whose time has very much come.

From little things big things grow.

(As an aside, I was very pleased to hear that George Schofield, dog chiropractor extraordinaire, was awarded an Order of Australia Medal yesterday for his magical chiropractic skills, for service to the greyhound industry and to the health of dogs in general. Nice one.)

I met up with my mother today for a little musical do in the Treasury Gardens. It was first organised a few years ago by a bunch of Aboriginal artists and musicians. The vast majority of the acts were hip-hop artists, so that is probably the cause of the headache I am nursing right now. But those aside, there was some great stuff too. Archie Roach, the dearly beloved, headlined. There was a reggae band called Soul Nation, and another band whose name escapes me but who began their set playing African drum solos, and who were mighty fine also.

And it was good to be there, where the indigenous people called today Survival Day, and I saw a man wipe a tear away from his eye as Archie sang about the stolen generations.

"It's begun," Archie said, "the change. It began last February with the government's apology to the Stolen Generations. It's continuing with the election of Obama to the White House. Ever so slowly, the change is happening."

The hope and growing confidence and pride of indigenous people is a beautiful thing to watch. One day we will wonder how so many of us ever fell into the blind pit of racism. I reckon too one day we will wonder how so many of us ever had the blindness to not see God in every atom. But that's just my fond, spiderweb hope for a future world that will lose all of its eye-scales. Even the non-trendy ones. 'Cause it's trendy to not be racist anymore, but it's still way, way non-trendy to love the God of the Bible.

Archie's last song was Beautiful Child, about that inner spiritual part of us that sees, that's eternally young, that creates, that loves, and I thought, I don't think I will ever quite, quite be satisfied until the God of the Bible is likened more to that beautiful child than to the God that comes out of Empire religion. Whose outward flow was a generation of well-meaning people who displaced childen from their families and thought they were doing God a favour in the process.

God help us. We always need it, after all.

The Dance of Body and Mind

I'm telling ya, there is something to this chakra business. Not of course that it could be scientifically proven or deduced, in the way that we often expect truth to be available to us. Some describe it by saying that chakras exist on the spiritual plane of our bodies. I wouldn't know. I'm not all that interested in being able to scientifically test whether these chakras exist so as to prove them to other people and validate my own experiences. All I know is that when I meditate upon these balls of energy in my body, I begin to inhabit my own body again. It is sometimes distressing to realise how much of my life has been spent removed from my own body, in a sense. I have intellectualised, or fantasised, when I could have been dancing too.

It is a funny thing, but I never really felt like I could dance. All clunkiness, you know? I didn't understand how other people could do it. And so in my late teens and early twenties, when my friends and I were regularly getting together on a weekend and drinking and dancing at the pub, I would sit out on the sidelines. I felt too unbalanced to dance.

The whole idea of the chakras is that loosely there are three that are related to your body, three related more to the mind and the spirit, and the one in the middle, the heart chakra, that binds them all. It is a nice thought, isn't it? It is also interesting to note that, regardless of whether these things actually 'exist' or not, I consistently notice that those chakras related to mind and spirit are very strong in me - I have a strongly developed sixth sense - and the ones that are related to my body are often undefined and difficult for me to tap into unless I work to strengthen them. This is certainly my weakness. It is becoming so apparent to me I wonder how it is that I could have missed it for so long. But then, it always feels like that, doesn't it? We see what we see and wonder how it was that we couldn't.

Last night I did some chakra meditation, and I could feel the effects of this uncomfortable period I have been going through in the last couple of months. All of a sudden I have felt back at the beginning again, before I started all of this creative and bodily exploration. Almost without realising it, I have become way more ungrounded and fearful, feeling a certain disconnection from myself. Thing is, I spent so many years feeling that sort of disconnection that I suppose in times of stress I slot back into it, unless I am aware. I suppose that it is no coincidence that this period of unsafety of the past few months has dislocated me out of my own body.

It is no coincidence that most people I know seem dislocated from their own bodies. It's a product of living in a Western society. We lose our heart because we lose our feet, and so we lose our heads. I can only pray that the Body does not forget what it is joined to. Sometimes I think we are living in the converse of the Renaissance. At that time, people were supremely confident about the ability of humans to rise up to greatness. There was a flourishing of creativity in that period, of discovery, of realising how much people had been held back in the past. Where is our vision, these days? Where is the vision of the Body? Oh, I see smidgeons of it here and there. I see it is returning. I see that one of the greatest things we seem to be grasping hold of is the untenableness of grasping hold of anything else except God. Perhaps this is all we need.

Of course, that idea that we can do nothing of ourselves, that we are the branches - well, it doesn't sit well, does it? I think it's something we all need to learn for ourselves, what that looks like, feels like, plays out in reality. We think that acknowledging that we are just the branches is taking something away from us, making us smaller. I suppose much of life involves God showing us what it looks like when the focus is instead not on what we lose but in what we gain. Life giving water instead of broken cisterns of our own hewing. This takes so long for us to learn, does it not, this overcoming the horror that we are not the Great Originators? But over that hump is the vista that we don't end up losing anything at all that is not worth chucking in the first place, and we gain everything we could desire. This is our giant collective blind spot.

The Body has sat outside of itself too much in the past. It has allowed itself to be violated by the culture. It has sat outside of itself so much that I think it is just beginning to get in touch with the levels of its own self-hatred. This is scary work. You need to be safely connected to the heart to begin to acknowledge and recognise the disconnection. Perhaps this is where we are at? I don't know.

I am seriously tempted to start up some yoga again. The lovely discovery of yoga was that it was like a form of dancing to me that I could do. How wonderful to discover that I could do these movements, these postures, with something like grace. And afterwards, the most wonderful thing of all, the settling of my fears and insecurities in some strange way. It was like tapping into my body, actually moving in it, twisting it (sometimes into such forms I never would have thought I could twist it into) settled and calmed the fears. In writing this post I am understanding over again how it is that I don't need to have all of my fears removed, as if they are a cancer within my body that I must have surgically extracted. It is enough instead to be held, and have them quelled.

I have had a deep loathing of my own body for many years. It is way too hairy, lumpy, wobbly. I believe I have still not quite come to terms with it. I also believe this is like a manifestation of some things I have going on inside of me. I am not willing to share my body with anybody else until I have come to some sort of healing, to some extent. Doing yoga, I felt that I was entering into my own body in a way that made me realise how hollow I often felt within it, how not at home I was within my own body. Like us. We're often not at home in our own Body either.

But we're becoming more so, I believe we are. I have no evidence to back up that claim except what I feel in my own heart. Do you feel that too? I think it is about acceptance, of ourselves with all of our hairiness, lumps and wobbly bits. But even more than that, it is something overarching that we need to realise. I think it has something to do with vision, with seeing, more than it is to do with getting rid of all of our many and horrible sins. I think that is a byproduct of the seeing way more than anything else. I don't quite know what it all looks like yet. I know that it is the same sort of vision and scale removal and grabbing hold of something that is not from ourselves that enabled those first century Christians to chuck all they had in common with each other. We haven't experienced anything like that yet, not really. I think maybe we've all had glimpses of it. We haven't even begun to dance yet. I don't think we believe yet that we are able to. I think maybe we are just starting to hear the music.

Everything Belongs

This weekend so far has proved to me that everything belongs. Again. Friday night I felt so incredibly sick to death of everything going on, couldn't see God working in my life, couldn't see what the hell was the point to everything. I am so tired of this portion of my life, just patently exhausted by it all, that it is no wonder I have these times of meltdown. I don't feel entirely comfortable with having them - I am tired of feeling like my vulnerabilities are hanging outside my body like a string of sausages and those times just exacerbate that feeling - but then the afterwards, the peace that descended on Saturday morning as I sat on the steps in the sun, feeling the effects of people praying for me (hello Kentster). This is the life that comes from death. It is the opposite to the reverb that I often feel, that has going on in me the past few weeks, as the things I deny come to the fore anyway and force me to look at them. That reverb is like a death that comes from death, from denial, from unconsciousness. It is why I want God to enter into all of my rooms because I will not ever be as safe as I want to be unless he does. I just wish he'd stop taking his sweet goddamn time about it all ;)

In the meantime, I am trying to sit in the midst of these things, these scary things, these little deaths living within life, to learn from them, because it feels to me like the safest thing I can actually do while they continue to exist within me. Doing otherwise feels like a form of bodily abdication. Thanks for the reminder, Mr Rohr.

Yesterday I took a mental health day for myself. Well, I didn't plan to, it's just that by the time lunchtime came and I hadn't done anything but read, I decided to just kick the ends out and let myself rest. Pour water on the expectations. We get taught in every possible way to strive, and we don't get taught the wisdom of lying down and rolling with it when we need to. That's the sort of shit they should teach in school.

So it felt good to me to yesterday allow myself to do nothing. And so I did, literally. Read two books basically all day. Got online a bit here and there. Watched television (old reruns of Fast Forward, an Australian comedy show). Ate the leftover takeaway from the night before. Didn't even bother having a shower, all day - gross :) Couldn't even be fagged going up the supermarket to get the dog's food. Instead, went to McDonald's for dinner - such a violent method of eating but I didnt care - and my dog was forced to eat a couple of burgers for dinner also :)

Still, today I have woken up and feel soothed. I think the equilibrium is returning, after a week of feeling like I am living inside the middle of a giant gong. And all I know is this. I have freewheeled from feeling like I could just throw in the towel and give it all up on Friday night, to feeling the slow return to some sort of equilibrium today. Inbetween those two states, there is always some sort of almost violent throwing myself back onto God, onto what I can see I am losing focus in. It feels wrenching and it feels like death, it really does. I can see some more areas in my life lately that I am seeing wrong. How funny that space is - seeing that you are seeing wrong, and yet not yet knowing what it is to see right. It is this continual ongoing walking the dark path, having to trust in this unseen being who you have never seen face to face before, and who is strangely silent sometimes to the point of wanting to throw things at him (and because I can't see him, what can I throw? Well, most oftentimes it's my words, my vitriole, and my anger, but he can take it. Indeed, I think he wants to take it. That has been demonstrated 2000 years ago surely. It is death to our egoes to think this way, that God wants to take all of our rage and our wounds and our fuckedupedness because we can't cope with them ourselves. We like to think that we can cope with anything and everything, even while the world reels to and fro and we bite the insides of our mouths in anxiety.

I think I have named my blog well, you know. A discombobulated head, but also a discombobula of thoughts. Thoughts that ramble too far that they seem to not fit into the same life. Nice thoughts, evil thoughts, right thoughts, wrong thoughts. Embarrassing, gauche, socially inept thoughts. Cool, calm thoughts. Thoughts that veer from poo, and whether I am horny or not, to ethereal mysticism and blatherings about how I love God. The two cannot fit, can they? Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I feel embarrassed about what I write. I have often thought maybe I should split this blog into two. And yet, all of these things are me. And so all of them fit. Not necessarily cohesive or comfortable, but this is what encompasses me. So I shall keep it all messed up together, like it or lump it :)

Today I took Lester and Elly to George Schofield, dog chiropractor extraordinaire. Lester danced around with his muzzle on trying to box it off his nose, and growled at George when we was manipulating his front legs. But didn't try to bite him this time, which is good, because George is 89 years old, and you don't bite 89 year old men. This man, however, is still able to lift a large dog's back legs with ease, and lean over their back to realign their spines, and generally get about doing physical work like someone 20 years younger. He just inspires the socks off of me. There is this feeling walking into George's place, a feeling I get from certain people sometimes. It's like he's just where you know he should be. And because he's there, where he should be, he occupies the space better than anyone else would. He fills up all the molecules to the full. If someone else was here instead of him, if he had taken a different turn and went somewhere else, then that person would fill up 97 % of each molecule and it would be fine. But it wouldn't be as fine.

Perhaps I am a bit too overly idealistic in my thinking. Perhaps it's because I'm reading The Alchemist at the moment. But some people just really seem as if they are just where they should be, you know? As if the desires of their hearts and the universe have colluded, and so the very molecules of the air surrounding them waltz in the extra oxygen. As if inhabiting their spaces to the full, they create extra pockets to walk through.

But then, maybe this sort of unity is something far more everyday for us than this ethereal blathering I am so given to spouting :) Not so Christianish that it is all sweetness and light and suppress the dark. Maybe this unity is all around us, like a river we can swim in, in a fashion that is real and attainable. In a fashion that includes tears, despair and boredom, the darkness and the tares. It must be. If the dark cannot stand, has not been redeemed, then the light and the wheat cannot stand either, in a fashion that we can walk in and still be real and broken. At least at this point of time.

In other times all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. But until then, I'm sure George Schofield wakes up and is bored shitless being George Schofield, wonders what would have happened if he'd become a farmer instead of a greyhound breeder and dog chiropractor? I'm sure he has crazy personality defects that cause certain family members to dislike him (this seems impossible in such a man as he, but who knows?)

I don't think there is just one path for us all. Surely there must be as many paths as there are ways to turn. Not just one heartfelt desire but many. Not just one chance at following those desires but every chance whenever the sun comes up, whenever we breathe in. Not so much a place that we need to be in, as a place that we are in, if only we can recognise it.

What a great mystery it is ~ even while we draw breath and live, it is not enough ~ we must choose life. We must continue to choose to be born, even as we age, even while we wake and eat, cry and shit, laugh and make love and wail and screech and glow and yearn and hope and pray. Even when we are behaving badly and missing the mark, losing the plot and fucking ourselves over, we still get to keep walking into the grace fields. This is the space God has stretched out for us.

Image: A Dream by arkano3