Trey's Days No. 18

"Little Ashes" is a tale of two men of Spain, Frederico Garcia Lorca and Salvidor Dali, once lovers. Dali goes to Paris to join Picasso, to marry a woman, to become famous and to love money and America. Lorca stays in Madrid and joins the Revolution, plays the piano, drinks with men and women, dances the new dances and smokes, writes revolutionary treatises and gets shot in the head by fascist thugs. Lying in a field, his chin quivering, a little white blossom wobbles in the wind as the blood of genius soaks the earth. Fascism is like that.

Swimming in the moonlight, drops of water dripping off their fingers glow like stars; they kiss. Lovers in a land where love between men is forbidden, they dare, beg forgiveness, fight themselves, love again, run away. Forbidden love is like that. Lying on pillows, reciting poetry, wearing turbans, their forbidden love makes the dormitory gay. My heart hurts.

Stalking Lorca, Dali finds himself. Loving Dali, Lorca scares Dali and he runs off to Paris. Lorca is left to fight Franco all by himself. Loving Lorca, his girlfriend knows. All Spain knows. The bloody thuggish regime knows. The bulls in the ring know. The blood of babies in the streets knows. Love will not be silenced, not by guns, not by smothering thugs. Neither time nor death can kill it. Love is like that.

Lorca and Dali live, their love lives, their art, their poetry live. Their story is told and retold. Hear it? Tell it. Love is like that. My heart hurts. Arise and tell the story, oh you of blood, of poetry, of art and music, of drops of stars in the moonlight, swimming, dancing, glowing. Live on sweet Lorca, strange Dali, your men, your women, your guns, your blood, your swimming dancing glowing moonlight. Death cannot kill it; love is like that.

Trey's Days No. 17

"Think about the last time you were stressed out – I mean really stressed out – I mean 'I have four papers due on Monday and I washed a red shirt with the whites and I’ve been stuck on the tarmac at Logan for two hours for no discernible reason' stressed out. What did your friends do? They took you for coffee or for ice cream or, perhaps, for coffee ice cream. They told you to take a couple deep breaths. They told you to focus on breathing. Everything will be alright, they said. They knew that breathing, like God’s presence, is a constant in our lives. They knew that we don’t have to focus on constant things in order for those constant things to continue happening. But they also knew that when we do focus on those constant things, we often find peace – peace and new beginnings." The Rev. Adam Thomas

Once when I was in a real crisis, my therapist Anna took me on a little spiritual journey that began with the words "I want you to become aware of your breathing." That commenced a little trip to a place inside myself that I'll call my conscious contact with God. It's always been there and does not depend on my awareness. Each time I remember Anna's words in that still quiet place, it re-emerges, unchanged by time and neglect. And each time I renew my conscious contact with it, its nourishing power, its salving balm is just as sweet as it was the first time. My God is like that. Unchanging, not dependent on me, ever salving, calming, saving.

The story of "Jacob's Ladder" to which the Adam Thomas piece refers, begins with a dream. Many stories in Scripture begin with dreams. Like dreams, our unconscious and the synchronistic nature of things, always lie just beneath the surface of our conscious busyness, and when we get stressed out, frantic, afraid, tired, they are there to remind us, "I want you to become aware of your breathing." And when we return, in an instant it reappears, that connection with something greater than self, greater than circumstances, greater than the world, greater than death. Yes, greater than death! That clear clean cool well of pure spiritual awareness that is our God is waiting for us, and all we have to do is breathe. Amen.

Now check out Adam Thomas' blog for a slightly more coherent hint of what I'm talking about.

http://wherethewind.com/2011/07/18/the-autonomic-spiritual-system/

Trey's Days No. 16

Betty Ford and Julia Hagerman: a legacy of recovery

by Trey Merritt on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 7:49am

"I'm having an eclipse of my own!" The living room was completely dark. I wouldn't have known she was there except for the orange glow coming from the tip of her Kent. "C'mon granny, we're going outside to see the lunar eclipse!" Her reply was startling to me as a young child, but now I understand it completely.

Betty Ford died on July 8th, and left a legacy of recovery. When I was growing up in the era of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, our family didn't talk about addiction or alcoholism. It was a dirty little secret, like being gay, or having a mental illness. There were lots of dirty little secrets that families suffered with in silence, or more likely, with whispers.

"Your grandmother is an alcoholic. She's had too much to drink. She doesn't mean what she's saying and she won't remember it tomorrow." My mother knew enough to tell me as a child that Granny's behavior had a cause. Her rants, her ramblings, her nonsensical goings on came after an afternoon of drinking Scotch and smoking cigarettes, a daily event that began with an oh so gentile, "I believe I'll have a highball. Would anyone else like one?" That highball was followed by a succession of "patches" which consisted of an ice cube or two and a splash of Scotch. Her glasses were etched with pink elephants. Her stories were of things that happened long ago, or never.

"I wish you could have known my mother before she got like this. She used to be a lot of fun." We had gone to the coast for the day. We had family in Pass Christian, and the beach was not far away from my grandparents' South Mississippi home. Granny had not gone with us that day, preferring to stay home and drink and visit with the maid, which is how she spent every day. Upon returning at dark thirty, we found my grandmother, walking in circles in the kitchen, the floor covered with smudges of blood and broken glass. One more patch was too many and the pink elephants had shattered all over the floor. Too drunk to clean up her mess, she had walked around in broken glass for who knows how long. My mother spent the rest of the evening picking glass out of her feet. "I wish you could have know my mother before she got like this."

No one ever suggested to my grandmother that she might have a problem with alcohol. Betty Ford hadn't sobered up yet, hadn't founded her famous hospital. AA had been around for decades, but in that small Mississippi town such things were far far away, or at least not mentioned. It was Betty Ford who changed all that. What Bill W. had started in 1935, Mrs. Ford took public in the 1980s. Suddenly it was not only okay to get help, it seemed like addicts and alcoholics were coming out of the woodwork, their disease to expose. Recovery happened. As a society we started to get well together.

So when it came time for my family's disease to manifest itself in me, help was everywhere. At work, at my church, at school, in the grocery store, on facebook, everywhere I go, there are people who walk the walk of recovery with me, and we see each other getting better, we listen to each other's stories and hear ourselves there. We see a fellowship growing up around us like a miracle we never could have imagined while in our disease.

So rest in peace Betty and Julia, and thank you a million times thank you for your legacy of disease and recovery. Things will never be the same for those of us who get a second chance, and we can never repay the gift you have left us. May we ever have the Grace to keep passing it on.

Trey's Days No. 15

Life is Good

I read an article about a dude who hiked the Appalachian Trial from way down south to way up north, and realized there that all his big thoughts crystallized into "warm dry place to sleep, food to eat." My Appalachian Trial at the moment is many sheet pans of cookie dough, great bowls of strawberry bread batter, and many repetitions of attempting the best brownie recipe ever (if you haven't tried the Boulevard brownies, you must!). I didn't go to school to scoop cookies and attempt to perfect brownies. I went to school to think big thoughts and write about them for people who critique big thoughts and writing about them. But somewhere in the third attempt to make the brownies, in the reading of an Appalachian Trial tale, in the bone tiredness of working all night, comes my crystallization.

I recently was temporarily kicked off Facebook pending an investigation of an allegation of abuse. It was resolved in my favor, for which I am very grateful. I didn't realized how much I would miss my Facebook friends, our little interactions here, the sites I see and read here. The human community if so great. The love we share with each other is powerful, nourishing and life giving. Yes, I know, it's on-line, and it's Facebook, but it's also human. We touch each other with our little words, our posts, our poems, our pictures of our lives unfolding, and somewhere in there is a crystallization of love between real human beings, connected, even if it is with computers.

Just as I was coming back to Facebook there was an article from "elephantjournal" by a guy who is a Buddhist meditation teacher, about how Jesus is God, and like seeing a wave in the ocean, if you've seen him you've seen the Father. And so it is with us. The article is about Buddhism, meditation and the Bodhisattva way, but it says something powerful too about who Jesus is. He's God! And we, through the magic of the human connection can see God through His fearless giving. And this coming from a dude who is not a Christian! And there too, a crystallization! I realized how much I love Jesus and His Church while I was sitting on a cushion meditating with some Buddhist friends. I thought I was getting away for a while, only to realize I was always moving toward Home. We all are always moving toward Home, no matter how far away we may feel now. Trust that!

Whether we're hiking the Appalachian Trial, making cookies, sitting on a Buddhist meditation cushion, kneeling in an Episcopal Church, rocking out to heavy metal or drinking beer by the pool, we're all being called Home by a God who loves us, and after all the big thoughts and complicated words are thought and said, it's all crystallizing down to a warm dry place to sleep, some food to eat, and a loving human community to be a part of. For that I am very grateful. Life is Good! Amen.

Trey's Days No. 14

Guidance

I had known for a long time from experience that to stay on the beam, to stay clean and sober, to maintain constant contact with a higher power, I had to be willing to follow directions and to get honest. Time and time again I had thought I was willing to do that, only to discover that at certain times making decisions in life, mostly small every day decisions, I wanted to be back in the driver's seat, to call the shots myself. And each time I did, I got myself into difficulty, into pain, a pain that is not sustainable without some relief. Well, we know what relief looks like. It looks like a drink, like a joint, like sex, like pornography, like over eating, like spending money; it looks like something that feels good for a matter of minutes and leaves a long hangover of still more pain.

This time around it had to be different. This time around, I was ready for the permanent solution, the solution that comes not from myself, but truly comes from a power greater than myself. This time around I was willing to follow directions.

I had seen (we'll call him “J.”) once several years ago at a church I was visiting. He was one of the lay people in charge around there, a trusted servant we might say, doing his work, unassuming and shy, but with a quiet authority. We never exchanged words but I knew who he was. I did not know then that he would be my way back to a way of life that demands rigorous honesty. Years later I would see him at a convention where we gather to hear people tell their stories. And I would see him at a meeting I go to, and I would see him at a different church where I had become a member. It seemed I couldn't go anywhere without him popping up. Interesting how these things work when there's Guidance involved.

So one day after I had gotten sick and tired of being sick and tired, after I had reached the end of the rope of making all my own decisions, I saw him at my church, and during the Passing of the Peace he said my name. Then later when I got myself to a meeting, I saw him there, exuding that quiet power that comes from years of following directions and surrendering to a power greater than oneself. I looked him up and called him. We got to talking.

I had finished school for the time being and it was abundantly clear that I was not going to seminary. The churchman I had sought out to help me with that had used me as a sounding board to share all his attempts at romantic exploits. He had listened to my theological and spiritual questions but assiduously avoided giving me the time of day on the content of my search, and each time I had broached the question, had made it clear I was not what his church was looking for. Not a squeaky clean undergraduate, not a successful second career person, no other degrees, more spiritual than religious, I was the exact opposite of what he would think of as a postulate for the discernment process. I went back to school with spiritual questions and seminary in mind. I had counciled with a minister who had helped me get to the place that at the age of 44 I was willing to go back to school and get that undergraduate degree I had abandoned to willfulness and youthful distractions. Minoring in music, philosophy and religious studies with a smattering of Spanish I was approaching a degree which looked on paper like one perfect for training for theology or ministry of some kind.

But Guidance would intervene at this point. The door I thought I had been persistently knocking on slammed suddenly with a smack. My persistent questions about spirituality and the church, my annoying comments about a church run by bankers, my demands that gay leaders, especially in the church have an obligation to be authentic and available to the struggling gay teen who is on the brink of suicide, my probing about the presence of God in our lives and the Guidance we receive through prayer, my exploration of eastern religion, had all just become too much. With the reprimand that it was obvious that the “friendship” had taken a back seat to my “other goals” he ended the relationship, soundly, suddenly and with characteristic vigor and finality.

Meanwhile Guidance had been pecking away at my brain. A friend had suggested a couple of books by Teilhard de Chardin. The Episcopal Church had celebrated the memory of Evelyn Underhill, Anglican mystic, on the day of the severing of ties with the closeted churchman, something had made me go back and reread “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis, and J. had insisted that I apply for a job at the bakery, with a sprinkling of words about Brother Lawrence and “Practicing the Presence of God.” I had been clean and sober again for enough months now to know that Guidance was telling me something.

. A coworker at the bakery is “one of us” doing what I do for the problem I have. The people there are so patient and kind it immediately feels like I'm suppose to be there. The Teilhard, C.S.Lewis, Evelyn Underhill, and the words about Brother Lawrence, and not to leave out the Bill W. readings, all come together to show me that the Spirit of the living God was there all along, showing me the Body of Christ is not in just in an institution run by bankers with its buildings, budgets and bureaucracy. It's in the cookie dough. It's in a coworker who is one of us. It's in a guy named J. who keeps popping up every where and suggests I go apply for a job at the bakery. It's in Teilhard's fossils, Underhill's naked awareness, Brother Lawrence's “Pressence”, C.S. Lewis' quiet intuitive thought. It's in meetings where God has skin and shares stories of recovery. It's in the slamming of a door by a closeted churchman and the opening of a bag of patent flour. It's in a dog walk by the lake on a muggy morning, in a call from a friend at church I never knew knew me, it's in the peace that comes from finally surrendering to a power greater than myself and enough willingness to follow some simple suggestions.

I don't know where this journey is going, but recent experience is making it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt; Guidance is real, unmistakable, and it frequently looks very different from what we're expecting. It requires surrender and willingness, rigorous honesty and deep trust. But when those qualities coalesce in a moment, there is the feeling of being home at last, and the weary seeker can rest in the knowledge of Guidance.

Trey's Days No. 13

The Path

There was a flame from an oil lamp on the table between two chairs. This little light transformed the otherwise conventional mid-century living room into a chamber of soul searching. Anne had been through a lot. Minister's wife, mother, social worker, ordained minister now retired, it is here that she would share her considerable experience with me.

The session was life changing. She helped me make the decision. If I wanted to go to seminary getting my bachelor's degree was the first step. I would register for some classes and figure out what I'd major in later. There was on that day with the little light and the woman wealthy with experience a sense that something had changed. There was a new path, the path of education and preparation.

Academic advising with the chair of the music department was a mistake. It didn't seem like a mistake, but I emerged a music major. Dr. Choirmaster exclaimed “Major? Major?” and put his head down on his desk. Dr. Choirmaster has sent me to the department chair for advising. He had not imagined I would emerge a music major. “Okay, get ready!” he warned.

Concert choir was easy enough. Community chorus was even easier. Anyone with half a voice can sing in a huge choir, even if it is Handel and Mozart. It was the voice lessons and recitals, the piano lessons and recitals, the aural skills tests and the other classes on top of that that started the anxiety attacks. Standing in the wings, running “See the Raging Flames Arise” from Handel's Joshua in my head, the anxiety was like having an out of body experience. “Can you take it a little faster?” the Bulgarian accompanist asked as we walked out. “I guess” I squeaked meekly.

I crashed and burned. Two lines into the all together too fast Handel aria I looped and forgot the words. “Kristina, we have to stop.” She ignored me and kept on playing. Lost, I turned and tried to sing again. That was my last public performance. It was an unmitigated disaster. After many successes singing and playing, after mastering a gob of theory, after working my ass off, it all lay in the ruins of one disastrous performance. “Major?” Right. Big mistake!

Advising in the philosophy and religious studies department after years of a steady diet of music felt so much more appropriate. Of course. Preparation for seminary or a theology degree would involve philosophy and religious studies. Naturally. Off I went for some more years of classes I mostly loved. Existentialism, Islam, Medical Ethics, Eastern Thought, all wonderful stuff. But something had happened to me in the process of working on this patchwork we call a Liberal Arts degree. All the resolve of that day with the flame lighting a new path had vaporized. The hope of a degree itself had crashed on the rocky shores of a biology class taught by an old school hard ass. And the anxiety of crashing and burning on the shards of “See the Raging Flames Arise” with the Bulgarian racer now followed me everywhere.

“Wanna get high?” the hippie brother beckoned. Well hell yeah. Years of experience taught me how to make that stalking anxiety go away. Relapse held at bay for a while by a fellowship and a program, there comes in the life of every recovering person the moment when there is no human defense. Hell yeah I wanted to get high. I wanted relief, relief from “Major? Major?” Relief from “See the Raging Flames Arise”, relief from the passive bureaucracy of urban public education, but mostly just relief from myself, from my disease, from stalking anxiety that followed me from childhood, stirring my brain chemistry into a perfect storm of confusion and exhaustion.

I escaped with most of my dignity in tact and a zillion hours. I learned a tremendous amount. From Dr. E I got my faith back in Eastern Thought, Philosophy of Religion, and watching him teach. From my friends I found a new kind of fellowship, one of ideas and aspiration. But I had lost the light of that little flame showing me the way to a new path that would take me to the vocation for which my maker had given me great and powerful gifts.

The fellowship that offers a way out was right where I left it. Many of my old brothers were still there. They had saved me a seat. And in that fellowship I found the lamp still burning, the path still illuminated by the light of that one still and steady flame. The gifts are still there and into them has been stoked the logs of learning and even still breathes Spirit to fan the flame. Tomorrow I go to meet one who found his vocation and met his calling, to hear a word of experience. The path stretches out before me still, and still alive and breathing I have a chance. I am starting to see how my experience can benefit others, and alive in my recent memory is the message of Sister Helen Prejean reminding me not to be overwhelmed but to reach out to one in pain. And I have a whole list of names of people in pain who are waiting for me to reach out. The flame still burns, and the path will become visible again as my eyes open, I trust.

Trey's Days No. 12

Sister

I went to see the Dalai Lama. And I did, along with several thousand other folks. What I wasn't expecting was to be blown away by a Catholic nun. Sitting there between the leader of the Tibetans and a great American civil rights leader was a woman who taught me a lesson I've been needing for a while. She taught me how to not be overwhelmed in a world full of unimaginable suffering. She said you do it by reaching out to one person in pain.

Sister Helen Prejean sat between the civil rights leader and the Tibetan god king, an ordinary nun in plain clothes. She spoke plainly. She wore a red scarf and pants. She told of befriending one who had committed an unspeakable crime and another who was the father of one killed in an unspeakable crime. She told with great authority how they both wanted healing and how that healing cannot come from more violence. She told of a killing chamber with a window. Three are invited to watch the killing. There's the state's witness, there's one who is the representative of the victims family, and there's the mother of the one to be killed, her hand pressed against the glass as she watches her son the killer be killed. Nothing gets solved there and the cycle of violence continues.

Not overwhelmed in such a world where the cycle of violence continues unabated she loves each of them one at a time. She listens to them one at a time. She is Jesus for each one of them, one at a time, and walks away strong, sad but strong onto the stage of the Razorback arena before thousands.

As we waited in the afternoon to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet again, coming to receive his honorary degree of humane letters from the University of Arkansas, the audience are in their own thoughts. A mother and daughter behind us check their stocks and talk excitedly about Pepsi's recent split. Another wears lama colors, yellow and maroon. The superstitious and the irreverent together waiting to see if the sound system can be fixed so the monologue on a non-violent response to Chinese oppression can be understood better than the morning talk which presumably was on non-violence, although it was anybody's guess since very little of what he said in the morning could be understood; his English fast and bubbly runs together in the giant re-verb of too much amplification, soft fast speaking and a giant echo in a huge domed room. All that way and a year of preparation, to present a god king and scarcely a word he spoke could be understood. Finally some brave anonymous one of the thousands yells “louder!”. But louder was not the answer, maybe slower, clearer, with less reverberation.

The message which could not be heard was that a baby learns love and compassion at her mother's breast. We carry that mother child connection into the world and we can't let it get beat out of us. In a jail cell in a Chinese prison, a monk has the snot beat out of him over and over by a guard whose job it is to be cruel as a matter of course. “My enemy my best teacher” he can almost be understood to say. Can't learn patience from a loving mother, from a Buddha, from your best friend. No. But from a guard who beats the snot out of you on a daily basis as a matter of course because he's just doing his job, you can learn patience. His culture irreparably altered forever, his childhood home raised to the ground, his people systematically oppressed on a daily basis in the country where he was once the god king, he smiles, even laughs. “My enemy my best teacher.”

It was the re-verb that taught me patience on this fateful day. Arising at 4, driving up in the morning, sitting through unintelligible speech all morning, returning hoping for another chance to hear the god king before he goes back to his place of exile, perhaps never to come this close to us again, it was agonizing to see him and hear sound coming out of his mouth and to be able to catch only about every third word. But what we did hear loud and clear is that unimaginable cruelty and suffering on a global scale cannot take away our hope. An ocean of suffering cannot overwhelm us. They taught us with their unintelligible words to love each other one at a time, to reach out to one in pain today, and to bring our love and hope with us, even into a great reverberating stadium full of chatty people checking their stocks, and superstitious groupies wearing the right colors with “spiritual” jewelry. From the god king and the simple sister came a love that cannot be killed, even by all that.