Tuesday, October 18, 2011

What Fear Can Do

In my mid twenties after leaving the Navy, I went to work for a government contractor running physical inventory processes. The work at first was sporadic, but my work ethic paid off with a full time position at the Naval base in San Diego. Working along side sailors (some of who I had known from my ship), I got along easily with everyone except for one young man from my company. He was shy and kept to himself. He brought his bible to work with him daily and could be found studying the scriptures during brakes and lunches As a result he earned the nickname "the preacher".  As for the rest of us we were all piled in the break room watching soap operas (men and women alike) yelling at the screen and making jokes about the crazy story lines.

One day, after work I was walking to my car and realized that the preacher seemed to be following me. I knew something was wrong but kept walking, eventually thinking that I had lost him. As I got into my Karmann Ghia that I was driving at the time, I saw him in my rear view mirror. He walked alongside of my car and tapped on the window. That is where the memory stops for me. The next thing I remembered was waking up in my car in a pool of blood with a raging headache and a rather nasty cut above my left eye, that I would discover the next day had been made by his ring. I drove home and cleaned myself up and shackingly called my boss. I was asked not to press charges and told to meet him at my job site the following morning. When I walked in he was there talking to the Senior Chief in charge and "the preacher". That's when I heard the preacher say, but he is a sinner and I try so hard, but everybody loves him. It makes me sick. He was told to apologise to me and then my boss escorted me to the side. If I promised not to say anything to anyone, I would be transferred to a prime location in Point Loma and get to travel to all of our inventory sites including Yuksuka, Japan.  Travel? sign me up! I wasn't much of a wave maker anyway. Oddly enough, it would be another five years to connect the dots and realize that I had been "Gay Bashed".

The point of telling this story isn't to point out that I was bashed or that I got to travel or that I was timid. The point is that fear can debilitate you completely! I don't know if I passed out even before the punch landed on my forehead or if fear erased the memory. But thanks to fear, I'm missing a few minutes of my life. Pretty amazing. I have come to understand that my response is something that would be consistent with victims of abuse (not the case) or bullying (defiantly the case). What ever the reason, I still find it fascinating that we can black out to avoid handling something too frightening.

Fast forward to December of 2010. Sitting in the doctors office, listening to the fact that I had cancer. I didn't pass out or fade out to some safe place in my mind. I've grown stronger over the years. Strong enough to face an internal danger that is far more frightening than an external one. Yes, I suppose that "the preacher" could have had a gun and shot me, but I would have been dead. The threat and the fear of cancer is one of living in ever increasing pain, of losing you body piece by piece until it finally and mercifully no longer functions Every survivor knows this all to well. Every care taker has taken that same journey with us and they know it all too well. Having lost my first life partner, Tim, to AIDS in 1985, I was no stranger to what cancer could do. Tim, was a beautiful and kind young man, who within a year was physically ravaged, going from a 215 lb gym build man to a 95 lb skeleton that I barely recognized. Yes I knew what cancer can do, and yet I knew something else. I could heal myself. Whether I did it using Western or Eastern medicine, was never the point. The point is that even facing our greatest fear we can heal ourselves. I firmly believe this. I believe that this is exactly the way God made us.

Fear can do much to us. It can freeze us, immobilize us, but we must remain strong in our faith and start to move one muscle at a time until the function returns. Until we can eventually smile and laugh and roll our eyes at how dramatic and ridiculous we can be. Until we can set ourselves and our spirit free.

Impoverished

The word poverty brings up many images for most of us, whether or not we have experienced it. Impoverished still more so. For many people the two words sum up vast regions of Africa or other 3rd world nations but for me those words, especially impoverished, brings up feelings of a period of my childhood that,  try as I may, still come to haunt me in the night. Tonight was one of those nights.

Many things can be said about my mother, she was funny and had a great personality, outgoing, stylish in her own way, vain and proud. My sisters would both probably add cruel and thoughtless to that list, but I have to say that I didn't experience that in the way that they did. Looking back on our lives to the period following my parents divorce it was an impoverished existence. I would not realize that for some years to come, however. Immediately following the divorce we moved from a typical suburban home to a charming home in the mountain town of Paradise California. Had we of stayed there, I think that life would be quite different for my sisters and I but we did not. We moved to Texas so that my mother could be closer to her sister that always seemed to be her emotional anchor. Even with her anchor though my mothers spirit seemed to wither and die. I remember her saying to me once that children did not know if they were poor or not, but I knew that we were. We left a beautiful and comfortable home and moved to a dark country style house with a crazy land lady that lived the back rooms which she had converted into an  apartment.. I still remember the sound of rat traps going off in the attic and finding the evidence in the trash can the following morning. Still for awhile we were happy or let me say I was happy. Even tornadoes couldn't wipe away my optimism as one of my favorite memories of that time is my sisters and I being shoved in a bathtub during a tornado, foolishly believing that the house and everything might blow away but somehow being attached to the plumbing we would be safe. I didn't know enough about the world not to be happy at that point.

We would move yet again, this time to a small drab box of a house next door to my Aunt and her husband. Once again, I knew we were poor. Yet I would go and visit my father who was living in Ft Worth, Texas the time and know that at least a part of my was ok. Somehow, my life seemed to have a safety net. For my mother that was not the case. She dried and withered emotionally in the Texas heat. My sisters and I begged to return to California which finally, loaded into my mom's Chevy we did. Mom never recovered from the divorce. She would go on to re-marry a man that I believe she resented and looked down on, but who kept meals on the table. She would continue sewing and designing cloths that she would wear only in the drab little house. As she escaped farther and farther into dark red color of many bottles of wine, I escaped into books. My oldest sister escaped into the Army and my middle sister, I am still not sure if she found an escape. She still bears the emotional scars of those years. Looking back, I see how my mothers depression came to cloud or vision. What I knew them was simply that our existence was no longer one of beauty.

Impoverished is a word that describes not just the physical financial landscape. It cuts much deeper like a scythe removing the golden wheat from the ground. It removes the scenery and color and movement until there is nothing but dried nubs left in the ground. Impoverished is the word for losing hope which is what happened to my mother. Far to proud to take a handout or help or to admit her actual age (but that is yet another story about her). She created and accepted an impoverished existence and all that goes along with it, especially the lack of joy. Even the Sunday outings to church seemed to be filled with resentment and bitterness. Our trips to get ice cream after church became just fond memories. I can speak for no one but myself, that church became the place that I couldn't wait to leave so that I could get back to my pile of books that I was always reading. It was thanks to those printed words in paperback pages that I never lost the ability to dream or see or know beauty. They were my drug of choice. I was saved from a drab and impoverished existence by them. I was saved from bullying by them. I was saved from opinions of the outside world by them. In order to graduate from the sixth grade, we had to log and do book reports on two thousand pages. My pages numbered in excess of twenty thousand, and I actually won some sort of award for having done so.

It is clear to me that being impoverished is a state of mind. Having traveled much of the world, I have seen many people with no money but much joy. These people are not impoverished, in fact some of them are most likely the richest people in the world. Joy and love create a richness all of there own. Happiness is it's own reward. God is infinite and unlimited and tapping into spirit brings about the sense of being unlimited. I have experienced this first hand many many times. And much like the story about going to the river with an eye dropper and going thirsty, while envying the man who brought a cup, far to many of us cripple ourselves in our lives by our own behaviors. Rejecting joy is a choice. It is harder physically and mentally as well. It is much easier to be happy than it is sad. You don't seem to have to work at happy, where sadness takes constant work to remain in that state of mind, so why do we bother? I wish I had the answer to that but do not.

What I do know is that in spite of what my bank account says about me, I feel rich and privileged. I look around at the beauty that I easily create and see evidence to back this up daily. I am nurtured by family and friends who are rich in spirit. My mind is incapable of sustaining a dull and grey world, and thanks to the lessons of life I know that I will never be or feel impoverished.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Ordinarily Extraordinary

Life is amazing. In ways large and small it reveals truth to us. Just by walking around a different corner one day on your morning walk you can discover something that you never knew existed before. So it is also with writing. For the past few months my posts have been dwindling. So have the extraordinary feelings and emotions that I get from writing daily. I was thinking about it this morning, wondering why I don't feel so bright and polished lately. When was the last time that I felt amazing? As the blocks rolled on beneith my feet the answer slowly reveiled itself to me. The last week that I felt amazing was the last week that I had written daily.

What? Why? Clearly more walking and thinking were needed to figure this phonomon out. Actually nothing came until I came home and pulled out a notebook that Ken gave me for my birthday and started doing what the notebook was intended for, writing down my thoughts. As the paper filled up so did my heart. Not that I think that I'm brillient or special. It is exactly the opposite. I am an ordinary man who when he lets go can see the extraordinary in life. The more I let go, the closer I feel to God and the closer I feel to God the easier it is to express myself, to create to sculpt a life in words. Some of these will be read by only myself and others shared, but all of them extraordinary in the way a leaf or a blade of grass is extraordinary. They are one individual expression of the divine.

I remember this feeling well. Years ago I started painting. No training to start off with, just the belief that maybe I could create something beautiful. I did! I found that the medium came easily and effortlessly to me. I painted for my friends freely giving away what had come thru my hands into being. The more I painted the more creative I became. I found that I could create digital works of art and sculpt. The big dream for me though was always to tell stories. To write. I never did, though until the cancer diagnosis. Perhaps it was the fear that even though I believed at one level I would survive it, there was a dark beliefe just below the level of conscienceness that maybe I was running out of time and better start telling those stories before it was too late. I believe that the truth is that when I am creating I feel closer to God and the only time I feel extaordinary is when I am close to God, so it make sense that I need to create. Maybe because these are my God given talents and to not use them would be to waste my life. I also believe that to truly waste your life is to never feel connected to God, to never experience something truly bigger than yourself or your own life. I spent years in the dark being small and I know that I don't want to revisit that path. So once again I am writing.

Several religions belive that having a disiplined practice is important to stay connected to God, more than ever this makes sense to me. Writing has been my practice this past year, when consistant, I feel amazing, and when not writing, I feel dull and lifeless. I believe that I am not alone in this. I suspect that Athletes, Artists, and anyone living out their highest self feels this. It is when we try to listen to others truths that do not work for us or to swim upstream in a river that was not intended for us to swim that we drown our own spirit.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Lessons learned along the way

About 3 or so weeks ago, I decided that I had had enough of being "stuck" in the house. I wanted to get back in the world. Go back to work. Do all of the things I normally do. I decided to push myself. It made sense. If you push yourself in the gym, you get results. Push yourself at work, you get promoted.... Well, that is apparently if you are ready to be pushed. Against the advice of my doctor and even my own dad, to take it easy, I pushed. I mowed the lawn, weeded, weed whacked, raked and made the outside of my house look like it had been visited by a professional gardener. I ignored being tired and some what out of breath. I even ignored feeling dehydrated. In short, my body pushed back.

The symptom started a few days later with a sore throat and a tight chest, by nightfall, I was feverish and knew I had a chest cold. The cold lingered, making it impossible to do the things I love to do. In fact anything but laying around with the dogs (which they seemed to love) was not possible. Now, three weeks later, I am just getting over the cough. My flem has gone from green to yellow and now clear. I am on the mend, but carry the wisdom that I should have listened.

Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, here in my blog. In my head and heart. Listening has always been one of my own shortcomings and now, I was the victim of my own selfish ways. I get it. Just because we hear something or understand something doesn't always mean the we have applied it, and clearly I am guilty of not applying this lesson. Ken still complains that I don't listen to him. That should have been a clue. Additionally, I am still having trouble speaking, because I didn't apply the lessons of my speech therapist and practice daily (apparently talking to myself and the dogs just isn't enough). The other thing I am guilty of is not practicing meditation and prayer on a daily basis. I have stated several times and still believe that those two things were paramount in my healing. Wouldn't it stand to reason that not practicing them could be paramount in a relapse? It makes sense to me. So now the plan is to sit aside some time each day. Time to listen. Listen to God. Listen to my heart and mind. Listen to others, especially Ken. Maybe I'll even listen to my doctor and my dad and take things just a little bit easier.

Of course in the mean time, I do plan on asking the universe for more energy, perfect health, but in praying for specifics, I am reminded of the old Quaker saying: "Pray, but then move your feet". Perfect health and energy are possible for everyone of us, but just like practicing other disciplines, they both require practice and, well,  discipline.  Proper Nutrition, staying hydrated, exercise, rest  and LISTENING to our bodies when they are telling us something. OK, so no healing chocolate donuts, no matter how tempted I am. I am after something much sweeter than a quick sugar fix and that is living a sweet life.