Meditations 4 Misfits

The good news is I think I’ve secured a beautiful place for Nancy, Shanti, and I to live long term. Will find out for sure later this week when we learn what insurance will pay us.

The bad news is that I continue to deeply mourn what we’ve lost. You’ll probably think me silly, but what I really miss most are my books. They weren’t just pages glued and bound – they were intimate friends. Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Brennan Manning, Pema Chodron, Abraham Heschel, Thich Nhat Hanh, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Joan Chittister, Parker Palmer, Lao Tzu, Red Pine, Hafiz, Rumi, Irvin Yalom, Robert Farrar Capon, Thomas Moore, John O’Donoue, and a host of others – men and women I’ve never met, yet all who have profoundly contributed to the shaping and crafting of my soul.

I know, the books can be replaced. But it’s not really the books, it’s my highlighting, underlining, and marking questions on their pages that I mourn. They were my refuge when life got the better of me and I lost my way. They called me back to my Center. I feel like I’ve lost my mooring. My recorded dialogue and arguments with these beautiful wisdom teachers is gone forever, burned to ash.

So staying here at the Millers, I have access to my friend Randy’s library. He has a different set of spiritual guides, ones with whom I’m not so familiar. I’m currently reading one his books called “What Jesus Meant” which is Erik Kolbell’s take on the Beatitudes.

I’m captivated by Kolbell’s insights into the second Beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn …” He writes, “Our lives are lived in a series of lives and deaths, comings and goings, gains and losses.” He unpacks this beautiful line with a rich passage on childbirth. Just as a child is pushed from the safety and security of her mother’s womb into the uncertainty of life as we know it, she releases the first primal wail of surrender to the impermanence of our existence. This loss of what we know to be security is followed by an endless series of losses – a favorite blanket, toys, leaving home for school, friends made at school, the insecurity of finding work, a life partner, aging and the loss of mobility, until the final loss of life itself. We mourn them all.

He suggests that while, “Life is arbitrary, God is not … God does not engineer suffering and loss but rather calls us to redeem it, to die into something.”  Kolbell’s point is that all these losses do cause pain as we are ripped from whatever has helped us feel safe and secure, but they are also doorways into the Great Next. Such is the human condition.

Maybe all of these life mournings are preparation for the Great Morning we call Death?

Maybe my mourning over lost books isn’t really bad news after all?

Yesterday was an odd day. The air was cool, the skies were blue and clear. You’d never know the previous week we were living in Dante’s Inferno.

Nancy left early for a flight to Massachusetts, a long-planned trip for her father’s 90^th birthday. My son Elijah has been on a Walk-About for the past week. After his mother’s death, and our total loss due to the southern Oregon fires, he just needed to get away from the smoke and process his own grief. He’s been driving east for over a week now. And our temporary hosts, the Millers, left yesterday as well for a planned silent retreat in Washington. So I was home alone with Shanti the wonder dog.

Now normally, I love being alone. All my life I have sought out silence and solitude. As a Five on the enneagram, and an off-the-chart introvert, silence has always been one of my dearest friends. Until yesterday.

After more than ten frantic days occupied by evacuations, the search for temporary housing, and initiating the mountain of minutia with insurance and what-not that a disaster of biblical proportions requires, I was left home alone with really nothing to do. And it as disquieting.

With no immediate crises demanding my attention, the repressed emotions of the past two weeks were free to reach up from my bowels and grab my heart. In the long hours of quiet, images flooded my mind and remembrances of what we have lost overwhelmed me. It was unusually difficult. Even my dear friend, Silence, had turned on me as well. Nowhere to hide.

I experienced in a very real way what I have shared with countless survivors of a loved one on hospice care over the years: after spending so much time care giving for your loved one, lots of free time will not be easy. A truth I really didn’t grasp until yesterday.

Yesterday, silence was not my friend.

Woke up tonight from a fitful sleep feeling like Jacob wrestling with the Angel (Genesis 32). I realize my on-going struggle with receiving help (and I can’t escape it right now, because we really do need help in so many ways) is really a spiritual one. Dress it up however you want, the real issue is pride. It’s so damn hard to surrender my primal nature to be in control. What’s so awful in bein’ beholdin’ to others? All I know is it’s not letting me sleep, and tomorrow’s a workday.

I remember reading a great line by Philip Yancey. He said God’s amazing grace can be just downright annoying – because you can’t earn it – you can only accept it.

Well as the story goes, eventually Jacob learned when to let go and just give up. He was greatly blessed for it. I sure hope I can get to that place soon because this futile wrestling really sucks.

As a follow up to yesterday’s posting, I’ve been thinking more today about the gifts that come from embracing our neediness and leaning into our vulnerability. One of the main things I’ve gained from being forced to surrender to these realities is a passage way out of my unhealthy isolation and the discovery of true community.

A significant experience of this gift occurred several years ago in a small church meeting I was at facilitated by a local spiritual provocateur, Mark Yaconelli. There were about 20 of us in the meeting and Mark shared in our culture we are so willing to help others and yet so reluctant to ask for help. Giving help often is a way of exercising power over the ones being helped. He said if we really want to let people into our lives, we can start by sharing a need we have right now and ask if anyone in the group would be willing to help. Well you can imagine the stone-cold silence and fear that flooded the room. But eventually someone started, and we all in turn were invited to share a real need.

Being totally useless at fixing things around the house, I asked for help in unclogging some bathroom drains. Sounds simple, but it was a very embarrassing confession of my ineptitude. Michael, another man in the group and someone that I really didn’t know said he would help. When we got together to fix the drain, I shared I was desperate for some meaningless male companionship and just plain useless conversation. My job as hospice chaplain can get quite intense, and I really ached for ways to just blow off some steam. Michael said he was up for some meaningless male conversation and we began to meet regularly for a beer and just heckle each other.

Well, needless to say in the years since he has become one of my dearest friends and he was a great inspiration in the completion of my first book.

This is the main point of Kurtz and Ketcham’s classic, The Spirituality of Imperfection. They suggest if you and I sit down over coffee and share our success and triumphs, we’ll learn some things about each other, but we really won’t connect in a meaningful way. On the other hand, when you find someone you can trust enough to share your deepest fears and vulnerabilities with, you’ll discover you really aren’t alone and taste the soul nourishment of true community. A core principle of the whole Twelve-Step tradition.

It’s also a lesson I’m learning again this week. By being forced into receiving help from friends and colleagues due to the loss of our home in the Almeda Fires, the depth of those relationships has expanded exponentially. I’m learning again, to my great surprise, I’m not alone.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not fun, and it’s filled with the fear of rejection … but so far, it’s become a gift even fire can’t consume.

One of the hardest parts about being a refugee is the emotional distress that comes with knowing you are committing the ultimate cultural sin: being needy.

Over the past week I’ve come to experience first-hand how difficult it is to receive. I really suck at it.  Being needy, knowing you are utterly dependent upon others, unable to avoid the reality of how vulnerable you are is really scary. In one afternoon, the whole illusion I have spent a lifetime crafting of being independent, responsible, able to provide for myself and my family all by myself literally went up in smoke.

Today as I was praying, a verse from the Bible surfaced in my soul, Luke 6:20. It’s a verse that’s always puzzled me. “Jesus said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.’” I mean, what in the world could the Rabbi be taking about? Why would he proclaim you are blessed or flourishing when you’re poor? How can being destitute possibly be a blessing?

This is a lesson I’m beginning to learn in the School of Refugee. One of the first things you learn when you literally have nothing is how to surrender. Now I know that word “surrender” comes with a lot of baggage … but I just think of a better one. You learn how to surrender to waiting in lines, surrender to being on hold, surrender to wearing clothes you that don’t flatter your physic, surrender to not being in control of your own life. Surrender to the fact that you’re interdependent and no one can really go it alone.

Truth is, we’re all needy. Most of us can just hide it better than others a good deal of the time. But life has a way of puncturing that illusion. I’ve seen it so often with patients I’ve served in hospice who struggle with this lesson at the hands of a terminal disease. The ones who fight tooth and nail to be in control, to be in charge against overwhelming reality, generally die a very hard death and require a lot of heavy-duty pain killers. The ones who can go with the flow, accept the process, allow others to help, often die with much less pain and much more peace.

Another Jesus line comes to mind, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:23) The rich people I know (myself included) have a really hard time surrendering to reality. One of the benefits of being rich is the ability to be in control. It’s a benefit that’s almost impossible to let go of – and we won’t unless Brother disease or Sister fire comes to take it away. But if Jesus is to be believed, the result of surrendering our illusion of being in control is the entry way into God’s beloved kingdom. Could it be that’s why he said, “Blessed are the poor?” They’ve mastered the art of accepting their neediness and surrendering to the reality of our interdependence?

How maddening Jesus can be sometimes …

Well, after arriving at the Miller oasis on Saturday, and having a couple of days to feel safe, sleep, and enjoy the reverie of my courtship with Nancy – reality reached out and smacked me in the face again yesterday.

It all started when I decided to go out and run some errands. As I picked up my key ring, I saw the house key was still there. Whack! What’s the point in carrying around a key that fits a lock on a non-existent door that led into a home that’s no longer there? Almost cried just looking at that stupid key.

Then as I went out to run the errands, get a pair of shoes, pick up some new glasses that had been ordered after a trip to the optometrist a couple of weeks ago, and get a P.O. Box so that we could have an address for mail (after all, are you a real person if you don’t have an address?) – errands that two weeks ago would have taken about and hour and half – now take six. One of the things you quickly learn in the School of Refugee is that there are always lines, nothing happens quickly. Whack!

But the coup de gras came after I arrived back at the Miller oasis. Opened up my laptop to check on things and derive some soothing balm for my awfully inconvenient day. What I wanted was encouragement of friends and family, to be told what a good and holy man I am. What I got was reality hitting me upside the head again. After wading through the obscene volume of spam from people trying to sell me walk-in-tubs, new gutters and windows, insurance, and untold other useless offers for an illusory “better life,” there was a post forwarded from a friend about the plight of my Latino / Latina neighbors who were going through the same experience of fire, smoke, and evacuation as me – only their plight is so much worse. Whack!

Yes, this is the most difficult experience of my life. But being a documented white man with good insurance and a wonderful employer (Providence Health System) going over and above in ensuring my family’s needs are met – I have a wonderful and deeply appreciated safety net, my dear Brown-skinned undocumented neighbors don’t. Whack!

While I can escape the worst air quality on the planet by entering a clean, quiet, air-conditioned, atmosphere – they do not have that option. No government aid is available to them. Many can’t even access the free food and clothing available at the many distribution centers because when you don’t have a car, or gas to put in it, you just can’t get there.

These are my neighbors. Human beings that work and live in the same valley I do. Mothers and fathers who love their kids as much as I love Nancy and Elijah. Yet our experience is worlds apart. How can this be? How can this be a just a fair society?

I know these are complex issues, with layers of difficulties and a long history of failed attempts to rectify. But when you’re in the same cauldron and you can see the disparity of suffering up close and personal the sheer absurdity of it all is overwhelming. Whack!

I remembered a line from Anne Lamott that, “becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.”

I didn’t want to be conscious. I wanted to be comatose. I felt so many things I didn’t want to feel. The intense poverty of my Latino / Latina neighbors was maddening, Whack! My own sense of entitlement and privilege was embarrassing, Whack! The ineptitude of our culture to let this reality exist was infuriating, Whack!

It was all too much for me, so I just went to bed.

Now it’s 1:30 in the morning again, and I’m awake, and I hope to God I come out of this experience with more compassion, understanding, and an ability to actually ease the way of my neighbors who are not nearly as fortunate or documented as I am. Please pray for me.

… So, after my encounter with the Thin Silence that day at the nursing home, I decided to sign up on Match.com.

I figured it was my best option to meet someone. Because I’m such an introvert, I had really no other way of meeting someone who was: 1. my age, 2. interested in men, and 3. looking for a relationship. Match.com answered all those questions instantly.

I was so naïve, I even used my real name on my profile. (I’ve since learned that no one does that.) In less than a month I had coffee with four ladies, and Nancy was the fourth. Actually, Nancy contacted me first. She discovered my book, “What the Dying have Taught Me about Living,” liked what she read and reached out.

Her profile captivated me. She too is a writer (of poetry), she also has a Doctor of Ministry degree (as a Zen Buddhist), and her favorite author is Thomas Merton. She had me at Merton.

I did notice that every picture she had posted on Match included her poodle, Shanti … so I knew this would be a package deal. We met for coffee, and after 90 minutes or so of me trying to find out how this beautiful woman was just too good to be true, she said she needed to go walk Shanti. I invited myself along, figuring if Shanti didn’t like me there would be no future for us.

Well, Shanti it seems has no better taste in men than Nancy does, so I hit the lottery.

We married on May 16^th of this year. I close this post with a poem I wrote for her on our wedding day. 

Bonazzoli

fleeing in fear, like me, the prophet found a cave

and there he would have stayed but for the call of God

and there I would still be but for the invitation of your love

God was not in the wind

but the gentle breeze of your spirit has soothed my shame

God was not in the earthquake

but the depth of your love has plowed the fallow covering

cocooning my pierced and wounded heart

God was not in the fire

but the passion of your love for me and for life

has thawed the atrophied emotions within my breast

BUT, God was in the whisper

and the prophet hid his face

when I sensed the voice of Thin Silence

emanating from your soul

shining through those magnificently clear eyes

it called me

out of hiding

and into life

So, Lou, that’s the story of how Nancy and I met.

Then on September 8th, the second anniversary of our first date, everything we own went up in flames …

Today has been a really good day. First of all, we have now safely moved in with our most wonderful friends the Millers. They have a beautiful en suite apartment in their downstairs and it’s ours for now. First time Nancy, Shanti and I have felt safe since Tuesday.

Had some deeply moving moments with my son Elijah today as well. We simply held each other tightly and talked about how even in this most difficult week of our lives, we have such a deeper love for each other. Go figure. I guess that’s the paradox crisis offers. Events like this can forge relationships into greater realms of strength and depth than you knew possible.

There’s also been a flood of reconnecting with dear friends from over sixty years of living. Responding to emails, texts, and phone calls has afforded unbelievable respite from the literal hell-like atmosphere we are living in; continued threat of fires, smoke, and the worst air quality on the planet I’m told.

Overwhelmed too by the numerous more-than-generous offers of short-term housing, money, clothing, food, and whatever it is we need. Right now, our greatest need is to secure a long-term place to rent. Until then, we can’t even begin to assemble the things required for simple day-to-day living – as we have no place to put them. Your prayers, chants, meditations and loving intentions to that end are greatly appreciated.

Again, we are financially secure right now. Many of our community who have also been displaced are not. If you are moved to help, the Jackson County United Way is a great place to give. The director is one of my closest friends and is as wise and trustworthy a woman as you will ever meet.

Finally, your well wishes and encouragement to my posts soothes in ways that is hard to describe. It is evidence that in going through what we are – we are not alone. We are part of a larger, loving community. As much of a pain-in-the-ass as I believe myself to be most of the time, I am fortunate enough to have acquired some incredible loving and kind companions along the way. That is so humbling – and I am so grateful.

I’ll close with another of those haikus I worked on while we were on our honeymoon.

North wind blows sea sand

ghost-like swirls, racing with joy

into who knows where?

Who knows where the Spirit’s wind will blow us all next?

But wherever you are – may grace guide you, peace surround you, and joy surprise you today.

Blessings, Fred