Thinking out loud: The things we do for love..........

Thursday, April 24, 2008

The things we do for love..........

I was at the church last night, working with a handful of folks on the Children's Hope Chest Mission team, packing up the suitcases we'll be taking with us on the trip to Russia next Saturday - we've packed 22 so far, 18 more to go. All of the checked bags will be filled with all of the things we're taking to the kids in the orphanages. It's amazing to see all the things that we have to take. And even more amazing to see it being packed!!

While we were packing, one of the women there was ribbing her husband about how long it was taking him to do a task she'd given him to do. It was actually pretty funny, and he took it well. He looked at me and said, "See what I have to put up with?!" My normal response would have been something smart-assed like "Reason # 915 not to get married!" But I didn't say that last night. I just laughed, too. I actually like being around the two of them. I think they have a good marriage and make a good team. Of course, I only see the outside and you never know what things might really be like, but, I really do think they have a lot of love there. And it got me to thinking about the things we do for love. And I've been thinking about that all day. I've been thinking about the thousands of stories I've heard as I've sat quietly and listened to my patients. It never ceases to amaze me the stuff folks get themselves into.

I was telling a friend of mine earlier today that I am a penultimate voyeur. I am always watching. I love to watch! People fascinate me. People's relationships fascinate me. I have found that watching is easier and a helluvalot more entertaining than trying to do it myself. (That's my excuse for today, anyway). But, by watching, I think you do learn. Sometimes you learn things that prove to be incredibly valuable. Sometimes you learn things that'll only get you deeper in trouble in the end!

It seems that so much of the trouble I see stems out of this search for love thing. Sexual love, platonic love, family love. But then, too, comes much good.

This is just for starters. The things we do for love:
We abdicate, adore, anger and agonize. We bite, bitch, beg, borrow, bicker, and berate. We conquer, chastize, chase, captivate and coerce. We demand, demean, degrade, and dictate, but we also delight and dedicate our whole heart sometimes. We examine things in detail and extract great joy out of small things. We fuss and fight and forgive and forget. We gyrate, gesticulate, gawk, and gaze in wonder. We hold, help, and seek harmony, but we also harbor resentment and pass down hate (hate and love are brother and sister, sometimes twin faces on opposite sides of the coin). We idealize and idolize and internalize. We justify and jeopordize and juxtapose our own spirit with another. We kick and kill and kiss and keep the secrets of our loved ones close to our chest, guarding them with our very lives. We lie, lay, languish, and long. We make war not peace. We make love not minding about morality, mortality or mystery. We neglect: ourselves, our health, our children, our wallets, our bodies, our minds. We pursue passion purposefully without preparing properly. We pray. We preach. We project and protect. We quiet, quake, and quicken at the sound of our lover's voice. We rescue, respect, redeem, and rejoice. We screw and screw and screw (even if we don't want to! because it's required somehow. I find this to be particularly true with young women - they give it up, give it out, hand it over - not even knowing that what they are offering is more precious than gold and as unretrieveable as a soul lost at sea). We sacrifice, satisfy, and soothe. We sing the songs of our souls. We tantalize, traumatize, and tempt. We touch. We trust. We teach. And we thirst for more touch. We understand and underestimate. We unclothe and undermine. We value, victimize and vindicate. We worship, want, whine, win, and whither our dreams for another. We x-ray events and experiences and we turn X-rated if all our examinations of our PG-13 existence find us still seeking that mysterious "thing" that we seem to seek so intensely. We yearn. We become zealous or overzealous or zealousless, if we can just figure out if we're coming or going; if we have it or not; if we've found it or lost it or are still somewhere on the road in-between.

I am amazed at what people do for love (or sex or connection) - myself included. Though the watcher that I am, I am still quite guilty of many amazing and dramatic blunders.

I suppose it is part of the human condition - this need for love, sex, acceptance, intimacy, entanglement. Seems like sometimes we've made a mess of it. But then, at other times, when I am with those people and couples that challenge my jaded way of thinking - then I see the beauty in the midst of the madness. There are lots of folks I know really - that show me that beautiful side - my mom and dad (55 years married and still counting), Jody and Bates, Kristen and Charles, Laura and Bill, Bobbi and Steve, Laurie and Clark, Tom and Virginia, my brother Eric and his wife Tina, my friend Jon and his wife Kathy (though I've never met Kathy, I know that Jon loves her - it's as plain as the expression on his face when he talks about her!! one of my favorite things about spending time with Jon is seeing that expression when it comes). My son Daniel and his girlfriend Emily - they are still young, yes, and they have their share of arguements and bickering, yes, but there is something very beautiful in their relationship with one another - something that shines through.

So I will close with this thought (a line from one of my songs): "I would say, in my defense, that I have learned love can go wrong. It can wear you down, it can make no sense, but, in the end, love has made me strong".

Love has made me the person that I am. I have had the great privilege to have lived a life, so far, surrounded by love - friends, family, my kids; lovers and strangers, too, each in their way have shown me love and kindness, tenderness and mercy. And so, while sometimes I long for love (or intimacy or sex or touch or tenderness), I see that I do have it. And the longing is soothed. I might not ever have that one true great partner - but I sure do have lots of love.
Peace.

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Song Lyrics of the Week (or maybe the day)

I've been walking down a solitary road.

Looking for some open door, some comfort from this cold.

And I have been afraid I'd lose my hope

But now I know hope will survive.

I've been searching for a heart that is like mine.

A little taste of peacefulness is all I'd hope to find.

So I looked into the eyes of my child

And when he smiled, I could see it shine.

I do believe the dawn will follow the night fall

And I will not have to walk this road alone.

In the voices of my friends, I hear a light call

And the sweetness of that sound will lead me home.

Love is waiting there for me, it's in the pictures on my wall.

I hear it in my grandpa's clock ticking down my hall.

It's underneath the quilt my grammy sewed

And the sweet songs that I've know since I was a child.

I do believe that joy will come to find me.

And I'll know again how that pleasure feels.

And the scars that I bear are here to remind me

That I may love and lose but I will heal.

-----yours truly, Hope Will Survive

Gratitude Journal (a New Year's Resolution)

I am grateful for the many times that I have survived depression.
I am grateful for the memories I have of Morganton and our house there - the house where Jacob and Daniel and I grew up, and the many great times I had in that lovely space.
I am grateful for the red maple leaves blazing in my front yard and the few short weeks I have left to say, "Oh! look at that!" when I step out the front door.
I am grateful that I have learned to be alone and at peace with my own company.
I am grateful for the book of Job. One cannot feel sorry for one's self for very long whilst reading Job. And for that I am quite grateful, as I'm feeling sorry for myself today.
I am grateful for the opportunity I had to play music with Scott and Ken and Mary. Our group was a wonderful thing.
I am grateful for patience.
I am grateful for my nephew Matt and for the man he became in his recovery. I am grateful for the relationship that we've developed and the love that we share.
I am grateful for the sound of my father's voice - the way it echoes still.
I am grateful for dreams of the mountains.
I am grateful that I knew a part of Scott that was good and true before all the other stuff happened. It gives me the place to start forgiving and letting go.
I am grateful for my friends Jon, Lorna, and Bruce.
I am grateful for the week I had to sit by the ocean and listen to that ancient, pounding sound.
I am grateful for friendships that span miles and years.
I am grateful for giggling! You should hear my sisters and my little brother and my sons and me - we all giggle the same!
I am grateful for love that came later in life, even though it would not stay here with me and even though it broke my heart. I am still grateful that I knew it and it knew me.
I am grateful for my music and the way it saves me.
I am grateful for tears.
I am grateful for the voices of my sisters. They sound so much like my own, it surprises me everytime!
I am grateful for the way my kids hug me - with love and intention, warmth and honesty.
I am grateful for the beautiful, warm day yesterday (2/8/09) and the opportunity to sit out in the sun with my dad.
I am constantly touched and amazed and humbled by the courage of others. Thank you for that. Thank you to the young man who waited on our table down in Chapel Hill. Your courage inspires my own!

Good Music

If you haven't heard these albums, have a listen. You'll be glad you did:

Jon Zachary, Turn on a Point ("The Ballad of the Piper Cub" is indeed a very very fine song and an artist rendering on forgiveness. Worth listening to about a thousand times or more.)

Mary Gordon Hall, Wine Glasses and Wooden Spoons (with Christmas coming, listen to "Babe Alone", incredibly beautiful song)

Danny Ellis, 800 Voices (listen to "800 Voices" or "Tommy Bonner" first and read the liner notes, this is powerful music and will heal you way down inside if you open yourself up and let it)

Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, The Harrow & The Harvest ("Hard Times" is my current favorite song!)

Patty Griffin, Children Passing Through ("Up to the Mountain" is a song that I play and belt out when I think that I can't go on anymore.)

I could go on for days!!

My thoughts on finding pathways to peace

I have found that lavender candles or vanilla candles help. I light them when the sun goes down and I blow them out when I go to bed. Especially in the dark of the winter, that soft light soothes me and helps me feel centered. The vanilla reminds me of my grandmother's house when I was a little girl and the cookies, cakes, or pies she would bake when we came to visit. Lavender reminds me of the fields of summer and sitting on the edge of Linville Gorge watching the sun set. I never smelled lavender there but every time I smell it, I think of summer and the Gorge and the many days in my nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first years that I spent there.

It is often easy to set aside a hurt or an offense or a wrong doing that someone throws my way, intentionally or not. Most of us, I think, can set things aside, take a deep breath, control our tempers. The harder part is to leave it aside! To not allow ourselves to take it back up again and carry it around like some sort of blazing badge upon our chests. Letting go means leaving it behind. That's a hard task sometimes. I have found that taking things back up again or carrying them on and on and on significantly diminishes my peace potential. So how do I keep from picking things back up again? Injecting either humor or music into situations of conflict helps me a lot. i try to talk things out with someone I trust and I try to make it funny if I can. I love to tell a story and the funnier the better. I try to make big hurts into little hurts by breaking them up with humor. I also will send a little sound clip in most all the time. I have a constant, unending, soundtrack playing in my head. I have the remote to that soundtrack and I can switch stations whenever I want. There are particular songs that I play in my head that help me feel peaceful or calm or loving or generous or sensitive or, on the flip side, angry, combative, vengeful. You know what I mean? You have these too? Most of us do, I think. I use that music in my head. When I am tempted to fight, I flip a switch and turn on some internal music that either expresses that anger for me (here's an example - "No Bad News" by Patty Griffin. Awesome song. I turn that song up loud in my car on really really bad days when I feel like I might explode - and I explode into that song and wail it out!! and am much the better for it - without doing anybody harm!! 'cept maybe my poor ear drums!) or soothes that anger down (here's another example - "One Love" by Bob Marley, or from Playing for Change. "Let's get together and feel alright" or "Imagine" by John Lennon. "Imagine all the people living life in peace"). It might sound crazy. It might sound meaningless to you. But it works for me. Try it. Turn those songs on in your head and see what happens. If you don't have the right one, go looking for it. It's a powerful tool.

Gratitude has saved my life.

Service has saved my life. I wish that the Feds would give everybody a tax break for doing service work. Like you do some service work, you get a receipt from wherever or whomever, and you attach it to your income tax return and you get a 2% tax deduction or something like that. Plant trees around a local park, build trails on the Appalachian Trail, serve mashed potatoes at a local soup kitchen or bag groceries at a local food bank, write letters to an orphan in Somalia, volunteer to read to a kindergarten class, mow your elderly neighbors' lawn, clean cages for the Humane Society. There's a lot out there to be done. Big and small. Might be life changing. May just be something to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon. But helping others helps me. Helping others takes me out of my little solitary world and opens me up to the blessings that I have and puts my world into perspective.

Prayer is powerful. And it works. When I moved to the Eastern Shore in 2006, I rented this great big old farmhouse. It was beautiful and I loved it there. But the nights could be painfully long. The house made so many sounds and popped and creaked and groaned in the wind. I was sometimes quite spooked. And my peace seemed to run away and hide under the bed. Sleep was elusive. I found there were nights that I could not remember the 23rd Psalm, though I had learned it by heart when I was just a little thing. Sometimes I would simply say, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." Period. That was it. That's all my mind would let me remember. And so that became a mantra and a prayer and I would repeat it over and over. And peace would come stealin' over me, slowly, gently. And I would feel my heart slow down. And the popping and creaking and groaning of the house would fade into an ambient sound that did not startle me. And I would float on that prayer into a peaceful state where thoughts came clearly and my voice, the voice of my heart, would talk directly to my God. And my God would listen. I have to work at finding that place. It does not come easily to me. But I work at it and when I find that place of stillness, I find that talking to my God is as easy as talking to my own mother or my closest friend. And my prayers are a conversation that is left unended, to be continued. The peace that I find when I pray is a peace that stays with me as long as I am willing to acknowledge its presence. Because it is always there. I just only need to remember.

A dog, a cat, a horse, a cow, a bird. Study after study has shown what great benefit there is in having a pet: lower blood pressure, less pain, less chronic disease, higher self-esteem, lower rates of depression. I am a believer. I know it to be true in my own life and in my own house. Sitting quietly, listening to a book on tape, knitting or not knitting, with my dog curled up next to me, leaning against my legs. My vital signs stabilize and then mellow, my muscles relax, my heartaches ease, and everything feels alright. Just touching her soft furry head and listening to her sigh. Wow. What a simple thing.