I love jazz. I also have a great discomfort with jazz, specifically improvisational jazz. As I listen, I start to feel anxious as the piano and percussion pull farther and farther apart such that one or both will fall out of the song. I feel as disquiet arise in me when a song I “know” takes a turn I wasn’t expecting and now I don’t know where we’re going anymore. It’s as if the security blanket I turn to music to be suddenly smells and feels like it’s not my blanket so not very comforting.
I try to tell myself that perhaps that’s okay. Getting pushed out of comfort zones is a good thing, it builds stamina and resiliency. But is that really true? Why do I keep doing this to myself? Why don’t I just stick to Louis Armstrong standards instead of drifting back to Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, and Dan Tepfer? At some point I have to say to myself, “you’re just causing your own tension.”
Well, I suppose I am. As uncomfortable as improv jazz makes me, I’m made better by it. It makes me think and challenge my norms. It makes me ask about the intentions of the artist. It also makes me discern the difference between a shift of genius and a shift of folly because not all improv is good improv. At times, it even connects me to racial and socioeconomic reflections because of the spirit that moves within the music.
Yet, even as I acknowledge the gifts of jazz, I also know that I can’t listen to it all the time. It makes me think and feel too much. That’s when I go back to songs that are more compact and tight in their presentation. That could mean a lot of styles of music. Frankly, what pop has going for it is its predictability and limited range. Sometimes I just need to know what’s coming next and that’s okay. Other times, I need to connect to a memory or disconnect from the present. Regardless, it can’t always be jazz.
I guess what I’m getting at is the obvious. There is a time and a place for almost all musical genres. There is a reason why we love soundtracks and our lives have their own soundtracks as well. Music moves us and moves with us and for that I’m grateful.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
I’d Do It All over Again… All of It
I’m having a bad day and when I have a bad day I write or draw or both. Today, you are the unwitting recipient of my bad day reflections. This bad day is brought to you by a phone call from my doctor telling me that a test I had the other week had some very concerning results. She wanted me to come to her office ASAP. Fortunately, I work right next to my doctor’s office so I was able to leave work and go straight over.
When I arrived, she told me that she needed to do a biopsy of some cells, blah, blah, blah… of course by this point I couldn't hear much of what she said because I had hit my saturation level of stress for the day because this new thing means that both my wife and I are struggling with major health concerns. At any rate, we did the biopsy this afternoon and I hope to hear the results by the end of this week.
But all this is not why I’m writing. See, for the umpteen thousandth time, I had to consider the question of “What if I die soon?” It’s a useful question when discerning practical matters like wills and such but that question never resides simply in the mind. For most of us, the only reason we sit down to think of the practical considerations is as a matter of lessening the emotional worries. The reality is that the emotional matters of fear, loss, and worry are what arise in most of us when faced with the question of our death or the death of a loved one.
And those feelings and questions are where my family and I have been for the last 18+ months. I’ve walked through my mother’s death and the legacy of reckoning with an irreparable relationship. In other family members, I’ve faced untreated mental illness and substance abuse which often lead to death. I’ve also faced the very real and ongoing possibility of losing my wife to unexpected illness. Now, my own health is back in focus as well.
But even that is not why I’m writing. I’m writing because all this brings up more than just fear of loss and the unknown. It also brings up the question of regret. Are there anchors of shame I’m dragging behind me? Are there relationships that should (note the difference between could and should) be repaired? Are there milestones left undone?
Of course the answer is yes for all of those questions. The honest answer is that I have lots of pain, heartache, and unpursued dreams in the ripples and wake of my life. My life story contains abuse, trauma, bipolar disease, cancer and all manner of crude survival techniques to get through decades of suicidal thoughts and haunting forces so I damn well should have events that I wish could have been another way. Nevertheless, I don’t look back with regret and I try to release the shame because those dark waters are nothing compared to the wonder and meaning in the journey to get here.
The truth is that I did the best I could every step of the way given who I am and the resources available to me. The number of moments, relationships, and resources that would have had to be different in my life to produce a different outcome are beyond my capacity. But I do know that I tapped into every resource that came my way and never lost sight of the hope that tomorrow would be different… and it always was. But greatest of all, I held onto the wonder and the meaning.
Whether I live 50 days or 50 more years, the moments I passed through had meaning and I’ve shared that meaning with others to the best of my ability. Even during years of constant suicidal thoughts and depression, I survived on the moments where I saw glimmers of love, flashes of God, shining through other people. Still today, if I lost my wife to unimaginable illness, I’ve been blessed by our time in a way that I vow to always share in the world for its betterment.
See, as much as I was overwhelmed by the prospect of cancer this morning, I’m even more clear that every moment has been worth it. I think it’s a false dichotomy to suggest that the opposite of regret is acceptance. The opposite of regret is resilient thriving in the meaning. Sure I want to lose 100lbs, coach rugby, publish extensively, and get a PhD but none of those accomplishments and none of my failures will ever count for more than the meaning in the moments that made them.
I pray that all may know the meaning of their moments and grow from every one of them into a love of life and a passion for sharing that wonder. Amen.
When I arrived, she told me that she needed to do a biopsy of some cells, blah, blah, blah… of course by this point I couldn't hear much of what she said because I had hit my saturation level of stress for the day because this new thing means that both my wife and I are struggling with major health concerns. At any rate, we did the biopsy this afternoon and I hope to hear the results by the end of this week.
But all this is not why I’m writing. See, for the umpteen thousandth time, I had to consider the question of “What if I die soon?” It’s a useful question when discerning practical matters like wills and such but that question never resides simply in the mind. For most of us, the only reason we sit down to think of the practical considerations is as a matter of lessening the emotional worries. The reality is that the emotional matters of fear, loss, and worry are what arise in most of us when faced with the question of our death or the death of a loved one.
And those feelings and questions are where my family and I have been for the last 18+ months. I’ve walked through my mother’s death and the legacy of reckoning with an irreparable relationship. In other family members, I’ve faced untreated mental illness and substance abuse which often lead to death. I’ve also faced the very real and ongoing possibility of losing my wife to unexpected illness. Now, my own health is back in focus as well.
But even that is not why I’m writing. I’m writing because all this brings up more than just fear of loss and the unknown. It also brings up the question of regret. Are there anchors of shame I’m dragging behind me? Are there relationships that should (note the difference between could and should) be repaired? Are there milestones left undone?
Of course the answer is yes for all of those questions. The honest answer is that I have lots of pain, heartache, and unpursued dreams in the ripples and wake of my life. My life story contains abuse, trauma, bipolar disease, cancer and all manner of crude survival techniques to get through decades of suicidal thoughts and haunting forces so I damn well should have events that I wish could have been another way. Nevertheless, I don’t look back with regret and I try to release the shame because those dark waters are nothing compared to the wonder and meaning in the journey to get here.
The truth is that I did the best I could every step of the way given who I am and the resources available to me. The number of moments, relationships, and resources that would have had to be different in my life to produce a different outcome are beyond my capacity. But I do know that I tapped into every resource that came my way and never lost sight of the hope that tomorrow would be different… and it always was. But greatest of all, I held onto the wonder and the meaning.
Whether I live 50 days or 50 more years, the moments I passed through had meaning and I’ve shared that meaning with others to the best of my ability. Even during years of constant suicidal thoughts and depression, I survived on the moments where I saw glimmers of love, flashes of God, shining through other people. Still today, if I lost my wife to unimaginable illness, I’ve been blessed by our time in a way that I vow to always share in the world for its betterment.
See, as much as I was overwhelmed by the prospect of cancer this morning, I’m even more clear that every moment has been worth it. I think it’s a false dichotomy to suggest that the opposite of regret is acceptance. The opposite of regret is resilient thriving in the meaning. Sure I want to lose 100lbs, coach rugby, publish extensively, and get a PhD but none of those accomplishments and none of my failures will ever count for more than the meaning in the moments that made them.
I pray that all may know the meaning of their moments and grow from every one of them into a love of life and a passion for sharing that wonder. Amen.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Mother’s Day Angst
I never
feel happy about Mother's Day. It always leaves me feeling burdened with ghosts
of the past. But this year is way worse than usual. I recognize that it is in
part to do with my mom's recent death but I can't find the words to explain or
safe harbor to explore how bad it feels. Maybe it's because it snuck up on me.
I've been so busy. Maybe there just aren't good opportunities to explore this
on other days. Regardless, I'm making my situation worse and I don't know what
proactive steps I need to take to move forward in healthy ways.
I'm also
realizing as I sit with this that my extra pain is also about my brother. In
many ways, I've had a mother role with him and I'm in the God forsaken place of
watching him languish in depression, anxiety, and addiction. Worst if all, I'm
powerless to do much to help. So I definitely don't feel like celebrating my
role as a mother to him because I'm too busy trying to hold my fears of his down slide
at bay. There are other layers of sorrow for him as well that I can’t begin to
write out at this time but they are profound and deeply burdening.
Do you
know the poem “The Invitation” by Oriah? She goes through this litany where she
says she doesn't care about what position you hold or how much money you make
or the like. What she wants to know is about your inner integrity, passion, and
trust. I sort of feel that way about Mother's Day. I don't want to know how
many children you have and what you do to celebrate on this one day. I want to
know if you wake up and do what needs to be done as a parent day in and day
out. I want to know if you can look your mom in the eye and risk disappointment
for the sake of becoming the creation God called you to be. I don't want to be
celebrated on this one day as a mother. I want to witness the fruits of your
blossoming as my child and dance gratitude, sorrow, hope, pain and love every
day and not feel alone in that dance.
I
acknowledge I'm cynical about holidays in general because they often reflect
consumerism and idolatry more than true celebration. Yet, I am not feeling
cynical today. I'm sad and hurting.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Powerlessness of Love
“There can
be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.” - Martin Luther King,
Jr.
I keep
finding myself needing to write but unable to put words to page unless it is
for something I have to do like a recent grant proposal. As badly as I need the
outlet personally and professionally I just can’t seem to make myself do
it. I ask myself why. A lot of it is because of the emotional
strain I’ve been under due some touchy matters (don’t worry, my wife and child
are just fine). I feel hamstrung to talk about what is really bothering me
because it would either violate someone else’s confidentiality or draw
attention to someone that is already deeply vulnerable. This runs contrary to the lesson I learned
years and years ago which is secrets and silence will kill me. So, I’ve been managing as well as I can in
the midst of this silence where I’ve been cut off from my primary supports.
It’s not
been pretty but by and large I’ve done pretty well. I’m still experiencing the
longest sustained period of my adult life of not being depressed (Yea!!!). This
is saying a lot because I’ve weathered some pretty significant strains in the
last few years, among them are my mother’s decline and death and a vocational
rejection that still has me searching for direction. Nevertheless, I persist… and
I’m not just surviving, I’m actually thriving for the most part.
But this
damn silence is about to kill me. Talking to my wife and therapist just isn’t enough
to save my soul from the darkness that secrets and isolation breed. All this is
climaxing in a way that something has got to give soon. I’ve been going downhill for the past month
or so and I need that to stop NOW.
Maybe the
answer is to focus on my particular struggles within all of this. As I consider
that angle, I see where a primary agony for me is my feeling of powerlessness
to help someone I love not hurt more or outright self-destruct. Powerlessness is a difficult experience no
matter how self-aware one is.
I am
powerless to fix the situation and I have to be careful how much responsibility
I take for helping because of some very complicated risks. Those two factors
collide in ways that leave me feeling agitated and downright angry… well,
really I feel fear and sorrow but for now they are manifesting as anger.
As I’ve
looked for outlets and understanding I’ve remembered that the Psalmist knew much
about powerlessness and for now I find comfort in those cries. I look to the
One who knows all of us because we are fearfully and wonderfully made… so beautiful
and so precious that it evokes our deepest fears and our most profound awe.
May this
journey through powerlessness lead me to a deeper understanding of all who love
and need love’s healing.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
You’d be so pretty if…
I grew up hearing the phrase “You’d be so pretty if…”
followed by a myriad of pointers on how I should
look, act, think, and be. My mother and
grandmother were the primary users of this expression but I occasionally heard
it from others too. They truly believed
themselves to be offering loving advice that would make me happy and better
liked by others. But in reality, this utterance
deepened existing wounds and reinforced a message that I was not okay as is.
Later, I would spend years of my adulthood working through the
wake of sorrow caused by repeatedly hearing “you’d be so pretty if… you weren’t
so fat… you walked like a lady… you didn’t play in the dirt… you weren’t so heavy…
you’re smile wasn’t crooked… you wore makeup… you wore more flattering clothes…
you didn’t look so manish…”. My family
didn’t realize that I was at times barely hanging onto life because of depression
and shame that dogged me so badly that suicidal thoughts were the norm for
me. Even if they had of realized what I
was going through, there still is not a world in which saying “you’d be so
pretty if…” is a healthy way to raise a child.
Lest you misunderstand my point, I’m not launching into this
to rail against my family. I deeply
loved my grandmother and still miss her even though she died almost 12 years
ago. And my mom is currently dying which
has led to a very interesting path for her and me to feel reconciled in a
positive way to the legacy of our complicated relationship. When it comes down to it, I believe my family
did the best they could to love me and I harbor no resentment over the things
that damaged me as I believe it revealed deeper wounds within my family for
which we all needed healing.
Nevertheless, I was dismayed to have this phrase rehashed
this past year as I was helping my mom with some things around her house. I was immediately transplanted to my
childhood and all the shame and pain rushed back to me when my mom looked at me
with all sincerity and said, “you’d be so pretty if you just weren’t so fat.” I managed to cope with that moment in relatively
good fashion by telling my mom “the only people I care about think I’m
beautiful.” Later in the evening I
turned to my wife and social media for support to process it.
The outcome of processing it is what I am primarily
interested in writing about today. I
have spent time thinking about who I would be if I had taken all those pieces
of advice. I’ve considered what my life
would be like if I had looked, acted, and thought the way they believed would
make me pretty.
What I’ve decided is that I would not be me. I would not even be real. I’d be a shadow of an image that bears no
resemblance to the gifts I’ve been given or the experiences I’ve had. In fact, part of me believes that following
that advice would have led to my eventual suicide because the things that have
kept me alive in the darkest times are my abilities to eat pain, dress and
appear in ways that kept me out of competition within the social conventions of
women, and use my strong, broad, “manish” body to hold the weight of crushing
sorrow.
When I look at who that person would be, I don’t see
pretty. I see sad, empty, and lonely
because I would not have known how to be that person. I am exactly who I was created to be. I may never be able to see myself as pretty
but I know that I am strong, intelligent, resilient, charming, cute, playful, and
much more. When I hold all that I am, what
I’ve been able to survive and accomplish, and who encircles me with love, I figure
I’m about as beautiful as I’ll ever be.
A Body Of...
A quote from Margaret Cho:
“If you are a woman, if you're a
person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a
person of size, if you are a person od intelligence, if you are a person of
integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world.
...And it's going to be really hard
to find messages of self-love and support anywhere. Especially women's and gay
men's culture. It's all about how you have to look a certain way or else you're
worthless. You know when you look in the mirror and you think 'oh, I'm so fat,
I'm so old, I'm so ugly', don't you know, that's not your authentic self? But
that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies,
billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will
take your hard earned money and spend it at the mall on some turn-around creme
that doesn't turn around shit.
When you don't have self-esteem you
will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for
the job you really wanna go for, you will hesitate to ask for a raise, you will
hesitate to call yourself an American, you will hesitate to report a rape, you
will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of
your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote,
you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of
revolution and our revolution is long overdue.”
I’ve been trying to write about the complicated relationship I (and many people) have with body image, self-love, healing, and transformation. You see, if there is anything I profess as a Christian, it is that Christ offers deliverance from bondage and transformation into new life. Yet this is something I have struggled to embrace all my life.
My awareness of this has never waned but it has been
heightened in the past few years because I’ve watched my wife lose about 100
pounds and experience a transformation from carrying body fat as a shield to
loving every ounce of herself as an expression of her life. I envy her experience. I wish I too could experience that. (I do not
want to oversimplify her experience as I know she still struggles every
day. Nevertheless, she has accomplished
a great deal of growth and transformation.)
Another reason my struggle to embrace my body and experience
healing has been especially obvious as of late is that I’ve grown increasingly
defensive for my wife. As she lost
weight, people would walk up to her and in all good nature tell her, “you look
so good” and “you look beautiful.” While
I recognize that they mean to be encouraging and supportive, the unspoken
message of “you weren’t beautiful of good enough before” remains.
My blood boils for her, me, and all who struggle with body
image when this happens. The common
experience that my wife and I share is that of using our bodies as a shield of
protection. In similar ways, we have
dieted for acceptance, eaten to push away pain, and loathed our bodies for all
they pain and struggle they represent. I
still do.
But she doesn’t. She
has finally found the combination of space, support, and love to look at her
body one ounce at a time and love the way it has been a protector for her,
grieve the past, and transform it into a new creation. It’s been so beautiful to watch. Truly, there aren’t words for how life filled
and hope giving her journey has been and it’s not over yet. I am grateful and honored to be a witness and
sharer in this journey.
But where does all this leave me? I still find myself in the despair of pain
from a childhood that should have destroyed me, depression that won’t stop haunting
me, and a body so full of scars seen and unseen that I can barely stand to look
at it on most days. I want what my wife
has. I want that deliverance and
transformation that I so deeply believe Christ offers. Yet, I’ve never experienced that combination
of emotional space, physical energy, and external support that it takes to
sustain such a life changing, transformation.
Will I ever? I don’t know but I
hope so.
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