Life's been good to me so far

I really love the work and musings of many people who grew up steeped in rich, devout and/or orthodox religion... and then turned away from it. Anne Rice, Dan Savage, and Tori Amos are my most prominent and famous examples, but it's a LOT of people. It's sort of...my thing*. And what I see, over and over again, is that these people are often judged by their modern, secular, left wing followers for harkening back to their faithful childhoods or their old family traditions. The echoes and pangs of longing for deeper meaning and rituals that they still have, mixed in with the existentialism and the secular humanism they've embraced, just seem boring to the audiences they've attracted. Tiresome.

The audiences they've built by turning away don't want to hear about all the shit they turned away from.

But I do. I love it when they talk about it. I will never get tired of Anne Rice's never ending spiritual struggles and internal tug-o-war, because it calls to my own and does it in a deeply cathartic way. When Dan Savage talks about his seemingly pointless visits to his old church or the ache he's got, for his dead mother to be in Heaven, I am there, weeping, putting it on repeat. Tori's Christmas album made a lot of people just turn en masse and walk away, from her, for good. It gives me goosebumps, all fraught with myths and pagan origins and laced with theology like it is. I dig it back out every year. People called her a sellout for getting married, too, but I just wanted to hear what she had to say about it.

I think part of what makes each of these people (not just the three I'm actually describing but the others I'm thinking of, as well) as awesome as they are, as complex and appreciative of small things and as searching for MORE, as they are - is having been raised steeped in religion. I think there is real, quantifiable, scientifically provable value in being raised with religion and ritual. This, for what it's worth, is something I feel I lack as a person who finds consistency life's greatest challenge and routines to be the kiss of death.

I mean, we see the benefits of prayer, and faith, and habits, and church community - on happiness and on the immune system - but more than that I see that my own children have got better attention spans... They are able to sit still and be polite, and to just participate in adult situations, partially because of all those years in church. They have better, less gift-focused attitudes about Christmas and Easter than they might, because of the depth of what those days were presented as being about, and the multitude of ways we celebrated (special masses, special books and stories, special candles and decorations in our houses, all kinds of things).

Of course, being steeped in religion also makes you nuts, and drives you to art through frustration and angst, and the taboo of asking unavoidable questions vs the denial of avoiding them, and a vicious guilt/shame cycle. All that, I did manage to give myself in spades with just late adolescent and young adult devoutness.

Que sera sera, am I right?

I am eager to see the world move on from patriarchy, and from the violent and enraged reactions that variations on the gender binary get met with. I'm in love with the priorities that emerge, and the shifts in perspective that happen, for individuals and for society, when you lift the filter of Judeo-Christian values off of your eyes and look around with nothing but honesty and evidence to guide you through daily life and human interactions. I naturally gravitate towards very existential, black humor where nothing is sacred.

I'm also impossibly sad about the idea idea of a world where nothing is sacred. The jokes without the sanctity to make you gasp at them are just banal, just empty, just...not even funny anymore. I don't want to live in a world without monasteries, without altars to light candles on. It seems like too big a loss to bear, and I don't even know why.

It makes me very happy to know that a woman half a mile from my house is living in her saint-studded house with her seven children, and that they go to Mass and take communion every single morning. I don't want that life. For me or for my kids. But I'm glad she's living it, in a way that doesn't infringe on me. I'm not saying it makes sense. I'm telling the truth. I'm afraid of Anne Rice's son, and Dan Savage's son, and Tori Amos' daughter all growing up as people who don't really get what their parents were on about. All the while realizing it would be horribly wrong for any of them to impose things on their kids that tormented them, themselves, so intensely.

I'm glad there is a Buddhist temple and a Schoenstatt shrine within a few miles of me, filled 24/7 with monks and sisters respectively, despite it being 2013. I like knowing they're there, around the clock, studying old wisdom and leading chants and prayers. I like knowing they're open whenever I might want to stop by, as I ignore them completely.


*Incidentally, Anne Rice's assistant is a former monk turned heathen/heathen's assistant, because it's totally her THING, too. Becket seems really awesome.

As soon as I had kids, I realized that a lot of my old, childhood fears had dissapeared - a new litmus test of sorts developed right away: if it scared me for them, then it was real. If it just scared me in a way that didn't involve them, I was being a damn ninny. Please keep in mind I was 17 when I got pregnant with Ananda, and moved out of my grandparents' house and into my own "first place" right before she was born. With that in mind, for instance, I had always been very creeped out by closet doors being open - or worse, ajar - as I tried to fall asleep in a dark bedroom. Lying in bed, it ranged from distracting to genuinely scary based on my age, what horror movies/books I had recently been into, and my own imagination. Then I had Annie, and there came a moment when I lay her down in our bed and went to tiptoe away only to realize - the closet door was ajar. And blocked by a pile of stuff (because I had my first new baby and was not cleaning). And it would probably wake her up if I started unbalancing precariously stacked miscellany to get to it. As I walked out of there, I thought about how silly closet doors being open as a scary thing seemed - and I have never been scared of that, personally, again. I actually can't remember the last time my own closet even was closed, in this house I own as a 30 year old. Because, really, if I could leave my precious vulnerable newborn, who had stolen my heart so thoroughly, in that room with an open closet door...it was because I knew that in reality there was nothing to fear from a closet being open.

As an avid fan of Stephen King going back to 3rd grade, you can repeat that same sort of scenario for all sorts of things: shower curtains used to terrify me (WHO KNOWS WHO'S ON THE OTHER SIDE - they'll strike when you have shampoo in your eyes!), cats staring off into nowhere as if they see something, things under the bed that could grab your ankles as you get up, the list goes on and on.

I am kind of amazed, looking back, at how my maternal instincts have so rarely led me wrong. I didn't have any college education, access to the internet or even a decent collection of books, and yet I went head to head with doctors who were wrong about Ananda (needing speech therapy for her stutter) and Aaron (being mentally handicapped rather than "just" SID) and with relatives (on everything from breastfeeding to you-name-it). My children get the best of me (all of my kids - not just the oldest two) and they continuously challenge me. They bring out the best in me, stretching me and maturing me and scaring the living shit out of me and making me proud.

I have historically had a really hard time getting along with terrible parents; but I don't see "terrible parents" everywhere the way the whole "boob nazi"/attachment parenting cliche tends to imply. For the most part, if you have children and you're doing better than your parents did (because how we were raised often poses huge challenges), I respect you and your efforts and you get my admiration, even if our standards are radically different. If you have kids and your parents ARE raising them, or you are just generally being a fucking dipshit and causing them grave traumas, that's very difficult for me to deal with on a face to face level with honesty and tact. My close friends who are really crazy or totally wild or off the wall unstable have my total endorsement because they don't have kids and it's their lives to do with as they please. I can accept that freely.

I am actually approaching a point, here. With a heavy sigh.

I have had problems and conflicts with my children and Christianity from relatively early on. Not the very beginning. Praying for my kids made perfect intuitive sense to me, as did praying with them, before bed and before meals and other times as well. I liked having a tool I could give Isaac that would help him feel less frightened before sleep, which was often full of nightmares for him. Explaining the deeper meanings of our cultural holidays and making Easter and Christmas rich and the ends of seasons (Lent/Advent) was beautiful. Attending church improved their behavior at concerts and restaurants.

There is also the not-so-incidental situation of relying on my devotional journal for guidance and my Lord for a miracle when Elise was in dire straits.

But, as they got more cognizant, I realized I was absolutely NOT comfortable teaching them about the concept of Hell. Not because it's a hard one - I talk to my kids about famine and natural disasters and why Aunt Mindy wants to use crack - but because I didn't want them to know about Hell, or believe in it, or be afraid of it. I was terrified of Hell by things taught to me in Baptist private school in K-1st and remember crying myself to sleep about it, nightmares about my heathen parents roasting, and so on.

I was also not at all eager to introduce the concepts of the devil, spiritual warfare or temptation. I didn't want them to start seeing evil in the shadows and interpreting the world through the lens of it being an invisible battle zone. I didn't want them to worry that they were doing things under sinister puppeteer influence because their faith wasn't great enough to resist it. I've had thoughts and feelings like that keeping me up at night and driving me nuts for years and years but I didn't want to tell them about it and give them that preoccupation, not at all, it seemed very cut and dry and that -

THAT. Seemed like the closet door.

It felt like, "That danger is only real in your own mind when you believe it, and they do not need that on them." It felt not only like I could disregard the dangers of Hell and Satan as directed at them, but also like I had to protect them from belief in those things.

By the time I had kids turning 9 and 10, these were pretty glaring omissions from their religious teaching. To some degree, studying Orthodox and Catholic theology and especially reading The Mountain of Silence was personally comforting in this area, kind of quelling some of my own cognitive dissonance, since TMOS defines Hell VERY differently than our standard Protestant (non-biblical, wtf) fire and brimstone cultural definition. Really more as as a sort of abstract "suffering because you are not yet with God because you weren't ready to be when you died, until you eventually become ready and then go to Heaven with everyone else, just late". But, Orthodox (/Catholic) people still believe strongly in being on guard against temptation and spiritual war and all of that. There is actually a more defined belief in demons, possession, and so on.

And overall, Catholic and Orthodox personal expectations - that you're supposed to have of yourself, as a believer - are much more stringent, and they exert many more detailed rules over everything from how you eat on different days to how you're allowed to have sex within your heterosexual, Church-sanctioned marriage.

This is one of the conflicts I had about my kids continuing in AWANA/VBS programs. Another, was that I did not want Christian people talking to them about homosexuality or sexuality in general.

Did you read what I just wrote? Because it is pretty radical in my own mind, to admit to myself, even though it was a motivating concept in my behavior for a long time while I avoided articulating it.

I did not, and do not, want Christian people talking to my kids about their own sexuality, or other peoples'. Individual persons who happen to be Christian could gain my trust to talk to my kids in a way that doesn't represent "Christian beliefs" or *shudder* ...Christian politics. It gives me a rush of protectiveness, this urge to shield them.

Like, to such a degree that my older kids are now "with it" enough that I'm nervous about them ever listening to another sermon and it's part of what's kept us out of church services for, oh...the last year?

Yeah, it's been a year. It's been a year before, when we were "church shopping" and didn't know where TO go. But a year when there is a church I like a lot and that they can all deal with available is strikingly different.

Because I can't go to a church that says birth control is wrong and use birth control. I know lots of people can. But I can't. I can't go to a church that says birth control is wrong, and help Ananda acquire birth control, and I want to be able to help Ananda acquire birth control, and I want her to feel she can come to me and talk about that openly.

If one of my kids turns out to be gay, which I think is relatively likely considering my particular kids, it makes me do a maternal PANIC to imagine them growing up within the church! I've tried for years to explain to and hash this out with Christian friends.

I absolutely can't just sweep under the rug the parts of these beliefs that don't gel for me, and enjoy the rest. Maybe I should be able to? Maybe that's even the point! I don't know. But I can't.

I can't be Catholic (or Orthodox) and teach my kids that masturbation is a mortal/grave sin. I don't believe it is. I think they're all gonna do it and I think it's not just acceptable or "to be expected" but a GOOD THING to explore your own body, understand it, and figure out how it works as you navigate adolescence. Without any weird taboos or "down there" terminology. I don't want to take them somewhere that's going to teach them the taboos. I don't want to teach them that. I can't stand it for them to get caught up in the cycle of soul-crushing guilt, temptation, giving in, repeat, that I lived in for SO LONG, experiencing so much stress and despair about who I am, how I am, etc -

Do you know how that detracted from things I should have been worried about?

I spent so much time thinking I should not be having sex because it was wrong to have sex outside of wedlock that I seriously avoided birth control partially BECAUSE it was like condoning/giving in to that behavior. Pre-meditated fornication, "living in" sin. Keeping in mind, here, that ONLY Elise of my five (six pregnancies) was conceived in wedlock. It was like mental illness, knowing I wasn't ready to be married for most of that time but feeling like it was the only way to assuage what has always been my massive sex drive and need for affection. Suspended in conflict without resolution. "Failing" over and over. I think this is part of the general cloud of dysfunction surrounding my relationship with Bobby, and also part of why it was so hard for Grant and I to get our relationship going again/sustain it.

I had five children and a second trimester miscarriage between the time I was 18 and 25. And I love them, I am not bemoaning them, I do not regret them. But I can see myself in retrospect now, always hormonal and vulnerable, always physically awkward, in poor and even abusive medical hands, ending up again and again in situations I always swore I wouldn't - and it makes me cringe with horror to imagine Ananda in those shoes. I did well with it. I've made the best of it. I love a lot of things about my life and so maybe, again, I'm missing the point? But I have reached a point in my life where I see that I was swept away and out of control, and that rapid-fire super-young child begetting is something I had to spend a couple of years on the dl recovering from, as much as the near-death experience. I was never an adult who wasn't gestating or postpartum before! I never slowed down enough to stop and say, wait, what would be best for me (or even "us"), I just had so many rules caging me in on every side and NO advocate, that I was being carried along. There was never a conscientious midwife or a knowledgeable mother or aunt or a good friend for me during that time, to say hey, do you realize you have options here?

I tried to be on the pill in high school and experienced major complications. I spent the next 10 years thinking I "couldn't take birth control", and aside from truly hating condoms thought I was setting myself up for sin by keeping them around ready to go. All around lose-lose for someone who had only slept with two virgins anyway and didn't need to worry about STDs. I did try the mini-pill once, but GOT PREGNANT. And really in the end felt I didn't have options beyond the rhythm method/NFP and "trying not to". I didn't know about the IUD. Nobody knows about the IUD! Which is ridiculous, it's the cheapest and most effective option out there, hormone free, and there is all this "abortifacent" propaganda that you can research your way through to the other side of - but it takes awhile.

I just read an article yesterday about how women's health is and has always been controlled primarily by the church, politicians and the medical community - basically, three groups of patriarchal and often sexist men who are not motivated in most cases by what is best for women. And even though I know that sounds like feminist/communist/whatever propaganda on some level...I also know it's fucking true. I know how my SELF CONCEPT CHANGED FOREVER the first time I experienced quality midwifery care. How I burst into TEARS the first time Nancy asked me if she could touch my stomach.

Anyway. I hear all this stuff about Girl Scouts, you know? How they push the pro-choice agenda, they talk too much birth control and inclusivity with other-sexual people (like there's a fucking boycott right now on cookies because a troop in Colorado let a transgendered girl in?). And, well. Ananda is selling cookies. And I don't see why people are so afraid of INFORMATION.

Unless it threatens beliefs that are dependent on ignorance.


And this brings me to cognitive dissonance, which I threw out as a term I thought I was making up last week (some psych major, eh?). I was talking to Grant, thinking strictly of dissonance in the musical sense - things clashing, stuff sounding off, clangy and jangling wrong sounds. I told him I was experiencing cognitive dissonance all the time for so long now and I'm tired of it and I meant in many ways, really - knowing I can't continue eating too much and trying to do it anyway and being a night owl that increasingly has to get up very very early are examples. He didn't seem to know what I meant. On a lark, I googled the phrase and realized it's actually something that's been studied and written about for more than 50 years - perhaps I have heard it before, and pulled the right words from my subconscious? Anyway, it's when you have clear evidence in front of you that something you believe, is wrong, and you experience distress. Sometimes acute distress. Generally people avoid distress when possible, so in these situations they immediately whip out a coping mechanism - denying or arguing away evidence, changing their beliefs, or convincing themselves that the particular incompatibility between the beliefs and reality is unimportant, such that it can be forgotten about - those are all coping mechanisms here.

I haven't been using any coping mechanisms most of the time. I've been living in acute cognitive dissonance FOR YEARS. I arrived late in the year to RCIA classes, on a whim, and then almost dropped out a dozen times over the months, and fought my own boredom and tried to find the good spots, and decried my own blasphemous thoughts, and then got denied passing when I made it to the end. I went to Orthodox churches and read Orthodox books and stayed close to Orthodox people, and it never felt like more than foreign, even when it sounded philosophically like such good stuff. I lost all interest in Protestant church long ago, and can't even take what I hear second hand seriously a lot of the time. The last dozen times I was in a Disciples of Christ church were cripplingly disappointing. My trip to a shrine to the Virgin for my religion class last semester left me somewhat devastated and just...apathetic, as I called Grant to discuss how blah the whole thing was.

I've went from "I feel guilty" to "I feel guilty for not feeling guilty", and am fast approaching "aren't I supposed to feel guilty for not feeling guilty?"

What I do feel, is grief.

Full on bereavement, that is sometimes truly awful.

And confusion, because, truly, I do continue to feel it's obvious that there is "something more" than what we can understand and quantify - or perhaps ever will be able to - at work in our lives and world. I feel certain that I've experienced supernatural...something. And that prayer DOES "do something"...even if only because we're all made of energy and energy focused can affect outcomes.

And I feel the most heart wrenching misery when I consider Jesus, who I continue to physically cringe over blasphemy over and who I am not in any way ready to say isn't...real. The whole concept of "considering" any of this makes me feel small, lost, lonely and like a toddler in a world I don't understand. Also scared of losing Christian friends and alienating people, and EVEN scared of hurting anyone else's faith. I still feel like that would be horribly wrong, to do.

Even as I consider the parts of the gospels I always glossed over to quell my own cognitive dissonance. "This language is hard, these translations are old, my understanding is vague". I still see wisdom and benefit and light in the gospels. Quite a lot of it....mixed in with things I can't deal with.

I always said - and say - that if something is true, it doesn't matter whether or not I like it. I said in great mental suffering over and over that there were things galore I did not like about Christianity but that my preferences were really not the issue, Truth was, and that I was upset that I was part of this system I as a mortal human seeing as through a glass darkly could not understand, but that I believed God did understand it.

Do I now have such motherly hubris that I think I know better than He does re: my kids? Maybe. I don't know.

What it FEELS like, now, is that maybe it's just NOT true. Maybe it's a lot of stuff a lot of people say for reasons that have nothing to do with truth - reasons like a desire to be a part of something, a desire to help people, mental illness, a desire to control, a desire for riches, a desire to reinvent the wheel and fix whatever was wrong with religion BEFORE...because we all want religion at some point in our lives, on some level. It's programmed in our brains and maybe even (according to TIME magazine) our DNA. It increases our health and life span and decreases our stress, to have a religious faith and a religious community. I don't think people would BE this way, if it weren't for some natural and beneficial reason. Like one pastor I know says, we're hungry and there is food, we want sex and it exists - all our instinctive cravings are there for the purpose of being fulfilled, to drive us toward something that IS out there for us. And maybe we can really plug into the universe, or Life, or energy, or an actual supreme being, through prayer and ritual, regardless of what we call it.

There is an argument that peoples' feelings shouldn't play in - that real faith is not dependent on God constantly proving Himself. That you shouldn't be testing Him. But that's kind of hard to get behind when I only started believing all of this because of feelings. I never could have become a Christian based on reason and logic; it is not reasonable or logical. I was pulled in by strong feelings that led me to leave logic behind. Now, other Christians tell me to put aside feelings because they can't be trusted. And sometimes, feelings can't! But feelings are what I've got.

And maybe I could have kept "calling it" Christianity forever, regardless of misgivings or dissonance, if I had been childless and my life was mine to do with as I pleased. But I have kids. And I don't want to pass this torment on to them in a way that's intrinsic and deeply rooted such that they can never truly, totally shake it off - like my 6 year old Hell terror - because I think that's how what we're taught in childhood is.

It stays with us, like the cycle of abuse I fight, like the dozens of Disney song lyrics I can sing beginning to end after not hearing them for DECADES, like growing up bilingual or eating candy all the time. It stays with you, and then you gain intelligence and you study it and you find out that cremation is wrong because all our bodies are supposed to be resurrected when Christ returns and you go, what, wait - God can resurrect dust but not ash? What about people who burn to death in fires? I had someone I love dearly say she could never get a tattoo because it seems wrong to mar this body she's in for eternity and I was like, wait, what? So like my surgery scars and hernia are for eternity? I mean. I mean. This is kind of crazy talk. The feelings, the passionate feelings and the fervent desperation for it to be true can gloss over the craziness, sometimes indefinitely. Without the feelings, what is left?

There are a lot of very smart people using their superior intellects to compose elaborate diatribes on the minutia of Christian theology and all I can think is, you know, as a very smart child I was able to use my superior intellect to hone superior coping mechanisms and flesh them out until my delusions were almost real. Intelligent people have the hardest time being happy in general. Intelligent atheists, in my experience, are absolutely miserable much of the time. Who wants that? No. Cognitive dissonance = explanations forthcoming. 2000 years of overlapping and sometime contradictory explanations from some of the greatest minds and most ambitious men in history.


OR!!!

Maybe I'm so awash in secular media with such a long time since I did more than browse the theology tag on tumblr or listen to a Christmas carol, that the devil finally has a hold on me and can speak freely, through me, from my big influential blog platform - just like God might have worked through me in 2007 such that I got countless comments and emails from people who had their faith renewed by Elise's story.

I am at such a loss about faith, church, and so on.

My mind is an absolute whirlwind about it.

It's like, my husband doesn't like the Catholic Church or want to be a part of it, no matter what I tell him or how many times I reiterate. This might seem like less of an issue if it wasn't a family-centric religion that you have to be married within, come into together, etc. The priest at St Louis agreed with me coming in without a convalidation of marriage but that's one of those things that is not really Rome-approved or understood by other Catholics.

It's an ongoing paradox, that I would be coming into a religion that is under the ultimate authority of a group it doesn't really obey. How do you take a sacred vow to adhere to the lax and vague standards of American Catholics who nod to but act independently of Rome? It doesn't even make sense.

I have my own doubts about the Catholic Church, myself, and I am kind of embarassed and over-explaining when I try to tell any of my friends or relatives why I am drawn toward it or considering it.

I was drawn toward it partially by tennets that validated my life choices in a lot of ways - procreative sex, openness to life, all that. Now I can't have more babies, I'm getting an IUD to avoid, you know, death.

The parish I went to initially, close by, my family didn't like, so we went far away, where Grant liked it, and I ended up in RCIA there, which is great, except that now nobody but me wants to do it anymore and it's really impractical to be driving half an hour each way to any and every thing. We've revamped our whole life (Grant's job and side jobs, kids' extracurriculars, how we shop, everything) to stay in Homestead, especially now that we're down to one vehicle. I don't know that it will ever be doable - in time or gas money - to go to the half hour rosary prayer or the early morning breakfast or any of the other myriad things they do up there throughout the week.

I am kind of dangling by a hair this weekend, right on the line where I can choose to beg my Elvis loving, overly-lecturing, well-meaning-but-off-the-mark RCIA teacher and the priest I met with (who was vague and sent me out to a secular counselor), and bend over backwards for them, and continue. Or I can just slack off a little more in indecision and be dropped out.

My sponsor (KT), a wonderful woman I love, is extremely alarmed that I might be dropping out. She's talking about spiritual war and how of course obstacles and interference are going to get in the way, because I'm about to make a leap, but I have to stay the course. She's lighting candles and doing a prayer vigil and begging me to call her back later today and throughout the week.

I'm thinking of all the time I've spent in RCIA soooooooooooooooo bored, just struggling not to go to sleep (KT would say her husband sleeps through mass all the time but is still reaping some spiritual reward for being there). All the time that I've felt like I'm seen as very backwards and half-way because I am not expressing the overwhelmed conversion feelings other people are sharing in a circle; I'm really honest sitting there like "I didn't want to come today. I didn't want to come yesterday. I'm glad I did, though, now that I'm here." and that is not met with enthusiasm.


I am scared that I spent so long protestant church shopping that I'm never really gonna be part of a church, if I drop this. I'm scared that I'm kind of gradually giving up on Christianity altogether, if I drop out of this, because the truth is I don't trust or want to be a part of protestant churches anymore, so if I am also out of the Catholic circle, what does that leave? I guess my devotional journal still has a few more empty pages that might multiply themselves like the loaves and fishes and be there when I go to them for another decade?

I'm TERRIFIED of what sort of changes in my world view and personal ethics could happen as a result of not having Christian beliefs anymore, and I'm also very afraid that even if Christianity were not true, CHristians are still getting a level of fulfillment from it that is not possible outside of having defined, "practiced" faith.

I'm curious about whether the Disciples of Christ Christianity that hit me so hard and changed my life so radically as a teenager was pulling on the Pagan-leaning part of me - I found God in the woods, I thought my first real baptism was sudden spontaneous rain, and I was sure the Holy Spirit was there for me in those early years in gusts of wind, and shooting stars I saw from a swimming pool.

I certainly did not have any problems whatsoever with stopping at Grant's on the way to teach Sunday School to get it on, or with kissing Bobby in a prayer circle, or even sitting in worship fantasizing and giddy right up to the moment I grinned up the aisle to get (metaphorical, Protestant) communion.

I've felt sure I sensed evil many times over the years. I don't know what to make of that. I'm not one of those people who doesn't believe in real objective evil, I really do.

So yeah. I guess I am not really ready to commit to being Catholic, to throw myself in to a lifelong committment that is unbreakable. I started having serious problems week before last because we started having to recite the creed during Mass (we used to be dismissed beforehand) and I don't really feel comfortable doing that ("We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church...."), for all sorts of reasons even down to technicalities about whether or not the Orthodox or they are saying it right (AND THE SPIRIT, those three schismatic words).

I still want it, I want to dip my fingers in holy water as I walk in the door and cross myself, because it's passive and comforting. I want to hear the music swell during Mass when the one acapella singer up front lifts her hands and everyone else joins in. I want to get down on my knees with hundreds of other people every week and clear my mind of everything and just open my heart.

I actually want those things REALLY BAD. I want to NOT have a hole in my life where I want religion to be, again, too. <---nonsense grammar, even beyond the usual, my apologies

There's just all this other stuff, too.

Miscellany:

1. The Pope is being charged with crimes against humanity in a world court in a case that I found shockingly compelling from a purely secular perspective.

Of course the missing part of the story is the incalculable charity and volunteerism and financial giving of Catholics, to people of all faiths.

2. I am not at all sure I'm up to the challenge of being devoutly Catholic and not sure I'm comfortable being lax. I mean that even with total faith in the Church and in Christianity, even with total spousal support and a local parish, I enjoy walking the line way too much. I mean I can't wait for True Blood to come back and I'm rabidly infatuated with Anne Rice books and inexorably drawn to like...bdsm erotica, goth clothes and industrial music.

My best RL friends are: the Pagan leaning divorced woman who taught belly dancing and has a new hip to calf man-o-war tattoo; the x-drug dealing x-con with tattoos of govt agents heads in jars; the flamboyant swinger of a tattoo artist; the former drug addict and fashion-obsessed agnostic with the throw-down cynical Daria worldview; and the lesbian and ftm trans couple. There is also the lapsed-ish Orthodox woman I love with my whole heart, but, truly, I can't help but think lately that she is completely miserable partially because of the Orthodoxy. Then I think no, it's the lapsed part.

There's also my sister, who I'm tremendously grateful for and is a pretty conservative Christian with a really conservative Christian husband, but - I can't help but feel responsible for her faith on some levels, as I've taken her to church, given her bibles, talked to her about this at length, etc since we were very young, as the older one she looked up to - she's even come to and considered Catholicism and St Louis since I started going. Also I can't stand her husband's company (and vice versa, this is openly mutually acknowledged).

I've never really been sure, even in my most pious and prayerful times, that the more devout Catholic and Orthodox people (I don't mean my dear friend) I'm exposed to aren't wasting their lives and/or hiding their true selves. I'm not sure I want to commit to a belief system that involves missing Sunday Mass being a sin. I am sure I don't want my kids to believe masturbation is a sin, at least not until they're past being teenagers, and that is EVEN IF THAT IS TRUE.

Does this make sense?

I'll be honest, I can't make a damned bit of sense out of it.

AS YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED.

I suppose that it shouldn't have a big effect on my own beliefs, as none of it changes my own personal faith experiences, but the truth is that I'm sort of heartbroken and confused in the wake of several people I never expected leaving their Christian beliefs behind. It's had a lot to do with my own doubts and troubles over the last year.

One of them is Anne Rice... I came into Catholicism directly following reading her book about returning to The Church, Called Out of Darkness, as a long time fan of hers. I follow her on facebook and we have even chatted there a couple of times, and...well...silly as it might sound, she has been very influential in my life. Her vampire books were some of my very favorites as a teenager and her witch/crossover books are some of my very favorites now. Her deeply researched and beautifully expressed reasons for returning to her childhood faith really touched me, and when we were talking we seemed to have a bizarre lot of things in common (she was starting the Eat to Live doctor's Beans and Greens diet and wrestling with her faith vs her (anti-Catholic) friends, and had always wanted to write, and was with one man most of her life, and is really pro-gay rights and anti-abortion but has such a hard time with religion and politics...) I've always found it comforting and inspiring that she didn't START writing until her 30s. Anyway, it really rocked my boat in a big way when she publically, loudly decried Christianity and said she would not be a part of it anymore.

Then someone else, who I will not name, but who I thought of as a real living saint of the Orthodox faith...who has inspired and moved me and countless others and had bishop approval for their writing and who I had had long conversations about, with several other believers, and had traded emails with...found out that their bishop, the one they had been directly interacting with for blessings, prayer and counsel, was sexually abusing children. It was very painful and this person left Orthodoxy and is still going to a (different sort of) church, but it is painfully obvious that they are much more ecumenical and are also reading about many other faiths, and open to practicing them, and...I am not judging them! It's just a completely different path and definitely not the same one I'm on anymore. Everything this person says makes complete sense to me, still, as they try to sort out where they are and what they need and deal with persecution from those who feel they should have stayed the course with Orthodoxy...and that is...hard, I guess, for me, as someone in RCIA classes.

Those two things happened very close together, along with my ex, my baby daddy 1.0, so to speak, telling me he regrets his own Catholic conversion and feels he's agnostic at this point. I mean part of me wants to be really judgemental because of our history and say agnosticism is just more compatible and convenient with his lifestyle at the moment...but if I'm honest and shrug off the baggage I understood everything he had to say on the topic very well. Which is...jarring, I guess? Because we went to church and youth group and church camp as teens and attended bible study and prayed and grappled with premarital sex guilt together, and I told him all my deep dark spiritual secrets and just, I don't know. First kiss in a prayer circle and all this. I mean he kind of led me to Catholicism and to Humanae Vitae, several years ago, too. So it's like, damnitt, now you pull the wool out from under me??

The biggest whopper, though, the blow that leaves me winded and makes me tear up to think about, is Mother Theresa. I've read just about everything you can read, by and about her, and been so moved - I truly believe her words are as powerful as the gospels and that's what made the idea of saints make sense to me. Her obedience to The Church and all she accomplished in her life, through it, blew my mind. There is really no way to overstate this. Her ideas about seeing Christ in everyone and being Christ to others are the foundation of my beliefs about what it means to be a Christian (they'll know we are Christians by our Love).

But the Vatican let this whole somewhat unethical, breach of confidentiality book be published, of her letters to her mentor priest guy, her confessor. Private letters she never meant for the public. ANd in them it's revealed that she went MANY DECADES without ever feeling the presence or love of God. That she lived nearly her entire life in the proverbial dark night of the soul, lonely and miserable inside.

This is "supposed" to make me feel really comforted about the times when I don't sense or feel the presence of God, like, oh, well, even the great nearly beatified Mother Theresa herself had those times of doubt and despair! It's perfectly normal!

But...it doesn't. It makes me feel like if SHE was just going through the motions, if SHE was just forcing herself through what the faith dictates without that real emotional conviction, if she could sacrifice and give and pray and devote herself on that level and still feel like the sky was empty and it was just her doing the good work....If she could give lip service to others about how great the joy of knowing God was while she was not at all joyful...

Well fuck.

I mean, really, FUCK.

Does this make sense?

*sigh*


Last night my mil was on facebook chatting with me and she was talking about how she missed our old Disciples of Christ (female) pastor, Robin. And I understood what she meant, but I was thinking of all of this already, and so I could not help but recall standing 20 feet from the live nativity scene we were putting on by the highway as a teenager, with her telling (horrified) me that she didn't think it mattered if Mary was ACTUALLY a virgin or Jesus was TRULY conceived by the Holy Spirit. That the faith itself, the comforting metaphor, the belief in something, was what mattered.

Well, that is not good enough for me. I need it to be real or not be real. I am not someone who can respect and adhere to rules and rituals for the sake of themselves.

---

I am still deeply in love with Jesus Christ; all He said and did, everything He stood for. I'm deeply disillutioned with His followers and not so sure about anything being done in His name. I'm even curious about whether or not He's quite who I've typically been thinking.

I was out tonight, and feeling a little pang at every smudge of ashes I spotted on someone's forehead. I feel I need to throw myself into Lent, and then I feel like I just can't, or don't want to, or don't understand why I should. Then I go back to feeling I need to just do it. Because there is this pure love I can't help but feel in spite of all this consternation and grief, when I see the icon I'm using for this post or even think the word "Christ". There is a real longing in me for God, even when I can't bring myself to repent for anything because I'm just not sorry. Not even sorry I'm not sorry.

I guess that for now that has to be enough.

This day took quite awhile to warm up. Like...10 hours. But then it finally got going and was sort of ok. I give it a C-.

To nullify the parts where I slept in until people were arguing and making messes so loudly that I had to get up, and then wasted hours trudging around feeling grumpy, I'm going to list the things I did accomplish to make myself feel better.

*sitting staring blankly for far too long*

Oh! Alright.

-enforced all chores being done and all animals being attended...this is getting to be a lengthy process as we currently have three chicks indoors under a heat lamp and 7 kittens being nursed by a ravenous mama cat, in addition to the guinea pigs being pet-sat (<- ha) and Jake having chores now...
-Helped Isaac through handwriting, Jake through "g" and "h" work, and Aaron through a nature journal entry, and checked Ananda's math work.
-Made a great dinner of chicken fried rice and steamed green beans that was a hit all around.
-read The Ugly Duckling to Elise, some poems about chocolate to Isaac from a volume he found at the library, and part of the D'aulaire's Book of Trolls to Jake (our third multi-night run through this one...he loves it), at bedtime...Ananda, Aaron and I started The Island of the Blue Dolphins.

THAT'S IT.

I'm "currently working on" (I stop every couple of paragraphs to do a little more) some incredibly tedious crap to help Grant out. This is the only sort of thing re: web coding and design that I can be trusted with, I assure you. It involves color proofing and renaming dozens and dozens of tiny images that represent fabric swatches for one of his clients with an upholstery business.


( I was in Mass yesterday - for the first time in forever -  )

That got long so I cut it.

I would like to thank everyone who was posting on livejournal and facebook throughout Lent, and especially on Good Friday, and Easter/Pacha, with Christian meditations, scriptures, links, thoughts, and so on. I've been wayward and out of it and really would have missed the whole journey this year if it weren't for those of you who were sharing on the internet. I like it that this wheel keeps on turning even when I'm too self-absorbed or "in between" to bother to take notice. And I like it when I do notice.

Aaron has laryngitis. I'm not surprised, as it's been going around like crazy. He keeps rasping out things like "The germ-uhs, the germs ah messin around with mah voy-ace!" in a crazy accent.

My brother starts at JobCorps tomorrow. I feel just a little bit guilty about how insanely excited I am at the prospect of him NOT BEING IN THE HOUSE for many hours out of every week day. Mostly though I'm just insanely excited, guilt be damned. Seriously, OH HAPPY DAY!!! Aside from my own selfish glee, this is a huge positive step for him and I'm proud of him as I've watched him do all of his laundry and take a shower and get his things in order tonight. He's been out there 3 times in the last 2 weeks at meetings and appointments, and doing bizarre things before each one like shaving, and asking my brother in law to cut his hair and such. He's taken pains to brush his teeth tonight; I nearly knocked on his head to ask who was in there hijacking his brain.

She came out this way, thinking she was ready to go to the store with Daddy.


Om nom nom. Sugar snap peas sauteed in a little oil with brown sugar and soy sauce are SO GOOD.


This is our new weekday schedule.


Ananda is going to be cutting her hair into a chin-length bob again soon, and so we've let her run amock with the hair that's going to be cut off. This pic is when we first did the bleaching. It was like this for about two days.

The stuff we used was a bleaching and dying kit, and after I put the bleaching part all over her hair I tied it up in a plastic shopping bag because it has to sit for a long time and she didn't want to be paranoid about the furniture. That's what I did the last time we did this with her hair, because it was reccomended by the company on the packaging. This was a different brand, though, and after a few minutes she came to me - "Mom, it's burning my back through my shirt!" "What?" Sure enough, the bag was HOT hot to the touch, and when I took it off, her hair was SMOKING. All I could think was...people put this on their scalps?! Or hair they intend to keep?!


She liked the ponytail being a different color than the head hair.

( But she LOVES this...+the rest of the entry and more pics )

For me, personally:

-I realized I lost a lot of weight and had a lot of success with Eat to Live's 6 week plan, seeing it as a 6 week plan, but trying to go back to doing the "maintenance" diet after the holidays was just impossible to me; it's too strict for me to have that kind of permanence in mind with it and persevere. I NEED AN END IN SIGHT. But, I lost 27 pounds that first 6 weeks and have only gained back 16 of them in the 5 months since, during which I have been glutting myself on Starbucks, cheesecakes, restaurant meals, and late night cooking. So Grant and I have concocted a 6 week on, 12 weeks off plan for me that will be indefinite for as long as it works and I continue to need it. Tomorrow is day 1 of the first 6 week period, and I feel really good about it. The first couple of months OFF ETL were even healthy ones where I didn't gain back at all; eating so healthfully and in moderation put me in the mindset of not WANTING to eat way too much of all the wrong stuff. But I've gradually beaten that mindset back and resumed pigging out, since. So I think if I keep it to 12 weeks off, this could really be a healthy way to live.

-Grant and I are at a bit of a faith impasse that is really frustrating. We've both sort of "slipped" - he interprets that as needing to go back to the beginning, i.e. "remedial christianity". Like very salvation based protestant services loaded with praise and worship music. I understand where he is coming from completely, and respect it. But I also feel like, for me, I need to get back to the deep theology and catholic ritual I let fall by the wayside, because it holds me up so that I DON'T slip. Neither of us are going to push the other one to do something they're not comfortable with, or pull the family in a direction without the other. And I am so FREAKING. TIRED. of this conundrum.

-we're planning a potluck for this weekend. It's a facebook event at this point. I'm psyched.

-and really needing more time to write. And really tired of talking about that, saying it, my gosh haven't we heard this before?! I just hit this wall, this stir crazy wall of pent up mental energy where I always realize, that would help.

-I am BLOWN. AWAY. by my girls' birthdays coming up. My little girl is going to be THREE. And my big girl is going to be TEN. I don't know which of those shocks me more. On so many different levels. Five children, and the youngest one three? Our baby is three (how in the hell have I not gotten pregnant for this long, how nuts)? It feels like we just had her huge celebratory 2nd birthday - JUST. And then Annie in double digits? It feels like we just had her big tea party birthday...just, just. I got my period at ten. Went through Hurricane Andrew. Moved to Jacksonville. Had a journal with long entries. May 1 and then June 1. My daughters, three and ten. *sigh* Then Aaron is June 27, he'll by 9. For months he's been saying he wants a violin and cologne (wth?). Tawanna, his hip hop teacher, thinks that's the sweetest thing she's ever heard and has volunteered to get him the cologne if we take care of the rest.

Today has been a good day. Patrice spent the day since it was a teacher's work day. No dance classes for the same reason. Lots of watching things online with sick Aaron, and laying and reading with Ananda, and cuddling with Elise and Jake, and talking to Isaac (who is way less of a cuddler). It was a sweet, slow day. Tomorrow is the beginning; back to activities, on our new schedule, day 1 of Eat to Live, day 1 of JobCorps for Bob (which will change the whole house for all of us).

This is definitely the song for the week:


I downloaded the whole album. Massachusetts bluegrass quartet. Aaron's watching it too much, with that look on his face. Next thing I know he'll be asking for a cello.

Elise is especially affectionate today, we've spent probably a cumulative hour hugging, kissing, embracing on the futon. She squeezes me so tightly, and she does things like put her hands on my cheeks and pull my face towards hers with her lips puckered. I'm sure she's spent as much time in Annie's arms and lap.

Annie got another biking injury, re-opening the same arm wound for the 3rd time now. I always know she is bleeding because she comes in yelling in this bizarre, strangled tone as she struggles to remain conscious knowing she is bleeding. Then she acts totally disrespectful, even going so far as to yell at me, while I clean her up, with her whole body tense. She would never normally act like that. She's the wrong color. It's kind of ridiculous. My prescription is always the same; rinsing, ointment, bandage, and then time alone in a dim room reading or watching a movie until she can swallow normally again and is no longer sweating.

The chicks are SO, so cute, I can hear them everytime I pass my bathroom door - incidentally, wouldn't that be a great book title for life in a big, homeschooling family? "Chickens in the Bathroom". They're in a bird cage on the ledge of my garden tub, with the window open, A/C vent closed, and a heat lamp pointed at them. Ananda, Aaron and I are rotating duties changing their newspaper, food and water 3 times per day. Anytime any of us are in there with them, we can turn around and see cat legs, the WHOLE LEGS up to the shoulder, under the door and madly swiping as they struggle to get at whatever is making that delectable noise. Chrysanthemum especially is like a cartoon and in the time it takes me to turn around and open and shut the door, she is behind me perched near their cage.

Aaron was getting over some mysterious 24 hour illness nobody else had, this morning. Now he is back to his usual tricks, which this week involve standing on the cross bar of his bike as he coasts down the street, and unicycling off the porch (about an 8 inch drop) and onto the front lawn and just keeping going. This is why I wanted the "skatepark helmet" that covers the skull all the way down to the neck.

Jake is feeding Elise and himself peanut butter with a butter knife right now. Awhile back he rushed cauliflower greens to the rabbits, who will eat it right out of his hand.

Isaac is in heaven because I'm letting him play basically unlimited computer games today.

And I think my cat is in heat. The breeder wanted me to wait until she was at least 6 months to spay her, if not 9. Now she is yowling all over the place, rubbing on everyone and everything, and whenever anyone pays her a bit of attention she puts her head on the ground and her butt in the air and yowls more. I suppose I will have to take her in to the vet next week. Peter, neutered as he is, is incredibly irritated by her antics and keeps pouncing on her and biting her like, please for the love of everyhthing stop with the racket.


I have spent most of today reaading French Women Don't Get Fat, emailing back and forth with Grant, and cooking. It was a peanut butter toast and plum breakfast, almonds and bananas for snacks, strawberry oatmeal flavored with yogurt for lunch kind of day. We're all drinking tons of lemon water. Now I have an acorn squash split in half and two red peppers all in the oven stuffed with ground turkey, brown rice, canned tomatoes, onions, garlic, salt, pepper, italian seasonings and shredded cheese.

As for the book, it is very haughty, but I find that amusing, so it's all good. Some of the things she thinks are crucial to a more French (i.e., thin) way of life are just not considerations for me - like a glass of ($40 per bottle) champagne with every lunch and dinner. But overall I think it's the direction I'm moving in anyway; eating smaller portions more frequently, of fresh, whole, in-season foods that you savor such that it is quality over quantity. Along with walking and biking places rather than driving, and drastically increasing your water intake. There's some good talk about balance. Overall I find it validating and, mostly, I just love reading about food - this is full of childhood anecdotes of things her mother made, interesting stories of going mushroom picking and climbing trees for cherries, and RECIPES :) Including one I'm making tonight, for a creamy, sweet risotto that is served hot with a piece of dark chocolate melting in the center.

I think my organic produce co-op boxes and backyard herb garden are the closest I can get to the kind of open air markets she describes, but I am happy with that.


We've been focusing almost exclusively on Christianity and Spanish, as school subjects, largely done through me and the five of them sitting down together for an hour or two of reading aloud and conversation. I'm actually looking forward to this as an after-dinner activity tonight, because it was great last night.

I feel really really happy and satisfied with my life. Even though we're on a strict budget for awhile; even though the van still needs fixed, there's cleaning to be done and I have weight to lose; despite (or perhaps partially due to) the long decision making process and journey I'm on, with reference to faith and conversion...

It's just all good. I can't believe how blessed I am, it is freaking nuts!

I've had Anne Rice's Called Out of Darkness sitting on one of my bookshelves for months. I never started it before because, I am ashamed to say, I just assumed that her non-fiction account of her faith in God couldn't possibly be as riveting as her stories of vampires and sex slave islands.

I was totally wrong. This is rich and spellbinding and I had to TEAR myself away after two chapters. It's personal for me, granted, because she's recalling memories of early faith and her mother, and I am a mother to young kids who will one day look back, and because I was a child a lot like her, from the description she gives... but I want to beg Grant to read it because there's just no way he could read it, and not also be spellbound. Not suddenly understand what pulls me towards Catholic churches so strongly.

It does not hurt that I've lived all my life in hot, humid tropical places bursting with flowers and vines, and so I can really picture everything she describes in an informed and familiar way. New Orleans and Key West are so parallel, right down to being gutwrenchingly fragile in their below-sea-level, on-the-hurricane-path ways.

---

I had taken that and The Theology of the Body Explained out to the tv room with me, in the quiet sleeping house, because I want to understand and have peace about The Church, and sex. So badly. Tonight my husband pulled my "Well, my husband doesn't want to go to Catholic Church or Orthodox Church and so I'm supporting him by remaining in the Protestant place" rug out from under me by urging me to go to Mass again because he can tell I need it, what with my Nana post-stroke and possibly near death.

I miss the time when I had my own Pastor to talk to about anything and everything spiritual and personal, all the time in the flesh, and two other Pastors I called and wrote to when I wasn't seeing them at some denominational event. I miss moving through the Christian year. I NEED Lent, and Advent, and fasting. There was a time when I just panicked and mourned over how the Diciples of Christ are falling by the wayside as time passes and aren't available to me anymore; now I wonder if they weren't just an echo of something else that is still there, just like it always has been.

I even miss my amazingly intuitive and over qualified high school guidance counselor (an agnostic Jew-by-birth) who helped me so much, for years, as a teen. I hate this place that I've been in where if I am seeking guidance - not talking to friends and venting to sisters or dumping in a journal online but seeking guidance and wanting direction and clarity - I have to pay someone by the hour.

City Church is a thought provoking worship experience, it's sometimes been a place I felt the Spirit, it's fun and the kids absolutely love it. But there is no support for established Christians. It's another one of these "get people converted to Christianity" churches where every Sunday is about why you should believe in Jesus, and/or why you are absolutely right to already believe in Jesus. That has it's place, but I haven't doubted Jesus for, oh... 12 years now?

---

Here it is after 1 am and I'm glad I stayed up, because of the book and also responding to a "15 Poems That Have Stuck With You" tagging I got on facebook with my own answers - that was good, and just...peace and quiet. But I have to get up early tomorrow. It's gonna go like this:

8:00 - out of bed, waking children, starting to delegate chores as I make blueberry pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs; then we have breakfast
8:45 - finding shoes, doing Ananda's bun, packing a bag full of pineapples and blueberries and crackers and water, grabbing my book and my iPod, making sure the cats are fed, etc.
9:10ish - leave to take Ananda to dance. This is a half hour drive, probably featuring lots of conversation and some song requests.
9:45 - drop Ananda off at dance, take other four kids to the zoo (only 3 miles from there, and we have an annual membership). Look at exhibits for awhile, but mostly play in the splash pads and have snacks. At least one bathroom trip.
12:45 - pick up Ananda, head to Grant's work to take him to lunch. This is a 15 minute drive that will mostly be me finding out all about how Annie's classes went and her brothers telling her how the zoo was
1:00 - get Grant, go to the subshop, which is a cool little place who's owner is always there and knows us. Very low key and empty on Saturdays, too, since it's in a business district.
2:00 - drop Grant back off at work, head back down to Homestead, to the bookstore. 35 minutes in the van, most likely I will put in an educational dvd and tune them out for it. Elise and Jake will nap the whole time while the other 3 act like zombies.
2:40 - walk into our local bookstore. Ananda wants the next Spiderwick Chronicles book, she's ready for #5. It's mostly social, though, the owner and her kids are friends, and then at 4:00 free karate starts in the back room and Aaron and possibly Ananda/Isaac are going to be doing that. Some amount of time will be devoted to reading to Elise and Jake, trying to get Isaac to stop whining, and taking people to the bathroom, but mostly they like it there and amuse themselves with coloring and games in the children's area, or the big saltwater fish tank with step stool. I'll read at least some.
5:00 or so - get home. Make everyone put their shoes away and do a couple of very minor chores. Free time for awhile. Annie will devour half of her book while Aaron unicycles and the little kids play pretend games, I will veg on the computer or talk to my mother on the phone. If I'm really with it and there is not a need for conversation from Lakeland, I may use the Wii Fit for awhile.
6:30 - Quiet Time. We do it for half an hour every day now, but not at a set time. Ananda works on book reports for all of her voluntary reading, since she needs more spelling, handwriting and grammar practice, and Aaron reads, since he loves it when I tell him it's time but never instigates it otherwise. I try to encourage Isaac and Jake to play games or color, but often end up shooing all three of the youngest outside for the duration
7:00 - it will be cool by then, so I'll practice bike riding with Annie again. She is finally getting it, but she may be hesitant at first since she SCRAPED HER FACE ON THE STREET today. We just do about 15 minutes at a time because that's all the falling repeatedly she can handle. She's almost there, though, she got half a block done at once today, twice.
7:20 - start quick cheating dinner of frozen things that go in the oven or pots since it's a hectic day - fish, peas, onion rings.
8:00 - Grant gets home, we eat dinner.
9:30 - start brushing kids' teeth, reading them books - The Mysterious Benedict Society for Ananda and Aaron, The BFG or classic Pooh for Isaac, Amelia Bedelia for Jake and who knows what for Elise. Off to bed with all of them at 10 or so.
10 or so - Grant and I watch newest episode of Kings and since he doesn't have to work for the next four days, actually get to go to bed together, like at the same time.

See? I've basically already done it :p

This evening I made a big old wok of stir fry vegetables (terriyaki), a big pot of chickpea noodle soup, and a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting and some of my strawberry filling. All from scratch, all good. And a lot of 10 minute boil in bag brown rice to go with the stir fry.

---

Every time I closed my eyes to go to sleep last night, I saw my Grandpa's dead body in the funeral home. I cried a lot in the funeral home. I'm still not completely sure why; it was some combination of having known him in life and seeing his dead body, being near a dead body in general, and the overwhelming pain and grief my mother was feeling. Basically I was standing in an emotional tidal wave and there was no way not to get sucked under.

This is the third time I've been near a dead person. It always unsettles me terribly.

It's just so fucking intensely obvious that it is not the person anymore. SO MUCH of how a face looks, is the personality that animates it - even in sleep, even in a coma. I really don't understand how anyone could see a dead body and not know that souls exist. What was there...is gone. What is left...is something else. Vacant, and decomposing.

So those first few hours in bed, I had all these cyclical, exponential thoughts. Round and round, wider and wider...
That is going to happen to me one day - all this flesh on me will be just a carcass.
It's going to happen to everyone I know or ever see.
Everything is so temporary, so changeable, we are all gradually falling apart physically.
Sometimes, people go into the hospital and don't come back out.
Sometimes, there is something going wrong inside your body and you have no idea until it's too late.
It's going to be our parents, before we know it - mine and Laura's, Grant's and Frank's.
Not just that Grandpa died, but my Mom and Dad and Teresa have all been in the hospital for serious things now, in these past years.
My Nana!
When I was in the ICU, I had such a thick and solid wall up, blocking out my emotions, that nothing I perceived can be trusted. But it seemed, it really seemed as though everything was trying to fade to black, as though that's all there would be, if I let go - just black.
Could it really actually be possible that Grandpa is in Hell?
Could it really actually be possible that Grandpa is in Heaven?
I was so afraid of my parents going to hell as a 6 year old in Baptist school.
Everything is so temporary, my mother refusing to come to church where I was getting baptised, my mother getting baptised in a church, my mother in the My Dad years, the Jud years, the (golden) Todd years. My mother now thin and fragile and different, no boundaries, but looking like her old self for just an hour before she left.
Except skinny like she was 17 and in my baby pictures.
I say these things, these wild hyperbole over the top things to joke like I'm so old, but they're ACTUALLY TRUE:
-The bridge I drove over all the time in my remembered childhood is rusted railings falling into the sea and 9 foot trees coming up through the asphalt
-my baby videos are silent flickering things converted from old reels
What will my Dad have left to live for, if his Dad dies? He drives a cab, he lives with Madie, and he takes care of his Dad. That is the important part.
My daughter will be 9 so soon.
My baby will be 2 so soon.
My brother was my 2 year old baby.

It was a long time getting to sleep full of intense dreams.

---

Grant is still sick. We have been talking a lot about all of this. And I ran a lot of errands with Ananda today - Publix, post office, CVS for a picture print, PetCo for hay and litter.

God feels so real to me. Not just real...always real. He seems so CLOSE. I keep praying and having the sense of turning to yell to someone and finding myself nose to nose with them, and being like...oh. And adjusting my volume. It's how I felt in Boston, and at camp. I spent an hour on the phone with my Dad today. And my mom called 3 times. I pray Mother Teresa's prayer; Speak with my mouth, touch with my hands. I don't know how to explain what I mean except that I FELT my prayers working, in the funeral parlor, I felt my mother's pain and I felt how she needed it and I felt it working. Not taking the pain away. Just the sharpest corners, the roughest edges, making it something she could wade through somehow. Holding her up. There are all these little things I start to want to do - to eat crap when I'm not hungry, to slack off when I shouldn't, to give in to little temptations of all kinds, but it's easy...easy to not do them. It's annoying how easy it is, because I want to be more tempted and do them and like them. But it's just so clear that I'm not supposed to, and don't need it. That it isn't what I'm really looking for. And then the words and tones are right there, to say these things to my mother and to my father that are so hard to say, so harsh to say, that need to be said, and then I'm in some state of curious surprise that I didn't offend anyone because I wasn't offensive.

I guess this is kind of cryptic. But it's amazing. I feel so calm, but calm in this very humble, very raw way that has to do with deep connection and faith in surreal times.

I do hope that I sleep better tonight.

I am ready to bust right out of my skin! Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez I do not want to try to channel this energy into fucking cleaning. Argh argh argh.

The good news is, I've abandoned all pretenses at specific strict diets and have returnedto the only thing that ever REALLY really worked for me - relying on God rather than food in times of emotional upset, boredom, exhaustion, etc. It's a lot of prayer and a lot of bible study but it's very rewarding and works very effectively. I don't think I would ever have thought to come back around to this method, sinner that I am, if it hadn't been for larger spiritual struggles going down. But here I am, and it benefits in countless ways...

Aaron's cat has finally stopped acting like a vet from 'Nam and is starting to come out from under the couches and allow himself to be touched sometimes. Aaron is beside himself with joy about it. I am relieved, I was starting to think we were stuck with a mouth to feed and litter box for cleaning attached to nothing more than a blur streaking by a couple of times a day. I feel like a cat classist, it is so glaringly obvious looking at these two cats that the terrified, jumpy, anxious cat is the rescued shelter cat, and the playful, sleeping with us, sweet cat is the socialized-daily-from-birth and generally pampered cat from a breeder. Mine has a double identity: My sweet adorable kitten is Chrysanthemum. The nutcase who scales bookshelves, pounces on the bigger cat and attacks our sleeping feet, is her alterego Roxanne. The old lady who handled Peter's adoption through PetNetwork and brought him to our house, and the guy who breeds Maine Coons that I got Mum through, are both clamoring for updates and pictures constantly. I come home every day to emails and voicemails, and while I understand the concern, I think it might be time for them both to move on.

We got a Christmas tree. It's nice and fat. I'm thinking of taking a minimalist approach due to toddlers and kittens, like maybe lights; some strung beads, cranberries and/or popcorn; a topper; and our usual Christmas cookie ornaments. I'll probably make up a big old bunch of gingerbread dough soon so we can make them in batches over the coming weeks (as they have a tendency to quietly dissapear).

The Christmas season in general is like prozac for me - just driving around with lights on houses and the city having decorated, with carols on the XM Radio, makes everything seem better.

Tediously mundane BS: our dishwasher isn't working. Our brand new stainless steel KitchenAid dishwasher, that I have raved about since it was purchased. You can't imagine the backup in my kitchen, where normally I do 2-3 jumbo loads a day.

Sidenote: You can't imagine how much I can cram into a dishwasher without compromising cleanness. All those years of Tetris were good for something after all.