Saturday, March 18, 2017

Prophet

Once upon a time there were people, a few, who called me a prophet.

And I knew some people who were being held up as prophets, who would bring messages to people from god.  I saw as they seemed to grasp for some kind of fame and basked when people gathered to hang on their every utterance.  And sometimes I could almost see the sleight of hand, the misdirection, the parlour trick that felt to me like a slp in the face to the truth of God.

Here is the thing; I do have a basic belief that if you listen the one who is light and love that I have come to know as God will sometimes speak or show or, I don't have words for that enfolding of holiness.

And sometimes I would be asked to pray for someone and words of prayer would come that I did not know I would pray, they were just the outpouring of being in that awareness of God.

And I was asked by a person In Authority what I was doing to work on my gift of prophecy.  This confused me.  How was I supposed to "work" on this?  I was a wife and a homeschooling mom and busy and fighting depression and trying to make ends meet and crying out to know more of God during the cracks and crevasses of my time.

And feeling weak and dull and trapped.

How could I work on anything.

Over time I backed away.  I backed away from people who set themselves as godly authority.  I backed away from people who worked at trying to prove God loves them best.  I backed away from people who thought they could tell the amount of sin in your life by the amount of prosperity, beauty, and status you held.

But I didn't back away from that being that I know as God.

And I turn again and again and again to love and light and the enfolding presence.

And I ask again and again and again, what is the path, the next turn, where is the center in this moment?

And I'm still sometimes surprised by the answer.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Falling Up 3: Don't Feel

Today, near the end of the workday, I heard that someone who used to be in our department is not expected to live through the night.  As I saw tears come to some eyes, I was really surprised.  When she left because of a very nasty cancer, I did not expect her to live this long.  I know her faith was strong, and I wish her well on her journey.

Death is part of life.  But it is hard to know what young children understand about it.  I have to remember that when I tell this story.

One morning my best friend came over to my house.  This was odd, I usually went down the hill to her house.  Even odder, her older sister came too.  They looked at me sadly and said they were sorry.  I was confused.  That was when my mother explained to me that my Grandpa had died.  I remember wailing uncontrollably, but I don't think I really understood.

I remember being 5, but the date I have says I was 6, almost 7.  I was dressed in a new, scratchy black dress and we drove to my grandparents house in Palmdale. My Aunts and Uncles were there.  Everyone was dressed up and looking very serious.

At the funeral home it seemed like there was endless talking as I squirmed on a hard bench next to my mother.  Then we walked past a dressed up doll in a box that people said was my grandpa and everyone said how natural he looked.  He looked plastic and was dressed in a suit instead of his usual overalls.  I followed along, did as I was told, but in my memory it is like a play I was once in.

Then I was in some fancy car, sitting on a little pull down seat in front of my mother.  Then standing between my Mother and my Aunt in the bare, desert cemetery where my Uncle Who Was Killed in the War was buried.  The box with my grandpa was closed up and covered with flowers, and more words were said. At that moment I knew.  I was never going to see this big, silly man who loved me again.  Tears started rolling down my face.

I heard one of my Aunts whisper to my mom "Look, she's crying."

My mom whispered back "Oh, that's just because she sees us crying, she doesn't really understand."

I was so confused.  My heart was breaking, but my mom said I didn't understand what I was feeling.

The rules of a dysfunctional family are simple.  Don't talk, don't tell, don't feel.

Sometimes I still struggle with expressing my feelings.  I have gotten better, but the more something matters to me, the harder it is to share.  Sorrow or joy, love or anger, if it is a strong feeling I have to hold it and guard it.  I have to be sure it is safe to share.  I have to be sure I know what I am feeling.

So, I have to find a way to tell you how it was in my family, how it felt in my family, because the seeds of many of my later choices were planted during the following seven or so years.  Some of the seeds grew to fruit, some to weeds, and I'm still having to deal with sorting it out from time to time.  I hope you will be patient with the story.  I will try to tell it as true as I can and not make any one better or worse than they were, including myself.  But I was a child.  Sometimes I forget that.

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Family and myth

I was talking on the phone with my brother, I think it was 6 or 7 years ago.  He was telling me things that he had heard about our family that he didn't think I knew about, and he was right.  But more than that, some of what he told me seemed more like myth; here are some things that make us more special.  I have been thinking from time to time over the intervening years about how much we mythologise our family histories.  I mean, we all want our stories to be special, right?

There were a few things that I had grown up knowing.  Like I knew that my grandma was part Cherokee.  She knew her grandpa had married a Cherokee, and that was why her hair was so dark and her nose had the look it did.  Now, there was also a family rumor that there may have been some Native American on my grandpa's side, too.  But others in his family denied it, so it was a maybe.  But my grandma?  That was a known fact.

So when someone shared a link with me on Facebook about why so many white people claim to have some Native American in their family, something about white guilt and feeling special or different or something.  I don't really remember, because I just skimmed it, because that wasn't my family.  My family, it was a known person attested to by my grandma.

Except, then I did a DNA test a few months ago.   And you can guess, but after 61 years knowing one sure thing about my family, I learned it isn't true.  I am English and Irish and Scandinavian with a few tiny traces of other mostly white people.  White through and through.  So white I still don't know how I could possibly have such brown eyes.

It has been really hard to wrap my head around.  How could my beloved and trusted grandma get this so wrong?

We want our family stories to be wonderful and magical.  And let's be real here, those of us who are educated and have big hearts and grew up in the US thinking about the history and culture of our country, well there is a lot of ugly in that mix.

But I also come from a long line of strong women who survived some really hard circumstances.  I come from a long line of deeply spiritual and intelligent people, even if much education was not often available to many of them.  I come from a musical family, and a family of storytellers.  I come from a long line of people who tell the most horrendous stories of surviving some really crazy stuff, and yet who keep finding the silver lining and who keep laughing together.

And that is the mythology I hope that my grandchildren and great grandchildren will carry into the future.  With the advances in testing, they may grow up knowing more truth about who they are they my grandma could have ever imagined.  And really, aren't the very best stories the ones that you can prove?