love

Breaking: Apart or Open?

Have you ever looked at the first card in the tarot deck, The Fool? In many decks, The Fool is setting forth on a journey. He has packed lightly, a small bundle slung over his shoulder. He looks ahead, not down at the path which, to onlookers, appears to be a precarious one. A dog nips at his heels (or in some drawings, his bum) but he appears unconcerned. In fact, he sets forth with a face full of joy and hope, blithely unaware of the dangers that await wherever he is headed. The Fool appears foolish, indeed.

What an apt image for us as we set out into our lives – especially as we set off into the uncharted lands of relationship. We rarely see what is before us, even when there are markers in place (I once dated someone who told me on our first date that his favorite song was “Love the One You’re With”. Perhaps I should have read that marker.) But often, there are no easy-to-read road signs. I don’t know about you, but I am cautious by nature, and it is rare for me to put my feet to a path I can’t see the end of. So, I have ventured out into the territory of love relationships timidly, afraid of the unknown future ahead and of the possibility of experiencing emotional pain.

Which brings me to the topic of this post: broken hearts. Despite my caution, my heart has indeed been broken a time or two. No one, I think, really experiences life without heartbreak. In the throes of real emotional pain, I have wondered, “What am I supposed to do with this? With this broken thing that was my heart, with these feelings that have nowhere to go now that they have no one to be invested in?”

In one such moment recently, I read the following paragraph, and it gave me some much-needed perspective:

“But there are at least two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken. One is to imagine the heart broken into shards and scattered about — a feeling most of us know, and a fate we would like to avoid. The other is to imagine the heart broken open into new capacity — a process that is not without pain but one that many of us would welcome.” (Parker Palmer, from A Hidden Wholeness)

When I read this, it immediately reminded me that I have, in fact, experienced my heart being “broken open into new capacity”. One such experience was a trip I took to Ireland a few years ago. I had never travelled overseas, and had dreamed of visiting Ireland – then got the opportunity to travel with a group from the university. I fell in love with Ireland, and with the person I became on that trip — a person who lived as fully as possible in every minute, who didn’t leave a drop or a crumb behind. It was amazing. When we boarded the plane to return to the States, I put my jacket over my head and cried for two hours.  But the experience of leaving that perfect moment broke my heart open. A love of travel and an image of myself as fully alive were the new capacities born of that experience.

When our hearts break due to relationships not working, not going where we want them to, ending, it is difficult to accept. To then, on top of learning to live with the brokenness, expect or hope for something new and good to be born of it almost defies us. It feels beyond our reach, and yet…perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps we’re meant to learn that looking like a fool isn’t the end of the world. Perhaps we’re meant to discover that hearts are resilient muscles — and like all muscles, they get stronger the more you use them. And perhaps the capacity that will be born is the ability to love without reservation, because you begin to understand that the journey itself (rather than its end) is what makes it worthwhile to do so.

And so you, The Fool, journey on. You feel your feelings, especially the ones that hurt. You look for the good, for the things you may have learned or discovered in yourself. You flex your heart muscle and find that it still works. And eventually, as a Missy Higgins song puts it, “you’ll wake to find, you’re a little unbroken.”

Measuring vs Pouring

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

–T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

“It is the law that is measured out. It is the law that always asks the questions, “How far do I have to go? How much is enough?” But love never asks these questions because love is never measured out. Love is always poured out.”

—Bill Mills, Naked and Unashamed


It is a little strange to begin an entry with two quotes, especially two which come from such completely different sources. The first, from one of my favorite poems (especially to read aloud), strikes me as being all about living life by holding back, by choosing to believe that pouring oneself out into the world unreservedly would be presumptuous. Poor Prufrock feels the insecurities of being ordinary in a world which values the extraordinary – and who among us has not felt that? And feeling that, he holds back. We hold back.

The second quote, above, comes from a source I haven’t read. Instead, this quotation was included in a blog post by Randy Greenwald, and it has stayed with me for days. Love is always poured out. Which is to say, if it isn’t being poured out, if it is being held back, measured, and dribbled out, it isn’t love.

Usually, I would want to blather on and on about what all this means. Today, I simply want to say that in learning to love my life, I have been learning to pour myself out – to allow love to flow unimpeded by insecurities and fear. I haven’t learned to do this perfectly yet. But I have learned that putting myself out there in a careful trickle only results in regret. So I am going to let love (of life, of others, of my flawed self) cascade, flood, gush forth and inundate my world. I hope you’ll join me — and let it pour, baby, let it pour!

The Rememberer

My Nana, Marie, was one of a kind. While I didn’t know her in her hey-day, I’m told she was fun-loving, funny, and had a great personality and sunny disposition. At one point in her life, she owned a business, a diner I think. Nana gave birth to six children, the first of whom was born while Nana was a teen, and who was raised as Nana’s sister. Nana’s adult life, and consequently the life of her family, was not easy. Among other things, Nana was an alcoholic, at a time when very little was understood about that crippling disease – and when the “treatment” was to lock her up for months at a time in the state mental hospital. (If you think they didn’t understand alcoholism back then, believe me, the understanding and treatment of mentally ill individuals was worse.) As the son who lived in town, my father often found himself in the role of caretaker to his mother. His stories, told with the distance of time, are both funny (in a macabre sense) and hair-raising.

I was a kid and didn’t know anything about that stuff. To me she was just my Nana Marie, and I loved her. Nana was a great baker. I can still remember the coconut cake, decorated with silver dragees, she made for my sister’s first communion. I also remember baking bread with her at her house. We made a tiny, child-sized loaf just for me, with a sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar on the top crust.

Unlike my siblings, I got to spend some quality alone time with Nana. As luck had it, I was the only one who attended half-day kindergarten at the school across the street from her house. I have truly happy memories of time with Nana, going with her to the beauty parlor, baking, walking on errands in her neighborhood. After kindergarten, I moved on to the Cathedral grade school, and my half days with Nana ended. She passed away shortly after that.

Years later, in graduate school studying counseling, I first learned about the disease of alcoholism. Not that I hadn’t known of it before, but I learned details about its long-term effects and generational impact. I also learned more about the gritty realities. And I was horrified to realize that my parents had knowingly allowed me to spend time alone with someone whose alcoholism made her, by their own admission, untrustworthy.

That summer (when I was working on my MA), my father’s youngest sister visited from her home in Florida. We sat outside one warm, June or July evening, chatting and telling stories from the distant past. My aunt, who had been removed from Nana’s home to live with my grandfather and his second wife, made a comment about not understanding how a mother could let go of her child and never want to have contact again. And suddenly, a side of my mother emerged that surprised us all. She was on fire for the truth: and out came the story of how badly it had hurt Nana to lose her youngest child. Though kept secret from my aunt, Nana had written and called. Had begged for contact and been denied.  Mom said, “I can’t let you go on believing she didn’t want you. Losing you broke her heart.” I can’t speak for anyone else who was there, but hearing that story broke mine.

As the vehemence of the conversation wound down, I remember saying, “Still, I’m a little shocked you let me spend time alone with her. I was awfully young, only five, and you knew she didn’t have good control.”  And my mother, the woman of fierce compassion, responded, “She would call and beg me. I almost always said no, but sometimes, I just couldn’t bear to. She always promised she wouldn’t drink if I said yes, and she knew that if anything ever happened to you, it would be the last time.”

I sat on my parents’ porch late into the night, after the conversation had quieted and people began moving inside to get ready for bed. I thought about the sad stories I’d heard, and the things my parents saw and experienced in caring for my grandmother. I thought about how it was not right for children to endure these things, to have such grim pictures of a parent indelibly imprinted on their memories. And I realized something that has brought me a lot of joy ever since. I saw that my mother had given Nana more than quality time with one grandchild. What my mom did for her was to give her a rememberer: someone whose only memories of Marie are good ones. Shouldn’t we all have at least one person who remembers us as our best self? I am so happy to be that person for my Nana Marie.

Celebrate Love

love is the voice under all silences,

the hope which has no opposite in fear;

the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:

the truth more first than sun more last than star

— e e cummings

 

Today is Valentine’s Day. For many, the day is all about romantic love, which is wonderful and worthy of celebration. However, I want to think about LOVE in its broadest sense, in its many and varied meanings. How, after all, can one little word carry so many ideas, so many definitions, in its four little letters? As the poet, Michael Blumenthal, says in “The Word Love“: a word/I have uttered time and time again/and now hesitate to say at all–/being, as it is, always too much/to stand for what we really mean,/and never enough.

For years, now, the song “Love’s the Only House” by Martina McBride, has been a sort of theme song for me. Not because I know how to love better than anyone else, but because I firmly believe that right action (toward self and others) flows from love. This song reminds me that, every day, I am offered the opportunity to choose from a place of love…or from somewhere else (fear, anger, selfishness, etc.). When I choose from love, I may not choose perfectly, but I do remain whole.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

How to Love People: A Misanthropes Guide to Relationships

First off, I used the word misanthrope because it is a great word.  I don’t really qualify as one, but it also serves the purpose of letting you know right off the bat that I’m no relationship expert!  I once read an article in which a woman said, “I love mankind. Individual people annoy the hell out of me.” That’s fairly representational of my feelings, or at least of my natural, introverted inclinations. However, inclinations change. At least mine have, and I’d like to share some things I’ve learned about loving others which (now that I know them) have changed my life. Really. They’ve changed my life.

I am not required to tell others what I really think about them, their choices, their actions. Once, I was with a friend who was telling me that he and his wife were thinking about having a child.  His wife was really pushing for it, but he wasn’t sure. He shared his reasons for being unsure, and I told him they were, essentially, stupid.  He responded, “You know, some friends would just listen and empathize.”  This particular friend, at that particular moment, needed someone to hear what he was feeling, not someone to argue against him.  The trick, and the art of being a good friend, is learning the difference between these times, and those moments when what your friend is looking for is someone to help them face a hard truth.  Parker Palmer suggests (in Let Your Life Speak) that we must “avoid the unconscious violence we do when we try to save each other”, that we must learn to “hold another life without dishonoring its mystery”. In other words, sometimes just being quietly yet fully present to another is enough.

I am not required to tell others everything I  feel. I used to avoid telling anyone what I felt, and that included myself. In order to open my life to more and healthier relationships, I’ve had to learn to acknowledge my emotions and, yes, to express them. Finding that sweet spot, you know the one where you allow others to know your heart without knocking their feet out from under them like a riptide, is terribly difficult. Frankly, I still suck at it. Sometimes, I don’t share my feelings when or how it is most appropriate (usually because I am arguing with myself about whether I should), then I blurt them out at moments when others are completely unprepared. Sharing honestly without hurting or knocking others down – practicing this skill is key to mastering it!

Being RIGHT is overrated. Let’s face it, we all love being right. We love being in the right. Sometimes, this is important. But not as often as we think, especially in relationships. I’m a middle child, and early in life was known for over-using the phrase, “That’s not fair!” I would go to great lengths to prove I was right. And when I did, it was almost always a hollow victory. It turned out I was either the only one who cared OR my need to be right had taken the spontaneous fun out of the moment. Now, when my entire family gets together, I enjoy staying out of the fray. Let others fight for control, for the decision-making power, or for the sheer delight of fighting to be right. The gift of this approach is that I get to stay in peaceful connectedness with all my loved ones. I just wish I had known this at 18. I would so have avoided that unfortunate kick-fight with my 19-year-old sister one morning before going to college classes together!

I am capable of loving people whom I know to be flawed. One day, I was hanging with a friend whom I just love. I mean, this friend is really special, wonderful, funny, loving, kind, beautiful inside and out. And then, something was said by this person that completely shocked me. It revealed a weakness in my friend’s character. The kind of weakness that, in the past, I might have considered a “fatal flaw”, in that it could have killed our friendship. And that’s when it hit me that I could choose to extend my love and friendship anyway. That I could see someone’s weaknesses and flaws clearly and still love them. That blindness to these traits is not a requirement of love.  In some cases, I am actually learning to love the flaws. No, really! Being in relationships intimate enough that I actually know these things and see them as an endearing part of the whole package is a gift beyond measure. It is a gift I hope to learn to extend to myself, as well.

When in doubt, choose the most loving course of action. This suggestion, while akin to “being right is overrated”, takes the concept a step further. There are often times in relationships when we don’t know the right thing to do. Should I go over there? Or give her space? Say something? Or hold my tongue? Take a stand/give an ultimatum? In my experience, the right path can proceed forward from whichever step I take, as long as that step is taken with a loving heart. Importantly, my action needs to express love for the other, and for myself. And that tends to be the hard part. It is easier to step into the role of martyr (“See how I sacrifice for you?”) or that of the self-righteous (“I don’t deserve/need this!”) than it is to carefully navigate a loving response.  Yes, there may be times that the most loving response is to walk away. But, by and large, the great beauties of relationship develop when we work through these tough issues and come out stronger on the other side.

I don’t think there’s anything new or earth-shaking in this guide. I am an imperfect practitioner of each point. But I’m learning how important each one is to deepening relationship. I also don’t think its any coincidence that each one refers to maintaining a balance between self and other in relationships. I no longer think it is possible to have loving relationships with others if I don’t have one with myself.

One last thought: being a misanthrope (allowing minor things about others to annoy me) was a defense mechanism that kept people at arm’s length. If I could be blunt or dismissive or right, I didn’t have to risk letting people close enough that I could be hurt. Recently, I was talking to my friend Tricia, who is a mental-health counselor. I said, “I cry a lot more often than I used to.” And her response was, “Thinking about the person you used to be, and how your life has changed, would you really want to go back? Isn’t crying, even if it is a little every day, a small price to pay?” And, of course, she’s right.

Love vs Power?

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:

“…Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites – polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love.

It was this misinterpretation that caused Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject the Nietzschean philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love. Now, we’ve got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on. What has happened is that we have had it wrong and confused in our own country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience…

…And I say to you, I have also decided to stick to love. For I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate. I’ve seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South. I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens Councilors in the South to want to hate myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality…”

Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Atlanta, Georgia
16 August 1967

For the love…

Once, in my early thirties, a friend told me that if she knew she would never get married, she would prefer to just die right then and save herself the effort of more lonely years.  I was shocked, since it had not once occurred to me to think such a thought about my own life.  But there was something tickling at the back of my brain, trying to help me remember that I had felt that way, once.  About…what?

When I moved into this house that I love, I wanted to surround myself with only those things that were meaningful to me.  This necessitated a gigantic purge of stuff that I had held onto long past the time to let go.  Thankfully, my friend Sue came with her large truck.  We sorted and hauled an unbelievable amount away — two full truckloads of books, for example.

There was one storage tub I refused to open until Sue had driven away.  In 1973 I was given my first diary.  Since then, I have been a regular, if episodic, journal keeper.  I have never had the discipline to write daily, so there are few journals which are full cover to cover.  Also, I’ve experimented with a variety of styles, both in my journal writing and in the physical journals themselves.  The one thing they had in common was their place inside a large storage tub which had been unopened (except when I tossed another one inside) for years.  Once the rest of the house was in tip-top shape, I had an overwhelming urge to open the tub and start reading.

And there it was, in a hardcover bookkeepers account log.  An entry from my sophomore year in high school (1977):  “The only thing I want to do with my life is write.  If I knew I couldn’t be a writer, what would be the point?  I would just lay down and die right now.”

So now you know: the heart of why publishing jenion has been such a joy.  And what lies behind the decision to take on the postaday 2011 challenge.  I am doing it for the love…of writing.

(Gentle reader:  If you have something you love this much, I would genuinely like to hear from you about it — please share by posting a comment.)