Trying to Wrap My Brain Around Humility

I recently read a blog post (dated March 13, 2012) by Abbot Tryphon of All-Merciful Saviour Orthodox Christian Monastery on Vashon Island, Washington. In this post, Abbot Tryphon talked about self-esteem, and how, in our culture, this term has really just become another word for self-importance. It also appears to have become the antithesis of humility.

I agree with Abbot Tryphon that there are times when self-esteem becomes confused with self-importance and pride. But I think that this is indicative of our culture's complete inability to comprehend the spiritual dimensions of concepts like humility and pride. It's tough to make the distinction when people simply don't think beyond immediate satisfaction, when people think that "feel good about yourself" just means "feel good right now". 

The problem with that is that feeling good about oneself - that is, feeling like we've done the right thing, like we can look ourselves in the mirror without loathing, without hiding - can take time. It takes dedication, courage, strength and sacrifice. It takes hard decisions, and difficult paths. I think it also takes spiritual grounding. True self-esteem is not the easy way out, and I think that's where we miss the boat, as a culture. 

The easy way out is to see self-esteem as being wrapped up in our image to others, which is really pride. So let's call it that. Our culture teaches us pride, not true self-esteem. And it does this by marketing products that will make us pretty/handsome and ageless, chemicals to make us smell good (i.e., not like a human, but rather like a flower or a spice mill or a chemical dump), drugs that will make us slim by 3:00 tomorrow, and endless amounts of stuff that will make us the envy of all those around us who don't have all that incredible, unnecessary stuff. 

Then, when we inevitably age and our bodies change and we smell like a human first thing in the morning, this image gets shattered and we want to repair everything, make it like new again. But that's okay. Just turn on all those electronic things and you'll get bombarded with more advertisements for products that will keep you from feeling like you're actually living. And if you act now, we'll throw in this other thing that will break in  3 days at no extra cost.


Part of the cycle is that the generations that follow us are learning these lessons, and they're learning that you are only okay if, between the ages of 14 and 40, you perpetually look like you're 20 years old. They learn that they are only okay if they are always winning, and do not know defeat. They learn that they are only okay if they are doing everything right. I think that our culture knows this on an unconscious level, so we try to promote self-esteem by ensuring that no one ever loses, no one ever knows painful defeat, and no one ever really has to struggle to win. It's the easy way out, and it just doesn't last.


Now, in some circles, people are actually talking about self-esteem in the sense of being able to wake up in the morning and still feel good about yourself, despite smelling like a human and having bedhead and being shaped differently than the model who looks like she hasn't yet hit puberty (or, for men, shaped differently than, say, Hercules). Some people are still touting self-esteem, though, by encouraging the purchase of stuff - the right yoga mat, the right exercise video, the right meditation CD, the right book to read. "This is the one! This is the one thing you've been missing that will give you self-esteem! BUY IT!!!"


Cha-ching.


And of course, if you're not getting all that you want and more, it means that you are not doing it right. It means that you aren't enlightened enough; it means that you haven't grasped the magic formula and said the right thing so that *poof* it will appear before you, as if summoned from beyond.


But wait, that's still more pride, isn't it? I have the right yoga mat, so I'm awesome. I bought that CD and I'm so much more enlightened now. I got the stuff, and the stuff makes me better than I was. So why are people still sad?


What people do miss is humility. We've been taught that humility is self-loathing, and that it will ruin us, and cause us to be abused. In our grab for power, recognition, and love, we cannot possibly risk losing it by appearing humble, by self-deprecation and loathing. Right?


If humility is not self-loathing, then what is it?


The day after seeing Abbot Tryphon's post, I also saw this video.



This, I thought, this holds one of the keys to understanding humility. At least, I think it might. I think one of the keys to grasping this elusive idea is to understand our place in the Universe. And to realize that we are all connected.

The Buddhists use a Sanskrit term - Pratītyasamutpāda - that means, in a literal sense, Dependent Co-origination. That's a really amazingly fancy way of saying interconnectness. We are all connected to one another.

Similarly, in the Orthodox Church, we cultivate humility by remembering that we are all connected to each other. Within the Church, we are connected by being in communion with one another. But even in the larger scheme of things, we are all connected by our humanity, and its need for Grace.

Who among us has not desired forgiveness from those we love? Who among us has not fallen short of expectations? Who among us has not fallen into despair, or soared in joyous abandon? Who among us has not felt the most basic emotions - fear, longing, rage, joy, and of course, love? We are bound by our common experiences of being human as we are by blood and erect bipedal locomotion.

And so I am connected to the homeless man, to the wealthy CEO, to the beautiful girl who fears she is ugly, to the man who resents his brother for being smart and funny, to all those who are struggling with fear, longing, rage, joy and love because I, too, struggle with these. I have made mistakes, and fallen short of Grace. I have run away from God and from the love He offered me in so many forms. How is it possible to try to be superior when I know that I have experienced all of this? Pride is the belief that we are separate from everyone else, and that we should be held above others because we are different from them. Humility (which comes from the term humilis (Latin) and is related to another Latin term, humus, which means "earth") is the recognition that every breathing, hoping, running, praying, playing, imagining, trembling, dancing, singing, innovating, crying, prostrating, laughing human is made of the same stardust as everyone else.

And not only that, but we are also connected to those stars out there. We are connected to the Universe in its entirety, to all of Creation, as we exchange atomic material with them each day.

I cannot say if this makes me feel small or big. It's neither. And it's both. Humility isn't about feeling superior or inferior. It's about knowing my place in the scheme of things. It's about understanding that someone else's crazy behavior is no more crazy than the environment that created it. It's about looking at ourselves and seeing not only the divine image of God, but also seeing the image of the lowliest among us.

What the Church has taught me is that the result of our humility, the natural outcome of realizing our interconnectedness, is Love. We can't truly love without it. And we cannot be in the presence of Divine Love without humility, without realizing that it extends out to all of us. Grace touches each of us, just as we are each made of the dust of distant stars. 

The Depth of Tradition

Any member of my family will tell you that I am not one to follow the crowd. I've always got to do something to challenge the status quo. Sometimes I'm subtle about it, but not always. Sometimes I'm a little over the top, like the time I showed up to a Christmas Eve service at my parents' evangelical Protestant church dressed in a beautiful silk sari (an Indian garment). This was the bridesmaid's outfit from a friend's wedding (she was an America Hindu), and I wore it on this occasion complete with silver headdress. My poor parents. They acted like they were happy to have me there anyway.

There's just something about me that wants to wake people up. It's so easy to be complacent in this world, which makes us miss out on so much (and I fully recognize that I am not exempt from this). People make decisions without too much thought, or they do things because they should, not because they're called to. Also, being a sociologist, I want to look at cultural expectations and see what happens when we defy these expectations, or step outside of them.

Sunday ended the second week of Great Lent. 

In so many ways, Lent challenges us to break with societal norms, to defy the expectations of our culture. We are expected to enter this debt economy, to pursue wealth (or at least the acquisition of stuff), to work ourselves to death. We are expected to find pleasure where we can, to win all our battles, and to get what we want as fast as we can.

It's so easy to be swept away in that tide. 

The Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian is a wonderful reminder of how we should defy cultural norms during this time. It is also a reminder of the rewards of this defiance.

O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.

Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou unto ages of ages.

During this prayer, we make three prostrations, one after each line, embodying the humility that allows us to challenge how we walk through the world.

As I reflect on this simple prayer, I realize it isn't so simple. The depth of its challenge is immense. Our challenges are laid out before us, and we prostrate in an effort to humble ourselves, to receive help to meet them.

O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

Emotional laziness and apathy (sloth), hopelessness (despair), a desire for control, an unwillingness to relent or to yield to another (lust of power), and our ever-present influx of sensory distraction (idle talk) surround us in our daily lives. Every one of them inhibits spiritual growth and communion with God, and every one of us has to deal with them.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.

These are the gifts that I seek. I want to cherish my own body, sharing it only with the person who will commit himself to me fully. I want to stop fighting for power, and to recognize that I am just a small speck of dust in this universe, and while I carry the spark of God's divine image, I have to try to conduct myself in a way that lives up to that. I want to calmly face stillness and solitude, to rest in that place, so that I can hear God when He talks to me.

And I want to love.

As I mentioned last week, I do love - so deeply it threatens to overwhelm me at times - but I have a hard time receiving it. I know I put my guard up, and I can't imagine how that must hurt others sometimes. I want to knock those walls down. I've been working on it, but it's harder than I thought it would be. Fear is a tough habit to break. Sometimes those prostrations feel like my head banging against a brick wall.

Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou unto ages of ages.

This is real psychological gold, because it addresses projection. We are so accustomed to projecting our worst onto other people, where we can revile it in relative safety. Being able to see our own transgressions, and by seeing them, truly see their consequences and origins, can help us to have compassion for others. If I have hurt others because I was lashing out in my own pain, then how much pain have those who have hurt me experienced? Do I have the courage to face my own projections? And do I have the courage to forgive?

As I prostrate after each of those lines, as I have every day for the last two weeks, I try to let the mystery of the prayer take over, not to overthink, but to simply let the power of word and movement work its magic in my soul. I can feel it happening; little by little, I can feel this simple prayer open me up in ways I no longer thought possible.

Orthodoxy and the Spiritual Journey

We're one week into Great Lent.

I have been Orthodox for nearly five years now, and this is only the second Great Lent in which I've been fully involved in the life of a parish. And it is the first Great Lent I've experienced in which I've participated in the entire liturgical year prior to its beginning.

Why did it take me so long?

I started asking that question after Forgiveness Vespers. This incredible service is held on Cheesefare Sunday, the day before Great Lent begins. During this service, each person in church that evening asks forgiveness of every other person in church. Individually. Out loud.

Imagine walking up to around 100 people, and before each of them, you touch the fingertips of your right hand to your forehead, and then bring your hand down, palm up, until those fingertips touch the floor. While you're doing this, you say to that person, "Please forgive me." As you do this, the person from whom you seek forgiveness performs the same action, and asks you to forgive them. Acceptable responses are "I forgive you" or "Christ forgives all" or "God forgives all". There is no need to hash out the details of the transgressions. We are doing what the Lord's Prayer demands of us: "And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." To feel the grace of forgiveness, we must extend that grace ourselves.

Acknowledging each person in the church that way, seeing their faces and saying to them that you recognize that you may have injured or slighted them, knowingly or unknowingly, is humbling.

Last year, I arrived too late to participate in Forgiveness Vespers. It was my first time visiting St. Paul's, and I got the time wrong. It might have been better that way. Witnessing this intense and beautiful ceremony with complete strangers would have been overwhelming to me.

So this was only the second time I'd participated in Forgiveness Vespers; I first participated in it just before my very first Lent. Why did I wait so long to do this again?

On Tuesday, I attended the Great Compline and Canon of Repentance by St Andrew of Crete. It is a hauntingly beautiful service, divided up into four shorter services during the first week of Lent (shortened, it was still 90 minutes long). During that service, we all made full prostrations while singing, "Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me" over 50 times. And I'd come in late.

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

Among Orthodoxy's many mysteries is the way our faith is embodied in these kinds of services. We do not just sing of repentance, of the wastefulness of our lives, of our shame at pursuing material wealth when our brothers and sisters suffer. We sing of these things and then prostrate ourselves.

Not all of you are Orthodox, so let me go over this. A full prostration is where the worshipper, from a standing position, kneels on the floor, and then bends at the waist, resting his or her hands on the ground and then touching his or her forehead to the floor. Then, the worshipper stands back upright, completing the prostration.

You may have seen Muslims, Buddhists or Hindus do it. Most people don't associate this gesture with Christianity. Yet, Orthodox Christians have been doing it for a couple thousand years now.

In yoga, the position halfway through the prostration (forehead on floor) is a pose known as The Child. And that is truly how we should be before the Creator of all, before the most Loving Parent we could ever have, right? Humbled and deeply respectful, full of trust and wonder. In the same vein, the prostration is also a position most children adopt in the womb; in utero, we are all tucked into a ball, just like this, preparing to be born.

So we did this over 50 times. I started getting choked up sometime after 35, as I stood up and saw Fr James on his knees, reverently gazing upward. When he spoke next, his voice was rough the way it might be if he was trying to control his own emotion, and I almost burst into tears. I was glad I didn't have to speak out loud. I wouldn't have made it.

It was around this time that some things began to dislodge. I could feel it happening. I've long known that one of the benefits of dancing is that as the body gets moving, the things we store up in the body also get moving. Emotions and memories that we've suppressed or forgotten begin to awaken and come to the surface. Within any Orthodox service, all the senses are engaged: sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. Adding movement to this brings worship and ritual into our bodies; there are prostrations, half-prostrations, crossing oneself, hugging, and the veneration of icons, which involves a reverent kiss on the icon. Within this sacred context, the movements seem perfect to accompany reflections on repentance and humility, and in fact mirror such reflections.

The next night (Wednesday) was the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts, which means that the blessing of the Eucharist has happened the Sunday before. During Sunday Divine Liturgy, we don't normally prostrate because it's just too crowded. But during a Divine Liturgy that happens on another day, we usually have a little more space for this. As the Eucharist is blessed, we prostrate, remaining on the ground until the blessing is finished. During the Liturgy of Pre-Sanctified Gifts, however, we prostrate during what would normally be the Great Entrance. Instead of the Little Litany, the procession with the Holy Gifts around the inside of the church (the Nave) occurs in silence.

It's actually awe-inspiring. I lay on the floor, knees tucked underneath my body, arms encircling my head, and I began to feel different, as if a breeze had wafted down from Heaven, barely touching us, and inviting us in. My brain shut down, and my heart opened.

It felt like years before I stood up again. Wordless joy filled me... but also a sense that I'd been avoiding something, and the dreaded certainty that I was about to discover what that was.

All week I'd been feeling the urge to talk to a friend about Forgiveness Vespers. Although she is not Orthodox, nor even Christian, she has been extremely supportive of my journey with the Church. I simply wanted to share this with her, because I thought she'd appreciate the beauty of the ceremony. On Friday, she sent me a text message, communicating her sense of peace in her new home, a cabin in the woods, not unlike the one I live in. In the text, she asked me to forgive her for something.

In my response, I asked her forgiveness as well. I asked her to forgive me for leaving Santa Barbara. I admitted my own self-centeredness in that decision, and my inability to realize how much love surrounded me there.

It just came out. I hadn't thought about it until my fingers were typing it into my phone. But I knew that my departure from Santa Barbara really wounded Sunny. She'd told me as much. When she first told me that, I felt ... defensive. I wanted to defend my decision. I hadn't ever apologized. It was way past due.

It was also way past time for me to examine that decision. Evidently, at an until-recently-unconscious level, it had bothered me, causing my initial defensive reaction. I didn't want to have made a mistake in my decision to move to the Bay Area. I wanted to make it right in my mind.

So not only was I confronted with this giant three year mistake - a mistake that had its graces, mind you, in the form of good friends who kept me sane - but also with the arrogance that kept me from even recognizing it, from outright refusing to recognize the error. To top it off, I then had to realize that something in me had run away from all the love that surrounded me in Santa Barbara.

I've mentioned it before. I had a thriving dance community in Santa Barbara, an amazing parish, and loving friends. I was happy. Why would I leave that?

Because as happy as I was, I was also scared of that kind of love. More specifically, I think I was afraid I'd lose it somehow, that the love would run out, or that these people would discover something about me - I don't know what - that would make this suddenly end. I don't know why, but I felt somehow...unworthy.

So I ended it first. Pre-emptive strike.

I used to always ask myself how people could be afraid of love and happiness, and yet there I was, so terrified that I moved 350 miles away.

Now, for the first time since Santa Barbara, I have a parish with which I'm deeply involved. I love my job, and I'm also doing volunteer work in my parish that I've always dreamed about - working with youth in a spiritual context. I have great housemates and get to live in a cabin in the woods. I live 5 minutes away from what has become my second family, who also are members of this parish. I have a thriving gaming community, which is about the only thing I didn't have in Santa Barbara.

There are times when it isn't quite that idyllic - like when I don't have classes to teach for a month and a half - but really, it's pretty amazing.

As I looked over all the faces today during Divine Liturgy, I realized my challenge. My Lenten challenge is to have the courage to remain here, to let myself take root and grow in the love of these people, and in the love of God, who brought me back to peace and happiness in spite of myself.

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

And this is after only one week of Lent. Five more weeks to go.

Crazy Faith: A Surprising Journey Part 5

When I last left you, Greta and I were in a log cabin in Woodinville, Washington, buried under several inches of snow. And lovin' it.

If that was the end of the journey, it would still be pretty awesome. But there's actually more. Moving here did not magically make my final settlement appear. It did not instantly give me a source of income. It did not miraculously make everything in my life alright. However, it did allow me to really see how incredible my life is, and give it space to become more so.

I grew close to my housemates pretty quickly. They were all talented, wonderful individuals, and all strong personalities (which had its issues as well). In addition, I found something that I didn't find in the Bay Area, something that I cherished, and something I didn't think I'd ever find unless I went back to Santa Barbara. I found a church home.

So much of St. Paul Orthodox Church in Lynnwood reminded me of my home parish in Santa Barbara. The people were genuinely wonderful, warm, and welcoming. Not that other churches hadn't been. There was just something...intangible. But it felt like home. I had a spiritual support system again.

My legal struggle with the insurance company for my old job seemed to come to a resolution when they offered me a really tiny settlement. Mind you, they'd speculated that I would someday need a surgery (spinal fusion) that runs usually around $100,000. And the medical coverage would have covered that. However, I didn't want a spinal fusion. I wanted preventative care that would keep me from getting a spinal fusion, because a spinal fusion should be the last resort. Right?

I don't understand the logic (if we can call it that) of insurance companies. Rather than pay a smaller amount of money to prevent a procedure, they'd rather pay 10 times that amount to actually get the procedure. It makes no sense! I'd already begun a preventative measure of my own, and was paying for it out of pocket. My work with the brilliant Dr. Matthew Howe was already healing me, but to pay for the remainder of it would take a good portion of this settlement. Part of this work - called Network Spinal Analysis - is about helping one's body heal itself, about reconnecting ourselves to our body's innate intelligence about what it needs. And part of that was recognizing that I had been so traumatized by my last job that I could not go back into a job that would take so much out of me, even if I did love the clients.

This insurance company was willing to pay me about 10% of what that surgery would have cost, and I was too sick and tired of them to argue. When I first heard about it, I thought it was 30%. A month later, my attorney explained it to me (which he'd evidently done inadequately before), and I took it anyway. I was just done.

Of course, this was not easy. My aspirations of starting a dog food company were shattered, and I engaged in a full blown, panic-induced tantrum that would have made a three-year-old proud. I scared one of my housemates, as well as the dogs. Strangely, a few days earlier, I'd gotten an email out of the blue from an organization with whom I'd interviewed, asking me if I'd be interested in a position that was about to come available. At the time, I still thought I was going forward with the dog food business, and I told them no.

After getting this news from my attorney, I second-guessed myself. Was this the right thing to do?

When my emotions calmed down, I settled into a feeling that surprised me: peace. It was the oddest thing. I had a peaceful acceptance of this situation, and I had total faith that God was still there, still working, and still taking care of me. It wasn't in the way that I'd envisioned, but He was still there.

Perhaps more than landing in a beautiful log cabin in the woods, even more than finding a church that felt so much like home to me, this is what surprised me. I felt peaceful. I had faith.

For someone who'd been a practicing Wiccan just a few years before, this was quite a shock. I didn't know I was capable of this.

Meanwhile, my mom very sternly told me that I should have taken that job, and that I needed to be sending out resumes everywhere I could.

But I'd done that. I did it for three years in the Bay Area, and had done it quite a bit in Seattle as well. All to no avail. Most people wouldn't even call me back. It had become clear to me that this was not the right way to go about supporting myself. I needed to look for a different way.

Two days after finding out about how small the settlement would be, one day after discovering this strange sense of peace, two things happened: one which would affirm my faith, and one which would challenge it.

On the morning of April 29th, five days after Pascha (Orthodox Easter), I woke up to an email from an online university, offering me a course to teach. I'd gotten this job three years ago, but they never had a course to assign to me since I completed my training just as the economy was tanking. Three years of campaigning by a good friend of mine who worked there led to this offer, just in the nick of time. I was flabbergasted that my faith, once again, had yielded such results. God really was taking care of me.

One of the things that made me move from a religious practice like Wicca/Paganism and into Orthodoxy (via a long, circuitous, and frequently painful route) was the fact that the Orthodox faith was a path of devotion. I didn't get that from Wicca. Wicca taught me lots of things, things like empowerment and personal will and strength. I needed those at one time. But when it came down to it, I saw too much personal will and much less of a deep wonder of the Divine in that environment. And also...well, I think God was waiting for me. He'd sent me on a journey that would prepare me for Orthodoxy, oddly through Buddhism and Wicca. But He was ready for me to arrive where He meant me to be. Moving into Orthodoxy was, for me, a way to move into surrender and devotion that were somehow still empowering. There are many forms of Christianity, and I do not find these elements in all of them. I have never been called to surrender my will like I have as an Orthodox Christian. I have never experienced a sense of devotion in any other church as I have when in an Orthodox Church.

I was humbled beyond words that my clumsy attempts at faith and devotion left me open to experience this incredible sense of being cared for in ways I never would have imagined.

But then, the other shoe dropped. That afternoon, I got other news.

A good friend of mine from Santa Barbara, the lovely Erin Glaser Hall, died that day. She had a rare form of cancer that took her life in just a couple of years. She'd been married less than two years. She was 28 years old.

I went from elation to a broken heart in a matter of seconds. How could God, Who could take such good care of me, allow this incredible woman to pass from the world so soon before her time? How could He take her from all of us, from her loving husband? Remember what I said about surrendering my will? Yeah. That again. Part of that surrender is the willingness to not have to figure it all out. To (gulp) trust.

I got this news just before I was to go to the home of a family I met just a few days before, at Pascha. On Pascha morning, after waking up hours past the time for which I'd set my clock, I arrived at church dreadfully late, and plopped my basket full of meat (and other goodies I'd denied myself all through Lent) at a table that looked not-quite-full, and then bolted up the stairs just in time for the Gospel reading and the Paschal Homily. Afterwards, I discovered I'd invaded the table of the McGinnises (or, as I call them, the McGinnii), who lived only 10 minutes away from me, also in Woodinville. They invited me to stay at their table, and share the lovely Pascha morning with them.

Now, five days later and awash in grief (with the incongruous backdrop of relief and elation at the earlier news), I could have opted to stay home. Strangely, I still felt compelled to go spend the evening with this family. I pulled myself together and drove to their house.

I wish I could describe the feeling of being gently welcomed into their lives, just as a part of my life was falling away. It was an immeasurable comfort to sit in their home, share a meal, and simply watch a movie. They didn't make all the pain and confusion go away. They didn't make a big deal out of anything. They couldn't possibly replace Erin or bring her back. It's hard to say exactly what made that evening so comforting, but maybe it was just their presence. I felt safe there, as if all this struggle had a purpose, and the purpose was to heighten moments like these, where a simple show of love and support can keep faith from taking too big a hit. God really does show up everywhere, and tonight He was working through the McGinnii.

It is from this broken-hearted moment that the title of this series comes.

You see, I think having faith is just a little bit nuts.

I think it's a little bit nuts to have faith that I will be taken care of when the settlement that would have given me a cushion turns out to be only a third of what I thought it was. How is it not nuts to have faith that despite my love for the clients, the sweet job opportunity that was presented to me is not what I'm supposed to be doing? And sometimes I think I'm off my rocker to believe that God took a beautiful young woman from this Earth, but left me here, all for good reason.

But I do have faith in that. I don't know what the reasons are. I don't know where this path will take me. But I have faith that I am being guided, no matter how much my mom or anyone else thinks I'm crazy for not doing what seems most sensible, and for taking the risk that God has something else, something really cool, planned that is just right for me. I have faith that there is a reason for all of this, for my grief over Erin, for my confusion and rage when the rug gets pulled out from under me, and also for my joy and my stubborn hope. Just because I don't know the reason doesn't mean there isn't one. So I have to have faith that this will all make sense one day.

See? Faith seems like insanity sometimes.

In the Orthodox Church, there are saints known as Fools for Christ. They're called this based on I Corinthians 3:18, which states, "Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise" (Orthodox Study Bible). Some well-known Fools for Christ have been Blessed St. Xenia of Petersburg, Russia, St. Basil the Blessed of Moscow, and St. Simeon of Emesa.

The thing about Fools for Christ is that people thought they were out of their minds. They did things that made no sense to the people around them, but they did them anyway. And often, this craziness turned out to be precognitive, or healing, or some other form of blessing. They were dialed in to God at a level that most of us can't even imagine. And in fact, most people in the times that they lived thought they were insane...until prayers were answered, until people were healed, until their ramblings started to make sense.

Now I'm not saying that I'm dialed in at that level, and I'm nowhere close to being holy. But I do get that in this environment where we're supposed to have the next several years planned out, where we are supposed to have reasons for everything we do, where we're supposed to be looking for jobs that are full time and provide health benefits, it is sheer lunacy to turn away from the sure thing and say, "No. I know God has something else for me."

I have not moved through this journey gracefully. Grace has happened to me and all around me, as I stagger around trying to make sense of it all.  Maybe I'm more of a Stumbling Idiot for Christ, blundering through a new habit of faith like I'm in a Molly Shannon skit (only without the armpit schtick). What I have to show for it are simple moments of joy and well-being that prove to me that I have been visited by Grace and led by God to such moments, in spite of myself. Some of these moments here in Washington have been:

• waking up to peer out the window through the trees into the morning sky (grey as it may be), a soft brown dog snuggled up against me, the sound and smell of rain filling the room
• hearing my church's choir sing The Beatitudes, and the smell of incense permeating that peaceful place
• reading a thank you email from a student
• teaching swing dancing at St Paul's
• playing Dungeons & Dragons with new friends (and some old ones)
• visiting a monastery on a nearby island, and having a long talk with a Norwegian monk over a cup of good coffee
• going to a holiday barbeque at Castle McGinnis
• laughing with my housemates
• swing dancing (and watching Battlestar Galactica, though not at the same time) with a really good new friend from church - one who's reckless enough to do aerials with me
• driving down the road and seeing the clouds suddenly break to reveal an ice-capped mountain range, or Mt Rainier looming over the city
• standing in relative silence in the rain, on the property where I live, hearing raindrops land, and noting the exquisite color of green on the cedar trees
• watching Greta frolic in the tall grass

Huh. Maybe faith isn't so crazy.

Crazy Faith: A Surprising Journey Part 4

So, when we left off, I'd gotten to the part where finally, FINALLY, God answered the first part of my prayer. I asked Him where I should go, and He finally told me: go North, to the temperate rainforest of Seattle, Washington.

Yes Sir!! Thank You, Sir! Seattle - home of the Science Fiction Museum, plenty of salmon, beautiful rainy days, trees everywhere, and Camp Jitterbug, not to mention the location of several friends and in close proximity to many others. I spent a few days in awe during my prayer time. Yeah? I get to live there? Sweet!!

But then I had the second half of my ... demand ... to think about: "...and how to get there." That was going to be a problem.

As I mentioned earlier, my lucrative job as a therapist got less and less lucrative with pay cuts due to the recession, as well as pay cuts for me because of my injuries, until I was just barely hanging on. As you might expect, "barely hanging on" isn't exactly a strong position from which to launch a move over two state lines.

So, back on my knees I went, praying simply but fervently, "I have no idea how You're going to manage this, but if this is where You want me, then I'm going to need help."

Two things happened then. The first was that a medical issue that I thought had been taken care of two years before resurfaced (aside from the work injury). It was a terrifying experience, but the reaction I had to it was the most interesting part.

I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was insurance.

God knows me. He knows that without something to drive me, I do have the capacity to get complacent...or discouraged. He needed my full commitment, and my total trust. And in order to get that, He needed to convince me that staying in California would be the Worst Idea Ever In The History of Bad Ideas. It worked. Something inside me felt strongly and intuitively that if I stayed in California, I would die. If not with a GMC truck killing me instantly, then with the slow deterioration of my body; and I was not ok with that.

I was strong...am strong. I'd always been tough, but beginning with that first injury, my body had gotten weaker. When I was first injured, I drove away from the child's home, tears of fury burning my eyes. I'm tougher than this, I kept thinking. I'm stronger than this. I'd survived graver injuries than this. But I kept taking hit after hit, and this was the final one: a tumor. A benign tumor in my uterus, a place that was designed to harbor life, had returned from two years ago, when I'd had surgery to remove it. My doctor discussed options with me, one of which was a hysterectomy. WHAT? No. Freaking. Way. Just because I don't have children yet doesn't mean I don't want them. And it doesn't mean I want to be cut open and have parts of me removed, like bad plumbing. We settled on another surgery. And I knew I had to get out of there.

(God, in His infinite brilliance, knew I would not miss the glaring symbolism in this latest development - that this place would destroy me from the inside out, from my very core, and destroy the possibility I had to create newness, wonder, and joy. How long had He been trying to tell me this, and I just couldn't hear Him? I swear, if I get any more dense, an anvil will have to fall from the sky just like this dude.)

(Hey God? J/k...lol. No anvil pretty please.)

The second thing that happened was a piece of mail, a very interesting piece of mail that scolded me for missing a court hearing about my worker's compensation case. Huh? This was the first I'd heard about it. I placed a few phone calls and finally discovered that the worker's comp judge was supposed to close the case, but he found a discrepancy and re-opened it. I have never heard of this happening. So, I rescheduled the hearing, got the time off, and went in July.

The judge said this: if I could no longer work as a therapist with children, then I certainly had more than a 0% disability rating. And if that was the case, he said, then I deserved compensation. Counsel for the insurance company nodded in agreement. The judge very strongly suggested to me that I get an attorney. Mr Opposing Counsel helped me find one, right then and there in the courthouse.

Now, my attitude at the time was that anything I got from this would be a bonus. Anything at all would be good. I would be called to remember that as the months went by.

At that point, the ball was definitely rolling. I did research regarding this tumor I had, and discovered that eating food tainted with toxic chemicals like pesticides and herbicides strongly contributed to the problem. While I'd always known that eating organic food was good for me, I didn't realize quite how much or exactly why. I educated myself on the growing food revolution, and radically changed my diet to include fewer grains, a lot of organic, locally grown vegetables, and humanely raised meat. My dog's diet changed right with mine. I'd been making her food for quite some time, but I couldn't bear the thought of losing her to a disease I could have prevented.

Mind you, there was quite an undercurrent of anger and frustration with all this. I was livid...which was the alter ego of actually being terrified. Learning more about the viability of our food supply did nothing to alleviate the fear, either. But it all demanded that I get out of California and FAST.

Two months after I got my marching orders, I had an interview in Seattle (Redmond, actually). It went swimmingly, until the part where they gave the position to someone else. I had some other promising leads, but the process was slow-going. I started feeling an urgency that bordered on panic.

An old friend from high school - a woman I dearly love - and her husband lived just south of Portland, Oregon, and they offered me a place to land if I needed to flee before I had a job. I jumped at the chance.

On September 30, 2010, I left my hellish job, said goodbye to a few coworkers I really cared about, and never looked back. Two days later, I left San Mateo, California, dog in my lap, with the vision of my beloved housemate Elizabeth standing in the driveway. Within 30 minutes, she sent me an email, telling me that a thousand crows flew over the house just after I left. She also said the raccoons must have been watching Greta leave with me, because they invaded the yard that evening. The email made me smile until I got to the end. "I will miss you more than you know," she said. I arrived in Santa Cruz sobbing.

My friends in Santa Cruz helped me celebrate my time in the Bay Area, and celebrate the beginning of my new life. The next day, one of those friends set out with me, to navigate and keep Greta comfortable (Justin's official job was "dog furniture") while I drove the Uhaul (towing my car) to Vancouver, Washington.

The next four months were spent learning how to just breathe again. I was among friends. Family, really. They harbored me, while I learned how to be human, and while I waited for the results of my settlement. I reacquainted myself with restful sleep. In exchange for the safe haven, I walked all the dogs, and made their food. I loved my friends and their sweet family. The four months I spent there saw two holidays, a wedding, and atrip back to the South, to visit my family.

Some compensation began to arrive in late November. It made me a little bit afraid, to have this money in the bank. I hadn't had a real cushion in the entire time I lived in California, and I almost didn't trust it. My attorney was also working on a buyout that would give me more compensation in lieu of medical treatment. The treatment they said I might need had a 50% failure rate (as in, the condition got worse), and I would have nothing to do with it. My buddy Matthew Howe, D.C., one of the ones who convinced me to come to Seattle, said it was unnecessary, and the work he did had a much better chance of healing me for a fraction of the cost. I went with that.

Just after Christmas last year, I discovered my friends in Newberg, OR (the friends who were harboring me) were moving to Idaho. Cross got a job (Intel laid him off a year prior), and they were leaving by the end of January.

God knows me so well. Again, I could have gotten comfy and just stayed in Oregon. It would have been easy. It was pretty close to Seattle, right? Ha! So He pulled the rug out from under me. Pure genius! It was a clear message: it was time. (And I'm so glad part of the message involved Cross getting a sweet job!)

Ever since I'd started thinking about moving to Seattle, I repeatedly saw an ad on Craigslist for a room for rent in a beautiful cabin. It seemed a bit far away from Seattle, but it was gorgeous. The ad would disappear for a while, then reappear. And when I finally was ready to move to the area, the ad popped up again.

I drove to Woodinville, Washington (about 40 minutes from downtown Seattle - close by Bay Area standards) to meet Stephanie, the owner of the place. I got solidly lost along the way, but it was well worth it. As soon as I saw the place, I was hooked. It was a dream come true: a log cabin on 5 acres of partially wooded land. Stephanie and I shared a number of passions: feeding dogs healthy food, learning beekeeping, rescuing dogs, saving the planet, helping the food revolution along. We talked for hours on our first visit.

On my next visit, I brought Greta, and her three large dogs loved her (the biggest of them - about 85 pounds - followed her around adoringly). It was settled. Woodinville would be my new home.

I arrived here on February 1, 2011. Within a month, we had a winter storm that snowed us in for a couple of days. I took Greta out every morning, beholding the land under a blanket of snow. The air was cold and still and perfect. Glorious!! I could have wept with the loveliness of it.

I will only drag you through one more part, but not now. Now I leave you with a snow-covered cabin among tall evergreens, a little brown dog leaping through the snow, and my complete awe at the humbling place to which God led me, both within my heart, and here in the world.

Who knew? Who knew that I could trust God enough to experience this?

Yeah, well, besides Him....

Next time, it gets better...and at times, worse.

Crazy Faith: A Surprising Journey Part 3

This is part 3 of the saga of how I got here to Washington, so if you'd like to catch up, you can read Part 1 and/or Part 2, just so this makes sense (as much sense as it can make anyway).

So where were we? Oh yes, almost dying, and having things explode.

I entered the new year of 2010 knowing, just knowing, that something big was about to happen in my life. There would be a major change. I was able to recognize that God had severed some bonds to people that would have kept me where I was, which told me that God no longer wanted me where I was.

Of course, this did not mean that God severed all the bonds I had to the Bay Area. In fact, He managed to keep intact the bonds that would withstand distance. Friends with whom I danced, or gamed, or were housemates - all of these bonds held strong. In addition, I felt intuitively that I needed a dash of home before I could move on. So I went back to my home parish in Goleta, CA - St. Athanasius Orthodox Church. I saw them near the end of that painful struggle, when I was so spiritually exhausted that it was all I could do to get down there and collapse in their embrace. I didn't even have the words to tell them how their love and guidance supported me from hundreds of miles away, or how their love and presence healed me now.

In January, God pretty much guaranteed that I'd flee California by having my employer change my job description. Since I couldn't be a therapist with children, they had me doing administrative work in all three of the offices in the area since the previous summer (and for a wage that kept me only barely above the poverty line). After the new year, they kept me in San Mateo (the closest office to my home), and created a position for me as a scheduler.

It was a new position, so I was inventing the wheel here. Initially I had 100 clients to schedule, for two offices, and with about 45 therapists to serve those client sessions. For some of those clients, I had to schedule up to 25 hours of therapy around school commitments, doctor appointments, staff vacations, and other obligations. It was overwhelming.

This might be when the insomnia began. I had to be at work at 7:30 AM, but usually couldn't get to sleep until around 2 or 3 AM. I had to develop a system to collect scheduling information from schools, therapy teams, and families, and then assemble all of it into a coherent schedule for each client. At night, when I could sleep, I dreamed about the scheduling software, which was full of bugs. In March, the bugs got worse. For months, I had to deal with schedules where sessions just disappeared before my eyes. As if that wasn't bad enough, the management was only intermittently supportive. Our regional director once chased a parent away from my desk while she was talking to me about her scheduling needs. In her words, "You can't talk to Tanya while she's working." Since when had my indentured servitude begun? I worked long hours, often staying until midnight when schedules were due, and returning a few hours later. When my dad came to visit me in May, I had to fight my managers just to spend two days with him.

And all the while, I endured by remembering that God was sending me elsewhere, at some point. I knew I'd asked Him to "show me where to go," although I really just thought I was talking about my job, and not my actual location. I also realized, by this point, that before He was able to tell me where to go, He had to cut the ties that bound me to this place or I would never have listened. Now that those ties were severed, I was waiting for my marching orders. So I waited...

And waited...

And mused, and pondered, and grumbled. And waited...

I began to wonder if I'd somehow missed the message, if perhaps the email had ended up in the Spam folder or something. Was I missing something? Where was I supposed to go? In the absence of clear direction, I began to try figuring it out on my own.

I know. Bad idea. I ran through the options. I could go back to Santa Barbara. I definitely had community there. My home parish awaited me, as did a thriving dance community, and wonderful friends who had become family in my heart. But jobs were terribly scarce, and the cost of living was through the roof. Another option was to return to the Deep South to be with my family.

The Deep South. The very thought was oppressive. It's not the heat, it's the humidity combined with extreme heat, alligators, mosquitoes as big as my dog, fleas, roaches as big as my hand THAT FLY (and they move into your house no matter how clean you are), racism, intolerance, very few Orthodox churches, red states.

And that's when I developed compassion for Jonah when God sent him to Nineveh. Nineveh? Are you kidding me? I could hear Jonah asking. Maybe the bugs were bad there, too.

At the same time, the presence of my niece made The Deep South almost attractive. My family had always been the best part of the South for me. We are closely knit, and get along almost all the time. Kind of unheard-of in modern family dynamics. My parents are crazy in love with each other (it took a LOT of hard work from both of them to get to that point, but still...); my sister and brother in law were beginning a new life, and my niece was growing into a brilliant, hilarious little girl. My family made the South almost tempting.

But this idea came from my own logical reasoning, which had thus far landed me in one of the most expensive locations in the country, with a job where my pay had been reduced by over $7/hour after all was said and done, and where I was now a stress zombie. So, I wasn't likely to put too much stock in my own seemingly brilliant ideas.

Still, I was waiting. I waited for God's direction for five months.

Back in February, giddy from finding my tax refund in my bank account, I'd had the foresight to purchase a plane ticket to Seattle, and the entry fee for Camp Jitterbug - three days of lindy hop instruction and celebration. I went three years before and knew that it would be amazing. I knew I'd need this, and I did. On Thursday night, just before Memorial Day weekend, I boarded a plane for the Emerald City.

Matthew Howe, a gifted chiropractor and one of my dearest friends from way back in Florida, and his gorgeous fiance Carrie picked me up from the airport, and the mantra began:

You should move to Seattle.

I smiled politely at first, but they kept at me, taking me by the Lenin statue in Fremont after breakfast the next day, and then to Matthew's office for a quick tune-up before all the dancing began. I adored Carrie immediately (it was my first time meeting her) and she gushed about how wonderful Seattle was as she took me around to run errands, while I sat in the passenger seat quietly grateful that Matthew had found her.

I was staying with a hostess this time, and I discovered that she had mastered the public transit system, and was willing to share this arcane knowledge with me. She also joined the chorus Matthew and Carrie started.

No really, you should move here. You'd love it.

And of course, there was Camp Jitterbug itself. More on that some other time. Let's just say, it was blissful.

At the end of Camp Jitterbug, I met another friend of mine, a recent transplant from the Bay Area and a gaming buddy. He drove me around the east side of Lake Washington, showing me another side of this green city. I marveled at the trees that were everywhere, how lush it all looked, while Trey told me about his life here. We grabbed a sandwich for lunch, and it was at this time that he began his own campaign.

You should look for a job here. I swear he must have said it a dozen times in the course of a single afternoon before he dropped me off at SeaTac.

Now, I'm pretty astute about a lot of things. But when it comes to subtle communication directed at me, I'm a little slow. I can see it in hindsight, but in the moment, I just can't always read the message. It's part of my charm, I'm told, that people can watch a guy flirt with me and I can just be absolutely oblivious; or I can miss little clues that everyone else can see about situations I'm in. I do know this about myself. It's why I'd been worried that I missed God's marching orders. I actually remember praying, "You're going to have to make this really obvious, You know. I don't want to miss this."

I guess that's why God decided to do away with subtlety altogether and just flash a bright neon sign at me. After an entire weekend of different people chanting the same thing at me, I sat on the plane on the way home and thought, "Seattle, huh? It would be cool to live in a temperate rainforest...."

Maybe I wouldn't have to go to Nineveh after all, even if my family was there. At least in Seattle I'd be able to breathe and go outside.

And this is where things got really cool. Next time, I'll tell you just how cool.

For now, I leave you with this: on that trip back to the Bay Area, I became aware of the first inkling of a hint of a Plan. I began to see the past 9 months in perspective, and realize the genius of how it all played out, painful as it was. I realized that God answered me when I called out to him with my broken heart and my desperation. With the exception of the weird and wondrous way I found the Orthodox Church, I don't know if I ever really realized that God was listening that closely to me. Maybe He had a hard time hearing me through the walls I'd built around myself. Maybe He could hear me just fine, but I couldn't hear His responses for those very walls, and then resented the silence. Nevertheless, a hint of wonder crept into my being, and for the first time in a while, the possibilities before me made me smile.

"We are so blind and deaf. The world is transparent. God is everywhere whispering to us, talking to us, shouting at us. Usually we do not hear. Sometimes we do. Then we know that everything is grace." ~ Rev. Fr. Andrew M. Greeley

Crazy Faith: A Surprising Journey Part 2

In Crazy Faith Part 1, I set up this insane journey I'm about to tell you about, by telling you how I threw a challenge out to God, and inexplicably, He answered me.

Now, some people are mortified that I did this, that I spoke this way to Him. I mean, He's God. He could, you know, smite me and stuff.

Now that I put it that way, I guess He kind of did.

The hubris of issuing demands like this to God notwithstanding, it really wasn't such a bad request. The terrible, wonderful magic of it all is that in my sheer desperation, in my certainty that my life was meant to contain more joy and less stress than this, a tiny crack appeared in my prideful heart. I mean, it was itty bitty, a hairline fracture, really. But it was evidently enough for God's Big Toe to wiggle in and force open the door. "For if You desired sacrifice, I would give it; You will not be pleased with whole burnt offerings. A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit. A broken and humbled heart God will not despise." (Psalm 50:18-19, Orthodox Study Bible)

Thank God for desperation profound enough to make me vulnerable. Thank God that it found a way for the walls around my life, my ideas, my heart, my firmly-held beliefs around who I thought I was supposed to be, to crack and subsequently crumble. Incidentally, these were walls that I built, or chose to have built, around my life. And He showed me unequivocally where those battlements were weak.

Once God kicked in my door, with Love in his eyes and with a gentle "You wanted Me to do this," He set fire to my life. He created the very sacrifice He needed from me.

It was far more brutal than I imagined it could be. Two days after issuing that demand, my most recent work injury was exacerbated by an incident on the job in which a sweet 4 year old Indian boy begged me with tearful eyes to "hold [him] tight" while his mother and a case director pulled thorns out of his bare feet, which he acquired while exuberantly playing Scavenger Hunt. As requested, I held him tightly and tried to distract him with silly questions ("How many eyes to do I have?"), as he struggled against me in reaction to the pain. By the following day, I could no longer work. My neck injury was simply too painful.

Once again, the doctor put me on limited work status, and gradually my clients disappeared from my schedule. The final straw was losing my favorite client, again without a chance to say good-bye. (They finally relented and let me say good-bye a month later, which was still horrifically painful.)

But in addition to that, one of my best friends, a woman with whom I shared a loving and soulful bond (we were the Dancing Depth Psychologists) moved to Boston. And two weeks after that, the person I was seeing, with whom I thought there was a deep bond, dissolved our relationship. Within 6 weeks of asking God to radically change my life, He had done so in an immensely painful way. I fell into a deep grief that lasted until the new year.

The thing is, at the time, I knew this was answered prayer. I just knew it. I knew God was trying to get through my thick skull...something. But I couldn't figure out what He was trying to say. I understood that transformation was occurring. Of that I had no doubt. It just hurt so much.

I don't remember a whole lot from that time. I didn't dance much, because of my injury, so I lost that conduit to joy. I hadn't found a parish that felt like home to me, although I'd visited a few. I wrote dark poetry to try to express some of my turmoil, but mostly I remember waking up every day and trudging to work, then coming home to either sit numbly in my room, or hang out with a few friends, including my housemate, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was a blessing to me. Anyone who thinks that God only blesses us with people who share our religious practices is missing out. Elizabeth is a professional astrologer, a wonderful massage therapist, and a spiritual leader in her community. We were an unlikely pair - me with my icons of saints, her with her crystals - but we worked. I firmly believe that God knew I'd need someone strong enough to live in the same house with me while I went through my painful struggle, and loving enough to nurture me through it. We would take walks with my dog late at night, after she returned from work, and talk. We only ever encountered one other person playing with his dog that late at night (it was usually around midnight), a friendly man with a Russian accent, and we'd jokingly speculate that only Canadians and Eastern Europeans would ever be out that late acting for all the world as if it was daylight. Silly dayfolk, thinking the day ended when the sky turned dark. Sometimes we watched Firefly or V on her computer, drinking beer and eating popcorn. Elizabeth's friendship and love created a space that allowed me to feel all of this without judgment. And when I needed it, she could make me laugh until we both snorted.

My grief, while punctuated by pain (and also joy), was mostly characterized by a terrifying numbness. It ended when a few things happened within days of each other.

1. I almost died on Christmas Eve.

2. I went to a performance of the band to which my former romantic interest belonged. Misunderstandings ensued.

3. Things started exploding in my purse and backpack.

After visiting some friends on Christmas Eve in The City (San Francisco), I was on my way home when a giant GMC pickup (a 2-ton truck maybe? - it was beastly), started to turn left, apparently not seeing me in the intersection (I had the green light). The driver stopped his vehicle less than 6 inches from my driver's side door. I looked past the great big GMC on the grill into the mortified faces of the people in the cab of the truck, and realized I was flinching, waiting for the impact. I kept on driving, numbly realizing that I had been spared, but not knowing why. I just kept muttering, "Why did You spare me? Why didn't You take me?" The only thing I could think of was that there was still some purpose to me being on the planet, although I couldn't possibly fathom what it was. The previous few months had all but convinced me that what I should really do is close up my heart for good, so that nothing and no one could get through, except for my family and a few close friends. If I got a better job, I'd make sure I didn't open up to clients or form any deep connections. It was safer that way.

A few days later, I decided to attend the musical performance of my former romantic interest's band. He played guitar for the band, and I really enjoyed hearing them play again. As I watched him, I realized that I absolutely adored hearing him play. It was wonderful to be able to share that again, and it made me feel good to know that our struggle to maintain a friendship in the aftermath of the breakup at least resulted in my being able to enjoy this once again. He really was brilliant at what he did. I barely talked to him after the show. I was more engrossed in talking to my friend, Tiffany, who was also there, so I gave him a quick hug good-bye, and he told me it was good to see me.

A few people mistook my attendance there, and my joy at hearing the band, for an inability to let go. However, for me it felt like the beginning of real release - from him, from grief, from what my expectations had been. I could just go and enjoy the music, and appreciate him for his gifts.

Or not. Two days after that, he banned me from attending all future performances, for fear that it would upset his new girlfriend. He didn't even have the guts to introduce us. Release complete. I don't like cowards.

Just after the new year, I opened my purse to find a bottle of ibuprofen had popped open, spilling its contents all over my purse. A day later, the same thing happened in my backpack with a container of chocolate covered raisins.

Now, being trained in depth psychology, I tend to look at events like this with an eye toward symbolism. It's like reading your life the way you would a dream (Carl Jung advocated this approach). If these two events had been in a dream, how I would I look at them?

I wrestled with this elsewhere, and this is what I came up with:

"On the second and third days of a brand new year, something in the dark places I carry around with me has opened up. The words that came into my head when I started to make the connection were:

Emergence, eruption, uncontained, contents under pressure, opening, it's time, overflowing vessel, I’m ready, spilling over, burst container, energy, matter, what matters, this brings something new in its wake….

Medicine and sweetness. Something that heals, and something that rewards. These are the potentials for this new year. Something is waiting to burst from me, to emerge from my depths and darknesses. Something in me will be contained no longer.  ...This seems to imply that 2010 will bring healing."

That year, 2009, had certainly contained a lot of love. My friends were amazing, and I had a housemate who had created a home in which I could truly be myself. I was able to see the deep love that existed, despite the radical transformation my life had undergone. I finally started looking forward to 2010, to see what would erupt from my own depths.

And with that, I've decided this post is long enough. You'll have to wait for Part 3 to see how all this manifested, where I had some insight into what Jonah must have experienced ("Nineveh? Are You serious?").