RevGal Friday Five: Women's Retreat Edition

Over at the RevGals site, revkjarla posts a timely Friday Five about our favourite women. In honour of International Women's Day this week, here are just a few of my choices:

1. Name a woman author you very much love to read. The number of woman authors I love to read are far too many to adequately list here, so I'll choose a few favourites....
Anne Lamott is very high on the list. Another is Tara Brach - a wonderful Buddhist teacher and guide. I tend to listen to her podcasts as opposed to reading her, just because her voice is so soothing and beautiful.

2. Name a woman from the Bible with whom you would like to enjoy a nice long coffee talk. Mary, the mother of Jesus.

3. Name a famous woman from history with whom you would like to have lunch. Joan of Arc. I like her spunk. She pretty much invented speaking truth to power. I like to think the word "uppity" was probably spoken for the first time in history about Joan. She met such a tragic end. I would ask her if it was worth it and if she would do it all again.

4. Name a living famous or infamous woman with whom you would like to go out to dinner. A woman named Renee, whose sad and often horrific story began the movement known as To Write Love On Her Arms. Dinner with her and the founder of TWLOHA, Jamie Tworkowski, would be an amazing experience. Here is her story:

To Write Love On Her Arms

Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes

Intrigued? Check out the site....

5. If you could be SuperWoman (o.k., I know you already ARE) what three special powers would you like to have? Oh, this one's easy.

Invisibility.

Teleportation.

And Math.

Happy Friday friends!

to dust....

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday.

I did not go to the service last night.

Why?

Well, the time came for me to leave and I just couldn't get myself out the door.

Two reasons.

1. Tonight is the beginning of (let's all say it together) - yes, Presbytery. *shudder* Don't get me wrong, I really don't mind Presbytery itself. I love the work of Presbytery, the support they provide for congregations and clergy alike. I understand that even the *yawn* financial reports and other less-than-riveting reports are necessary in order for us to be who we are as the United Church.

I get that.

I like my committee - the social justice committee - we do some really good work. This time around we have an excellent theme speaker, who happens to be a member of our congregation here at Little Church on the Corner. She will be speaking on the important topic of Dying with Dignity.

All of that is good, but our meetings are marathons. Tomorrow will be 12-13 hours depending on whether we stay on track with the order of the day. That is one seriously long time for me to spend in a room full of people. My introvert self starts begging for mercy about three hours in.....

Then we come back for more of the same on Saturday. Sunday too usually, but this time around I'll be here at LCotC.

In other words, my energy level right now can't keep up with my life. Thankfully my last headache treatment is holding better than any other so far - Yay! Even so, last night, something had to give. That something was the Ash Wednesday service which I wasn't leading. I'm pretty sure no one missed me.

2. I'm also a bit conflicted at times about Ash Wednesday. We United Church types, and I say this with all due respect, are not very good at dealing with the issue of sin. To add repentance into the mix makes more than a few UC types squirm, explaining the astoundingly low attendance when we did the service on our own. We had one Ash Wednesday service where everyone in the building had a role to play in the worship. Ya. It's so much better now that we share it with other churches.

It's not that we don't believe in sin. I think it's a matter of semantics more than anything. Even the most die-hard "what's up with that prayer of confession?" folks recognize that all of us fall short of our Creator's best hopes for us.

The United Church's doctrinal statements over the years have been clear that sin is part of the human condition and is eternally forgiven by God who created us in love and holds us in love. And yet....there is this vague sense of not wanting to dive into the slippery slope of "Worm Theology." Personally I don't believe that an admission of our human nature takes us all the way to "forgive me God, I'm no better than a slug" but some would disagree.

Our most recent statement of faith as a denomination is called "A Song of Faith." Here is what this poetic statement has to say about sin....

Made in the image of God,
we yearn for the fulfillment that is life in God.
Yet we choose to turn away from God.
We surrender ourselves to sin,
a disposition revealed in selfishness, cowardice, or apathy.
Becoming bound and complacent
in a web of false desires and wrong choices,
we bring harm to ourselves and others.
This brokenness in human life and community
is an outcome of sin.
Sin is not only personal
but accumulates
to become habitual and systemic forms
of injustice, violence, and hatred.

We are all touched by this brokenness:
the rise of selfish individualism
that erodes human solidarity;
the concentration of wealth and power
without regard for the needs of all;
the toxins of religious and ethnic bigotry;
the degradation of the blessedness of human bodies
and human passions through sexual exploitation;
the delusion of unchecked progress and limitless growth
that threatens our home, the earth;
the covert despair that lulls many into numb complicity
with empires and systems of domination.
We sing lament and repentance.

"A Song of Faith" is one of things I love the most about our United Church.

Last night, when ashes were being marked on foreheads everywhere, I was at home reading the above, knowing that God is okay with me having my own home-made worship to begin the long journey of Lent.

Made in the image of God, we yearn for the fulfillment that is life in God.

And so it begins. It's a long way to Holy Week, but we are not alone. God is us. Thanks be to God.

New Wheels!

No, we do not have a new car. Even better!!!!

P has a new wheelchair. I'm so happy for him, and so very thankful that he can have this wonderful chair. We are blessed with so much love and care - thankfulness doesn't quite cover how we feel.

I think the only person more excited than P and I this morning when the chair arrived was our Occupational Therapist. Apparently, OTs love designing wheelchairs. Who knew?

Anyway, here's the photo of the fancy wheels (just the wheels - I'll post a pic of the whole chair later). This is no ordinary set of wheels. They are the best of the best. The great thing about them is that they are specifically designed to be easier on P's hands. It is a manual chair because his upper body is still strong and using the manual chair will keep it that way for much longer than it would if he had an electric chair. He is adjusting to the different feeling of the chair after using the other for so many years, but it is so wonderful for him.

It's a good day. A blessed day.



Sweet!!!

Just Because...

Because some people say things in such an eloquent way, I feel a need to share...

This is from the To Write Love on Her Arms website. It is written by Jenny Lawson and really gets to the continuing stigma that hovers around depression.

If you follow me on twitter you already know that I’ve been battling off one of the most severe bouts of depression I’ve ever had. Yesterday it started to pass, and for the first time in weeks I cried with relief instead of with hopelessness. Depression can be crippling, and deadly. I’m lucky that it’s a rare thing for me, and that I have a support system to lean on. I’m lucky that I’ve learned that depression lies to you, and that you should never listen to it, in spite of how persuasive it is at the time.

When cancer sufferers fight, recover, and go into remission we laud their bravery. We call them survivors. Because they are.

When depression sufferers fight, recover and go into remission we seldom even know, simply because so many suffer in the dark…ashamed to admit something they see as a personal weakness…afraid that people will worry, and more afraid that they won’t. We find ourselves unable to do anything but cling to the couch and force ourselves to breathe.

When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker…but as survivors. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand.

Regardless, today I feel proud. I survived. And I celebrate every one of you reading this. I celebrate the fact that you’ve fought your battle and continue to win. I celebrate the fact that you may not understand the battle, but you pick up the baton dropped by someone you love until they can carry it again. I celebrate the fact that each time we go through this, we get a little stronger. We learn new tricks on the battlefield. We learn them in terrible ways, but we use them. We don’t struggle in vain.

We win.

We are alive.

TWHOLA - a great organization that has helped a lot of people. Good stuff...

Study Leave 2.0

Today marks the end of my final two weeks of continuing edcuation time for this year. I've been doing plenty of reading and relaxing - not a bad idea given that it's full speed ahead from now until Easter. I'm sermon-writing today, which explains the first blog post in a month. Seriously, show me one preacher who doesn't have a long list of "Look, Shiny!" distraction tactics. I like to think of it as a way of opening up that creative energy. Or maybe I'm just procrastinating.

I spent the first two days of my study leave in Toronto at the pain clinic. Same as last time: about 25 injections of Medicinal Botox. We also had a lovely visit with our son who lives out West for most of that week as well, which was great.

The first thing people tend to ask me after I return from the clinic is "Did it Work?" This is such a tough one to answer. It depends entirely on what one means by "work". The direction of the question is always a hopeful one. Kind and generous hearts are hopeful that once and for all, the pain is completely and permanently gone.

The answer is no.

On the other hand, after each treatment I get 3-5 months of greatly decreased intensity and frequency in the pain department. For me, at this point, that is what I call success. Is the pain gone entirely? No. Is it easier to cope with day to day? Yes. Do I still have bad days when light and sound, and frankly everything, makes the hot spike in the side of my head fire up a little more than usual? Yes. But not as often as I did before my clinic visit.

The good news: I can only have Botox every 4 months because, while approved for treatment, it is still a toxin. However, my pain doc has invited me to come back in between treatments as needed to receive a series of trigger point injections with lidocaine to tide me over. She used lidocaine for the first round to determine the location of my major trigger points and I had about 2 weeks of relief. In any case, it is good to have a back-up if that four month time frame is looking and feeling a bit too long.

Enough of that.

Because I didn't have to be up early in the morning for these weeks of study leave, I was able to catch my favourite band as they made the rounds of the late-night shows to coincide with the release of their second video.

First, there was Leno (apparently both Vanessa Hudgens and Daniel Radcliffe - they were the guests that night - are Evanescence fans and were quite starstruck). The song "My Heart is Broken":

Well, the Leno video isn't allowed in Canada, so I'll try the actual video...



Then there was Conan - "Made of Stone":



and a Conan bonus - "The Other Side" - they closed the Nashville show with this one.



Ok, back to sermonizing. Have a great day everyone!

Hmmmmm......

We watched "Contagion" yesterday (good movie - creepy, but good) and one line stood out for me. One character had a sort of "expose the truth" blog about the outbreak. One of the CDC directors said in an off-the-cuff sort of way..... "Blogs are just graffiti with commas."

Are they? Is the day of the blog over?

I sometimes wonder. Every time I think I've made up my mind, I read an amazing piece of writing on someone else's blog that either makes me laugh when I need to laugh, makes me feel less alone in my vocation, my struggles with chronic illness and just generally connected to other people in the world.

Then I remember the amazing people I've met in person, at conferences or just visits (hello Texas!)......people I would never have known without InnerDorothy leading the way. I have been tremendously blessed in this place. At times I don't think there is much more to say about myself. It's all here, pretty much.

I try to keep this place friendly for everyone. I stay away from political opinions as much as possible. It's pretty tough to stay away from theology, as that is the life and vocation I live every day. It's the water I swim in.

I love, love, love the posts that I read from other migraine/chronic pain sufferers. They inspire me and keep me uplifted when I need it the most. When I post about my own head pain, I try really hard to stay away from that fine line that crosses into whining and the always enjoyable pity-party. But it's VERY difficult to talk about without coming across as whiny, especially to those who haven't experienced chronic severe pain. I wish I was as skilled at walking that fine line as some of my favourite headache bloggers. Still, I do the best I can to be honest without being self-indulgent.

This blog started as a journal. It was an addition to the hand-written journals I have kept since high-school. I still have hand-written journals. They serve me well, but are for my eyes only. I recall the old adage:

"If I should die before I wake, throw my journals in the lake"

I disagree with the statement from the film. Blogs - good ones - are so very much more than "graffiti with commas." they can connect people who in any other way would have no knowledge of just how much they share in common, or just how much they can BE for one another.

I thank God every day for my friends, the ones I know and see often who live around the block. I also give thanks for wonderful friends I have never met in person, but would turn to in a heartbeat in a time of need, and would go to help if they needed me. my friend the Rev. Richard Bott spoke via Skype to our Presbytery in September and pointed out (thanks again Richard!) that he considered me one of his best friends, and yet we have never met face to face. I think that says it all.

That's not graffiti.

It's grace.

Happy 2012

This wish comes a bit late, but is heartfelt.

It's been a rough start to the new year. All uphill from here, no question. On Boxing Day I started feeling a bit "funny" and chalked it up to exhaustion from the season. The next day, The Plague of 2012 hit in full force. (For the record: that is the LAST time I am shaking hands at the door on Christmas Eve.)

Yep. Happy New Year everyone.

Here's to the rest of 2012 - may it be grand!

Happy Christmas!

I can't quite believe we are just a few days away from Christmas Day. It's been a busy time, but no more than usual. A few blips such as mysterious hives are not enough to dampen the season.

I've watched "It's a Wonderful Life" twice, decorated our little tree, and I've enjoyed our annual family dinner out (always nice when P can join us and no one has to clean up after the meal), the Cantata was fun and added so much to the whole Christmas season. So, it's all good.

The next few days are going to be very full, but as always, filled with blessings. If I don't get back here before then - a joyous Christmas to all!


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