Love- Part I. Me

**  One of the main reasons I was passionate about using this platform was the creativity and freedom I eventually would work into.  One thing I am really excited about is about having "guest" writers contribute to the whole gig.  So for the next few posts, hopefully you'll get to hear from people I find fascinating and am close to.  You'll get to read their stories of love and passion**

I've never really done "love" all that well.  I guess you could say, my track record isn't all that great all that well.  In fact, one might observe that it's nonexistent.  And you know what?  I'm not all ashamed of it.

A lot of people have opinions about love, how it's defined, and how to accomplish it.  I've always been more interested in where it comes from and how it expresses itself.  I can tell you the most "lovable" people in my life right now are people who at first I didn't want to love.  You could say they intimidated me or seemed impervious to affection.  But they are definitely the ones worth loving.  Like all.  Like you.  For me, love just isn't an end to a means.  It's a process.  A transformation.  A serious of actions.  Or in the most profound ways, love sometimes is most powerfully captured when the lover does nothing to the beloved and its expressed in what is being withheld.  It sounds crazy I know, so here I will start off with an expression of my love and how through the years, it has taught me.

Think of that one family person or member, you know the one that once you mention their name, a silent murmur and then moves into a pained sigh, and back into a well versed and cut to the chase grumble.  Think of that person.  Got it?

That person in my family was my late Aunt.  We'll call her Aunty D.  Aunty D was the eldest child of her generation, my own mother being a younger sibling.  She had a rough go of it early on in life.  In a car accident, had left her without vision in one eye, an eye that would never open fully again throughout her life.  She struggled.  With her own body image, self-esteem, confidence, and it affected every aspect of her role as a Yakama woman.  I'm sure it made food gathering, cultural protocol, and home making work.  The woman I came to know struggled, and struggled terribly.

Aunty D had a load of other nephews and nieces to love.  Its not like our family was short on children.  What brought us together was out utter weaknesses.  I was a needy child, weak, vulnerable, incompetent, and lame.  She was a lady passed over, scarred, and at times abandoned.  

Her own mother, aunts offered very little in the way of encouragement.  I mean its not like she was a model either.  She made poor life decisions.  Bad parenting.  Gambling addiction.  Untrustworthy.  Suspicion inducing.  People needed a break from her.  I was a traumatized adolescent.  In need of rescuing in every possible way.

We needed each other.  The most enduring act of love is when she stood up to grandmother and said that the violent sexual abuse I survived was not worth trying to save her reputation as a professional and a member of the community.  She risked what little honor and dignity so that I could be safe.  She risked being disowned, treated harshly, and scowled and held in contempt.  For that I'll always love her.

When others talked bad about her, I remained silent.  Because that's my aunty.  Why should she only get the scorn and contempt?  I made it a point to visit her every time I was on break from college.  My mom disapproved and  rolled out the list of the evil deeds and manipulation my aunt had recently engaged in.  I ignored it.  I was happy to see her.  She never waived in telling me how proud I was.  Everyone else was concerned with making me a better man, how to be an honorable man, and what decent men were like.  She loved the man I was  And I loved her.

I never had to question, take a sigh, roll my eyes, or moan under my breath painfully in accepting her approval and affection.  There was no motive behind her words.  And towards the end of her life, all I wanted to tell her was she had done a good job.  That her life wasn't in vain, lost, or a burden.  She may have failed to  do many things in her life. One thing she never wavered in was loving me.  That love helped save my life and bind my own wounds.   In an instant, the shattered slivers of our family tree fell into my hands, and I whispered "I got it" as we passed each other.  My ascent has everything to do with the descent and lowliness she so dilligently embraced.

I've had to stop and cry a couple of times writing this.

When I do get to go home, I'll park myself at her head stone, we'll laugh, cry, and I'll tell her stories.

She told me once I deserved an uncommon love and that I'd have to work at it and make it my own.  I never understood that. I guess I'm starting to now

This week~ post game

I started off, confused.  That's never good for anyone.

Day one- I'm grateful that I'm taking my woundedness passionately. The most lethal and rewarding real estate is the square foot between the ears, and well the battle was won. Remember to pray for that one thing later this week.

Day two- recovery.  Progress was made, but didn't feel like much.  Distraction.  Focus.  Distraction. She's a beauty, that smile [best distraction ever], I can be thankful for that.  Progress was made.

Day three- Groggy, sterile in every mental and emotional aspect.  Bejeezus how am I able to stand?  Creatively get to prevent my own mid week breakdown.  Encourage the volunteer you work with, as the next few days will be tough.  Divorce does that.

Day four- More useless than day three.  Co worker's anxiety and whining about a 12.5 shift is unbearable.  Gently and firmly rebuke.  Bad aura.  Co worker has a tough first shift. Doesn't play well with others.  Be supportive.  Encouraging.  Present.  Mission accomplished.

Day five-  Rest.  Focus on the home front.  Never felt more like a bad ass shopping for Valentines Day decorations.  Wasn't such a bad thing.  Can feel good about that.

Day six- look forward to Day seven.

Day seven- Best 2 hours of my week happen here every week.  Amen and Amen.


Thank you God, for this week

Failing for Hope

God has bigger things in mind.

I've heard this throughout my pilgrimage.  God wants to bless.  God wants to conquer.  God wants to overcome.  It always sounded like God was pithy, and straight to the point.  No nonsense. No compromise.  No latitude.  Speak and you shall vanquish. Ask and you shall receive.

But what if God had all the little things in mind?

You know.  The process.  A transformation.  A very holiness that championed struggle and not completeness or wholeness.  Recently I shared, very affectionately and vulnerably about my ex "best friend" and girlfriend and my struggle  to be diligent, mindful, cordial, and civil, as she very freshly and successful entered into a relationship.  One that would bitch slap me in the face by way of her being around me and my space more than ever before when we were the best of friends.  I did not take this well as you might imagine, when this process started.

I was angry.  Bitter.  Insecure.  Petty.  I protested to whoever, my poor roommates probably wanted to hang me by my fingernails.  I didn't suffer.  I complained.  I did it harshly, and mostly focused on my selfish woundedness.  I was proud that I had cut her out of my life, like it was coming off a vision quest to beat all vision quests.  But this isn't the honeymoon the cosmos had in mind for me.  I asked the Pastor, now some months into this "thorn in my flesh", with an admission that I needed forgiveness.  Pastor, I asked- Father, have mercy on me, a sinner.  I wanted forgiveness.  I told my pastor, I didn't want the end result,  wise counsel, rebuke, and eventual restoration if that's what the process required.

No Pastor, I asked just PRAY for me.  I wanted to be angry but to do it well and with a good heart.  I wanted to feel my emotions, but in a constructive way.

I'm moving beyond want-ed, and moving into want-ing.  I'm wanting to suffer well, my relational baggage aside and in life in general.  My status isn't as well defined and fluid.  I am wanting to make a ritual of thankfulness and gratitude around my weakness.  There's got to be a ritual to this right?  I'm wanting this very respectable person, worthy of every dignity and ounce of affection she is getting to be not happy, but healed from me.

I never thought I would be the guy somebody needed to be bound up and healed from.  And that's the littler thing I overlooked in the past.  I'm owning up to my part, and now I'm dealing with it in a way that is leading to growth, gradual change, a passionate affection, and a tender boldness.  I want those who know me, to see that I do struggle, and although it isn't pretty, it's worthwhile and transformational.

Hope is a contradiction to evolution.  The grandeur of our species is the ultimate result from a struggle, that decimates, on a stage made for spectacle it seems. It's fascinating our lust and bulging imagination to dream up disaster, and chaos, and yet the weakest pulse of consistency and obscurity has been our saving grace, and we often mock it.  I'd take insignificance over celebrity.

Failing on an equally grandeur level, akin to our nature is pure devastation.  That's the flaw in our logic. Failing is non life-like.  It's a disease, an unwanted appendage.  I pray that if anything, I remember to give the art of failing, it's creative, life- giving ability.  That there can be hope and faith.  That it isn't evil.  It's necessary.

 

The Braid

In about late September, I decided I would cut my hair after 22 plus years.  That's a big deal.  My old companion dog Jake would be astronomically aged, and he would've croaked at the thought.  So I speculate.. .

There are two primary reasons why I wanted to cut the hair, thick dark brown, and poorly groomed for many years.  The first reason was I lost my aunt, and the loss of her is significant to me.  This is a relative my family wouldn't talk too graciously about, if she were alive today.  She possessed character flaws, made the kind of choices and mistakes that had people questioning her parenting, and subsequently her approach to living.  You spoke under your breath in contempt because for the life of her, my aunt suffered from severe chronic lateness and was never really reliable.  But did I love this lady.  She was cheerfully and wearily always on my side, believed I could exercise an systemic disease in out bloodline if I maintained the choice to succeed, and witnessed my  broken past and made it a mission of hers to make sure I made it out in one piece.

It's a tempered love, surpassing seasons of life and the weather.  I admired her rash bad living. It represented a smeared and creative destructiveness I longed to play out.  I never aspired to make the choices she made, not because I couldn't live with them.  But rather, my conscience and humanity would die with them and it wouldn't be too hard to make them.  I learned to live with tension watching my aunt live.  How to handle disappointment and contempt.  How to be pitied like so much of my family did with her.  How to fail and be resilient.  She taught me about the lower parts of life and I loved her- immensely.

I grieved, bitterly and passionately.  So the hair was going.

The second reason was much more practical.  I felt ready for a change.  There were certain people I wanted out of my life.  Symbolically and silently I protested their presence, probably as much they protested mine.  This felt like the perfect opportunity to let them go.  They served no real purpose being in my orbit, so I thought.  It was what came after that I began to see the irony and my wishful thinking washed away in cosmic humor.  Some of those people linger in my world to teach me about grace and dignity.

My mother took it pretty hard when I informed her of the choice.  Culturally, I understood what I was doing, and figured no one would object too fiercely.  I still have the braid stowed away in a medicine pouch, ready to be properly handled, in whatever way my family deems necessary whenever I decide to drag my bad self home.

Healing.  Hope.  Change.  Growth.  Life.

Mostly I was surprised about how youthful I looked once the locks were gone.  But I definitely love my dome the way it is now, and every now and then, think about all those years with it.

The 9-1-1 Call You Never Really Are Ready For

You're about 3.5 hours removed from intervention.  Your eyes are bloodshot.  Your head bobs pretty hard.  Mostly you're thinking about not how comfortable sleep will be when you get the chance, but that it's finally going to be a break from the hustle and flow.  Mentally, you also realize something.

The next few days are going to hurt.

You're Pastor is preaching a usually decent sermon, life in the wilderness.  Loving Jesus, means sometimes answering the trumpet call of battle... or something like that.  Mostly you think "I should probably listen to this later this week."  You seem distant.  People in your community/ family of faith take offense to your behavior.  You blow them off.  Then they whine "What's going on?  Are you okay?"  You're not affectionate.  You're not encouraging. You're not anything resembling decent.  In fact you didn't even have time to clean up after the incident.  This is the best two hours of your life every week, and everyone probably thinks you're a jerk.  I wasn't sweating them though.  That communion is what I'd drag myself to the pew for any day. I confess and repent.  I sing to keep my spirit up.  I confess again.  Life in the wilderness.

You don't even want to mention you may have helped save someone's life hours earlier.

It's hard.  Because that person intended to end it themselves, and you intervened.  And that's not a good feeling.  Check it.  I had just the week earlier, had to call the EMS to help this gentleman with another medical emergency.  Naturally I wanted to check in and make sure he was okay.  Medications, good spirits, some sort of plan of attack.  Boy was I ignorant.  I was happy to see him.  So when the time came, I just happened to look over at him and ask "Hey, you doing anything today?" My demeanor intentional in hoping to make him smile a bit.

The pale and less than responsive posture is what really got my attention.  He signaled for me to come into his space, and then he confessed, that an intentional overdose would be the thing he wished to accomplish that day.  My question answered.  My heart sunk.

I remember being agitated with the emergency dispatcher because I couldn't hear her.  She was trying to use a head set and it felt like we were a continent apart.  I struggled with the saying the words ". . . with-the-intention-of-ending-his-life."

That was the hardest part of the situation.  Giving his action validation.  He's fine.  Still alive.  Lonely and shamed out I suppose.  But there are somethings I can't explain, but am glad happened.

*The closeness I felt, the trust this guy had.

* The vulnerability.  That was the miracle.  Had I chosen to make the decision to not look over and observe for more than the 4 seconds I did.  Who knows what would have happened if he'd walked out the door.  A few seconds of your consideration can go a long way.

* The Spirit.  I know this sounds hokey as all get up, but I was trying to cheer the dude up, and well he let me know what was really going on.

* Amazing co-workers.  Those guys are studs and worked through it with such professionalism and class.  There was a moment when I had nothing to say and my co-worker made the kind of small talk where it was literally a matter of life and death.

*  The Emergency Medical Service and their diligence.

The biggest thing is I'm grateful I wanted to drag my sorry self the next day and keep on keeping on.

You know you're ThAt Christian Native when. . .

. . . when- you're going to a community feed, fully anticipating the deliciousness of potato salad, burnt burgers, and squishy hotdogs, then all of a sudden somebody in a panic asks you to pray over the meal and gathering.

when- as you're being asked to be the prayer dude, you run it through your head to use culturally appropriate language and idioms.  These people are serious, mostly hungry, but serious.  They don't mess around.  And you don't want to seem phony, so you run through the list:

Creator
Community
Family
Relatives

Mention at least three of four of these and you're legit.

when-  you never get invited out to the night scene, and it gets awkward for people to relish in their Ladies night exploits the moment you walk around.

. . .  what they don't know is the stout wine you take for communion every Sunday will knock their blood quantum down about 10% and you drink just as much like a dirty pirate than they do.  You just do it in a confined context and at a really boring pace.

when- your peers start confessing their dirty secrets and quirky habits and you go into minion mode and say "banana"?

when- your peers are offended than shocked than impressed by your equally perverse sense of humor and they respond usually with "aren't you a good little Christian boy?"

when- your romantic life gets reduced to Christian fu$@king mingle.com or some dot com in general.

when- people are fascinated that you can talk to animals and Jesus alike.

when- you reassure your non native brethren that Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas, are ceremonial and mocked equally discriminatory and championed.

when- people suggest you'd be an amazing counselor, caregiver, or teacher.

-and you rebut by saying the heroes of your faith were adulterers, thieves, cowards, and murderers.  Where's the fun in doing those virtuous things?

-Casinos are a ginormous no no, especially at Christian conferences. I giggle at that one.

- sweet grass, sage, and smudging in general makes you feel like one with the universe to the point of lulu-ing and pumping your fist like a boss.  Nobody gets that excited, seriously.

-you can mix and match about eighty shades of colors of wooden crosses/ crucifixes. Pendelton, Turquoise. . .

- you get asked "how does your family feel about this. . .?"

- you may or may not practice your "praying face, the head bob down, or the just plain stoic face"

- somehow you give sage like wisdom when really you mimic Gandolf or Dumbledore.

-  you eek out words like 'grace, mercy, glory, amen'. .  and you stop and think about the rez slang to translate that with.

mostly, you feel comfortable around your inter-tribal peers and non natives equally and figure out how mess with them in their own contexts and natural habitats.