WordArt

A prayer that I found in this cool book that I am reading:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

A prayer of Thomas Merton, taken from Thoughts in Solitude, quoted in My Life with the Saints by James Martin, SJ.

The desire of my heart, the heart of my fearlessness, the foundation of my trust: God, let Truth, Beauty, Love--your character-- be all of these to me.

I went for a run to erase my mind. I wanted out. I wanted it all to stop. So I ran and ran and ran. Things became dimmer and dimmer. And finally it was dark. I had escaped. I stopped to stretch. Pop. I pulled a hamstring and found myself walking. As I walked, I found myself descending a deep dark staircase. I have been digging now for about a day and a half and have finally found the right location for a dungeon. I am ready to walk in, lock the gate, and be separate, alone, distanced, cold. I was ready to tell you all how I got here, how I found it to be the right place for me. I was writing you all a story about my departure, from the world of so-called freedom. You see, I am the strongest woman in the world. I know, it is your pleasure to meet me. But there is no safe place, for me, with all of you or for you, with all of me. I am dangerous in the bad way. We all have a weakness and in combination with some kinds of power this can cause more damage than it’s worth. As I’ve built the dungeon, I have decided that some risks aren’t worth taking. And I am one of them. So, I am preparing myself to tell you all. I am applying dark eyeliner and putting on black clothes. I am telling you all how you can’t imagine the depths I am in, that you couldn’t know this darkness (you see, because I am so damn special, I am so much more deep and dark and complex than you could imagine, please). And I am saying goodbye and preparing to slip into madness. Yes, you think I am crazy, but really you have no idea the madness that exists just below the surface. When we remove light, things die; and then things really get crazy. Decomposition, anaerobic metabolism, the ugly things that live under rocks break it all back down and feed us to the rest of the light embracing world. I was digging my self a dungeon, a grave. You are a crazy woman. Like no one before. Until you break, and then you are just like the hundred-millions of other crazy people in the world.

I was crazy for about a mile and a half. That’s a pretty deep walk.

I turned another corner, picking up the pace again, and the wind changed. It picked up, but not over my head, it was like under me and all around me, it was thick, like water. I didn’t want to feel it. But even as the strongest woman I could not stop it. I felt. Everything. Every emotion, every joy, every pain; like a million needles pricking at once, every pore stung. I wanted to laugh and cry. I walk faster, and then slower, and then faster, trying to make it go away. And in this ‘A Beautiful Mind’ -like moment I begin to see the leaves on the path differently. Suddenly they are in pairs, they match, they are grouped together, they are in progressive series. There is this order to their position on the ground. I am crazy, you already know, so yes, I see these things, and they are very real. I keep walking, and they keep popping out at me. Two here in symmetry, a group of four with points together like a four leaf clover. A pair of big ones, a pair of small ones. Same color, same shape, same alignment, mirrored alignment, growing in size or deepening in color. I look around and I feel lost all of a sudden. I know that I’ve been here maybe a thousand times. I walk this street all the time, I drive it daily. I know it. But I felt so out of place, so lost, missing. I continued up the path and the crazy things stopped happening and I began to feel like I knew where I was. I don’t know if I wanted to know, but I did and I was almost home again. I crossed the street and there were cars and I didn’t make eye contact because I hated that they could see me, and I wanted to pretend that they couldn’t. I don’t want to be seen anymore. I want to be invisible. I looked at the ground. Like those crazy people who don’t really know that you’re there because they’re all caught up in their crazy heads. Yes, just like them, us.

I’m fine, I’m fine. Really. No, I’m not really going crazy. Ha. It’s just this way I feel sometimes. Everything’s cool. What could we do? Anyway, what can we do. I am at a loss. A terrible loss. I am wanting to abandon ship. I feel this way sometimes. Sometimes I lose everything. Sometimes I don’t. We will see. We will all see.

We all have a weakness
But some of ours are easier to identify. Look me in the eye
And ask for forgiveness;
We’ll make a pact to never speak that word again.
Yes, you are my friend.
We all have something that digs at us,
At least we dig each other.
So when my weakness turns my ego up
I know you’ll count on the me from yesterday.
If I turn into another
Dig me up from under what is covering
The better part of me.
Sing this song
Remind me that we’ll always have each other
When everything else is gone.
We all have a sickness
That cleverly attaches and multiplies
No matter how we try.
We all have someone that digs at us,
At least we dig each other.
So when sickness turns my ego up
I know you’ll act as a clever medicine.
If I turn into another
Dig me up from under what is covering
The better part of me.
Sing this song!
Remind me that we’ll always have
Eachother
When everything else is gone.
Oh, each other…
When everything
Else is gone.

Dig—Incubus, 2006

A Hero Deferred...

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

Today, I thought I would share the gift of life by donating blood to the American Red Cross, as is my every so oftenly tradition. I have it to spare and I can save 3 lives, so if you know I'm a superhero this all makes sense.

So I roll down to my local donor center this noonish and sign in and do the tests and get my under the tongue and around the arm and out the finger and gently on the wrist and the list of bizarre and nearly perverse questions... finally we review the questionarre and I am ready to start gushing blood into the bag.

Then the nice lady gets to the part about having been out of the country within the last 12 months, and I'm like yea, I went to Costa Rica, what's the big D? And she starts asking me parts that I went to, and apparently a couple of them are high malaria risk locations, which is a bust because they told us there was almost no risk there. The even bigger bust is that I am now "deferred" (not allowed to donate blood) until July! This officially sucks, no?

So, what I need to ask of all of you, is to carry the torch for me. I will have missed approximately 5 donation cycles before I am able to give in July... and these are like guaranteed life helping/saving opportunities! If even just 5 of you could support me in my innability by donating blood between now and July, (or even every couple months between now and then) I would really appreciate it. If you haven't done it before, it is a relatively painless and incredibly rewarding experience. The people are kind and you always get snacks and juice when you are done. You're helping people, straight up, plain and simple, handing over some life juice.

Please take this opportunity and check the American Red Cross website for local donation sites and drive dates.

Much love, and thank you for your support. It means more to me than you may expect.

Courtney

Thanks giving to God, and to my fellow human
A rambling tale of my heart at the moment:

I suppose in every choice I am thankful for the freedom to choose it
I am thankful that while God could be anything, that he is Good
There have been deserts and tropical islands and cement shoes at the bottom of the ocean
Thanks for every place you've taken me
I think of every simple thing that I am thankful for
And they all become manifestations of God
When I hold them to light
And I am thankful for some clarity of vision
In that sense

Today I became accutely aware and anxious
That my choosing to follow the essential passion
The ticking in my soul, the God in me
It leaves me out of control, not like wild
Rather out of control of myself in a fearfully constricting way
And then I remembered that it is okay,
Because it isn't like I'm giving it up to someone else like me
I am giving it up to the one who knows both the plan and the person
That I can actually do best what I am best suited to do
If I continue to commit to this

So the universe is returned to order
Lucky for all of you
My anxieties subsiding in appropriate ways
As I recognize my lack of control as a gainful-loss

So I am thankful, at the moment, for the God whose nature makes me as I am and makes that alright at the same time.

The other things are great. The gravy. The house the cars the food the job the family supporting me the friends the senses. And I am thankful for them in many ways. But to me a prayer of thanks is like an exhaling. A joyful acceptance of things as they are, in and out. If I had none of the gravy I would be as thankful. I am sure of it. I'm not proud, I just want to be honest. That's all.

I am oh-so overwhelmed,
While remaining ever-so underwhelming.
I am tired of working so hard.
But where are the fruits of my labor,
For me to eat and be sustained?

Empty girl, are you unfilled?
Is there a leak, are you a sink?
Or are you simply a vacuous wasteland:
Take love, take love take love take.
Return nothing.
It is burning a hole in the pocket that you do not have.

You had some
Resources, we call them.
You came with some and picked others up.
You put them in a backpack for later use,
Then broke the zipper.
What a fuckin waste.

Cry yourself to sleep again,
Wake up anxious and angry with yourself,
Have them tell you not to be so hard.
Don’t ever tell them that you know what you’ve wasted,
Because you know;
Better than them, you know.

Waste another minute.
Just one more, one more one more one.
Every time your heart beats, every tear breath nervous twitch second wasted thinking of a better word for this and then there is that thing over there you need to stop this stop this stop this stop


Breathe deeply,

Slowly,

Know that God forgives,

(How kind)

Fall asleep believing you have done all you could.

Wake up tomorrow,

Stomach sinking, teeth grinding, leg twitching.
What a shame, what a pity, what a waste.
A criminal to your own supposed system of the Right.