Mildred Espree's Open Salon Blog

Class, Religion, Race and Immigration (In Black and White)

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 03:11:45 -0500

This appears to be a ranting. It is. But I don't know what to say exactly. I have not been excluded from the conversation, but simply dismissed. After all, how can a conservative Christian have anything relevant to say on a Blog site, especially about religion, class, race, immigration and government policy.

But that's not all, those on both sides like to discuss the moral worth of those of us who claim faith, and most often we are cited and criticized for having friends in low places. And yet, I don't remind folks as often as I should that Christ himself had friends in low places, ate and drank raucously and was criticized for associating with tax collectors. I get criticized on the left for my affinity for Pro-Lifers and middle-of-the-road Republican Party members, and for not being liberal enough. The truth is that I'm not liberal at all. Once when I was young and had a strong need to fit in, I fashioned myself a liberal, but in truth, liberal values create anxiety in me. Can I just love the sinner and not the sin? Perhaps for some of you that sentiment is just oversimplistic, but I confess to you that a close look at Psalm 1: 1-3 will change your mind. It is the key to happiness."Blessed is the man (or woman) who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the seat of the scoffers; but his (or her) delight is the Law of the Lord, and on his Law(s), he/she meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by the water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that she does, she prospers."

Now, now I'm not a scoffer at anti-Christians, but faith has always gotten me in trouble. In graduate school, I didn't understand post-modernism, but I understood religion. All attempts to interpret literature in lieu of what I believed were met with poor grades and opposition. I once wrote about Coleridge's dark poem "Crystabel" that it was a struggle about faith. Same for Anne Rice and her vampires. I could have used a cross with a stake in those days of the late 80's when true liberalism meant freedom to experiment with just about anything. Again, it succeeded in making me anxious and ill. Perhaps I was too deficient to compete.

The fruits of my tantalizing ventures into free thought landed me in the hospital though. I just wasn't made for it on any level. The byproduct of those years are false labels, gossip, and misperceptions. Everyone has a theory.

The fruits of the spirit, however, are different. Suffering gained me the life of the saints, the miracle of Mother Mary, and the reality of the Holy Trinity. I have not abandoned it. What my friends have learned to face is that I am not who I thought I was as a youngster, not who they thought I was either, 60s childhood notwithstanding. In truth, I have not ever changed at my core, and I suspect life is like this for most folks, who often do not follow their heart or their minds, but who choose to align their values with faulty actions in some misguided effort to be true to themselves. It's called sin folks, and it's best not to stick to your guns about it. Transform! Be reborn!

Some of my friends who have known me a lifetime would also argue that I have always been true to my heart. Not so. Like most faltering sinners, I have often failed myself and failed God. I have confessed here and before my priests, but I still haven't wrapped my mind around the reality some folks live.

For example, how can someone embrace hatred and justify it as faith, responsibility and social action? All this on the political right. What can one say about Rush Limbaugh except that he wants to make money at any cost? What can be said about those who take him seriously?

On the left, others will attempt to use some slight of hand, shorthand to confuse social justice for some, with injustice for others. For example, it would appear to be extreme liberalism to want health care for immigrants, but this is a bipartisan issue. On the other hand, we have American citizens who continue to be underrepresented, overlooked, and who will miss out on this healthcare debate unless some sort of divine intervention takes place.

Another problem: Abortion.

I am a Catholic. Period. I believe in the Church of the Apostles, the one Jesus himself created. I believe in God the Father. Period. I believe life begins at conception and ends in natural death.

So yes. I have issues. To begin with, let's end federally-subsidized abortion. Let's never embrace euthanasia as government policy. It boils down to right and wrong. There are absolutes. Moral ones. Abortion and euthanasia are wrong. Period. Our government should not involve itself here. It's simply "the right to kill" carefully embedded in federal policy with what looks like something for the public good. Our health care laws before Congress right now look exactly like this upon close examination. Don't let the White House or the liberal legislature get away with this. Do your homework.

Why should a chance for life ever be considered evil? Inconvenient, yes, but politically sound or justified? Never. Nor can the dignity of a natural death be something legislated except by personal conscience. If you think I'm evangelizing, you're correct. I am Catholic for a good reason. I believe enough to attempt to live out the tenets of my faith. Attempt is all I can do. I'm merely human. C.S. Lewis had it right about us men and women. If you have faith, I know you try to live it just as I do. So don't conclude I'm being self-righteously smug. That is not my purpose here. I just don't like politics.

One other thing before I upset the liberal left even more. I don't like it when "feel good" Joel Osteen type, pop psychology passes itself off for Christianity, regardless of how popular it has become. Granted, some folks won't go to see a therapist, so the Osteens in this world are sorely needed, but his brand name is not religion, not even Protestant style. Let's just call it what it is. It is the Brave New World orgy-porgy, stadium-style, feel good, secular humanism that sells Sunday mornings as football faith -- a faith of the populus in our 21st century post-American era and ethos. Yes, it's for sale in bookstores and it's cheap, but I'm not buying it. It will not buy me heaven in this world or the next. Even Billy Graham knows this is not religion. Too bad our reporters can't read between the lines...

Instead, give me an austere and critical St. Jerome. Give me poverty as a lifestyle. Give me suffering and the cross of Jesus. After all, when all is said and done, we cannot make sense of our lives by embracing tootsie roll polemicals, no matter how nicely they're packaged. No matter what brand we choose, God is real. And God decides.

Please note: This is not about doomsday, but it is doomsday-style suffering every day somewhere -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, in Somalia and Rwanda. How do we sell our Polyanna-style, free-wheeling American ease to these human beings? Or do we see them as human at all, or as anything other than Third-World Muslim terrorists? Yes, some of them are, but what about their victims, and why do we only save those in countries where we have remunerative interests?

We Americans are in our darkest hour, mostly because we cannot see ourselves the way others see us. Try shallow. Or insensitive. Try brutal. Or power hungry. We have not fooled anyone except ourselves. Want another example: Many Americans cannot get past Barrack Obama's blackness, regardless of his policies; many pray for his failure and utter demise. We tolerated Bush with much more grace. We have a fine-tuned taste for evil that passes itself off for something good. And in the case of Obama, any attempt to criticize him is offset by the sheer numbers of people ready to pounce on his actions only because they have problems with his race. And granted, his brand of politics is not what he claimed it would be, not yet anyway.

Americans please note: Our litmus tests are faltering; our canaries in the coal mines are on their last breaths. We are failing to solve problems; insisting on unity, but never working for it; hiding behind our doubts and hatred. We have become our own worst enemy. If you do not believe this, just watch the news. Any channel will do. They are all about reporting what they believe are facts, and as usual, no one is interested in the truth. What truths? Well I have a few ideas, ones that are only partially credible solutions, but then I'm not running for office either. But I would exhort you all to pray.

So why don't we get on with it? We can always impeach another Democratic President to satisfy someone's moral outrage. We can always elect another George Bush to stand up for the rights of the so-called moral majority, who are by the way, only moral when they define the terms. What then?

Final Question: How do we pass true reform minus the lobbyists on both sides? I would attend a Tea Party if it were for true issues, and not the age-old messiness of "Othello in the White House." Shakespeare as a Catholic is quite convincing you know.

Cautionary Answers: Anyone considered putting prayer back in public schools? Or, ignoring tax dollar gains and instead kicking out the troublemakers in high schools? Or fostering relief efforts in war-torn countries? How about featuring public service as a responsibility and a prerequisite of citizenship? How about reclaiming women's rights in terms of eradicating misogyny and abortion, or fostering universal health care for all children as a critical national policy? We seem to fight over everything but what matters. This secular society has made individual rights a religion at the expense of true democracy. And in a country founded on faith, we cannot tolerate the austerity of true faith.

I suggest we require a course in Western Civilization and the faith of the Founding Fathers as a prerequisite for high school graduation and while we're at it, let's go ahead and require English as our national language.

Every immigrant has had to assimilate, and NOW we're arguing over whether new immigrants have the right to assimilate us. Outrageous! But I may be entirely wrong, but I too am free to speak my mind. One last thing: If you consider yourself an American, please pick up a new book titled, One Nation Under God: The History of Prayer in America. We surely need to pray and to act on our consciences as our Founding Fathers did with great clarity: "In God We Trust." That's all.

Yes. I'm a conservative who eschews labeling. I vote my conscience and have no permanent party loyalties. I am a Christian, a Catholic, a woman, a black Creole American, a Southerner, somewhat learned, but not always right. I don't always have to have my own way either. I understand this to be part of what it means to live in a democracy. I can live with holding the minority opinion. I was born into it. Can you?

Finally, America could use a media capable of transcending the superficial pablum of the daily grind. We use our televisions to reassure ourselves that we are in touch with the world -- and every form of sensationalism some pundit passes off as truth. We would do better to unplug the noise and talk to our children, or our dogs, for that matter. Or we could wax profound and try talking to God about it. He will most likely answer.

The Music on My Mind: Too Old, Too Young, and Counting ...

Fri, 5 Dec 2008 02:12:27 -0500

Sometimes in this jaded world, we forget to let the people who count know what we think of them We get caught up in doing more in order to be more, when just being in close contact with someone would really count more than a would-be pundit's words in a blog. Perhaps this medium is too foriegn to me. I prefer the old, lost art of conversation. Bear with me. I'm learning. Here goes.

Somewhere in time, I learned that you can't take your love or your issues to the graveyard. Actually, you can, but the dead don't hear you. At least that's the common belief. Therefore, I'm using this Blog space to count on my friends. Folks, it's just plain old love, so before I begin, I'll share the words that I'm also singing in my sleep.

Moe Bandy wrote these lyrics. When I'm awake, I sing them aloud:

"If life is like a candle bright, death must be the wind.
You can close your window tight and it still comes flowing in.
So I will climb the highest hill and watch the rising sun.
And I pray that I don’t feel the chill till I’m too old to die young.

CHORUS
Let me watch my children grow to see what they become.
Oh Lord don’t let that cold wind blow till I’m too old to die young.

Now I have had some dear sweet friends I thought would never die.
Now the only thing that’s left of them is the teardrops in my eyes.
If I could have one wish today and know it would be done.
Well I would say everyone could stay till they’re too old to die young. "

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This song is for my friends, the ones I've known a lifetime. Please hum along if you know the tune. There are some of you here on OpenSalon who have spent a lifetime in my consciousness, though I barely know you. I speak of Monte, MaryTKelly and Sandra Miller. Would that I could be so prolific and wonderfully bright and erudite and accomplished. This short reflection is for each of you as well.

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My Friends:

How old is old enough? How young is young enough? To die young?

Now, there is young in years, and there is young at heart. If this is the case, then we would all remain young at heart and perhaps would never die. I don't want to live forever, and yet I'm facing my mortality in tangible ways.

Two of my friends from childhood are facing serious prognoses. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but because I can't get this song out of my head tonight, I just want to talk about them.

My friend Deborah Gradney was born a day before me, December 12th. Our mothers were in the same hospital wards in beds next to each other, so it is reasonable to think we knew each other in the womb. I met Deborah outside the womb at age 12 when we found ourselves at the same middle school, in the same home room, the only two Creole kids...

Chance? Just chance? I don't know. Our steps and paths would cross consistently until we were 18, when I went off to the University of Texas at Austin, and she to the University of Houston.

But certain circumstances make me wonder why we meet certain people in time and space and not others. I'm not a determinist, but what are the odds?

Consider this. In 1972, Deborah invited me to a youth dance at her parish church, St Francis of Assisi. It was there that I met her cousin, Rene Jerome Espree, along with several others. Five and a half years later I married him. We are here together, 31 years gone by. That has been my blessing.

Deborah's outcome has been different. She was diagnosed with Lupus Erythematosis in 1972. She has a grown married daughter in Hong Kong, a long-standing divorce and she lives alone. I cannot begin to describe the surgeries and near fatalities in her history. I don't understand why her life is what it is. She accepts it all with grace. I can't imagine myself surviving in her shoes...

I've been given so much more -- and more from her than I ever deserved.

I am in awe of her courage. Stooped and bent, dependent on daily, skilled nursing care, and managing a body in constant danger of immediate demise, she lives her faith, and never considers her long exile from her youthful potential or asks why.

Because I hear so much whining from everyone -- in the media, the government, the schools, the salons, I am amazed that she carries on each day and never complains. Much of this time, she is alone with herself, making me believe that those of us inclined to complain are most likely in great shape.

Deborah has endured numerous surgeries, infections, and physical losses of all kinds. I cannot help thinking of what the poet Elizabeth Bishop said about loss: We can lose a relationship, a continent, a home, even our minds, as easily as we lose our car keys. But so few of us ever really know this much loss all at once.

Most of our lives are filled with activity and with hope. Most of us endure something, but what about the total loss of viability and options, short of death?

Deborah, at almost 54, against all odds, lives on. This must be what constitutes gifts of the spirit. Bear with me, I'm trying to understand the untenable, at least it's not tenable to me.

My other old friend, Sherry Horn, called me two weeks ago and said she had to see an oncologist/gynecologist. What she thought was a cyst on her ovary is a growth the size of a lemon. Her tests show her malignancy points based on blood tests are 22. Normal is a count between 1 & 6. She has surgery December 19th.

Married and divorced twice, Sherry lives alone with her two daughters, Nacha and Sable. Nacha, at 29, an educator, will marry this coming January. Sable is in nursing school. Sherry herself has been a career educator and a licensed counselor, not to mention a very proud black woman who has always impressed me as being fearless. When she called, crushed and devastated, I felt helpless. All I could muster was "I love you and it's going to be all right." I meant it. One way or another, metastisized or not, it will be what it will be.

How long have I known her? Since we were six years old. My mother was her first-grade teacher, whom she says, inspired her to become a great reader. My Momma thought Sherry's family was wonderful and wanted us to become friends. We did. My fondest memories are of Sherry acting out the characters in every story she read.

She was so skinny and so black-skinned, some folks believed color and culture, ultimately, would have been a barrier to our friendship, but our lives have proved this assumption false. So much for stereotypes about us and either of our families. Both our mothers were selective about the company we kept. They liked and respected each other.

What's eerie about this? Well, in 1996 we would walk a difficult road together. She buried her Mother in April. I buried my Momma that October. Through the years our paths have parted and entwined together, spiraling apart, yet circling back again. Our children know each other as family.

This past weekend. She came by to see if I was okay. Sherry is formidable and is convinced she can battle this potential life-threatening cancer and win. Am I okay? As long as I focus on the big picture. She's right. If anyone can.

But if life is in the mundane details, I have to consider the possibility of loss. It has been my nature that I begin to mourn long before the mourning is due. My process.

Now I do not wish to tempt fate. Both my friends are young at heart. Much younger than me. If that's the criteria for this wind called death, then he has to pass them by, at least for another 40 years. I just can't get this damn song out of my head. That means it's supposed to be there right now.

So here I am lighting candles and singing in the dark, asking God to spare all my folks. God has affirmed me before.

You see, my dearest companion, my husband, had a meeting with death in 2007, and I prayed, and his doctors successfully completed a seven-hour procedure that required burning away the errant circuitry in his right atrium, which made his resting heartbeat more than 150 beats per minute.

Without that intervention, he might have lived only in my teardrops, except for the power of memory, recollections of a boy I fell in love with before his beard grew in.

Just a few years ago, such a procedure was unheard of. The old remedy was to just stop the heart and restart it, and then hope the problem corrected itself. I want to emphasize, if I have not already, that this is not all about me. I want to honor these, my living treasures.

You see, it is easier for me to face my own death than to imagine the loss of these old friends. I'm an old friend kind of girl. New friends are hard to make. It has been that way for me since adulthood. This alone has forced me chronicle these passages, the age-ing of people whose faces I knew when we were very young.

Scary stuff and yet I know that just having them in my life is a privilege, not a universal experience in a world where so much, even friendship, is ephemeral.

Another two best old friends are Alice (from middle school) and Erlene(from college). We visit a few times a year and its always like time has stopped. Alice is my Saturday morning breakfast pal. We venture into Houston's Fourth Ward to eat at Merida's a few times a year. She also visits with her son Joshua whenever I cook their favorite foods -- a gumbo, an etouffee, a court-boullion. Long ago, our families would meet at her Mom's house each year on Christmas Eve for homemade tamales.

Erlene, my friend since college, is now enduring the loss of a healthy husband. Jim is getting over a bout of pancreatitis and has back problems. We mostly talk on the phone since she lives out of state now. But we remember birthdays. I'm sure these gals have their trials, but as far as I know, they are in great health. They both love their professions. Alice, a mathematician and educator; Erlene, an above-the-glass-ceiling chemical engineer.

My new, oldest friend is Beth. We too have traveled long roads that parted in high school, and commenced again in recent years. We crossed the distance of those times at a long lunch in 2007, and began a friendship based on our common ground, past and present. Beth is a wife, a mother, and a professional therapist.

My oldest old male friend is Michael. Originally from Abilene, he's in Austin, Texas. Still. Also a loyal husband and a noble friend, he is one of the few pals I made in college. He's a historian and an urban planner. Like me, he keeps things forever. We have held on to each other. We are great companions who possess a penchant for highly esoteric subjects.

As for me, I have some disabilities. I am loyal to a fault, hopeful to the end. One dear friend, a next door neighbor, has been out of touch for five or six years now. My song is for her as well.

Oh Lord don't let that cold wind blow, on any of my friends...

At least not till the time has come, and all their stories told...

Now I'd like to add more of my own lines to Moe Bandy's sentient lyricism.

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"If death is just a conscious sleep, then let them know we care.

That even if our life does end, our love is always there.

And sing this song some years from now, when life is closing in.

Then you will know these words by heart, and share your soul with friends..."

Our birth is but a gentle sleep, where we forget the end.

So let me die with memories, til life begins again."

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I end here with an invitation. Would my new friends stand up and be counted?

"You can sing your songs to me, when darkness closes in.

And I will stand and proudly be, your true and faithful friend."

Still,

Just Millie...singing, praying, musing...here in the darkness.

The Avatar Project

Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:12:54 -0500

A Profile In Darkness:

Thu, 4 Dec 2008 01:12:16 -0500

A Little about My Dark

Night of the Soul

What is the Dark Night of the Soul? (Spanish: La noche oscura del alma) Because I believe many people have experienced this real form of acedia, and have written it off as depression, anomie/alienation and/or moral decline, and many therapists, psychologists and their medical counterparts are apt to prescribe drugs for something far more profound, I would like to introduce you to a journey I have taken for most of my life, in hopes that it will change someone else’s life for the better.

Having realized that most people, or perhaps the ones I’ve encountered, have well developed lives of the mind, as well as a critical eye, I have hesitated to take you on this journey with me until now, until I could frame it in a context which explained all of what happened, and how I got from there to here and back again. I’ve been musing about this essay for a while now, so bear with me.

I want you to come away with more than a polite platitude; instead, I want you to understand the value of this condition to each person who has it, not as something to be avoided or cured, but rather as a time of deep spiritual growth, a budding in the soul, which often resembles insanity and excruciating pain, but is neither.

You see in our western understanding of the world both "la noche oscura" and acedia can be mistaken for all of these things, but the Dark Night is very real and can last for a long time.

It is also a treatise written by Spanish poet and Roman Catholic mystic Saint John of the Cross. The expression, La noche oscura del alma is used to describe a phase in a person's spiritual life, and is a metaphor for a certain loneliness and desolation. It is referenced by spiritual traditions throughout the world. (Wikipedia)

Rather than resulting in devastation, however, the dark night is perceived by mystics and others to be a blessing in disguise, whereby the individual is stripped (in the dark night of the senses) of the spiritual ecstasy associated with acts of virtue. Yes, there is a certain pridefulness in doing good to feel good about it. Such is the stage of moral development when a person only does the right thing in order to receive praise, or a smug awareness of one’s noble nature, or to avoid guilt.

But the Dark Night is different. More like the most highly-evolved stage of spiritual understanding M. Scott Peck described in Further Along the Road Less Traveled, where someone may, for a time, “seem to outwardly decline in their practices of virtue, when in reality, she becomes more virtuous, but in this phase, is being virtuous less for the spiritual rewards (ecstasies in the cases of the first night) obtained, and more out of a true love for God.

It is this purgatory, a purgation of the soul, which brings purity and union with God” (Wikipedia). You can find much of the history of the dark night of the soul by googling it. Previously referenced, Wikipedia will give you more of the history than most people care to know, but I have a design and purpose here. So before you read the story I want to share with you, I want you to understand the history of this noche oscura.

A journey of similar merit is told by J.R.R. Tolkien in his short story, "Leaf by Niggle." The character Niggle wastes time on unimportant things and can never finish is life's work, a painting, because he is distracted by a need to help his neighbor, Parish, which he often does, with increasing irritability. Niggle goes on a journey. I won't spoil the story here by iterating here. But I will say that it has a profound relevance to our unifying metaphor here: The Dark Night of the Soul.

Common knowledge among Catholic clerics, the phrase "dark night of the soul" emerged from the writings of Saint John of the Cross, a Carmelite priest in the 16th century. Dark Night of the Soul, the name of a poem and its theological commentary, are among the Carmelite priest's most well-known writings. The texts tell of the saint's mystical development and the stages he is subjected to on his journey towards union with God.

I do not pretend to have come close to what St. John of the Cross must have lived through. But I have practiced an ascetic lifestyle and have chosen self-denial for extended periods throughout my life. My deliberate journey has not been perfect and I have not been able for health reasons to fast for more than a day or two in recent years, and yet, to focus on that would be to miss the point of what St. John’s journey was about.

He was as frustrated, as irritable and irascible as I am sometimes, and perhaps as narrow, as understood by the phrase, the path to God is straight and narrow. Like me, he most likely didn’t understand the world, or people, any more than he could measure and obtain “a priori,” a comprehension of the mind of God. It was all too much for him.

Don’t you feel that way sometimes? I know I do more often than I’d like to admit, but a Dark Night is as pitiless as this metaphor suggests: No light. No clear path. No candles. No reason. No hope. No faith. Yes. No faith.

By now you’re asking how can a Catholic priest and mystic admit to loss of faith. Perhaps this is best understood by the words of the poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, who wrote: “There is more faith in honest doubt than in all the creeds combined” (from In Memoriam). These lines were a part of Tennyson’s meditation on death and the loss of his best friend Hallam. But my dark nights continue.

You see, I have a life-long friend who has been battling Lupus for thirty years, who raised a daughter alone, and who has more courage to face each day, even with skilled nursing care and multiple doctor visits a week than I have ever had. Her name is Deborah and my words are also a prayer for her. Such is the love of life, but I am a wimp who can only ask God why.

Another dear friend recently discovered that she may have ovarian cancer. She will have surgery just before Christmas. My blue rosary’s turquoise is darkening from the continuous turning between my fingers, those natural oils and sweat, my meager offering up, mostly to cope, but more because I’m scared for both friends, more scared for myself, my selfishness, my prayer existent. Not to be a cynic here, I really mean it when I say that I am, in all my fears, still more at peace than I was when my dark night began more than twenty-five years ago.

But first, I want to tell you more about St. John of the Cross, St Therese, also referred to as The Little Flower (her statue presides as one of the welcoming saints at my front door), and Mother Teresa, all of whom were known to have had “dark nights” which lasted for decades.

But first I have to talk about my best friend, my husband Rene, who underwent a seven-hour cardiac ablation procedure a year ago to prevent him from having a massive heart attack caused by an atrial flutter that kept his resting heart-rate at 150 beats per minute. That was truly a night, no, many nights of terror, but I had been living in the darkness all alone, so mostly I was numb.

I did pray though. That was 2007. He’s okay for now. I’m not. In 2002, another really dark night and many dark days following an incident where my college-age son was attacked, knocked down, and almost died, but saved when someone else died at someone else's hands. It’s all okay now.

But I’m not.This year, 2008, has been a good year. I retired. I am prepared for surgeries in 2009. My dark nights are with me. It’s a purification process.

"I’m getting my business right" was a favored phrase of my father who enjoyed reminding us, even when we were young, that we should prepare for the Judgment Day. Everyone would get one. I haven’t succumbed to his brand of fatalism, but I do recognize the road.

St. John’s treatise, The Dark Night of the Soul is divided into two books that reflect the two phases of the dark night. The first is a purification of the senses. This was his ascetic experience; it is what most people imagine when they think of a cloistered life. Asceticism lends itself to extreme self-denial, and I believe that many modern-day versions of this can be found among those seeking physical perfection as a form of enlightenment, but most often it is not enough, and is probably the true reason diets and exercise do not work for long. The issues and the neediness often come not from what we feed our faces or do to our bodies, but rather in our failure to cultivate and understand the needs of our souls.

There is a story about the biblical Jacob who had a dream in which he wrestled with God. The story goes that he had to wrestle with God in order to literally find a stairway into heaven. Another metaphor perhaps, but one we understand more easily than the “dark night of the soul.” You see, we often do not see our spiritual lives as a battle with God, a struggle of wills.

After all, we believe, free-will is God-given. However we understand God, we also understand that this freedom is intrinsic to human experience. What we do not understand is that while our wills are free to choose right and wrong, good and bad, we are taught to choose the lesser evil, if the choices are not in black and white.

The problem lies in our consciousness and in our ability to rationalize everything when a clear choice is really simple. Do we really trust our senses, our gut, as the Romantics believed, or should we submit to some higher authority? You see the issue here. One must purge the senses because they have been polluted by all the enticements of this world and its decadence in all times...

I know. I know. This stuff is not palatable to the tastes of our brave new century, but perhaps it should be. Our world is corrupt. We can all agree to that, and in order to repair our world, we must work on our perceptions and revise our conceptualizations.

Perhaps the answers are in the ancient truths. Yes I do think that in order to achieve purgation, one must wrestle with God like Jacob did in his dream. And God must win. It is much more difficult than a laxative, an enema, or regurgitation. Trying this form of upheaval will leave you with many sleepless nights.Such was my first twenty years of life. I knew formal religion, but it was a faith of fear.

Having prayed from childhood without anyone telling me to do so, I also knew self-denial, the kind that is borne of suffering. I know suffering. I lhave lived with chaos. But I did not know myself. I did not understand my soul.

By twelve, I was more than well-read for my age. I was a virtual encyclopedia of facts. I was a smart aleck. Thus my isolation and decline. Alone, because I did not like to party. How does one party with a heavy heart? Alone, because I was afraid to open up to people and make friends.

A co-dependent enabler to a functional alcoholic mother and a rage-aholic father, I had my share of problems, the worst of which was my belief I could handle this alone for the rest of my life. My answer: God.

Did it work? Yes. It got me though four years of college with honors, led me to marry and after five years, to become a mother. Twice. And then at 33, I cratered, lost my mind, and could no longer find God or manage alone. The lights were out for a rather long time, but like my parents before me, I was functional, could work and inadequately sustain my most important relationships.

What was really wrong? I’m not certain, but the fact is that my father died in 1984, and I didn’t mourn him then. I was too angry with him. By 1989, I knew my mother was dying too, and I knew that with her my ontogeny ended. I did not, could not verbalize this, but its finality was a cellular truth. I set out to tell her story in order to understand mine.

The more I wrote, the deeper I sank into the darkness. I could not free myself. Shelled into an early 20^th century Sabine Pass, Texas marshland of chronic dissolution,that stretched into St. Martinville, Louisianna, it was inevitable that I could not bring myself back alone any more than I could cross a dimension in time, and yet I had crossed many boundaries in my consciousness.

In the process, I submerged my ego, my pretentions, my illusions and my sensibilities about the world. My doctoral program faltered. No one in 1988-1989 Houston, Texas had heard my story or anything like it. (No wonder I still haven’t even attempted to finish it, much less publish it. Perhaps one day, the truth about those specifics will find my pen).

Before long, I could not face my husband, my children, my mother, or anyone else who really knew me. I was alien and wrong no matter where I turned. At school, my situation was kept quiet by some; others bullied me on my return. My husband, who loved me, did not understand my plight. I was lonely.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not unwrite my story or deny it; I was the object of amusement, the buffet of subtle innuendo and cocktail party gossip. I was plain crazy and I knew too much. It made certain important people very uncomfortable. I had to be stopped no matter what. Young and dumb, I thought everything was all my fault, when all I did was to write a story and tell the truth.

My family, what’s left of them, and especially my husband Rene, are still amazed at the accuracy of my memory and penchant for details about these times. An out-of-body experience would explain it; however, I was inside, living this torment, but it was my spirit which had taken over.

Jesus said that in order to gain our lives we must lose our lives. I believe he meant that we have to lose our egos in order for a transformation to take place. My doctor would concur today. This doctor, who was number three after two failed attempts by others, still owns the raised stone I saw in his office the first time I met him. It says: Nothing is carved in stone.

Alone on all sides, I had been wrongly diagnosed several times until in 1989, I met this most endearing Dr. Douglass Stockwell, who is now with the well-known Hauser clinic here in Houston. Instead of deciding I was psychotic, bi-polar, clinically depressed (and I was all those things), he offered to help me. Next year, (2009) I will have been in his care for 20 years. He treated me medically for depression and anxiety and for a few bouts with psychosis, resulting from extreme self-denial, issues with weight and self-image, and with my extremely dysfunctional family-of- origin dynamics.

But the cure came from being in contact with a competent and ethical doctor who possessed an open mind, someone who put his diagnoses on hold in order to allow me to trust him and the process, and someone who wisely referred me to a therapist, who in her own turn, referred me back to God.

The answer? My Dark Night of the Soul was not something I understood then, nor do I totally understand it now. It is a part of me, something which cannot be prescribed or medicated or self-medicated away. The Question? Is God Real? My answer is yes, that in my life and in all the suffering and loss I’ve endured and am still enduring, there is no reason why I am still here unless this soul journey is the purpose.

I still voluntarily see Dr. Stockwell twice yearly for checkups. I look forward to visiting with him. We are about the same age and we have watched each other grow, although he may have a different take on this. Today after 20 years of unofficial acedia and 20 more years of a secular diagnoses, I am on the side of both my faith and my doctors. After all, the God of the Universe made the doctors and the medicine.

My life has been in the details, the daily work of being a teacher, a wife, a mother, a friend, in these quotidian mysteries, which have taught me the simplicity of just keeping up with God’s/my plan and my life routines.I am grateful for the past forty years of my darkest nights because yes, I am a sensitive soul, too sensitive at times. Also, I am observant, occasionally irreverent, not the least bit fundamentalist, nor unhappy or happy, nor content or discontent. And no, I’m certainly not catatonic either, although my rigid gait might suggest otherwise; it’s the result of rheumatoid arthritis, relentless pain and flare-ups.

And yet, my dark night and all the events of my life have not left me bitter or angry, disillusioned or alienated, even though at times I am all these things, and even in this contradiction about the truth of the dark night, one can glimpse its power, the result of all the stresses and pains of living something other than a facile reality. No, this is not the devastation of drugs or decadent living; except for some missed-steps in my youth, I have fallen lightly.

Instead, my dark nights are the cross of living, or rather trying to live a good and righteous life, one that is not easy at all. You see, keeping myself, my spirit and my body clean are keys to my peace of mind. My sanity. Yet my dark nights of the soul are still with me because it’s much easier to succumb to my innate hedonistic tendencies. We all want joy and freedom, but it all comes at a price. Though I can't keep pace anymore, I do allow myself an occasional bourbon and too much spicy food. Pricey.

The "dark night" might clinically or secularly be described as the letting go of one’s ego, by suppressing the psyche to make room for some form of change in a person’s natural patterns or a revealing of the true self, according to researchers with whom I do agree.

This period in my own life changed my relationship with God. I realized that it was okay to be flawed, acceptable to be honest, a sign of strength to take risks, and healthy to love myself and my life in spite of and because of everything.

As a practicing Catholic, I have found that there are times when my prayer life is strong and I am enraptured with God. At other times, traditional prayer is extremely difficult and I have to ask God to bear with me and to just know what I need without my asking, much as a mother senses the needs of her children, and the children in turn expect that mother’s intuition.

This is what exists between me and God, even when I cannot voice my needs. During this time, I often cannot find God, not find my source during the worst parts of my dark nights when I am alone, and then, I doubt myself, doubt the existence of God. I turn away from religion. I distance myself, and I become the natural loner which is also a part of who I am. This too is paradox because I also crave contact, but am often disappointed when I receive it. God still has some culling to do in my soul.

Here’s more of the Wikipedia entry. I have a few things to add about this as well. The facts are: The second and more intense of the two stages is that of the spirit, which St. John of the Cross describes in the. Dark Night of the Soul as the ten steps on the ladder of mystical love, previously described by Saint Thomas Aquinas and in part by Aristotle. (Wikipedia).

John of the Cross was imprisoned by his Carmelite brothers, who opposed his reformations to the Order. I’ve always thought of the 10 steps on the ladder of mystical love as the same as Jacob’s ladder to heaven.

Each rung requires us to love more that which we hate most. And for me, my journey though this lifetime of dark nights has been about wrestling with God over things of great significance to me – things like divorce (I’ve wanted to at times); the rights of women to abortion (I fluctuate on this one rarely, but I don't want to be too judgmental); human rights (what is the responsibility of our government toward people -- beyond suffrage?); war and religion (I too have a disdain for unchecked ideological fervor); and ultimately, I keep asking these big questions: Have I done enough with my life? Have I done what I was put here for? When will I know how much is enough?

The next two entries are about two of my heroines. Their lives are monuments, great examples for those of us who have identified with the Journey of the Dark Night of the Soul. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a 19th-century French Carmelite, underwent similar experiences with dark nights. Centering on doubts about the afterlife, she reportedly told her fellow nuns, "If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into.”(Wikipedia).

I have read much about this young, beleaguered woman who died young, but I never fully understood what her struggles were about, except that she was human and a woman. She lived and suffered. She loved. She died. Is that what we’re here for? Why isn’t it enough? What singularly profound insight is missing here? Did she see the Virgin Mary like St. Bernadette of Lourdes did? No. It is simple enough. Like Jesus, like so many of the great prophets of all faiths, she too carried a cross – the fear of the darkness, of being all alone in the dark with some kind of supernatural transformation taking place in her soul.

When you really think about this situation, it’s a lot like a nervous breakdown, but worse than that. It’s the kind of stuff we substitute in order to avoid. Instead, we opt for vampires, aliens, predators, or monstrous crimes, none of which satiates the hunger that only God can fulfill. It is easier to watch television that to face your aloneness.

My dark night of the soul is not something I openly celebrate or discuss with anyone anymore. It just is. But clearly not the stuff of small talk. How does one explain to others the journey of the soul and really tell the truth? I’ve tried to say something here about suffering, about sin and redemption, about living with grace even as we move toward death. Death has been up close and personal in my life. My mother, when she wasn't in intensive care, hospiced in my home before she died.

I miss my Momma tonight, only because she was my mother, and in spite of her failings, a source of strength and joy, and she loved me. Although he wasn’t perfect, I miss my father too because like God the Father, he took care of my earthly needs. Yes, like so many of us as we age, these nights are long, but now we can see them coming. No longer the thirty-three-year-olds blindsided by pain and loss, we are not afraid to praise the light even as we embrace the darkness.

The "dark night" of Saint John of the Cross in the 18th century lasted 45 years, from which he ultimately recovered. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, according to letters released in 2007, "may be the most extensive such case on record", lasting from 1948 almost up until her death in 1997, with only brief interludes of relief between.

Franciscan Friar Father Benedict Groeschel, a friend of Mother Teresa for a large part of her life, claims that "the darkness left" towards the end of her life (Wikipedia)

Perhaps after a lifetime of purgation, we are finally free enough at death to willfully join with God. Others may call it something very different, but in my Catholic Christian world, St. John and Therese, "The Little Flower," and Mother Teresa make the most sense.

It was Mother Teresa who said, "every day we are called to do small things with great love," and so I offer up to a world robbed of faith and angered by religion, this little bit of love.

What has your journey been like? Please share.

An Open Letter to Barrack Obama, Our President Elect

Sat, 8 Nov 2008 00:11:57 -0500

Dear Mr. Obama,

Your triumph is the victory of all people everywhere. What I want to share with you today is why your election is a victory for me. I am a middle-aged Creole woman of many races, someone who like you, is often referred to as a mutt among us humans who value ethnicity, culture, race, geography and national pride, and that is all good. But on Election Day and for the past two years, you have gone the distance and in doing so you have ended the worst myth in American lore, that of the tragic mulatto. I can think of none else in Western literary history unless it is Christ himself who has been more maligned. From William Faulkner’s Joe Christmas in Light in August to Mark Twain’s satirical Puddin Head Wilson, the black man with white ancestry has been treated as the last and least of all characters in American Literature. That is until you gave this stock character a name and dimension as a human being: He is you – real, gracious, erudite, proud, white, black, male, Barrack Obama.

America now has to face its past and its future by rethinking its assumptions about race and purity. We have always been a part of this landscape. Rarely have we been able to say so with dignity. Thank you for working so hard. Thank you.

For you are now President of the United States of America, and like I wrote your wife Michelle shortly after the Democratic National Convention last August when I received your email about her speech: I was very moved by the humility I saw, by the grace that shone through a political land mine fraught with all the problems besieging America today, and for the first time, I saw someone in her with whom I also identified -- because of her intellect and her recognition of the strength in simply being real and honest with people about why you were there, and why she stood with you. Michelle Obama and her brother both communicated a proud black American family experience which I understood on an emotional level because their lack of guile was a profound statement which spoke to all American people in words plain and clear. When I heard her speech, about being a daughter, a mother, and a wife, I was moved to tears for the first time during the election season, so I sent in my donation, though small, on that day as I had before and would do again.

Again, not being a political being at all, and having been accused more than once of being antisocial, I respected and admired the lack of pretense and phoniness I saw in you and your family. There you were in a national venue and the message to the world was a simple: I am real, I am here, I am competent, and with your support I will have what it takes to turn this downward spiral in the American economy and national reputation around and give this country back to the American people. I admired both your community activism, your Harvard education, your professorial career and credentials, and your forthright commitment to help everyday people. I, like so many other Americans, really was sickened by trickle-down economics. Now we are facing a Second Great Depression.

When the right-wing muckrakers accuse you of buying the White House for 650 million dollars, I want them to know that, "representatively," it was my dollars that paid the cost for your victory. Yes mine, a retired public school teacher in Houston, Texas. I probably donated a total of $150.00 as I recall. That was a lot for me, but a small price to pay to have a voice in my country. I also talked to my friends. Called my family. Told my students. Taught them lessons about argumentation and logical fallacies. Asked them to evaluate campaign media. I also asked them to decide for themselves. My parents and theirs, as is true for all Americans who have been here for generations, have paid for this country and its government with our labor, our backs, our minds and through many generations of struggle, all the while never attaining the accoutrements of wealth and power. "We the People" are plain tired of being objectified by the mediocre with money.

I am incensed that the losing party would ever imply that you could buy the White House. That is as ludicrous as believing you can change laws without the consent of the people. We have a Constitution which has been ignored for too long. You were elected because you gave voice to the cries and pleas and needs of millions of Americans…

As our candidate, you would write to us, as would David Plouffe, Joe Biden, and Ted Kennedy. Though ill and disabled, I always tried to act positively in my small way. I’m one of many Americans and I’m proud of you. I’m also Catholic, a Pro-Lifer, a conservative Democrat, and a feminist. I’m proud you are a part of my history and culture, only more so, I’m proud because I can honestly trust you to keep your word as a Christian and an American citizen. Mr. President, keep those letters coming. We need to hear from you. You will need to hear from us more than you listen to the media. The media can be bought and sold on a whim.

Now I want to remind you that you’re only human, remind you that God, the God of the Universe, not just the God of Christianity, requires that you keep faith with your best self at all times because you will come under attack from people who think that God only speaks to them –some of these folks are everyday Christians like me and you; others are extreme Christian fundamentalists; some are of other faiths. All of them think they’re right and everyone else is wrong about what God wants you to do.

Therefore, I would like to remind you of Jesus’ words in the days leading up to his Cross.

“If the world hates you,

Remember that they hated me first.

No servant can be greater than his master.

If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.”

Mr. Obama, I can think of no other position on earth that carries a

greater burden than being leader of America, and of the world.

At this juncture, there is no role greater, or more vulnerable, on this

Earth. I know that you know all these things.

"We the People," in America, who elected you for this

Great Cross, are also quite aware.

Although some of us may need reminding again as we suffer through the

hard times ahead. But there is a faith perching in the soul of all

Americans, the vision of our founders' promise and the faith of our

mothers and fathers --our past greatness and our future

hopes.These are the enduring things -- as long as there is an America.

Finally Mr. President-elect: Don’t forget that we are here to help you. We know you cannot do this by yourself. I want to see you succeed. I’m nobody important and my greatest achievement in life has been my 31 year successful marriage and my two children. I have watched them closely all through their school years, I trained them, I taught them, I gave them hell when they deserved it, I took them to church, I taught them to work, I sacrificed and sent them to college, and I also taught them to ask questions, to put God first. I’ve had some rough years, but like most Americans, I am resilient, and like you, forever hopeful.

Just like you launched and successfully ran the greatest grass roots campaign in history, we the people expect you to keep us in mind as you run our country. “We the People” have a vested interest in your successful implementation of our platform: Peace, restoration of the middle class, jobs, healthcare, better schools.

I, like so many people in this country and around the world, have a personal interest in seeing the People’s President, prevail. You are in my prayers. We realize you are not perfect. Neither is this world, but it's all we've got. We have to fix this mess we're in. Failure is not an option. Not for any of us.

Officially American,

P.S. With the weight of the world on your shoulders, don’t forget to be a good Daddy and husband. Michelle, Sasha, and Malia deserve your best too.

Godspeed Sir.