I'm out, but I don't want to be
I don't want to be home either
There are so many people downtown
And I could walk into any bar right now and find someone I know
I would still feel completely alone
Came this close to going home, got three texts
Meet me here. Don't go. See you then.
Maybe I can do this. The mood will pass. The night is young
Three different bars, three different groups, only one problem
No one here is you and I'm not even myself
If I just keep moving I can slip out of my skin and into something...
Much more comfortable
First bar, small talk with my first drink in hand.
I know there are words coming out of my mouth but I'm not even listening
He's funny, the other one's good looking and nothing's ever mattered less
Time to move on, Like you moved on? I'd appreciate it if you left.
Instead I leave, find myself moving more easily at the second stop
Find some breathing room and a small part of my soul
A few more connections that seem real. Not grounded in anything but fake flowers
More drinks and I'm done here. One last puff. One more text. Next bar.
Outside there's some unexpected chemistry. Haphazard and fleeting. Like my good mood.
I move inside and there's no amount of alcohol that can numb how empty this feels.
Friends met want me to stay, but there's no joy in this place. And I have none to spare
That was my foot you fucking twat. Please, stop grabbing my ass.
This isn't even well earned sweat you are trying to rub against me. I'm out.
Thought about heading home, had to see if I could dance some of this off.
It works most of the time, but not tonight.
A few more friends to catch. One more friend to patch. Just as I was starting to relax.
I'm the most drunk sober I've ever been.
Can see directly through the haze I tried to create.
Going home seems acceptable now. Past due being there.
Community on my cell phone keeps me company.
Keeps me safe while it's so late. I wouldn't let a friend walk in this neighbourhood at night.
It's the fatigue and hour that have finally caused my brain to stop.
It's not what I want but it's what I've got.
And I'm ready to lay it down. While I lay down.
I know I won't sleep, but I can rest.
Tomorrow I will feel differently and the lens I look through will be affected
More people around me tonight than was comfortable.
Just be grateful. Just be blessed. Forget the rest.
Tuesday, 7 June 2016
Saturday, 3 May 2014
Food & Sex... Just kidding, it's only about sex
How difficult is it to use the vernacular of the truly rooted Christian life when it just isn't popular or sexy? Like, not even to yourself. No matter how good all of these words might be -- or rather, no matter how good the life is that these words point to, they just aren't hip or fun or clothed in the rampant sensuality our world is clinging desperately to at the moment. And they aren't helping you find the authentic, sexual part of yourself, because ugh... male privilege hiding in said Christianity and everything it represents repressing female sexuality, blah blah blah. So you try and change your perspective, or your language, or both...
For me, language and perspective are inextricably linked so I have no choice but to change both. That means opening up my celibacy for conversation again and lately I've realized that I don't talk about this or share it or have open discussions about it like I once did; the subject matter is both too personal and too sexual and too religious all at the same time, and no one really wants to have these discussions so I have learned to tiptoe around it and talk about it in short and funny terms, if at all, or sometimes in very intellectual and cerebral terms that leave it safely clinical.
So if you don't think you can handle a fully honest read about sex/God/health et cetera, I suggest that you just stop reading. Also, I suppose I should include a trigger warning for anyone with experiences of sex in a violent or unwanted fashion. So, even though I still believe sex is and/or should be healthy and wonderful, it often isn't (and certainly was not in my case, as I'll share) because it is the most common form of manipulation currently being employed in the world, in my opinion and studies bear out my opinion pretty sufficiently. Rape, sexual assault and abuse are rampant, and because this is a difficult thing to discuss (super difficult for women, almost impossible for men) the situation doesn't change. It is used as a form of warfare in conflict torn countries, and it runs across socioeconomic lines and leaves silent damage in its wake even in the most “normal” families here in affluent North America. It changes people and how they interact with one another forever.
As a form of childhood trauma it rivals cancer because of the inner damage it does for which there are no protocols or treatments. It is the saddest thing in the world to me that one of the most creative and sensual forms of human interaction is also the most corrupted. There is no cure and no quick fix for the damage that is caused by rape or sexual abuse. What's necessary is to normalize it, partly because that damage can become something beautiful. This means talking about it because, the thing is, rape and sexual violence don't take place in a vacuum. They happen right in the middle of our lives. Sometimes really boring mundane shit is happening right alongside it. That is one of the reasons it can hide in plain sight.
I just don't think it is going to get any better until we talk about it. Until we have open and unfiltered conversations about it. (*Editor's note - I wrote this long before the #metoo movement. The conversations and the potential paradigm shift we are experiencing still seemed light years away) When we realize how many millions of people it is happening to there just might be a way for us to stop thinking of ourselves as outside of the norm. Sadly, but empoweringly enough, it is the norm. I think once you get to that realization it is so much easier to put the thing down and walk forward into your life without it weighing you down. Talking about it as a society just helps people put it in context instead of compartmentalizing it within the rest of your life like it is a separate entity. More later about why compartmentalizing can be debilitating.
So...how and why did I stop having sex??
Just to be clear - I am a very sexual/physical person. Just because I stopped having sex does not mean I still don't relate to situations/people from that perspective. I have a pretty healthy attitude towards sex in that I believe very strongly it is a natural and good thing to do. As a person of faith, I believe that God created our sexuality and the sexual bits that go into making it a totally fantastic experience. He didn't just make our bodies with the right equipment to have sex, He also made our nerves to experience pleasure from the situation and he gave us imaginations and a very tactile character so that it would be a dynamic thing to do. It's not just a minimal biological function.
I also believe that the act of sex is, and should be, an ongoing conversation between two people which ensures that you never stop learning about one another, and that the conversation should be satisfying and fearless.
Because I feel that way one of the hardest choices I've ever made was to go without this very natural, expressive and delightful act - for over 20 years. The question is, why? Actually the questions are myriad. Why did I make this choice? What has happened in the meantime and what do I want to do now? I am still processing all of these questions and have had to go way back to retrieve some memories and try to make friends with them in order to own my truth and be more authentic as a woman in my prime. Mhmm.
Like many women (1 in 4, although some say the ratio is closer to 1 in 3 because of how many remain unreported) my first experience was rape. I was 14 years old and the 17 year old I was dating decided that it was time. Oh, and the only reason in his mind for not really giving a shit if I was okay with it was because he assumed that all girls were just a little concerned with how much it was going to hurt so he'd just get that over with as a favour to me.
To this day I don't really believe I was especially traumatized by this interaction, but for clarification I will say that, while there are four groups of peoples that are in danger of developing PTSD, it is rape victims that have the highest degree - 93% of them - of developing it. It is a violence done to your own personage in such an intimate way that it doesn't have to be multiple times or particularly brutal to be traumatizing, so it could have traumatized me, but in this instance it's just that I was 14 and pretty nonchalant as most teenagers are. I was more disgusted than upset and I can safely say that while it coloured and informed my view of the male/female dynamic as well as making me very wary in any physical situation with men, it was not actually traumatizing in the clinical sense. It was very brief and I remember being in the bathroom cleaning myself up afterwards and thinking, so that's it, that was all about him and not about me for a minute (er, actually less than a minute). Where was his self-control??? I despised and disrespected that he hadn't had any. Subconsciously at first, from that point on I think I did everything I could to learn how to be in the driver's seat where a man was concerned, even though that is not particularly satisfying. I've only recently realized that I am looking for something a little different, but I won't delve too deeply in this post as it's a little tricky and may seem contradictory in this context. Just understand that if your sexual paradigm was impacted by rape or assault, there is nothing wrong with you in terms of how you react to sex or live out your sexual appetites so long as it does not hurt another person.
However, anyone that has experienced sexual assault or a sex act against their entire will is going to have to come to terms with it at some point because, even if you have a different level of trauma than someone else, you have still been affected at your deepest core and it will come out of you as the need to be healed gets the better of you.
The other thing is that I just had no idea I'd been raped, and it wouldn't be the last time. I mean that quite honestly. I didn't feel the need to tell my parents (not that I told them anything anyway, no matter how traumatic it was, but this didn't even warrant a thought in that direction) nor do I believe I shared this info with a girlfriend. They wouldn't have said much. The most I would have gotten out of telling a friend would've been that it was unfortunate my first experience having sex was rushed and crappy. Aaaand this is how millions of women have experienced rape over the millennia. No fanfare, no assault reports, no uproar or outrage from our loved ones or the world around us. Just silently and with an uneasy acceptance that this was our lot as women in this world. In particular, "date rape" was not in our vocabulary in the 1970s, it hadn't entered the lexicon yet, nor did anyone talk about sexual assault.
I didn't have a word for it until I was about 28 or 29. I was out at the bar one night and a friend from college was there as well. He asked if I wanted to leave the bar and go for a walk by the water instead. I did, and eventually we found ourselves talking about sex. I think I told him I'd recently decided to become celibate and he wanted to know my sexual background as well as trying to figure out if he could perhaps talk me out of it, even for one night, lol. I was talking about my first time like it was just a bit of nothing (which it still was to me) and he stopped me and put his arms on my shoulders and said, "Wait a minute. You are saying that he raped you!" I was totally taken aback. I started to say, "No, no. It wasn't like that." He shook his head and said, "Um, did you want to have sex with him?" "Well, no." "Did you ask him to stop?" "Yes, I yelled it repeatedly."
"You. Were. Raped."
"Oh."
Yes. The irony of a man having to be the one to tell me that I'd been raped. He was appalled and I had a lot to think about.
So... I chose not to "go all the way" again until I was about 18. This experience was unheated and unrushed; more like a tutorial. I was grateful though, and it gave me a little more breathing room from which to explore sex.
Or it should have... that breathing room didn't last because right after that I ended up living with a man who was violent and damaged and unpredictable; it lasted for about a year and a half. This is another area of my life that I don't like to look at but that has had profound ramifications right to this very day. So very frustrating. I am currently trying to exorcise this particular demon once and for all because it is probably at the core of every emotional/relational mistake and dysfunction that I have.
I don't exactly remember having sex with this man, because I shoved all of those memories far from my conscious mind, but I imagine that I thought the sex was good at first because I thought I was in love, (I was not, I was just happy to be out of my parent's house) but it very quickly became a way to make sure that everything stayed non-violent and that he would just go to sleep and whatever situation was escalating would stop. It was, I guess, a voluntary violation each night to avoid even more unpleasantries. It was a way of thinking that I was in control, but it was self-denying and soul crushing.
Eventually I got out. Getting out was extremely complicated. I believed I was responsible for his reactions because I left him and he was wounded. Leaving catapulted him into a full blown psychotic break and he responded by stalking me for almost a year. I was trapped in my house because I was followed everywhere, threatened all day, every day. The phone rang over a hundred times a day and with it came messages of menace and threats as well as begging and pleading and attempted negotiating. I would wait till after 1 or 2 in the morning when I knew he had finally fallen asleep wherever he was and go out and walk around the city by myself for hours just to find a way to breathe and be alone with my thoughts. Well... just to be alone, period. He tried to kill himself several times - showing up at my door, cutting his wrists open with a knife in front of me, calling me as he was overdosing, as well as threatening my life and the lives of whoever I was interacting with. He was a never ending, malignant presence and I began to shut down until I barely functioned. I froze people out of my life. I couldn't even let my own mother hug me and I know this was very hurtful to her, but I felt like I was going to explode if even one more person wanted or needed something from me. I started to experience super wild mood swings from numbness to rage which were exhausting and confusing. Basically, nothing about that time is good and it changed me and my ability to interact within a relationship dynamic forever.
Oddly enough it was my dad who helped me break free of this man. As I said, I had thought it was my responsibility to keep him sane and safe even though he was making my life a living hell. Call it the learned reality that women look after things. My dad was not given to handing out advice or talking to me about anything personal or that involved feelings, but one day, after watching me field the 50th call that day, he took me aside and said, "I know this will seem counter-intuitive because you think you are helping him, but what he is taking from the fact that you engage him and talk to him every time he is falling apart is that you still care, and that there is still a chance that you will take him back. It is never going to stop until you simply cut him off. You have to rip off the band-aid. It might be a cliche, but sometimes you really do have to be cruel to be kind." Truer words have never been spoken and, even though it didn't happen overnight, eventually the phone calls slowed down, the times I was followed and threatened became sporadic rather than constant and then, one day, it just stopped.
That is my best stab at explaining that. It is almost impossible to relay what it feels like to be stalked and have your freedom hampered by another individual and, truthfully, I just don't like to put myself back there emotionally in a way that would allow me to verbalize it more thoroughly. It is new to me to even talk about this whole segment of my past because after finally getting some much needed therapy from the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre a couple of years ago (I am giving them a plug here because I'm hoping that any women reading this who have yet to deal with their issues might know there is a amazing resource to go to when and if you are ready to heal) I learned that I had suppressed most of this and that I had no idea I was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress or what to do about it. Not to mention that if you had tried to label what I was going through at the time, I would not have listened or believed anything about it anyway, in fact, it is still repugnant to me that I have to deal with a mental illness because control was taken away from me by someone I just wanted to be free from.
Anyway... I hit 19 and I hit the bar scene. It was the early 80s and everything was done to excess. I was finally free, in body at least, and it was exhilarating.
At this point sex became liberating instead of the opposite, as good sex does, particularly when you are not self-conscious and particularly when you are the one in control of your choices. I had sex in elevators and on roof tops and in church parking lots because I could. I had lots of one night stands and also several lovers that I kept for years. Maybe one day I'll write a post about how to have/keep a lover because there is an art and a finesse to it that seems to be escaping people nowadays in amongst the constant need for gamesmanship and forced nonchalance. I was not promiscuous in the same way that many of my friends were back in the day, because I was/am only attracted to one person at a time. If I had a one night stand, I wouldn't be able to have another one for quite a while. If I was with a lover or a friend with benefits, I could not turn around and be with someone the next night or the next week or whatever. The hidden reason that having a lover worked for me and not a boyfriend was that there is a supposed freedom to be with other people. It's just that my choice was to remain faithful to the one lover I had even though I would never have told them that. So even though I am wired to only be engaged physically by one man at a time I had no problem with the fact that they were with other women because it stopped them from believing that they had any ownership over me, which at the time was of paramount importance to me although I didn't really understand why. I didn't elect to use my freedom, but it was/is important to me to believe that I have it.
I have never cheated on anyone because I feel a profound loyalty to anyone I am intimate with even to the smallest degree. Well, also anyone I care about in any way. Unfortunately I still wasn't developing any trust or respect, I guess, for men in general. It was too easy, there was no thought or emotion in it and I just didn't want any of them getting that close. I think I was maybe 26 when I finally let someone call me their girlfriend. I was not a good girlfriend. I was constantly on the verge of making the situation explode and probably made them feel insecure about how well they were doing in the relationship. Somehow, miraculously, most of these men have remained my friends even though the 6 month mark was all I could ever make it to in a committed relationship dynamic. This is most definitely the part that living with the psycho retarded in me because the thing is, when I finally got free of him, I just didn't look back at that part of my life. I closed the door emotionally and mentally and pretty much acted and pretended that it had never happened. I completely compartmentalized it and tucked it away in what I thought was a safe place, having no idea that it was simply a ticking time bomb in my brain. What was happening was that each time someone got close enough to me to make a difference in my life, I was paralyzed by a sense of claustrophobia so intense I just couldn't breathe or respond like I wanted to. Instead I just panicked and left the situation without examining why this was the case.
I was about 28 when the the idea of just not having sex anymore entered my head. I was extremely comfortable with who I was sexually and physically as it was my primary method (read only method) of expressing my emotions inside of a male/female dynamic. I am, or was, an extremely passionate person so when I express something in that way it can be very misleading to say the least. And at the time I didn't see a reason to restrain anything I might be feeling, even if it had nothing to do with the person I was physically with (this was true more often than I'd like to acknowledge).
It dawned on me that the situation was this: when I first got to know a man, I was all about the talking. Exploration of any kind is intriguing and exciting to me. Then, we'd have sex and it's almost like a part of my brain would think, "This is what you have been after so now this is all you get." (I have to acknowledge here that this would be the effect of having my first sexual experience be a non-consensual one, most likely) No talking, no explaining, and no warning when it was over for us. When I was done it was done so fast that it left them completely in the dark because I was only capable of processing what was happening to me emotionally in my own head and never out loud. I remember wanting to let them know what was happening, or thinking I should, but I just freeze verbally if I am being sexual. Everything I had previously felt about them would just be gone (sometimes immediately, sometimes after a few months) as I became numb from the inner battle that I had no real idea I was fighting. This is super confusing when you've been nothing but warm and responsive physically and then are saying coldly, I'm finished with this. I spent quite a bit of time apologizing to exes when this realization hit. Again, shocking that they are still my friends.
So I began to think that I should spend some time retreating from sexual situations and focus on maybe even being in love before I had sex again.
This lasted for about a year and a half.
That's when I realized that my faith needed to play a role in how I was managing this part of my life. I fully believe that God wants you to have good things in your life, but it's part of my faith that He also knows you better than you know yourself, and He knows if you are being self-harming and lying to yourself about the things that make you temporarily happy versus giving you peace and joy, which so far exceed happiness as to be ridiculous. As the apostle Paul said, "All things are permissible for me, but not all things are beneficial." This means that sex is good and natural, but if you are not doing it in a healthy way, for both yourself and those you interact with, then you need to take a step back from it. Same goes for food and eating or drinking and drug abuse or whatever else we indulge in to fill a hole and not look at ourselves and our intentions honestly.
For the first 10 years of my celibacy I tried to keep to my new values and boundaries while dating and putting myself in normal relational situations. These were all doomed to failure. Each one started out pretty much the same way. "Oh, you haven't had sex in how long? That's fascinating. (There's a word I came to recognize as a red flag) How do you manage? How far will you go? Do you masturbate? I kid you not, every single man is interested in how he is being replaced. I do, btw, but it is not anything like being with a man. It is a counterfeit and is not truly satisfying. In the end it really only makes you want that thing that it is a place holder for. Don't get me wrong - ladies should learn about their bodies and how they work so that they can communicate this to their partners, it's just not a good substitute for intimacy, for me at least, and doesn't make up for that lovely component that only a man provides, at least in my hetero sex paradigm.
After initially being fascinated by my stance and expressing their respect for it, the inevitable contest would begin and it would ultimately implode and so I just retreated from the whole man/woman world and stopped even trying to date. Saying you are sexually unavailable to a man is akin to painting a target directly on your vagina. This is not something most women understand. I would not really think much of it if a man told me that he hadn't had sex for a super long period of time. It would not make him sexier or less sexy. It would just be a fact. I know men like a challenge so I guess it is just in their nature? Basically, this is one of things I am trying to work out right now because in my head, every time I had to tell a different man I hadn't had sex in X amount of years, I would be thinking, "Well, I am sure this will be the un-sexiest thing he has ever heard. I used to think that they would just be like, "That's weird," and walk away. That is not ever the reaction that I got and I am not usually dense about things, but no matter how many times the same scenario with the same reaction was played out, I still thought it would turn out differently. That it would be a huge turn off. This might be one of the reasons I don't talk about it anymore; I still think it would sound ridiculous and yet, I am assured that men would still primarily respond the same way. I just don't want that to be a thing anymore so I don't talk about it.
Back to the linear journey - as expressed in an earlier post, I then got totally out of shape and, well, 20 years older, so I stopped thinking of myself in any sexual terms that I was comfortable with. If I didn't want to look at myself naked, why would any man? In other words, this whole thing became a cerebral concept exercised in a vacuum; just an intellectual exercise.
I believe that all of the reasons I stopped having sex outside of marriage were completely valid at that time in my life. I don't regret any of this, truly. For me, the idea of waiting till I was with a husband was very multi-layered and one that worked for me for a really long time. However, it is the one thing that I am now weighing the merit of.
First of all, for myself anyway, I grew up in a time of history when it was still fairly common that people were waiting, or at least still saying they were waiting, wink, wink, till they were married to have sex. The sexual revolution had not completely filtered its way into small town, conservative places like the one I was raised in.
Once upon a time, there was this lovely balance that took place between a man and a woman. A man gave her his name. Which was everything. It was who he was and what he was. It was his honour and his history and his legacy.
A woman gave a man her body and her unsullied reputation. These were gifts between each other and there was equal respect for what was being given. At least that is the myth that I was raised on.
A topic perhaps for another post but there are many different rationales; philosophically, physically, socially, and spiritually that I based this decision on that I still believe are valid which is why I am struggling with whether or not to leave the course or continue on with it.
Regardless of how you look at sex; whether you are someone who views it as something compellingly deep and personal, or just a fun night of getting some strange, it is a pretty intimate act and you are exchanging knowledge of yourself with another human being, even if you aren't doing it on purpose. It is like mixing sugar and sand.
The thing is, I miss being intimate. Physically, mentally, emotionally, et cetera. It's the details of it all that I'm missing, I think.
But here's the catch-22. I have not truly been able to find out if I know how to be physical and stay authentic with someone emotionally instead of shutting down because I stopped putting myself in any situations that would teach me anything new and now I won't know until I try. I have also realized that the psychological harms from being with someone who tried to control my life have made marriage seem very hard and very confining and I don't know if I will ever be able to commit to it. It seems unlikely because, in addition to just not ever learning how to stay in a relationship, I then proceeded to raise a child and, the minute she was out of the house, I basically became a caregiver to my mother. Time alone is now an amazing gift to me and the last thing I think I will be able to handle is another person in my space in a significant way. I could be wrong. And not for nothing, but I like being single. I am a free agent and I come and go as I please. It is familiar to me and I enjoy it. It's what I know. I may have been waiting to have sex, but I sure haven't been waiting for someone else to complete me.
I will just be as honest as possible and say that I am totally unsure of how to proceed. The world is changing and I am changing; evolving. Yes, I do believe that the things of God stay the same, but I also believe that inherent untruths have been spread by fearmongers in the name of God especially about women and sex, so I go back to "all things are permissible for me"...
So do I stay celibate? I mean, is it time to just completely acknowledge that I will never be open to that part of life again? Do I just have sex again in a no strings attached environment with someone I am attracted to and trust to a certain degree in order to find out if I have learned how to be open emotionally at all? I'm really not sure I want to lay all of this on a marriage, if marriage was something I could even wrap my head around, or someone that I am completely invested in when what I think I might want at this point is a friend or a lover that I can learn how to communicate with at a level of respect and intimacy that is reciprocal instead of me just shutting down as per usual. At the very least I have to get more comfortable in this new place. I am not going to put a label on myself at this point and say, "I am this and this only." I can only respond to what is happening right now in my environment and part of this truth is that the "celibacy" itself has almost become something of a separate entity from who I am, who I've become, and I'm not sure that it's valid currently. I think it is time to give myself the grace to be a new person with new goals and perspectives. Not one of us is a finished product. We are all a work in progress and I don't mind taking time with this season. I'm thankfully not in a rush to put any of this to the test.
At least I have my diet figured out...
Final edit:
I will say this one thing about my first time being raped, which I have recently had some time to reflect on given the overwhelming #metoo movement; there are studies that show that your "flight, fight, or freeze" response is programmed the very first time you experience trauma. That means that if it is freeze, as so often it is for young women, it will take a monumental amount of counselling and effort for it to be fight, or flight. It is something that is critical to understand in this grey area of consent and men not really understanding that we may not want it. The truth is that for those of us that have been raped or assaulted, we were taught that our words did not stop it and that they have no value and no power in the realm of men holding the cards in a sexual/power dynamic. So that ability shuts down. No amount of well-meaning advice on how to get out of an escalating situation is going to help if you have been programmed this way at an early age in particular. So, both men who date us and women who are trying to "help" us (or the few who still feel the need to judge us when we do come forward) need to understand that this isn't a simple fix. This is multi-layered and complex af. Please keep this in mind. And ask questions instead of prescribing aid or help if you haven't been in this situation, and even if you have, understand that not everyone experiences it the same way.
For me, language and perspective are inextricably linked so I have no choice but to change both. That means opening up my celibacy for conversation again and lately I've realized that I don't talk about this or share it or have open discussions about it like I once did; the subject matter is both too personal and too sexual and too religious all at the same time, and no one really wants to have these discussions so I have learned to tiptoe around it and talk about it in short and funny terms, if at all, or sometimes in very intellectual and cerebral terms that leave it safely clinical.
So if you don't think you can handle a fully honest read about sex/God/health et cetera, I suggest that you just stop reading. Also, I suppose I should include a trigger warning for anyone with experiences of sex in a violent or unwanted fashion. So, even though I still believe sex is and/or should be healthy and wonderful, it often isn't (and certainly was not in my case, as I'll share) because it is the most common form of manipulation currently being employed in the world, in my opinion and studies bear out my opinion pretty sufficiently. Rape, sexual assault and abuse are rampant, and because this is a difficult thing to discuss (super difficult for women, almost impossible for men) the situation doesn't change. It is used as a form of warfare in conflict torn countries, and it runs across socioeconomic lines and leaves silent damage in its wake even in the most “normal” families here in affluent North America. It changes people and how they interact with one another forever.
As a form of childhood trauma it rivals cancer because of the inner damage it does for which there are no protocols or treatments. It is the saddest thing in the world to me that one of the most creative and sensual forms of human interaction is also the most corrupted. There is no cure and no quick fix for the damage that is caused by rape or sexual abuse. What's necessary is to normalize it, partly because that damage can become something beautiful. This means talking about it because, the thing is, rape and sexual violence don't take place in a vacuum. They happen right in the middle of our lives. Sometimes really boring mundane shit is happening right alongside it. That is one of the reasons it can hide in plain sight.
I just don't think it is going to get any better until we talk about it. Until we have open and unfiltered conversations about it. (*Editor's note - I wrote this long before the #metoo movement. The conversations and the potential paradigm shift we are experiencing still seemed light years away) When we realize how many millions of people it is happening to there just might be a way for us to stop thinking of ourselves as outside of the norm. Sadly, but empoweringly enough, it is the norm. I think once you get to that realization it is so much easier to put the thing down and walk forward into your life without it weighing you down. Talking about it as a society just helps people put it in context instead of compartmentalizing it within the rest of your life like it is a separate entity. More later about why compartmentalizing can be debilitating.
So...how and why did I stop having sex??
Just to be clear - I am a very sexual/physical person. Just because I stopped having sex does not mean I still don't relate to situations/people from that perspective. I have a pretty healthy attitude towards sex in that I believe very strongly it is a natural and good thing to do. As a person of faith, I believe that God created our sexuality and the sexual bits that go into making it a totally fantastic experience. He didn't just make our bodies with the right equipment to have sex, He also made our nerves to experience pleasure from the situation and he gave us imaginations and a very tactile character so that it would be a dynamic thing to do. It's not just a minimal biological function.
I also believe that the act of sex is, and should be, an ongoing conversation between two people which ensures that you never stop learning about one another, and that the conversation should be satisfying and fearless.
Because I feel that way one of the hardest choices I've ever made was to go without this very natural, expressive and delightful act - for over 20 years. The question is, why? Actually the questions are myriad. Why did I make this choice? What has happened in the meantime and what do I want to do now? I am still processing all of these questions and have had to go way back to retrieve some memories and try to make friends with them in order to own my truth and be more authentic as a woman in my prime. Mhmm.
Like many women (1 in 4, although some say the ratio is closer to 1 in 3 because of how many remain unreported) my first experience was rape. I was 14 years old and the 17 year old I was dating decided that it was time. Oh, and the only reason in his mind for not really giving a shit if I was okay with it was because he assumed that all girls were just a little concerned with how much it was going to hurt so he'd just get that over with as a favour to me.
To this day I don't really believe I was especially traumatized by this interaction, but for clarification I will say that, while there are four groups of peoples that are in danger of developing PTSD, it is rape victims that have the highest degree - 93% of them - of developing it. It is a violence done to your own personage in such an intimate way that it doesn't have to be multiple times or particularly brutal to be traumatizing, so it could have traumatized me, but in this instance it's just that I was 14 and pretty nonchalant as most teenagers are. I was more disgusted than upset and I can safely say that while it coloured and informed my view of the male/female dynamic as well as making me very wary in any physical situation with men, it was not actually traumatizing in the clinical sense. It was very brief and I remember being in the bathroom cleaning myself up afterwards and thinking, so that's it, that was all about him and not about me for a minute (er, actually less than a minute). Where was his self-control??? I despised and disrespected that he hadn't had any. Subconsciously at first, from that point on I think I did everything I could to learn how to be in the driver's seat where a man was concerned, even though that is not particularly satisfying. I've only recently realized that I am looking for something a little different, but I won't delve too deeply in this post as it's a little tricky and may seem contradictory in this context. Just understand that if your sexual paradigm was impacted by rape or assault, there is nothing wrong with you in terms of how you react to sex or live out your sexual appetites so long as it does not hurt another person.
However, anyone that has experienced sexual assault or a sex act against their entire will is going to have to come to terms with it at some point because, even if you have a different level of trauma than someone else, you have still been affected at your deepest core and it will come out of you as the need to be healed gets the better of you.
The other thing is that I just had no idea I'd been raped, and it wouldn't be the last time. I mean that quite honestly. I didn't feel the need to tell my parents (not that I told them anything anyway, no matter how traumatic it was, but this didn't even warrant a thought in that direction) nor do I believe I shared this info with a girlfriend. They wouldn't have said much. The most I would have gotten out of telling a friend would've been that it was unfortunate my first experience having sex was rushed and crappy. Aaaand this is how millions of women have experienced rape over the millennia. No fanfare, no assault reports, no uproar or outrage from our loved ones or the world around us. Just silently and with an uneasy acceptance that this was our lot as women in this world. In particular, "date rape" was not in our vocabulary in the 1970s, it hadn't entered the lexicon yet, nor did anyone talk about sexual assault.
I didn't have a word for it until I was about 28 or 29. I was out at the bar one night and a friend from college was there as well. He asked if I wanted to leave the bar and go for a walk by the water instead. I did, and eventually we found ourselves talking about sex. I think I told him I'd recently decided to become celibate and he wanted to know my sexual background as well as trying to figure out if he could perhaps talk me out of it, even for one night, lol. I was talking about my first time like it was just a bit of nothing (which it still was to me) and he stopped me and put his arms on my shoulders and said, "Wait a minute. You are saying that he raped you!" I was totally taken aback. I started to say, "No, no. It wasn't like that." He shook his head and said, "Um, did you want to have sex with him?" "Well, no." "Did you ask him to stop?" "Yes, I yelled it repeatedly."
"You. Were. Raped."
"Oh."
Yes. The irony of a man having to be the one to tell me that I'd been raped. He was appalled and I had a lot to think about.
So... I chose not to "go all the way" again until I was about 18. This experience was unheated and unrushed; more like a tutorial. I was grateful though, and it gave me a little more breathing room from which to explore sex.
Or it should have... that breathing room didn't last because right after that I ended up living with a man who was violent and damaged and unpredictable; it lasted for about a year and a half. This is another area of my life that I don't like to look at but that has had profound ramifications right to this very day. So very frustrating. I am currently trying to exorcise this particular demon once and for all because it is probably at the core of every emotional/relational mistake and dysfunction that I have.
I don't exactly remember having sex with this man, because I shoved all of those memories far from my conscious mind, but I imagine that I thought the sex was good at first because I thought I was in love, (I was not, I was just happy to be out of my parent's house) but it very quickly became a way to make sure that everything stayed non-violent and that he would just go to sleep and whatever situation was escalating would stop. It was, I guess, a voluntary violation each night to avoid even more unpleasantries. It was a way of thinking that I was in control, but it was self-denying and soul crushing.
Eventually I got out. Getting out was extremely complicated. I believed I was responsible for his reactions because I left him and he was wounded. Leaving catapulted him into a full blown psychotic break and he responded by stalking me for almost a year. I was trapped in my house because I was followed everywhere, threatened all day, every day. The phone rang over a hundred times a day and with it came messages of menace and threats as well as begging and pleading and attempted negotiating. I would wait till after 1 or 2 in the morning when I knew he had finally fallen asleep wherever he was and go out and walk around the city by myself for hours just to find a way to breathe and be alone with my thoughts. Well... just to be alone, period. He tried to kill himself several times - showing up at my door, cutting his wrists open with a knife in front of me, calling me as he was overdosing, as well as threatening my life and the lives of whoever I was interacting with. He was a never ending, malignant presence and I began to shut down until I barely functioned. I froze people out of my life. I couldn't even let my own mother hug me and I know this was very hurtful to her, but I felt like I was going to explode if even one more person wanted or needed something from me. I started to experience super wild mood swings from numbness to rage which were exhausting and confusing. Basically, nothing about that time is good and it changed me and my ability to interact within a relationship dynamic forever.
Oddly enough it was my dad who helped me break free of this man. As I said, I had thought it was my responsibility to keep him sane and safe even though he was making my life a living hell. Call it the learned reality that women look after things. My dad was not given to handing out advice or talking to me about anything personal or that involved feelings, but one day, after watching me field the 50th call that day, he took me aside and said, "I know this will seem counter-intuitive because you think you are helping him, but what he is taking from the fact that you engage him and talk to him every time he is falling apart is that you still care, and that there is still a chance that you will take him back. It is never going to stop until you simply cut him off. You have to rip off the band-aid. It might be a cliche, but sometimes you really do have to be cruel to be kind." Truer words have never been spoken and, even though it didn't happen overnight, eventually the phone calls slowed down, the times I was followed and threatened became sporadic rather than constant and then, one day, it just stopped.
That is my best stab at explaining that. It is almost impossible to relay what it feels like to be stalked and have your freedom hampered by another individual and, truthfully, I just don't like to put myself back there emotionally in a way that would allow me to verbalize it more thoroughly. It is new to me to even talk about this whole segment of my past because after finally getting some much needed therapy from the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre a couple of years ago (I am giving them a plug here because I'm hoping that any women reading this who have yet to deal with their issues might know there is a amazing resource to go to when and if you are ready to heal) I learned that I had suppressed most of this and that I had no idea I was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress or what to do about it. Not to mention that if you had tried to label what I was going through at the time, I would not have listened or believed anything about it anyway, in fact, it is still repugnant to me that I have to deal with a mental illness because control was taken away from me by someone I just wanted to be free from.
Anyway... I hit 19 and I hit the bar scene. It was the early 80s and everything was done to excess. I was finally free, in body at least, and it was exhilarating.
At this point sex became liberating instead of the opposite, as good sex does, particularly when you are not self-conscious and particularly when you are the one in control of your choices. I had sex in elevators and on roof tops and in church parking lots because I could. I had lots of one night stands and also several lovers that I kept for years. Maybe one day I'll write a post about how to have/keep a lover because there is an art and a finesse to it that seems to be escaping people nowadays in amongst the constant need for gamesmanship and forced nonchalance. I was not promiscuous in the same way that many of my friends were back in the day, because I was/am only attracted to one person at a time. If I had a one night stand, I wouldn't be able to have another one for quite a while. If I was with a lover or a friend with benefits, I could not turn around and be with someone the next night or the next week or whatever. The hidden reason that having a lover worked for me and not a boyfriend was that there is a supposed freedom to be with other people. It's just that my choice was to remain faithful to the one lover I had even though I would never have told them that. So even though I am wired to only be engaged physically by one man at a time I had no problem with the fact that they were with other women because it stopped them from believing that they had any ownership over me, which at the time was of paramount importance to me although I didn't really understand why. I didn't elect to use my freedom, but it was/is important to me to believe that I have it.
I have never cheated on anyone because I feel a profound loyalty to anyone I am intimate with even to the smallest degree. Well, also anyone I care about in any way. Unfortunately I still wasn't developing any trust or respect, I guess, for men in general. It was too easy, there was no thought or emotion in it and I just didn't want any of them getting that close. I think I was maybe 26 when I finally let someone call me their girlfriend. I was not a good girlfriend. I was constantly on the verge of making the situation explode and probably made them feel insecure about how well they were doing in the relationship. Somehow, miraculously, most of these men have remained my friends even though the 6 month mark was all I could ever make it to in a committed relationship dynamic. This is most definitely the part that living with the psycho retarded in me because the thing is, when I finally got free of him, I just didn't look back at that part of my life. I closed the door emotionally and mentally and pretty much acted and pretended that it had never happened. I completely compartmentalized it and tucked it away in what I thought was a safe place, having no idea that it was simply a ticking time bomb in my brain. What was happening was that each time someone got close enough to me to make a difference in my life, I was paralyzed by a sense of claustrophobia so intense I just couldn't breathe or respond like I wanted to. Instead I just panicked and left the situation without examining why this was the case.
I was about 28 when the the idea of just not having sex anymore entered my head. I was extremely comfortable with who I was sexually and physically as it was my primary method (read only method) of expressing my emotions inside of a male/female dynamic. I am, or was, an extremely passionate person so when I express something in that way it can be very misleading to say the least. And at the time I didn't see a reason to restrain anything I might be feeling, even if it had nothing to do with the person I was physically with (this was true more often than I'd like to acknowledge).
It dawned on me that the situation was this: when I first got to know a man, I was all about the talking. Exploration of any kind is intriguing and exciting to me. Then, we'd have sex and it's almost like a part of my brain would think, "This is what you have been after so now this is all you get." (I have to acknowledge here that this would be the effect of having my first sexual experience be a non-consensual one, most likely) No talking, no explaining, and no warning when it was over for us. When I was done it was done so fast that it left them completely in the dark because I was only capable of processing what was happening to me emotionally in my own head and never out loud. I remember wanting to let them know what was happening, or thinking I should, but I just freeze verbally if I am being sexual. Everything I had previously felt about them would just be gone (sometimes immediately, sometimes after a few months) as I became numb from the inner battle that I had no real idea I was fighting. This is super confusing when you've been nothing but warm and responsive physically and then are saying coldly, I'm finished with this. I spent quite a bit of time apologizing to exes when this realization hit. Again, shocking that they are still my friends.
So I began to think that I should spend some time retreating from sexual situations and focus on maybe even being in love before I had sex again.
This lasted for about a year and a half.
That's when I realized that my faith needed to play a role in how I was managing this part of my life. I fully believe that God wants you to have good things in your life, but it's part of my faith that He also knows you better than you know yourself, and He knows if you are being self-harming and lying to yourself about the things that make you temporarily happy versus giving you peace and joy, which so far exceed happiness as to be ridiculous. As the apostle Paul said, "All things are permissible for me, but not all things are beneficial." This means that sex is good and natural, but if you are not doing it in a healthy way, for both yourself and those you interact with, then you need to take a step back from it. Same goes for food and eating or drinking and drug abuse or whatever else we indulge in to fill a hole and not look at ourselves and our intentions honestly.
For the first 10 years of my celibacy I tried to keep to my new values and boundaries while dating and putting myself in normal relational situations. These were all doomed to failure. Each one started out pretty much the same way. "Oh, you haven't had sex in how long? That's fascinating. (There's a word I came to recognize as a red flag) How do you manage? How far will you go? Do you masturbate? I kid you not, every single man is interested in how he is being replaced. I do, btw, but it is not anything like being with a man. It is a counterfeit and is not truly satisfying. In the end it really only makes you want that thing that it is a place holder for. Don't get me wrong - ladies should learn about their bodies and how they work so that they can communicate this to their partners, it's just not a good substitute for intimacy, for me at least, and doesn't make up for that lovely component that only a man provides, at least in my hetero sex paradigm.
After initially being fascinated by my stance and expressing their respect for it, the inevitable contest would begin and it would ultimately implode and so I just retreated from the whole man/woman world and stopped even trying to date. Saying you are sexually unavailable to a man is akin to painting a target directly on your vagina. This is not something most women understand. I would not really think much of it if a man told me that he hadn't had sex for a super long period of time. It would not make him sexier or less sexy. It would just be a fact. I know men like a challenge so I guess it is just in their nature? Basically, this is one of things I am trying to work out right now because in my head, every time I had to tell a different man I hadn't had sex in X amount of years, I would be thinking, "Well, I am sure this will be the un-sexiest thing he has ever heard. I used to think that they would just be like, "That's weird," and walk away. That is not ever the reaction that I got and I am not usually dense about things, but no matter how many times the same scenario with the same reaction was played out, I still thought it would turn out differently. That it would be a huge turn off. This might be one of the reasons I don't talk about it anymore; I still think it would sound ridiculous and yet, I am assured that men would still primarily respond the same way. I just don't want that to be a thing anymore so I don't talk about it.
Back to the linear journey - as expressed in an earlier post, I then got totally out of shape and, well, 20 years older, so I stopped thinking of myself in any sexual terms that I was comfortable with. If I didn't want to look at myself naked, why would any man? In other words, this whole thing became a cerebral concept exercised in a vacuum; just an intellectual exercise.
I believe that all of the reasons I stopped having sex outside of marriage were completely valid at that time in my life. I don't regret any of this, truly. For me, the idea of waiting till I was with a husband was very multi-layered and one that worked for me for a really long time. However, it is the one thing that I am now weighing the merit of.
First of all, for myself anyway, I grew up in a time of history when it was still fairly common that people were waiting, or at least still saying they were waiting, wink, wink, till they were married to have sex. The sexual revolution had not completely filtered its way into small town, conservative places like the one I was raised in.
Once upon a time, there was this lovely balance that took place between a man and a woman. A man gave her his name. Which was everything. It was who he was and what he was. It was his honour and his history and his legacy.
A woman gave a man her body and her unsullied reputation. These were gifts between each other and there was equal respect for what was being given. At least that is the myth that I was raised on.
A topic perhaps for another post but there are many different rationales; philosophically, physically, socially, and spiritually that I based this decision on that I still believe are valid which is why I am struggling with whether or not to leave the course or continue on with it.
Regardless of how you look at sex; whether you are someone who views it as something compellingly deep and personal, or just a fun night of getting some strange, it is a pretty intimate act and you are exchanging knowledge of yourself with another human being, even if you aren't doing it on purpose. It is like mixing sugar and sand.
The thing is, I miss being intimate. Physically, mentally, emotionally, et cetera. It's the details of it all that I'm missing, I think.
But here's the catch-22. I have not truly been able to find out if I know how to be physical and stay authentic with someone emotionally instead of shutting down because I stopped putting myself in any situations that would teach me anything new and now I won't know until I try. I have also realized that the psychological harms from being with someone who tried to control my life have made marriage seem very hard and very confining and I don't know if I will ever be able to commit to it. It seems unlikely because, in addition to just not ever learning how to stay in a relationship, I then proceeded to raise a child and, the minute she was out of the house, I basically became a caregiver to my mother. Time alone is now an amazing gift to me and the last thing I think I will be able to handle is another person in my space in a significant way. I could be wrong. And not for nothing, but I like being single. I am a free agent and I come and go as I please. It is familiar to me and I enjoy it. It's what I know. I may have been waiting to have sex, but I sure haven't been waiting for someone else to complete me.
I will just be as honest as possible and say that I am totally unsure of how to proceed. The world is changing and I am changing; evolving. Yes, I do believe that the things of God stay the same, but I also believe that inherent untruths have been spread by fearmongers in the name of God especially about women and sex, so I go back to "all things are permissible for me"...
So do I stay celibate? I mean, is it time to just completely acknowledge that I will never be open to that part of life again? Do I just have sex again in a no strings attached environment with someone I am attracted to and trust to a certain degree in order to find out if I have learned how to be open emotionally at all? I'm really not sure I want to lay all of this on a marriage, if marriage was something I could even wrap my head around, or someone that I am completely invested in when what I think I might want at this point is a friend or a lover that I can learn how to communicate with at a level of respect and intimacy that is reciprocal instead of me just shutting down as per usual. At the very least I have to get more comfortable in this new place. I am not going to put a label on myself at this point and say, "I am this and this only." I can only respond to what is happening right now in my environment and part of this truth is that the "celibacy" itself has almost become something of a separate entity from who I am, who I've become, and I'm not sure that it's valid currently. I think it is time to give myself the grace to be a new person with new goals and perspectives. Not one of us is a finished product. We are all a work in progress and I don't mind taking time with this season. I'm thankfully not in a rush to put any of this to the test.
At least I have my diet figured out...
Final edit:
I will say this one thing about my first time being raped, which I have recently had some time to reflect on given the overwhelming #metoo movement; there are studies that show that your "flight, fight, or freeze" response is programmed the very first time you experience trauma. That means that if it is freeze, as so often it is for young women, it will take a monumental amount of counselling and effort for it to be fight, or flight. It is something that is critical to understand in this grey area of consent and men not really understanding that we may not want it. The truth is that for those of us that have been raped or assaulted, we were taught that our words did not stop it and that they have no value and no power in the realm of men holding the cards in a sexual/power dynamic. So that ability shuts down. No amount of well-meaning advice on how to get out of an escalating situation is going to help if you have been programmed this way at an early age in particular. So, both men who date us and women who are trying to "help" us (or the few who still feel the need to judge us when we do come forward) need to understand that this isn't a simple fix. This is multi-layered and complex af. Please keep this in mind. And ask questions instead of prescribing aid or help if you haven't been in this situation, and even if you have, understand that not everyone experiences it the same way.
Tuesday, 8 April 2014
Get off the Plank
So I started working out.
Trying to be fit. Wanting to get
the body back I left behind when I stopped trying. When it all got very bad.
I like working out, and I am trying to slow down and enjoy
the process which is not easy as I am so rabidly impatient for the results.
Once I realized that I was going to keep doing this until
the goal was achieved I immediately started to feel anxious about what my
reality was going to be as I got closer to it, and what I might experience when I
looked the way I wanted to look and felt the way I wanted to feel.
It should all only be good, right?
I have never known a time when who I am, and what I look
like hasn't caused some kind of drama. From
a very, very early age it was all I was made aware of. And when it should have long stopped being a
thing, in the worst way possible, my own daughter had to be constantly reminded
of how “hot” her mother looked her whole adolescent and teenage life. Who the fuck wants to hear things like that
about their own mom. Ridiculous.
It got so much easier the fatter and more out of shape I got,
even though that took a really long time.
So as I started to see an incredibly faint glimmer of a
suggestion of what I used to look like, all the self-loathing about that body
came flooding back and I felt so unsure of how to be at home in my hypothetically improved body if the best possible outcome of training happens. Who will I be? How will it shape my situation? Never mind that this body is now almost 50 so…
seriously? Why is anyone going to care
this time around? It's just not a big
deal anymore. I am not 30, not even
40. First world problems.
Yesterday my trainer told me to go home and write down a
list of things that were stopping me from believing that I should be getting
healthy & fit and have the body I want, not realizing how fucking neurotic I
was being, of course.
What I wrote was
You can’t move a
plank you’re standing on.
The same person I heard that gem from also said, “The last
thing a person will do is give up their neurosis, because even if they are
wrongheaded, or crazy, or harmful, they are familiar.” They leave us safely with our labels
intact. Staring at the plank and
thinking about it doesn't make it go away.
Neither does pulling at it or smashing it if, in fact, you are still on
it.
So, why on earth would I obsess for even one moment over
something that I've never been able to control in the first place and that isn't a reality anymore in the second place? I don’t need to write a list, I just need to
get over myself in a big way and it doesn't take time. It takes about two seconds. As long as it takes me to just move forward,
one step at a time into a future that has no fear in it for me. If I believe, as I say I do, that the only
life worth living is the one that you live present in the moment that is
happening, without all of the baggage of yesterday and the anxieties of
tomorrow, then that life is fearless. It
is free from anyone else’s influences or harms and hid safely in God where He
holds it in trust for me.
Either I believe that or not. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I just know I am going to be healthier and
happier. I know I am supposed to be
doing it. Because I am doing it. I am so over this.
Just get off the fucking plank.
Saturday, 23 November 2013
2nd Session - The place of Psalms in silence
Rowland E. Prothero, writing over a hundred years ago, says:
"The Psalms are a mirror in which each man sees the motions of his own soul. They express in exquisite words the kinship which every thoughtful heart craves to find with a supreme, unchanging, loving God, who will be to him a protector, guardian, and friend. They utter the ordinary experiences, the familiar thoughts of men; but they give to these a width of range, an intensity, a depth, and an elevation, which transcend the capacity of the most gifted."
Last month we did our second session on Contemplative Prayer on the Psalms. I feel that we only scratched the surface, and it has led me to know that I want to spend much more time on this subject.
Bruce Bryant-Scott came out and explained a number of historical aspects regarding the psalms. I am not going to try and encapsulate that for you as I would not do any of it justice. Suffice it to say that as someone who enjoys the history of the church and the history of the bible (as they are so intrinsically connected), I was fascinated and would like to have heard more.
What was beautiful was getting to hear him chant (in various forms) the psalms out loud in such a lovely setting. It makes you remember that the Word of God should be something you take your time with, something that you linger over and roll around on your tongue like a fine wine.
The main gist of the session, from my perspective anyway, was to try and talk about the opportunity to embrace the psalms as a very concrete and human way to lay a foundation for both silent prayer and time with God in His word. It can be daunting to expect to find yourself so perfectly and completely alone with God in silence, and not all that healthy emotionally, because time in silent prayer can be far too ethereal if you do not connect it to something substantial. It has to have a cornerstone, a base point, an underpinning to keep you both connected vertically to God and horizontally to man and, most importantly in my opinion, to allow you to be aware of the emotions you are dealing with in this broken world so that you can rise above them in the end and find out what it is that God is saying to you about your place in that world.
I love the Psalms. I have been blessed by them more times than I can count. When I have found myself in pain, emotionally, spiritually, physically, I have been able to go to them like a friend, like a confidant, like a guide and be comforted by the non-judgmental quality of the human voice uttered likewise, often, in pain or distress. It has given me the sense that I am not alone in the messy unreligious experience I may be having as I struggle, humanly, to find my feet again in my walk and overcome some area of conflict.
At the end of the session I read one of the psalms that I have been writing as a practice of finding my way out of a bad day, bad mood, bad inner battle, et cetera, in the tradition of the psalms as we know them. As Bruce laid out for us, there are several different narrative styles used in the Psalms: first person, third person, God speaking to us, us speaking to God, either-or...
I don't pretend to know much about that, but what I do know is that there is something inherently healing and solid about writing out your emotions and your inner dialogue; so just pick one that feels comfortable to you. I think that God honours the attempt no matter how perfect/imperfect the final draft. I encourage you to write your own psalm as a way to get at the truth of what you are feeling. I hope to write more/speak more about this at another time so if there is not enough meat here, either ask me a particular question in the comments, or make it clear that you would like to explore this theme more going forward.
Here is the psalm I wrote again for reference:
Psalm 1013
I'm so uncomfortable in my skin tonight.
It's been months and months since this visited.
Grief looking over my shoulder; looking at me from the mirror
Wondering if I'm finished being happy yet.
Ready to take it back.
I want something present and sharp but i get the past, polluted and vague and scary.
I retreat instead
In my head
Fill my mind up with a life that isn't real in the hopes that I won't remember what I was sad about
What I was nervous about
What I can't fix
So impotent so broken so done with this
God, are you still in the centre of this like you said you were?
If I am still in the centre of this will I know you are?
Just be my centre in the midst of this
It's your peace I miss.
It's possible with you that I will simply go to bed
Lie in safety
Till I wake
Not take back what isn't mine to mend
You can take it for tonight.
the end.
So give it a try! It may be fruitful for you. At least I pray it might.
God bless.
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
Contemplative prayer 101 -background, history and Lectio Devina
"these are the things God has
revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep
things of God" — 1 Corinthians 2:9-10.
The first session in the series was back on September 28th. It touched on the background and history of Contemplative prayer (To save you the trouble of googling click here!) along with the basic precepts of it. We also talked about some of the key players in its history and its current state.
I myself was first introduced to the idea of contemplative prayer as a structured part of a daily devotional practice sometime in 1996, and in the spring of that year I attended my first silent retreat led by Cynthia Bourgeault. (Check her out here) I encourage you to search for her presentations on Youtube (This is a fairly recent video) and/or read any of her books on the subject. She is delightful and wise.
I was able to attend several of her weekend retreats in the years that she spent in this area, as well as two led by her own mentor, Father Bruno Barnhart. Bruno is a Camaldolese-Benedictine monk of New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California. He is the author of many books including The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center. (for a full list go here) It was from listening to him that I saw a very concrete fruit from time spent in silence with God; he speaks in the most articulate fashion I have ever heard. It is something to do with the time he spends not thinking and then using the time he is with people to just be a conduit of the words that are given to him, without all of his stuff in the way. Would that I could.
What Cynthia, and the movement she is central to, (as the founder of the Contemplative Society - ( this is their website)) talk about is "Centering Prayer." It is what was first called Contemplative Prayer or Silent prayer, and I am of the opinion that it does not matter what you call it, it is that you make the attempt to do it. My favourite poetic name for it is Practising the Presence of God. Another book I will recommend is called just that, and the author's name is Brother Lawrence. (Awesome book!) It is a collection of letters he wrote to a young monk who wondered at this man's ability to find peace and satisfaction in the most tedious of tasks.
There were two primary factors that led to the desire to do this series at this time. About two years ago, I started watching the growing epidemic of addiction to electronic devices with ever-increasing unease. Even in my own life and the lives of my nearest and dearest they fill every waking hour until the ability to hear your own thoughts, never mind what God has to say to you, is almost impossible.
As I dwelt in thought on this growing phenomenon, I wondered what the antidote would be. At the same time I was also curious about the ever increasing western fascination with Eastern traditions such as Buddhism, Zen philosophy, and yogic practices. Every magazine you open, even the health portion of the nightly news, is full of articles proclaiming the many benefits to be found meditating and doing yoga. It is extremely hip to be a Buddhist. Not so much to be a contemplative Christian. Why that might be is for another time, suffice it to say that the concept of Western Christianity seems very out of touch with our current modern culture, and in the marketplace of self-help, ready-made peace and inner wellness, Eastern traditions are easily trumping anything that can be found in the mainstream Christian church.
I was fairly young when I was first drawn to the idea of silence as it relates to prayer. It might be a very ancient path in the church, but in my late 20s I found it to be very intriguing. Here was this time-honoured tradition that was accessible to me. Like being told you could go back in time and then bring something home with you and make it fit into your modern world. It is a true reflection for me of the expression, "God - the same yesterday, today and tomorrow." It was comforting to me to know that I was entering a stream of Christian tradition that has remained essentially unchanged yet flexible from approximately the 6th century. It may seem a contradiction in terms to look back at the past in order to embrace something that I am saying can be fresh and new, but as a dear friend said, “Sometimes reflecting on the past makes the future more clear and less frightening. You don’t feel as alone.” I feel that way when I know that the pioneers of this tradition were real people just living real lives and that what they taught wasn’t just a passing trend.
It was St. Benedict of Nursia (480 to 543)(more about him here) that first established the practice of Lectio Devina,(more fully explained here) which is important to know something about because it is this practice that contains the tradition of Contemplative Prayer as we know it today. St. Benedict is considered the founder of western monasticism, but it was Guigo II,(info on him here) a Carthusian monk,who died late in the 12th century that formalised the four-step process of Lectio Devina in a book called The Ladder of Monks.
In Guigo's four stages one first reads, which leads to think about (i.e. meditate on) the significance of the text; that process in turn leads the person to respond in prayer as the third stage. The fourth stage is when the prayer, in turn, points to the gift of quiet stillness in the presence of God, called contemplation.
Guigo named the four steps of this "ladder" of prayer with the Latin terms lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio.
Nowadays in most monastic houses you won't find that any one monk does these steps in a linear fashion, but they are there for a reason. They are all aids to getting to the heart of time with God, time in his centre with nothing in the way. I find it helpful to go through each one of them as a way to quiet both the body and the mind to reach a time of silence gently and not be too overwhelmed by it. Put much more eloquently by John of the Cross:
"Seek in reading and you will find in meditation; knock in prayer and it will be opened to you in contemplation" — The four stages of Lectio divina as taught by John of the Cross (1542 –1591).(click this!)
So for many centuries all of this wisdom and this very rich knowledge just stays put in monasteries and cloisters. It is out of reach of the laity and the everyday Christian. But around 1975, three Trappist monks begin a movement that brings this tradition out of the monastic houses and into the church proper. The most well known of the three is Thomas Keating (born 7th March 1923)(Brother Keating info), known as one of architects of Centering Prayer, (more about that here, in particular scroll down to the heading called "Practice" and you will see 4 point set of guidlines by Basil Pennington on the physical practice of it) a contemporary method of contemplative prayer, that emerged from St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, Massachusetts.
It is this new emergence and accessibility that brought people like Bruno Barnhart and Cynthia Bourgeault into prominence in this area, and into 2013 there are new authors appearing in the New Monastic movement which looks to cement even further this idea that we all have inherited this wisdom and it is not for keeping in stale, old monasteries, but in our churches (no matter what the denomination), in our homes, driving in a car, or wherever you find yourself in need of plugging in with God rather than your cell phone. I think that if you have found yourself drawn to some part of this, God probably has something specific to say to you about the relationship He wants to have with you and a devotional practice that can bear unexpected fruit for you.
It is apparent that each new generation finds something fresh and relevant in this ancient tradition, although the language might seem intimidating at first. We invite you to explore it with us next Saturday, October 26th when we will talk a little bit about how to get at some of the emotional, social, or cultural issues that keep us from being comfortable with silence, as well as exploring how the Psalms can act as a foundation on which to place what is sometimes an ethereal experience.
Saturday, 12 October 2013
Dialogue, Debate and/or Discussion
The following post is from several years ago. But i had it stored in a different blog and wanted to move it here to be reminded of it:
I found out something I did not know today! I have always believed that I valued and appreciated discussion above debate. However, upon researching the difference today, I stumbled upon the reality for myself, which is, I do not really like either one.
The verbal dynamic that I have heretofore thought of as "discussion" is actually "dialogue". For the purposes of clarity and just to lay out the differences and convergences of all three, I have put an explanation I found most useful below. It is from a site called "socratic seminars". It was just a point by point chart really, but very clear and, as it says, it is not a discussion as to whether there is a good or a bad way to go about this, there are just differences. Where the difficulty lays (and the trap for humans in relationship with each other to be careful about) is in knowing whether they are all participating in the same thing. I mean, it is no good to anyone if you think you are having a debate and someone in the same conversation thinks they are entering into dialogue or vice versa. Sometimes this runs along gender roles and sometimes it runs along philosophical ideologies. Anyway, have a look. Maybe you'll learn something too! I know I did. :)
Dialogue
Debate and/or Discussion
Dialogue is collaborative; cooperative; multiple sides work toward a shared understanding
Debate is competitive and/or oppositional; two (or more) opposing sides try to prove each other wrong; sometimes Discussion can move in this direction as well
In dialogue, one listens to understand, to make meaning, and to find common ground
In debate, (and sometimes discussion) one listens to find flaws, to spot differences, and to counter arguments
Dialogue enlarges and possibly changes a participant's point of view
Debate defends assumptions as truth; in discussions, participants may tend to "dig in"
Dialogue creates an open-mined attitude; an openness to being wrong and an openness to change
Debate creates an close-minded attitude, a determination to be right;
Discussion often tends to lead toward one "right" answer
In dialogue, one submits one's best thinking, expecting that other people's reflections will help improve it rather than threaten it
In debate, and often discussion, one submits one's best thinking and defends it against challenge to show that it is right
Dialogue calls for temporarily suspending of one's beliefs
Debate, and sometimes discussion, calls for investing wholeheartedly in one's beliefs
In dialogue, one searches for strengths in all positions
In debate, and sometimes discussion, one searches for weaknesses in the other positions
Dialogue respects all the other participants and seeks not to alienate or offend
Debate rebuts contrary positions and may belittle or deprecate other participants; a discussion gone awry may end up this way as well
Dialogue assumes that many people have pieces of answers and that cooperation can lead to a greater understanding
Debate assumes a single right answer that somebody already has
Dialogue remains open-ended
Debate demands a conclusion
Dialogue is mutual inquiry; collective knowledge
Discussion is individual opinions; individual knowledge
Dialogue practices a product
Debate and discussion produce products
Dialogue is divergent
Debate, and often discussion, is convergent
Note:
The differences between and among dialogue, discussion, and debate should not imply that dialogue is "good" and that discussion and debate are "bad." There are certainly times when discussion and debate are useful instructional strategies. The chart above is simply intended to articulate the differences.
I found out something I did not know today! I have always believed that I valued and appreciated discussion above debate. However, upon researching the difference today, I stumbled upon the reality for myself, which is, I do not really like either one.
The verbal dynamic that I have heretofore thought of as "discussion" is actually "dialogue". For the purposes of clarity and just to lay out the differences and convergences of all three, I have put an explanation I found most useful below. It is from a site called "socratic seminars". It was just a point by point chart really, but very clear and, as it says, it is not a discussion as to whether there is a good or a bad way to go about this, there are just differences. Where the difficulty lays (and the trap for humans in relationship with each other to be careful about) is in knowing whether they are all participating in the same thing. I mean, it is no good to anyone if you think you are having a debate and someone in the same conversation thinks they are entering into dialogue or vice versa. Sometimes this runs along gender roles and sometimes it runs along philosophical ideologies. Anyway, have a look. Maybe you'll learn something too! I know I did. :)
Dialogue
Debate and/or Discussion
Dialogue is collaborative; cooperative; multiple sides work toward a shared understanding
Debate is competitive and/or oppositional; two (or more) opposing sides try to prove each other wrong; sometimes Discussion can move in this direction as well
In dialogue, one listens to understand, to make meaning, and to find common ground
In debate, (and sometimes discussion) one listens to find flaws, to spot differences, and to counter arguments
Dialogue enlarges and possibly changes a participant's point of view
Debate defends assumptions as truth; in discussions, participants may tend to "dig in"
Dialogue creates an open-mined attitude; an openness to being wrong and an openness to change
Debate creates an close-minded attitude, a determination to be right;
Discussion often tends to lead toward one "right" answer
In dialogue, one submits one's best thinking, expecting that other people's reflections will help improve it rather than threaten it
In debate, and often discussion, one submits one's best thinking and defends it against challenge to show that it is right
Dialogue calls for temporarily suspending of one's beliefs
Debate, and sometimes discussion, calls for investing wholeheartedly in one's beliefs
In dialogue, one searches for strengths in all positions
In debate, and sometimes discussion, one searches for weaknesses in the other positions
Dialogue respects all the other participants and seeks not to alienate or offend
Debate rebuts contrary positions and may belittle or deprecate other participants; a discussion gone awry may end up this way as well
Dialogue assumes that many people have pieces of answers and that cooperation can lead to a greater understanding
Debate assumes a single right answer that somebody already has
Dialogue remains open-ended
Debate demands a conclusion
Dialogue is mutual inquiry; collective knowledge
Discussion is individual opinions; individual knowledge
Dialogue practices a product
Debate and discussion produce products
Dialogue is divergent
Debate, and often discussion, is convergent
Note:
The differences between and among dialogue, discussion, and debate should not imply that dialogue is "good" and that discussion and debate are "bad." There are certainly times when discussion and debate are useful instructional strategies. The chart above is simply intended to articulate the differences.
Thursday, 10 October 2013
Wells, Nevada
I fell asleep last night with a little girl resting in my arms.
She's a grown woman, but she's a little girl.
She may not have known she was in them, but in my mind's eye, I remembered what it was like, what it felt like to hold my own daughter across my lap in a rocking chair till she fell asleep and I just put us together in one, right there in Wells, Nevada.
She was right beside me
She was almost a thousand miles away and she was right beside me
I spent the night in Wells, Nevada, while falling asleep for snatched moments here on the Island.
I could smell the floors and felt the night around me, the silence getting bigger as it got later.
Knew what it looked like through the living room window into the dark, but I've never been there. Curled up beside her under the table she'd pulled her blanket and laptop beneath while we both tried to believe in the illusion of safety inside her makeshift fort.
Knew a stranger was breathing deeply in the other room, but didn't know if they were awake or not. The big man who rescued her from the side of the road.
Prayed short anxious one word prayers; Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
Does she know I actually did keep the laptop open and on all night, my hand reaching out of its own volition to shift it back to the feed of her sleeping every time the screen went dark.
And I miss Wells, Nevada, because I was there, seriously, but I was so glad we got the fuck out.
I miss being there with that little girl, with that
teenager, with that grown woman.
I miss hearing all of her words; spoken with that rich Kentucky-bred treacle. Each and every one of them. Some showed me a keyhole, some a window, some
opened up a door real wide.
I like this girl. I
understand this girl. I want to raise
this girl all over again and take her to school, drop her off on the first day of school
with a perfectly packed lunch bag full of love and sandwiches.
I want to put a band-aid on
her knees when she falls and gets them skinned, and I want to hear about her first love, and teach her how to drive a car so that when she grows up and gets a truck and drives across the country and gets stranded in Wells, Nevada, she remembers us laughing hysterically when she got it all wrong the first time.
I'd like to do it all in reverse until she gets what she needs, what she deserved to have.
I told her, "It's good to work out whether you want someone for something you need that you never got, or someone you need for something you never even knew you wanted", but the truth is she needed a good mother for pity's sake, a strong father so she can rest easy in who she is.
Wells, Nevada... never thought I'd be there, but I'll always be glad I was. Can't shake the feeling of the desert out of my heart right now and I don't think I'll try right away.
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