From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard:

“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery.  The surface of mystery is not smooth, any more than the planet is smooth; not even a single hydrogen atom is smooth, let alone a pine.  Nor does it fit together. . .

“The question from agnosticism is, who turned on the lights?  The question from faith is, whatever for?”

Dear Friends,

This post will be a place-holder, a reminder and commitment to write at more length about the importance of our self-talk, especially when dealing with chronic challenges.

What I want to suggest is that we reflect on how we talk to ourselves.  Do you speak to yourself kindly, compassionately?  Or do phrases like “oh, you stupid stupid. . . !” or “I can’t do what I want to, I can’t move forward” come to mind much more often?

First off, do you have a name for yourself that reflects who you see yourself to be, how you want to be called?  What is the etymology of your given name?  Does your family name insert you in a genealogy of survivors?  Or, do you have a secret name you’ve chosen, that you use to encourage yourself in the hard times?  It’s never too late to call yourself by a name that calls you to your self, to your chosen self.

My last name, “Charissage”, is a chosen name.  I legally had it changed from my father’s last name when I was in my early thirties, more than 25 years ago now, and I’ve never regretted it.  In fact, it’s been a name that truly calls  me to my Self, every single day.  “Charis” is the Greek word for “grace”, and “sage” come from the Latin for a wise person.  Grace and wisdom:  hard to live up to, but I have my whole life to grow into it.

Every time I introduce myself it’s a reminder of who I want to be, how I want to live my life.  Every time I fill in a form I have a little nudge reminding me to try to live up to my vision.

As most of you know, I studied theology for many years, 8 years and counting.  Yet I have not continued practising the Catholic religion of my youth.  I went through the changing of my name the year that I was leaving the formal study of theology, a year that saw many losses.  By choosing “charis”, though, I was able to still bring along with me the inspirations that had brought me to the study of theology in the first place, for “charis” is the word used for God’s grace, the self-communication of God’s self to us, in mystery and paradox.  It refers to the Giver, the Gift, and the ground of the acceptance of the Gift, all at once.  It is gift and call, both at the same time.  Even if I experience “charis” as more mystery and paradox than revelation and comfort, I’m still gonna carry that name forward —- that’s what and how  I’m called, and that’s who I wanna be!

Oh, and “sage”:  at the time I changed my name I was immersed in the study of midwifery and herbalism and was working as a labour coach (babies, not unions).  As I examined my world under the lens of feminist critiques, I came to realize that what I wanted to know, really wanted to know, my theology teachers didn’t know to teach, and what they had to teach, I no longer cared to know.  Now, those are my words of 25 year ago or more, and while I would qualify them a bit more today, there is still much truth there for me.  After reading, among dozens of other books, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses:  A History of Women Healers by B. Ehrenreich and D. English, along with their Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness, I knew that my allegiance, my heritage, was with the witches rather than with those who were so zealously burning them.  The French word for midwives, sagefemme, is literally “wise woman”, an unbroken literary connection with the wise women healers of old.   And that, too, was where I wanted to be, in unbroken connection with wise women healers of this world.

So:  What is your name?  What, how, are you called?  Who calls you?  If your name is not what you are deeply and truly called, find the name that calls you into the future, and into this moment.

With much warmth,

Cat

In Buddhism there is the concept of impermanence.  It’s the idea that everything is always changing, and that our attachment to things as they are can be a source of suffering.  We cannot keep people, situations . . . . life itself, from changing.  When we cannot flow with that, with non-attachment to the ways things were, then it can hurt.  Badly.

Impermanence, however, can be a blessing and a comfort to those of us who are in a bad space, whether in suffering or indecision or waiting for something, anything, sometimes, to happen.  Last week I had a busy day taking my son to see the Hamlet at the local university.  At first glance, the day looked like it could almost be a holiday.  No lessons that day, just a short drive to see excellent performers in a version of one of Western civilization’s great plays.  A classic! Then we had lunch with dear friends, and after a short rest at home my son went on to a cherished activity at the library, leaving me home for a (rare) solitary evening of relaxation and reading.  See?  It really did seem like a good idea at the time.

I hadn’t sufficiently taken into account quite a bit, it turned out.  I had to leave the house fairly early in the morning.  It’s really hard to get the old stiff protesting body consort to move without my usual slow walking, stretching, resting, then stretching some more that makes leaving the house more pleasure than pain.  Once at the university, there’s the parking, walking back to get the parking validation, putting it in the car, and walking farther than I usually walk in three days to get to the theatre (remember, wherever you go, you’ve got to have enough strength for the return!).  At the theatre is the line-up to pay for the reserved tickets, then the line-up to enter the theatre in the midst of 398 other high school students and teachers.  We were told we had to be there 45 minutes before the starting time.  I hadn’t known that I would have to stand for most of that time.  The play was wonderful — except that it was 3 hours and 40 minutes long rather than the two hours  I’d originally expected.  Fortunately, I had with me a protein bar to eat surreptitiously while Shakespeare played on over my usual lunch time.  With insulin-dependent diabetes one needs to take these things into account.

Lunch was another 1/2 mile away in the student cafe area, but our friends’ packed lunches were in their car that was 3/4 of a mile away — in the other direction.  Some of the kids and I waited reasonably patiently.  The lunch chatter was fun, but in the back of my mind I was remembering that the car that might bring me home to my comfy chairs was 3 days’ walk plus 1/2 mile away, and I with a son who is not quite old enough to drive (and that’s if he were interested in driving anyway).  Sigh.  At least in airports they have those golf carts to get around in!

It took a long time to get to the car, and I blessed whoever it was who hadn’t given me a ticket for overstaying my time by 3 hours.  But there was still the drive home and the getting through a simple supper before collapse on the couch became available.

Now, one of the ways that I usually live through difficult sessions of pain is by reading.  I have semi-completed books on the go for every sort of attention level possible in the moment.  In some situations only short sections and wide margins will do.  I love the books that have chapters of only a few pages, but where each chapter is a gem, such as Rachel Naomi Remen’s Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings.  Stay with me here, I haven’t totally strayed off topic:

There are some evenings, though, when my muscles won’t let me rest in one position and my brain won’t let me attend to even a sentence or two.  When reading is impossible I move to aural comfort —- cd’s or internet podcasts while I move around finding a spot that might hold me for a few minutes.  Most nights it’s Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ The Power of the Crone series; that night it was Krista Tippett’s podcast On Being.  TV or DVDs are too stimulating with the shifting of images along with a soundtrack.  I need distraction and nourishment, but not too much of it, if you know what I mean.

That evening while I tossed and turned in the well-padded chairs I was reminded by Tippett’s guest, singer and composer Meredith Monk, of impermanence.  Monk was speaking of her partner’s recent death and how all we leave behind, in the end, is love.  I thought about how things change. I was reminded, then, that impermanence meant that my job in that moment was to witness my pain with compassion and to wait for the inevitable change.  And it came.  It took a few hours, but the pain subsided just as tempests do.

What was left?  Tempests usually leave a legacy of damaged living spaces, but this tempest left my living space, my dear body, a home of kindness and peace.  And my legacy?  I so hope that others will be able to say it is love, just love.

Dear Friends,

On Thursday Liberty and I went to see the University of Lethbridge’s production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  By the time evening came, with its tiredness, extra day’s activity, and throbbing “discomfort”, I had plenty of material for another blog post.  However, this isn’t it.  Instead, I want to remind you all of the spirit- and thought-provoking words

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  Act I, Scene v

May you have a night where at least some of your mysteries unfold,

Cat

Dear Reader,

Although I live with chronic pain and several chronic diseases, I want to broaden my discussions to deal with challenges in general.  As we baby boomers age, more of us will be living with chronic disease.  More effective cancer treatments mean that fewer people die from cancer, but more people are living with it, on a day to day challenging basis.  And there are many other challenges.

Many have social or familial challenges, such as caring for aging parents in their final years, where their social lives consist primarily in their numerous medical appointments.  Other friends have children with disabilities or who are on the autism spectrum, where there’s no such thing as a simple life anymore.  Mental illness still remain hidden all too often.  And there are many other challenges.

There are those of us who are committed to making this world a better place in a larger context, who spend hours a week, for weeks going into years and yet more years, working for social or political changes.  The challenges of remaining committed without becoming cynical or burnt out are huge.  Developing our consciousness means that once we know what we know we can never not know it again.  You can’t take a vacation from knowing and caring about the deep injustices or deep traumas of this world.  And there are many other challenges.

How do we live, day by day, with ongoing challenges that may change, but will never fully go away?  If a “cure” isn’t in the picture, what do we call “success”, and how can we measure it?  How do we keep our hearts open?  How can we make meaning and nourish soul life?  These are the questions that have grabbed me; this is what I want to write about.

With warmth and care,

Cat

Dear Reader,

“Soul” is one of those words like “love”.  Those words can be used in so many different ways that they can practically lose their meanings altogether.  When I use “soul”, I’m talking about that which is deepest within us that at the same time transcends us, helping us grasp our radical interconnectedness with all that is.  “Soul” is that point where our unique selves meet “us”, and where we touch that Benevolence/Goodness/”God-ness” that so many of us, across all cultures and throughout history, have intuited.  I like the ambiguity of the word, a lot.  “Soul” is a symbol that points beyond itself, encouraging associations and resonances with much that is within our human depths of psyche.

Recently I came across a description of “soul” that fully resonates with my understanding:  “Finally, we use the term ‘soul’ to denote our immanent human value. . .  soul implies relatedness, complexity, and vulnerability.  Frequently, we are forced as children to abandon the tender, authentic needs of our souls.  As James Hillman has pointed out, soul offers an approach to life as sacred, an orientation toward depth.  It brings a a quality of awareness that is reflective, imaginative, and downward, engaged with the dailiness of things.”  Romancing the Shadow:  Illuminating the Dark Side of the Soul, by Connie Zweig, Ph.D., and Steve Wolf, Ph.D.; p. 19.

So what I mean by “making soul” is the cultivation of depth awareness, of the awareness that life is so much bigger and more mysterious than we grasp at any particular moment, and the openness to making this depth more and more conscious in our daily reflections, tasks, and interactions.

So does that make sense?  Remember, things don’t always have to make complete sense before we can know that these insights are valuable and intriguing, helping us to create ourselves in conscious response to all that is around us.  Mystery.  Unfolding.

With warmth and care,

Cat

Dear Reader,

So you ask, “What do you mean by ‘making meaning, making soul’?”  I’ll start with the “making meaning”.

I mean making the attempt to see our personal daily experiences as part of a much larger picture, as part of the political, social, and spiritual landscapes of our times.  Who we are and what we experience are made not only by our own choices, but by the particular matrix of our familial, cultural, ethnic, religious, educational, racial, political and economic conditions in which we find ourselves.  I want to make some of those pieces of the matrix visible in my life, and explore what is under my control to change or make better.

While I can only speak from my own voice and experience, I want to use my particular challenges as entry points to understand those others with ongoing challenges.  I believe that we can make ourselves larger and see ourselves in a much larger picture of life by stepping into those entrances to see, to enquire, and hopefully, to understand not only my own self, but whoever and whatever is other.  This making meaning is a first step toward having a life of depth and purpose, of contentment and joy.  What does it mean to live a more or less middle class life, with chronic illness, in Canada at the beginning of the 21st century?  As a woman with invisible challenges?  What can I do with this?  How free am I?  How free are you?  And what are you making of your one wild and precious life (to paraphrase the poet Mary Oliver)?

These questions help me transform the chaos of unfair suffering into a carefully woven web of connectivity and belonging.  It helps me know and walk together with all those walking in the same direction, towards compassion for self, for others, for all.  Join me.

With warmth and care,

Cat

God Says Yes to Me

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

and she said yes

I asked her if it was okay to be short

and she said it sure is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish

or not wear nail polish

and she said honey

she calls me that sometimes

she said you can do just exactly

what you want to

Thanks God I said

And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph

my letters

Sweetcakes God said

who knows where she picked that up

what I’m telling you is

Yes Yes Yes

—– Kaylin Haught, from Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, Billy Collins, ed.