You’re Not Awesome

What is the heart and soul of Christianity in America?

If you pay attention to most of the news related to Christianity, what you see is hatred and intolerance, militarism and fascism, a lockjawed embrace of ignorance, and a blind adherence to principles which seem to actually fly in the face of those presented by Christ himself.

Last week I was fortunate (blessed?) to have the opportunity to see the two extremes of Christian behavior, and while the first was disheartening, the second was wonderful.

First, the suck.

One of my friends on Facebook recommended a new friend named Sandy to me, and being the generally agreeable guy I am, I clicked to invite her. Some time later, I received this message from the woman in question:

I received your friend request but have to refuse. I am conservative Christian. It is too much that you are liberal but when I saw you were into the occult that was just way to much.I have no tolerance for liberals and much less for anyone who gets involved in evil. Hope you find your way out of that because you are heading for hell.

My goodness. Aside from the fact that she blows my rather unformed and informal interest in paganistic spirituality (i.e., I see the sacred in the natural world) into occult evil, she has “no tolerance for liberals.” No tolerance.

Just like Jesus.

For rhetorical effect, and the joy of irony, I embraced the tolerance of actual pagan religion to reply to her:

Go with love, Sandy. My faith encourages me to have compassion and understanding toward people even if they are different from me, so I regret we cannot be friends, but harbor no ill feelings toward you for it.

She responded:

You don’t have a faith you have an invitation to hell. The one giving you the encouragement is none other but ole Beezlebub himself.What a horrid tragic choice you have made for your life. Your future is burning in hell and I can’t help but wonder where mentally you got your self so messed up that you would choose eternity in hell. Of course I have compassion for you, who wouldn’t but it is pretty hard to understand how a mind can become so mixed up with demons. There is nothing grand about saying you are involved in evil but your choice and I know the ending and for you it isn’t going to be pleasant.

Speaking the truth is not being judgmental. It is called speaking the truth.. Your liberal wording reminds me of when a liberal says an area of water is a delicate wetland.. No it isn’t, it’s called a swamp. or liberals call it same sex marriage, It is called legal perversion. Lets tell it like it is. You are involved in a horrible evil entity that is going to take to straight to the pits of hell itself if you stay in it. That is not being judgmental that is the truth. You tack your words on if you want but I am being up front and totally honest.

The warmth of her Christian love makes me feel all toasty and safe, how about you?

That’s enough about Sandy. Let’s move on to someone who Sandy would despise as much as, or possibly even more than, she does me:  a true Christian.

Lisa Bertolini blogs about her own spiritual journey at her blog Soul Liberty Faith:

Soul Liberty Faith is a place where I share my personal journey, my walkabout with Agape, exploring all that grace is. To live with soul liberty is to have freedom to follow Agape, as Agape guides us. This journey might look different than your own and yours might look different than mine. My walkabout is a journey in the wilderness of grace being led by faith. There are times when I step out where there is nothing visible to stand on and that’s why faith is so important to me. I believe in the sovereignty of God to do as He wills in my life on this journey and while that which many might call evil, falls upon me, or crosses my path, I rest in His unchanging grace that there is a purpose for those times. May we uplift one another to walk by faith in this glorious grace, for that is where we are the safest.

On August 2nd, in a post titled “Pagan Kinfolk,” she shared her experiences with pagans online and in a Lughnasadh ritual she attended and participated in:

About a month ago, I was inspired to volunteer for a work day with some local Pagans. The thing that inspired me? Seeing Christian mom bloggers bashing Pagan mom bloggers and watching the Pagans have more grace than many Christians did. The kindness they expressed while suffering from the cyber ‘witch hunt’ stopped me dead in my tracks. I had the most wonderful opportunity to get to know these bloggers better and they have been quite gracious to me and all my questions about their faith. The more I read their blogs the more I realized we had something really incredible in common. So I spread my wings and ventured out to the local park work day with the local group of Pagans in my town. After spending a few hours having a fantastic discussion with my new friend, Stella, I became more intrigued with their spirituality. I decided to go to their Lughnasadh High Day Ritual.

Who is more Christlike? Sandy, who won’t “tolerate” those who are different, or Lisa, who goes lovingly to learn and share spiritual common ground with those of different faith?

Some may be in fear for me and my family as we have taken this incredible journey, but I can assure you that my friendship with Pagans has solidified my faith in Christ more than I could have imagined. Yes, their own spiritual journey has deepened my own. But not because they are ‘opposite of Christ’ or ‘of the devil’ like many Christians claim. In fact, I have seen more Christ (Anointing) in their spirituality than I see in many churches today.

I know which I want to hang out with.

Lisa’s account is a beautiful read, very moving and thoughtful and wise. I encourage you to read it and see the face of a Christianity that exists all too often in the shadow of the politically crusading and hate-filled “faith” we see in America these days, as well as the loving face of modern paganism.

Go read it here. Really. Go.

I don’t know the source of this tale, but it’s one I needed to read and it found its way to me.

Grandson, why are you so full of hateful words?

Grandmother, because I am angry and I feel like saying what I want and who cares anyway, they are just words!

Grandson, here is a box of nails and a hammer. Go and every time you abuse someone or tease or say other hurtful things hit a nail into the fence.

Grandmother, I have used all the nails in your box what now?

Grandson, every time you say something nice to someone you have spoken badly to or even apologise for your words take a nail out of the fence.

Grandmother, I am finished but it took a lot longer to take them out then to hit them all in.

Yes, Grandson, and you see all these holes left behind from the nails?

Grandmother, of course I can see them..why do you ask?

Grandson, every time you hurt someone with words or deeds you make a hole in their hearts and leave scars you can’t see… so even when you apologize or do good deeds later, you remove the nails but a scar or hole remains and takes a lot more time to heal…

Fuck Yoda.

We all know his words of wisdom, right?

“Do or do not. There is no try.”

That’s all well and good if you’re a super-monk toad-midget with a glowy sword, living in an imaginary swamp, created by a man who’s getting closer by the minute to exhausting every good idea he’ll ever have. But in real life, sometimes trying is all we’ve got.

No one is perfect. Not all actions, no matter how resolutely performed, will be successful. The nature of the scientific method is all about trying, trying this and trying that, seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t. And life is pretty much the same.

You want to “Do or do not, there is no try?” Then only act on simple things, don’t aspire. Stay in your safety zone.

Trying is good. Trying is noble. If you try and fail, learn from it and keep going. That is wisdom.

My status on Facebook as I wrote this:

• 

  Tim Byrd

  is trying, in both senses of the word, but trying not to be trying, so it can be just the one sense from now on.

Though no horns adorn my head
My spirit points to the moon’s sky.

Though my legs don’t end in hoofs
I walk a cocksure prance ‘cross sacred Earth.

My body is hairy.
I’m a proud-hung young buck.
Behind sharp eyes my soul stalks wild.

Horned God–
Horny As Hell God–
Reviled by  fundamental debasers of flesh sacredness–
You still live
in me.

I will drink red wine
I will eat bloody venison meat
And I will dance and sing and fuck and live
So that you may be sacred still.

So that I may be sacred still.

So that life will be sacred still.

An inspiring passage from writer Rick Bass…

If it’s wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it, whether it’s a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even (heaven forbid) your job. It doesn’t matter if it’s wild to anyone else; if it’s what makes your heart sing, if it’s what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime, then focus on it. Because for sure, it’s wild, and if it’s wild, it’ll mean you’re still free. No matter where you are.

I am sitting uncomfortably, strapped with my back to a pine, thirty-odd feet off the ground. It’s dark and cold, not yet five a.m. A periodic wind pushes the branchless length of trunk this way and that and cuts through the layers of clothing I wear. The worst part is my feet feel like ice sculptures in my boots. I can’t feel my toes.

I’m on a deer hunt, this autumn of ’91, but just as an observer. It’s bow season and I am unarmed. The men I’ve come with are spaced in hopeful stillness across several miles of night-dark Georgia forest, participants in a ritual much older than recorded time. Hunters. Predators. There is camaraderie, even when everyone is alone, frozen, quiet. Camaraderie building to beers to be shared, observations spoken, well-meant insults inflicted. But now there’s just stillness and darkness and cold.

Uncomfortable as I am, I have a thrilling sense of connectedness, an awareness of how alive I am, and how alive the woods are around me.  This place, this rural, undeveloped parcel of land, still dreams the deep dreams of wilderness, and I, not back in my bed partitioned from the earth’s breath by walls with their own vented, heated breath, am a part of those dreams.

Of course, I’m still cold, regardless. After a time I climb stiffly to the ground and stuff dry leaves between my jacket and shirt, down my pants, into my boots. Leaves are excellent insulation, which is why squirrels make their nests out of them.  I walk in a loose orbit around the tree, a crisp living scarecrow, to work up some heat, then climb back to my perch.

I watch as a distant white touches the easterly sky, hinting of dawn. I think of hunters and the land. Of tradition. Of connectedness, and reverence, and wildness. Of the yearly rituals, considered uncivilized by some, and that is the point exactly. Civilization can leech the blood from experience. Civilization dulls the edge of vitality. And civilization poisons us all–who in their right minds, given the choice, would choose to eat store-bought meat with its steroids and sickly marbled fat, civilization’s entrée, over venison, deer meat, clean and lean and healthy and wild? Experience, too, nourishes, or not, and the clean rawness of nature is essential to full life. That is what this is all about…or should be.

But later, the pack of bearded flannel-clad men reunite, tobacco-spitting stereotypes with pulley-drawn bows of aerodynamic design, and I wonder. From a cooler in one of the pickup trucks, canned beers are passed then guzzled, and after a truck is driven hellbent through a flatland, breaking a new trail, splintering saplings, crushing shrubs, its roar rupturing the cold morning calm, the emptied cans arc to the ground, gleaming seeds of civilization’s progress, planted, to grow, until one day this land too will lose its dream and life will flee and the primal shall peer back at us with a bent back and smoggy eyes…

I watch and say nothing, shamed at my own diplomatic silence and thus accomplice, as guilty as these men, who walk a time-honored, sacred path, thinking themselves part of the earth-and-wood clockwork ticking around them but never quite hearing the music of its rhythms…or the scream of its alarm.

My first “grown up” romantic relationship was with a lovely German girl I met the day I arrived at my Army post in the village of Treysa, West Germany. She was smart and funny and sexy, and we were together for something like four years. She was a good girl friend.

I was a good boyfriend too. Mostly.

I’ve been remembering certain things the past few days, as I’ve dealt with the after-effects of my electroshock therapy, tossed around like a cork on a sea of emotion churning, chaotic, and deep.

Then, I was young and passionate and immature. I had some anger issues. I lacked a certain measure of self control. I know this sounds like I’m about to launch into some darkly revelatory reminiscence, but the truth is (mostly) a lot goofier than that.

I’d get pissed off, usually for no real reason, and I’d lose control of myself. I remember several times telling her off when we were at the local disco, then storming out of the club, into the night, marching my sullen ass back toward the barracks nearby.

Stomp. Stomp. Curse. Stomp. Mutter. Step…Sigh.

I wouldn’t get more than a couple hundred yards (wait, this was Germany, so meters) before all the fire and bile would drain out of me. I’d turn around and return to the club, to my girl, all sheepish embarrassment and regret. After the first couple of times, she took it in stride and forgave the bubble of crazy.

I was barely post-pubescent then, freshly twenty years old. Over the years, I got used to my own emotions and gained control over my reactions to things, as we all do with time. I stopped being such a freakazoid, stopped pitching fits, felt like a grownup.

What also happened, it seems, was as decades passed and I suffered from my depression, the emotions I felt lost power. Maybe this happens to everybody to some extent, I don’t know. But it definitely happened to me. So at the same time I was gaining self control, I needed it less because I was losing passion. I was with my ex-wife for over fifteen years and we were unhappy a lot of that. But we very rarely argued. At all. Our discord simmered, it didn’t boil over.

I’ve blogged a couple of times this week about how I’ve been weirding out and losing control to emotional extremes lately, since having the electroshock. I speculated that my emotional pathways had been blasted clear of years of gunk that accumulated from the depression and an accompanying retreat from the vitality of life itself. Once I started thinking in those terms, looking at my reactions, consciously examining my feelings, I became convinced this is indeed the case.

It’s like the reset button knocked my emotions back to the power they had when I was twenty, stomping around like a goon pissed at little things, but I’m severely out of practice in dealing with such intense reactions. Add the fact my weight is currently lower than it has been since before I was twenty, and it’s almost like I’m the young me again, which is kinda cool.

Starting over. Starting fresh. Passionate and vital and motivated and full of life.

Recognizing the need to regain self control in the midst of this has started that process, but it’s not that simple. I may know why my feelings are turning on a dime, why positive stimuli feel great but negative stimuli are maddening or crushing, but knowing doesn’t lessen the power of the feelings themselves, in the moment.

But I’ll get there. And I’ll be the better for it, able to feel fully, able to enjoy that passion and pour it into living, but able to keep from creating needless conflicts over stupid things.

I’m thinking it may have been a good thing that Kate broke up with me back in April.

Not because I think we had good reason to break up. On the contrary, I think we were doing wonderfully as a couple. We had some frictions, some issues, some growing pains, but all couples do, and those are the things you work through together that strengthen you (assuming commitment and compatability, of course).

And not because I think it’s good that we still live roughly a gigamile apart, because I don’t. As a general rule, I think distance is a terrible thing for a relationship and inflicts great stresses, daily, on a relationship that lovers otherwise wouldn’t have to suffer through. And it can be lonely, being so far away from the person you want to wake up with, drink coffee with, walk in the rain with, laugh with, watch movies with, dance with, and make love with over and over and over again…every day apart is a world unshared.

And, of course, distance can (and usually does) kill a romance. And we did break up, though we remain close and will see what happens from here. We’re apart, and that is a shadow on me. Do I think it’s good that we’re broken up, for its own sake? Fuck no.

So why do I say it may have been a good thing Kate broke up with me?

Because of the lightning.

I was happy with Kate, really happy, but I was still in the grip of terrible depression. It didn’t keep me from loving her, or being elated by her, or fully interacting with her…but it still held me back in other areas of my daily life. I was writing some, floating on the inspiration and energy I got from loving and being loved by her, my darling muse…but I wasn’t writing enough. Not enough to steadily produce the words that are my livelihood. And I was similarly still in stasis in other practical aspects of my life.

When Kate left, I signed on for ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, which I’d been considering for a while. In fact, last fall I went through a course of TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, with an Atlanta shrink named Brian Teliho, as a way of avoiding doing ECT, which was looking like my last real option for dealing with depression. The TMS was sort of ECT-lite, and may be the early stages of a gentler, more effective therapy, but it’s not there yet. I went through the full, long course and spent $9,000 I couldn’t afford (and which isn’t covered by any insurance companies) and got absolutely nothing out of it.

So, ECT was still an option but scared me, was yet another expense (though significantly smaller because of insurance coverage), and of course inertia is the way of the depressive. And when I was with Kate, I felt I could conquer the world, even though I wasn’t.

When she left me, though, I not only realized how much I was still struggling, I went into what the fuck? mode. Yes, there were potential dangers involved. Yes I might damage my brain for good. Yes, I might even lose my ability to write. But I’d tried everything else I knew about, was still seriously debilitated by the depression, and now had lost the most vital relationship I’d had in years, possibly ever, and figured I had little else to lose. And if I went on the way I had been, there was no reason to think I’d improve my life just by doing the same old shit I’d already been doing.

So, what the fuck? I rode the lightning.

And I seem to have benefitted from it, perhaps greatly. I’m writing, I’m exercising, I’m socializing. I’m getting my life together. The insomnia which I’d suffered for a long time, a symptom of major depression and very damaging to my health, motivation, energy, and ability to function, is gone. I have hope now that I can rebuild my life into the life I want and need.

And I did it because Kate dumped me.

That’s why it may be a good thing we broke up. Had we stayed together, I might never have gone through ECT. I might never have regained this hope and functionality. I might have muddled along until I failed for good, ran out of steam, went broke, and crashed into a self-destructive abyss I would never again arise from. I might have enjoyed our time together, but not been able to maintain the relationship in the long run; I’d probably have lost Kate as my life continued to implode.

Keeping Kate in the short term may have been the best way of assuring I lost her forever.

Now, I have had the ECT, and I’m doing a lot better. We’re still connected, and have our lives ahead of us to explore. If we ultimately do become a couple again, I’ll have a richer, fuller, more successful life to share with her.

Again, I hate that we’re apart. But I think we have so much more possibility now.

As the wise man pointed out: you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.