The 39th Revelation

The 39^th Revelation

I turn 39 this Sunday. In a lot of ways this is a relief. For the past 8 years many people who don’t know me have presumed that I must be in my 40s. I have thought about why this would be. Do I look old? Am I wearing “mom” jeans? Am I acting crotchety? Upon analysis I quickly debunk my own presuppositions. The reality is that I act generally immature, I have a fantastic wardrobe and I barley have a wrinkle. So, why all this age inflation or rather, why does anyone care?

When I was a child, my mother would not tell anyone her age. She didn’t even let me see her driver’s license out of fear of me revealing her birth year to those she entertained. This mystery was extra frustrating for me since my mother and I share a Birthday. I always wanted to know how old she turned on the day that she birthed me. The secret was disclosed on her 40^th Birthday. My father surprised her with a used 1978 Cadillac Coupe DeVille. My father was from the generation that loved Caddys the way that “Go Green” urbanites love Priuses today. My mother, on the other hand, was not a fan. Wait that was an understatement; my mother, upon removing her blindfold and viewing her new set of wheels, lost her mind. She did not want the car. She also did not want to turn 40 and have it exposed to her children who might go and tell someone. She wanted her youth. She wanted it to last forever.

A similar car that my mother was given. I drove it into high school. The engine would die on left hand turns.

I had a dream several months ago. It was one of those dreams that stay with you and wind themselves around your waking consciousness. The details of the dream are long and arduous and I believe the many parts deserve their own examination. However, the events culminate with Rob and me driving up to our church, which was not really our church, to find a music festival-size stage taking up most of the courtyard area, which was no longer there. U2 music was blaring and there was an extremely thin middle-age blonde woman performing what appeared to be karaoke on the giant platform. A screen behind her displayed all sorts of beautiful roses. I was struck by the floral scenery and grabbed my camera to capture the moment. The woman jumped off the stage and threw me against a wall. She pinned me and began to angrily insist that I don’t call her beautiful unless I kiss her. This all felt very real to me, so out of fear I closed my eyes and puckered my lips. The blonde was squeezing my neck and I gasped for breath. Then, I felt her tongue touching between my outstretched lips. I opened my eyes and found that the woman had transformed into a huge yellow snake that was attempting to shove its forked tongue into my mouth. I woke with a jolt and a cry for Mary.

I have spent months considering the meaning of this part of my dream. Carl Jung says everyone in your dream is you, or rather a symbol of you or your shadow material. What I have concluded is that the snake is symbolic of the process of my healing and that the woman is representative of the person who I do not want to be and that person is my mother.  Let me clarify, my mother is not all bad but she has made choices in her life to not acknowledge and attempt to mend her own brokenness and through this caused a lot of damage to those around her including her children and although not recognized, she has lived a life full of anger, fear, and lonely resentment.  The blonde in my dream denotes my mother’s subconscious hold on me and the snake (an image of healing) represents my ultimate choice in life: Do I resist the not so pretty truth that I too can easily become angry, fearful and lonely or do I go ahead and kiss it, make friends with it and call it beautiful and through this find wholeness and health.

A Franciscan priest named Richard Rohr has written at length about the first and second halves of life. He states that an individual has to experience a great failure or loss to get catapulted into the second half of life. This is equated to the death of the false Self and through this death an individual, if appropriate steps are taken, can gain fulfillment and develop into a whole and content human being. Rohr is explicit in saying that the first half is not bad and is definitely necessary. However, how one manages their entrance into middle age can mean the difference between, as Erickson put it, ego integrity and despair.  Obviously my mother’s birth year antics are not an example of entering wisely into the second half of life.

As the day that I turn 39 approaches, I have been reflecting on a passage from Revelation. It talks about those who participate in the first resurrection will not be impacted by the, “second death.” It is my hope that as I enter into middle age I will continue to be resurrected from my first death so that I may gain not just years but wisdom and that I will gracefully accept the end of my existence from this realm when the next half has been played out. I might even buy a Cadillac and a pet snake.

It’s Not About The Cupcake

It’s Not About The Cupcake

I was recently having lunch with a friend who has been going through some serious personal trials. He was talking about how his reactions to various situations are more understandable to him now that he is in Psychotherapy. I shared with my friend that I totally agree with this observation and that I too am able to analyze my reactions to things from a much different angle than pre-therapy me. Putting this newfound self-scrutiny into action is a totally different story. As we talked, I brought up a saying that I like to use, “It’s not about the cupcake.” I love this adage because upon explanation of its meaning, most people incorporate it into their own common usage. It also fully describes those times when people obviously have no ability to self-reflect on their own behavior.

The cupcake in the back was called the "Tantrum Tamer." It was our biggest seller.

I coined the term when we owned Lulu’s Cupcakes. Anyone who has worked in the hospitality industry will tell you how awful hungry people can be. What I saw at the cupcake shop was different. During any given month, at least one customer would fly out of control about their dislike of our offerings. What made the situation more odd was that these were not the people putting in huge corporate or wedding orders. These emotionally unstable confectionary consumers were the people who bought a single cake or even stranger had not purchased anything. The angry complaints ranged from, “What are you thinking, not offering a red velvet cake!?! That’s just stupid!” to, “My cupcake was dry and it ruined my entire day!” Foul language and yelling was not uncommon even after an apology and an offer for a replacement or refund. During this time it was hard for me to not take it personally. I also had not realized my own triggers that could (and still can) lead me to the, “it’s not about the cupcake” edge. 

One day, while working my Speech Therapy job, an administrator said to me after an intense meeting with a very upset parent, “The parent isn’t really angry about the Special Education services. They are distraught about having a disabled child and everything that goes along with that.” It hit me. The cupcake customers were not really angry about their disappointing dessert. They probably had other shit going on in their lives; perhaps really bad shit. The cupcake and the shop owner or employees were easy targets for their discharge of emotions.

Over the course of the last couple of years I have remembered incidents from my own life that embody my invented proverb.  A perfect albeit tragic example was after my father’s death when my mother found my dad’s toupee and placed it on her face and jumped around wildly, screaming, “This is my fucking facelift!? Damn it! Lloyd (my father) was so worried about his Goddamn hair and here I am left with this fucking toupee and I could have used the money for a facelift!” Um, it wasn’t about the hairpiece. It’s not about the cupcake. My guess is that my mother was slightly grieving the loss of her spouse but was stressed and pissed that she was left an inheritance of debt totaling over $100,000 (this was in 1989).

I am embarrassed to think that one of the reasons that I enjoy my saying so much is because I am probably the guiltiest of projecting my anger onto unsuspecting recipients. Giving people the cupcake treatment, so to speak. I have a history of losing it on bankers, tire shop employees, fellow volunteers, and I am sorry to confess, once on a fast food worker, the later happening in High School when I was under pressure to get back to campus after lunch. My outbursts were the most severe and undeserved when I was younger and felt hyper vigilant of my place in society. I was an angry young adult with a definite “screw you” chip on my shoulder. I was ready to find and point out perceived or real injustices and proceed to verbally slam the person delivering these wrongs. In retrospect it really wasn’t about the multiple overdraft fees, the poorly installed tires, the bitchy philanthropic cliques or the slowly prepared taco. It wasn’t about the cupcake.

As my friend and I finished lunch it dawned on me how far I have come. Although at times I still react in a cupcake rage, I am usually able to redirect myself and define my underlying problem. Am I tired? Stressed? Does this person/event trigger a childhood or familial memory? As I said initially, I am able to more readily analyze my reactions and as they say awareness is the first step. I am still working on putting these tools to work for me. My friend and I agreed that everyone should be in therapy at least once in his or her life if for no other reason than to identify times when it isn’t about the cupcake. So, next time you flip about your barista improperly frothing your latte, a slow loading cell phone application or a delayed flight, remind yourself: It’s not about the cupcake!

Finding the Divine in a Cardboard Box

Finding the Divine in a Cardboard Box

Up until recently Michelangelo’s Pieta was a disturbing religious icon for me. The classic figure depicts Mother Mary holding her dead son on her lap. Does it really get any worse? When I was an adolescent and would see this symbol either in a picture or as a three-dimensional piece of art, I would cringe. Yuck! Who wants to look at that? How morbid! Isn’t God supposed to make you feel good? It only got worse when I became a mother. The notion of losing a child was unbearable. Why would an artist choose to represent the concept of that by creating a big statue of it? Craziness!

To make things worse, my church has one of these effigies in its chapel. Jesus, I am not even with the Romans and we still have to be so damn macabre! Anyway, I sat one morning in the chapel trying not to look at it. I thought to myself, “You may want me to, but I’m not turning my head in your direction Mr. Dead Jesus. Sorry NOT doing it! I am just going to sit here and look at that tapestry!” Then my compulsion took over. Slowly I glanced toward its place on the altar. It was like a car accident. I did not want to look but I had to. And then I was grabbed. The rubbernecking began. I stared and stared. I noticed how much larger Mary seemed than Jesus. She also appeared calm and easily able to maneuver a man-sized corpse. Suddenly tears welled in my eyes and poured down onto my shirt. I was filled with a realization that God holds us in our misery and that Jesus in the Pieta represents human brokenness on the deepest level possible. It was all so sad and happy at the same time. For me to be able to hold the tension of an infinitely caring God allowing Her creation to suffer so much, and for me to accept that, was huge. God’s purpose is not to make mine or anyone else’s lives peachy and happy but that God is big enough to hold the desolation of humanity and the goodness of the world all in one package. I realize none of these ideas are novel but at the time it felt like a personal breakthrough.

My next step was to order myself a miniature Pieta (sometimes retail therapy is necessary after a theological discovery). I found the perfect one. It was even made in Italy not China! The package arrived in about 10 days. It sat there on the kitchen table; a cardboard cube begging for me to open it. I approached it with shears only to find another hallowing event waiting for me inside. I pulled the statuette out and immediately had a flashback to my childhood.

It dawned on me that this was not the first time that God came to me in a cardboard box. In 1980 my family was living in Maryvale (a Suburban development in West Phoenix). Our house was a 1950s ranch style home that hadn’t been updated since maybe 1960. The lack of modern appliances spurred my parents to buy a brand new, Almond, side-by-side refrigerator. The best thing ever was included with the fridge-freezer, a large cardboard box! I promptly laid the container on our unkempt back patio. I fashioned windows with scissors and hung make shift curtains. I stocked it with blankets, stuffed animals and crayons. I drew designs and pictures on the inside. This was my refuge. I loved being in there, hidden. My mind would wander and I would create stories in my head that entertained me for hours. One afternoon I retired to my abode and stealth fully took a doll house size “bible” with me. I had obtained this contraband literature at the State Fair. A fundamentalist was preaching in one of the crowded exhibit halls and his counterpart handed it to me. My mother saw and quickly stated, “Oh God! Those people, always trying to shove their religion down people’s throats. My mother gave all her money to those assholes and she never gave me a dime!” I knew the reading of this prayer book would not set well with my mom, so, of course I snuck it into my fort. I sat there and read the abridged passages and it happened. God came. A presence that can only be described as divine encompassed me and I knew all would be well in my world if I could rely on this personal truth. I understood that God was omnipresent and benevolent . I knew without being able to name it. I trusted and I was hooked.

I realized, as I stood holding my brand new Pieta that God makes Herself present in lots of places and my initial experience sitting in that box was as true and valid as any encounter with God I could have had. It also dawned on me that my years long resistance to the Pieta was just my fear that if I admitted that life is truly awful sometimes it might negate the existence of God and thus invalidate my early experience. That sanctifying moment in the chapel proved otherwise, because God was there too.

My Pieta currently sits on my dresser and I am thinking of incorporating it into a cardboard shrine. Michelangelo would be proud.

Searchlight and The Toilet in the Desert

Searchlight and The Toilet in the Desert

My parents finally managed to settle for a while when I was 4 years old.  Their travels ultimately landed them in the small Nevada town of Searchlight. My father had agreed to mange one of the community’s only restaurants and to provide their music as well. By this time our family had acquired a tour bus or rather a REVCON R.V. It served as our home and felt like a sanctuary to me.

I attended a local preschool and my parents would dutifully run the hospitality side of the establishment that our home on wheels was parked behind. These were happy times. I was the smartest at my school. I knew my alphabet and was starting to do simple math calculations. I had friends, as did my brother who was becoming increasingly more socially awkward. My best little girlfriend whose name I cannot recall, had a mat of blond hair on her head that matched her persistently dirty face. We would play for hours on end. When she had had enough she would express her desire to return to her trailer by biting me as hard as she could on my arm eliciting at least one trip to the clinic for a tetanus shot.

My father was a gifted musician and salesman. He would often times be more focused on “making it big” than actually worrying about his children’s safety or anything else for that matter. He placed a coffee urn poorly by the edge of a counter and strung its power cord across a walkway. He warned me repeatedly to stay away from his strategically placed booby trap. Inevitably, the day came when my lack of wisdom became very evident. I ran my 4-year-old self right through the precarious site; the container with 5 gallons of hot coffee came tumbling down on me. A shriek. Next, my father’s fed up voice filled with anger and disappointment, “What the hell did you do? I told you to stay away from here! Carol (my mother)! God damn it! Carol!” My mother, being concerned for my wellbeing (at least that point in my life) came running. I remember cold water and a heated argument about whether to seek professional medical help. The decision was made to not pursue treatment but rather to slather vitamin-E on the burned tissue that encompassed most of my left arm. Lack of appropriate medical care (barring vaccinations) was a theme in my house growing up. This was presented to us as a financial decision with heavy overtones of paranoia. The home remedy worked with amazingly little scarring. I was back to playing with my friends and brother in no time.

The REVCON was not my only shelter during that period. A fort was artfully crafted in the back of the tavern. My brother and I would share this primitive cave with our friends. When we were not engrossed in imaginary play, or dodging rattlesnakes we would hike unsupervised in the desert adjacent to town. One day, after a seemingly endless walk, my brother and I came up over a parched embankment to discover a large ninety degree slab of marble, that reached vertically into the air about 12 feet. . At the base of the partial structure was a toilet. A single white commode embedded into the greyish block that appeared to have once been attached to a hotel was the strangest sight in the middle of a truly ugly, vacant desert.  We mused as to how it got there. Was it from an abandoned ghost town? Did a helicopter drop it there by accident on its way to Vegas? Whatever it might have been, the sight of the toilet in the desert has lingered with me all of these years.

Our sojourn in Nevada ended dramatically one evening when our R.V. burnt up on a Las Vegas street. My family stood on the curb, helplessly watching it perish in flames. Shortly there after, we dragged ourselves to Phoenix in that gold Olds Cutlass Supreme.  Still, the image of that toilet in the desert has stuck with me. As I reflect upon this as an adult, I view the toilet as a foreshadowing metaphor of my young life in Phoenix. Toilets are undoubtedly useful, as was my 13 formidable years in Phoenix as a child. Toilets can also leak, crack, get clogged up and overflow with shit and might need to be upended and replaced all together. Now, I realize that I had spent 20 years of my life denying that the toilet needed an overhaul. Others might have noticed the smell or tried to unsuccessfully plunge but it was ultimately my responsibility alone to fix the plumbing. Here I am almost 2 years into my renovation. The plumber, carpenter and interior designer are on staff but I realize that I must make the final decisions about how my new toilet is going to look. So far the new fixture is pretty incredible, I might even add a bidet.

Salt in My Wound

Salt in My Wound

My mother was always superstitious and then would scoff at others who held similar belief patterns. She taught me all of the traditionally held irrational beliefs such as stepping on a crack might break your mother’s back, dropping certain pieces of silverware indicated the gender of an impending visitor and throwing salt over your shoulder after spilling it would ward off bad luck. Her incongruous thinking also included a detest for religion and religious people because, “They are a bunch of assholes!” Repeatedly and venomously she admonished any and all “religious people” as being simple minded, gullible, hyper-sexed, hypocrites. Yet would ritualistically toss salt over her right shoulder and mercilessly criticize everyone. “A rose by any other name…” is also true of dogmatic beliefs.

Note the spilled salt at the Last Supper

Growing up in this environment was confusing to say the least. Especially since I started experiencing what I define as direct experiences with God at a very young age. The messages I was receiving caused an internal upheaval. There was God on one side doing the mystical God thing and my mother on the other side admonishing those “religious types” for being the anti-Christ. What a hell of a thing to sort through at the age of 8. What to do? If I tell my family then I would certainly be viewed as a hypocritical whore. So, I kept silent and presumed that there must be something wrong with me given that I had these religious beliefs and thoughts.

High School came and I was allowed to attend a Catholic all-girls school, which was a treat given the fact that I was homeschooled to that point. I battled the presentation of religion and was an extreme skeptic for a 14 year old. Mouthy and questioning of the nuns and priests; I spent many an afternoon in detention. Then, I made friends who easily accepted their religion and faith. I followed along and would scoff and eye-roll during training to become a Eucharistic minister. “How do you know it is the body and blood of Christ? I mean really, do you even have eyes?” I would quip. A fed up nun finally said, “It just is ok? Stop with the questions, you might mess it up for everyone else!”

I continued my spiritual development in the Catholic Church and completed my confirmation classes. I took note that some girls would ditch class to hang out with their boyfriends. My contemporaries were dropped off for church indoctrination only to quickly be swept away by naughty public school boys driving badass Cameros. These trysts ended in at least one baby being born at the end of my senior year. Ah, the religious whores at it, just as good ol’ mom predicted.

The culmination of confirmation class was a retreat to get closer to God. In my case it was to get closer to a bong, a beer and a boy. The HYPOCRISY! Where was God in all of this debauchery?

Shit! Mom was right!

I reasoned that organized religion had it wrong and caused people to go astray. By the time I got to college my belief system was summed up in two linear equations. God + me not saying anything about God=good. Religion + humanity=bad. There, I figured it out.

Then, Rob proposed. “We need to get married in a church.” I insisted. “Yes” Rob responded. “I mean it isn’t a real wedding unless that happens. Or ugh, hmm, I mean the church is just so pretty and we don’t have to buy as many flowers.” I didn’t want to give away too much of my buried religious feelings. “Ok” was Rob’s simple response.

Children came next. An immediate inner drive to have them Baptized took over. “We have to do it soon. It needs to be done.” I insisted. Rob countered with a curious question of, “Why so quick? I wasn’t Baptized until I was like 8 or something.” In a near panic I said, “It just needs to be done!” “Ok” he answered.

During this time in my early adulthood I would dabble in attending the Roman and Anglican churches. Continuing to be skeptical of the Eucharist sacrament and those attending church (they could be whores or assholes).

Then through a series of events that was nothing short of a cosmic alignment, I found a community that was open enough to hold my baggage, my doubts, my deep, scary beliefs and my humanity. Which is really the point of organized religion. It should allow people to acknowledge their faith and to find God within and among each other. And in my belief, express one’s deepest religious feelings through the sacraments.

My mother was right. There are religious people who are whores, assholes and hypocrites. There are also religious people who are chaste, angelic, and non-judgmental. There are also all sorts of people in between. That is how God expresses Herself, in all forms, from good to evil.

And the best thing about it is that God can even be realized in those who choose to throw salt over their shoulders as a means of controlling their existence.