Consumers Anonymous (December 2013) by R

Addiction is tricky. It’s in our brain. It’s in our muscles. It gets tangled up in every aspect of our life, so that when we try to quit, the negative habit is triggered by other, healthy pieces of our life that we do not want to lose.  

There is a tendency in our culture to use clinical services of counseling and medicating for addiction; an individual’s solution to the individual’s problem. But a popular intervention has been the twelve-step program. The steps provide people with a course of action (which we all feel we need from somewhere outside ourselves), as well as a built in support network, or ‘fellowship’.

The steps differ based on the culture of the addiction or compulsion. Narcotics. Sex. Gambling. Work. But very generally, people are asked to admit that they cannot control their addiction, see strength in some higher power, reflect on their life with a sponsor, make amends for their errors, develop a new code of behavior and learn to live it, and then to help others through the same path.  

Consuming is an addiction, but a culturally sanctioned addiction. Other addictions, like alcoholism or sex, may be glorified in our culture, but they also come with negative moral connotations. Consuming, on the other hand, is considered responsible. Necessarily. How do you declare yourself addicted to something as assumed as breathing? But we’ve been paying to live on oxygen tanks while we go indoors to escape the wind.   

Twelve steps:

1.                   Admit we are disempowered by the compulsion to consume—that our lives have become unmanageable.

2.                   Believe in a restorative power greater than ourselves as individuals.

3.                   Decide to turn our lives over to the care of this Earth and Her Spirit and a family of life.

4.                   Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5.                   Admit to the Spirit of this world, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our over consumption.

6.                   Be entirely ready to have the sufficiency of this world end our addictive behavior.

7.                   Reach within and beyond ourselves to overcome limitations.

8.                   Consider all in the family of life we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.

9.                   Make direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10.               Continue to take personal inventory, and when we are consuming beyond the design, promptly admit it.

11.               Meditate to improve our conscious contact with the Spirit of this world and the entire family of life, praying only for a better understanding of our relationships and the power to carry out our role in sustaining one another.

12.               Carry this message to other consumers, and practice these principles in all our affairs.

Hello. 

My name is Renee, and I’m a consumer. 

I don’t know how else to live. 

I trust there is a Way. 

I commit to exploring my behavior and its impact on all in the family of life. 

Consumers Anonymous (December 2013) by L

I wasn’t’ offered health.  A whole way of being in the world was not my inheritance.  So here I am an addict, trying to be whole with things.   

thing

noun

1.a material object without life or consciousness; an inanimate object.

Things.  This is all we have to satisfy us.  So we say, so we create, so we have.  Only things.  Nothing is sacred, nothing mysterious, nothing alive and conscious and loving to join us and make us whole.  Only things or the hope of supernatural redemption.  (i.e. this world is a joke, a game, the real deal is somewhere else--hang around it’ll be sweet)

What the hell. No, I don’t buy it.  I’ve tasted wild water. I knew this as a child. The earth is alive.  We are all the family of life and we sustain each other.  It’s all here. 

But how do I drop my addiction?  How will I be cared for?  It’s not like we have people showing us the way.  I’ve only started to meet a few people I think to be on that path.  And damn is it hard.  How do you let go?  How do you trust it at this point? Certainly it’s all going to fall apart?  How does an entire global culture drop an addiction?

How do I drop my addiction?  When everyone around me is killing the earth how can I put my trust in it? How can I leave my comfort?

But what else is there?  JUST THIS MOMENT OF BLISS. Indulging again.

HELP ME, FRIENDS.

Consumers Anonymous (December 2013)

Society, by Eddie Vedder

Good Byes (November 2013) by Josh W.

When the activity of the day finally stops,

I stand still in a clear, starry night looking up to the moon.

I remember that you can see it too. 

Maybe not at this same hour,          

Maybe you forget that it is even there.

When it is New it can easily be forgotten.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Perhaps only when it is Full do you remember.

Reflecting on the abundance of moonlight.

There are moments of Waxing. 

Times that you happen to look up and remember.

Mostly the memories are Waning,

With the passage of time.

So Good-bye.

I am merely becoming New.

When I return we will again be Full.

Good Byes (November 2013) by Renee

The love of my life still remembers, with pause, this childhood thought:

That all he lived and learned and loved were just the vivid dream

of a single palm tree – the sole occupant on a distant planet.

We all have this fear, don’t we? That in the involuntary flutter

of a waking eye the contents of a life can turn to crust

on sleepy lashes. Gone, to the fleeting memory of a finite slumber.

I can imagine the scene so clearly. My love returns to consciousness 
on that lonely planet, drifting in eternal space. Slowly, he returns 
to his bark skin, heavy and numb from sleep.

His coconut eyes fuzzy and unfocused, still trying to look

through some avatar’s strange squishy eyes. What is real?

He stretches his root toes and feels rock. He scans

the familiar landscape of his barren planet, and ruffles

his leaves, attune to that sound. And yet, there was that dream.

And this feeling. Can you miss what you never really had? Or,

can you mourn what you never really lost? Why, 
in the midst of everything warm and human, do we feel, 
in our pumping hearts and with real tears, 
the loneliness of an imaginary palm tree

in an unfathomable eternity?  

Good Byes (November 2013) by Renee

When I stop to think about good-byes, I think about the big ones. The sad ones. The ones that haven’t even happened yet. But our parting traditions are generally so habitualized we hardly think about the gestures, phrases, and rituals we practice daily.

Parting phrases, in particular, click off the tongue like a compulsion, or run together like a meaningless alphabet soup of acceptable phrases (Brian Regan’s “Take luck and care for it” comes to mind). We rely on tradition and habit to make such transitions with minimal effort. But we do still take some time to acknowledge those transitions.  

Even in such a mobile culture, where we consider ourselves independent if not disconnected, we acknowledge separation. We express it. We use the air in our lungs moving through us to say good bye.

We say it in just about any context, whether it’s a daily occurrence or an extended leave. Even when it’s final, and someone is dead and arguably unable to hear us, we still say goodbye. In formal situations and the most un-ceremonial encounters. With people we barely know, people we meet in passing, and those we  hold most dear.

God is in our good byes. A Dios. A Dieu. Even in English, from “God be with you” to Shakespeare’s “God b’wy”, to modern day good-bye. Good-byes are scary. Even the small ones seem to sum up this questionable existence we have on Earth. So naturally we call upon God.  

Even if we don’t mention a specific deity, a good bye is often prayerful.  An appeal. A blessing. A hope.

Fare well.

Have a good day.

Rest in peace.

We can’t give these things to people, but we offer it like a gift. We wish it for them.

Our good-byes are expectant.

Au Revior. Hast la vista. Auf Wiedersehen

See you later. Until I see you. Until later. Catch you later. Like it or not, I will see you and I will latch onto you. This-is-not-good-bye Good-bye.  

It can be full of the most Intense emotions, or said without any thought or feeling, but the parting wouldn’t seem right without some expression.

 So long.

 See you on the flip side.  

 Smell you later.

 Piso Mojado  

 Live long and prosper.

 May the force be with you.

 Take it easy.

God bless.

Toodles (from the French, à tout à l'heure).

Remember we are all aspects of one universal soul (Or, Namaste).

Keep it real.

Happy trails.

Piss off.

I miss you already.

Birthdays (October 2013) by Jonothan

You don't choose the date you're born.

You don't choose the time you're born.  

You don't choose the place you're born.

You don't choose the body you're born in. 

You don't choose the family you're born into. 

You don't really do much to earn a birthday. 

It comes without you asking or caring. 

So birthdays aren't worth celebrating for all that. 

What they are worth celebrating is another year of life lived. 

There are those we've known who never made it this far. 

A lot of them didn't choose their date of death. 

But here we are, still standing, breathing, for some reason. 

In many ways, we didn't ask for it. 

But we have it. 

Like my father says, "Every day is a gift; that's why we call it the 'present.'"

And you've had 365 of them in the past year. 

You're alive, my friend. 

Whether the day is happy or not, it is good. 

So...Good Birthday to you. 

-Jon

Birthdays (October 2013) by Josh W.

Birth Day.

My mother once told me that on the day of my birth, she foresaw something in me.  She could sense that I was special and destined for something great.  I think all mother’s believe in their new child’s uniqueness and trust in their eventual power to rid the world of its maladies.  I’d like to think she was right…that there’s some greater purpose to my life than just myself. 

Perhaps it was the events of my birth that led to her thinking.  The March day she went into labor I wasn’t due for another 2 weeks.  No matter, the ultrasound stated I was roughly 8 pounds, about the size of her first baby.  She was no novice.  Labor was as fine as any labor can be, and then something was wrong.  Stuck.  A case of shoulder dystocia.   Whereby after delivery of the head, the anterior shoulder of the infant cannot pass below the pubic symphysis.  In my case, my right shoulder wouldn’t budge. Is he supposed to be blue like that?  No, that’s from the compressed umbilical cord.  Pull.  Episiotomy.  Break the clavicle. There.  He’s out.  He’s breathing and we didn’t even break the clavicle.  Good show, 10 pounds 2 ounces.  A few days later, damage was discovered to the brachial plexus nerves.  Brachial plexus - a bundle of nerves that runs from the neck down to the fingertips.  

Birthing trauma.  It makes me think of the maternal pain and anguish during birth.  However, the baby also suffers as it traumatically travels through the birth canal.  Most babies travel unscathed.  Some have lasting effects.  As a child, I remember hearing the story in Genesis where God condemns women with painful childbirth.  I wondered if my injury was related to that curse.  That this stupid, weak arm was an evil that I had to bear.  Maybe.  Sometimes I have dreams where I have “normal” arms – except they are two left arms.  It’s hard to imagine that my right arm could be as strong as my left.  My right and left legs are of equal strength, so I guess it’s like that.

Is there a reason for this?  That question has always been the same.  Thankfully the answers change.  Right now I would say it has taught me, is teaching me, patience with myself.

-Josh W. 

Stress (September 2013) by Jonothan

The view from my small third floor apartment overlooks the earth roof of the funeral-home on the adjacent street. The colors of the plants on the rook suffer a full range of colors throughout the year: brown to gray to yellow to green; then back to yellow for the flowers and finally on to the oranges and reds of this time of year -- before repeating the cycle. The wildlife is mostly squirrels and starlings with the occasional house-cat.
In the summer the view is dominated by trees and tucked among the trees, the tops of building. I don't know what most of the trees are but some of the buildings I know or at least recognize. When the leaves fall I can pick out the 6 or so tall buildings, most of them churches, in the dozen or so blocks that I can see before the city disappears over the horizon or out of the periphery.
The houses that I can see on my own street have a sort of monotony about them: same hight and number of windows, same depth of porch roofs, same state of functionality that, while not run down, speaks to me of a certain lack of love. Just a house to rent or rent out – a good-enough place to be. But I'm being uncharitable.
These houses, or at least the front porches, are a constant source of human life. The farthest one and the second nearest are perpetually being worked on by would-be handymen or,  when needed, professional handymen. The third house boasts a lovely (lone) rose bush in the planter and bicycle traffic like JFK has plane traffic: it can always be heard and sometimes seems like the bikes were ordered to a holding pattern until it is too dark to see. A few houses farther down two or three women sit with books but never seem to read.
Beyond what I can see is a restaurant to the west and a chronically empty parking lot to the east. These are worth mentioning because, even though they are out of sight, I feel their effect up here. During football season six or eight of the neighborhood boys “practice” their plays against imaginary opponents and miraculously always end up loosing. And everyone knows that teams loose because one of you is not pulling their weight. So I can hear the cheers and calls when everything goes according to plan and, a while later, the jeers and cussing that it unravels into. I don't worry too much: coach will have them out there again tomorrow.
The restaurant brings in people that are “not from here” - meaning that they drive instead of walk and worry about what kind of neighborhood they are in. But once they loosen up, usually aided by drink and good company, they forget their worries and laugh at jokes with a volume that my grandmother would insist belongs outside. Of course they are outside, which is how I know. Their laughter and conversation and arguing can be followed into view, into the funeral-home parking lot that is shared between the two establishments as their busy times seldom coincide.
I can see the parking lot if I stand near the window or as I walk by to and from the kitchen. Up here on the third floor, looking through a nondescript window of a nondescript building, I generally assume myself to be invisible, especially during the day when squinting eyes are not sharp enough to see into the relative dark of the apartment. But some days ago I felt like I was seen. And I don't mean simply noticed, I mean SEEN.
A young woman got out of her car, the only one in the lot at the time. As I walked by the window, I noticed her long curly hair flashing back and forth as she looked about. This was clearly her first time  here and was not sure she was in the right place. She searched the back of the funeral-home and scanned the buildings on the far side of the board fence. The boys were loosing again and their yells warranted a look. Oh, there is the restaurant... but that is not what she is looking for. Maybe its one of those houses there... – while she got her purse in tow and slipped a phone into the end pocket without looking. Two plates of home-baked goods covered in plastic wrap, more bobbing curls, and I gasp as when jumping into cold water. She's looks right at me, right into me, right through me. Of course I'm frozen and desperately hunting for my invisibility, and in just one second that feels like a minute thanks to special relativity, she looks back at the houses where she might be going and smiles to her host who has come to the door.
We've all been there: going about our business, paying no mind, when out of nowhere we known - we KNOW - deeply, that we are being watched. We look around uneasily and convince ourselves we are paranoid and push out the though -or at least try to ignore it- and eventually it goes: the uneasiness has no closure, it just ceases. Except in this case, what might have been an uneasy feeling was turned back on itself and sent back to whence it came. The observed became the eyes and my gasp got stuck in my throat. Now my stomach tenses when I think of what other eyes – eyes without bodies, sympathetic eyes, nervous eyes, knowing eyes, dangerous eyes – see with the power of those eyes that have seen.

Stress (September 2013) by Kate

I am about to go to work in the evening for the last time! This is the last time I plan to go to work after Josh arrives home from work after I got home from work after I took care of the chickens after I got home from work after I woke up at 6am. I look forward to a schedule with less stress. I think it starts tomorrow.

Stress (September 2013) by Renee

Faith (August 2013) by Joy

Growing up in a religious home, ‘faith’ was one of those words that was thrown into conversations with very reverent, deliberate tones, and met with knowing nods and great Christian sincerity.  And it was also one of those words that whenever someone asked me what it meant, my mind went blank and my palms got sweaty.  I just didn't know.  

There was a vague sense that to have faith would make my life better, it would make me better.  And perhaps it possibly somehow related to ‘trust’.  Maybe I believed that Faith = trusting in good.

Sitting to write this now, my mind is blank and my palms are sweaty.  I’m surprised that so little has changed since my evangelical days.  I still want to be a better person living a better life marked by some great faith.  Mostly I want to stop worrying so much and live with a peace that melts the icy knot of fear that burrowed into my stomach decades ago and has never warmed enough to disappear

.

But it turns out that I am so tired (I mean literally exhausted) of living my life with the assumption that to have faith is to trust that ‘good’ things will happen at the exclusion of ‘bad’ things.  It’s difficult to explain, but life experience has taught me over and over again that the one thing we can trust is that beautiful, exhilarating and ‘good’ things are exactly as likely and expected as ugly, defeating and ‘bad’ things. 

Faith is a problematic word for me because I get stuck.  I get stuck in the who’s and the what’s…I get stuck in the nouns that we substitute for the word ‘good’ in my previously stated faith equation.  Some options I've considered for this equation in the past include:

1.  Faith = trusting in (God):  In the God I grew up knowing who was a father, a male.  Who gives caveats to the powerful and consolation prizes to the weak.  Who unleashes violence with some frightening sort of calculation.

2.  Faith = trusting in (nature):  In Mother Nature who provides lavishly and drums out a cadence of life.  But who unleashes violence with some frightening sort of arbitration.

3. Faith = trusting in (reason): In science and technology and innovation that makes life easier for some, more complicated for others, and nearly always perpetuates violence against other sentient beings.

4. Faith = trusting in (the inherent goodness of people):  As in, believing that our violence and hatred will be kept to a minimum.  Or that the propensity to rape and mutilate is the exception whether in war time or peace time.

Faith = trusting in words or rocks or clay or fashion or melodies or silences or vacuum cleaners or football or turkeys or sky or bells or laughter or life or death or saviors or communism or poetry or democracy or the forces of capitalist markets, etc.

At this point in my life I am realizing to choosing to place my faith in anything at all is exactly the reason I’m well on the way to a stomach ulcer before the age of 30.  Putting faith in anything at all guarantees a disappointing let-down of a crash into reality.  

In the end, I am stunned that the definition of faith that makes the very most sense to me, that gives me the most peace about the state of the crazy world comes from the Christian bible:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.

Faith has no concrete, tangible or absolute noun.  It is a feeling and the vague sense that life is both all good and all bad, all beauty and all pain, all life and all death.  And that it should be lived to the absolute fullest despite and because of it all.

And now a poem, which as usual says everything more succinctly and lyrically than any essay possibly could:

Before He Makes Each One by Rainer Maria Rilke
Before he makes each one
of us, God speaks.

Then, without speaking,
he takes each one
out of the darkness

And these are the cloudy
words God speaks
before each of us begins:

"You have been sent out
by your senses.  Go
to the farthest edge
of desire, and give me
clothing: burn like a great
fire so that the stretched-out
shadows of the the things
of the world cover
me completely.
Let everything happen 
to you: beauty and terror.
You must just go--
no feeling is the farthest 
you can go.  Don't let
yourself be separated 
from me.  The country
called life is close.
By its seriousness,
you will know it.
Give me your hand." 

-Joy

Faith (August 2013) by Josh W.

Sentinels

Have you ever doubted that the sun would rise?

Have you ever wondered if the moon would stay invisible, hidden behind the shadows?

The sun and moon, sentinels of faithfulness, rise and fall in spite of your belief

or unbelief. 

Can we believe in a God just as faithful?

A God who is present whether we believe

or don’t believe.

The sun.

The moon.

God.

Thank you for your faithfulness.

    -Josh W. 

Faith (August 2013) by Renee

Our resolve for simplicity is renewed in the spring. We cast away our heavy layers and enjoy a new lightness. Windows are thrown open and delight is taken in the things we cannot own.

Smells.

    Sounds.

          Smiles.

Spring is simply being.




        



















So it is suiting that summer would be a time of


overabundance,
of shameless fertility, and of great wealth.

Vines hang over.

       Sweat pours out.

                 Light lasts longer.

There is so much to learn when the world is new each day.

Nature's choir brings us back to the dance floor. Barefooted walks and sleeping naked, our bodies cannot connect enough with this world.

Summer is wholly being.

In the fall, we eat. 

  Curried soups. 

        Pumpkin anything. 

               Whatever we can fire up in the oven to take the edge off the cooling air.

Breads. 

Casseroles, potato and cabbage. 

And we drink. Apple cider and fermented fancies. 

What cannot be eaten is canned and saved. 

Fall is being full, and fully being.

Then the heavy hand of winter slows us down.

Quiets us.

     Contains us for a season.

If you wait

   and listen,

      enduring the cold,

          you can hear the snow landing, softly.




What else do we have in the winter, save good company?
What else do we need but this quiet time of holy being.

Expecting summer's harvest?
 
Planting in the spring?

Or more. Faith is saving seeds in the fall,

when you are full

and forgetful.

Faith is season after season the same,

and yet an evolution.

Or a friendship, through all seasons.

I do not know the future, but I know you.

I do not fully know you, but I take you
                                               on faith.



      -Renee

Faith (August 2013) by Jonothan

Hey guys.

I had a conversation with a recent seminary graduate who is totally in to the preservation of "particualrity" when in comes to spirituality. I may have told you some of the previous conversations that I've had with him. This weekend at the beach we were using our group (some of what we talked about when you were down) as a case study for what "shared spirituality" might mean for us, being as we are at different places. None of this is rocket science, but it is nice to have words.

A1. We do have a shared spirituality in that we have elements of worldviews that are common: we "believe" in simple living, in sharing meals, in life together. We believe in the support of friends and deep connections. We believe in choosing to be together [how ironic] and sharing what we have and receiving what others have. This is a shared spirituality... this is our "confession".

A2. It just so happens that this spirituality we share is not "meta" in the way that organized religious traditions are. We don't have a common confession of epistemology or of teleology (to use Randy's' seminarian words). We are not joining in to the work of something bigger (like a tradition or a history) directly, even thought -- as we have pointed out-- many people have lived like we seek to live for a long time. In other words, our confession is of practices and not of reasons, of the what and not the why.

B1. Which brings us to Randy's suggestion of "a community of communities". What would be wrong with saying: "These are our common practices that we do as a whole based on our (actual) shared spirituality. And these 'sub'-practices are the things that the neo-pagans, or christians or earth-based-spiritualists among us do as a part of their shared spirituality... each their own set of practices that serves and emphasizes the particular spirituality (in the more "meta" sense) these sub-groups espouse."?

B2. Nothing, I suppose. There would be nothing wrong with this if we understand that a sub-communities particulars of language and practice and ritual are just that: the part of a peoples spirituality that is not common to the whole. And this is not so hard to fathom: we already do this all the time in a hundred different ways. Try this image: a Vin Diagram. Or perhaps more appropriate for the complexity and the layers: a kaleidoscope. All over the place there is "religion" that is held by some and not by others: think of sports fans with their religious practices and smokers with theirs and the goths and the soccer moms and the monks and folk-music-concert-goers. So the soccer-moms all gather to worship whatever it is they worship, and smokers take time out of their day (better than most of us) to honor whatever they honor on smoke breaks. A chain-smoking soccer-mom? A monk who won't miss a radio broadcast of the Phillies? A person who loves shared meals but does not care for the language of the Eucharist?

C1. One shared value that would make this Kaleidoscope of practices possible is grace: a grace that sees the difference of practices, the different particulars, and understands that they are good for "us". Note that I don't want this to be the same as tolerance; tolerance has a boring shrug-of-the-shoulders to it, a 1980's "whatever" to it. That is not this grace. This grace says: "I am a emerald green parallelogram. You are a mesmerizing violet ellipse. There are times and places that we overlap and have space in common. There are times and places that do not. And that interplay is what makes a Kaleidoscope interesting.  By way of contrast, think of a musical piece where all of the instruments and voices were reduced to the lowest common denominator: Noise is the result, even static perhaps, but not music.

 

So, here is to faith in whatever it is that creates the possibility for a kalsidoscope of practices within a common confession. May this mystery visit us often.

                   -Jonothan

Dirt (July 2013) by Renee

Sterile Environments

I was excited to write about dirt with a focus on the land, a desire to feel rooted, or the uncomfortable recognition that dirt is made up of the dead and the living. But what really comes to mind is the padded half-walls of my office building, and all the negative gossip I hear riding on the recycled air. "Give me the dirt on that one".

The word gossip comes from Old English God Sibb (God Relative), and refers to the community of women who would come to a house during the birth of a child.

This word has morphed from a way of treating people around us like family during the most vulnerable, intimate, and painful moments of life to a toxic presence that has filled any office or neighborhood I have ever inhabited.

And we spend most of our waking hours at work, in these stilted relationships that have strict boundaries, vaguely explained by words like professionalism. Afterwards we return, tired and distracted, to our God Sibb.

Geophagy is the practice of eating dirt. Literally. Animals do it. People do it. Likely because they crave the minerals in dirt, and their culture has made a practice of ensuring sufficient mineral intake at key times, like pregnancy.

I will draw a cheesy comparison and say there are essential minerals in the lives of everyone we encounter, and we crave it. Even at work. Especially at work? We are hungry for community.

But...there is a difference between talking about someone's 'dirt', and literally clearing it away as they push out life.

           -Renee

Dirt (July 2013) by Keith

-Keith-

Dirt (July 2013) by Joy

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the summer

at day’s end

we notice our salted skin

(how it clings and crusts as silt deposits)

touch lightly the tomato-red sheen in that space just below the eyes,

at cheek’s peak

deep lines of chocolate brown beneath fingernails

and plastered into the creases of our necks

Wearied bodies.  Sticking flesh.  Warmed and weighted eyes.  The smell of ourselves.

We are caked and moistened from the soil that draws up seeds to plants

and the damp places that quench them lavishly.

The water runs murkily off us and we watch its browness against the porcelain sink.

Who was it that likened sin to dirt?  Who declared purity a vast white void?

Who never noticed the gospel of a body

in the summer

at day’s end?

                 -Joy