spirituality ii

Don't recall exactly where I left off yesterday, guess that is what happens when I type at 12am.  I've only a half hour to type.  With Lie to Me, playing in the background, I probably won't have much to say.

Returning to spirituality, I was saying that I would have frowned upon it, and I did, two years past.  I remember one client who said she was very Christian and very spiritual during the psychosocial assessment I did on everybody as a Social Work intern.  I figure my disgust was all over my face.  Spirituality, that's the stuff for New Age tarot card reading-mantra chanting people.  That's not the 'spirituality' I'm considering.  That's spiritism, the belief of spirits and demons without the foundation of religion and dogma to declare one as benign and the other evil; all is 'spirit' and all is there to serve us and guide us.

Spirituality is the flavor added to your faith relationship with God that is grounded in the foundation of a religion.  I got to a solid understanding of my spirituality over the summer.  I delved into spirituality last winter, and came out with a different understanding in the spring.  So many are focused on the life, the spring time, the  resurrection, the sun and the warmth; I tend towards the winter, the dark, the dark night, the crucifixion, the agony in the garden.  I told a friend at a house warming party in July that people need to move beyond what I got, the faith I have is good, go and get what is better.  Some of us have to stand at the foot of the Cross at the Crucifixion.

spirituality i

Perhaps the best thing about endlessly purchasing and perusing books is knowing exactly where to look when I'm needing a particular turn of phrase.  All of Austen is available for wit, Merton for quasi-Christian-Buddhist 'silence is golden' tendencies, etc.  But if I want a mood, I also know know which authors will squash or evoke something.  I have four statistical books perfect for insomnia, Heller for cynicism, Malachi Martin for caution.  More to the point, I picked up the book I had dropped last year and resumed in in the same spot.  I've always had this knack for putting a book down for one or more years, picking it up and resuming without needing to review the previous page or chapter.

If you don't like what I'm doing, saying, or reading without good reason and just object; you've automatically lost my audience.  I'd say that two years ago I didn't understand or value in any sense the nuance between religion and spirituality; I couldn't parse out foundation from trappings.  I frowned upon it and adhered only to religion, not understanding that spirituality has its own importance.  I didn't go seeking for any grasp or understanding, I had shut it out.

In November '09 I took any job that I could find; I worked as a bell ringer for the Salvation Army: paid to ring a bell next to the red bucket.  I hated it as a job.  Coming out of my rejecting the SMMEs, the days and months were already darkly tinted; I was already in the shadows, and this job provided the transition from shadow to darkness.  At first I fought against it, but in buying a book from the library resale I learned that I didn't always have to fight off the darkness.  The author, Thomas Moore, has a way of writing in a spiritual manner but not a religious one.  Reading his work, automatically took me out of my comfort zone.

As I was being pushed out of my comfort zone in terms of religion versus spirituality, I was pushing others out of their own.  I stopped fighting the darkness and the depression.  I didn't give into the depression, obviously, but I just sat in it.  Like a hiker lost in a thick fog, I didn't waste my lethargic energy on wandering around but sat down on a mossy rock and waited for the dawn.  It was one of those fogs so thick that the trees drip and it sounds like rain, and the drops pierce through your sweater.  You're on-edge sitting there in the dark just waiting, waiting.

So I sat and waited.  I got through my depression, intentionally this time, the hard way; it's the only way I've ever known for getting through depression.  I lost quite a bit of audience.  I remember one prayer meeting, some religious people who were emotionally sensitive but religiously neurotic (cautious in all the wrong ways) told me to just make nice, to play pretend.  Those blithe statements of "smile and soon you'll feel happy."  Pardon me.  My emotions and states of mind are my own.  I chose to share with some people and not all were understanding.  Anything that's not within their experience wasn't valid.  So I ignored their opinions and turned to others who understood.  My spiritual director was understanding and supportive, my therapist a phone call away; the bases were covered.

So, this week with it's crazy paperwork fiasco at work (let's just torch it and start over), mom's episodes, finals, lack of sleep, Grampa, and other things, I made the choice to just shut down emotionally.  It's really its own state of consciousness - being emotionless.  I'm capable of emotional reactions, but I chose to ignore the ones that relate to my interior world.  Knowing that I was in need of spiritual component again, I turned to Moore's writing.  It's nice to get confirmation that it's okay to be awake at night, to be in the dark.

stop violating the perfection of silence with your noise

Damage Control

I can handle instigating if it means others have sanity.  But triggering myself that's an emotional event I tend to avoid.  I know that I need what I did on Divine Mercy Sunday; I cried from 11pm all the way through 4pm.  I was able to do that because it was completely dark and others didn't focus on me at all.  Not sure I'll need 5 hours, but ... eh maybe getting more than 4 hours of sleep would work better for the moment.


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In other news, 1-403-896-9013 stop texting me!

Thought of the Day

Curs'd juxtaposition.

How dare I be forced to think about what I had set aside in a neat little mental package?

Rant of the Day

Pettiness is wearying.

Wearing 'chemo' scarves because she doesn't like how the hairdresser cut her hair.  Then crying around the house as though someone had died.  I've never heard her cry like that for when someone was actually dead or ill; she keeps the gut-wrenching crying and banshee screaming for pettiness.  Then she moves towards screaming about how ungrateful my sister and I are because we didn't use all our savings (we didn't have any at the time) to keep her and dad from using retirement funds for her cancer treatment 5 years ago.  If its not that, I'm disgusting to look at, or don't do anything to deserve a single present for Christmas.  Then we move back towards how all the prayers and Rosaries don't matter if "you're a bitch! It won't make a difference!" Oh, yeah.  If I'm not a bitch in December, then she'll call me a lesbian having affairs with priests in July.

... back to a test, two papers, and networking with people about code violations at work.