When I read (on the train sometimes on the way to work) and I find myself with yet another spiritual journey sort of book in my hands, I am always drawn in to the world the author is portraying–having a prayer rise in your throat as you watch a diligent bird make her nest, finding transcendence in the silence of a room full of monks face down on a cement floor, discovering the holy beauty of baking bread before dawn then sharing it with the homeless at a local soup kitchen–and it also pisses me off royally. When do these spiritual seeking/finding people work? And if they don’t work, don’t they have bills to pay? Don’t they have kids who need to get to play practice or need to be watched at their softball games or band concerts, don’t they have loads of laundry staring at them with contempt in the basement?

And I resent the hell out of them.

Which isn’t very spiritual of me, is it?

Hard to think of one right at the moment, however. Which is my problem, of course. Recognizing saints when they’re standing right in front of you. I’m usually so caught up in myself and in my own self consciousness and sense of inadequacy it’s hard to see past that. Hard to be present. Hard to look up and see people and moments that are infused with radiance.

And truth be told, most of the time, I don’t want what people have to offer me. I so often see gifts being given to me as coming with strings attached. Someone hugs me because they want something from me. Someone compliments me because they’re needy and want me to be their friend. Someone wants to spend time with me and I feel suffocated, like I’m going to be held captive and bored.

It’s all so crazy and yet this is the only reality I know.  I am so NOT a saint on the inside, though I may give the appearance of one now and then. I guess I do have my good moments, but rarely do I have purely good moments. They are all so twisted up, the good and bad, the grace and despair, the love and hate, the openness and fear, all braided together. Impossible to separate the various strands.

And now I need to go down to church potluck. To a room full of saints, potential saints, saints in the making. And I would rather go run and hide.

90:13 Turn, O LORD! How long? Have compassion on your servants!

90:14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Those words are from the lectionary readings for this coming Sunday. Verse 14 jumped out at me. Satisfy me in the morning with your steadfast love. Mornings are very hard for me. I have been stuffing myself with bread and cinnamon toast every morning this week. I wake up and eat, before I go work out, and all I want to eat is bread with butter and cinnamon sugar, toasted and warm. It’s what gets me up in the morning these days. What gives me the power to get out of bed. How sad is that, is what I say to myself, in my shame. I am trying to look at it differently, “with curiosity and kindness” as Geneen Roth would say. What’s the cinnamon toast about for me? Warmth, sweetness, softness. It’s also about sneakiness–because I eat it alone. I’m getting away with something. So it’s a big F-You. Big sweet F-You. Who am I saying F-You to? Is it to God? I do have this anger, just barely underneath the surface, that I have to go to work and “be good.” I have to “be good,” as in obediant and “be good” as in top of the class, the best, or as close to it as possible. I resent both kinds of “be good” demands. But who puts those on me? Me, I suppose. And all those voices in my head.

What I hear myself saying, what the little voices are saying now is I’m a big whiner, why am I moaning about my stupid little middle class white chick problems. Then I hear that other voice saying, You want something to cry about, I’ll give you something to cry about. It’s a threat, it’s a way of telling me to shut up because if I don’t something worse will happen to me.

Oh my. My mind is a battlefield. There are land mines everywhere. Trying to keep me from getting anywhere. Where is it I’m not supposed to go exactly?

I don’t know. But another cup of diet Pepsi and some cinnamon toast sounds good.

But instead I think I’ll go work out. One last thing I noticed.

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,

so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

These words scare the shit out of me. Being glad scares me. God’s love scares me. Being satisfied scares me. And with that I’ll pass.

Lectionary Proper 20, September 20, 2009

I spend a lot of time and energy trying to be great. But secretly. Not so it shows. I want my greatness to be discovered and praised. But I am ashamed to be open about it, about how much I want it, need it, seek it. All my stress of last week was at its heart, about that. Was I the best in the room? Did I have the best ideas? Did I present them the best? Did everyone like me the best? And, of course, I came up short on all those measures. Starting with myself. I didn’t like me or my work the best.

This week things have calmed down at work but I don’t feel important because I’m NOT busy. I feel bored and unnecessary.

There’s so much craziness swirling in my head. Because even when I do get praise, acknowledgment, approval, it’s never enough. I think about Garrison Keillor — in an interview once someone asked him how he felt about all the acclaim he was receiving and he said something like, “Well, you  know, it’s not really enough. It’s never really enough. What I want is to be WORSHIPPED FOR THE GOD THAT I AM.”

Which is exactly who I am. Whatever praise I get is nice, but not enough. Whatever success. Whatever approval. No one yet has worshipped me for the God that I am.

It’s so strange that on the one hand you can feel like such a failure and slug and on the other want/imagine/desire to be seen as a God.

The exact nature of my insanity.

I was thinking about Jesus embracing that child in the passage from Mark above. How I would like to feel embraced, welcomed, approved of, loved deep down. And how Jesus says to be great you need to embrace that child. I need to embrace my own child, the child in me, love that child as Jesus did/does. A child who plays, who has fun, who just takes delight in being alive, who isn’t scrambling around all the time trying to win, desperate for approval, trying to feel needed and important.

And Jesus is saying that the path to God and to greatness, real greatness, not the kind that drives you crazy with worry, is the kind that embraces the children, that maybe sees the whole world as one big baby that needs to be held and soothed and patted and loved.

I would like to see things more like that today. Think less of what others think about me and more about embracing the child, the one in me, the ones all around me.

About 4 I started having very bad pains, sharp, doubling you over pains, in my midsection, my belly. I ran over to Walgreens and got some Zantac, took one but it still didn’t help. Tried laying down too. I went to the meeting at 5 which lasted until about 6:30, in excruciating pain most of the time. I stood at the back by the door and when a bad wave of pain would hit I’d kind of cringe by the door grimacing into the corner so no one could see me.

After the meeting I went around and gave some advice to people about their campaigns then about 7:30 I finally got in a cab and headed home. Oh and I did call my doctor’s office in the meantime and I took another Zantac. The doctor told me that if it didn’t get better in the next hour and certainly if it got worse I should go to the ER. Gary met me at home, ready to take me to the ER, but I wanted to wait a little while longer…and finally about 15 minutes later, around 8 or so, I was better, the pain was gone. So it was strange–just really bad heartburn I guess, but it was scary and so painful and maybe not by accident that I started feeling this pain when i was actually feeling kind of happy, a little happy anyway, that my boss wanted my help, my consultation. I was feeling valued and important for a second or two. And I guess that’s very painful for me. And it’s like my body decided to play that out for me.

Ohhhh. Such a f-ed up crazy girl I am.

I was thinking about the lectionary reading for this week again, and the phrase: “Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how.” I know that the food is one of the ways I run from suffering, it’s how I run from the f-ing voices in my head that constantly assail me with how bad I am, how terrible and stupid and worthless I am. I’m in pain, there’s a lot of pain inside me that I walk around trying to hide–I look so cool and calm and collected on the outside. I help others. I don’t freak out. I speak calmly and rationally and warmly and maturely. I am so friggin mature. And have been since I was a young kid. People would always comment on me as a kid–that was the big compliment I’d get–You are so mature for your age.

What I am is a mess, I just hide it relatively well.

Not sure what it would look like to embrace the suffering as Jesus says. Talking about it out loud is a start, I guess.

So I woke up before 3, stayed in bed as long as possible, got up before 4. Wrote some stuff out. Tried to prepare and envision myself doing well. I’ve prayed: Help me. Help me let go of the fear. Let go of my need to appear to have it all together and all under control to always have to say the absolute right thing. Help me to have fun. Help me to see the people around the table as friends rather than enemies, as people who want to hear from me, rather than people who want to kill me. Thinking about that Marianne Williamson quote which Nelson Mandela made famous in a speech in 94 I think: “Our playing small does not serve the world.” It doesn’t serve me, it doesn’t serve anyone. I want to take that into my gut where all the fear and holding back sit. I want to knock all that playing small shit inside me on its ass, I want to tell it to get the hell out of my way. Once and for all. Or at least for today.

And now I’m tired, of course. Now when’s it’s almost time to get going, go work out, get to work early, I’m ready to go back to sleep. Insomnia is a bitch.

34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?

Lectionary Proper 19, September 13, 2009

I woke up this morning, as I always do, feeling like I might die if I didn’t eat something right away. I went to bed tonight feeling like I wanted to die from the shame and humiliation I felt today at work. I couldn’t sleep so I’m up again, writing, trying to chase away the demons.

At work we’re in the middle of coming up with new campaigns for brand S. We had a work-in-progress on Friday and the 3 campaigns I’d worked on got a pretty positive response from my boss and the two account and planning folks in the room. Two of them were fairly edgy campaigns, but there was safer stuff in the room so having the edgy stuff was fine– we want to show the client a broad range of work.  But that was Friday. Today for the final review before the client presentation on Thursday there were more account and planning folks in the room, none of whom are in the target audience, I might add. But they hated all three campaigns I worked on and the creative director ended up killing two of them and letting a third live, just because he said that he needs more stuff in the room. A winning vote of confidence. Of course the campaign he kept in he felt needed work, a different visual look, in many ways, a restart. None of which he said or seemed to feel on Friday.

Anyway, I was feeling good on Friday, happy because I had “approval,” but all that is gone today. The approval and the happiness. All that’s left is this feeling of shame, this reconfirmation that I’m not good enough, that I’m just a hack, that I shouldn’t be respected, that I have nothing of value to contribute. And I hate myself for that. I feel like I could die of embarrassment, I feel like I don’t really want to do this anymore. I want to run away and hide. I want to be gone. I want to kill myself.

I’ve been killing myself with food lately. Eating crap–tons of sugar and chips and bread. Stuffing myself. I could just be eating all the time…feel like I practically am. And I’m gaining weight. I can feel it in my clothes. More reasons to hate myself. Feel deep shame. Crushing sadness and loneliness and loss.

I read the scripture passage for the week and I’ve got to say, I hate this one. It just sounds, on first reading,  like I’m being yelled at for not doing enough . I’m not giving up enough. Not denying myself enough. It’s all my fault and I suck. That’s what I hear in this.

But I looked at it in The Message translation and it feels a little better to me.  ”Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

I would like to save my true self, whoever the hell that is. I would like to let go. I get it that I can’t help myself. So all I can say right now is Help me. Help me.

I’m sitting in the living room and my 14 year old daughter just sat down at the piano and started doing a song my husband and I wrote for her. She’s so beautiful, she sings so well–it’s amazing to me. I have so much good in my life, so much grace and loveliness and love. And yet…this food compulsion…it kicks my ass every day. Maybe that’s the point. To keep me numb and isolated, to keep me from feeling anything but shame and sadness, to keep me far away from the joy. It makes me think of the quote by William Blake: “And we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love.”  That is the most difficult thing of all for me, to bear the grace and love that’s in the air all around me, like dust motes, sparkling in the sun.

7:24 From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 7:25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 7:26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 7:27 He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”7:28 But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 7:29 Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go–the demon has left your daughter.” 7:30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

New Testament lectionary reading for Sept. 6, 2009, Proper 18

Just when I have a moment of imagining Jesus as some sweet godly guy who’d I’d enjoy hanging around  all day long, someone gentle and cute like a kitten, someone who floated slightly above it all in a spiritual guru kind of way, walking on air when he wasn’t walking on water, I run across a story like this. Here’s  a different sort of Jesus than the one I carry around in my imagination. He reminds me of  a new celebrity  learning how to deal with the paparazzi, a miracle worker being followed everywhere by all kinds of strange people. And he doesn’t seem so happy with it. He seems overwhelmed by it, like he’s afraid he may  freak out if he can’t get away from everyone.  He doesn’t seem so sure of himself, he seems exhausted and haunted and maybe even overwhelmed by his own power, his own abilities.

And he also seems like a jerk. Like Sean Penn after eating bad sushi.  This Gentile woman finds him in his hide-out and asks for his help and he snaps at her: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” So dear darling Jesus basically calls this woman  a dog and calls her demon-possessed daughter a dog too, and tries to kick her away.

Makes me want to slap sweet baby Jesus silly. Because, of course, I am that Gentile woman, that dog.

Jesus views this woman like all Jewish men of the time did– like he’s been culturally conditioned to see her…as less than, as a stray dog, as not worth his time/attention/love. Which is very similar to how society, our culture, views fat women. When I have been at my heaviest, weighing in the mid-200s,  I can remember several occasions when I was just walking down the street minding my own business, and  people yelled at me from cars–yelled things like “Get off the street, Fatso.” Like I was such an offense to their eyes. Like they were angry I was taking up so much space on the planet.

Of course, this is also how I’ve seen myself. Still see myself. And this is also how I see other fat people, other people like me with eating disorders. With disgust. And contempt. Which is part of why I hate going to OA meetings.

I went on Saturday morning. Ready to feel contempt and disgust again. Ready to think how annoying and stupid and clueless these people were, how un-hip, uncool, ready to once again feel like I was not like them, that yeah, even though I have an eating disorder, I’m somehow not really a part of this club. But it didn’t happen.

Well, it did happen at first. I walked into the church school library (the “learning center”) where the group was meeting. I got there right at 9 am and there were 3 other people there besides me, sitting around this large table with copies of “the brown book,” the OA version of the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions spread out on the table in front of us. An older woman seemed to be in charge–she had the 3 ring binder with the instructions on how to conduct the meeting. The other two women were probably  younger than me but dressed like old suburban ladies with old suburban lady hair. I was wearing some low, tight jeans which showed off my thin, toned legs, and a black jean jacket to cover up my belly where I carry most of my fat, where I carry so much of my shame. But I looked pretty good, I told myself, for a 54 year old, reasonably stylish, not overweight, with good hair and good jeans and a nice pedicure–definitely better than these other women.

The leader woman started the meeting–and soon other people wandered in and the table was full–there were 8 of us in all.  It was a meeting in which people take turns reading from the Brown Book and we were on Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. And then we started the sharing time with people reflecting on the reading and about their lives and that’s when the barriers that I put up between “them” and me started breaking down. Because, of course, what’s on the inside of me is so much like what’s on the inside of them.

One woman, Mary, talked about being afraid to get too close to God, afraid of what might happen. She said she’s the kind of person who has to stay alert at all times on an airplane because she feels she may need to take over and fly the plane at any moment. This guy, Dom, the only man there, who looks and sounds like someone from The Sopranos, like he does whack jobs for a living, talked about binge eating, about his problems with alcohol and going to the track and gambling, how it feels like one little thing will set him off and he’s out of control, doing what he doesn’t want to do. One woman talked about how’s she’s not only an overeater but she’s a “hoarder.” She hoards crafts supplies. She buys more than she needs and surrounds herself with stuff she’ll never use. She talked about how it’s not so different from the eating stuff. And everyone talked about how hard it is to be still, to stop running around, to be quiet and meditate, and rest.

And all these stories…pretty much everything out of their mouths, was something I could have said. It’s what I feel, what I experience. It’s my reality which I keep hidden and never speak of because it’s so stupid and strange and contemptible and weird.

It’s what makes me feel like a dog. A stray dog who doesn’t even deserve scraps from the table. Who’s more likely to be kicked than petted.