Coincidence?

"But the opposition between the 'intended' and the 'accidental' begins to break down at this point: if Joyce intentionally builds a machine of such complexity that unforseen connections are bound to arise when it comes into contact with a reader possessing equally complex systems of memory and information, we cannot call them 'unintentional' in any straightforward sense of the word. And this means we cannot say that the openness to chance and to the reader that I am arguing is Joyce's link with postmodernism is only an 'accidental' effect of his overloaded monumentalization."

~Derek Attridge, "The postmodernity of Joyce: chance, coincidence, and the reader"

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In Thomas Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, he discusses a time in his life when he was ardently struggling with his vocation of whether or not to become a priest. He tells of how he did the whole open-the-Bible-and-randomly-point-to-a-verse-and-it-will-be-an-omen-from-God type thing, and he mentions how this was evidence that he “was not very advanced in the spiritual life” because there are so many “difficulties which show how silly it is to make an oracle out of books.” Well, it turns out that the verse his finger fell on was, “Behold, thou shalt be silent,” which in the long run is what he ended up doing: taking a vow of silence and entering a Trappist monastery. So much for that silly Word of God.

This story really spoke to me when I read it a couple of weeks ago, piquing my curiosity about the nature of how God speaks to us. One could certainly write this story off—and others like it—as some sort of cosmic coincidence. My rational mind would love nothing more. But my romantic side says otherwise—especially on days like today: September 23, 2005.

You see, lately I’ve had this nagging, yet quiet voice in the back of my mind telling me to just end it. Why fight so much? Why struggle with preserving this marriage that’s been so dead for so long? Maybe Ann’s right. Maybe some of my friend’s are right. Perhaps I should move on. Maybe I need to reevaluate my principals and beliefs. Maybe I am too old-fashioned and romantic. Maybe life is entirely about being happy at all cost.

This nagging, yet quiet voice has been increasingly more difficult to ignore over the past couple of months. I have always been able to refute it with such resolution, such conviction, such belief. But lately that confidence has been waning. And then came today. Today I pulled a Merton and then my good friend Kelly came along to put the icing on the cake. What a great day. Let me tell you…

So I’m in Borders, as is my want on Friday afternoons after school lets out. I’m finishing up my journaling for the day—going over yesterday’s (mostly) productive conversation with Ann and thinking about some of the positive steps she’s taking in her life (not with respect to me per se, but baby steps are better than no steps). Before I decide to leave heaven—I mean Borders!—I wander over to the Religion section where I know my new mentor Frederick Buechner sits. I often do this with James Joyce, too: I know I’m not going to buy anything; I just like looking at the books. So I pick up Buechner’s Listening to Your Life and I start thumbing through it, wishing I had $15.00 to spare. Then I put it down, remembering that I needed to get going. But then something struck me. I don’t know what it was; it was just this feeling inside me that I had to turn around and see what his entry was for today (the book is a collection of 366 entries taken from his wide body of work, one entry to ponder for each day of the year, including leap year). So I go back to the shelf and open the book to September 23, thinking all along, like Merton, how silly I was acting.

And this is what I read:

"But on the really crucial decisions of life—Do I love her enough to marry her? Is it worth dying for? Can I give my life to this?—when it comes to decisions like these, it is not just the pro-and-con-listing part of me or the coin-tossing and advice-seeking parts that are involved. It is all of me, heart, mind, will, and when the moment comes and I find myself moving out for good and all, one way or another, there is a kind of restless spontaneity about it, a kind of terrific sense of conviction, so that if you are Matthew in the tax office, you lay down your slide rule and your pencil, do not even finish the form that you happened to be working on at the moment, but just push back your chair and start heading for the door without even bothering to pick up your coat hanging over by the water cooler. And then you step out of there forever without once looking back over your shoulder, and start following the way you have chosen: not that way over there or that way right here, but this way. Of all the ten million and one ways in the world, you choose this way. Or maybe it chooses you—to put it a better way. Or you choose each other, your way and you."

I was completely, utterly, absolutely dumbfounded in every way imaginable. Here I was, for weeks now, doubting my resolution, doubting my conviction, doubting my beliefs. And now this. Resolution. Conviction. Belief. Instead of having the God who can control even the minutest of coincidences speak to me through his Word, he allowed his Word to speak via an editor who was compiling this book, who through a staggering set of coincidences with respect to my person just so happened to place this one entry among possibly thousands on this date, this very same date I was in Borders following some mystical sense to inanely find some direction in a book whose very structure centered on a calendar that is designed to follow the Earth’s rotation around the sun, the properties of which were laid down billions of years ago following an explosion brought forth by the Creator of the universe who, billions and billions of years ago, knew I would be in this spot at this time wondering if this was God or coincidence.

Either way, Buechner is right. He is dead right. This passage is so miraculously powerful. I did love her enough to marry her. She is worth dying for. I will give my life for this marriage. This is the path among ten million and one I have chosen. And mysteriously this path did choose me out of the ten million and one it could have chosen. I am flabbergasted, dumbfounded that a passage that speaks directly to me, directly to my doubts, directly to where I was most broken, was here in this one book among hundreds of thousands, on this one date among hundreds, in this one store among dozens. And then I get home and read that Kelly has chosen to write on this topic as well, this topic of two people working together to make a marriage work, this idea of sticking at it, growing through the difficult times, working toward a real and beautiful relationship based on true love and true sacrifice. She speaks from a heart of resolution, of conviction, of belief. And she chose to write all this on this particular day, September 23.

What a staggering coincidence. What a staggering God.

Asstastic Blog the Whole Family Can Enjoy

Dude! (I did that in my best Hurley impersonation, which you know if you watch Lost. If you don’t—and I say, Why not?!—I guess you could substitute Keanu Reeves. I believe there are major differences in delivery, but I digress...) Did Tom call me a dumb ass in his last entry? I thought so.

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I have been trying very hard not to comment on Tom’s current state of affairs. I care about him as a friend, but honestly I have been trying not to say anything. It pains me that he seems to be going through a rough time, but I don’t know what it’s like. I am happily married and have never known anyone close to me who got a divorce. I don’t want to comment personally, but I will generally. Not as an expert, but as a fellow traveler.

As a society we seem to put little emphasis on staying married. We prepare for the wedding for months, even years, but do very little to prepare for the marriage. We have all heard about the 60 percent divorce rate, which now seems like a perfect pretext when things don’t go as planned. Obviously, a larger percentage of people don’t realize that you have to work hard at having a happy marriage. That’s not to say that there aren’t easy times. But it definitely takes some pruning, much like a garden. It’s easy to end up with lots of weeds and flowers that have gone to seed.

It’s wonderful to analyze yourself and question what you could do better. It’s great to try to change your lifestyle. But you are who you are and a marriage is built around two people. It takes two people working together. As the french author Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote: “Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.”

You could run and run and never catch someone who is ahead of you. If she has already taken off, she must slow down or stop for you to reach her. Treating her nicely, thinking of her, and showing her you care will hopefully slow her down. But then you must work together at traveling similar paths at the same speed.

That is the difficult part.

I’ve never been good at math and those “If Train A leaves the station at x time, while Train B leaves at...” problems were hell for a right-brain thinker like me. But I know that you must be at the same pace. Life pulls us so many different directions at so many times in our lives. The marriage you have when you get married will never be the one you have in 6 months, 10 years, or 50 years. And it probably shouldn’t be, because we all should grow.

But like a garden, there are needs of all the flowers. There are more aggressive plants that hog the sunlight, there are weeds, there are temptations (as in Eden)—all of which we must prune. One beautiful, unselfish, and well-counseled flower does not make a beautiful garden.

That is the difficult part.

The Fine Art of Friendship (Meaning of Love...)

Disclaimer: I actually wrote the following post yesterday, and in light of some very recent events I was considering not posting it, but I think it needs posted. A lot has happened since then that I need to write about, AND I still need to get back at Kelly for misinterpreting my previous post, or at least ignoring the part where I specifically said, "There is nothing wrong with being a smart-ass." But my lame ass will take care of her dumb ass later on in an asstastic blog the whole family can enjoy. Now, onto my shitty life as seen about thirty-two hours or so ago...

Over this past summer I started seeing a counselor, a family and marriage specialist to help me figure some shit out. My life was falling apart. Actually, it had been falling apart for years but I was too blind to see it and Ann was incapable of speaking in a language that I could hear. In other words, I did not have eyes to see and ears to hear. Anyway, this counselor I started seeing was excellent—a very wise woman in whom I could put my confidence and trust. She was big on assignments and, knowing that I kept—and still do keep—a journal, she assigned me to write on the broad topic of things that are hindering Ann and me from being civil toward each other. I wrote at length on this or that, but one thing that I thought summed up our problems was a little diagram I drew. I drew two diagrams, actually, each of which had two stick figures on the far left of the page, which represented Ann and me, and on the far right of the page I drew a mountain. The mountain in the first diagram, titled “Tom’s View,” was labeled the “Mountain of Friendship” which could only be reached once the “Chasm of Issues” was crossed. In my view, Ann and I could not arrive at any type of friendship until we first got over our issues, which is why I was seeing a counselor and why I wanted her to go to counseling with me. The mountain in the second diagram, titled “Ann’s View,” was labeled the “Mountain of Issues” which could only be reached via the “Road of Friendship.” In Ann’s view, she and I could not arrive at any resolution of our issues until we mastered the fine art of friendship, which is why she stressed being friends so much.

There is nothing wrong with either worldview, different as they are. The problem is that neither of us was willing to adopt the other’s point of view and put it into practice. She was too angry with me and didn’t trust me enough to work with me on our issues, and it pained me too much to be friends with her because all it did was either remind me of what we once had and how special that was and how it is all lost or it would make me really horny and since she wasn’t about to get naked with me the hormones raged and I would become very angry and frustrated. We were at a huge impasse and someone had to do something about it. So my counselor told me to do something about it, to stop thinking about myself and my pain and misery and focus on her and her pain and misery. If she needed kindness and warmth and compassion and friendship, then I needed to give that to her at all cost.

So all this was swirling around in my head during July. Is this not what Jesus did, sacrifice all of himself for us? If I was who I said I was, then this is what I had to do. But fucking A, this was hard! I had never done this before in my life, this self-sacrifice. It was completely foreign to me. I struggled immensely in esteeming her and downplaying me. So I went to California and read Anne Lamott’s new book, Plan B. Reading Lamott is truly a blessing, especially when I can read her uninterrupted in the pristine wilderness of Yosemite and Hoover National Monuments. When I came across the following it struck me very deeply, for it is as though she were speaking directly to me and my situation: “If you want to change the way you feel about people, you have to change the way you treat them.”

This is why I love Lamott: She intersperses these little nuggets of Truth throughout her books with such ease and candor that just when you least expect them, there they are to punch you out and jar you awake from your blind stupor. For practically all of 2001 to 2005 I was walking around in a blind stupor. Now I was not as blind as I was in past years, but I was definitely not seeing 20/20. My wife, Ann, and Anne Lamott helped me see that I needed to see things from a different worldview, a different perspective. And in this way, Ann’s worldview was better than mine—at least in this instance. Would my way work? Sure it would. But would Ann’s way work? Sure it would. But neither would work if we each refused to change the way we treat each other. So I have been trying very hard to do the right thing, even thought it’s killing me inside. Now it is getting better with time, but it is still a difficult thing to continually give and give and give and receive virtually nothing in return. Actually, I shouldn’t say that because it makes it sound like Ann isn’t trying to do anything right. She is doing what she thinks is right, and she is probably doing a lot of right things, but as far as my needs being met emotionally and physically, that is what I am not getting that I am desperately craving. I want her companionship more than anything else in the world, and these snippets here and there, these crumbs on the floor from the feast that could be our marriage just aren’t satiating the emptiness inside me. But in all this Lamott's words are becoming real, for in treating Ann differently, I am changing the way I feel about her. But no one ever said change was easy, and this change is the hardest loving I've ever done in my life.

We are Always Selfish

We are always selfish. Even when we are being “kind,” we are doing it for ourselves so we could appear kind. It is because we want to be kind. And we want to be kind in order to get someone to love us, or give us something, or think of us in a certain way. Everything comes back to us because as a human our innate goal is to take care of ourselves. Every goal is ultimately about what we ourselves want. Even if you intend on doing something for someone else, it usually comes out of a need of our own.

Our empathy is also given out based solely on our own lives and experiences. You put yourself in someone else’s shoes because that is the only way you could feel for them. Doesn’t that seem extremely egotistical? It has to be about us and what we feel. Sure, you feel bad for a little boy in New Orleans who lost his mother and their home. But your house isn’t in a hurricane’s path. You will never be there. Is that the reason why some men cannot feel for a pregnant woman who decides to have an abortion? You know you will never be there.

Even when we know that someone else has gone through what we are going through, we still feel alone. Alone in our excitement; alone in our sorrow. That’s why we make such a big deal of weddings, divorces, illnesses, funerals, births, miscarriages, job promotions, etc. They are big in the scheme of our lives. And perhaps rightly so. They mean a lot to the person going through them, but to everyone else, it can’t be understood. But therein lies the wonder of it all: anything that has happened to someone else could happen to us, but we don’t care until it does. Is that a protection? Perhaps naivety? If someone’s parent gets cancer, we say, “Wow, that’s too bad.” We may even feel empathy for a moment, but it doesn’t crush us until it is our parent. We watch the devastation in New Orleans and Texas and think, “That’s too bad.” We may even give money to the Red Cross, but do we really feel for them? Probably not. Because it is not happening to us. Not me. Not my life. I will never be there.

Smart-asses of the World Unite!

I just read Tom's entry and I must say that there’s one point to make about Project Ass: she IS an ass. There’s no way around it. When people say “Be nice” or “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” they are really saying: “Stop saying what we all know is true.”

I am not saying that we shouldn't be kind. But being nice usually stems from societal standards. It's something we tell our kids, but we never practice ourselves. It's an ideal. I'm not about to bring Jesus into this entry, except to say that "nice" usually has a double standard. I do believe in the "Do unto others" rule, but that runs into snags with "Two wrongs don't make a right" and such.

What I am saying is that we should find the humor in things whenever possible. Here at the office, we’re supposed to sit back and allow Project Ass to be a righteous know-it-all who has proven time and time again that she doesn’t know much...

Except...

---Tom Cruise is correctly dissing prescription drugs and psychologists; they are unnecessary and only used by the weak.
---You should never try to attack an attacker because in 97.5% of cases, it will not work.
---The Maya culture included several different languages, some of which she could speak. But who the hell is going to argue the finer points of Mayan lexis?
---Spontaneous combustion IS real and HAS happened numerous times. (So there.)

She makes comments because she is a pompous ass, but we're not supposed to point out those traits via smart-ass remarks? Heh, I don't think so.

I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a smart-ass. I come from a long line of smart-asses.

After all, humor gets you through the day. As my dad always says, “No one likes a smart-ass.” That, of course, is usually what he says after making a some smart-ass comment himself. I guess you learn from the best.
Maybe the world is becoming too politically correct. Hell, I really think so. With a little bit of humor, things wouldn’t be so detrimental. Where would we be without Shakespeare, Mark Twain, W. C. Fields, or Michael Moore?

I also come from a long line of bullshitters.

And, as my dad likes to say, “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.” So can we stop pretending George W. isn’t a wasteful product of nepotism who says stupid things? We ALL say stupid things. Why should we think that he is above that because he bullied his way to the presidency?

I will continue to make smart-ass comments because I CARE about the world. Humor can help us all. I'm simply trying to make the world a better place. Jesus would like that.

Remembering the Goonies

There are times when I like to think that I was actually a good brother. I remember watching the movie Goonies a long time ago and thinking that the older brother (the character’s name I think was Rand or Brand or something that sounded like that) to the central character (who I think was played by Sean Astin, but I’m not like the Movie Geek on one of my favorite, albeit short-lived Comedy Central shows “Beat the Geeks,” so Astin is just a guess) was a really great guy. I mean, I would watch him interact lovingly with his younger brother and think, “Why can’t I be like that? What’s my problem?” Unfortunately for my two younger brothers—and my two younger sisters for that matter—that’s as far as I went with my self-interrogation: It would be a very long time before this introspection would lead to any real change or growth or blossom into any type of love or affection.

Goonies seemed to also have an impact on at least one of my brothers, Jason. He claims it’s his favorite movie of all time. And while I might have some reservations about the critical faculties of my brother because of this assessment of said movie (he also thinks The Ring, the scariest movie I’d ever seen, was dumb, but I digress), I can’t altogether write him off as having unsound judgment. But when he continually sticks up for a certain person in a certain office that neither Kelly nor I can stand, it makes me again wonder about those critical faculties. Kelly and I, being the smart-asses that we are, will be in a constant state of laughter over each other’s deprecating remarks about said fellow Project Ass, when my brother will harshly censure us—especially me—leaving us wondering, “What the hell is up with him?” Said Project Ass is way-too-happily married and of the female persuasion, and my brother is gay, so it’s not like he’s trying to move in on her or anything. (And as an aside, it really bothers me that my younger brother is a higher-on-the-totem-pole Project Ass than me, so it’s a double whammy to my fragile ego when he pulls shit like this, but again I digress.)

It takes me back to a time when I was disparaging my brother’s life partner, whom I have only recently begun to tolerate and even like sometimes. But back then, because of my immaturity and a strong dislike for this dude, and because my brother hadn’t yet matured into someone who would actively stick up for those he loved or even liked, I would regularly—even habitually—make slanderous remarks about Jason’s life partner, even to my brother’s face (of course, in these instances I would disguise my remarks in a jocund fashion, trying to get him on my side, which speaks of my immense immaturity to say the least). One day, though, my brother reached deep inside himself and found the testicular fortitude to remonstrate and verbally reprimand me for my comments toward his partner. I was stunned. Silenced. I had nothing in my arsenal to combat this onslaught of prudence. Then he said something to the effect of: “You should try looking at it from his perspective. Walk in his shoes for a little bit.”

All this was swirling around in my head this morning as I was driving to work. Like many people, I tend to think the world revolves around me. I tend to think that it’s all about me, my wants, my desires, my needs. I just finished Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain and I can say with much certainty that it was one of the best books I’ve ever read. My buddy Paul, who got me into Merton, asked me what I thought of it on a scale of 1 to 10 and, much to his delight, I gave it a 9.5. (The imperfect score rests on the notion that Merton is just a little too Catholic for my blood, but since he mellowed out over the years I am quite anxious to read some of his later works.) One of the central ideas that Merton tries to hammer home toward the end of the book is that it is not about us. It never was about us and it never will be about us. Much—if not all—human suffering can be traced back to this confusion that arises within us, this thinking that we are the center of the universe. Yesterday I was pondering this notion and my mind wandered to how Jesus taught us to pray. It takes him twenty-four words—six phrases, two sentences—before he gets to us. The beginning of the prayer is all about God, who really is the center of the universe. And even by the time he gets to us it’s all about God’s providence for us. It’s never solely about us, and even when it is about us, it’s about us in this fashion and order: us in relation to God, us in relation to other people, and us in relation to ourselves. (In Sunday school I remember singing, “Jesus and Others and You / What a wonderful way to spell Joy!”) Of course, the paradox is that until we love ourselves we can’t love God or even other people, which is why there’s much truth to what Anne Lamott says: “God doesn’t want or expect you to get it together before you come along, because you can’t get it together until you come along.”

The crux is faith, and in order to effectively and fully live in and by and through faith we need eyes to see and ears to hear. This is what I pray for, to see and hear through the lenses of Jesus instead of my own fucked up lenses. And I say all that to say this: For a long time I have only been thinking of myself and my wants and my desires when it came to my relationship with Ann. And even when she decided to leave me, at first I only thought about what she was doing to me, how she was hurting me, how she was killing me. But I go back to the Goonies, I go back to my brother, I go back to making fun of a fellow Project Ass and I think of my depravity. I think of how truly fucked up I am and how much work lies ahead of me as far as cleaning up my shit. I need to see through Christ’s lenses, for his lenses penetrate, his lenses cut through all the bullshit and see authentic people dealing with the fears and anxieties in their lives, all of which are the causes of so much of our pain and suffering. So he bypasses all the bullshit and can actually see things from their perspective; he can walk in other people’s shoes. Jesus spoke through my brother that day, and it cut me to the quick. Who can justify themselves before God? No one. No, not a single one.

So there are indeed times when I like to think that I was actually a good brother, but I know I was not. And there are indeed times when I like to think that I was actually a good husband, but I know I was not. And I know now why my brother censures me with such credulity when I poke fun of Project Ass, and I know now why my wife is so bitter and angry toward me. Who wants to continually deal with an egocentric smart-ass who doesn’t know when to shut up? Even I would shy away from such a person. But there is a time and place for everything under the sun. The problem is not that I am a smart-ass; the problem is that I don’t always have the discernment of who I can be smart-ass with. With Kelly I can always be a smart-ass which is why I feel so comfortable around her. I feel this way about my other brother, Mike, too. But with others like my brother Jason or my wife Ann, I have to be careful. This is why eyes that see and ears that hear are so vitally important. They give one prudence and discernment; they make one wiser and more like our Father.

My own dad told me time and time and time and time again, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, keep your mouth shut.” I should have listened to him. It would have saved me from a world of suffering.

Call Me Jerry

After reading terriamachine's last entry, I feel the need to be the funny person to Tom’s straight guy role. So basically we’re like Abbott and Costello, but I can’t remember who was the straight guy. Ummm...the cartoon Tom and Jerry? Nah, that mouse was never really funny. Penn and Teller includes that mute guy. The Three Stooges had three people so it really doesn’t work. Okay, I’ve got it: We’re like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Although I’m pretty sure Tom doesn’t sing Italian love songs and no one calls him Tom-O (but maybe we should!). Well, you probably get my point.

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I am usually seen as being funny, even when I don't mean to be. I say something in all seriousness and I get lots of laughs. Now I know how court jesters and comedians feel. Just call me Jerry.

Kelly: "I slammed my finger in the goddamn door!"
Audience: Hahahahaha [insert laughs here]

Kelly: "I am so pissed!"
Audience: Hahahahaha [insert laughs here]

Perhaps it's the tone of my voice. I'm not sure. The odd thing is that I usually write when I am upset or feel the need to vent. Rarely does my writing reflect my true self, so you may not get to see the "real me" on here.

Oh well. I feel it is my duty to make you smile at least. Just consider me your Prozac.

---

And what is it about the world? Everywhere you go, someone is telling you what to do.

"Simply press okay to continue..."
My computer is such a smart-ass.

"Remember the good times you've had..."
Hallmark is full of poop.

"Place stamp here."
Damn you, Postal Service!

Some Random Thoughts

It is Monday evening and I have had a number of ideas brewing in my head all weekend long and all day today. I have not enough time to dedicate fully to each one, so I will do the bad thing and briefly hit each one. If I don't do this I'll forget them and new ideas will supplant them and they'll be lost forever, so without any further ado...

On Sunday my friend and pastor said something toward the close of his sermon that really hit home. He said that there is probably no clearer or more precise or more loving picture of Christ than in Revelation when he says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." This was crazy and insane because I was thinking along these lines all week long with respect to Ann. To me, that passage always meant that Jesus will always be there when we are ready. He doesn't bang the door down or force his way in or scream for us to open it. He just stands there and knocks and waits. Since it's recently been my goal in life to be more like him, I've been waiting for Ann. I stopped trying to force my way in. I stopped trying to force my way in. I stopped screaming for her to open it. Instead I took the advice of my counselor and my heart and have been quietly knocking and waiting. Knock: I make sure she comes home to a clean house. Knock: I make sure she comes home to an organized home. Knock: I make sure I speak kindly to her as much as it is in my power to. Knock: I try to praise her anytime I feel it is necessary, even when it might not be necessary to make up for lost compliments. Knock: I try to joke with her and be friendly with her because she wants to be friendly for the sake of the kids, even though it really hurts me inside. All of these things I do because Jesus would do the same if he fucked up as much as I did. Also implicit in the standing at the door and knocking is the waiting--not just the knocking. The ball is in her court. I am making no moves toward dissolving our marriage. I feel like Lincoln waiting for the South to fire on Ft. Sumter sometimes. If she chooses to go for a full divorce, then I will go along with it not because I want to because that's the last thing on earth I want, but because Christ would if he were in my position. He's in that position all the time, actually. Divorce is one of the ultimate Fuck yous. It says among other things, "I no longer care about us. I care only about me. So good-bye." We say that to Christ all the time. "I don't care if you love me and died for me and created me and sustain me. I only care about me. So good-bye." And Christ says, "Okay, I'm sorry you feel that way, but I'm not going to beat you over the head and force you to love me." That's how I was treating Ann, but those days are gone. Christ lets us leave him and his grace, and I have to let Ann leave me if she so desires. Christ doesn't want this and I don't want this, but that's the price of free will. C.S. Lewis and Thomas Merton both helped out in this line of thinking as well, so they deserve props.

Another thing I was thinking about is right and wrong. I told Ann that one of the conditions for letting her off in non-contested divorce was that she admit how wrong she is for divorcing me, and that we both teach our kids how wrong she was in leaving me. But this was the fear talking again. Damn that fear. It is always getting in the way of life. Just as I learned to give Ann to God and his providence, so I have to give our children to God and his providence. I have to live in the trust and not the fear, which has been my goal recently--to get rid of all fear and let in all trust. So what I need to do is trust that God will work in my children's lives as they grow up, he will work in Ann's and my life as we rear them even if separately, and I need to have the trust in them to decipher for themselves what is right and what is wrong. No one can tell another what is right and what is wrong. God gave us all a conscience and writes on our hearts nowadays, not on tablets of stone. The days of top-down management are over; they were crucified 2,000 years ago. We now live in the age of inside-out management, where instruction is given and the hope that we will listen is offered. It always has been up to us, but at least now God has decided to do away with the law and petty rules and regulations. So I was wrong to force my own regulation on Ann. All rules and laws are fear-based. I need to trust that Ann will do what she thinks is right and I will do what I think is right and I'll leave it up to God to judge us both. I can only now pray that God softens my heart to his will, softens Ann's heart to his will, and puts a hedge around our children no matter what happens, because no matter what it's going to be a battle to do what's right. It always is because there is so much fear involved, so much bullshit caused by the fear to work through. Just as I need the strength to let go of Ann and trust her to make her own decisions--right or wrong--so I need the strength to let go of my kids and trust God to protect them while they are still unable to do much in the way of making right/wrong decisions, and eventually trust them to make these decisions for themselves.

Today as I was walking toward one of Reading High's faculty lounges I saw in one computer lab a young girl typing away and she reminded me of Ann. I quickly went to a picture of Ann that is down in our basement that I saw as I was digging out stuff for a yard sale two weekends ago and how this high school picture of her looked so sweet and innocent, just like this girl did. Reading High is filled with students trying to be cool or strong or defensive or better than the other and this girl struck me as just being. I'm sure she wasn't, but who knows. All I know is she looked like my wife did when she was in ninth grade or so and a picture of innocence struck my mind so strongly. As I continued to walk the hall I thought of human innocence. We are fucked up creatures because we are raised by fucked up people because we live in a fucked up world because we decided we wanted to be God and God said, "There's only room on this planet for one God and that's me so have fun trying to be what you are not and when you are tired of that then I'll be waiting for you on the other side of this door which I'll be knocking on and will only be open when you are ready to open it." So we're not innocent, but I'm not talking about our state of being--I'm talking about certain moments in our lives where we're innocently living our lives in a state of grace. Perhaps this girl was in that state when I saw her typing for all of one second in that computer lab. (That's right, I only saw her for one second at the most and I'm getting all this from that.) Perhaps Ann was in this state as the photographer snapped her picture all those years ago in high school. And then the defilement happens. That brief time in her life cannot last. Of course, if we lived in an eternal present as God does and we will, then that state of grace will go on forever, but as it is now, time marches on and innocent moment is followed by innocent moment until--BANG--innocence is lost. And that is what I mean by our state of noninnocence versus our moments of innocence. So anyway, what I thought was this: I defiled Ann. She would be in a moment of innocence and--BANG--I would cut her down or I would be rude to her or I would deny her a request or I would ignore her or whatever the fuck I would do to piss her off or make her sad or make her lose that moment. We all live in these moments and it is so fucking hard to keep them. If we could all slow down--like really slow down--perhaps we would all be more aware of each other's moments and not be so eager to trample on them.

And here's the thing: It is a lack of knowledge and a lack of understanding and a lack of compassion that all human sadness stems from. If we could really see--I mean REALLY FUCKING SEE--what we do to hurt one another, we would stop dead in our tracks. But we don't see what we do to each other. We can't. We see through a glass darkly. This is why--in getting back to Revelation--we need eyes that see and ears that hear. Actually, that's what I pray for every day: eyes to see and ears to hear. I don't pray for any specifics because if I have ears and eyes then I will know what to do and when to do it and how. If I have ears and eyes then I can be more in tune with Ann and what she needs and how she needs it. I can be more in tune with my children and other family members and friends. We can't see and we can't hear--this is what causes all human suffering. It's not even natural disasters. It's us.

It's never about the things of this world. Now this is something I was thinking about for years now, at least dating back to 1997 or so. I noticed something about myself back then. You see, I was strongly attracted to this young lady, Jen M. Man, did I have the hugest crush on her. Anyway, there was this album by Steve Earle that just came out called El Corazon and as you can imagine there were some love songs in there that I really, really got into. I was also heavy into Rush at the time--still am, but not as much as back then--and I noticed that sometimes I was really into some songs on some days and not into others on other days. So I had this tucked away in my mind, this whole thing about getting into "Tom Sawyer" or "Red Barchetta" more on some days than on others, when one night I was listening to Steve Earle and I just wasn't into that night. I was like, "What causes this? Why am I not in the mood for this when every other night I am?" And then the thought hit me: It's not the songs themselves I am getting into; rather, it's the feelings inside me that these songs arouse and since I am not feeling happy toward Jen M. right now I am not feeling keen on listening to that which usually arouse good feelings in me toward her. So then I realized it's not the thing itself. It's about me. Then I started thinking about art in general and how it's never the art itself, but about that feeling that it generates in us. If it was about the art, then we would always feel the same about it all the time and it would never wax or wane. I want to write more on this, and perhaps I will at a later date because this idea I had way back when is important, but fast-forward to today and I read the following in Thomas Merton: "All the parents of the children were there, sitting on benches, literally choked with emotion at the fact that their children should be acting in a play: but that was not the thing. For, as I say, they knew that the play was nothing, and that all the plays of the white people are more or less nothing. They were not taken in by that. Underneath it was something deep and wonderful and positive and true and overwhelming: their gratitude for even so small a sign of love as this, that someone should at least make some kind of gesture that said: 'This sort of thing cannot make anybody happy, but it is a way of saying: "I wish you were happy." ' " I realized that among other things that I do not have time to get into (this is such a loaded passage) that Merton was verifying what I have been thinking all these years. It's never about the thing itself. This is why words are not important, but the meaning of them is. Words are not bad in and of themselves. Music is not bad in and of itself. Nothing is bad in and of itself. It's what is behind the words or music or art, what we make of it, how we interpret it, what it arouses in us. If it causes us to sin, then it is wrong. If it causes us to rejoice, then it is good. It's never about the thing itself, but always about our reaction to it. Even something as wrong as a rich, white person's stuffy and self-righteous play being acted out on the streets of Harlem by poor-as-dirt black kids can be right if viewed through the eyes that see and ears that hear. That is what I believe Merton is getting at, in my humble opinion. Call it liberal all you want, but the Apostle Paul talks about this very same thing, and so does Jesus for that matter, so you might as well call them liberals, too.

I think there was one more thing I wanted to briefly touch on but it is escaping me at the moment and I have reading I have to do before I go to bed. It can wait until tomorrow or perhaps the next day if I run out of time tomorrow. Just some random thoughts that have been brewing that I'm finally glad to be able to work through, if only very roughly here.

Nothing Much to Tell You...

If you know your King's X, then you'll know from where I got the title for this blog. You'll also know from where I got the title of this particular entry. They've been in my head recently, especially Ty's solo album, Safety, since it's all about his divorce and whatnot. So there's nothing much to tell you, but there's so much on my mind. But unlike Doug, I can't put this pencil down.

Mostly because I started this damn blog with Kelly and feel bound to write something. The problem right now is that I have so fucking much to say and not enough hours in the day to say it. The kids get in the way, mostly. They just drain your energy. By the time I get them to bed and do my nightly exercises I'm ready to hit the hay. I tried bringing my laptop downstairs to type while I watch them but they just are too young to be left to their own devices right now. And they're so noisy! And I can't pawn them off on people all the time; they are my responsibility when Ann is not around.

And speaking of my estranged wife, we went to a wedding yesterday. Her cousin got married. It was a beautiful ceremony. I hope Ann was paying attention to the preacher. He did a good job of stressing the solemnity of the wedding vows and how they are to be kept until death and it's a sacred bond not to be taken lightly and how the couple will have to endure all kinds of sorrows and happy times together and trials and tribulations will come but that the couple needs to look back on this day when they vowed to love each other and how that should be the focus--the promise to endure all through thick and thin through sickness and health. We all know this stuff but how seriously do we take it? For too many of us, I fear, these vows are just hoops to jump through. I know when Ann and I got married we didn't have a traditional ceremony and to her I guess that meant it wasn't all that important because she told me the other day we did it all wrong. I agreed with her in some ways, but I took it all very seriously, even if I didn't show it too much afterward. You see, I have--or I should say I had--this thing for not showing emotion. I always took foolish pride in my stoicism and used it as a crutch. It was all fear-based, though, and a means to stay in control or power because in my twisted and warped worldview showing no emotion meant showing no weakness meant being in control meant being in power meant protecting my ego meant security for the scared child I was but didn't want to admit--hence the elaborate defensive mechanism. We all do this. You do it and so do I. But now I am fighting that as much as I can.

I fucking cut my hair. That should be proof enough. I kept my hair long and swore I would never cut it because I was never going to sell out and let The Man bring me down. But the truth was I was keeping it long out of pride, and this was affecting my relationship with God and to some extent Ann. So when I was out in California I almost cut it. I had the scissors in my hand and everything. But the people I was with convinced me that this would be out of fear, so I kept it long. Not even a week later, though, I found myself in a salon getting it chopped off--all eleven inches--because I thought I was going to get a job as a teacher. But it was not meant to be. But the cutting of the hair was meant to be because it showed me that I am now beyond all fear. If I can cut me hair and live to tell the tale, I can go through a divorce and move on. Will I like it--no. Will I endure it bravely--yes. And if you are reading this and laughing and saying, "It's just hair," then you just cannot understand the symbolism. My hair was my identity. It was me. The day it got cut off symbolized and consummated the old Tom dying. I will now live in the trust. No more fear as much as it is in my power. Nothing will bring me back to those days of living in fear and walling myself up, shutting myself off from the world. Will I still be moody--Yes. Will I still be aloof sometimes--Yes. Will I still mask some of my emotions--Yes. I am only human. All I can do is realize it more and more and apologize and ask forgiveness and move on and try harder the next time. And after a while I won't be saying I'm sorry so much anymore because the more you do something the more habitual it becomes. Pretty soon I'll be a pro at this showing feelings and talking thing--this whole living in trust thing, this whole love thing.

And man do I have more to say. But I have this book I'm trying to write and I need to get more than a few sentences a day done. I'm signing off to go do some research now, and maybe I'll get some words down, but for tonight I just want to get some research done.

...But there's so much on my mind. Guess I'll put this pencil down, sincerely your friend, I.