Becoming Prayer

Note: This is a slightly revised reflection that I originally shared in a Facebook group on August 11, in the midst of news reports about Isis attacks and right after the deaths of both Robin Williams and Michael Brown.

The news around the world feels exceptionally dire lately. I know terrible things (and much that we never hear about) happen every day, but this morning -- even before I heard of Robin Williams' death -- I watched part of a news broadcast -- going back and forth from the riots in Missouri over the police killing of an unarmed black teenager (it was to be his first week at college) and the increasingly disturbing wars in the Middle East. I saw footage of an air drop of food & water to the refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar in Iraq. The helicopter landed for just a couple of moments and was immediately swarmed by desperate people, some who boarded in a raw panic. The copter crew took as many as they could, then lifted off. Soldiers on board had to shoot at nearby militants on the ground to protect the helicopter. Then the camera focused on a girl passenger -- perhaps 14 years old -- crying and flinching at the sounds of machine-gun fire. Later in the afternoon, that image returned to me as I was pondering a passage from Isaiah that I am to read aloud in church next Sunday, including the line "I will bring [them] to my holy mountain" -- I recalled the terrified girl on the helicopter, and burst into tears. What a hell this holy mountain of our world can be. These tears are my prayers of grief and of mercy for this world, and for all who are grieving, suffering, or struggling with the vicissitudes of life.

Within this sadness, the tears are also a gift. I feel paradoxically grateful when a brief image or a personal story hits something deep within and releases a torrent. It keeps my heart open and enables me to respond with a deeper tenderness to the people and situations I encounter day-to-day. For me, it is frequently something very specific -- like the raw footage of that girl -- that opens my dam (which can be hard to open!)

I think this is just one way in which "prayer" -- or however one prefers to phrase it -- "works." We are struck by a moment, an event -- we allow ourselves to be affected, or it sneaks past our defenses -- and a spontaneous cry, a wordless yearning, a gutteral summoning, percolates and flows up from the soul. This interior spring then softens any dry riverbeds within and spreads outward, through the heart and body and mind, in tears, in love, in creativity, or in action. In touch with this saturating stream, we incarnate ("give body to") prayer: the word becomes flesh. Thus prayer is literally able to contact and affect others, in ways that we may never consciously recognize.

(Might this mean that the news media -- despite its manipulative aims -- occasionally triggers prayer and the beginnings of compassion...?)

Confessions of an Undercover Herbswoman, Part 1

Sometime in the late 60s, when I was not yet ten, I came across the possibility that Bob Denver, aka the lanky Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island, did drugs. Some rare re-run of The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis had aired, and I grokked that the character Maynard -- Gilligan in some former incarnation -- was, like, a beatnik. And beatniks, of course, smoked drugs and went on trips.  

That drug was weed. Aka pot, grass, tea, ganja, reefer, green, maryjane, herb, whacky tobaccy. I adored Gilligan and thus was horrified. “Oh my God,” I wondered, “does Gilligan smoke drugs?” * The sweet, goofy first mate of the shipwrecked Minnow might be … an addict? Was it really true that the Minnow would be lost, the Minnow would be lost…?

I cannot recall the specifics, but there had been some anti-drug speakers at school – usually cranky, retired police officers -- who persuaded me that weed, acid, heroin, speed and the like were all quickly and equally deadly. There would be hallucinations, wild abandon, mouth-frothing, seizures, addiction, leaps from skyscrapers. 

And, ruh-roh: Shaggy, Scooby-Doo’s big buddy, also had that air of some kind of beatnik pot-toker. But Shaggy was just a cartoon character. Gilligan felt much more, like, real.

Dear God, I prayed, please don’t let Gilligan OD on pot.

                                                *   *   *

When I was 12 or 13, my next-door girlfriend’s older brothers started smoking weed that they bought at school. I noticed its heavy skanky smell and knew it had to be DRUGS. They offered hits to me, smirking at me with bloodshot eyes, and I always coolly refused and acted outwardly nonchalant about the presence of the devil’s herb. But inwardly, I judged them: They could do something terrible, smoking those drugs. There could be madness, gun fights, heart attacks. My girlfriend might be forced to sell herself so they could buy drugs. 

Madness, gun fights, and heart attacks did occur in our neighborhood. Sadly, a local pimp actually did attempt to "turn out" both my friend and her sister. (They turned him out instead, thank God.) But none of those horrible realities had anything to do with the marijuana being smoked next door. On the contrary, Andrew and Rufus -- my girlfriend’s brothers -- mellowed out and spent more time playing music. Andrew’s electric bass got deeper and funkier. Rufus became quieter, more introspective, more prone to poetic and philosophical ruminating.

                                                *   *   *

In high school, lots of my Catholic-girl-school classmates were doing drugs. Not me. My biggest crime, thus far, was chewing gum in the second-floor classrooms, which was against school rules. I’d gotten caught with contraband cud enough times to earn some after-school detention and make the rebels think I might be cool. One of these rebels – the daughter of a wealthy contributor to the school – was a big-wig dealer to students. I once overheard her in the bathroom closing an angel-dust deal with our senior class president. When they discovered my presence, they were not worried. I might be a nerd, but I wasn’t a nark. No one in our class was a nark. There could be nothing worse than being a nark. It was the unspoken rule of our class for both the drug-doers and the drug-abstainers: We’re in this parochial purgatory together, from the stoners to the jocks to the scholars. We’ll get outta here relatively unscathed just as long as no one narks.

Then, during the last semester of senior year, when we were on the verge of actually escaping our desert island – narklessly preparing for senior projects, final exams, and graduation -- the history teacher caught two girls rolling joints and guffawing to I Dream of Jeannie on the small TV in the senior lounge. 

The principal, Sister L, was incensed. She called all of the senior class to a special secret midday assembly. “My understanding,” she hissed, “is that there have been DRUGS in our school for quite some time.” 

Well, yes. That is our understanding too, Sister.

“And none of you bothered to report this?” Sister was pacing as she spoke, she was so riled.  “None of you cared enough about the dangers that your classmates – your very own friends -- were in? Why didn’t any of you talk to me or any of the teachers about this serious issue?”

No one responded. But the first thing that came to my mind, and perhaps to my classmates’ minds, was “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” 1970’s adolescent translation: “Do not tattle on others as you would not have them tattle on you.”

Our punishment for neglecting to nark was: forfeited eligibility for the “school spirit” award, which would have won us a Friday off and some mutually agreed-upon outing for the whole class, paid for by the school. While committing our collective sin of omission, the seniors had also accumulated the most “spirit points" by volunteering at hospitals and in the community, having the highest GPA, and being the most involved in extra-curricular activities such as the yearbook, school newspaper, and basketball team. Our refusal to nark lost us all our well-earned “spirit” points. In addition, the two joint-rollers were immediately suspended from school for the rest of the year and banned from graduation – although they were given their diplomas without having to take finals.

Thus: the school’s big-wig dealer was never caught or reported. The middle-class joint-rollers (who probably purchased their weed from dealer-with-a-rich-dad) got a reprieve from the last two months of classes and finals and an instant diploma with no marks on their permanent record.

The moral of this story for our 17-&-18 year old minds:

1.  Hell. You mean all one had to do be absolved from last two excruciating months of classes and finals – and still earn a prep-school diploma – was get caught rolling joints in the senior lounge?

2.  Hell. Even if one of us had narked earlier, would that just mean that rich daddy’s drug-dealin' daughter would have gotten the same “punishment?”

3.  Hell. Maybe we should ALL have just narked on each other and slept in and partied hearty for those last two months?

All glibness aside:  Most of us were looking forward to graduating together and were truly upset that two of our classmates would be banned from participating or even attending the ceremony as guests. I considered all of it an injustice: to my mind, the joint-rollers were not the main “culprits.” They were neither pimps nor pushers – they simply happened to get caught with a little weed likely sold to them by someone whose family made big donations to the school. Would the dealer have been banned from graduation if she had been caught? Did Sister L know more than she let on? Wasn’t she just making scapegoats and “examples” out of the less-deeply pocketed girls? I questioned the reasoning behind kicking them out of school – as if to simply sweep the problem away, push out all the troubles and “impurities.” During my years at this well-regarded school, there were girls who got expelled after getting pregnant and deciding to carry their conceptions to term. There had also been a male science teacher romantically and (possibly) sexually involved with a student for at least two years. Upon her graduation, the two married, and the science teacher was quietly fired -- and rehired elsewhere.

(This was my introduction to the Catholic church's sadly frequent way of handling broken laws, potential scandals, boundary breaches, and sexual misconduct: deny, ignore, minimize, or ship it all away. Find good scapegoats. Punish some minions. Don’t investigate too deeply; shun responsibility.)

Essentially: Don’t nark, even as we preach the necessity of narking. We had learned our lessons well; yes?

(Click here for Part 2)

(to be continued as a multiple-part series)

* Bob Denver actually was arrested for marijuana possession in 1998, at age 63. (Before his acting career, he had also graduated from Loyola and taught PE and math at a Catholic grade school in Pacific Palisades, California.)

"I Want a Bishop with Bad Teeth and an Attitude"

I want a bishop who has AIDS.

I want a bishop with no health insurance who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn't have a choice about getting leukemia. 

I want a bishop who was kicked out of the house at fourteen and I want a bishop who lost their last lover to breast cancer, who still sees that person every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying.

I want a bishop who has stood in line at the clinic, at the DMV, at the welfare office and has been unemployed and laid off and sexually harassed and gay-bashed and deported.

I want a bishop who has spent the night on the street dumpster diving for a meal and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. 

I want a bishop who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them.

I want a bishop with bad teeth and an attitude, who has eaten nasty hospital food, a bishop who cross-dresses and has done drugs and been in therapy.

I want a bishop who has committed civil disobedience.

And I want to know why this isn't possible.

I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a bishop is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker...

--Shared by a "Chaplain Bill" in the comments section of an NCR post, sometime in 2013. Originally seen on a flyer sometime in the 1990s.

Weed Wisdom Wednesday

I don't know if I will make this a recurring column on Here Cat. Let's just call it a possibility.

I love this snippet from "Star Power," Joel Achenbach's 2014 Smithsonian article about Carl Sagan's life and legacy:

"Sagan was a compulsive dictator, delivering his thoughts into a tape recorder that never seemed far from his lips.  The conversational nature of his writing owes much to the fact that he didn't type, and literally spoke much of the material and had a secretary type it up later. He also liked marijuana. Sometimes the pot and the dictation would be paired.  A cannabis brainstorm would send him dashing out of a room to speak into his tape recorder, his friend Lester Grinspoon told one of Sagan's biographers, Keay Davidson.

The Sagan papers aren't organized by High and Not High, but there is a lot of material filed in a category with the peculiar name "Ideas Riding."  That's his free-form stuff, his thought balloons, dictated and then transcribed by a secretary.

. . . Sagan did not reveal much of his inner life in his letters, but sometimes in 'Ideas Riding' he lets down his guard, as was the case in July 1981: 'I can talk about my father in ordinary converstation without feeling more than the slightest pang of loss. But if I permit myself to remember him closely -- his sense of humor, say, or his passionate egalitarianism -- the facade crumbles and I want to weep because he is gone.  There is no question that language can almost free us of feeling. Perhaps that is one of its functions -- to let us consider the world without in the process becoming entirely overwhelmed by feeling. If so, then the invention of language is both a blessing and a curse.' "

A parting treat, featuring a contemporary astrophysicist whom Sagan enthusiastically encouraged --

Holy Thursday's Period Piece

TMI* warning: This is a literally drippy "female issues" post. You have been forewarned.

I'm approaching 54, but apparently my body still wants to menstruate about once a year. And what I've noticed in these past few years is that Aunt Flo is a total trickster about when she decides to show up.

A couple of years ago, for example, she showed up very unexpectedly while I was on a Greyhound bus from coastal California to Tucson, about a 10-hour ride -- the first leg of a journey helping my birthmom move to the Northwest. The one saving grace was that I had some ancient, though frighteningly limited, emergency supplies in my purse. It was a serious challenge. The Greyhound I was on was in terrible shape. (Sadly, they are no longer the luxurious "Scenicruisers" of years past.) The bathroom was basically a port-a-potty with no soap, water, paper towels, or toilet paper. Plus, the bathroom door was broken and held together with duct tape. Ancient, stained, cruddy-edged duct tape . Anyone using the bathroom had to ask others to keep the door closed for them, because it generally swung loose on those duct-taped hinges. The entire bus sloshed and smelled like a port-a-potty. Worse: None of the bus stations we stopped at (until nearly Phoenix) had any towels or TP in their bathrooms either (although at least there was water flowing through the faucets). Two hours into this particular ride was when my body started having the mother of all periods. On the way to be with my blood mother -- so I suppose it was quite fitting. I was a grimy, bloody mess when I finally made it to Tucson. But I made it.

Then there was last night. I went to Holy Thursday Mass at 6:00 pm.. Our church encourages people to host in-home potluck dinners after these masses as a way to communally commemorate the Last Supper. I have never participated in these after-mass dinners before, but for some reason, I decided to do so this year. I had signed up to be a guest at an older couple's home with four others, and I was to bring the hors-d'ouevres. Aunt Flo arrived early enough in the day for me to be relatively prepared -- although I did consider calling in sick because I was feeling so whuped (and,again, Flo was totally unexpected). Alas, I talked myself into going, and, wouldn't you know it, as soon as I sat down at church things got to really . . . FLOWING. Of course: it's all about the Body and Blood, right? I began to worry if I'd brought enough supplies in my purse to last the entire evening, and was grateful for black pants. But oh, the potluck. This lovely meal of three hours was held in a swanky, gated-community home ... very clean and pristine, with all white and pastel furniture & carpet. The dining room chair I sat in was fucking velvety-plush-SNOW-WHITE. I kept getting up to make sure I wasn't starting to leak. I used the guest bathroom at least twice, and one time ended up dripping blood in several spots (look, people, I told you this was TMI*) in the cleanest, fluffiest, whitest, Eastery-ish lavatory I've ever set foot in -- decorative white bunnies and yellow chicks peaking at my blood-dripping body from all angles -- sending me into warp-drive cleaning mode . . .  Cold water gets blood stains out of pale plush things, but you gotta act FAST.

To quell my nerves, I sipped a tad more of the copiously offered red wine than I'm accustomed to drinking in the later evening and came home with a splitting headache. A hangover BEFORE falling asleep. My half-snoozing husband, bottle of Excedrin, and multicolored, dingy-sheeted bed were sights for my sore eyes and cradles for my bloodmooning body.

I'm not complaining too much. This all seems to be stirring some writerly juices, at least.

*TMI = too much information.

The Gift of Pagan Homage

At yesterday's Mass celebrating the Epiphany of the Lord, our pastor spent part of his homily reflecting on the significance of the biblical Magi, the "three wise men" who came to see the infant Jesus and pay him homage. Though the legend mentions only three "kings," there were likely many foreign dignitaries at the time, traveling in these desert regions in search of some divine figure (an ancient Persian legend claimed that the appearance of a star would predict the birth of a ruler, and the term "Magi" is derived from an old Persian term that refers to a priestly caste within Zoroastrianism). 

At any rate: Father M emphasized that these dignitaries were astrologers and 'pagans' -- that is, non-Jews. And that "they sought as pagans, they gave homage to Jesus as pagans .... and they returned home as pagans." Not as converts to Judaism or Christianity (which, of course, didn't exist yet). In other words: God, or the Light, or (for those who prefer nontheistic terms) the meaning-generative yearning deep in our hearts speaks to us through the languages and contexts in which we've sprouted and bloomed, whether we are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, pantheists, atheists, agnostics, spritual-but-not-religious, or interspiritual ... One of the meanings that emerges out of the story of the Magi is that the primary goal of authentic Christianity (and other "heart" paths) is not to proselytize or convert, but rather to love others through our actions and choices, and to seek and follow the light that guides.