In the Name of the Father

Today, we are told that the killings in Syria have again crossed the lines of the imagination. People are being killed execution-style in their homes and safe houses, and government officials say that each and every person was killed as a part of a terrorist sweep.

War changes people. I've seen it in my own life. It creates mental illness in numbers too large to imagine, and it's so ugly, all most of us can do is turn our eyes away so we don't have to see the ugliness. People who are tortured, people who see their friends murdered - these people are forever changed. This is why soldiers returning from the Middle East commit crazy crimes, and kill themselves. They are terribly wounded by what they've seen, and what they've done. War brings out the worst in all of us, and we pass the worst parts of ourselves on to our children, and our children's children.

Peace is difficult. It is painful and sacrificial. But it is the only way we can survive without killing our own souls. It's the only way we can create a world that is worth living in, a world that is fit to give to our children.

That's all I have for today folks. You can help Syrian refugees in tangible, practical ways by giving to Mennonite Central Committee, who provides material resources to refugees in Jordan.

Poor and marginal

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority.  The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.

 ~Ralph W. Sockman

I was really surprised by some of the comments I got about my landlording posts last week. I admit, I was not very organized in my thinking, and that may have made me come across as judgmental, and I don't like that. I want to affirm that people make mistakes and are not perfect. We are all human, and we all see things a bit askew from how they actually are (perhaps how God sees them). And our skewed views are okay to have. I think the problem comes when we aren't willing to extend a little grace to ourselves and perhaps admit that we might be wrong.

I think it's more important to be flawed and fallible than it is to know everything. I think it's more important to admit being wrong, and maybe not knowing everything, than it is to hold to one's convictions so as to never admit defeat or vulnerability.

I was raised with material possessions. If I made the choice, even today, I could go back to that life. I am poor because I choose to be. And of course, that has become more difficult than I expected it to be, but it's also better than I ever expected it could be. I left a life of plenty, because there was no love, no real unconditional love, and if I have to be poor and marginal for the rest of my life in order to be loved for who I really am, then I will work my darndest to be okay with that.

Peace out mofos :)

Menstruation! Periods!

Large cork placemats from Pimpernel - Made in England

So I personally hate the clutter of ads on blogs, and I don't see my blog as a marketing ploy, so I haven't signed up for any monetizing opportunities...until now. Today I signed up to be an affiliate on a menstrual cup website, and I've placed a friendly button on the right, under "My campaign to save the planet".

A couple months ago, I bought a cup in hopes that it would work for me, and allow me to radically decrease my personal waste. I get pretty offended by implicit suggestions that we as women should be scared or ashamed of our business, that we need someone else to take care of it for us. I've heard fear and disgust from so many people - it makes me sad :( There's nothing wrong with you, and there's nothing wrong with your body. Yeah, maybe I'll have a daughter someday and give her the "miracle of life" spiel, and then we'll all laugh at what a crazy hippie I am.

I am also VERY offended by those campaigns that tell people to buy sanitary napkins for women in Africa so they can go to school. When we place more importance on money than we do on human beings, we dehumanize people, and ourselves, in the process. I don't need to make any money off of the affiliate program. I just want to publicly support personal behavioral shifts that radically defy the status quo. Is that such a big thing to ask? I like to tell people things that they didn't know before. I like to be helpful.

Note: If anyone can affirmatively ding me for using that vintage ad as a button, let me know, and I'll take it down. Also, full disclosure, my deal is that if someone buys something through my page, then I get 15% of profits from the sale. If you think I should use the money for a particular cause, let me know in the comments :)

Survive the best you can.

Don't you just wanna feed it bugs?

Doo-bee-doo-bee-doo. What a day. It began with a night of terrible insomnia, followed by interactions with the police after I found my friend's home had been broken into overnight. What a day -- not one I'd like to repeat anytime soon. My friend's already antsy, loud, and annoying dog was on point today, yelping all over the house, letting me know that something was terribly, terribly wrong. And it was.

Why do people steal from their neighbors? Why do people steal at all? My experience last year with a home robbery was traumatic in a way, and I don't ever want to experience anything like it again. But seeing the drawers opened all over the house reminded me that bad things happen to good people, and there are no warnings to the crap that happens to us sometimes.

All I want to do is help people survive the crap they get dealt. But when I see the perpetrators damage in front of me, tangible evidence, I feel a little loss of hope. Then this afternoon, I came home in the middle of a gang territorial confrontation on the corner by my house. It feels like there is no hope, like this is life, and all we can do is survive the best we can.

What's up with that?

 

At my job, I can make one hundred good decisions, and generally just be my bad ass self, and then one bad decision, and suddenly, I'm a failure. Everything I've done for the past few days is for naught, and I should never be gainfully employed, and I suck suck suck.

What's up with that?

Forgiving ourselves: treating ourselves the way we'd want to be treated by other people, is a difficult thing indeed. I can't tell you how many times this subject comes up for me in conversation with other people. At least once a day, I have to explain that it is unacceptable for you (i.e. the person sitting in front of me) to demean yourself in my presence. Don't do it. It serves no purpose. It is never therapeutic for you to hate yourself. It will never do you any good, no matter how much you think about it. So knock it off.

Speech over. Peace out mofos.

The pain can't last forever.

Have you ever felt debilitating emotional pain? Have you ever done everything in your power to then cover up or numb that awful feeling(s)? If so, you are not alone. And I am here to tell you that that numbing that you seek is perfectly understandable. Those terrible feelings are oftentimes the reason people attempt suicide. Sometimes those feelings do indeed feel worse than one imagines death could ever possibly feel. "Hell? This is hell."

So this is a shout out to all those who have felt those debilitating feelings of awful, unspeakable pain. You are not alone. Ride it out.

Someday the pain will end. It has to. It really must end at some point. I'm beginning to think that if I equate emotional pain with physical pain, I can begin to imagine that this awful feeling in my chest that makes me want to die is actually my heart healing from a horrific injury. It has been blasted, and now it is doing the difficult work of putting itself back together. I'm not going to pour salt into it by sleeping around and making it worse. I'm not going to start drinking excessively. Alcohol will only make it worse.

All of things we do to ease the pain only prolong the feeling(s). And in order to get over those feelings, we must FEEL them. We must do the awful, heartbreaking work of sitting with those feelings and waiting.

So wait, dearies. It will end. Someday, somehow, it will end.

We've been downgraded

So, we've decided to leave some things behind in Iraq. You know, the usual stuff that's difficult to ship via the US Postal Service: guns, tanks, port-a-potties. This seems like a good idea to me, giving to those in need and all. Although, I do hate guns (hate them) and don't think it's any good to just pass them along to someone else. But Iraq is going to maintain a military, no? So it suffices to think that they might be aided by our leaving some essential supplies behind. Or maybe we don't want to bring the mess home, and we're trying to leave it behind for someone else to clean up. That would be a horrible idea. Don't make your problem someone else's problem.

Like I tell the kids when they're "so bored" and start following me around with puppy dog eyes. "Don't make your problem my problem. Don't pout in my face." Come to me for help, or go spend some time thinking about different ways to solve the problem. Don't dump it on my doorstep (Wow, so harsh).

Yeah, leaving things behind is often a difficult task, especially if you plan to do it well. We all have to move on at some point in our lives; change comes and we have to embrace it. I am in the midst of some pretty darn humongous changes right now in my life, and I'm not embracing them, no sirree. I am digging my heels in, hanging on to the past. I know what's coming after graduation and it is not pretty. After the excitement wanes quickly, the depression and unemployment will set in; the loan officers will start calling, and I will still have the rest of my life to be single and help other people with their marriages (Oh, haven't I told you? I'm planning on being single for the rest of my freakin life, or until I turn sixty, whichever comes first.). Yippee!

These are dark days my friend, dark days. I wish someone would leave a tank in my backyard. Not really, since I wouldn't know what to do with it, but all the same, it sure would make me feel powerful for a whole five seconds.

3. The Chilean Coup of '73

Now to be fair, I am also equally fascinated by the Argentinean coup of the same decade (1976). And unlike yesterday, I will outline this love through film.

1. Missing: Jack Lemmon. Sissy Spacek. Disappeared people. Directed by Costa Gavras. Amazing. This is based on a non-fiction book of the same name, and is not explicitly about the '73 coup as it doesn't name names of the oppressors. It does, however, make clear the U.S. involvement in the matter, which is despicable. You can learn more about the disappeared here. It's interesting to watch an American film about U.S. citizens in Chile. It makes we wonder if that is why I cared to begin with. It really is difficult to overcome that intrinsic apathy towards people different from oneself.

2. Waking the Dead: Billy Crudup. Jennifer Connelly. This isn't a true story, but centers on the Catholic Church's response to Chile in the midst of the coup. It focuses on this through one particular American couple who disagrees strongly about the rightness of the interference. Is it right to smuggle people into the U.S.? Is it right to interfere in another country's disturbance? Note: Graphic sex.

3. Imagining Argentina: This is a film that is difficult to believe was even made. It is beautiful in so many ways, but incredibly raw and ugly at the same time. I commend the actors for their willingness to portray such an important topic: the disappearing of 30,000 Argentinean citizens by their military government between 1976 & 1983. This is also a book, which I own but have not yet read. Note: Graphic sex and torture.

War is ugly. I think that my own interest in South American coups might be linked to my own familial background and oppression. It's very difficult for me to talk about and think about my own family's suffering at the hands of a military dictatorship, but it's a whole lot easier to talk and think about things that are less connected to me and my life.

Note: The above photo is of the inland Amazon river shore. It was the closest I could get to Chile in my own photo collection.