I am not spiritual... 5/40

I am religious.

Actually, I really should say something like "I am not spiritual, I am a religious heretic"

The former version is my standard response  to people that seem to fancy a surface driven spiritual life that is individually based.

See, to me spirituality at its very essence is about community. Claiming to adhere to your own spiritual definition is placing oneself away from the global community and I just don't think it works that way. Especially since being having your own kind of private Idaho "spiritual belief system" is completely exclusive of others.

Relationships are amazingly difficult, and they take time and energy to make them work. This is true for congregations too... sadly, they (a church body at any level in a structure) can become toxic just like one can have with family and friends... the thing that has been happening though is that if it gets too uncomfortable, one just leaves and finds another body politic that hold to their beliefs... most often, in family this is not the case and for those families that are strong enough to hold on to each other, there if a definitive commitment... meaning that the whole unit is stronger than the individual... right?

I mean, look at having children... they are completely dependent on you for a long time, choices you make can deeply affect them... the same applies to family and friendships... they can be a lot of work.

But, I have yet to show you an example of my heresies...

I love Lent. I love the ritual, the sacrifice, the mindfulness of it... is prefer it over Christmas in terms of the intent of the event.

I observe a hybrid version though (yes, one that fits in with the religious community I am worshiping with). I don't allow for the weekends, or Sunday to be a free day (in my mind that lessens the intent that accompanies the call of abstinence). I begin preparing the week before, in a pre-lenten prep period. In addition to abstaining, I invoke. I mean that I try to bring in a practice that allows me to self reflect in terms of abundance (and therefore not only in restraint). Fasting, is an interesting thing as I often claim that gluttony is my favorite sin. I fast, I avoid meat (though I do eat fish) and on Fridays I only eat when it is dark outside.

I love going to mass and watching the ashes be blessed, walking up to receive the imposition of the ashes and wondering which route they will go in the words uttered while they place the ashes.

This year, I was unable to make it to any church to this. So, I took a dried rosebud, and burnt it and when my husband got home I blessed them and placed them upon his forehead. He in turn placed the ashes on me, and I uttered "Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return. (Genesis 3:19)" because I enjoy the reminder of mortality.

I feel like I made a mockery of the ritual, though I kept to intent. The ashes after all are a very ancient symbol of mourning an penitence... so, maybe I need to make peace with the ritual this year.

Merely visiting, but oh what a visit - 4/40

When my grandfather died and we were stuck on the islands as my father arranged to get grandpas body back to the mainland we hung out with friends... the usually bright sky of those islands will forever be overcast.

I remember being at the beach with my brother, staring at the waves rolling in... the children of my mothers friends untouched by the deep loss that we were going through.

I sat on that beach, gray skies, but no rain... my lightly tanned legs stretched out in front of me, my heart heavy... I watched my friends, these children of the friends my mother had that lived on the island. Two boys my age and two young girls, I watched them jumping and playing in the water, I sat near my mother's friends Mary and Christie, two women who would continue to influence me for what will be the rest of my life. I like to think that they felt a palpable grief for this small sailing party that included my family and had just been dealt a blow. One of them, Mary I think, put her hand on my back and told me to go play. I hesitated and she called for her son, Daniel and Christie's son, Jason. She told them to get me in the water and teach me to play some game. Daniel grabbed my hand, and Jason grabbed my other and pulled me up.  They trotted to the water, forcing me to move... they jumped in the water and dove under... the water was so beautifully clear that I could see the sun reflect off of their tanned backs, the kind of tanned skin that children that live on islands tend to have, reflecting gold and bronze. They surfaced over to my left, where a mangrove was... its gloomy, gnarled and ropey trunks enticing me like sirens... I started swimming towards them when Daniel grabbed my foot and pulled me short. we stood up and he told me to stay away from them as the eels like to hang out there and he dove off again.  I watched his back arch and his legs kick out behind him into the air as he made a head dive into the deeper water... and I thought he was beautiful. I watched Daniel and Jason play with in the water with me for the next hour or so, until Mary and Christie called us out and we went in to one of their homes.  But by then, I had managed to fall in love with both of them... the very first boys I would ever love.

Trips to the Galapagos for most people require a guide, the guide will repeatedly tell you to not take anything with you, to not move any thing to pick it up and put it right back where you found it... and that trip was all about that.  I was visiting, and left so much behind when we finally had permission to leave. My father had managed to get  (bribe, most likely) a military cargo plane to take us all and my grandfathers body back to the mainland. We all boarded, my grandfathers makeshift coffin in the middle of the cargo hold. All of us, the adults and the kids (there were a total of 10 of us on that trip) sat on seats in that plane. Military personnel and their "guests" (years later my mother would refer to them as their floozies, which was such an appropriate word) boarded after us, they sat on the seats surrounding the coffin and placed their wine glasses and ashtray on the box that held his body.  And we flew home watching them play cards, drink, smoke, and flirt.

So, this story came to me because I ate a frozen chocolate cupcake with mint icing  while I was pondering what to write for the 40 Days of Writing group for day 4.  It struck a chord and brought to mind a story, but that tale needs to come up at a later time, I had to share the preface first.

“Just in the nick of time they realized that it was their own habitat they were wrecking -- that they weren't merely visitors.” 
~ Kurt Vonnegut

Fundamentals of Magic Realism - 3/40

Growing up in the Andes you tend to develop a sense of magic about the world, if you have lived in Latin America you grasp this pretty fully. There is a magic that permeates the land, something that allows for unicorns, sea foam and mermaids and miraculously blue bugs

Los ecuatorianos son seres raros y únicos: duermen tranquilos en medio de crujientes volcanes, viven pobres en medio de incomparables riquezas y se alegran con música triste.
Translation:
Ecuadorians are strange and unique beings: they sleep peacefully amidst the creaking volcanoes, they live poor among incomparable riches and they become happy listening to sad music.”

~ Alexander von Humboldt

  I am not sure when we found this specimen. I recall that my sister and I were exploring the dark forests of CafeWasi. It spoke to us and asked us to mount its lovely head. once we did, it proceeded to stick its tongue out at us...

 I was driving with my son when we suddenly found ourselves beneath the waves that we miles from our home. There is something about sea foam that is so incredibly beautiful and makes the visible world become imbued with hues of blues and pinks and greens that cast a delicate and magical glow on to our surroundings.

Like this creature that graced our home, a blue lady bug of sorts, watching our moves around the house.

Somehow, the mountains that I grew up on, allow me to see a magical world... no matter where I am, who I am with, or what I am doing.

They might be rose colored glasses, but they are a gift from pachamama.

Public indecency at the PTO - 2/40

When one sets upon a road of public self discovery they can be forced to the point of such intense personal inquiry that the vulnerability can be painful.

Most bloggers ride lazily and slowly around the circumference of such a truthful self-examination. A few of those who do rise to the challenge face the best parts, and a smaller portion of those will lovingly wrap the worst in to gentle little packages to make dealing with them easier and bring them out slowly and carefully into our cruel world.

My life was changed because of a PTO. This same PTO changed the lives of four of my friends and my brother as well, it changed the lives of all of our parents, and so many others. It involved a well loved, by some, principal who chose what I believe to be lust over the lives of some of his students and volunteers, and has come to include a series of relationships that I can never understand... and some that I will always treasure.

Three parents joined the PTO, they were supportive of the education that their children were receiving... little did they know how much it would change their lives, and the lives of the children they were trying to support.

While I can lament how much that all changed me and my friends, I think that I need, instead, is to be grateful that I came from that experience with a level of compassion that I would love to believe is much deeper and can be tied directly from the cumulative effects  of the choices the adults made in that group.

Two women and one man, their lives and the lives of their kids, burdened and yet enriched by the painful choices of those they loved.
 

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public.” 
~ Paulo Coelho

My knighting shining armor