I read this great quote a few days ago in "Patience with God" by Frank Schaeffer, and laughed very hard over it. He said that he would rather be in a lifeboat with Christopher Hitchens (the avowed atheist) than with any hardline evangelical/fundamentalist Christian. His reasoning was that Hitchens wouldn't try to make the lifeboat sink in order to make Jesus come back sooner and that Hitchens might even bring along a case of wine.
I've gotten to thinking tonight about lifeboats and life(giving) resources, and thinking about who is in my "lifeboat." Wondering what to do about a partner, a boat mate, who consumes more resources than I do. Who consumes more of MY resources, who seems to need, or at least want, always more of and from ME than I do, ever, from him. Most of the time I find myself building structures, internal and external, and contemplating survival strategies.
Does he want more than he "should"? Do I have less to give than I "should"? Can we ever come to resolution or sustainable middle ground about the allocation of resources? I don't know how to negotiate fairly and well when it seems like I turn into myself to fill my need while he seems to turn to me to fill his.
I find myself ... I want to turn inward more so as to avoid becoming stingy or selfish. Harder faster wiser boundaries so that I retain integrity of self and don't descend beyond the precipice of the slippery slope I know this all to be.
All requires vigilance, and the energy and awareness and time to see, contemplate, know, understand -- these things that seem only available when I do well what my previous post considered.
Must continue to seek my internal North. I alone hold the compass on this lifeboat. I never had a navigation course so I'm charting by instinct and the star chart of life experience.
A few weeks ago I sailed for the first time with a gracious skipper who believes in teaching charting and navigation the "old fashioned" way. It was just me and him on his boat, and he sat me down first thing in front of some charts (maps) and gave me a couple of strange tools and told me to find magnetic north instead of true north. He taught me the difference, and I learned that "true north" is less reliable than one might think based on the name. Magnetic north changes as Earth revolves and the other planets in our solar system also move. None of it is as simplistic as where the "North Pole" is located. It's all rather organic, changing along with nature and very life forces of matter, land, sea, etc.
This knowledge brings me some comfort. If I expected things to be easy, clear cut, predictable, unchanging, as set and dependable as an "always NORTH of North POLE" I could grow very discombobulated by the uncertainties of life, the questions, the what-ifs or "wait 'n sees."
Boundaries are important when living aboard a lifeboat. So are charting skills, which the ancient mariners had based on knowledge of the heavens - the sky and the stars. There's an awful lot of wisdom to be contemplated there...
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Searching for an internal North
How does one go on when dreams have been shattered. Fallen to the ground like the house of cards they apparently were. Crushed into worthless pieces like cubic zirconia smashed under the weight of a thousand betrayals in life.
I need something new to live for, but I can't figure out what to make it be. Faith is all but gone, the few remnants scattered and chased into the wind daily by the follies of crazy men (and women) full of certainty and hatred. (Where does love shine a true light anymore? I would walk toward that light, could I find it.)
The hopeful dreams of youth have been roundly disassembled, rendered mute as the pathetic naivetes they were.
Searching for an internal North.
I want to be at home more. I want to keep interpreting, but not to be running all over kingdom come at every hour, increasing my carbon footprint and burning myself and my body and spirit out. I want to be in a writing kind of life. I want to find some sort of spiritual center for myself, from within myself. I want a sense of peace and security. I want more simplicity -- though "more" and "simplicity" sound as though they must surely be at odds with each other, so maybe that is the problem to start, so maybe what I really want is less.
I need to reconnect to self. To do that, I need to run less, be still more. Read, journal, think, write, be present with the pets and absorb their innocent committed love more. Can I own that this is the kind of person I am, the kind of person I must be in order to be whole? To feel, think, learn, write, muse, rest, contemplate, breathe, meditate, be still, be active in mind but less so in body? A different sort of productivity - can I own it, respect it? Can I find security in it and trust in some form of "higher power" to take care of the necessities? I can be uber responsible, take every job I can get, but lose my soul in the process. Can I say "no" and trust that I will still be taken care of?
Can I find the pause button, that magic gold watch from that t.v. show I loved when I was a kid, push the stop watch button on it and all motion around me pause so I can take time to examine and understand better?
Do I have the strength, the gumption, to do another reorg? I feel I must, for the current pace seems unsustainable. Worse, not only will it run me dry very quickly over time, but it leaves me empty and becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of increasing emptiness leading to madness. But to do a full-stop, a reassessment, and then to take the necessary steps to make change . . . by now experience dictates that this will take time and concerted effort.
My guiding thought at the beginning of this year was Simplify. I made some initial good-effort stabs at it. But it seems that the horses and wagons need to be circled now. No one else will do it for me. What is truly important to me? What do I truly need to sustain and fulfill me? How do I give that to myself?
I need something new to live for, but I can't figure out what to make it be. Faith is all but gone, the few remnants scattered and chased into the wind daily by the follies of crazy men (and women) full of certainty and hatred. (Where does love shine a true light anymore? I would walk toward that light, could I find it.)
The hopeful dreams of youth have been roundly disassembled, rendered mute as the pathetic naivetes they were.
Searching for an internal North.
I want to be at home more. I want to keep interpreting, but not to be running all over kingdom come at every hour, increasing my carbon footprint and burning myself and my body and spirit out. I want to be in a writing kind of life. I want to find some sort of spiritual center for myself, from within myself. I want a sense of peace and security. I want more simplicity -- though "more" and "simplicity" sound as though they must surely be at odds with each other, so maybe that is the problem to start, so maybe what I really want is less.
I need to reconnect to self. To do that, I need to run less, be still more. Read, journal, think, write, be present with the pets and absorb their innocent committed love more. Can I own that this is the kind of person I am, the kind of person I must be in order to be whole? To feel, think, learn, write, muse, rest, contemplate, breathe, meditate, be still, be active in mind but less so in body? A different sort of productivity - can I own it, respect it? Can I find security in it and trust in some form of "higher power" to take care of the necessities? I can be uber responsible, take every job I can get, but lose my soul in the process. Can I say "no" and trust that I will still be taken care of?
Can I find the pause button, that magic gold watch from that t.v. show I loved when I was a kid, push the stop watch button on it and all motion around me pause so I can take time to examine and understand better?
Do I have the strength, the gumption, to do another reorg? I feel I must, for the current pace seems unsustainable. Worse, not only will it run me dry very quickly over time, but it leaves me empty and becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of increasing emptiness leading to madness. But to do a full-stop, a reassessment, and then to take the necessary steps to make change . . . by now experience dictates that this will take time and concerted effort.
My guiding thought at the beginning of this year was Simplify. I made some initial good-effort stabs at it. But it seems that the horses and wagons need to be circled now. No one else will do it for me. What is truly important to me? What do I truly need to sustain and fulfill me? How do I give that to myself?
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