Month: October 2020

The souls of my shoes made a satisfying crunch as I made my way along the leaf-covered pathway toward the dock that has become my steady place of sacred ground over the last four years. Before rounding the corner, I noticed a single duck floating in the pond beside me. “Huh,” I thought, I don’t usually think of ducks as solitary creatures. My mind began to wander down my own internal hiking trails pondering what it means to be a social creature alone, bringing up the dissonance churning in my stomach at feeling quite distant from my own pack in this season of 2020. Usually I have a stroller full of twenty pound, fire-charged estrogen and light to push along on my walks, but today the nap stars aligned and I found myself alone. I quickly became aware of one of the gifts of walking with this companion as, in her absence, I failed to stop and marvel at each stunning, simple pleasure I passed along the way – a vibrant purple flower, the gentleness of a soft breeze moving across my skin, the nearness of a statuesque squirrel, or the distant yet distinct sound of the rooster crowing at the house I always envy when I pass by. It was strangely quiet. 

As I observed a sense of sadness at this absence, I was also able to reengage with the part of my mind that is constantly looking for these pleasures to call out. I stopped naming the experience, but I, instead, simply lived the experience. I relished in the warmth of the sun and found joy in the skittering of rodent claws high overhead. I noticed the way it felt to take a deep breath and felt a depth of gratitude for the space in which I was inhabiting. 

Once I arrived at my destination and became present once again with the energetic dissonance that desperately needed a way to crawl out from the thinly worn barrier of my body. I thought about the rhetoric that makes my flesh crawl, and sadness at my utter inability to reconcile the source and audience of these words with the narratives that formed me. I was raised to believe in a story, and wander though I may at times, it is still the scaffolding by which I orient myself. This is a story about a garden. 

God, like an artist shooting up from bed at 11pm because the inspiration was churning and demanded expression , created this garden. God filled the garden with an immense diversity life and named the entire thing good. Then God created humans. From the narrative, it would seem that the role of humans was to be the consciousness – the experiencer of the experience. God gives these experiencers the task of noticing, calling out, and naming each aspect of creation – a task I find myself continuing as I use language to model for my daughter the gift of experiencing through noticing and naming on our walks. It’s innate in us, this ability to notice, name, and assign meaning. God called all of this good, and sent the humans forth to experience, enjoy, and flourish. 

There was a warning, though. There was this one particular tree that they were never to eat from – the only prohibition in all of creation. The story calls it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  It was not called the tree of evil, or the tree of the devil, or the tree of sin. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The story’s antagonist, of course, attempts to lure the human experiencers to taste of this tree with the promise that they will be like God – that the knowledge, or certainty, of what is good and what is evil is God-like: Powerful. Just as God warned, after tasting the fruit of this knowledge, the humans lost the privilege of simply enjoying the garden. 

Many people view this story as a time-limited, chronological event, but what if it is more than that? What if this is an invitation and a prohibitive warning that lives in perpetuity. The invitation: live, experience, feel, enjoy, abide in the entirety of this creation. The warning: if you are enticed by the fruit of this tree of knowledge, if you want to claim the power and authority to name what is good and what is evil – the result will be separation, death, and destruction. 

Certainty is power. It is the ability to have the answers, to reassure ourselves that we are the “good” ones, and to craft narratives that are coherent and cohesive. But certainty is not without a cost – and the cost is separation and destruction. Death – not in the way of the physical body, but of the ceasing of our ability to simply abide, purely enjoy, and wholly experience. 

You can choose to live amongst the bounty of the entire garden, or you can choose the one tree, the power to claim Ultimate knowledge, Ultimate judgment, Ultimate certainty. 

Myself, I choose the garden. 

For some reason, last night, I turned on the vice presidential debate. I knew it would bring up unpleasant feelings for me, but I wanted to at least see some if it for myself and not just read the summary later. Well, I wasn’t wrong. About a minute in to watching Pence’s face and my stomach started to churn. All of these angry thoughts (which I’ll spare you from) arose and their presence in my mind made me physically sick to my stomach. Because I work in therapy and am always curious about the “why” underneath my feelings, I sat paralyzed and churning on my bed wondering about the curiously strong energies swirling through my body. There was definitely some fear about what might happen in the next few months, as noted by the tensing of muscles and increase in heart rate – and I am sure that fear was probably felt by most (not matter what “side” you are on). But mostly what I felt was the urge to explode all of these nasty, vicious thoughts somehow. I wanted to get on facebook and write sharp, tarted arrows with which to discharge the anger and the blame and get those nasty feelings out of me and into others. So I sat with that for a moment. Would that be helpful to anyone? Would that cause any change? Would that ultimately even make me feel better – probably not, as I have certainly gone this route many times before and am familiar with the terrain. 

What arose next was somewhat of a surprise – it was heartbreak. Not just sadness, heartbreak. While it feels “acceptable” or even maybe pleasurable in some twisted way to spew anger, the more vulnerable truth was that while I was feeling anger, I was feeling anger because I was having to sit with this heartbreak. It was a heartbreak of realizing how distant I felt from people I love. It was a heartbreak at having to hold the dissonance carrying people in my mind who I love, respect and admire in innumerable ways and also whose choices, as I see day after day in the therapy room and in the world, are so harmful. And I know with every piece of my heart that these good, loving humans do not intend to cause harm. And I feel powerless, because I am holding the harm and love at the same time, in the same hands, and what I am left with is dissonance. 

I do not and will never understand how people who I truly know to be caring, compassionate, and empathetic can support an administration that openly refuses to denounce white supremacy, an administration that says that uncovering our implicit bias (which EVERY HUMAN ANIMAL HAS, by the way) and working to mitigate it’s effects is “harmful and offensive” in some way, an administration that openly objectifies and dehumanizes immigrants and refugees, and most importantly, an administration that openly rejects the well-researched, well understood implications of systemic racism on humans in this country. And I am saying all these things right not with a tone of anger, but with true and genuine confusion and sadness. There many differences between the parties and the ways in which they navigate finances as limitations of government, when in looked at in a vacuum can certainly be widely and fairly debated, but lets not pretend that these larger systemic issues are not also tied in to each and every one of these decisions. Who will benefit from these decisions on a large scale? Who stands to be harmed? 

I don’t deny that this is a difficult, and maybe an impossible election year to navigate. The options are fairly crappy. We have to do better, friends. I refuse to believe that America can not be better than this.

I have all these thoughts about Spirit and Certainty, and how much people love the safety and avoidance of dissonance of clinging to dogmatic, black and white responses and how maybe the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in our time is just that – certainty. So, I’m coming with an open mind. You are not going to change my mind about who to vote for and I’m sure I won’t change any of yours because as strongly as I feel my convictions are driving me, I know yours do to. I would, however, be so curious and open to know how others understand this dissonance – whatever “side” of it you are on.