All We Are Sayin…

“Ev'rybody's talking about Ministers

Sinisters, Banisters and canisters

Bishops and Fishops and Rabbis and Pop eyes

And bye bye, bye byes

All we are sayin’

is give peace a chance.”

~ John Lennon

I thought I was going on a journey. Several years ago my ex-wife gave me Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and a couple of other books regarding the man and his mythology. And while I don’t give her credit for this path, it was in the midst of our divorce, it was part of this character arc of a man that I never would’ve known.

Do you have demons inside? I think most of us do.  I think many of us struggle with overindulgence, pride, success vs. failure, aging. Some of us have seen the end of our lives.  And in the moment of my last breath, I didn’t want to be revived to something that was worse than what I knew before. That’s my journey. When I wanted to die last year, when I wanted to die my entire life, I thought it could never get worse. But I did stop breathing. And if it wasn’t for one brave soul I would be dead. And I hated him for that for a long time. Because I didn’t want to face me. I didn’t wanna face my demons.

I woke up in a hospital, angry, volatile, marked a dangerous patient and aware of only one thing. I was going to die. I was damn well going to do it. I spent the next five months on that quest.

And I couldn’t appreciate the gift of life that I was given. Why this man who stood just days after my mother‘s death and told me that he would “take me out” would also be my momentary savior.  I was angry at someone for standing up to a drunken, addicted bastard who didn’t even know how to mourn.

Because I didn’t know peace.

I knew the rationalizations. I knew the religious contemplations, but I didn’t know how to let God show me how to settle.  To breathe.  To be.

The journey isn’t to find some mythic Quest.  The Journey is to find our ‘self’.  

On this journey I met a man. I met him through the one place I was never willing to go.  I met others.

I found God.

Though he really was always there.

Peace doesn’t come out of some miraculous journey. Peace comes out of practice, prayer, petition, practicing more and proving that you are willing to give up everything for it.

I heard the story of a man who gave everything to bring a form of peace to the world.  Not peace in the world, but peace beyond; a peace inside that resonates from a deeper belief in something that we can’t explain with science or philosophy or cable network news.

I lost my serenity yesterday. I found myself sobbing hopelessly at the Portland airport.  Angry at God, mad at my circumstance, and alone.  Yet I wasn’t alone.

God presented himself in trials, in trusted people from the rooms, and in a little boy who loves his daddy.

I hugged that boy and knew that it was going to be okay.  If even just for a moment.

And this morning I realized that I’m still learning, I’m still growing, and I’m still finding peace. Sometimes even in the midst of the storm.

I’m thankful for Ron. He gave me the gift of life when I really just wanted to die.

For my group of peeps. Even though I shut down yesterday and didn’t want to talk. 

For my mentor who has shown up for me many times.

For my daughter. For my sons and my family. Even though I feel estranged most of the time. For a new relationship with my father.

For tears flowing freely as I write this. The spiritual reset that they bring.

For a day with a little boy. Baseball, hiking and hugging.

And for peace. One step at a time.

~ Peace

The Burtle

A.W.

The failure of Fear

I grew up in a culture of fear.  Not the fear that was being pushed down my throat from a fiery pulpit, or the fear of the bullies that shared the same halls with me in early middle school.  NOT the fear of the anger that I held just below the surface for most of my life.  And definitely not a fear of dying.

The culture of fear that I knew was my truth.  I feared anyone know the truth.  Because I was scared of who I was.  I was ashamed of what I was.  I was fearful.

That Fear drove me deep inside and it continued to eat away at me for the majority of my youth.  When I was a young adult, I found an outlet for my fear.  The symptom - a drug that destroyed almost as much as the abuse and the pain inside did.

At 26 I lost my fear.  Or at least I found a mask to wear to hide the pain and a weapon to attack anyone who got to close to my truth.  And I took this mask and wore it with pride, and I took the weapon, a retaliatory sword that slashed and cut the hearts and the hands of those who probably would’ve helped me.   I became a slave to my past, to a drink, to anything that would numb the pain inside.

Fear was winning.

And then it stopped.

In a quiet, simple moment I was given a calm and a ‘peace that passeth all understanding’ (and quite honestly scared the shit out of me)*.  Because in the world inside my head that had been so full of noise, commotion, battles being won and lost in single strokes of my mind, that silence was deafening.

And for once, Fear lost.

Fear can only hold us as long as we feed it.  It can only exist when we give it something to hold onto, when we allow it to purchase in a place inside us and not let go.  Fear does not abide with the truth.

“You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.”

Psalm 91:5-6

I can’t tell you how to find that place of calm.  I still don’t have it all the time.  My mind still races, my head gets ahead of myself and I find myself running around in circles so many times.  What I can say is that I don’t fear like I have in the past.

Nor do I fear my past.  Oh, I have a lot of things that I need to make amends for, but I don’t fear them.  I pray about them. And I pray for the people that I’ve hurt and the people that have hurt me.  But I won’t fear.

I’m pretty gosh darn stubborn, and I know that God wouldn’t let me go when I wanted to let go of myself. So Fear failed.

Yes, Fear tries to rise its head every once in a while.  It finds the little-bitty cracks that I’ve left open for attack.  But God gave me something much bigger.  Life.  I was shown how to live life in this moment. Nothing more.  I am blessed with friends that I trust, a mentor who puts up with my craziness and three beautiful kids that I adore - whether they realize it or not.

I still miss Annie.  Every day.  I still love her.

I don’t fear the future.  I know there is one.  Fear used to tell me that I had nothing to give, that I was worthless, that I wasn’t meant to be here.

But you know what, Fear loses if we choose life. 

Fear dies a little more every moment we chose to live.

So, “Fear not…”

The Burtle 

Fear = noun

fear = verb

* November 19, 2020

A.W.