The Monkey Chased the Weasel

My blog.  My rules.  Just Sayin'.

I have been in a right bizarre circle this past six months.

For me, the hard road is the one that yields the best fruit and I find that as I circle this same damn fruitloop of an intersection over and over again, eventually my own momentum spits me out.  Then, there is that hard landing on your ass part that is unpleasant at best, and downright painful at its worst.  Here I sit, again, ass sore and raw from a thousand botched landings, wondering if THIS TIME I might just be able to get this right.

It is an unfortunate truth of life with PTSD that you experience your story as a series of repetitive events---events which do not resolve until the emotions that were originally associated with them are experienced and put to rest

So, you live life on this circular spiraling path.

Lately, mostly I circle drains.

In the spirit of changing that dynamic...  here's something I'd like to share from the vault of things that sprang into being as a result of the difficulties I have lived.  It is an excerpt from a larger work, but it strikes at the core of what I want to amend right now, right here:

From Tenure of a Mystic, Mvt. 5 "Communion" (link to the whole poem:  https://www.scribd.com/doc/304893477/Tenure-of-a-Mystic-A-Symphony-in-Five-Movements):

The dark is not
because of us.
We did not make it
on our own.
We borrowed it when needed
to hide our pain
to cloak our rage
to mask our sin.

No one knows this better
than those who’ve
suffered from the dark
that others used
to mask their sin
to cloak their rage
to hide their pain.
BUT—victims who seek
justice
often fail to look
past judgment
and He clearly told us
we could not know the hearts of men
but what is pain to do
but seek redemption, rescue, and release?

It’s hard to see what’s real, what’s true
when all around you is deception
blame and muffled screams
of victims and of perpetrators lost to God
by sin and power.

Power chooses, steals His children
and in isolation
re-enacts a chain of pain
so ancient no one to this hour
can remember
there was a source.
There is a cure.

My mother tried to school in me the ancient curse:
She taught me that if I would listen I could KNOW, and then believe my eyes:

the difference between Good and Evil.

The fruit of the tree
a nightmare—
so like unto God but never God—
able to see but not redeem

Was that the agony, my Lord?

Could you see us as we were and know
we never really meant it
and know you could not stop us
know we could only be saved if we chose

You.

Yet, choice demands belief
in what we cannot see
or else we choose
the visible
accessible
the tangible
which we can grasp
without the tourniquet of faith,
and choosing all too often
what regards us best
we fail
and cry to God
What NOW?!?!

The answer is preceded by a question—
“Do you believe that I can do this?”

The simplicity of which is only
truly comprehensible for those who have escaped
the strangle hold of reason and entitlement.

For me,
it is hard:
this seeing in the dark.

It draws me ever closer to this God,
this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
but fear is omnipresent:
my hourly battle of barricaded will
          what will I see
          what will I choose
          what will I act upon
          what will become of me
if I surrender
to His power, love and grace
and disappear
among the ruins of the desert
to serve in silence
in the dark
alone with Him I cannot see
but never am without,
surrounded by people
still harassed and harried
people with the power
each and every one
to harm, to heal, to kill, to serve
and using it
aware or not
that using it
is garden, desert, garden, death,
is resurrection, promised or implied,
is mechanism of damnation or redemption
action of imperfect elements
is body, blood transformed
in us to hoard and share
as we do deign to try
to BE the instruments of God.

The wisdom of the cave is you can see in the dark,
but only when you realize that you yourself are blind.

The wisdom of the desert is that those
who seek surrender, silence, weakness
always find Him, finding ALL.

The wisdom of the kingdom is that the children
of the Most High God
cannot be contained simply because
our need for power
consistently demands an ordered world.

The wisdom of communion
is that I could not once by force of mind
or force of heart redeem myself
but yet I am redeemed:
the mystery of the living God.

The songs of children I have loved and served—
become as flower petals on the path.
My fading earthly light
reveals revision of belief,
transfigured by His brightness
brought within
cassandra 33
brought along
each step upon the path—
a ransom and redemption.

Grace forgives our broken choices
while our human hands and hearts and voices
can yet salvage the imperfect soul within
because He gifted us with silence that resounds
He gifted us with sight to gaze upon the dark
and even those who see
the impossibility of Faith sometimes remain,
and choose belief
and choose to face each other
as we eat and drink of Him
becoming us
and reach together toward the eastward rising Son.
Soðlice

-cassandra
revised 2009

New and Important Milestones on My Journey

The photo to the left is of Mass at Musica Sacra's Colloquium from a few years back.  It stands in my mind as the pinnacle moment in my search for authenticity in worship.

The colloquium Masses stand out in my mind as some of the longest two hour Masses of my LIFE, because, in Salt Lake City that week, inside St. Madeleine's, the temperature was often about 90 degrees, and my autistic son was having NONE of it.  I would be in a pew, near the sides, and he would be okay for the first hour or so, but as the temperatures climbed and the Mass continued, his patience would blow out like a cheap tire on hot asphalt going 100 in the desert.

There were moments, during those beautiful Masses, that I sincerely wanted to throat punch my then 8 year old child.  He was a beast.  But I endured it, and continued trying to redirect him as patiently and lovingly as I could.

My inner editor just yelled, over a bowl of popcorn: 

"HEY---maybe you could get to the point a little sooner, this IS, after all, the INTERNET, and people don't generally truck with all that talking and no point..."

Fine.

As readers of this blog know, Mass was a nightmare.

Autism and echoey spaces that require that you be still, quiet and do what everybody else is doing are NOT AUTISM FRIENDLY.  Trust me on this.  All the good intentions sail down the toilet the minute an autistic child is actually sitting behind you beating his head on the pew because the music is painful (don't mind his professional choir directing musician mother who would also like to be beating her head on a pew, but settles instead for a gruff constipated-looking judgment single eyebrow raise flashed in the direction of the "musicians" du jour up there with their microphones and terrible liturgical ideas....)

Inner editor is at it again:  "SO WHAT IS YOUR POINT PLEASE?"

Slow down, I need to write this in order, so people will understand...

"THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO READ YOUR BLOG ALREADY GET IT..."

Fine.

Go back for the back story if you're new around here... it's in the post "Things I did Wrong with My Autistic Son".  I'd link to it, but frankly, I have no idea how to find that stuff either, so good luck with that.

"WHAT IS THE POINT AGAIN?"

After three years of hiding from Mother Church, on impulse Sunday, I dug my son's Missal out of the bottom of the desk drawer, threw on a dress, a snood, and a jacket, and we raced to the car and drove like I was on a NASCAR track to the bowels of Pearl, Mississippi, and we went to Mass.

No, we did not take communion, in case you're wondering.  I have not been to confession, and I don't believe in the "let's all take a walk so we can get attention from the priest" form of "getting a blessing" at communion thing... It's up there with NO, I'm NOT shaking your hand during the Peace, you disease-ridden child.... Eric was very concerned about why we did not take communion, I told him I'd tell him when we got to the car.  So, I was nicer to you, dear reader, than I was to him in the moment...

"HOW DID IT GO?  THAT'S THE ONLY THING THEY ARE STICKING AROUND FOR AT THIS POINT..."

Eric was super enthusiastic.  He said, as he was going through his Missal on the way to Mass...  "This is a GAME GUIDE for MASS."  Yes, my dear and darling boy, the Missal is a game guide for Mass---it tells you where the secret rooms are, gives you the scripts to say to open the doors, and tells you at every turn how to properly "DO" Mass...  Thank you for the metaphor, I'll never get that out of my head now... but he was so happy.

At Mass, he fidgeted mercilessly, but tolerated the redirections:

Put your arms down.
Use you upper octave voice, that man voice isn't quite there yet, but soon... (WAAAAAAH, he is losing his soprano voice, and the mommy part of me is in agony... )
Put your ARMS DOWN.
Do what everyone else is doing.
NO, you can't put your ass on the pew when you're kneeling..
YES, you CAN kneel for five minutes without needing emergency medical intervention.
PUT YOUR ARMS DOWN!
When you turn pages in your Missal during the sermon because you got bored 10 minutes in... please don't do it in the NOISIEST MANNER POSSIBLE...

But, he tolerated it all so very very well.
Then, we got in the car, and for that nasty interrupting internal editor's edification, here is the "money quote of the day"

"Mama, we need to go to Mass from now on."

Okay, I'll start making a list for confession, and take a deep breath, and stop being a whiny, prideful, brat of God and get my ass back in the game.  We have a guide, and everything.

Toodles