forming; Again

'able to withstand the annunciation angels come'

i have been sicker than i have been in longer than i can remember. years, perhaps—? no matter, really. nothing that transpired or is currently transpiring is what i want to share. it is bringing reflection on Sharing, in general— the way i usually write, Here— the boundaryless and overflowingness, of it— its wild free-associating and nothing-off-limits. right before i tipped into the black molten dark of the cauldron i wrote an entry on october 2, eve of the jewish new year. i felt extremely vulnerable, Off, Exposed. i unpublished the last two entries i wrote, and Tipped. fever, pain, banging, Heat. i thank the gods for my protectors and my friends. i thank the gods for being able to ask for help. i thank my body for withstanding what only It could bear, ultimately— no one else could Take That from me, And— i love that i just opened my dear sophie strand’s latest substack and at the very end it reads: “No one is coming to save us. Everyone is coming to save everyone.”

this is just For Me; a recognition of what this place Is and what it also Can’t be, anymore. a marvelling— True Marvelling— that somehow my addiction to posting on instagram has been Altered. last summer i left and wrote the cauldron-book, then returned after california-via-the-rails and bianca’s death. then, Again, the same Truth in the body announced itself this year— this just doesn’t feel Right, anymore. these things we think can never change— these things we think we are Powerless under— one day we suddenly find are not The Same, anymore.

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i needed to hear my own voice, at 30— performing ‘reliquary: the body.’ funnily enough i had the instinct to explore it, now two augusts ago, and posted an Opening here on substack, in the early days of revisiting this online space i had but wasn’t using. This Time, it felt different. whereas then i felt lightly sad but somewhat more curious— this time, i was crying. i was crying at what i was saying, in the context of words-are-spells. i was crying at the suicidality i heard inside of it, that everyone clapped and cheered for at the end. remembering, now, how— in the space before my performance-call-time— all the assailing voices were telling me such horrible things and i was near-convinced i wasn’t going to be able to remember what i had memorized. i remember What It Takes in those moments, to Do It Anyway. how many of those moments there have been in my life. I Have To Remember. or else this can all seem like a wash of lostness, thrashing, pain, never-changing-ness.

and it’s just not true.

it’s just not true.

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even now, i’m not ready to copy and paste those words from ‘reliquary’ in, Here. [i just tried, and my cursor hovered and then did nothing.] there’s something more embodied than that that wants to Be Born; Exist.

during the endless-feeling fever hours one of the things i unexpectedly ended up doing was listening to kat von d talk about recently being baptized as a christian. and then i listened to alice cooper’s testimony. and the guitarist (i think) from korn. i thought of my beloved teacher, martin shaw, and his still-relatively-recent baptism; the journey he has been on. i was thinking of What It Means when this happens; how last year i thought i may be being called to become a woman of the cloth; how i got the closest ever to making confirmation in, first, the catholic church tradition i (loosely) grew up in, and then the episcopal church i had found a home in as an adult.

there was something about Knowing You Have A Place To Go; in your lostness. something So Much Bigger Than You that can hold it. [i’m following this thread trepidatiously, because i didn’t intend on writing about this, right now.] i took communion / the eucharist more times than i ever have in my life. went to church more consistently and willingly than i ever have in my life. and i felt different, After. i never understood why the eucharist was A Thing until i was in the practice of it. until i could feel the transfiguration inside my own self. this is why; i finally knew. this is why.

because i spend so much of my life in forward-facing and space-tending orientations i love being anonymous. i love slipping in the back of a congregation and crying and seeking my solace and saying my prayers. and Then, i loved it so much i wanted to Be Involved. and that’s where things start getting complicated. i got to tell two gospel stories in my own embodied style; i got to be an intercessor and read the prayers of the people; i got to finally be a proclaimer of the gospel, like i had wanted to since my faith came calling for me again in 2018.

And; i wasn’t anonymous anymore.

i felt like i couldn’t just show up with unwashed face and unbrushed teeth and whatever-the-fuck i was wearing because i hadn’t even planned to be there. i couldn’t be the weary traveller just stumbling in from the road. the pressure squeezed me out. something kept me from returning; told me to Hold. Wait. And Then Later. /// i remember the last time i tried to go to church on easter (last easter), in an episcopal church i’d sometimes go to in my own neighborhood. it was like every single mention of Him, His, The Father, The Son, The Savior, His, His, Him, Him … was jabbing me in different places in my body. i suddenly found i couldn’t do the subconscious translating i had been doing all along— of inhabiting the church and saying the words and prayers and Also knowing i am an earth-reverential follower of The Great Mother who Actually created it all. // i couldn’t just hold under the surface anymore my want to hear the gospel of mary magdalene in its legitimacy alongside all of the other sermons. i wanted the balanced-ness of The Mother and not just The Father and The Son.

[…]

it was an interesting place to Be, again; in the cauldron of so much sickness. remembering the Real-Ass-Truth of how a prayer novena to saint jude, the patron saint of impossible causes, was the one i made when i “had no idea, any longer, how to save myself.” my experiences with the black madonna and the madonna addolorata, The Mother, in general, have been staggering— and christ, too, the Beloved. The Teacher. the one who travelled with mary magdalene the self-transformative pathways cynthia bourgeault writes so eloquently and heartedly, about.

but/and— as i stumbled upon dear sophie writing, earlier— “No one is coming to save us. Everyone is coming to save everyone.” it cannot Only be christ jesus, yeshua, for me. he is a Part Of the pantheon. he is a part of Who I Must Remember to call in for myself, in addition to my earthly friends and family— when those blackest cauldrons come to tip me In. it is the pantheon that has saved me. and What, Here, in my Own Body— is leading me back to it. reminding me i am not just these words slicked with anger and sorrow, blackness and blood; sloppy. i am not this boundaryless blinking-cursor white page on the internet i spill myself into; spill myself All Over. particles and ash and flower-bits and Wounds.

i have become ghostly; in this. in this way.

And I Am Still Forming. thinking about how;

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when i rejoined the church as an adult and got to navigate it of my own accord— the thing that prompted me to move from anonymous pew-crier to something else was Being Of Service. i Always gravitate to this— from wherever i find myself in the spectrum~gradient of my life. this is Inherent to me. and it has been A Grand Riddle of my journey to Be Of Service without being a martyr or a forced sacrifice.

I Felt That Calling; i Know what it feels like. i know why i gravitate to it. the word Ministry.

it felt like the word Medicine, 2 years beforehand, sitting with the healing community in colorado i had My Way opened, into.

you realize This Thing— that happens. you are oriented towards something. in the church, towards Ministry. towards discernment and ordination and a formal process. So That One Day You Can Be. in the healing arts community, you are oriented towards initiations, shadow work, ceremony— the work you need to do to Find Your Medicine. Reclaim Your Medicine. to Stand With The Rest of the practitioners, and give your gift in a way that helps others. to even Know What That Gift is.

in my Striving-Towards i didn’t realize that both my ministry and my medicine were hiding in plain sight.

it’s so easy for me to be set-up-on-a-track (this is my get-good-grades-whilst-life-is-collapsing jam)— Do This and Study Hard and Try Hard and Work The Channels and someday you’ll get there. you look at the others— the priests giving learnèd sermons you admire, facilitating the mass. the practitioners/healers doing their readings or cord cuttings or facilitating the initiations or ceremonies. You Want To Be That. a gap is created that prevents you from seeing that you already Are that— but in your Own Way.

i’m remembering how i felt taking a step towards ‘being an ecotherapist’ during sprawling covid off-time from my full-time job, fall 2020. i remember for the first time being in a kind of ‘formal school’ environment again, since i never got a masters— with papers to read and a group to be a part of— i remember the intensity resonating of my Actual identity— i wasn’t a therapist like many of the others— I Was A Sufferer, Too. and at times i could barely hold it— was i ready to step into that role as facilitator, as ‘therapist’— when i didn’t have a ‘clean’ relationship to it— (thank god again for sophie’s essay ‘i will not be purified’ that lilts into my head everytime i try to use that word) .. the phraseology is eluding me to properly describe it—

but i felt it this summer, during my internship with a public health organization, as well. I Am A Helper as well as A Sufferer. i can’t be asked to read research papers innocuously as if They Aren’t Talking About Me. and there is barely enough Space for that. i realize over and over how (unsurprisingly) our overculture doesn’t make the both/and available to us. there is always the lilt of— well, if we are a healer, practitioner, priest, therapist, etc— we must be Fine. we need to be Fine in order to carry out that role. and most of us aren’t fucking fine. and it’s such a disservice and injustice to the Reason Why so many of us are called to being of service in the first place— we are hurting, we are/were hurt. we are on a healing journey that Forever-Continues— it didn’t just end all-drawn-up-in-the-bow and Now We Are Recovered, and Now We Are This.

i have to keep my ‘wretchedness’ close to me. I Have To Re-Memember. what it took. to get Here.

but there isn’t room in the conversations or the frameworks for the reality of this— isn’t room in the zoom or the garden table for the lindwurm, for the dragon. for the violence, for The Dark.

we like looking at anthropological studies from a distance; we like getting close to the throngs of people who need our help, but not too close. we don’t like disclosing on our websites and bios that in addition to being a healer/helper/practitioner we have also had mental health crises or addictions or struggles that are ongoing. how would people trust us, then? wouldn’t people be afraid?

‘we,’ the healthy helpers, are Here. and They, the ‘wretched refuse’ calling out for the help, are There. as if there is no overlap. as if it’s that clean.

because We Are Okay, Now. right?

We. Are. Okay.

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i think my exploration wants to be left Here, for now.

one of the questions i am sitting with Is about That Gift and my orientation to the one who is carrying it— Me. i get into many points where The Gift The Gift The Gift is the only thing that matters. i am a meaning-maker, i have had to make meaning out of sheer survival— that story Makes Sense to me— i had to go through everything i have gone through in order to birth The Gift, Reclaim The Gift, that allows me to give back to humanity in the way that i do.

but you have to be backed into the corner every once in a good while. or more often than that. to remember that if i am suffering, if my body is struggling, if i am ill, and i am not resting, and i am not taking breaks, and i am just awash in this tidal-torrent Forever— for The Gift, The Gift, The Gift— then something is amiss, Here. because don’t i matter, too? even without The Gift? because then i am back in the same place i was in, before— without the apartment, without the job and the title, without the money, without the relationship, without the identity— Who Am I? Am I Worth Still Being Here? Am I Worth Still ‘Getting To Exist’? even without ‘my work’? even without this story that has Made It All Feel Worth It, in the long-run?

this is an extremely complex question. but/and one that is not blowing me apart (at least presently) in the contemplation of it.

i am not-i. i am this one walking beside me whom i do not see.

the Different Roads I Take to walk alongside that question.. will be my only Answers.

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in the subtitle: ‘able to withstand the annunciation angels come’ is from the great gioia timpanelli. i am not i, of course, our oft-quoted juan ramón jiménez. <3