Thomas Merton Tracks

    It is a truth that real, authentic learning can only happen through reflection. You can't skip that part. I know that. I'm a teacher; it's what we do. 

    So I've finally mustered the courage to start looking back at some of the posts I wrote while I was married to tdub. There are not quite 200 of them which means it would be a pretty quick read if I were able to plow through it all in one sitting. I'm glad I'm not able to do that because there's a lot of stuff there I need to revisit, feel, and process. Sometimes it feels as if another version of me is moving through my body like a wave as I read. It puts me back in that moment, but going back is necessary because when you mess up at anything you have to take time to figure out the why of your mistake so as not to keep repeating it. And I'm not talking about the mistake of marrying a closeted gay guy. I mean, all things being equal, if you're going to marry the wrong person it may as well be a closeted gay guy. I've never had a problem with gay people, even at the height of my religiosity. For the most part, I find them delightful and, due in large part to the religious trauma of my youth, I feel a strong kinship with gay folks. I'm talking about not demonstrating an ability to make decisions in my own best interests as it pertains to relationship. I see now that I've been avoiding the very thing I most need to do if I plan to keep learning, growing, and improving. I'm about to turn 62, but I see no reason to let that deter me from my endeavor. In fact, it's more imperative than ever that I finally figure this shit out. 

     Being back in Duncan with my boys has given me the strength to do it. Go figure. I guess the best thing about Duncan being pretty much exactly the way it was when I grew up here 60 years ago is that it puts me back in that time and place much like reading the blogs about life with tdub puts me back in that time and place. It's a lot. It's been a lot. But I'm getting there. It's like I had open heart surgery as a child and the doctor botched it up. And somehow, in this, choose-your-own-adventure video game of life the rules state that the only way to move forward is to go back, untangle the mess and get your heart, mind, and soul functioning correctly. I don't remember who said it first, but if we're not learning we're dying. Obviously, I'm not done learning.

    The blog post I read today was from July 2006. I felt huge waves of comfort and strength as I read it. It moved me to tears. I may have been living in the middle of a slow motion train wreck back then, but I was always searching for meaning, trying to make sense of things, and basically just doing the best I could in my current state of growth. I posted it less than a month before tdub came out and our marriage ended. It's a Thomas Merton quote, and it resonated with me in a deep and profound way then just as it does now. I have a different view of it now, particularly the Jesus parts, but the words and the sentiment move me still. Thomas Merton tracks. Here it is:

    "My Lord, I have no hope but in Your cross. You, by your humility, and sufferings and death, have delivered me from all vain hope. You have killed the vanity of the present life in Yourself, and have given me all that is eternal in rising from the dead.

    Why should I want to be rich...to be famous and powerful? Why should I cherish in my heart a hope that devours me - the hope for perfect happiness in this life - when such hope, doomed to frustration, is nothing but despair?

    My hope is in what the eye has never seen. Therefore, let me not trust in visible rewards...Let my trust be in Your mercy, not in myself. Let my hope be in Your love, not in health, or strength, or ability or human resources." - Thomas Merton

    

 As always, thanks for reading! It feels good to write again. 

grace

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When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings

    

    My dad died on February 29, 2020. Leap Day. Departing on a day that only comes around once every 4 years suited his personality perfectly for he was a stoic man. The kind of man who'd appreciate the idea that he'd effectively quartered the number of days in our lifetimes that his death anniversary would pop up on our calendars. Pretty cool trick if you can pull it off. And he did. Of course he did. He may have been stoic, but he was far from dull or boring. He loved to laugh and make jokes, and he had a quick wit that made other people feel at ease and happy around him. I loved making him laugh more than just about anything. 

    I was several years into the process of religious deconstruction by the time Daddy passed which is fortunate because processing the musings of fundamentalist evangelicals as to his current whereabouts would have been all the more difficult to stomach had I not already come to find it all so ridiculous. So, when the Baptist preacher at Daddy's graveside service in Sulphur told the little crowd gathered on that sunny day in March of 2020 that my dad was so fine a man that those in his family were all certain he was now up in heaven taking care of the horse that Jesus would be riding in on at Armageddon, I didn't so much as roll an eye. Let them have their inappropriate apocalyptic fantasies. Disagreeing or providing a different point-of-view would, oddly enough in that particular setting and in this part of the world, make ME seem like the crazy one. Too smart for my own good and lost to the devil. Given over to a reprobate mind. Shit like that. Oh well. 

    The truth of the matter is that funerals are held for the benefit of those left behind, and far and away the majority of the people at my dad's funeral were completely in agreement about the idea of him tending to the horse of the returning King. I mean, when you put it that way, it does sound pretty cool and a bit Lord of the Rings. It's a compliment. I get that. A compliment based in a delusion, but still, they mean well. 

    For the record, my daddy was a real cowboy in every good sense of the word, so I'm quite open to the possibility and certainly the hope that wherever he now exists, and I do think the human spirit is eternal, that there are also horses of an eternal nature. It's not like I've given up entirely on the concept of an afterlife. I'm not an atheist. But I may as well be in the view of Christian fundamentalism. And I'm 100% okay with that. 

    My partner, bigby, played the guitar and sang at my dad's graveside service. It was so simple and so perfect. Nothing else that was said or done really mattered to me. It was a sweet, fitting service for a great man who I was fortunate enough to have as my Daddy for 57 years of my life. During the last years of his life, I told him about my changing religious beliefs. He always listened receptively, seemed intrigued, and never expressed any concern or doubt in my ability to figure it all out for myself. He didn't seem surprised by it. My dad was the kind of person who didn't have to fully understand you to love you, and I'm thankful every day of my life that I got to be here with him and be his daughter. 

    I didn't feel like I could go on writing here without writing about my dad. I feel him near me quite often, and I'm not sure if it's just the part of him that lives on in me or if his eternal spirit is actually hanging around here somehow. Either way he's living on, and that seems to be the crux of pretty much all religion. 

Here's a link to the song bigby sang at his graveside. When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings

Thanks for reading,

grace

    

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