Augustine: A Prayer for Becoming a Pillow

A good friend, I speak of frequently, sent me an email about a difficult family situation. He ended it with "At times the most appealing thought in the world is to become a pillow, and live out a life on a bed and occasionally under a head, between knees, etc. I spend mental energy fantasizing about being bedding, is my current state of being."

He asked me to keep his family in my thoughts. I wrote him this prayer in response. I offer it here. It is somewhere both silly and sincere.

Lord help me to be a pillow. Guide me in your tradition of bed-making which Jesus and the saints followed. On my journey in your stillness, open my air-pockets so I can comfort what is weary. Grant me patience to wait through the long day, both heated afternoon sun and dreary humid rain, and receive the heavy head that lays itself upon my down. Open my folded creases so I can welcome who is tired and bring calm dreams to the anxious mind. Open my folds and shape to the currents of air flow around me, that I may release the heat and sweat of painful dreams and take in afresh the cool night air; bringing it close to the mind burdened from the day. May my location be a familiar one, that those who lose me in the night, find me with ease. Shape me, O Lord, that my contours may alleviate loneliness from those who long to hold and be held. In the morning, I pray, make me a pillow to shield from a bright and stark light, but may I have brought rest enough to grant strength for the day. In my transformation, Lord, might I find all these qualities already inside myself, brought forth not through great effort, but in the midst of gentle contemplation. Amen.

Athena: Starting All Over

Dear Augustine,

I send you a picture of this quote, from The Book of Salt, earlier today. OOF.

I do not want to start all over again.
Scanning the help-wanteds.
Knocking on doors.
Walking away alone.
And, yes, I am afraid.

The context in the book is that a young man, from Vietnam, but living in France, is writing home to his brother. The words slip out of him, almost too raw and honest for the letter (and they're actually repeated twice.)

I almost cried.

For me, this hits home on so many levels. This is how I feel about finding a new job (search for that has been meh thus far, it's too early for when I'm actually available), but this is also how I feel about relationships. And online dating (which was brought up the other day when Facebook announced they were getting into it).

It's frustrating to feel like you have to start from scratch. It's terrifying to feel overwhelmed, like you have all these options in front of you, and you have to figure out a way to compare and sift through them all. And that's when you can find the options. In so many ways (jobs and dating) it just feels like I can never find something that's the right fit. Something doesn't work on somebody's end, and then it's the opposite the next time, and then it's just. It's so hard to get timing right, to make it all happen the way it feels like it's supposed to.

I was telling a friend earlier that I feel like Chandler Bing a bit. When they get close to getting married, she wants to know if he'll miss having the "firsts" of dating. He responds:

SO FRICKING RELATABLE. (x)



Maybe most people enjoy that newness part. I don't get sweaty, but it is all anxiety, feeling sick to my stomach (not butterflies. sick.), and just constant over-thinking and pressure I put on myself. I just. I wish that I could somehow jump past all of that and just be trying to figure things out 2 years in. I'd sacrifice the "new" parts to get to the comfortable and companionate aspects. But that's never how it works. And I can't skip the interview process and just fast forward to being a couple months in.

I have to go through all that work. And it is scary on so many levels. In my head, I keep telling myself that (at least with work), in a few months at the most, I will already be in my new situation, learning the ropes and figuring out how to adjust. This applying process will be a blip that I will get through. But I wish I could skip through it altogether, and I can't. With dating, I can, and I sort of have been. But then that just means never getting anywhere. I'm not sure if that's worth it.




+Athena

Augustine: And then...

Dear Athena,

I told you I would write up my thoughts on Rachel Held Evan's new book "Inspired." I'm endeavoring to read through it again and write as I read this time. Each chapter is incredibly moving in what it tells about the Bible and ourselves as people who read it. I don't know that I will necessarily have something to say about each chapter other than "It is good." But I will begin with what has found a place deep within me, and that is the epilogue.

It is with a tinge of regret that I give away the last section, but I will not do so in detail. The title of the epilogue is "And Then." Rachel describes her sister-in-law's masterful use of this phrase to coax stories from her family and friends and the use by biblical authors to carry a story forward with Waw Consecutive "And Then, And Then, And Then." She describes how we live in the "And Then." That we find ourselves in the narrative of this story, not as the main protagonist, but through theology "linking our individual story to the biggest story we can imagine."

I imagined the place of this phrase in my own life and the words I tell myself.

In my closet, I have in a box journals from my childhood and adolescence. Different kinds, sizes, colors, and materials; I collected them when I filled or abandoned the last one. Some were gifts given to me by friends, reading "Cheaper than therapy journal" and others are leather and I dug out of a corner of the basement. The earliest one I still have was given to me by my 2nd grade teacher as way to store story ideas, one of my favorites is a leather travel journal from my brother that quotes "Do not wait to be inspired to write, but write in order that you may be inspired." When I was feeling more like an adult and I emptied my parent's house of all my old possessions. I tried to get rid of most anything I would not use or would not revisit regularly. In the mess of creating categories (college books, high school trophies and awards, etc) I created a pile of journals. I don't know the person who has the strength to sift through old things and not stop nostalgically and pour over their contents. I glanced through pages, falling into the strangest moments of life in middle school or a college excursion. I found moments of spiritual formation on a retreat and silly gossip flying back and forth between friends. However, what I discovered most, and dreaded seeing because I knew it to be there, was the pages upon pages of desperation and disparagement for my sexuality. I couldn’t bring myself to read them then, I can't bring myself to read them now. I've held on to these journals in a box, in my closet, believing that one day I will be able to read them and find some use from their self-destruction.

Reading them now is not necessary, because they are scribed into my mind. When I accepted my sexuality, these words did not vanish. They were part of the story and are carried in the neurons of my mind that are relieved when I am imagining and planning and attempting my death. When I failed at a work task or let a friend down, these lengthy and destructive scripts start playing as an album.  It took years to recognize they existed, and longer still to recognize when they were playing. In time, I added to the wording on how to kill myself, with delaying phrases "Not now, wait until this thing…", but the belief still held that I was fighting an unwinnable battle. I would eventually lose against the script one day and die. I confessed this to a friend one day and they challenged me as to the truthfulness of this belief. "Why? Why do you have to lose someday? I don't believe that's true." He impugned the narrative, and my love for him meant I had to consider he might be right.

I let myself believe that as time progressed, the self-destructive script may become weaker and my resistance stronger.

And then, I read Inspired. Every chapter was like a billow of air into the heart of a just kindled fire. And then, I read the epilogue and I found myself rehearsing this phrase over and over and over again. And then, and then, and then. I imagined sitting in Maki's kitchen being asked this question again and again. I imagined the rabbi's asking me when I though my script was over "And then? What do we write next?" I imagine a great cloud of witnesses living and dead, turning their face to me and asking "And then? And then? And then? What does God do next?" I imagine a church and community holding me in their prayers with "And then? What do we see next in your life?" I imagine crawling into the lap of a God who holds me as they tell a story of "And then" about not only my future, the future of us, their people.

"And Then" is a script I didn't know would come. It is part of the story I did not think would ever arrive. The old parts of my narrative are not gone, but they are also not the end.

I woke up on my most recent birthday to an amulet sun rising on snowfields and iced branches. I had reached an age, for a long time, I never thought I would see, and it is beautiful.

+Augustine

Augustine: Increments

Written Last Night:

After debating between Brokeback Mountain and Call me By your Name, two movies I have never seen, I decided on the older one, knowing it was heartbreaking, and despite the feeling I already knew what the movie would be.

I finished it and immediately had to look up on the last line. Then I looked up more, and now I have been reading for at least half an hour till I stumbled upon the movie poster watermarked with "(2005)" and I realized that this movie came out, not during the college years when I was gracefully sheltered from the world, but in the midst of high school. I realized that when it came out I wanted to see it, but it also terrified me. It was not a celebration for me then. I did not think to myself how good it feels to be represented, but instead, how fearful I am that this is spotlighted for all to see. I wanted to see it then because I thought it would show me images that lusting teenage eyes wanted to see. It is strange to see it now and imagine that 16 or 17 year old watching this movie and trying to make sense of it. He was so controlled then. What would it have been to him to see the pain of not being able to talk about your feelings, to watch someone else suppress them, to watch them be embraced? What would this all have meant to that teenage boy?

What does it mean to this 30yr old man now? To see the time pass and dream of a life spent together with another? To see the loneliness that feels so present in his own life, displayed on the screen? What if you let go and lived a life you loved?

---Looking back on last night's entry---

I have been feeling this loneliness all morning.

I don't know where to begin with it. I thought I would sit down here and all the words would begin to flow out as they have been racing through my head all morning. But they suddenly feel stoppered. Not gone. Just held back.

Every time I begin with a thought, it seems too small.

I am so lonely Athena. I am so cut off.

--Break of Time--

Athena! My dear and close friend, Athena, Athena!

I went to reread your message that I have yet to respond to. The one that ends "I wrap myself in darkness. It shimmers." I wanted to write to you here, in this space that we hold for one another, and I, for the first time, read your letter from February.

Athena! Athena! Athena!

What a gift you are to me. What a moment of miracle to find this waiting for me.

There is such a great relief and comfort in reading your words for I feel them too.

I look back on the last 5 years since moving to Colorado and taking this job. "There has been so much that has happened since then, but nothing that's changed the circumstances of my life." I am exhausted from the change and demoralized by the lack of accomplishment.

Again, but with different words than those ones: I am tired of the churning and movement, only to discover then that I am still empty for all the effort.

A moment last night, while thinking of the boy that was me in high school and what he dreamed of, what my friends then dreamed of, would we ever have imagined ourselves where we are now? No. As a child I believed the future was a matter of effort and what I could make of it. That it was somehow a store and I could pick out what I wanted. It feels no more like a piece of land to build upon and I have only the resources at hand, or a canvas, already partially painted, and I have a limited mixture of paints from which to construct. If I am to paint with these colors, I must acquiesce to their to limitations. I cannot paint a traditional sunset without some shade of red or orange. I may be able to craft it from another genre or the sunset just at twilight when it is blue, purple, but it is at a different time. "Same friendships, same loneliness when I feel the reality of how far away my closest friends live."

The people and friends I am surrounded by are not the ones I thought I would be with. Yesterday I sat in a meeting with people I knew and had working relationships with and all I wanted to do was to be left alone. I texted this to my best friend Z yesterday, "I'm at an all day work meeting and it's lunch and I don't feel like talking with anyone. I'm tired. Texting you instead. " and a little later "It's not that I don't want to talk to anyone, it's that I don't really like any of the people around me in my life. I'm suppose to have dinner with my parents tonight and it sounds exhausting."

I've stopped going to work. I haven't spent even a half day in the office in 2 weeks (granted one was Spring Break so I don't know that it was noticed). Spending time with my parents is tiring and draining. I don't want just a vacation with good friends, I want my good friends to be my weeknights and lunch dates.

"For the most part I don't know what I want. I can't even really picture a dream job, because right now I'm just so freaking burnt out and in survival mode." I didn't get the job with Outward Bound and those I've told have asked me "Have you started job searching again?" For What?! I pull up job boards and see only new places to be stuck. I look at degrees programs (Law Degree) and I see opportunities for failure and little excitement. "I'm afraid to want things. That doesn't stop the wanting at all, of course, it just means that I keep submerging it and pushing it away. I hide it and I hide from it. Will writing it out help or just make things more raw?" -- The only thing I can think to do is to write it out. That maybe writing is the thing that will accumulate to change?

There is a counseling method (Solution Oriented I believe) that asks clients to think of a time when they didn't feel or experience the problem and to focus on why was that? There is a relief when there is a large change, like when I moved. It persists for a little while, acts as a guard against those things that may go awry. The moment that most clearly sticks out is when a friend asked me "What would your life look like if you stayed here instead of moving somewhere else?" I was shocked in the moment to discover how different I felt when I started appreciating my life as it stood now and the potential instead of viewing them as lacking. I think there is a cliché that tells us to 'stop wanting and appreciate what we have.' That is not helpful. This felt more like holding close the things I had, the paints at my disposal and rather than lamenting what colors they are not, meditating on them, what images can they become? What do the tools I'm holding give me? (For instance, there is a piano in my house. I paid for an app to teach me. There is a change to be had there).

It would seem that the changes of youth are more momentous, marked and milestoned. Semesters, graduations, major birthdays. I wonder if, on the whole, the changes of adulthood are of the incremental kind? They are not marked, but practiced? I find myself least in my loneliness when I write to this journal. When I am in great despair, I write to myself in a way to process. I shared it recently with a friend and she told me "*Augustine, you have such a way with words. That you can take this things… these abstracts and problems and you know how to put them into logic ways to deal with them. (Hand motions of fingers meshing) You find ways of talking about them and finding another way of dealing with  them." Last night at dinner with my mom, she told me that one of her coworkers complimented me to her about a meeting she recently had with me. She told my mom "He is so well-spoken. He thinks of things from a perspective I would never consider."

An author, if only I could remember who, once complimented for having chosen writing responded "I did not choose to write, it chose me." I wonder more with age if I have been chosen, and if need only to turn myself over to it. Not necessarily as a career, but as a practice, discipline, and ritual.

A woke up this morning, not sure what to do with this day. I had the notion that I might write a great deal. To you, in response to books, in letters to friends with cards that I brought with me.

I leave you now in this letter, not having resolved the fears and loneliness with a sound argument or comforting story, but, maybe, with a commitment. To write into the unknown and let myself discover who I become.

Love,

+Augustine

Athena: Raw

Dear Augustine,

We chatted just the other night and it was lovely. I so love getting to talk with you, and for some reason, I always want to talk to you the most right after we've just spoken. I think because talking to you just feels so natural and good that it never feels like we've had enough time. I know someone is really special in my life when it feels like that. :)

I had fortuitously found my five year plan, and we talked about that fragile and raw faith...the sort that feels so difficult to share, and you're just so exhausted because you don't want to try and defend it or convince anyone. You just want to...I'm not sure. Sit with it? Stay there and hope that it doesn't fade away too quickly? Guard it because it feels precious? All of those things?

The other thing that struck me though about that piece is that...I'm mostly in the same place as I was then. I'm in the same job, same living situation, same lack of relationship. Same friendships, same loneliness when I feel the reality of how far away my closest friends live. The only significant difference in my life since then is...my friendship with R, I think. (Edit: actually...my new Master's program is new. That's unequivocally life-giving. I feel myself when I'm in classes and learning.)

It makes me feel stuck. I feel like I haven't been moving for five years, and it's not that I haven't learned a lot and done so much at my job. There has been so much that has happened since then, but nothing that's changed the circumstances of my life. I just feel older and weightier. That line of Bilbo's comes to mind...I am "like butter scraped over too much bread."

I know that changes (at least in my job) are on the horizon, and will be here sooner than I can imagine. Changes in social situation? Perhaps that will come with the new job? I do have a very close friend that just moved home from Algeria, and I've been spending more intentional time with my cousins, so that's helped a bit.

But I don't know where I'm going at all. For the most part I don't know what I want. I can't even really picture a dream job, because right now I'm just so freaking burnt out and in survival mode. I keep reassuring myself that 1) in March or April when I'm applying I might be in a better head space for it and 2) that I won't be trapped. Finding a new job doesn't mean it's got to be forever. If it's not the right fit, I can leave. Or just take breathing time to figure it out.

I read this book recently called Designing Your Life and it suggested writing multiple five year plans. Alternative paths that future!Athena could take, even if they don't all feel achievable, or if you want a particular path. I think it's exactly what I need to do...I just don't know if I'm ready yet. I don't know if I'm ready to try and put words to what I want. At least a couple of those things feel fragile in the same sort of way that that faith does. Things I'm afraid will never come true, and that expressing those dreams, even as a possible future, will just be too painful. That feeling has been sitting with me since we've talked...

I'm afraid to want things. That doesn't stop the wanting at all, of course, it just means that I keep submerging it and pushing it away. I hide it and I hide from it. Will writing it out help or just make things more raw?

I don't know and I'm afraid to find out. I just don't want to be stuck anymore.

+Athena