Deficit

In January of this year, Gerry the spiritual director challenged me to think about deficit as part of my spiritual journey. I wrote part of a journal entry:

I live in a fortress of solitude. It is not at the North Pole, like Superman’s, but...

In those days, my main employments were shoveling lake-effect snow and brooding about my job-search. That deficit, the lack of purpose, melted into the Mediterranean on my way to the Holy Land. There is no lack of things to do, see, or write about in this context. Even if I must push creative endeavors to the back of the queue, I still have a queue. Why am I writing about deficit?

...when some ‘thing’, an object or relationship or resource or whatever, ceases or never begins to be there ... Deficit is all things that are less, insufficient, misplaced, removed and un-actualized.

I could be writing on Palestine’s behalf but I am not. They try to live abundantly. This is my last journal entry before I leave for Geneva. I will be gone.

“Gerry,” I said, “I think I understand what you mean: deficit can be a vacuum or it can be a space.” He nodded emphatically at this: “...and when it is a vacuum, all manner of things get sucked-in.”

“But when it is a space... then there is a place for, I guess, resonance?”. He was pleased with that.

“Exactly. Resonance. Very good...”

Only in resonance can the beauty of the missing ‘something’ be gleamed. Sometimes the resonance is the beauty to be gleamed, like the inside of a kettle drum or the pregnant pause after your doctor says “we successfully removed the tumor.”

Gerry encouraged me to settle into my deficits last winter and appreciate the present moment for what was there, resonating. Resonance is problematic because it is not always filled with choirs of angels.

The problem is that you can fill your deficits with whatever you want but things may not fit their container. When the jammed pieces of that life crumble and fall out, lesser substances still seep in through your cracks. This brings to mind the time I watched the movie “Office Space” and took a shot every time someone said “TPS reports”.

My use of lesser substances has tapered to nothing; I turn to friends or the news, at least, to fill spaces. Yet, however adeptly I squeeze the poisons out of my system, I must contend with being emptied. Grand Rapids or Bethlehem, a cold bed waits for me every night this December.

Gerry encouraged me to think of deficit not as an absence but as something that has a substance of its own. In the wake of this illumination, my thought life is continually mutating. Gerry, speaking on another matter, said that “perhaps it matters less what thoughts and feelings you have than how you relate to them...”

I realized today that there are two kinds of Faith and I have been enmeshed with one of them. I employ what I call “mustard seed prayers”: mountain tumblers. This audacious Faith gives us the courage to hurtle obstacles, risk failure, and stick like epoxy to our convictions. This is the Faith that empowers us to persevere through dissonances, pressing on toward what we know is right. The other side of Faith is patient it sits on top of the mountain through all weather. This Faith coats us in olive-oil and prevents adversity from lingering with our souls. This is a Faith that breathes inside a vacuum, can stomach stagnating uncertainty, and wait trustingly for conditions to ripen.

This Faith is found in fasting: embracing the deficit.

Deficit is not the woman who disappeared over a hill six months ago: it is the space she vacated and...

I do not miss her.

From time to time, I have to repel the suggestion that I try to date a nice Palestinian woman. If she is a nice lady, her culture will insulate her. Pairs come together through channels of church/mosque and family, often with beautiful results but sometimes not; romance is not necessarily absent but, either way, there is an established social network that brings nice couples together. I am a guest here. I could date another guest, an international, but we turnover every three months with no guarantees of return.

Logically, with limited energy, I would not set my sights further afield but, naturally, that is what I do. It is only speculative unless I meet someone who is a close match to what I really want, what is really missing. Then, that woman can be on the other side of the metaphorical check-point. I can enumerate all the obstacles and fill my empty time with reflection, rhetorical devices, and prayers. I can convert what might be a period of waiting, in deficit, into a situation that demands determination. “Nobody said never...”

...there was an instance...

The same friends who helped me prime my engines back-pedaled and started to pump-up the airbags. I thought they had empowered me to be confident and persistent but they all turned, in accord, from encouragement to comfort. “Be patient ... trust God ... you’re a nice guy...”

I could hardly stand it. Nothing I did had mattered very much. I used to fill the deficit with problems of my own construction, looking for what was wrong with me or what I had done wrong in order to defuse the absurdity of emptiness. Yet, there is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with her. Circumstances are more than sufficient to delay, if not preclude, the whole thing. Halas: there is nothing to be done.

Anyone who has done a large jigsaw puzzle has reached this point. It is time to lift up the puzzle and tuck it into the corner for another day. I released my epoxy grip and slipped-away, back to that vacant bed for an extra long-night of sleep. In the final hours before sunrise, I had a dream sequence:

I thought that I was in California but the flora was Belizean and the architecture was Palestinian. It was as if Bullet-Tree and Beit-Jala had a love-child. I was walking around a court-yard area, admiring the chaté palms and noticing that the stone was still wet and cool. Then, she came to get me...

I don’t know her name...

...she called me inside and we laid down together in the chill of the morning. It took a few minutes to get situated, scooching close together and getting our arms and legs positioned comfortably, but we finally got comfortable. We talked about something trivial as we snuggled each other to sleep: cozy. She was as familiar as she was beautiful but I had never seen her before in my life.

...which was the best part.

Sitting in Deficit

Between being sick and traveling, there has been little time for trumpeting this past month. I have an open invitation to jam at Dar Sansour (the Wi’am office) so I absconded upstairs and sunk my lips indulgently into a few familiar strains. My embouchure not entirely lost, I was just beginning to feel a little less sick when the scent of brewing zatta reached my nostrils. Zatta is known as thyme in English but I think that I will always call it zatta: the herb sees more action in this culture.

I went down-stairs and decided to sit while the tea finished brewing. As I did so, Zoughbi began to tell everyone in the room what a great guy I was and how important it was to be hospitable to me. I must have blushed terribly. I reassured everyone that they had been very hospitable to me and that it was really my pleasure to be there. Zoughbi went even further, saying that I was welcome to play outside, if I wanted, and no one would bother me.

As I sat down to drink my zatta, Zoughbi chimed-in again: “We are going to pay condolences; would you like to come with us?”

The answer was yes. I put my kafiah back on and joined Imad and Usama R. in Zoughbi’s car. We picked-up a school-teacher from Beit Sahour on our way to a nearby church. As we arrived, the abuna from the Greek Catholic congregation came walking up the street. We all shook hands and filed inside.

There, about two dozen older men stood as we entered. Zoughbi muttered the correct Arabic phrase and I tried my best to say it to each of them but I could tell I was not quite on-target. I took a seat next to Saliba and waited respectfully while they all conversed in Arabic. Only a few words popped in my ear: Eeran, ‘Ameerca, Isryal, Filisteen. Younger men were circulating the room with pots of coffee. I had to smile at the way older men accepted the tiny cup of coffee and then tried to offer it to the abuna, who wanted none of it. Personally, I had to use the restroom and Arabic coffee was going to exacerbate that like nothing else.

Another line of men entered, so that we all stood and shook hands with each other like opposing teams after a basketball game as our line left the church. I had made it without offending anyone and that was good enough for me, so I thought. We started the car and headed to the next church. “There are two funerals today.”

This time, I made sure to find the bathroom. While I was managing my fluid problem, I took a minute to think about what I was doing there. I knew nothing about the deceased. If I were capable of asking, I would not anyway. I had already been to one of these, I mused, so that I probably had all I needed to blather about paying condolences in my blog. From my normal, American perspective I was wasting time that I might have been using to... to... to...

I left the restroom with an intentionally different perspective: I was there. It reminded me of an important realization that flowered in the past month or so. In coming to terms with my relationship to my father, I also came to terms with the fact that sometimes even my attempts to be altruistic have oriented to my need to feel helpful rather than the needs of another. Praises on High, I managed to become more aware of that phenomenon and decided that there was value in ‘sitting in deficit’ with people while they are in the midst of struggle. Imagine how different the story of Job might be if his friends had continued sitting in silence with him rather than beginning their respective analyses.

We left the second round of condolences and proceeded to the basement, where (naam) a third funeral event was in progress. As I passed through the line, I tried to meet each eye and shake each hand with sincerity. It is hard to explain, perhaps. Facial expressions transcend some language barriers. I cannot take full credit: God blessed me with an expressive face. I let each of the older gentlemen see my emotions, how I felt to know that they had lost their friend. I can say honestly that something beautiful was there that was not at the first church, when I was worried about knowing what to do instead of wearing my compassion openly, even if there was nothing to do.

Back at the office, Zoughbi began again: “Really, you can play outside. My colleagues would like to enjoy your music without, uhh, so much repercussions inside here.”

I managed not to be very offended. At least I understood why Zoughbi had suddenly decided to talk about what a great guy John Daniel is – because he is a master at conflict resolution. Let me rephrase that: a master at Arab conflict resolution. In America, I could complain that he was being too indirect or feel betrayed by my co-workers because they did not feel comfortable confronting me. Yet, this is Palestine: everyone saves face. I choose to go outside; my co-workers are complicit in my playing somewhere on the grounds. Khalid remains outside of the equation. Trumpets are loud but that is what I play. Halas.

...and the children win. The children always win. I went outside to a play-ground with half a dozen children and left a play-ground with two-dozen children. They came in twos and threes to the funny, loud noises. They had the most beautiful brown eyes and gaping smiles... I should tell you all about them sometime soon...