The Sixth, Seventh & Eighth Lies

To make a quick comment about my mental state, sometimes what doesn't kill you can actually make you stronger. Every re-entry seems to usher-in about half of a new life-stage -- so two re-entries means I am in a different stage of my life than at commissioning.
With this growth has come many insights that I have not always spared time to share. This morning's revelation could be that unrequited longing and having fun are not mutually exclusive. Certainly, the past few weeks have revealed that I cannot discipline myself into accepting myself and that accepting myself makes discipline much easier. If that sounds like a catch-22, then an explanation for my difficulties is not far away. At some point, I had to give myself some unearned slack and take a moment to step-back. Not only did I get that from travel but also from writing a very personal article that I think IOW might be willing to post. Since then, I am noticing how I am able to take pressure off myself to perform without slipping into total hedonism, though the mechanisms are still developing. It can be said for certain that the key is replacing negative mechanisms with neutral ones (perhaps I just debunked another lie?): instead of getting angry with myself for unnecessary browsing, I am teaching myself to recognize it and simply "call halas" on myself. Done.

The sixth lie is that I need to react to things in proportion to their atrocity -- a lesson I think I learned before but could not quite internalize -- as if I am obligated to react on behalf of humanity, with my emotions, to how terrible something is. That is a LIE: just because I find the strength to have a poker-face in the moment doesn't mean I don't care. Two things helped me gain this insight. First of all, my latest entry called for poker-face tactics. Any play-acting would be disingenuous and getting upset was a liability. Being tired helped. While I was waiting to get my skimpy (problematic) 3-week visa I decided that it was okay to take the abuse with a straight-face. It was just plain okay. Neutral mechanism. Whether that came from God, tiredness, or drugs (of which I had none), I don't care: if I am naturally calm when I need to be calm, that's a good thing! I don't need to be any more rattled than I am.

The other debunked lie has to do with more personal things but it amounts to acknowledging gaffs with courage and healthy curiosity. If a pattern continues to occur, it cannot simply be thrown under the bus: it needs to see the light of day with the help of people I trust. The problem with the forbidden fruit, I maintain, was the fig-leaf cover-up (and I read that passage allegorically, in a dream-time sense -- which means it never occurred but it's always happening). To gain clarity, I need to risk hearing bad news or perhaps accepting a new paradigm that I previously thought was "wrong". Make mistakes, admit them, be aware of patterns, etc. A life of dichotomies is too draining. Better to stay engaged with life's diametric tensions.

While I am playing catch-up with my lie detector function (and listening to great play-lists, honestly) I might as well throw the eighth lie into cyber-space for your consideration. No one in their right mind would honestly think that a peace & justice intern could keep his comments to the intrapersonal. There are plenty of lies perpetrated by society and I have become all too familiar with them. Yet, I cannot always be projecting them outward. This one has leaked into my consciousness from time to time:

"If someone would just blow them off the face of the Earth, that would fix things."

LIE. Terrible, evil, insidious lie. Lie that hurt people, lie that keeps hurting people, lie that BROUGHT ME HERE. "Shoot the bad guys" "Us versus them" "Preemptive strike" "By any means necessary". LIES LIES LIES

This is not the last time we hear from this lie, here.

The Third Lie

To be excellent is definitive evidence that I am of worth, whether my achievement is superlative in degree or precision. I must be remarkable at all times. LIE

When I attended Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, a unit director (head-counselor) once told me that "we always remember the good ones -- and *sigh* the bad ones." I replied, "Wow, it sucks to be mediocre!" He chuckled but I wish he had not. That was typical of my attitude from third-grade upward.

I have given this lie the classification of "Root/ Time & Achievement" in my mini taxonomy of lies. In the first two days of Lent, God revealed that my compulsion to play catch-up and be product oriented were stumbling blocks. That still left the question of why I was so motivated to do those things in the first place. Excellence, of course. The feeling of excellence was ubiquitous to me in my school days and fleeting ever since. It is, indeed, a long story and an old old lie in my life...

The judge-form of this demon is at work all the time, either directly or by delegation. The judge says there is something wrong if I lack aptitude, especially at anything central to my identity. The inherent worth of my every component is measured by its excellence for being noteworthy, preferably superlative. To make a long story short, my activities of late should have quenched the judge. My boss is a great man and, though he doesn't praise me daily, he has said nice things. BISHOPS love me. My family is unbelievably proud. Old friends send me encouragement. It appears that I crawled out of the hole I was in during my AmeriCorps service.

None of that had any effect because the VICTIM form of the demon had a gangster-style grip on my situation. It's pretty twisted. I am not superlative enough in my OWN MIND and I am just begging for the world to see my shame. I've failed and I'm looking for the causes. In fact, as long as I am failing at being excellent I might as well be VILE, says the victim. If I am going to constantly berate myself I might as well berate myself for something truly dark. Above all, the victim embraces the ubiquitous sense of SUCKING. This smoothes the cognitive dissonance between the compliments and my actual sense of deficit.

If all this sounds crazy that would be because *checks his notes* it is INSANE. I became a maelstrom -- I could not close my eyes without the room spinning around me. My drive to be supreme fed into all the other lies, too -- and more of them promise to surface. Yet, this is the big one: fresh-squeezed fruit-juice from Eden, ladies and gentlemen. Supremacy or bust. Recipe for the Fall.

How perfect is the rise of Christ? How appropriate is it that I ran into this lie on Ash Wednesday? From ashes I came and to ashes I will go. That does not mean I am worthless. Ashes are made of Carbon. Think of all the things God can do with something as simple as a carbon molecule. Yet, I was really brought full-circle when I stumbled across Luke Chapter 4. The temptation on the mountain has always been a favorite of mine but it took on a new lustre in light of this morning's revelation.

Jesus is tempted with three things. None of them are decadent or blood-thirsty sins. Those sins of action are derivative from the sins that hold us prisoner in our hearts. Christ is tempted first to gratify himself, last to become invincible, but in the middle to become supreme. Everyone with a high-chrisology, say it together "Jesus IS supreme".

...now He is but he did not do it with empire, as his tempter suggested. After his time on the mountain, he goes into the process of ministry -- which is not always gratifying, is a serious threat to his mortal life, and is a far-cry from the royal-line from which everyone expected their Messiah to emerge.

To bring a long-thought to a short conclusion, I believe that Jesus comes from the prophetic-line. When he was transfigured, David and Solomon were noticeably absent: it was Moses and Elijah who appeared to him.

Again, to bring long thoughts to short conclusions, I made a confession to my colleague today:
"I believe that I am for my mission and my mission is for me." I am not the 'best' missionary. It is not the 'best' mission. It is the right mission for the right missionary. As I am healed, I offer more. Symbiosis.

...and my thoughts go on and on... which is another topic. I seem to be gaining Wisdom!

The Second Lie

The overall vision for Lent will have to come-together in pieces, for you as well as for me. I know that I exchange equally with my Mission in Palestine, which is to say that I exist in symbiosis with the Call I was given. It is for me and I am for it. As I learn and become stronger I, likewise, return the investment that has been made in me...

...but it is a process. I paid lip-service to the concept of being process oriented long-ago as a writing consultant. Yet the core of the second-lie remained intact:

The second lie: the process exists for its outcomes; to be process-oriented is ultimately to see the returns of focusing on that process.

It was no wonder that I continued to struggle with being process-oriented when, as a matter of fact, I was not process-oriented. My outcome-oriented basic assumptions had actually co-opted the idea of process-orientedness, domesticated it, and ultimately rendered it a peek-a-boo version of the same lie. Instead of being overtly focused on outcomes, I would focus on the process for a while and take an occasional peak at the outcomes.

This demon seems to appear equally in judge and victim form. In the former case, I keep intermittently doing mental checks of my work, even while I nurture the faux process-orientation. Conversely, I became dismissive of achievements that did not seem to correlate with my chosen process or came without enough suffering. In effect, this fake process-oriented attitude is worse than being strictly product-oriented ~ and I am not the least bit surprised. When you kick a demon out, it comes back with friends.

In victim-form, I located disruptions to peg my perceived under-achievement. These external factors explained and rationalized the missing achievements but, additionally, the damage done to relationships. I sustained the belief that if only the RIGHT process or circumstances were present, the desired outcomes would surface. Again, this was worse than what I began with because I too frequently attacked processes that might be natural for me and spoiled them.

While indicators are helpful, they exist for the sustainability of the process. The process exists because of natural expressions interacting – to be fully engaged in the process is to be free from the need for enduring evidence. It is not healthy to check the process against what occurs because there are too many factors at work; outcomes are for God to manage. The trick with this antidote is that I have applied process oriented methods with product oriented wishes at heart. When the desired outcomes fail, the process dies too. To celebrate life in Wi’am will be the only way to be at peace and that peace will be a greater gift than my achievement. This is another huge revelation that will take time to cement. I wondered for a moment why it had taken me this long to get here but I reminded myself of the first lie and let the matter drop. Now that I know, I have all lent and beyond to recalibrate with God's help.

We need to take a moment and connect this to a twin lie, which is that there is a need for completion in every endeavor. That subject will deserve its own treatment, eventually, but I need to strike at something while the iron is hot:

I thought about staring-down a bulldozer recently. There are some selfish reasons I didn't feel like being alive that day but the end itself was not selfish: it would have consummated the purpose that called me to Palestine. House demolitions. Perhaps I save someone's home for one more day. Perhaps I am crushed beneath the tread of a Caterpillar and become bad-press for Israel. Done. Complete. Perfect. Halas. ...but superior to my imperfect but continuing ministry of anti-normalization? I talked to four Methodist groups over the past two weeks ~ some people promised to put pressure on their tour company to visit MORE LOCAL PROJECTS*. My sloppy, continuing work is so much better for God's purposes than the perfect martyr's ending.

I am blessed to have shared my death-wish with my boss. He gave a knowing nod and, far from scolding or even lamenting my feelings, offered this:

"We love to celebrate life here..." <--sounds like some real process-oriented thinking. Don't just not-die... keep LIVING. ing ing ing

*as opposed to the "Stones and Bones!" tours that give plenty of chances to stick our heads in the sand...

The First Lie

It is my first day of Lent in the Holy Land but this forty day phase has been coming my whole life. I would bring you up to date but I think that would be counter-productive. I will have to make allusions as I go and shoot from the hip because...

The First Lie is the need to play catch-up.

Well meaning people have never tired of telling me that every moment is a new opportunity but the fundamental assumptions always remained intact: I believed that I should be achieving more at any given point in time. I was never clear quite how much but it must be more and, in order to get there, I needed to either be playing catch-up or getting ahead. As a child I was superlative at many things and avoided others. As an under-graduate, reality hit: I could not be superlative. This is a theme I have revisited repeatedly.

The truth all along is that God had a special place for me in the universe, just like She does for everyone else. Even knowing this cognitively, though, may not be enough to unravel the intuitive lie. I just read the last two chapters of a book called "The Four Agreements" that posits we are all under the oppression of the dysfunctional lies we tell ourselves. The author successfully places some Toltec teachings into a Christian theological framework -- frankly, he gets around the black-and-white issues and manages to zero-in on the nature of the disease itself: he calls it a bad dream, lies, The Parasite. As unnerving as it was to realize I was infested, it simultaneously has offered me Hope. Stowaways can be dumped over-board. Occupations can be shed ~ 'a shaking off' (Intifada)

...

Well, blog-spot glitched and cut my analysis. It's okay. I won't play catch-up with even that. The short story is that the author describes this demon as having two forms: the victim and the judge. As a victim, I blamed my environment. When that got me no where, I learned to be a harsh time-keeper in my own life. Sometimes I felt as if I had gotten ahead and I could afford to be lazy. Most times, I put myself under the stress of unknown standards.

Halas: Palestine is teaching me the truth. Work on Kairos time. There is not catching-up or getting ahead. There are relationships to build and things to do in the present. There are mistakes to learn from and plans to aim for but neither controls what happens in our bubble. Right here, right now. Granted, I still carry the heaviness of my regrets and wishes. That is why I am taking this Lent to get closer to God.

However, this demon comes with quite a few friends in tow. Stay-tuned...

Power-Source

This could be an entry about lying, the moral implications of bearing a false-witness to stay present with Palestine, how adeptly or poorly I can lie in the face of another Israeli Airport Officer or the nuances of the latest lie: "my parents booked the round-trip a month ago and forgot to change it--well, it's their money..."

This could be an entry about the uncanny intimacy of being searched by the thin young man wearing disposable gloves and the way his hands moves up and down my body like no one's have in months. While he swabbed the inside of my pants for bomb residues, I was forced to hide my amusement. A voice in my head said "this isn't a game," but another said "yes it is-- it HAS to be a game or you cannot thrive under this pressure..."

This could also be an entry about the microscopic social interactions I had with this team of sleuths. As they took apart my suitcase, a case of characters filled my world. An older lady officer grew impatient with me when she discovered that I had a pair of tiny scissors that I had, truthfully, forgotten about; I smiled and laughed at her like the entitled wanker I was pretending to be. ( "Oh they're so small, I'd forgotten about them." ). My trumpet drew interest, having so many cavities to search. Somehow, a USB drive had fallen into the bell and became lodged there when I inserted the conical stand. We took turns beat on the bell-pipe until a pair of them took it into a back room and returned with the cap of the USB drive. This entry is not about that or how my host easily retrieved it with some IKEA tongs here in Geneva (she's Canadian). Inevitably, there was a cute airport officer. She suggested that I try blowing the device out. Happy to perform, I played her "Under-Bridge Blues". "It is enough--" said the other lady. Too late: her subordinate smiled at me.

I almost made this about the lotion. The Israeli officers opened every pocket and rubbed swab-tipped wands along the insides of my suitcase and items inside, including my computer mouse. If they were looking for gunpowder there, all they found were traces of homus, mishmish, nutella, and lotion. The bottle of lotion I had so absent-mindedly tossed into the bag for the sake of my ashy hands had an Arabic label. I admitted I had bought it "in Bethlehem, that day." Of course, they could not take the chance that Hamas had teleported into my bathroom, slipped something inside my lotion bottle and then walked out my front door while I was eating hubz wa mishmish. I offered to throw the lotion away but instead the cute officer put it in its own, special box bound for Geneva. I day-dreamed some snide 'lubrication' jokes that are not appropriate for the general audience. I thanked her warmly for her consideration.

This entry is about my power-source: the cable and surge-protector that feed the battery on my Asus laptop. Forget, for a moment, Ben Gurion Air Port in Tel Aviv. Pretend, instead, to be a customs officer in Switzerland. Come out of the back in your wheel-chair to greet a young man in a black scarf and hat who has lost a 'computer part'. Take from him the Turkish Airlines receipt and ask him why he is here. Learn that in Tel Aviv they confiscated the power-source and said they would send it on a later flight. Listen to him explain how these security guards had told him they must have a machine check the device for anything someone might have put in there while he was not looking. This poor guy: let him use the telephone so he can get the address of the people he is staying with in Switzerland. Shoot him a glance when he lingers too long on the phone. Say, "this is what they do in Tel Aviv: we have been having problems with them." Smile and wish him well because you already know what David Wildman, my regional supervisor, told me the next day.

"Don't count on getting that power-cord back." He said they often say that and just throw it away. Its a deterrent tactic. Yet, I took it in stride for compassion's sake. First, compassion for my Palestinian brothers and sisters because I know this is what I must endure to stay present with them. I am not entitled to better treatment and this is one more story that brings us closer together, one more reason to tell their story wherever I go in life. It is also compassion for Israeli airport officers who are just executing policy. They are a middle-aged woman who wants to retire, a young man who would much rather pat-down his girlfriend, a young woman who would rather be listening to music then going through my underwear, and others like them. Israel's fears are plausible, if life is a Tom Clancy or Ian Fleming novel. It is even more unlikely that anyone put explosives in my charge-cable, more than in my lotion, but I could imagine that. Israel's policies are evil, even impish, but I am glad that I have transcended the good-guys versus bad-guys paradigm that perpetuates the rationalization violence. Israel needs a tough-love compassion; they are less evil than they are insane.

They also failed in their endeavour, Monday. I was nervous as they started removing clothes from my bag but they quit too soon. On top of the towel but below everything else, in the middle, was a brown hoody with a book inside: "The Invention of History: A Century of Interplay between Theology and Politics in Palestine." This book is not about how Palestine is good and Israel is evil. No. It is a book about the rhetoric and mistaken theology that formed the historical foundations of the conflict, going back to the British Mandate. It is better than inflammatory: it is illuminating. I hope to start and finish it this week so I will not have to smuggle it back again. If I succeed, it could be a power source for my itineration speeches. At the same time, I cannot help but musing that, if it were a chunk of C4 set to detonate when one of those security swabs made contact then, well, about five Israelis would have bit the dust no matter how careful they were. No tactics or technology can replace having cordial relationships: wi'am > warfare.

Yet, with the book was a kofiah (a traditional scarf) that I brought to trade with my colleague for some leggings from Germany. She was so pleased to have it, as much as I am pleased to be warmed from head-to-foot. There is so much to tell from just two days in Geneva but one thing is certain: I needed a hug. No, I need more than just one-- and even more than just hugs. I needed someone to listen to me for a while and commiserate about Israeli security with me... and even to buy me a drink.

Aside from God, a hug and an understanding ear are the greatest power-source I could come in contact with right now. I could not do this dance again in a week's time on anything less than that.

[UPDATE] For the record, the Israelis sent the power-cable. I must admit that I was more eager to see them keep their word than to 'burn' them for being jerks.