Isolated

My office lost all their IP addresses today. It was supposed to happen over the weekend, but instead happened four days early. I was unable to get to the vpn, the citrix server, or to my e-mail. I had internet access just fine, but all my tools were there.

I wish I could say I was really productive.

I am going to drag many of my data files over to my local machine, so at least I can still write reports when I'm down.

The Unitarians

I attended church today, after taking the sacrament with the Saints, with the Northshore Unitarian Universalists. It was a very interesting service. It lasted almost exactly one hour. The minister was out; he spends one weekend per month helping out in Gulfport.

The form was not at all unusual: Greeting song, lighting things, hymn, readings, reflective song, responsorial, hymn, and a talk. I like what they called passing the basket - “An opportunity for generosity.” The congregation asked questions and gave feedback to the speaker, there was a brief responsorial, and another hymn/song.

I enjoyed it, but being accustomed for the last 20 years to the LDS way of doing things, and before that as a Roman Catholic, it was hard for me to take the UU service very seriously. It was interesting, but not as worshipful as even the decidedly “Low Church” Mormons. It was certainly more modern in tone, and the presentations were very interesting. But overall, it was kind of…I don’t know, “squishy.”

The people I met were very nice. A woman I sat next to, the congregation’s vice-president, didn’t know there were any Mormons in Louisiana.

I’m going to go for a month. I certainly won’t be able to just blend into the background; their numbers have been decimated by the storm. Googling their web site, I found that a congregation in Massachusetts is paying their mortgage for a year, and a congregation in New York is matching that. The UU headquarters is paying salaries for the ministerial staff through the end of February.

They were having their annual meeting today after the service, where they were going to decide on a budget and elect officers. Those concepts alone are a striking difference from LDS practices.

I have a calling again

Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday. I am 46. But briefly, while running an errand yesterday, I was 21 again.

A song came on the radio. I swear, I danced to that song in a campus bar on my 21st Birthday...

Well I was scared and feared and for my life
I was shakin' life on a tree
'Cause he was lean and mean and big and bad
And pointing that gun at me!

Ah, wait a minute mister
I didn't even kiss her
Don't want no trouble with you
And I know you don't owe me
But I wish you would let me
Ask one favor from you...

Won't you gimme three steps,
gimme three steps mister,
gimme three steps towards the door.
Gimme three steps,
gimme three steps mister,
And you'll never see me no more.

The memory wasn't so vivid, a "take me back Calgon" moment, because it was in a bar and I was pretty buzzed. It was because I was dancing. For just a few minutes yesterday, I remembered what it was like to have so much energy that I could boogie for an hour solid, with a brief stop for a drink, then back to dancing.

There are lots of people my age now who have that kind of energy (my buddy Jo, for one). I think I understand, now, what they get out of it. They get to be 21 forever.

A paragraph Peggy wrote

The world has changed, but the church has tried its best not to. The best we’ve been able to do with “continuing revelation” was giving the priesthood to black members back in 1978. And that was a Good Thing. But it might have been the last time the church moved forward, rather than digging in its heels to stay in the same place. Well, there’s a place for people like that — we still have the Amish with us, after all. But sometimes it seems as if the church clings to so many of the unfortunate or trivial things about the past — inequality for women, suits and ties, keeping one’s knees and shoulders covered — and embracing the new things that are harmful — consumerism, television, soda pop. It seems sad to me that a church with an open canon, which often has changed to accomodate a changing world, now seems to be increasingly frozen in time, in many of the worst ways.

Routine

Some people like their routines. When I am in a Good Place, I also like my routines. But right now...well, I want Something Else.

It's kind of a vague dissatisfaction. I can't pinpoint one thing I would like to be different. Most things are very, very good. So why am I dissatisfied?

Of the Four Noble Truths, #1 is "Life is suffering." Suffering comes from attachment. I am probably attached to ideas of success and the direction life "ought" to go that are unrealistic.

But is it unrealistic to want more from life than work, cook, dishes, sleep, lather, rinse, repeat?

Aspiring to Leadership

Mormons aren’t “supposed” to look for higher callings. Every calling is important, we are told, from the nursery leader to the Young Women’s music specialist to the home teacher to the stake president - all callings matter, and if you’re faithful and diligent and serve to the best of your ability, you’ll be rewarded for it no matter what the job.

I have been essentially callingless for almost three years. I had a brief, happy burst of engagement as activities committee chair, which was an excellent fit for a non-believer. I didn’t have to bear witness of things I didn’t believe, or share the gospel with my friends, or try to figure out a way to teach a good lesson when all the references were quotes that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I planned parties. I attended the first 15 minutes of ward council, where we talked about the calendar, and then I left. It was a lot of fun, and there were some events coming up that I was rather looking forward to (along with things I wasn’t, like a “Finish the Book of Mormon” bash.) But there was a hurricane, and I left, and while I was gone, I got released.

I like being plugged in, and I like feeling like the things I do make a difference. Activities are a good and important way to build a community. It really, really helped that I wasn’t just contributing manual labor, but that I was presenting ideas and fleshing them out with a group. I wasn’t just a passenger. I was a driver.

I think it’s important that I examine my motives for the decisions I make about “Mormon Stuff.” I don’t want to delude myself. The more I think about it, the more I realize that what bothers me most about being seen as “defective” is that it immediately pushes me to the margins.

I don’t want to be on the margins, looking on as other people make a difference, and make things happen. I want to make things happen.

I think I am not alone in this. Most people like having their abilities recognized. I think more of us aspire to leadership than will admit it. One potential positive I see in going somewhere else is that I can probably get involved to whatever extent I like, in whatever area I like.

What kind of a God is that?

One of the speakers today had her printer healed thanks to divine inspiration. She had to print something, and her printer hadn’t worked for several days, so she prayed about it, and God inspired her to whack her printer cartridge on the floor several times, and then the printer printed.

Over 1000 people died during Katrina in the state of Louisiana alone. Many were praying for God to send them help.

I want nothing to do with the speaker’s God.

Dave’s account of the story of the Brahmin gave me a different way of looking at the story. It is not that today’s speaker’s faith is not real, or not grounded in her own reality. It is that her faith is not my faith, and I don’t want her faith. I am not capable of that kind of faith.

God is what God is, and what I think of God affects the reality not one bit. However, I do not believe God fixes printer cartridges and ignores the pleas of the dying. And if he is that sort of God…I don’t want anything to do with him. Capricious, cruel and a respecter of persons? No thanks.

New Office and Desk

My DH and I have been slowly in the process of converting our spare bedroom (which had housed most of our "stuff" when we were living away) into a new office. I don't like to call it my office, because it's going to be our office. I am going to work there during the day. DH will work there in the evenings. It will be set up so he can have meetings there, if he likes, and do lecture prep, etc. It's out of the main part of the house, so he will be able to focus when he's working there, unlike the current setup where somebody can interrupt him whenever, or where the TV blaring away is a distraction.

The main advantage for me is that it will be a place I go to work. One of the main challenges of working at home is separating the two. It's not so much that I work when I'm not supposed to, but that I don't work when I am. If I have an office, that is my workplace, then that is what I'll do during working hours when I'm in the office. Then, when working hours are over, I'll leave and shut the door.

When DH is home in the evening, and needs to work, it will be his office.

DH made the desk. It's really more of a work table, but it's humongous. He made it out of a door, and table legs we bought from Table Legs Online (no kidding). He trimmed it with red oak, and stained it cherry, and varnished it with four coats of a waterproof varnish made from tung oil. I just like typing that; I really have no idea what tung oil is.

Here is the finished product:



I'm going to take down the Sam's Club 4x2 white work table tomorrow, and we're going to set up the desk so I will be working at it on Monday. I will need to do some serious decorating to make our office worthy of my beautiful desk.

Living on the verge of tears

Since August 28th, 2005, I have lived on the verge of tears. The most trivial things could make me cry. The most devastating things could make me cry. Photos of the Superdome. Pictures of Mardi Gras. Music, especially, could make me cry. Being depressed when the nightmare started, I think I wasn’t able to cope as well as some, even though we came through the storm almost completely unscathed.

Proximity has also been an aggravating issue. I’m not from here, but I live here. Even when I was not here, I had mental images from when I was. Trees with three foot diameter trunks, scattered like toothpicks on top of the houses on Christian Lane. Power lines down everywhere. Signs spray painted with “Boil water” at the entrances to some neighborhoods, other signs with “Water OK.”

And the stories. The stories inspired a lot of fear in and of themselves. The man with the destroyed house, who refused to leave, and was guarding his business inventory from his ruined house with a shotgun. People with no flood insurance, who weren’t required to have flood insurance, but who flooded. People with no homes, the NIMBY attitude about FEMA trailers, the nauseating political posturing in The City. How can we get better when this is how we live and think? Racism, long the City’s ugly secret, hidden by professions of its non-existence, rose up and reminded us that it was still among us and, sadly, growing.

There were stories of bonding, and sharing, and community. But I wasn’t around so much in the aftermath, so I missed a lot of those. My therapist shared one of them with me: a minister at her church called and said, “a bunch of Mormons are coming from Houston to help. Can you house some of them for the weekend?” She said, thinking “I have a Mormon patient,” “Sure, I can give them a cool place to sleep and shower while they’re here.” She lost 40 trees, half in her front yard. Before they left, her houseguests, six of them, twelve Mormon Helping Hands and their chainsaws, cut up all the trees that were down in her front yard and hauled them out to her curb.

I blogged about the Free Winton Marsalis Concert And Keynote Speech. What happened to me there was a transition. I think I am no longer on the verge of tears. I experienced, for the first time in months, real joy. I remembered what it’s like to be lifted up by my experiences. I feel hopeful.

Come on Up for the Rising

I had a conversation with my husband the other night before I posted my “defective Mormon” post. I thought he should hear it from me before he read it online. It was a difficult conversation, and I don’t know that anything was really resolved, except that now I’m not carrying around the “I’m broken” burden silently and alone.

I don’t think it was until I actually spoke aloud the words, “I’m tired of being a defective Mormon” that I drew a line between my persistent and frightening depression and my loss of faith. I have always been the sort who conflates actions or behaviors with characteristics. I failed at being a Mormon, therefore I am a failure. My husband is disappointed at my loss of faith, therefore I am a disappointment as a wife. I am of no value to the church in my current belief state, therefore I have no value.

Of course, none of those things are true. That is, none of the “therefores” are true. I am not a failure, I am not a disappointment as a wife, and I do have value.

I called the local Unitarian church the other night, to see if they were still meeting and if they made it through the storm. No sense going to church there if they don’t have a congregation any more. They do. The minister called me the other day. He offered to meet me for coffee so we could talk, if I liked. I giggled a bit to myself at that.

I won’t be going this Sunday, because my husband is speaking on Sunday and I want to be at sacrament meeting for that (he’s a wonderful speaker). But I think the following week, I will skip out early and see what it’s like to attend a church where they’re just glad that you’re there.

Concert

The Free! Wynton Marsalis Concert and Other Things was wonderful. Another one of those experiences I wish I could describe more clearly, because if I could, I'd be one helluva writer.

The CAOT was presented by Tulane University, and funded by the Aspen Institute. The purpose was to celebrate the renewal of higher education in New Orleans. Four of the universities in town re-open either this week or the next.

The governor was there, and spoke. She was OK; she shouldn't have talked so long. The Lt. Governor spoke next; he may be opposing her for governor in the next election. He didn't talk so long. Wynton Marsalis gave the keynote address, and it was startling. He was alternately positive, encouraging, scathing in his criticism of our me-focused culture and clear in his vision of the most important thing that needs to happen - we need to bring our displaced people home.

Then, of course, he played. Just five songs, but oh, were they transcendent. St. James Infirmary Blues, The Glory Road (?), Just a Closer Walk with Thee, and "a second line." He said the music would be in the tradition of a New Orleans jazz funeral, with the first song a slow number for taking the casket to the cemetary, and the second a joyful celebration of life. The "second line" are the folks that follow behind the band dancing and clapping - I think. It's sort of assumed that if you live here, you know what a second line is.

After a rousing ovation, with vocal calls for "One more!" (lead by yours truly, I humbly declare) the band came back out and he played Gershwin's "Embraceable You."

The music...ah the music. It washed across my face and soared to the rafters and then back down and around me. Bliss. Absolute bliss. The best thing that's happened to me in six months.

I'm Tired of Being a Defective Mormon

This morning the bishop was going to call me to teach the primary. He asked what kind of calling I would like to have and I told him “I can’t teach.” I told him why. He did not call me to teach primary.

DH is giving a talk next week. I am not.

I think I’m tired of being a defective Mormon. I’m tired of not measuring up, of being unable to function in a full capacity. I think I would rather be a fully participating Unitarian than a crippled failure of a Latter-day Saint.

Whine

I'm really much better (re: the depression) and I don't want anybody to take this wrong. I'm just being flippant.

But if I do end up killing myself, it's because I just could bear one more minute of listening to little boy whine. It makes me insane!

Brrrr

It's cold out there! Forty degrees!

Three Calls

Well, two calls and a note. Ten days ago, a member of the RS presidency called and asked me to teach RS the following Sunday. I told her I was sorry, I can’t teach. That it’s not ethical.

Two or three days ago, a member of the primary presidency called and asked me to substitute on Sunday. I told her I don’t teach. I called her back the next day and clarified that I’m willing to help, but I can’t teach. She asked what I could do. I said I can work in the nursery and help with music and crowd control.

Today, I got a letter from the RS secretary. It was a visiting teaching list. The list was all typed up, with supervisor and visiting teacher and visiting teachees. My name was handwritten in. I opted out of visiting teaching well over a year ago (it may have been two), but we have a new RS president who doesn’t know that I’m an unbeliever. I got put on the spot once when someone asked me what I thought of the Book of Mormon. I told her. Ouch. I’ve not been out since, and when I told the last RS President what had happened, and that I wasn’t going back out, she couldn’t cross me off her list fast enough.

I’m not sure how to deal with these events. My ward has shrunk significantly, and they probably really need me. I feel not at all guilty about this. It’s not my fault that there was a hurricane and half the town was wiped out. And the fact that there was a hurricane doesn’t oblige me to behave unethically - and teaching in any form is unethical.

I am thinking of volunteering for something I can do, so they’ll stop asking me to do things I can’t. I used to be activities committee chair, but I lost that gig when I left town for three months. However, I do think I could do compassionate service. I’m in town all day, I’m organized, and I have a good feel for the kinds of things that are required. It’s a way to contribute in an important way and to put shoe leather on my Christianity (so to speak). I volunteered for my last calling, and it worked great. I’m not sure how to go about doing so this time, though. New bishop.

Attached to my POV

DKL’s story over on LDSLF has me thinking. I’m attached to my current POV about things Mormon. I am reluctant to shed my perceptions. They have become my truth, and I don’t want to surrender them.

There is a saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” When I came to believe that Joseph Smith made it all up, I felt like a fool. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could I have bought such an obvious con? That perspective makes it very difficult for me to consider actually doing the work that is apparently necessary to come to belief. Just because I can convince myself that the sky is green doesn’t make it so.

If I’m going to achieve some peace on the spiritual growth front, I’m going to have to get over this fear of being made a fool of.

Again.

Free Concert

Winton Marsalis is giving a free concert Monday evening at Tulane.

Doors open at 6:15. Keynote address followed by music at 7:00. I REALLY want to go. I'm not sure if I should try to find a sitter, or a girlfriend to go with.

I love jazz. I don't know a thing about it, but I like it a lot.

Lusterware

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote an essay, “Lusterware,” that cited Emily Dickinson’s poem, “It Dropped So Low in My Regard.”

It dropped so low — in my Regard –
I heard it hit the Ground –
And go to pieces on the Stones
At bottom of my Mind –

Yet blamed the Fate that flung it — less
Than I denounced Myself,
For entertaining Plated Wares
Upon my Silver Shelf –

The Shelf is a common metaphor in the disaffected Mormon underground (henceforth DAMU). It’s a common response to ideas that don’t match your paradigm - you take those ideas and stick them on your Shelf, to be dealt with Later, or Some Other Time.

I like this poem because as Ulrich said, some things that look pretty and shiny and valuable aren’t, and they needn’t be treated as such.

Unfortunately, the paradigm in the DAMU is that everything that goes on the shelf - Lusterware, silver plate, and sterling - all gets muddled in together. Sometimes, the ideas that don’t match the believer’s paradigm are junk. Other times, though, the ideas that don’t match the paradigm are valuable, true things. And when you shove enough stuff on the shelf, and the shelf breaks, the valuable true things are all mixed up with the broken Plated Wares. What a mess. How much more work it is to pick through the broken junk to find the valuable, true things, than to just put things on the right shelf to begin with - or to just throw the junk away.

Remembering what has happened to us

I am being treated for clinical depression. I had a major depressive episode about a year ago (maybe more) that is in partial remission. I take meds, do talk therapy, and work in fits and starts at cognitive behavioral therapy. While I am not yet well, I am much better.

I have been back home post-Katrina now for three Sundays. I have been to church three times. Each time, the overwhelming thought I’ve had has been, “I wish I were dead.” After the first week, I persisted in going, because I thought it might be an anomaly. The second week, I thought I would give it one more chance. The third week, fast and testimony meeting, I had pretty much decided to take a hiatus after that meeting. Church is not supposed to make one feel suicidal.

The second to the last person to speak changed my mind. I don’t remember much about what he said, except that things are different now, and it’s folly to pretend that they are the same. He said we need to remember what’s happened to us, and our families will be closer by talking about and remembering this time. And that spoke to my heart, and I felt God nearby again, for the first time in a long time.

I remembered something Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote in her essay, Lusterware. She recalled a young woman who said to her, “I used to think that the church was 100% true, but now I think it’s only about 90% true.” Ulrich wrote, “I wanted to tell her, ‘If you can find something that is only 10% divine, embrace it with all your heart.’ The bible talks of bits of leaven…”

Bits of leaven. I might be able to find some of those.

Yum

This is one of the reasons I love living in the Deep South.




It is just approaching mid-January. I bought two pounds of these babies (for just $2/lb.) at the Winn-Dixie around the corner. They came from Tickfaw, Louisiana, about 45 miles from here. The picture doesn't do them justice. They aren't that sort of pallid red that you find in "imported" strawberries. These are a deep, almost glowing red. The smell is intense and heady. They're also delicious.

Tomorrow, for breakfast, we are having waffles with fresh strawberries.

No Bar

We have been told by several people: You Can't Sell A House In Southeast Louisiana If It Doesn't Have A Bar. We had a pretty lame bar in our den/family room. A sink, and a black countertop, and mirror tiles with gold swirls and gold metal shelf brackets holding glass shelves. A cabinet face on the front. We piled stuff on in and put junk in the cupboards.

We have talked several times about getting rid of the bar, but were always told You Can't Sell A House In Southeast Louisiana If It Doesn't Have A Bar. When we returned, we decided: tough. We are getting new carpet. We are painting. We may get the sunken floor raised to make better use of the breakfast room. With all these other changes we're making, it's stupid to keep the bar because people tell us we have to have one. We are practicing Mormons, fer cryin' out loud. We don't need a stupid bar! Especially an ugly one!

On the other side of the bar was a too-small closet in a spare bedroom that we are going to use as our home office. That closet is now a spacious walk-in with space to hang clothes and room for 24 medium-sized moving boxes without using the space in front of the shelves. And we've recovered about 18 sf of floor space in the den/family room that was in front of the bar that we never used, because it was in front of the bar.

So, we now have a bigger closet AND more room in our living area, because we took out a wet bar that we never used.

We rearranged the furniture and now we have quite a bit of room to work with. I'm not sure how we'll use the extra space. We've thought of moving a little desk into the room for Little Boy's computer. With the new furniture placement, the sitting area is a nicer setup. The focal point for the room is our fireplace, and the conversation space is more intimate, but without feeling cramped. Before, we really didn't have a focal point. It's also somewhat off-balance now. I'm trying to overcome my obsession with symmetry.

I guess we'll find out if all those people were right if we try to sell the house.

A Better 2006: The Job

I love the job. OK, maybe it's too soon to tell, really. And I'm going to have to make an effort to get out and do things with humans, because working at home can be very, very isolating.

The commute is great, though, and the work is interesting. And let's not forget the three most important reasons people work: For the money, for the money, and, for the money.

Reading my mind, the bosses sent out an e-mail saying that they are going to install an internet filter, and if we want something to read, we can read the call notes from the day before. That is a great idea. Really! They roll up the notes into a color-coded plain old html file that is very, very long. I have a pretty short attention span sometimes, and now, when I feel the urge to just surf...I surf to the notes. I learn the kinds of problems and solutions that are happening, and may even come up with ideas that apply to my project. Good Stuff.

Resolutions

I've read some blogs where people are making resolutions for 2006.

Not me.

OK, maybe one. To have a better year than 2005. That should be pretty easy.