Shock, Sadness and Grief.

“You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.”  --Chuck Palahniuk

We are in shock.  This is a tragedy.  Our world has changed. 

I am prone to hyperbole, but I just can't find how this is an exageration. 

Between Saturday evening (after I dropped off his son at home at 12:30am) and Sunday morning (when the boys got uninteligible calls from their respective best friends), our neighbor hung himself in his garage.  He left four teenage boys and a wife.  And some very sad friends. 

This isn't just any neighbor.  They lived across the street and his two middle sons were my two sons' best friends from the time they were 3 and 5.  The younger one had spent the day and a half before helping us move.  He calls me 2nd Mom.  His dad was a prominent man in my sons' lives and a constant presence in the neighborhood.  And I wouldn't have imagined this happening in a million years.

We were all there within a few minutes and witnessed grief and shock of levels I couldn't have even imagined.  After the body was gone, we shepherded them across the street to our house (I mean Robb's house) and spent the next 12 hours in just unimaginable sorrow, disbelief and shock.  The days afterwards haven't been much better.  The boys and I are distracted.  Both the boys are getting sick and have missed a bit of school--the physical manifestations are just poor covers for the emotional turmoil they are going through. 

I could write so many blog posts about this and the experience we went through; here's just a few headlines:

• It is amazing what a body does when it is in mental shock. 
• My boys are amazing friends.  I have never been so impressed with two young men in my life--they knew just what to do and did it with amazing grace and compassion. I am overwhelmed by them.
• Those boys' lives have changed forever.  It was so sad to look at them and to know that fact for sure.
• His act ruined not only their lives and their future, but also their home.  They will probably never return to that home.
• I can't imagine the levels of pain and shame that could lead someone to believe that their children would be better off with him doing that. 
• The Haskins family can come together in amazing ways when we need to--despite what has happened in the past.
• The power of just "being" with someone.  Because, Lord knows, there isn't much you can "do."  Although I've tried--there are some beautiful resources here in Orlando for grieving kids.

"Live or die, but don't poison everything."  --Ann Sexton

• This obviously impacted our lives too. 
• The boys have missed much of this week of school between shock (I kept them home on Monday) and sickness (of body and spirit). 
• Move?  Oh yeah, we were moving. 
• The surrealness of me stepping back into my old house and playing hostess, interacting with my neighbors and coordinating everyone--and then remembering that this wasn't my house anymore. 

And of course there are all the existential questions this leaves, including:

• Is it cowardice or bravery to do that? 
• How can someone actually take that step and feel that they have no impact on others.  How can anyone think that their children will be "better off" after something like that.
• Of course, he didn't see the havoc that was wreaked with him gone. 
• Did he see afterwards?  If he could see what the impact was would he regret it?
• How does a child grapple with the message that this sends?  All the conflicting and awful messages that will never make sense?

I have no answers.  Just questions and sadness--on behalf of his family, my second children, my own children and myself.   

My Religion Is Love

There is something in the very nature of my freedom that inclines me to love, to do good, to dedicate myself to others. I have an instinct that tells me that I am less free when I am living for myself alone. The reason for this is that I cannot be completely independent. Since I am not self-sufficient I depend on someone else for my fulfillment. My freedom is not fully free when left to itself. It becomes so when it is brought into the right relation with freedom of another.  --Thomas Merton, 1915 – 1968

In a random moment in the car today, I was imagining what I would answer if asked by a panel of Unitarian Universalist scholars (say a panel who could decide if I were eligible to be a minister--hypothetically) what my "religion" was.  Of course, I'm a devout UU.  But within that, I could define my faith in many different ways, drawing upon many of the religions of the world.  But my answer would be simple. 

My religion is love. 

I don't want this to sound too simplistic or Pollyanna.  I don't mean this in a way that we don't look at the complex challenges out there in a discerning way.  But almost every decision I make is (or should be) based in the question "Is this the most loving way to respond to this situation?" 

We are not meant to live solitary lives; we live in community and how we treat each other matters.  I think we need to look at the greater good in a loving, compassionate way. 

If I look at why I'm a democrat, it's because I believe their policies are the most loving and compassionate to all people.  If I look at why I believe in earth-based religious philosophies, it is because it is the most loving to the earth.  I don't believe in the death penalty or torture because they are the furthest from loving practices. 

In this time of political discourse (that's what I always hope it will be and yet it seems to be a time of political hate), I try to look at the other side and see them as loving humans, but it is hard for me.  Because often I see selfishness and greediness.  I have to conclude that they don't believe in love as much as I do.  And that makes me sad, but what I can do about that is to live my life so darned loudly that they see the power of love and hope to embrace it more in their lives. 

Welcome to the Tree House

And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?"  --Mary Oliver

Ever since I moved out of the house where I'd been for 11 years, I've been stressing about where to live.  When I moved out, I needed something right away and made the best decision that I could for the kids and I.  But then I've stressed about it since.  How long to make my lease for?  Is the stress and instability of moving again worth a little more space?  How to make this apartment feel more like a home so that I won't want to move? 

The small space worked when the boys split their time between Robb and I.  It felt cavernous when I was alone and crowded when I wasn't.  But the balance was acceptable.  But with Kyle with me full-time right now, I feel like we're on top of each other.  On one such night last week when I was putting a post on Criagslist for Eric giving guitar lessons (anyone want any?), I just happened to stop by a page where a woman had a post entitled "Unique Octogon TREEHOUSE for rent" with this picture.  I was hooked. 

In the last 48 hours, we've been back and forth with the landlady and her daughter, but I think we are very close to having a new home. 

What I love about this house:
*The house SCREAMS Christine--it is unique, it's set almost in the woods, it's spiritual, it's funky.
*It's just 2 miles away from where I was before, and still a short distance to the kids' school and Robb's house. 
*It is a place the kids (and I) can look back on and remember fondly as the quirky cool house where we spent the last few years of the kids' high school. 
*All three of us said that we were going to be having people over asap.  I LOVE that we all want to share where we live with others. 
*It is just a middle finger to the typical cookie cutter houses here in Central Florida.  I thought I'd have to settle for one of those and I'm delighted that I don't.

*I HAVE MY OWN SPACE.  An office/reading room/meditating room/altar room.  YES!
*It is actually essentially the same price as my apartment now! 
*I've always felt most alive when I'm outdoors and scold myself for not being outside more--this will bring the outdoors in and get me outdoors more!

So it is hard not to look at this as fate.  I was waiting for the perfect solution to come before me, while I was in our "transition home."  And it was waiting for me to be ready.  But it is time.  I'm worthy of a home that delights me.  I'm ready for more stability than an apartment complex creates.  I'm deserving of an office and space that is all mine. 

So I don't have it yet.  And some may say I'm jinxing it to put this up before it is mine.  But I'm going to be crushed whether I share it with you or I don't, so I'm just going to assume that it is mine and put all of my energy towards that.  Please share that energy and let's make it so!

So to paraphrase Mary Oliver, the universe just woke me up and I made a comment.  I said "YES!"

[As an aside, it seems that every where I turn, I find a Mary Oliver poem that is just perfect for me.  So I looked her up in Wikipedia to find that she is still alive and was with a female partner for forty years.  I knew I loved that woman!]

It's Time

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~

I have an amazing friend named Bentley who has changed my world in ways small and great.  Last night was his final "Pub Theology," a gathering of friends who like to talk about deep matters and drink beer.  This was his final gathering because he is off to San Francisco to finish divinity school and follow his dreams.  Unfortunately, I am a big part of the reason why they are leaving.  We had lay-offs at my company and we laid off his wife, freeing them to go.  I did coaching with her to help her figure out her "what's next."  And I met with both of them to coach them through the hurdles that stood in the way between here and that dream of San Francisco.  So it's partly my fault and I am so sad to see them go but I am way more proud of them for jumping. 

We had way too many beers last night (don't most great stories start that way) and Bentley was feeling the love.  But instead of making it about him, he turned to a few of us there and issued challenges to us.  He wanted us to carry our gifts forward.  The poem above was the focus of his message.  The first time I heard this poem, I heard it to be all about death.  But the second time, I heard it to be all about life--and that it is.  Bentley said it wasn't enough to just have the amazing gifts that he felt that we had; instead in order to live our fullest, we need to share them in active, creative ways (ok, now I'm paraphrasing--and turning this into what I got from it rather than exactly what he said). 

My life has been on the more chaotic side and I haven't had the bandwidth to think beyond my little family (which, in some cases, was appropriate), but I'm looking to get beyond that and I want to go out bolder.  Maybe it's through the exercise group I just set up through church after my sermon on the body last week.  Or maybe I start my Moving Forward classes again.  And I definitely help continue Pub Theology.  And maybe I do the "Salon Dinners" I've been dreaming about for years (invite some of the few fascinating people I know in my life--who don't know each other--and let the conversations flow!).  Or maybe something else that I haven't realized yet.

But, he's right; it's time.  It's time to stop obsessing over children (okay, that's a big wish) and start focusing on me a bit more and giving a platform for this beautiful new self I'm making.  To be a bride, married to amazement and a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.  It's time. 

Despair and Hope are Inseparable

Despair and hope are inseparable. One can never understand what hope is really about unless one wrestles with despair. The same is true with faith. There has to be some serious doubt, otherwise faith becomes merely a dogmatic formula, an orthodoxy, a way of evading the complexity of life, rather than a way of engaging honestly with life.  --Cornel West, 1953 -

So one of the things that I realized early on in my process of the last two years was just how easy of a life I have had up to that point.  Really, I hadn't really gone through anything really hard.  And anything I had gone through, I had mostly pushed it under the rug (oh that good old denial is a powerful thing). 

I think I have a gift in sharing my message in the Unitarian Pulpit.  I have considered turning this into a second career at some point (a distant point, don't worry).  But I had often cringed when ministers would talk about how hard life is.  I was kind of a "get over it" kind of girl.  Okay, I get it now.  And, if the time ever comes, I think that these times, these challenges and what I learned about how to overcome them, I will be a better minister (in the general sense or the professional sense). 

How can you understand what happiness is--or contentedness is (which I've come to the conclusion is the opposite of sadness) without exploring the other side?  How can you know what peace is if you haven't had chaos?  How can you recognize loyalty if your relationships have never been tested?  And how can you know faith if you have never just thrown up your hands and hoped that someone took over?

Yes, there is divine purpose for our struggles.  For when we are not struggling, we can truly understand how far we've come and how great we can become.