Half-baked Ideas

Lately I’ve found myself pacing from room to room with no real objective. It could be that the pain of being female drives me. It could be that I just quit my job and have no idea what will happen next. It could be I’m developing the latest cold going around. Anyway, now is a time for deep digging, attempting answers to questions that are hard for me to answer.

What do I want to do?

Who do I want to be?

It’s also a natural time to examine ideals. Naming them, I’ve been very reluctant to do this. I have a fear that naming them will make them permanent, like, I won’t be allowed to change them once I say it even if I disagree with myself immediately afterward. Somehow I got the idea that these pronouncements were permanent so I should be very careful what I admit. This is a harsh thing to do to myself. Do you understand the pressure I carry to never change my mind? What’s wrong with changing one’s mind?

It may be far better to let out half-baked ideas than to have one perfect thought. One thought lasts a moment. It’s vapor. But a gang of half-baked ideas builds cities. 

So I struggle to make lists, lists of possibilities, lists of assessment. I will argue with them until I see the truth.

Pride Based Anger

It’s not often that I write something and think; hey I could do a whole series of posts on this subject. But after the anger post I just did I realize that I may have started down a line of thinking that will take more time to fully explore. Why explore this publicly? Well we all get angry and I think we all bear a little anger at God. 

The funny thing about my experience is that my anger did not push me away from God. And though I was very upset he still blessed me and gave me good things that I did not deserve. I realize that my experience may not look like yours or anyone else’s.

Having said that let’s be honest, the anger has robed me of one thing I desperately wanted and needed and that was freedom to express joy. I was so preoccupied with trying to figure out a way out of my situation that I wasn’t fully present to those who needed me or to myself. That is a danger in anger.

(I just realized that danger is just anger with a d in front of it. Now I feel like a nerd. I also want to go down a tangent about the relationship between danger and anger. But that would be kind of confusing and really off topic, except I’ve gotten off already.)

Ah, anger. You know, it’s all wounded pride. Pride is a disregard, an ingratitude, toward all things even the self. It’s not arrogance. Arrogance is the thing that says, “I am and deserve the best.” Pride says, “You have done nothing for me.” or I suppose worse yet, “This is your fault.” Pride blames. Unfounded anger comes out as blame in the end. 

No wait let me back up. You need to understand that there are two angers. The pride based anger and righteous anger. All the above has nothing to do with righteous anger. That is an anger born out of true injustice and produces good. Whereas the pride based variety, when taken to extreme, ends in death, literally. Mine was pried based I know because of the things it prevented me from experiencing and because there was no real injustice in the situation. 

It would be so nice if I could just get over myself and not have to go through this struggle but that’s not how things are done here on earth. This is hard training.

More thoughts will come. This will take time to get through, probably a life time.

Unhappiness Toward God

Last Wednesday something quiet and amazing happened. I simultaneously realized, confessed, and marveled at my anger at the Holy Spirit.

Yes, I was upset about a prophesy I’ve been living under for about three years. It was so bad that I hadn’t told many people that the prophesy even existed. Whenever I did there was a deep pain, anger, I would be on the verge of tears. I didn’t know why.

And then while talking myself through an imaginary scenario, this happens all the time, I said to the other person, who wasn’t really there, “I’m angry at the Holy Spirit about X.” This caught me off guard. I’ve never expressed anger at the Holy Spirit before. I stopped the scenario and had to sit with this realization. 

Twenty-two years of walking this path and I don’t know how to be unhappy with God. I mean, it's kind of a crisis, right? Lovers can be angry with each other and recover and be better to each other for it. But I, I never knew I could be angry at God. Ok, intellectually I did know but I thought I wasn't when obviously I was. And God is one of my oldest relationships. If in twenty-two years I was never angry at, say, my brother wouldn't that be weird?

Maybe this unacknowledged anger is why I’ve been frustrated at every turn. Why I’ve fought so hard against good things. Why I’ve tried to control what people know. After this realization I found myself happily telling people that I am an artist, though I’ve fought that too.

Unhappiness toward God is actually common, I think. See there’s some part of us that tells us we’re the only one thinking this way or feeling these things when the reality, like, 98% of the time, is that someone else, usually many someone elses, has felt the same. But what I wonder about right now is the message, that I unknowingly carried, that said I shouldn’t be angry at him. Why not? I don’t think anger is a sign of disrespect.

God does and says plenty of things I don’t like, naturally I would be upset. He made me to get upset. Inside of anger I shouldn’t sin* but this acknowledges I will be angry. The source of my anger could be a flaw in my vision, or it could be a deep thing happening in me, or it could be injustice. I think injustice is the main and legitimate external source of anger. But honestly anger is usually something rooted in me. My own flaws, what’s wrong in me, reacting, just blindly reacting.

I have a lot of anger.

*Eph4:26

Fool's Report 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

Every year on January 6 I issue the following report. I do this on the 6th because it is Twelfth Night, which has a special place in my heart. Traditionally, the Feast of Fools would be held today and the gifts of the Magi would be exchanged. These are ideas that I like and I prefer them over traditional Christmas. It also gives me a great excuses to not write Christmas letters in the middle of crazy-ah!-time, which is what Christmas has become.

Me at the Hotel Del

Fool’s Report 2013

The house remodel was completed in April, which now feels like a million years ago, allowing me to go back to my lifelong preoccupation with not knowing what to do with myself. At the end of August my mother’s side of the family gathered in New Mexico for a week of familiness. Unfortunately I was unwell most of the time, I think it was stress related, and didn’t enjoy myself very well.

I worked on three shows this year. Mixtape , which had been running since August of 2010 on extensions, (for those of you who don’t know, pretty much everyone hired on a show is on contract. My original contract began July 29, 2010 and has been extended 2 or 3 months at a time. This makes it hard to gauge when to start looking for the next gig.) Any way, after two and a half years of mixtape I was ready to do something different. In October I got the opportunity to do the puppetry for Mistakes Were Made at Cygnet, a local theater. I enjoyed getting to participate more in the story telling aspect of theater and I got some lovely feedback. Then it was back to the tape.

In December mixtape took a brake allowing me to do props and set dressing for An American Christmas, Lamb’s Players show at the Hotel Del Coronado. Following that I was on vacation were I learned about an intriguing opportunity that I’m not going to talk about because that story belongs in next year’s report.

I’ve been thinking hard about what my next project should be and how to fill the time when I’m not doing theater work. I’ve thought for a long time that having a second job or side business would probably be the best thing for me. Maybe I will actually launch something like that this year.

Because I know some of you care about such things, I’ve made some good friends over the past couple of years but remain contentedly single. I don’t foresee a change in this arrangement.

God has blessed me richly in the midst of my struggle and I have struggled much this year. I hope to enjoy some rest in 2013.

There you go, annual newsletter thing done.

Love you all,