Connections

May the Lord have mercy on those who are hurting.

My thoughts have been on those affected by the tornado in Oklahoma, as I’m sure yours have been, too. I’ve been thinking of those injured, of those who have lost their homes, and especially of those who have lost loved ones.

Tuesday evening I worked until about 8, then my husband picked me up and we stopped by a little diner in town for a bite to eat.

I’ve been deep into newspaper layout and editing today and didn’t come up for air very often. So Larry caught me up on the news from Oklahoma. He had been able to watch the evening newscasts.

I listened to his stories, and I realized that we’re both drawn to the personal stories, to the stories about individuals who experienced the storm, to the ways people are helping each other.

We talked about how we would handle something like that happening in Altavista, and neither one of us could truly imagine what it would be like find our home gone, our town destroyed, our lives devastated in that manner.

I would hope that we would react like so many did in the stories Larry told me: with strength, with compassion, with pluck.

I would also hope that I would remember that there were many, many people praying, sending healing thoughts, giving money and water and just connecting.

I wish I could remember it all the time. It seems like I remember it best in times of tragedy in this world. And that is this fact: we are all connected. We are all connected.

May the Lord have mercy on those who are hurting.

In what ways do you feel connected to others during hard times?

Snippet of a memoir: OCD and religion, getting saved, or not

  Note: I’ve written before about my relationship with religion, especially as a young girl trying to make sense of God while obsessive-compulsive disorder was running my life. In this vignette, I write about an early religious experience.

  I found out about rededicating one’s life to Christ on May 2, 1975. I was almost 12 years old. It was a Friday, and revival had been going on all week.

  My church had mustard yellow, walk-in carpet, the thin kind that wears well. The floors were dark hardwood, remnants of the church’s past. I sat in the youth choir section, which was directly across from the adult choir section.

  The altar was on my right between the two choirs. A railing encircled the altar and the chairs for the ministers. On the outside of the railing was a section for kneeling sinners, for those coming to get saved or to rededicate their lives to Jesus.

  Every night, as we sang the last hymn, the visiting minister, the revival speaker, put out the call to the altar. As we sang, people would put down their hymnals and walk up to the altar. Some would be crying, some looked scared, some looked relieved, some looked determined. But afterwards, they all looked relieved.

  I hadn’t gone up to the altar all week. I had been baptized when I was about nine, and I wasn’t sure how that played into salvation.

  From what I was hearing from the revival speaker, it didn’t mean anything. I was still a sinner and still far from God and still not saved.

  And there was a specific way to be saved. One had to accept Jesus into their hearts to be saved. Believing that he existed wasn’t enough either.

  During the final hymn all through the week, I had felt intensely anxious. I would feel a growing dread as we sang a hymn such as “Just As I Am.” My arms felt numb, I couldn’t concentrate on the words of the hymn and I felt afraid.

  I wondered if the fear was God’s way of telling me that I needed to be saved. I wondered if I needed to go to the altar.

  I wished I knew what the people going forward had prayed. The preacher usually talked to them, too, at the altar.

  This Friday night, we sang the final hymn, and I felt that now-familiar fear and dread and anxiety. I was afraid to go up to the altar. I was shy. But I was afraid not to go up, too. And some of my friends had gone up earlier in the week and seemed happy for doing it.

  In a daze, I put down the hymnal and walked the short walk to the altar and knelt down. I didn’t know what to do. I closed my head and bowed my head, but I didn’t really know what to pray.

  The prayer that came out without thinking, out loud, in a whisper, was something like, “Oh, God, please forgive me.”

  I remember opening my eyes and seeing the minister smile at me. I looked behind me and saw my parents, who had come up to stand behind me. They were smiling, too. I heard the minister talking to my parents, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

  Then I heard my parents tell the minister that I had been baptized. The minister looked at me and told me I had rededicated my life to Christ that night.

  When I got home, I opened up my Bible, the white one with my name embossed on the front that I had received for Christmas one year, and in the front wrote the date and that I had rededicated my life to Christ on that date.

  This was the beginning of my obsession about being saved. I couldn’t resolve within me how getting baptized was something that had saved me when I heard ministers and then, when I started going to Christian schools, school officials and teachers say that you had to accept Christ in your heart to be saved. I knew I hadn’t done that when I was baptized. But I hadn’t prayed that on May 2, 1975. All I’d prayed was for God to forgive me. Was that being saved?

  But what I was learning at church at revivals and at school especially was telling me that one had to pray a certain prayer and ask specifically for forgiveness from sins and for Jesus to come into your heart. That was the only way to be saved.

  I don’t know how many times I prayed for forgiveness and for Christ to come into my heart. I was looking for the feeling that I was saved, for a reassurance that I didn’t need to worry about it any more.

  That was a reassurance that I knew others my age had who were saved. They didn’t seem to doubt their salvation at all. They could point to a date or an age and say with certainty that they had been saved then.

  How did religion affect you when you were a child?

Lent lessons: Filling in the gaps

This year I gave up two things for Lent: playing solitaire on my phone and getting food out of a snack machine at work.

Maybe I should say I am fasting from them, a term my minister used in his sermon this past Sunday to refer to anything given up in order to prepare ourselves for self-examination and the sacrifice of Jesus.

I am fasting from solitaire because I have days when I spend way too much time playing it. It’s like a nervous habit. When I don’t want to do anything else, or when I’m stressed, I grab the phone and start fiddling with the electronic cards.

I am fasting from the snack machine because I do too much mindless eating at work, out of stress and sometimes boredom. It’s easy to stick my dollar or coins in the machine and have instant “food comfort.” But I’m eating when I’m not hungry, and I’m turning to food rather than more healthy choices to cope with life.

Giving up the snack machine has been the easier of the two. I can always take the time to fix healthier food choices at home to eat at work, and I am trying to eat only when I’m hungry.

It has been more difficult with the phone. I’m not having trouble resisting the call of solitaire. I’m having a difficult time knowing what to do with myself without the game.

My plan was to spend the time with more useful and meaningful pursuits, like reading and writing, or, if I’m at work, with work.

That’s hard for me when I’m tired and feel anxious and I just want to avoid doing anything that takes effort.

During Sunday’s sermon, my minister talked about giving things up for Lent. He said something like, if you’re fasting from food but not praying, then it’s just a holy diet.

Therein lies my problem.

Should I be praying during at least part of the time that I could be playing solitaire? What do I do since I have such a hard time praying, and I haven’t really prayed much since I realized how compulsive I still am with the process?

I’ve written about the obsessions and compulsions I have about praying. I’m working to no longer attend to the compulsive prayer thoughts. How do I bring in real prayer?

That’s my quandary. What other ways can I reach out to the divine?

Meditation is one way, but I’m still at the 10-minutes-at-a-time stage.

I’ve tried prayers that someone else wrote, like the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. Sometimes I still get lost in the words, though.

I’ve considered writing prayers.

I still think reading and writing are meaningful and have a place in my Lent practice. Prayer is not the only way to learn and grow.

But I want to do some kind of praying too.

Do you have any ideas or suggestions?

The imaginary shield of prayer

“Please forgive me for anything I did wrong today. Please forgive me for what I did do that I wasn’t supposed to do and for what I didn’t do that I was supposed to do.”

   I wish I were home. I wish I were alone in my bedroom, with the door closed. I’d be able to close my eyes or bury my face into my pile of stuffed animals, be alone with the whirl of prayers in my head.

“Please forgive me for not being happy where I am. Please forgive me for not focusing on you.”

I’m on the van that is carrying me home from school. I have to keep my eyes open so that the other riders won’t know that I’m praying. Everybody is so noisy. I can’t keep the rhythm of the prayer going.

“Please forgive me, Lord. Please forgive me for everything I’ve done wrong. Please forgive me for the mean thought I just had about the kids in the back of the van. Please bless them. Please bless them. Please forgive me for all my sins.”

Those were my prayers when I was a teenager, when I kept the journals that I wrote about in my last post.

I don’t pray like that anymore. I don’t feel like I’m physically straining to get the prayers right anymore.

I’m not all better. But I have begun to understand.

Late last night, or early this morning, as I got ready for bed, I knew I was too keyed up to fall asleep right away. My husband was still up, in another room. I sat in the dark on top of the bed and meditated.

When I meditate, I concentrate on the sounds around me. Starting out, I hear the larger sounds, the furnace running, perhaps, or the train passing through town.

But as I continue to listen, I hear the smaller sounds. The faint tick of something rolling around in the dryer in the basement, in the load I put in before bed. Or one of the cats munching a midnight snack.

Last night, as thoughts distracted me, I pictured myself apart from my thoughts. I pictured my hand holding a globe, with the thoughts swirling around in it, in pictures. I tried to be that Impartial Spectator that Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz writes about in “Brain Lock.”

My thoughts slowed down. I felt calmer. I felt like my mind was empty enough to go to sleep.

I put my head down on the pillow. But my mind wasn’t empty enough, after all.

I don’t remember now what I was thinking. I don’t even remember what I prayed, but I prayed one of the “spurt prayers,” something like, forgive me, God, or help her, God, or oh, Lord, be with him.

They’re not real prayers. They’re not directed at God. They’re compulsive chants. They make me anxious, restless. They’re meaningless, but necessary to quell . . . what?

I wanted to think. I wanted to answer the question. Why did I feel like I had to pray like this?

I’m beginning to understand that it’s because somehow I don’t believe that I will live a good life, in the care of the grace of God, that my loved ones will be safe and well, unless I think these meaningless chants.

It’s not for my salvation from an eternal hell. It’s to build some kind of shield against all that might hurt my family and me.

Somehow, I don’t believe God can take care of it all, that nature will run its course, that life will happen. Somehow, I believe I can control it all with my compulsive thoughts in the form of prayers.

I’ve been working on that shield for most of my life, and it hasn’t done anyone any good.

I feel like I had a brief moment of insight last night. Perhaps it came because of the stillness and quiet that I experienced during meditation.

It’s time for me to work on refocusing, on letting go of the imaginary shield. Do you have any ideas on how to do this? How do you deal with OCD when it’s all happening in your thoughts?

Mary Oliver: a gift

One of my favorite writers of any genre, and my favorite poet, is Mary Oliver.

She is an American poet who writes about animals, trees, flowers, ponds, God, death, meaning and so many other things.

I have reread her poems many times—not in the OCD way of rereading, but for new insights and inspirations.

Her poetry—any great poetry—is like that. I can return again and again and find another layer, another meaning.

I don’t remember how I first came to read Oliver’s work. I have degrees in English and taught writing and literature many years ago, but I don’t remember my first exposure to her.

I do remember going to a reading that she gave when she was a writer-in –residence at Sweet Briar College.

It was such a wonderful experience. The room was packed, and she looked so small and frail at the front, but her reading was powerful. That’s where I first heard her poem, “Wild Geese.”

I have memorized the poem over the years, and when I’m anxious and my thoughts are racing and there seems no hope in slowing them down, I recite the poem to myself and it helps to calm me.

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.”

-from “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver

I’m still trying to figure out the full meaning of that last line, even after all these years.

The words that end that poem are some of the most comforting I know:

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”

-from “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver

I’ve memorized some of her other poems, too. One of my goals is to memorize more of her work so her inspiration is literally just a thought away.

I think what calms me are her ideas, her questions, her deep connections to nature and her beautiful word choices. And I feel like she speaks to me and for me in so many ways.

I finally came to realize that when I read or recite her poetry from memory, I am really praying.

I have found her poetry to be an integral part of my attempts to pray and to meditate, and I expect it always will be.

I do have to be careful not to recite the lines by rote and forget about the meaning. Memorizing a new poem usually helps me with that.

One of the poems I want to memorize is the first one found in her volume of poetry “Thirst.”

“Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.”

-from “Messenger,” by Mary Oliver

   I’ll end this post by writing about “When Death Comes,” an Oliver poem I memorized a long time ago and still recite some nights.

   In the poem, she writes about the inevitability of death and how she wants to face it “full of curiosity.”

“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. . . ”

-from “When Death Comes,” by Mary Oliver

Conviction of sin

My spiritual life is very important to me, but I do not consider myself to be very religious. I was raised in a Christian home and am a Christian. I belong to and attend a Methodist church.

I don’t believe being a Christian puts me on a higher plane than those of other religions and beliefs. I believe in a God that lives within all of us.

I am at peace with that understanding. That sense of peace is a far cry from what I felt for many years.

Religion, especially fundamentalist Christianity, mixed with obsessive-compulsive disorder was a quicksand that sucked me in and mired me in guilt and doubt. I was an easy mark for the accompanying obsessions and compulsions.

When I was about eleven years old, I began my compulsive prayers for forgiveness and for the safety and health of my family.

This compulsion was based on my belief that how I prayed, what I prayed, and whether or not I was a good person affected not just my life, but the lives of those I loved. I was obsessed with the belief that I had to be “right” with God or something terrible would happen to my family.

I also prayed for my own salvation, especially after I started attending Christian schools at age 12. The need to be saved was drilled into us at school, and salvation came from following a certain formula of prayer.

My fellow students seemed to be sure of their salvation. But I didn’t have that reassurance.

I wanted to be sure that I was saved. I don’t think I was so much afraid of going to hell when I died, as I was afraid of the depression of knowing I wasn’t saved, and therefore, never having peace of mind about it.

I was also concerned because I was taught that God couldn’t hear our prayers until we were saved. So prayers for protection of my family wouldn’t go through if I wasn’t saved.

When I prayed, whether for forgiveness, for my family or for salvation, I said the same words over and over, out loud or to myself, until the words became meaningless chants, not said to God, but to myself.

These chants, especially the ones in my thoughts, created within me a constant rhythmic beat that I tried to stop but never could. The beat played in the background even as I talked with others and went about my daily activities. It reminded me that I wasn’t saved yet, that I still needed to deal with God, that peace was elusive as long as I failed at my prayers.

I never knew what made a prayer “right” or “not right.” There was a magical way to say the words, silently or out loud, but I found that magical way only by repetition and by accident. At some unpredictable moment, I would have the sense that I had gotten it right, and I could stop for a while. I had protection. My family had protection, at least until I sinned again.

I questioned my prayers and my state of mind during those prayers. Was I concentrating on the right things? Did I have to use certain words? What feeling was I supposed to have in my heart? Was the feeling a physical one? The lifting of that heavy feeling I felt so often? With these questions, the doubt of my state of salvation returned.

Eventually, when I was in college, I think I just became exhausted with it all. My prayers and my attempted beliefs in a fundamentalist system had brought me no peace and no satisfaction, just exhaustion and anxiety and endless prayers.

And I began to question what I had been told by my teachers and fellow students. Who said they were right?

I had also gotten seriously depressed, and for a long time that overshadowed my OCD.

For many years, I stayed away from God and from anything to do with religion.

Today, I pray, but not in the same way. It’s more of a meditation, a sometimes wordless expression of my needs and helplessness. And there’s more gratitude included. I also recite poetry and prayers such as the St. Francis of Assisi prayer.

I still crave peace, and I think what I’m doing now is moving me closer to it than the old prayers.