Blessed are the Peacemakers

So much of my blogging here has been reactionary to pain in my relationships--mainly with Todd. But I feel a new birth coming on. The emergence of a more fully integrated me. The reemergence of joy that has always been there, even if it's been squelched.

As I experience renewed freedom, I am able to be myself... and I realize that

I'm weird.

Like today, after dropping my daughter off at her morning class... I pulled into the driveway and looked up at the splashes of light playing as if the leaves and the branches of the trees were a jungle gym. It made me so happy that I had to just sit there for a spell. I thought about Emily's monologue in Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town, in which she declares, "Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you!"

How often I feel that wonder, that awe, and love, too... and then I want to share it with someone, but I realize I'm just being --

weird.

The Emily character felt that frustration when she was allowed a brief visit among the living after her death:

                     EMILY
Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama! Wally's dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it - don't you remember? But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another!

But Mama doesn't look. She is in a different dimension. Emily cries out to the Stage Manager (and launches into the part of the monologue most often made fun of for it's melodramatic delivery by high school actresses pretending to understand such depth of emotion just by putting a little quiver in their voices)...

                     EMILY
...I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye. Good-bye world. Good-bye Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?

The dead-pan stage manager replies:

                  STAGE MANAGER
No.
             (pause)
The saints and poets, maybe they do some.

Okay, I've been in with the mockers, parodying Emily's quivering words... but there is something to that sentiment--if you're weird, like me. What makes "the saints and poets" so different? Maybe that's part of what makes me feel like such a misfit. I was raised by poets -- I thought that was normal.

And who are the "saints"?

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

Matthew 5:9

Peacemakers. Hmm, "sons of God" ...sounds pretty saintly to me.

Saints and poets and peacemakers understand the importance of looking--really looking. That is odd in our society of disposable everything (including friendships). I've been chided and told I'm weird (or I'm setting myself up to be hurt) when I try to make peace with the playground bully who used to cause my knees to be skinned. Maybe I'm naive, but I was taught to believe in redemption--to believe that the bully's got to have some pretty deep pain issues to go around tripping little girls in dresses. Kind of like the little girl in the movie Hook said to the big bad pirate: "You need a mommy really bad."

Life has taught me that they are right, though--the naysayers, the critics who try to warn me that I'm going to get burned. They are right. A book I was just reading tells me that such an upbringing produces prime targets for "Dangerous Men." But the naysayers are also wrong--because some people do respond to peace-making. Maybe it's a gamble. Or maybe it's an endeavor that you just have to approach with caution and eyes wide open. Looking. Really looking.

I got to thinking about how normal people are so caught up in forward momentum... always moving in a linear manner. "Don't look back!" they cry in fear. "Forget about it; move on." That wiring doesn't feel right to me. My poet parents were also always good letter-writers. We moved a lot, but they didn't leave people behind, so our lives were rich with people from all different places and phases of life. It seemed that everyone liked my parents, and I grew up wanting everyone to like me. I know that's not possible, but I do think some people give up too easily.

Like so many things in life, I think it boils down to finding the right balance.

"Listen! I am sending you out just like sheep to a pack of wolves. 

You must be as cautious as snakes and as gentle as doves."

Matthew 10:16 (Good News)

I put emphasis on the word "and" because I think an awful lot of people ignore it. They look at this as an either/or proposition.

Caution is good. It can keep me away from dangerous situations. But caution also kept me from going up to the lady at the post office who I saw commit a random act of kindness, and telling her how much her kindness to a stranger blessed me as an observer. The poet in me wanted to celebrate the act, but I didn't want to be too weird.

How many times do I walk past a sad person and catch his or her eyes, and I'm stuck by the extraordinary color or shape that makes that person's eyes like no one else's... yet I don't take even a few seconds to pause and point out the beauty? To boost someone's self image.

Sometimes the beauty in the texture and variety of people around me in a public place makes me want to cry for joy. How can we ignore the splendor? How can these people not know how beautiful they are? Could it be because no on looks long enough to realize and tell them?

I've been on a peacemaking journey this year. I've seen it work, and I've seen it backfire. But I don't ever want to forget those times it works just because it sometimes backfires. And I don't want to let those times it works cause me to become careless around dangerous wolves.

Balance in weirdness. And weirdness in balance.

Spawn of Satan's First Kiss -- Part 2 Awakening the Memory

If you haven't read part one yet, read it first or you're likely to go, "Huh?"

I want to write Scott a note of apology, but it's hard to apologize correctly when you can't remember clearly.

I once received an apology from a former classmate who used to bully me in elementary school. When he said, "I am a different person now," that addendum somehow took some of the impact out of the apology. Sure, I was glad to know that he was no longer running around tripping girls and laughing when they skinned their knees, but still something felt... I don't know how to put it... it felt not entirely true. Does that make sense?

The thing is, I've been grappling with the concept of time and how we as human beings seem to be constantly evolving, and while I know that people do change and messed up lives are "redeemed," there is also an awareness that time is a very earthly thing. I mean, if you want to look at it from a religious standpoint, modern humans being under the curse of "the fall" actually makes less sense in the linear way of thinking than it does from a more timeless perspective. Adam and Eve ate that fruit that was a no-no... then years later, Jesus came to pay the debt for their disobedience (and ours too) and now, we're all included in that fall that took place eons before we were even born, until we accept the redemptive act of Jesus that took place a couple thousand years ago. Thus, in faith we are all over the place in terms of time, and I'm thinking that is why it is so hard for people with very disjointed views of life (in which time is chopped up into all kinds of disconnected segments) to understand either the need for, or the mechanics of, redemption. It's easier for us to chop up the time-line into segments and ignore those that are inconsistent. In ignoring our inconsistencies, however, we find it a whole lot easier to justify ourselves (and I think we also miss out on a lot of the texture that makes us interesting).

When the memories of writing that "break up" letter to Scott started to come back to me, I said that it was "like watching ... a fifteen-year-old girl, whom I barely recognize...." Initially, I was able to disconnect myself from that girl. The more I replay that scene, however, the more I feel like she is not such a stranger, and the more I see the patterns of behavior and the patterns of thought. We must exist in the entirety of our life experience in order to be honest. My soul often feels so confined by the skin that wants to hold me in, the time that wants to chop me up. I sense that I am intended to be much broader than that.

I know, I know... I "over-think" everything. So, I've been told. Few people have any interest in all the blather I can spew... so I put it HERE!!! I should call my blog "Blatherland."

So, I started to write an apology, but it ended up drowning in blather. Since I'm obviously not going to send this blather to some guy I haven't seen in three decades, I'll just post my imaginary "letter to Scott" here:

Dear Scott,

Since reading your "spawn of satan" comment, I've been trying to remember the letter you were referring to. No matter how much i rack my mind, the words elude me... however, a mute memory has trickled back--like I'm watching a silent movie of a vaguely familiar fifteen-year-old girl deliberating over a letter--a girl who is at once a total stranger as well as being more me than what I have become. I do wish I could see what she was writing--all I can do is sense that there is anguish in the action, and a compulsion, self-inflicted drama, beyond her understanding. None of this is intended as an excuse--but rather just a grappling for understanding (I know, weird writers--can't leave anything alone). On with my indulgent desire to understand the evolving psyche of myself and others... none of this need concern you except this: I'm sorry. I am really, truly sorry.

Scum of the Earth,

Bridget

Okay, truth be told, I had to post this here because I thought that "...a girl who is at once a total stranger as well as being more me than what I have become" line was just too good to fall prey to the delete button.