Finally!

What I'm about to write now is probably eventually going to give rise to a lengthy, rambling post about nostalgia and the fear of change, but for now, what I'm going to say is not particularly eloquent. Namely:

Ugh, special vestry meeting. Ugh, people who hold on to nostalgia and fear, rather than opening their minds to the fact that a decision has to be made, or in ten years or less, our church will probably have to close. Ugh, obstructionists who believe that the past (especially the nineteenth century and good old Queen Victoria) is more valuable and relevant than the future of the community that they claim to love so much. Ugh, people who try to derail the meeting so that they can try to push an agenda of their own, even when it means trying to keep a building open that probably won't be structurally sound anymore in five years because it's been basically neglected for the past decade. Ugh, people who have their heads so far up their arses that they don't understand that the point they're drawing out has not only been clarified three or four times already in this particular meeting, but it's been discussed to within an inch of its life at other vestry meetings, and it was in fact resolved at the most recent of those other meetings.

And...hooray, 90% of the people present, who actually managed to make what I think is the right decision for the future of our church, in spite of all the arguments, headaches and nostalgists! :)

A Minor Breakthrough

I had an interesting personal revelation last night.

For the past several months, I've been deeply afraid that I was developing inappropriate feelings for a married friend. The idea perplexed me, because I actually don't feel drawn to him as anything but a friend; anything non-platonic would, quite frankly, seem incestuous even if it wouldn't be completely against my sense of ethics, and it most definitely is against it—my parents' marriage fell apart rather spectacularly when I was a teenager, but that does not by any means diminish the respect I have for people who've been able to stay together for as long as he and his wife (who I've also lately come to think of as a friend, albeit a slightly more distant one) have. If anything, it increases that respect. Even so, every once in awhile I'd catch myself feeling a bit of some depressing emotion that seemed to be triggered by him.

And then, finally, last night I realized that the emotion actually was a kind of despair, but it's not because of any unseemly form of affection I may have developed for him. I haven't. It's because I've gradually been coming to terms with the fact that I'll never have anything even remotely like that kind of relationship myself; my love life has been very awful in general, and it's been practically nonexistent for the past two and a half years, largely thanks to a particularly awful heartbreak that I'm still not quite over yet, despite the fact that it happened in late 2007.

I know that a relationship like theirs takes a lot of work and a lot of trust, and I realize that even among people who have married, what they have is rare. I've even started to look forward to a quiet existence filled with music, cats, writing, faith, and a job that I hope will allow me the time to keep doing the things that have kept me from becoming suicidal in the past few years. If anyone is less suitable for marriage than me, I haven't met them; I'm a slightly socially-inept person who's fat and whose face is rather unremarkable, and who has suffered from depression for a very long time. I've got a nasty temper when it's riled and I find it very difficult to trust most people unconditionally (largely, I admit, because my trust has been betrayed so many times that I just can't give it to most people anymore). I need more time to myself than most people seem to and I don't want kids—I like them very much, which is why I wouldn't want to subject them to me as a mother. Besides which, although I haven't shown any sign of any of them yet, there are some nasty genetic surprises lurking on both sides of my family, ranging in severity from red-green colour-blindness to serious congenital heart defects. I may be a carrier for a few, and it would be much better if I didn't pass them on.

Still, I look at my friends and see how good they've been for each other for the last twenty-one years. It sends a pang straight to my heart when I think that I'll never have anything like that. Jealousy isn't a great thing to feel, but at least that particular Deadly Sin is its own punishment, especially when paired with the depression I've been fighting since I was very young. So if I feel a twinge of despair every once in awhile when I look at him or her, it isn't because I'm developing a crush on him (or anything worse, for that matter). It's because they have a relationship with each other that has greatly enriched their lives, and the knowledge that I'll never have anything even remotely like it has made me slightly, if somewhat justifiably, bitter.

Honestly, I don't know whether to feel relieved or disgusted with myself. For now, I'm choosing relief. Given how melancholy I've been feeling lately, that may be the best option. *sigh*

Musical Musings

Right now, I'm listening to a recording of Rachmaninoff's second symphony. This symphony is a piece I wasn't well acquainted with until fairly recently; I'd heard bits and pieces of it over the years, but I'd never heard it in its entirety until late last month, when I was lucky enough to have a ticket to hear it performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (As I mentioned in a previous entry, I spent about five days in Chicago last month. I was there with my community choir; we were there to perform a piece with two other choirs and an orchestra in a comparatively small community close to Chicago, and because it's so far away from where we live, we decided we'd make a trip of it.) Even from my seat way up in the gallery, the sound was spectacular.

The evening I heard this symphony, I happened to be sitting beside my choir director. We've always gotten along well, and during the intermission we got to talking a bit, and the conversation naturally turned to music. While even my infamously good memory has lost track of much of what we said, I remember one part of the conversation quite well—I remarked that I couldn't believe that anyone could possibly think of classical music as boring, and he replied that he suspected that an appreciation of classical music might at least partially depend on whether the person hearing it knew something about actually playing it. I had to admit that maybe he had a point; hearing music takes very little effort, but how much one gets from listening to it, actually paying attention to it, can sometimes depend on knowing exactly what to listen for. And yet, I know at least one person who doesn't play any musical instruments, but who has a keen appreciation for classical music, even though she was really only introduced to it when she was in her early twenties.

Perhaps it's got something to do with the image that classical music has gradually developed in the last hundred years or so. The performers of it are usually dressed in formal attire, and even if the audience isn't always dressed as formally as the performers are, their clothing is usually a bit nicer than what they'd choose to wear if they were just going to a movie with some friends. It's a form of music associated with grandparents, the intellectual elite (or those who only pretend to be) and rich people—not, perhaps, as accessible to most younger people as the manufactured marketing tool that we know as pop music.*

I suppose that it irritates me a bit that one of my favourite forms of music—one that's got such a range of emotion, one that I find so fascinating to listen to and that I even like to play once in awhile, even if I'm not very good at it—is widely dismissed as the kind of music that only people who are over-privileged, hopeless sticks in the mud or geniuses or pseudo-intellectuals could possibly find any value in. People forget that it's still used in most movie soundtracks. (Who could say that John Williams' "Imperial March" or "Hedwig's Theme", Howard Shore's theme for the Lord of the Rings films, or Alan Silvestri's theme for "Back to the Future" are boring, forgettable or inaccessible?) They forget that despite its reputation as a tedious artefact of the past that simply has no relevance today, many people of all ages are learning to play it—and love it—and that if they really want to listen to it, they don't need a ticket to the symphony, they can just flip to the appropriate station on the radio or look up a performance on YouTube.

Perhaps this is another kind of damage that's wrought by privilege, or at least, by the perception of it. It turns a great kind of music into something that many people won't even consider listening to because they think you have to be old or snobby to have any interest in it at all, and that anyone who isn't old or elitist is only pretending to like it. Food for thought, anyway.

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*I think that at this point, it may be best—purely in the interests of honesty and perhaps for bit of comic relief—to acknowledge that despite my lifelong love of classical music (and many other kinds of music, of course), when I was a teenager I was as likely as most other girls my age to listen to the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, and the Backstreet Boys, that I've recently developed an almost worrying appreciation for the work of Lady Gaga, and that I still listen to *NSYNC when I need a good laugh.

The Memory of Pain

Nine years ago today, something happened that hurt me terribly; I felt the sting of it for years afterward, even after I'd long since lost contact with everyone else involved. Even now, when what happened no longer actually has the power to hurt me, I can't help but think of the time I wasted in moping over it and wishing that the people who had hurt me had suffered for what they did. I won't go into any real detail about what happened to cause me all that pain because it isn't really relevant. Suffice it to say that it was rotten.

I still remember some almost impossibly small details of that day. The weather was beautiful; there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the sun was so bright, so warm, that I could hardly believe I was actually feeling so cold inside. I remember the tea I drank—Earl Grey, which has always been one of my favourites—and the pattern on the mug I was drinking it from. I remember the card game that some of my acquaintances were playing at the time, and a discussion about runes and tarot cards I had with one of them. ("The only cards I know anything about come 78 to a deck," I grinned.) After my chance discovery, I remember getting up from the table I'd been sitting at and nearly tripping over the ridiculously tall shoes I was wearing; the soles were about three inches thick, and I really only bought the damn shoes in the first place because they were the only ones I could find in my size that had decent arch support. I remember going to my locker early—this happened in my final year of high school—and digging around for a book I needed for my homework. A couple of hours after I got home, I took a long walk. Unfortunately, part of that walk took me to the place where one of the other people worked (I hadn't known about their job until I got there), and it all came crashing down on me again.

By the time I got home, I was exhausted both physically and emotionally, but I did my damndest to pretend that everything was normal. I suspect that I was successful; my parents didn't ask me what was bothering me, and at the time, neither of them really understood that I need to work things out in my mind before I'll talk about them. I'm sure they thought they were doing me a favour in encouraging me to talk about my feelings, but quite frankly, every time it happened, I felt more like I was being hounded to share things I wasn't ready to share, like my privacy didn't matter and my inner thoughts weren't really mine to keep. Any acting talent I currently possess can probably be attributed to that.

I remember what I ate for supper, hours later; it was pasta with white sauce and various kinds of seafood. I remember getting through my homework somehow and then flopping on my bed, staring at the ceiling. And I remember writing about the incident in typical teenage histrionics, but perhaps I can be forgiven for that, because I'd just discovered something that meant that someone I thought was a friend really wasn't, and I had a feeling—one that actually proved to be right a couple of weeks later—that things were going to get worse for me before the end of it.

Nine years later, although the pain of betrayal has long since faded, I still feel the mental echo of it once in awhile. Certain songs will remind me of it. Earl Grey tea, while still one of my favourites, is not necessarily a beverage I will consume quite as often as I used to nine years ago. Clear and sunny weather on the ninth of May is an obvious trigger. But the remembered pain doesn't rule me anymore as it did back then when it was real; now, I look at it as a reminder of a lesson learned rather harshly when (I suppose) I really, really needed a smack upside the head. DON'T TRUST THE UNTRUSTWORTHY.

Even that day, though, I knew that the pain wouldn't last. The next morning, though I wore darker clothes than usual and was a bit withdrawn even around my friends, I started to work drafting a ritual that would help me to distance myself from the hurt a bit. For whatever reason, it worked. Actually, it worked so well that the day after, I actually capered around my room singing the refrain to Britney Spears' "Stronger"! (Hey, I was eighteen, and that was actually the most appropriate song I could think of at the time.) And over the years, I've actually used that very same ritual to help me to get over similar—or worse—moments of pain in my life, only altering it to make it appropriate for the new painful circumstances.

That's not to say that everything was sunshine and roses, of course. As I said before, things actually got a great deal worse for me about two weeks later. May 9 was only the start of it, but of all the dates when things that happened that were related to this initial incident, this is still the day that reminds me of it the most. It's the day when I found out that all was not as it seemed, and when I realized that Something Really Bad was on its way.

In the end, I suppose I ought to be grateful for that unexpected revelation. It helped me to prepare myself for what was coming at me, and because I wrote that ritual I gained a tool for helping myself to clear my mind and step away from the distraction of mental and emotional pain. And it taught me a valuable lesson, which I believe I've already outlined.

Through the years, I've found that sometimes suffering makes me stronger, but only under certain conditions—namely, when I have the resources to deal with it. Sometimes I don't even know that I have those resources until I have to put them to use, as I did on May 9, 10, and 11, 2001. And so it seems that the ninth of May, while still the anniversary of a tremendously painful event in my life, has gradually become an almost triumphant reminder that pain doesn't have to be forever—and that if I can find a way to reinvent myself, even just partially, then maybe I'll be OK and even manage to pull out a useful lesson from the wreckage.

When God Made Me

Neil Young isn't really one of my favourite musicians, but I love this song (skip ahead to about 5:27). All of its questions, in one way or another, hint at something very close to my view of religion and spirituality—and a few other things, come to that.

You see, as heretical as it may be, my beliefs go so much further than the words of the Apostles' Creed or even the slightly more-detailed Nicene Creed. I believe that the countries we come from, our racial backgrounds, even our religious beliefs (or not, as the case may be) do not matter to the Divine. I do not believe that only humanity was created in the image of the Divine; to say so, especially since God is most frequently visualized as male, particularly by the adherents of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), to say that only humanity was crafted in God's image is the exact sort of arrogance and disregard for the rest of Creation that pushed me away from my original spiritual path. I believe that not only "True Believers" are God's beloved children. I believe that God does not approve of the wars that people use Her/Him/It/Them as an excuse for fighting. I do most emphatically NOT believe that there is only one way to know the Divine. (All things considered, if I did believe that, I'd be a terrible hypocrite.) I do not believe that we were given the capacity to love only to be told that we must love only certain people in certain ways. Our voices were not made to be silenced, no matter who we are. Vision isn't to be disregarded when it shows something of which we do not approve or which we do not understand. And compassion—perhaps the greatest gift of all—should not be shoved aside, but used to help people (and animals, and the environment) that need help in the way that best suits their needs—and, if applicable, what they want as well.

I don't understand the exclusivity argument from anyone anymore. If this makes me even more of a heretic than I already was, so be it. I'd rather be a compassionate heretic than a "One Way—MINE!!!" Bible thumper any day.

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When God made Me - Neil Young

Was he thinkin' about my country or the colour of my skin?
Was he thinkin' 'bout my religion and the way I worshipped him?
Did he create just me in his image, 0r every living thing?

When God made me, when God made me

Was he planning only for believers, or for those who just have faith?
Did he envision all the wars that were fought in his name?
Did he say there was only one way to be close to him?

When God made me, when God made me

Did he give me the gift of love to say who I could choose?

When God made me, when God made me
When God made me, when God made me

Did he give me the gift of voice so some could silence me?
Did he give me the gift of vision not knowing what I might see?
Did he give me the gift of compassion to help my fellow man?

When God made me, when God made me
When God made me, when God made me

Ah, just what we *don't* need more of...

...namely, another white woman's views on racism. I realize that my life is full of white privilege, regardless of how many aspects of it are negated by other circumstances of my life, and that a white person's views of racism are nowhere near as valid as those of a person of colour. But part of the reason I started this blog was to work through ideas that I'm struggling with, and though I know that at times I will probably verge on (or cross the line of) cluelessness and offensiveness, and apologize for the same in advance, this is an idea that I'm struggling with—and an idea that, if anyone actually does read this blog, I would dearly love to get some feedback on.

What prompted this particular post is the fact that I recently spent about five days in Chicago. The Black population there is much higher than it is in my comparatively tiny city, and most of the people who I encountered as store clerks, waitstaff at restaurants, hotel employees, etc. were Black or Hispanic—mostly Black. Every time I found myself being served by one of them, I felt very distinctly uncomfortable. I had, and have, no objection to the people themselves; it's just that I'm very much aware that white people have been, and still are, the cause of a lot of suffering for anyone who isn't white. The fact that the people I encountered are paid for what they do didn't do anything to lessen my discomfort—I actually felt unworthy of their help. Since I became aware of the concept of white privilege, I've been deeply ashamed of having it, and the added racial dynamic to the service provider/customer relationship was deeply disturbing to me. I did my best to not be just another white racist asshole, but because I was so uncomfortable to begin with, I'm not sure I always succeeded.

And it doesn't help that to a very large degree, I still fail to understand racism. I have a fairly good understanding of the damage that it does, and even experienced it myself to a certain degree (though arguably it wasn't real racism in my case, just an occasionally unfriendly bias against non-Italians in a school where most other students were of Italian descent, and justifiable hostility by First Nations people towards a white person at a pow-wow—my family was there because we were invited by a friend who lived on the reserve, but even so, fifteen years later I still wonder if we had any right to be there, and several people made it clear that they felt we most definitely did not have that right). What I don't understand is the motivation behind it. Why hate someone with a different skin colour? Why perpetuate harmful stereotypes that make life difficult for people whose bodies produce larger amounts of melanin than a white person's does? Why be cruel to people whose physical features show that all, or at least a significant part, of their ancestry is not from select places in Europe? There's no logic in that. There's no good reason for it. It simply is, and I have never understood it.

One of the few good things that I encountered in my Catholic school years was the message that we're all God's children, equal in dignity and worth. It stuck so well with me that it's still one of the core points of my philosophy. And if we're all equal in the eyes of the Divine, how can I hate anyone, especially for something that is so far beyond anyone's control as their ancestry is? I can't. I can hate people's actions, and I can form a deep dislike of people because of their actions. Hating people for their race...I just don't understand why people do it, and perhaps that makes me a worse ally to people of colour (if I could even be called one in the first place, that is) than someone who does understand it.

One Seed, Many Roots, One Tree

The older I get, the more I become convinced that the way that those of us who have religious or spiritual beliefs label ourselves and define our beliefs doesn't matter to the Divine as much as it matters to us. I've had many intense spiritual experiences over the years, starting in my time as a Catholic, continuing in my years as a Solitary Kinda-Wiccan Pagan and in the years since I realized that the path that worked best for me lay somewhere between the two. And you know what? Although my own consciousness has changed many times through the years, one thing has remained constant in these experiences.

Every time I'm gifted with one, I feel like I have come in contact with what can only be described as pure capital-L-Love, something so beautiful that it nearly brings me to tears—which is not at all a normal occurrence for me. (Most of the people I know have never seen me cry for any reason.)

We can give it all the names we like, tell all the stories about it that we want, make hundreds of rules about how to best know, love and serve it, but there it is. In the end, that's why the Christo-Pagan approach works for me. Although I'm no expert on world religions, every single one I've researched so far has come down to the same thing—it's inspired by love in one way or another, crafted to explain the mysteries of the world and used as a tool to comfort, guide and occasionally frustrate ourselves into a higher way of thinking than the strictly materialistic. The fact that so many people misuse and abuse faith (and believers) of various types in so many ways has nothing to do with the roots of it, the truth of it. Those people are predators and will generally use anything—not just spirituality or religion—to do what they want. Some systems make it easier to carry out these abuses than others (Vatican City, I'm looking at YOU), but that doesn't make those systems or all of their adherents into corrupt and immoral self-righteous judgemental douchebags—just the people who do these terrible things.

Despite our differences, we really do come from the same place. As the saying goes, though I doubt it was intended to be applied this broadly:

"One seed, many roots, one tree."

Things That My Body Is Not

My body is not a disease. You can't catch "fat" by being in my immediate vicinity.

My body is not a moral battle. I am not evil because I am fat. Neither can I be made a saint by becoming thin.

My body is not an indication of laziness or stupidity. I work hard when I've got work to do, and although I'm no Einstein, my intelligence is at an average—or perhaps slightly above average—level. My memory is so good that it's actually a bit of a running joke among those who know me best; I'm very good at memorizing music, and I'm often able to remember details that other people have long since forgotten.

My body is not disconnected from my mind. I know how much space it takes up, and I inhabit that space proudly.

My body is not unhealthy. My resting heart rate is in the low 60's and my blood pressure is also relatively low at 120/70 at my last reading. I have a brisk walking pace, and I am perfectly capable of singing in a clear, strong voice even after running up a flight of stairs. I may not be able to run a marathon, but my body does what it needs to do, and it does it very well.

My body is not an indication of the state of my soul. My extra adipose tissue does not signify gluttony, nor is it an abomination that should be removed from the "temple of the soul".

My body is not thin. Both because of my bone structure and my inability to shrink fat cells past a certain point, even if I only ate a small amount every other day I probably would never make it down to anything less than a size 12. Even that might be stretching it a bit.

My body is not weak. I grew up around horses, and that means a lot of heavy lifting, especially as I got older. Hay bales, large buckets of water, big bags of horse feed and shovels full of manure—to say nothing of actually having to push heavy wheelbarrows full of said manure—gave me some rather impressive musculature, especially for a fat girl, and even though my equine days are long since past, I still do enough heavy lifting that I am as strong as I ever was.

My body is not ugly. Not everybody has the same aesthetic preferences, and I happen to think that my body is, if not beautiful, then at least fairly interesting. Those who have dared to openly agree with me may be relatively few in number, but then, who wants to be with someone who only values them for their physical appeal, anyway? I certainly don't.

My body is not perfect—nor would I wish it to be. Some of its imperfections even mean slightly increased comfort; I survive the nearly six-month winters of my home province much more easily than my thin peers, and once the weather gets hot, I'm able to swim sooner and longer than people of a more socially acceptable size because I retain body heat better than they do. I also find that my size is a surprisingly accurate jerk detector—I've rarely had to wonder if someone found me attractive, and the people who don't will often tend to make their views known in such a way that I don't particularly feel motivated to impress them.

And most of all, my body is not anybody's business but mine. I don't want unsolicited diet advice from total strangers. It isn't up to anyone else to point out that I'm fat, as if the fact that I can't buy skirts, slacks, jeans, dresses or underwear in a "normal-people store" (unless said store is Value Village, and even then the selection's pretty dodgy) wasn't enough of a clue—perhaps they think that the fact that I can buy bras and (some) shirts in regular stores would throw me off the scent. Even if it did, the slightly tight fit of the seats in the local community theatre centre would be more than sufficient proof of the expanse of my backside. Any health issues I may or may not have are not suddenly made appropriate for public discussion by the size of my body. I am neither an advertisement nor an argument for the wider availability of bariatric butchery surgery, dangerous weight-loss drugs or fad diets. I am not an example of what's wrong with this country, and it is not OK to mock me for purchasing ice cream, driving a car or ordering anything but a small salad at a restaurant.

My body is my business only, and anyone who thinks that my size is an adequate excuse to discuss it in detail or rail at me for decisions they don't actually know that I've made is not only ignorant in the extreme, but unforgivably rude as well.

(Inspired by a video that was—quite rightly, in my opinion—absolutely torn apart at Womanist Musings.)

This breaks my heart.

Anti-abortion extremists go to Hell

...and once again, a religion that's supposed to be devoted to a God of Love is used as an excuse for anger and hate.

Stop it. Just stop it. If you claim that you want to follow the path laid out by Jesus, don't harrass people going into places where abortions are performed. Don't murder the doctors who perform the abortions. Don't create "WANTED" posters containing the addresses of the doctors' homes or private offices, and don't threaten them. Actions like this are just about as far away from being Christ-like as you can possibly ever get. I'm no Biblical scholar, of course, but the only time I remember Jesus getting well and truly angry was the time he threw the moneylenders out of the Temple. He didn't kill people. He didn't yell at people who did things he disapproved of. He didn't do everything in his power to make their lives miserable. He rebuked them once in awhile, but he never did anything this destructive—this evil.

Sometimes I wonder if Jesus as this trying-to-be-humble Christo-Pagan sees him, and Jesus as seen by these hate-filled and self-righteous people who are behind so much of the misery caused by the anti-abortion groups, really have anything in common besides the name.