O'Shaughnessy Dam

Last night we walked out on O'Shaughnessy Dan to look at the starts. So many city dwellers-so many fears of bears and snakes.

But I look at this dam, this rather pictorially large but actually small piece of the whole story and I am amazed by the remnants of the belief in Progress. I really don't think we believe in Progress anymore-we just use the word. Not that there are not some but collectively, as a whole, we have sold the idea of somthing larger than ourselves for the good of civilization for the very think Marx was so afraid of - except he called in religion, and imagined it was a church or a God when is was really just distraction.

I wonder, now, if the Egyptions actually worshipped cats, or if they had solved enough in the name of Progress that, like the internet today, there really isn't much to do except post pictures of our cats.

I've had another PTSD episode. The kind that make me totally freak out for 4 days (sometimes months) trying to integrate the trauma - the SUPRISE- into my worldview again. Shannon tried some tough love on my, again, because he hasn't quite figured out that stubborn isn't what is going on here and that he isn't telling me something that I don't know-just something that my body has a massive allergic reaction to. So he said something that he has said before, but hasn't quite figured out that it's only result is to make him feel bad. He said I don't get what I want because I keep doing the same thing - not breaking in order to get what I want. That, specifically, I am not a priest because I won't play by someone elses rules and I won't support their vision.

It occurs to me that the trauma is often if not always, that I thought I was. But what I was seeing was God's vision and not human vision. I am always so broken whenevery I think (ok, I invent) a leader in my mind that is the leader I want to support, the leader that is also seeking after God's plan. And when that leader is following a perfectly humanly secular rational goal, I encounter another rift in my soul.

Here, I really want to say that my problem with (often women) leaders is some deep seated bullshit about my mother, it really isn't. It may appear in relation to my Mother archetypes of God, but working through the feminine in God is something I have known I needed to work on for a long time now anyway. I think this is so hard because I have not been in a place to really explore incarnation before, and it will be around incarnation for me to look at Mothering, given that I am a feminine incarnation.

I may finally be in a place to start considering separating the human and the divine. Another step in the process that sucks from this side and sucks more because I know how much more amazing it will be on the other side. And I have done the work to separate God from religion; I think it is time and possible finally to start separating God from humanity. Perhaps this is why incarnation is finally a thing I can contemplate when for so long I was coming to grips with Death-Resurrection.

Last night, laying on the dam, looking at the starts, sattelites and planes, I found myself drawn to just one star, a bright, white steady star directly overhead. And I could look at that start and everything else would fade away and I could feel the fire of life inside me as part of the fire of that star - that burning brightness was where God existed. It had no desires or emotions, it had no needs except the knowledge that it was the shimmering that resonated in me of I AM - and how I AM is enought reason for being, enough reason for keeping body and mind whole in the face of life's bullshit - natural and manmade.

I see so clearly how humans can be - with all this smallness and the flaws and fixes - in relationship with one another and with the systems of humans that doesn't have to change people in order to make the world perfect, and my perfect, I don't mean that all the ills of civilization or humanity are solved in a perfect Skittles rainbow, but how mitigated the difficult bits are when that spark is what motivates us rather than the fears and foibles and discomfort of the vision of perfection.

Beauty is messy and it has warts and all, as they say, but never despite the warts nor because of the warts. Warts just are, why be so obsesses with warts? Focus on beauty without justification and it is so messy and awe inspiring.  I can see systems and I love formal logic, but the answers aren't found in it making everything conform to the logic - everything will fall within a standard deviation or two anyway. Help people with falling in the deviations and don't worry about it. Just know people and it will all work out.

One of the things that Shannon and I have been hashing out over the last few days has been my will. I have this vision as part of my will, and one of my superpowers is to build rather than destroy in the pursuit of that will. I can make people see, believe, desire, that vision, and feel their place within it, and that place is always inside the circle. Other people come along and try to exert their will over me, and it is perfectly reasonable, rational, sucessful ways of exerting will and vision, but when it is never as big as mine (will or vision) I am oblivious to it right until I figure out what is happening and I always respond in the same way, which is a problem. Because, not everyone is pursuing the vision of God, and lots of people are probably easily separating their vision and will of God from everything else, and I either can't do that, or more likely, can't imagine why you ever would.

I wonder how people wander around life not always considering how they are making meaning and connecting to their ultimate concern. I wonder if people even know they have one. I wonder why I have always done this instinctively.