"Do Not Hurry; Do Not Rest"

I've been learning about two things. One is "verticality;" the other, its kinsman, is pace. This has to do not only with writing but with life.

What is verticality? It's a concept that emphasizes depth rather than breadth (horizontality.) In other words, one's writing reflects a more inward, up and downward flow, than expansive, back and forth, if I'm saying it right. Annie Dillard says it best in her essay on "How to Fashion a Text:"

"The interior life is in constant vertical motion; consciousness runs up and down the scales every hour like a slide trombone. It dreams down below; it notices up above; and it notices itself, too and its own alertness. Te vertical motion of consciousness, from the inside to the outside and back, interests me."

A life lived mindfully and "vertically," may I even say "spiritually," will be interesting, if nothing else.

I've always been more of a rabbit than a tortoise - given to great bursts of energy, only to break down and be out of the race for a while. Is it too late to teach an old dog new tricks? I hope not.

Which brings me to my second lesson: pacing. The great philosopher/poet Johann Goethe once wrote: "Do not hurry, do not rest." If one is going for the deep sea diving of verticality, pacing is everything. "Do not hurry. Do not rest." It saves energy and spends it wisely.

So I'm trying this on in life, as well as on the page. Yesterday, as I walked through the halls of the prison where I work, I was conscious of these two things. Slow down. Dive deep. Oh yes, and breathe.

On Flashing Back

Today in my little Episcopal church, which I now love, we talked about the blind man whom Jesus healed. We also sang “Amazing Grace” – “I once was blind but now I see…” And for once, I didn’t have flashbacks to the cult. It was amazing.

The thing about flashbacks is you’re “flashing back” to a time of traumatic experience. It’s as though the mind is trying to bring light to a horrific situation by reliving it. But in reality, flashbacks, as anyone who’s had one can tell you, only terrify. They retraumatize the survivor. That’s why it’s so tricky to write about violence and abuse.

The point in writing about trauma is to bring light into the darkness, not to overwhelm the reader….or the writer. Sometimes, when I talk about my book, I find myself once again consumed by the trauma I experienced. I find myself remembering painful things that pull at me like a surging undertow. In order to maintain my balance and see clearly, I need something greater than myself to hold onto.

It’s hard to survive reality on your own. I’ve found I need the spiritual support of a Higher Power. Because to God, “darkness and light are both the same” and Jesus is the one who made the blind see. When I “flash back” into the darkness, I now take the light of the Spirit with me like a great lantern. That way, I am no longer blind. I see reality for what it was and is and I can thrive.

Reality and the Devil

When I was a student at Yale Divinity School, fresh out of a fundamentalist cult, I encountered a student who read tarot cards. She was a single mother as I was and our daughters played together. She had short cropped hair, wore no make-up, sported unshaved armpits, and lived in the brightly-colored South American clothing of an ecologically-minded feminist. By biblical standards, which I was trying hard not to apply, she was a virtuous woman. She operated her own loom, spun her own yarn, knit prolifically and made delicious lentil soup. She also believed in Jesus.

One day she asked me if I wanted to have my "cards read." Sure, I said, though not without intense fear amd trepidation. It was a Friday night. We sat on her apartment floor as the children slept in the other room and she lit some candles. Then she pulled out "The Deck," wrapped in a black silk cloth. She carefully unwrapped the cloth and invited me to touch the cards, just start randomly shuffling them, holding a question in mind. I followed her instructions carefully, with one eye on her, just in case she grew fangs and her head started rotating on its axis.

This was some devilish stuff, I thought, though I had ostensibly come to divinity school "looking for the devil." Our cult leader used to say that seminaries were the breeding ground of Satan. So when I left the cult, having not had much success with God, I figured I'd give the devil a try. Here I was - face to face with the devil's wiles. But as it turned out, neither of us showed signs of demon possession - eyes rolling back in the head, uncontrolled fits of cursing God, human sacrifices, pledging my soul to Satan.

Instead, what I learned was yet another tradition in unfolding the archetypes of the spiritual self. The Chinese have them in the I Ching. Hindus have them in mandalas. Native Americans have them in their own ceremonies. To me, the devil does not exist in these material things. The devil exists when we elevate these man-made forms above the Mystery of Being, above God, be it a deck of cards or a black leather-bound book.

As Shane the cowboy said, when asked about guns, "a gun is only as good or bad as the man who uses it." I believe the same applies to spiritual traditions. If we exalt a human device above the mystery of God, if we turn it into an idol, whether it's astrology, tarot or biblical research, then we are playing with the devil. It's only as good or as bad as the person who uses them.