The voice of the "nonbeliever"

Even though I L*O*V*E our new president and voted for him with excitement and intention, I will invoke my right as a citizen of this nation to rebut him just as I have the outgoing prez--though I feel sure that I will be doing so less than before, fair is fair.

In his inaugural address, he addressed a few religious groups and then..."non-believers".

Hmmm...certainly a nod to people like me BUT it implies that there is something to believe in at all and I (and others like me) simply opt out. We choose not to believe.

I know, I know--shut up Tina. It's semantics, right?

Well. Sure. It's small potatoes for sure but language can include and exclude, it can elevate and reduce and I'm quite accustomed to being on the excluded and reduced side so I pick it up like a pin-drop.

All I'm saying is, we need new language for "non-believers"--something that recognizes and better represents the myriad ways that people define and express their spiritual-religious-nonspiritual-nonreligious experience and/or identity.

For now, Obama, I'll take 'seeker of meaning" or 'traveller of a borderless path'...or something to that effect.

Just get back to me...

Gripping the edge...

I'm poised and ready and precariously balanced between mandate and will, as it seems.

The ground underneath me moves again--the walls are closing in and the air is getting thick.

When did commitment turn sour for me?  Why now do I feel ill-prepared for what comes next?  Why the questions all of a sudden, why the uncertainty and the wavering?

I look forward to a time when my decisions will be for me alone, void of consideration for others--I stand fragmented and lost and defeated.

But I stand...because I haven't fallen yet.

Waiting...

Waiting...

A place of waiting, a face of waiting
...a being, a spirit...waiting.

Detached...uncommitted, frozen in place.

Peace...

"...the peace that passeth understanding. The peace that comes from standing poised in the aching heart of life, the peace that is your core."

I read this in Yoga Journal and it resonated with me--it is the peace I seek each time I roll out my mat, each time I step off, within and out of every breath.

Wow

What do you do when a person you have held so high for so long...humanizes themselves?

I went to say deflates your ideal but that's not fair--no one person should have to live up to the ideals we set for them, the best we can hope for from individuals in our lives is that they are human and they act accordingly and as such, are entitled to assume a range of human emotions, reactions and fronts.

I have been left speechless by a recent disagreement with my father--saddened and speechless.

What hurts the most is that his distancing himself, emotionally and physically, from me at that moment of rift was palpable.

His eyes were cold to me in a way I've never seen and his back turned on me as he walked out the door.

Since that incident, I've really had to sit with myself and explore the feelings surrounding it all--I would usually reach out but I wanted to make sure I knew what to say, how to say what I wanted and how to listen. Above all, I wanted to listen.

Today of all days, he calls--when I find out my partner has been fired from her job of 8 years and my children's absentee father resurfaces with their 8-month old sibling--B*A*N*G.

I knew when I saw his number that I couldn't answer--I couldn't handle another second of emotional turbulence.

On his 3rd attempt to reach me, I talked myself into calling him back--I figured it would be the high point of this very fucked up day, that a reconciliation would ensue.

I should have gone with my instincts--neither of us were ready for the conversation.

My father, this man I have admired all of my life, this man that I love with a passion, humanized himself and I wasn't ready for what I saw or for what I heard come from his mouth.

I suppose he saw something in me too that conflicted with his own ideals and here we sit on two sides of the same problem doing what stupid humans do--we build imaginary fences creating imaginary divisions.

Unfortunately, imagined barriers to our connection breed real pain and real disconnect and time is lost.

I have yet to come to words for what I feel right now and where I sit emotionally. Sure, I'm angry but that's the easy emotion--the reactionary one.

The hard part is that I'm hurt too and I'm lost as I doubt the relationship I treasured for so long.