Stop Loss

We (and another friend, Ken (see his flickr account under khugokim)) went to see Stop Loss on Saturday. It was a hard movie to watch. It was a well-done movie, but deeper than that, I connected the very real stories and emotions to what I've seen at the VA. The director quoted scenes from The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, and Born on the Fourth of July, reminding us that we are are another generation who must care for our returning veterans, and warning us not to make the same mistakes of our parents' generation. And you know, I thought In the Valley of Elah was a damn good movie. I didn't see any of the other ones. Elah captured something horrific (and frankly, the best stories I saw in it were the harassment faced by the female detective, and the side story about the wife who complained about her dog being abused. What I took from this movie was that young men and women are deeply injured by what happens in war. But Stop Loss, I think, captures an everyday truth that Elah did not.
Yes, I cried.

100%

This weekend, we went on a trip to Mt. Tam, north of San Francisco. We stayed at the West Point Inn, which required backpacking in, and got a cabin with crazy views. During an afternoon hike to the peak of Mt. Tam, I proposed to him (completing the remaining 25% of our engagement). This is a photo that another hiker took of us. Notice that to our left is the Pacific Ocean, and to our right is the San Francisco Bay. Behind us is the peninsula of San Francisco.

Faith Pickle, slice two (let's make a sandwich)

Today I talked with my Chaplain peers about this faith pickle. One of them wondered if I am being arrogant in my faith—if I am considering my spirituality superior than my patients’. He wondered if I was looking for God’s work in my life, or trying to impose my desire for clarity on the process. He’s right, on some level, about arrogance. I do find my spirituality superior for me. But in the past couple months, I’ve realized that it’s not superior in a generalized sense (I paid lip service to that concept for a long time, but this work—with people who often have a more rigid, dogmatic faith—has helped make it real). And in the second case, he’s probably right there, too. I don’t necessarily extend myself the same grace as I do to others. I believe that spiritual truth reveals itself in many ways, and each person comes at it from their own experience. But I don’t necessarily apply that to myself—I forget that I’m on a journey whose goal is to move. I get impatient for the destination and forget how I’m getting there. And to complicate it further, I have this lurking spiritual inferiority complex because of the fundamentalism I grew up with. It’s like I know they’re wrong for me, but the risk of condemnation keeps me cowed (anyone up for an analysis of structural oppression?).
I also realized, talking with my peers, that I am looking for verbal affirmation of my spirituality when I talk with patients—I think psychology folks call that countertransference (right? when I start trying to use my patients to meet my own needs?). Whatever it’s called, it’s a little senseless. While I am not so different from veterans, I also have never experienced military life from the inside. I have not experienced combat or significant physical or mental health crises, like most of my patients. And while it’s true that I’ve met a couple of veterans who seem to share a similar sense of spirituality (one of whom saw multiple combat tours in Vietnam, and who is a quadriplegic), it’s also true that I talk with many whose spiritual truths are very different from mine. And somehow, in the mystery of it all, they’re seeing God, too.

just a note: check the suffering post

Audrey has some great things to say, and I answered her, and it would be cool to read hers and others' responses.

Faith Pickle (a little less than a crisis)

I know that I'm a seeker rather than a guru...someone who sails a lot more than drops anchor. As my friend Erica pointed out, it's more surprising that I am settled on something than I question and seek. So spiritual crisis isn't really where I'm at. It's a spiritual state of being related to a crisis, but a lot less serious and disastrous. A spiritual pickle, I think. And I do like a pickle. Anything pickled, really. Preserved in salty sourness, with a hint of sweetness...you could do a lot worse.

As I do my work in multifaith chaplaincy, I come into contact with many aspects of God. A lot of these are not aspects that have been real to me, or at least weren't real to me until I met someone who believed in them. In my respect for the traditions of others, I find that I'm losing a sense of my own faith and traditions. It's complicated by my rejection of a childhood faith that didn't work for me. So I feel rootless because I cannot draw back on some of my own roots (though I might explore the concept of a taproot that I could stil lmaintain), and I am not yet sure I want to graft myself onto another community's root system. I think it's also complicated by the fact that my sense of God and faith isn't as apparent here as it is in other places. God is more traditional here. God is not found in the middle of a redwood grove, or in multiplicity. God is found within black and white Scriptures, in (often exclusive) specificity. I lose track of my spiritual task, my own slice of the spiritual life, because I'm getting next to a lot of other aspects of others' spiritual lives.
I think this is partly connected by my lack of declaration of my own faith--what is true for me. I've gotten next to a lot of other people in how they're seeking to honor God, and I've lost a sense of my own way of honoring God.

This is what I'm thinking is true for me: Redwood groves, questions and mystery, witnessing, connecting, trying to be. Mindfulness, food, physicality. Transformative relationships, theology and thinking, God is everywhere and nowhere. Co-creation, mutuality, seeking warmth in a cold and senseless world. Not wrestling with external demons but with internal knots.

God question

I get all uptight about God all the time, so this is just a fit of that. Here's what I'm thinking, since I just posted about what I thought God does for us.
I think we experience the existence of God in the ways that we make God manifest in the world, by our belief and our action. I get tired of trying to argue about the existence of God. For me, it's about the experience of God. If we don't experience God, then God doesn't exist. And when we manifest whatever God is for us, that's how we experience God in ourselves and others. We create God by the way we live our lives.
Okay, I'm done being uptight.
Maybe.

Suffering, Pain, unexplained

This previous week was a tough one. It was like a recurring theme of needless pain. Several patients talked about the pain and suffering they endure, questioning why the whole thing happens. One of them doesn't really remember from day to day, but each day it's the same existential question--and for his mom, it's the same, too. I'm not a big fan of "God is doing this to me" thinking, but several patients go this route. At this point, I don't think it's harming them, so I don't challenge it. They're searching for meaning--why would God do this? Or they're relying on their faith, "Someday we'll know why, we'll know what the lesson is." I think this is a potentially healthy way of looking at it, but I'm not always sure. I'm not sure what the alternative is, because my existential answer--that things happen because they do; pain hurts because we have perspectives, because we favor ourselves and our loved ones over other circumstances (like favoring ourselves over the survival of the bacteria causing our infection)--my existential answer doesn't seem to work for lots of folks.
I think the question of meaning is best left to the ones who are suffering, and my job is to be a conversation partner in their searching. It's unethical of me to force meaning, or to suggest it without being asked. It's also unethical to force the issue of there even being a meaning to it. As I wrote in a paper for my Human Suffering class, sometimes the meaning is that there is no meaning. Sometimes the meaning that a sufferer finds is that pain is purposeless. It got some flack from some classmates for that, but I think it's true. It's hard for some people to imagine suffering that has no point, but I've seen it. Though it also seems easier for someone to be able to find meaning, or at least growth or development, out of it.
That's where I come down: Trusting that someday we'll find meaning--that's psychology. That's our ability to look back on something and find a way to integrate it into our histories. What I want is to ask about finding love. That's the spiritual question for me. Where is love, where is connection in the midst of suffering? That's my job, that's our job as humans, to care and connect with each other, and to support those who suffer (and we all suffer). In the end, I don't think God "teaches" us lessons, by "giving" us experiences. In my spiritual journey, "God" teach us how to learn, how to seek, how to connect, how to endure, how to seek hope and joy and peace even against the odds. Since it's Easter, I'll say that's resurrection if anything: hope survives death itself.