January

To stay alive amongst the death and dying of winter.... To be awake and energized while the long blackness of night surrounds you for so many hours......... To day after day climb out of he dark cold abyss of apathy and depression to go to work to earn money to live a life that offers so incredibly little to so few. To have given your energy, your love, your life to someone to have them take it and handle it like an insignificant piece of refuse. To be with someone for well over half your life and not feel connected to them. Well, it's just hard. But not hard like starving, or having a terminal illness or living under tyranny, or being physically abused. So I feel guilty on top of it all for feeling badly about things that are so small.

I have come to hate January and February because their darkness acts upon my emotions like a magnifying glass making all the negatives larger than life. These months are like unwelcome guests that come and stay at your house, and you as host, are required to be pleasant and put up with them, but you really just want them to go away and disappear somewhere and never come back.


I took a shower and dressed, the dog got walked and the salad got made and if that's all that happens today, I'll be grateful for it.

Grief as a gift

I borrowed this from another website and of course now I've lost the page, so I can't give credit where it is due. It was just an interesting thought. I've wondered why grief is such a large part of my life. When I read that grief was a purification of sorts, it rang true for me. Perhaps there is some power to it and it is not just wasted energy.

"Unlike anger, grief does not desire destruction. Unlike despair, it does not rob us of our hope. Grief simply tells us what is, at the present moment. Grief, like joy, allows us to be purified through our tears. Grief frees us and gives us power because it reminds us to ask what it is we truly desire.

This is one of the gifts given to HSPs (highly sensitive persons), those who experience emotions in a more intense way than other people. .....HSP can be viewed as a curse in view of the person’s difficulty in being susceptible to extreme emotions. However, this tendency is indeed a gift as well, if the person can steer his emotions into the purest forms of emotional power that can propel her to her heart’s desires"

To my son, on a hard night

I guess it's not really writing when you just quote someone else's writing, but she says it so well.

...."If you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old [wo]man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you." - Marianne Robinson, "Gilead". You're right, it is a good book.

time - look what's become of us

I see it's been a month since I've written. Finding the time to write is quite a challenge; I was told by other would-be-bloggers that this would be the case. I'm giving up knitting group this morning just to have 3 quiet hours to myself. I've been working tons of overtime at work in the past month and my life is severely out of balance. I keep thinking its temporary - just have to get through this new software rollout, but there's always something begging for attention, and more work comes in than I can put out, so it will always be this way at work. So, I continue to spend time where I don't necessarily want to and have little time to explore my own thoughts and interests.... and to rest. In my youth I was terrified of empty time - I was so lonely. If every minute was filled with activity I would have less time to face my loneliness. I think my current "busy-ness" stems a lot from those early years, but also from just wanting to touch, feel and explore so many things. I can't "know" something until I've experienced it, and there's so many intrigues! It's hard to say no to learning something new, so non-job hours get taken up with explorations - parenting, music, language, ancestors, gardening, cooking, nature, sewing, basket weaving, beading, parapsychology, spirituality, and now the newest, knitting.

One of those exploration is attending to my health, which is feeling like both an obligation and an interest. I spend three nights a week in various pursuits of physical strengthening and conditioning, and I continue to gain weight despite all the work. I think I am getting stronger, but it feels like the more time I put in, the less return I get on my investment. Many of the results are "invisible" of course, but we always want something tangible back for our precious time.

I don't know what I want in return for my time, but I'm feeling like it's all just a game. It just feels like spinning class - round and round and round and I haven't gone anywhere, and I'm exhausted. Perhaps expecting something in return for my time is causing the feeling of "not enough". Perhaps the perfectionist in me won't permit "less than" in anything I do and I will kill myself trying to experience everything and be at least moderately good at everything. There's so much to try, so much to explore, and feel, and wrap our heads around. Perhaps now wasting time talking about it keeps me in the victim role of never enough time. What relationship do you have to time?

Don't call it excercise

I secretly chuckled today as I enjoyed skiing with friends in the sunshine of a beautiful day.
I have such negativity surrounding "exercise" that if I approach this event as an exercise component, my mind turns to grumpily to obligation and sacrifice of time, but if I call it being with nature, being with friends, soaking up sun and vitamin D, then it's wonderful. Musing now on how word choice affects attitude.... how attitude affects how a day plays out..... how days play out create lifetimes. Happy to ski today.

An understanding of the situation ...

Thanks to a beautifully clear explanation on www.religioustolerance.org, this has to do with mortal sin and salvation. When church rules are inconvenient, they are easily overlooked or bypassed. But the closer we get to the end of our days, the more important interpreting the rules correctly and doing it "right" is a matter literally of heaven or hell. After reading this, I can empathize with her fears that stem from her belief system.

[taken directly from the website referenced above]
The trap that some Catholics find themselves:

Couples that obtain a civil divorce and remarry without first obtaining an annulment are denied access to the Sacraments of Penance (a.k.a. Confession) and Holy Eucharist. (Catechism 1650).

They are caught between a rock and a hard place:

If they continue in the new marriage, then they cannot repent of and confess their sins through the Sacraments of Penance, and return to Communion. Meanwhile, their sins are accumulating. Because the church does not recognize their new marriage, it considers every sexual act within the marriage to be a new act of adultery -- a mortal sin. According to the church's teachings, this means that they will not attain Heaven when they die. They will end up being eternally tormented in Hell. There are only two ways of avoiding this state:

-To be fortunate enough to not die suddenly (e.g. to not die instantly in a car accident or from a massive heart attack). This way, they might be able to receive the Last Anointing by which their mortal sins are forgiven. Needless to say, this is a risky route to take.

-To make an "act of perfect contrition" instead of Confession. But this requires the individual to repent of what the Church considers their sins of adultery, and sincerely intend to never engage in "adultery" in the future.

If they separate from their new spouse, and live alone, and sincerely intend to remain separated unless a annulment is granted, then they can resume their access the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist. But that would require them to violate their new marriage vows, and terminate their marital relationship. This option often seems profoundly immoral to the couple, particularly if there are children involved.

Judging from the overwhelming percentage of Roman Catholics who never apply for an annulment, it would seem that most have abandoned their idea of mortal sin leading them to Hell. For those Catholics who believe in the teachings of their church, it would seem expedient to apply for an annulment as soon as possible so that they would be free to enter into a new relationship when they wish.

Catholic conundrums

So, once again, the topic of organized religion comes up and not in a pleasant way. As background, I do struggle with Christian creeds and doctrines and theologies and the lack of "wiggle room" in church thinking. I am amazed at how people find such comfort in the belief that by following prescribed rites and rituals and rules, their lemming-like behavior in itself will somehow earn them an accumulation of a kind of holy brownie points they can turn in for guaranteed admission to a preferred after-life society down the road. I find, especially with Catholics, there is a tendency to ignore self-reflection and certainly a tendency to rarely question the myriad incongruities that exist between religious doctrine and the humanity of real life. They readily turn a blind eye to the hypocrisy of the leadership, and often judge others not by their personal actions but by their religious card carrying status.

The scenario I discuss today consists of a Catholic woman, married for 20 years, divorced and re-married to a second husband for 30 years. (She could not marry in the Catholic church this second time presumably because of the first divorce and the 2nd husband not being Catholic). Her current husband, for whom this is a second marriage as well, is in poor health, and she now requests that he have his first marriage annulled. So, not understanding the Catholic religion myself, why does she ask this? After 30 years of marriage to this man, she worries about how it will look to have never had her 2nd marriage blessed by the church? Or is there some kind of afterlife fear for her if he dies without the annulment in place? Does the woman feel a need to save face or save soul? I find this unreasonable and selfish.

So reading more about this on a Catholic website I find the following:

A declaration of nullity states that, according to Church law, a given marriage was not valid (and therefore not binding) at the time a couple spoke their marriage vows.


How does a Catholic governing body have the right to declare that the marriage of two people some fifty years ago is now invalid? (And, as an aside, what does that mean for the children that were born of that marriage?) This family never was Catholic yet, somehow these Catholic strangers have a right to delve into their personal affairs of another time and determine there was no validity to the marriage union? So the marriage of this man and his ex-wife, whose lives were legally and emotionally blended for over 25 years (and to their credit continue to be humanely and compassionately blended for yet another 25 since the divorce), was invalid from the beginning! Amazing!

And I also find amazing this woman who is asking this family to go along with this thinking for her sake and her sake alone. A request that an entire family be "nullified" for a single individual. What am I missing here in her thinking? Can someone who is Catholic help me to understand this?

Whatever this governing body decides won't change the family, their relationship, their past or their future. This decree of annulment may give the woman peace of mind (and really, who can be upset with the creation of peace in any way, shape, or form), but isn't this whole concept of annulment a bit ludicrous? Thoughts?