I also want to reiterate that I have no idea who, or what, God is. I don't follow any formal sect of religion, or hold one above the rest. It seems to me they're all trying to say the same thing anyway.
Whatever depth of faith I carry was derived from personal experience with this God thing. I'm not gonna spread the word, or proselytize, or be a zealot. However, I'll gladly write, a hundred times,
There's something bigger than me out there, There's something bigger than me outNo argument.
there, There's something bigger than me out there, There's something bigger than me
out there, There's something bigger than me out there, There's something bigger than me out there, There's something bigger than me out there, There's something bigger than me out there.
In my darkest times I've felt a tangible presence
of something near me, providing comfort. It sounds crazy, but it's
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true. I knew I wasn't alone. If you're in a dark room, you know when someone enters even if you can't see them. The energy shifts. That's how it felt.
It happened when my family left, and then again when my ex stormed the castle and left me homeless, and broke. It was as comforting as a mother's hug, and I'll speak to its existence until I die. Next year.
It happened when my family left, and then again when my ex stormed the castle and left me homeless, and broke. It was as comforting as a mother's hug, and I'll speak to its existence until I die. Next year.
OH JIM CARREY!OH JIM CARREY!
I don't want to force feed a spiritual life to my sons, but I want them to have one. All three are spiritual already whether they know it, or not. I want them to adopt spirituality on their own, as they gradually define it within the context of their lives. If it's going to have meaning, it will have to nurture who they are when they're alone.
Ironically, our first discussions about a spiritual life began at the time of our family's initial fracturing. Crisis has a way of forcing a renunciation of what's false.The earliest one I recall happened as we were driving home from Tahoe, years ago. The boys and I were navigating the initial months of marital separation, and getting used to how it felt to come apart. I'd taken them hoping the majesty of Tahoe's surroundings would do for them what it's always done for me, and we'd all exhale. I was desperate for something to counter the chaos I helped create in their psyches, and hearts.
We were driving through Davis and the flat, square fields of agriculture. The sun was a fading palette of red, orange, and cobalt on the horizon. The colors were deep and vibrant. There was nothing to talk about but God. I think E asked the question.
"Dad", he said, "Is God that actor, Jim Carrey, from the movie 'Bruce Almighty'?"
I paused. "Yes," I said, "yes he is." It seemed like a good answer to me, at the time. I mean, what the hell? I'd already fucked my kids beyond repair. At least God should be someone who makes them laugh, and talks out of his butt. E was satisfied with my answer, and our discussion about God was over.
We'd just spent a weekend under the spell of the Sierras where we baked our skin in mountain air, and soothed it in the icy salve of a century's worth of gathered snow melts known as Lake Tahoe. Now, we were coasting through a tapestry of crop and color and texture during a coronation, and I'm telling my sons Ace Ventura created it all.
What's wrong with me?!
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All this malarkey about a 'genuine me' started with my separation. It emerged through a fissure in our weakening union. I started to understand how to be real, or more importantly, that I wasn't.
Real can't be measured by a bank account, or in the feng shui of the furniture. I'm made real by the connections I share with the people I build a life with, and I wasn't my real self. I was making agreements again that weren't in my favor. They were to appease the needs of others, and I disappeared.
Real was found in the gratitude I'd feel when picking E and A up from school, when they'd run across the playground to give me a hug. A was 9 already, and the break had begun. I could see the fissures that formed in his life, the fissures that will someday separate his small heart from mine, and demand he figure out, on his own, what it means to be a man in the world.
Driving home, I knew it was over. The old way was over, and Jim Carrey emphasized it with a masterpiece. It wouldn't be revisited, or reconvened. The old way left when she did. She packed it up with all her other objects, and it's rank as our primary objective was lost.
I'd learned things about myself, already, in our brief separation, that I wouldn't compromise anymore. Not even for my children.
What I came to understand was the part of me that responds to what's raw in the world was the part that ruled me, and it didn't care if the "furniture is in the right place" for familiarity. That's not where security comes from, and the boys need to know they can adapt.
My new responsibility was to shelve myself in what made me feel whole, and complete, so what I gave my children was whole, and complete. It's their responsibility to figure out what speaks to them, what make them whole, even if it's a complete rejection of what I am. I'm not here to be an example of who they should be.
I'm here to be an example of the effort to manifest the truth in you, the one you were chosen to carry. Who else will do that for them? The world's built on lies, so it won't: Santa lives in the North Pole, Don't EVER do drugs kids (at least not as many as your parents), Marriage is the greatest thing ever and it's always dreamy, you HAVE to have kids.. it's miraculous (except those first two years of diapers, no sleep, and the wedge in your marriage), traveling's exotic, we're fighting for justice, not oil, etc. We sell what we've purchased to insure we have company.
If they see someone they trust attempt it they'll know there's an alternative. They might want to find out who they can become, who they hold the potential to be. I'm here to encourage that path, and those choices, and validate them whether they be the same, or different than mine.
But if I live a falsified life to keep them happy, I will have failed them. That's the example they'll rebuild, and we'll lie and say it's a tribute, and I'll hate myself for allowing them to accept the lie I discovered. I don't want that. I want them to be independent architects. I want them to unearth their nascent hearts.
Return
When we get home I'm in the backyard barbecuing a piece of shark, and this robin is on the lawn collecting worms. It has a mouth full of them, and I think of the nature specials I've seen about these birds who eat their catch, and fly back, and regurgitate the contents of their stomachs into the mouths of offspring not competent enough for their first flight. It's remarkable to me that nature wrote into them every instinct to care for their babies. They might be without food for who knows how long, but they're still gonna fly those lonely hours to empty their stomachs into their kids, and I'm thinking it's not fair that I have to take classes to learn how to do this, and Mother Nature bamboozled me.
She set me up to walk alone, to pick my own self up when I fall. I can't even make myself throw up. But I know I love my sons in a way that I've never known love. It's sick, and broken, and it might be wrong, but I trust her dictate to expose them to the sincerity behind it. My dictate is to honor this love, and go about it my way. Revel in it. Gush over them. Celebrate them. She wants me to figure out what's mine to digest, and what I should give away. She wants me to become real.
She wants me to allow my sons to see me without a mask. She wants my mistakes, my pain, my uncertainty, and my fear exposed. She wants my sons to know, when they feel those things, they're OK, they're normal, and stuff happens. She wants me to tell the truth about being human, and the truth is, we each decide for ourselves.
All praise Jim Carrey.
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