random philosophizing

the only constant

amybiancolli Albany, beauty, random philosophizing, spirituality, Uncategorized 8 Comments

⊄

A little over two weeks ago, I said goodbye to my job with the Times Union. In nine days, I start another one with the nonprofit webzine MadinAmerica.com. 

So I’m in limbo. And  limbo feels strange. Limbo always feels strange, hovering between the last leg of the journey and the next one, between the past I know and the future I can’t, between all the rich and crazy chapters that came before and the Lord-only-knows what and how many lie ahead. And by “limbo” I don’t mean either ye olde celestial abode for the unbaptized innocent or the bendy Caribbean dance I have never and will never attempt. Not with my knees. That’s a future I can see. I also don’t mean to imply that there’s anything negative in this limbo, that I’m hanging out in some nasty patch of oblivion and neglect.

I’m just not where I was or where I will be, and I can’t see around the bend. But can I ever? Isn’t something beautiful or odd or agonizing or potentially batshit always up ahead? Life dishes out the unexpected no matter what we do to guard against it, and no matter how many months in advance we make our dental appointments. I can say I’m about to start a new job next week, and right now that’s the plan, but what if a meteor slams into my roof? What if lobster-shaped aliens land in Albany and beam me onto a giant ship filled with corn and boiled potatoes? Don’t laugh. It could happen. Weirder things have.

Acting on faith, whether your creed is a question of religion or life itself, means making plans in the hope they might be realized and the understanding they might not. “Hope for the best, expect the worst,” as my surrogate dad Dan used to say, and let me tell you, he knew both. “The only constant in life is change,” said Heraclitus, whom I did not know personally. Or as my late husband Chris used to put it: “God can only help us in the present.” Not back there in the before-time. Not up ahead. Right here, as this second spills into the next one.

All we have is now. All I have, as I type this, is the chirp of sparrows in my tiny, leafy backyard and the sun that dapples the grass. I have my health. I have my hands. I have my nutball cats on the porch. I have my wonderful son working on a piece of furniture in the basement. I have my amazing daughters in Brooklyn and Detroit. I have the sweet man I’m blessed to call mine preparing to come over in an hour. I have my neighbors, my family, my pals, the bustling, friendly streets that I call home, and all the many gifts that fill this interesting corner of the world.

I look up at the sky and watch the clouds drifting east. I hear crickets. I hear a jet moving north, then a mourning dove sings its eulogy from the huge silver maple arching above me. Then a flutter of wings somewhere. A mewling sound from some agitated little scamp, probably a squirrel. Leaves rustle. A grackle lands on a bush, then flies away. The mourning dove sings again, the clouds cover the sun and drift on again, and the crickets just keep at it.

This is limbo. This is change. This is the moment that is no longer, and then this is the moment that is no longer, and then this and then this and then this. It’s all fleeting. It’s all cause for gratitude. So I look at the life behind me and say, Thank God. I look at the life ahead of me and say, Thank God. I look at the life before me now and say, Thank God.

And then, once I say it, it’s behind me.

faith, fear of death, and fatheads

amybiancolli random philosophizing, spirituality, Uncategorized 17 Comments

Lately I’ve been dumbstruck, and not in a good way, by some of the sentiments expressed on social media regarding:

A) God

B) Faith

C) Death

According to certain factions in conservative Christianity, we who are worried about COVID-19 should just calm down and stop whining about masks and stuff because, to quote one adherent of this view, “Living in fear of death is no way to live life.” This particular fathead referred to people upset about the mounting death toll as “the Corona SS” and then added, just for good measure: “I’ll be happy to tell you about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ if you fear death.”

Okay. Okay. (Fans face in futile attempt to calm down.) Okay. FIRST OF ALL, I have to state flat-out that NOT ALL CHRISTIANS ARE FATHEADS. Not all of us are anti-science, and not all of us are convinced that the best response to a pandemic is to pretend that it isn’t happening and then tell everyone who’s trying to take precautions that they’re all Godless Nazi twits who should shut up and find the Lord, and, you know, SO WHAT if thousands upon thousands of people are dying horrific preventable deaths.

Excuse me, but THIS MAKES ME WANT TO JUMP UP AND DOWN SCREAMING UNTIL MY DOLLAR-STORE READING GLASSES FLY OFF MY NOSE.

Okay. (Fans face again.) Okay. I would like to take this occasion to state flat-out that I believe in:

A) God

B) Jesus and

C) Masks

Yes! All three! I know, shocking, isn’t it? Even more shocking, I am a huge, HUGE fan of:

D) Fearing Death

Let me explain myself. (Clears throat, pulls mic close to mouth.) I believe that the Someone Out There who made us actually wants us to live — and wants us to want to live. I believe our fear of death is God-given, instilled in us to keep us here and keep us striving despite all the sacks of crap that are thrown our way.

Life is a gift, but it’s hard. IT’S HARD. I say this as a person of faith and one who has lost too many loved ones to suicide, my husband and sister included. I know they wanted to live — or, again, wanted to want to live. They fought to remain here with every ounce of their beings, and they did so with the faith that God was present in their pain. But the pain became too much. Fear of death became secondary. And I lost them.

SO DON’T TELL ME I SHOULDN’T FEAR DEATH, MR. FATHEAD. Don’t tell me this fear springs from a lack of faith — whether in God, or in life. That fear is a gift. That fear pushes me to treasure this time I have on earth, these hugs I share with my dear ones, these moments of light and beauty and laughter that dapple the craziness. That fear lends urgency to this life, defines its boundaries, inspires all of us to live and give and love and heal in spite of it — knowing we’re not here for long, groping for answers we know we might not find.

And since we’re on the subject of Our Lord and Savior, I just gotta add one point: EVEN JESUS WANTED TO LIVE. (Shakes fist, thumps bible, adjusts dollar-store reading glasses.) In the Garden of Gethsemane he grappled alone, in agony, in the dark, with his own fear of death. I am baffled why any professed follower of Christ would gloss over this little moment, because that’s why his sacrifice meant something. Meant everything. Meant the literal and figurative world. He gave himself to God, and to us, despite his own urge to let the cup pass him by. It’s kinda, you know, the point.

Does that sacrifice mean the rest of us shouldn’t fear death? Nope. It means WE SHOULDN’T TAKE ANY OF THIS FOR GRANTED. It means we should live and give and love and heal the way Jesus told us to live and give and love and heal: With absolute awareness that we aren’t here for long. With the sense and conviction that death is around the bend, and every sacrifice matters, every gesture of love and generous impulse. With the stubbornness within that says life is worth living even when it hurts like hell.

We’re here now. Let’s cherish what we have, do what we can, and take care of each other.

(Straps on mask.)

 

 

 

 

the circle

amybiancolli love, random philosophizing, spirituality, Uncategorized 13 Comments

I think I have discovered the highest good. It is love. This principle stands at the center of the cosmos. 

-Martin Luther King

Not long ago, an image flashed into my brain that I just couldn’t shake. I kept coming back to it, wrestling with its implications, wondering if I’d finally found a way to illustrate — to myself, at least — my understanding of love and God, my confusion and dismay at the hateful partitions that divide us, my own imperfect faith and my stumbling movement forward in my efforts to do right. Then today at Mass, the King quote popped up in a visiting pastor’s homily on love, and the image flashed in my mind again, almost cinematic in its scope and detail.

This is it:

We are all in a circle as wide as humanity itself. Imagine a field with tall grass and a shadow of mountains ringing the horizon. Imagine a light breeze with a scent of earth. And imagine, at the center, the wellspring of all love in the universe. Some of us call this center God; some of us call it goodness, or kindness, or the guiding principles of life. The name we give it doesn’t matter. But it’s the same beaming nucleus for us all, the same source and impulse to love that warms us and draws us forward.

We spend our lives walking toward the middle, or we should. To our right and to our left are our loved ones, holding hands as we take each hesitant step. Beyond them are those we know not quite as well, maybe love a little less. Beyond them are those we don’t know but see as equals. Farthest away, on the other side of this colossal circle, are those we might not even recognize as human: We can’t see their faces, after all. We can’t see the light reflected in their features — the warmth in their eyes, the gentleness in their bodies as they lean to help their neighbors. So we judge them. Fear them. Demonize them as the Other.

Only when we walk toward the center of the circle, pulled by love, does the distance between us shrink and we see their faces in the light. The closer we get, the clearer they become, and those faraway masses cease to be strangers. We see the fullness of their humanity and wonder why we failed to see it before, why we thought they were different, why we judged and feared and demonized.

I made a fumbling stab at expressing all of this after church, when I spoke to the visitor who’d delivered the remarks quoting King: the Rev. Daniel Carson of the First Reformed Church in Schenectady. I found him, thanked him, told him my story, told him about my image of the circle, told him I’d grown up in an atheistic/agnostic family and converted to Catholicism 30 years ago this spring. Told him, too, that I’d never understood the urge to erect so many walls. We’re all in this together. We’re all following the same light.

Believing in God means believing in love —  but saying we love is one thing. Moving toward it is critical, and not only because we long to be closer to the source; because it brings us closer to each other. Sometimes we lose sight of the love that binds and beckons, and we fail, we fall, we turn away. But as Martin Luther King reminded us — reminds us, still, from his place at the center of the cosmos — we can always turn back.

Because the love is there. It’s real. No matter what we call it, it calls to us at our places in the circle. And we walk.

(Stock image from dreamstime.com)

 

as far as the eye can see

amybiancolli beauty, random philosophizing, Uncategorized 9 Comments

Glimpses. We get glimpses.

We think we know where we’re headed, but we don’t. From the darkness of our mother’s wombs we ride the chute into hospital florescence, then into the fickle daylight, then into lives that carry us like tubes on a bendy river as we crane our necks for a better look and snap our quivering butts from the water to avoid each pointed rock. We try to see what’s coming but we can’t. Not really. All we can do is steer as best we can, flap our hands and feet a bit, will the river to calm as we approach it, then hoot as it whorls in sudden fury and slaps and sprays our eyes. We yield to forward motion. We laugh with our nearest loved ones. We inhale, then exhale, then wonder what the hell will hit us next. And we go on.

Or maybe we hike through dense woods to an unseen summit, moving our legs on faith. We know something’s up there. We know nothing’s up there: just a view, just a chance to stop for a moment and glance outward at creation. We hike upwards for miles in the hopes of being still, of grasping beauty, of sensing a sublime destination even if it’s out of reach. That it exists at all is enough to keep us going as we hike back down to nurse our blisters and tool around blind through our madhouse lives, wanting to feel there’s a purpose.

Or maybe we make music on a porch at night with friends and cousins, people we haven’t seen for years or decades or ever, maybe, but people who become — in that protracted, joyous instant — proof that life isn’t done with any of us, that life has direction, that life is filled with healing reunion even as memories of the absent make us weep. All we can know is what came before us and where we stand now. Stories illuminate the past. Love lights the present. We root ourselves in the here and now as best we can, batting away fears of death and age and loneliness and decrepitude and all the other gnats that cloud our psyches.

We can’t see much. Not ahead of us. Not in that direction. All we can know is the gifts that stand before us, the music we feel in our bones, the breeze that caresses a northern lake and the breath that shapes each moment. That’s all, and that’s enough. Now.

the things we share

amybiancolli random cultural observations, random philosophizing, Uncategorized 6 Comments


On this day of American celebration, in this era of heart-wrenching division, I thought now would be a good time to assemble a list of Things We Share. This isn’t anything profound, nothing on the order of Dan Rather’s “What Unites Us” (which you should read, like, now). I’m not pretending to be a poet or philosopher or pundit or anything other than what I am: a citizen of this country, a resident of this planet and a compulsive scribbler of words who’s been trying like hell to make sense of who and what we are — what it even means to even be American in this distressed, discombobulating age.

So I asked myself: What can we agree on, these days? Anything? I came up with a few points of likely agreement. Please feel free to add more in the comments. Share, if you’re so disposed.  Let’s try to find consensus.

THE THINGS WE SHARE:

  1. We like holidays (most of the time).
  2. We like fireworks (all of the time).
  3. We like to laugh.
  4. We hate paying bills.
  5. We love our children and want what’s best for them, though sometimes they drive us nuts.
  6. We love our parents and siblings and spouses and friends, though sometimes they drive us nuts.
  7. We work hard and take our jobs seriously.
  8. We sometimes put in more hours than we’re paid for, but we do it because we need the paycheck and know the work is necessary and figure what the hell, it’ll come out in the wash.
  9. We wish the workweek were a little shorter and the weekend a little longer (but we still got paid the same).
  10. We like to eat when we’re hungry.
  11. We like to sleep when we’re tired.
  12. We love the beauty of a sunrise tinged with hope and a sunset tinged with sadness.
  13. We wish our bladders were just a little bigger.
  14. We like getting along with people but also kinda-sorta-maybe enjoy the occasional zing of a heated argument, but only if it ends quickly with no lasting rancor.
  15. We hate garbage night and wish it would go away (along with the garbage, too).
  16. We love taking showers — but not too hot,  and not too cold.
  17. We regard caffeine as the greatest organic compound in the arc of human history, at least at 6:53 a.m.
  18. We don’t like dental appointments, even when the dentist is a really nice guy.
    We have a hard time holding up our end of the conversation during dental appointments, even when the dentist is a really nice guy, and to be honest we get a little tired of staring at that poster of clouds on the ceiling.
  19. We hate trimming our toenails and wish someone would invent a gizmo that does it in our sleep and then disposes of the clippings without our knowledge.
  20. We prefer the smell of our own farts to anyone else’s.
  21. We worry more than we’d like to admit.
  22. We hurt more than we say.
  23. We feel lonelier in the dark than anyone realizes, no matter how proudly we strut or loudly we talk in the daylight.
  24. We hate pain.
  25. We fear death.
  26. We have faith in something larger than we are, be it God or life or love or art or entropy and the expanding universe.
  27. We want to be loved.
  28. We want to be held.
  29. When we hold a baby, we smile.
  30. When a loved one dies, we grieve.
  31. When someone asks us if we’re doing our best to live a good and decent life, we say yes.
  32. We don’t like to be judged.
  33. We don’t like to be insulted.
  34. We don’t like to be demonized as sub-human.
  35. We try hard.
  36. We stumble.
  37. We try hard again.
  38. We stumble again.
  39. We have dreams.
  40. At some point in our lives, some jerk suggested we didn’t have what it takes to achieve those dreams, and since then we have spent our every waking hour laboring to prove them wrong.
  41. We want to believe in humanity.
  42. We want to believe we matter.
  43. We want to believe our vote counts, our voice counts, we count.
  44. We want to believe in ourselves, even when we don’t believe in one another.
  45. We want to believe in America.

oh, shit

amybiancolli random philosophizing, shit (literal. sort of.) 10 Comments

The photo above is not, as a friend of mine remarked, the Wicked Witch of the East. This is me. Those are my legs. That is my car. This is one of those periodic moments in my life when violent grinding noises interrupt my peaceful and orderly existence, or would interrupt it if indeed I had a peaceful and orderly existence, and if violent grinding noises were not already the norm. But isn’t that true of everybody’s life? Aren’t violent grinding noises always the norm?

You may have noticed that the name of this blog is Figuring Shit Out. As it happens, I also wrote a book with exactly that title, and it’s also true that I’ve made kind of a BFD out of fixing my own sink whoop whoop, and hating on the very car pictured above, and best of all that time I shoveled piles of literal crap out of my basement.

But I don’t mean to suggest that I’m a BFD. Or an authority on cars, plumbing, caca or any other noxious essence that splats down upon humanity. I’m not in any way special or unusual in my shit-figuring, not remotely, certainly not because I crawled under my scraping and groaning CRV with a roll of packing tape (YES, PACKING TAPE, AND YES, THAT’S TOTALLY PATHETIC) in a futile attempt to mend the undercarriage, although I will admit I was rather proud of my moronic and stubborn refusal to let others with Actual Car Knowledge to climb under it in my stead and give it a proper look-see. I was even prouder when, later on, I slithered down with a pair of kitchen shears and clipped off the offending broken bits with the same offhand panache that I once used to to trim my son’s bowl cut, and won’t he be pleased when he learns I just broadcast that tidbit on social media.

This is the story of my life. This is the story of everyone’s life, the figuring out of shit on an aggravating, extemporaneous, predictably unpredictable basis. It’s all about the belching of noises, the breaking of parts, the interruption of routine, the introduction of disorder, the muttering of Oh Nos and Oh Shits and Why Nows, the looking down in an attempt to understand, the crawling under in an effort to repair, the retreat from shadowed underworlds with blinking eyes and a face streaked with grease and confusion, the glance thrown at people who see you and know you and stand with you and show you the photo of your “Wizard of Oz” legs that they snapped from an oblique angle. And then the laugh that you share. And then the prayer that you utter to God or to fate asking furiously for a break, though not a literal one, at least not for a little while, please please please please please.

It’s all F.S.O., my people. The noise and the grease streaks, the shadows and the laughter. It’s all F.S.O.

the miracle of art

amybiancolli loss and grief, random philosophizing, Uncategorized 6 Comments

“The Weight of a Ring,” by Terry Liu.

Ars longa, vita brevis: art is long, life is short. Even the briefest radio story can live well beyond its 11-minute running time, as I learned on receiving this startling work at left: an illustration inspired by “The Weight of a Ring,” my story for “The Moth” chronicling husband’s suicide in September of 2011 and my decision, four months later, to remove my wedding and engagement rings.

The artist is Terry Liu, an MFA student at Cal State University in Long Beach who’s preparing 20 such illustrations for a graduate show. “The theme for my show is about how radio stories can connect people around the world,” Liu writes, “and make people feel less lonely.”

Telling that story made me feel less lonely. Hearing from strangers who’ve heard it or read it or watched it on YouTube and reached out to me, firing off little electronic missives filled with love and kinship, makes me feel less lonely. Reading Liu’s email made me feel less lonely. Opening the attached jpeg and finding this extraordinary portrait of my life, my grief, myself made me feel less lonely — and profoundly grateful for both Liu’s creative gift the gift of creation.

A fellow artist in another medium had comprehended and channeled the smallest details I’d shared and dwelt on them, found some truth or beauty in them, transformed them into art.

There I am. Me, weeping, whorls of my hair draping around me. Me, curled up in a ball. Chris. A hammer and saw, allusions to Chris’s years in carpentry and construction. The front door I opened to hear the news of his death. A cop. A TV, a nod to the “Battlestar Galactica” my kids and I watched from the living room floor that long and sleepless and terrible first night. The calendar days, just peeling and floating away. A writer’s quill. My ring, with its ruby stone. My gold chain. My hand. Chris’s hand. Ours.

This is the miracle of art: it renews and extends the life that it touches.

Six years ago, something happened to me. Somehow I turned it into narrative. Someone else heard it, found in its intimacy some arcing universal element, then took it apart, studied its pieces and turned them into something else. Something beautiful. Something that isn’t my story but evokes it with insight and compassion, shaping it gently and splashing it with color. And I can see it in a new way, now. I can see myself from a distance, my own eyes filled with tears, my own complicated story filtered through the mind and heart and hands of another. Someone made art of my life, and both endure.

 

turns on the slide

amybiancolli family, loss and grief, random philosophizing, Uncategorized 8 Comments

This past Wednesday, I celebrated the day I was born 54 years ago in Booth Memorial Hospital, Queens. That actually happened. Then, this coming Tuesday, I’ll mark the sixth anniversary of my husband’s death (more accurately, it will mark me).  That happened, too. What also happened: I grew up in a singular family, married a singular man, buried my parents, buried my sister, had three babies, bought a house, kissed my children on their first days of school, watched them grow up and up and up and up, wrote books, wrote for newspapers, loved my husband, grieved my husband, wrote another book and kept on living.

And it’s all a blur. I never expected it to be a blur, but who does? Long, long ago, while chatting with an older, wiser colleague in the hallway, she shot me a comprehending glance and said: “You’re at such happy stage in your life. You have a wonderful husband, and your kids are small. Enjoy this.” I thanked her, assured her, then walked away thinking: ‘Stage’? You mean, this moment in my life won’t go on forever? 

Of course I knew it wasn’t permanent. Of course I knew my kids would grow, and I knew that either my husband or I would weep at the other’s grave. But now that I’ve wept at his, I can’t help but look back with shock at the abruptness of the change from then to now, the lickety-splitness of it all, the belated comprehension that even a marathon will feel like a sprint in hindsight.

But still. It was real. It is real. Every inch of it. The fact that something or someone’s behind me doesn’t diminish its presence or lessen its impact; it doesn’t make anything any less treasured or miraculous or true. My husband is real. Our wedding is real. Those nights at home when he wrestled on the floor with our kids: real. The love we felt and made: real. Those trips to Cape Cod, freezing our bodily bits and pieces in the ocean at Coast Guard Beach: real.

Everyone I’ve ever loved, whether they’re alive or dead, in my life or not: real. My best friend from college, her insight, her humor, her calm, all gifts to the world until it lost her: real. Every laugh I’ve shared with a friend: real. Every late-night conversation that bled into dawn: real. Every kiss I’ve kissed, every blush I’ve blushed: real. Every embrace that felt like eternity: real.

The days I shared with my parents and sister: real. The Scrabble we played by the fireplace, the fireflies we chased by the lake: real. The Chopin my sister played at the piano: real. The Bach my mother played on the violin: real. The Franck they performed together, with little bumbling Amy turning pages: real.

That fat Maine coon I had as a kid: real. The purple banana bike: real. That time I went sledding on ice and crashed and flipped and landed on my head and didn’t die and didn’t tell my parents, oh good God, no: real. The boy I had a crush on whose paintbox I smeared: real. The other boy I had a crush on whose stomach I punched: real. The best friend from grade school with the big barn and the big heart and the big hands: real.

That long, steel slide I rode on the playground in first grade, then stood in line and rode again, then again, then again, because I never wanted it to end, not even in January, not even when the air pinched my chest and the metal bit my butt: real.

Every turn on the slide is real. Every moment now past. Every job I held. Ever book I wrote and re-wrote and re-re-re-wrote. This moment right now, as I bang out a fresh sentence in a blog post? A turn on the slide, and look, it’s over now. Every blip and burp in life, whether a brief interlude or a lengthy stage, is a turn on the slide. My two-decade marriage was a turn on the slide. Our years as a young family of five were a turn on the slide. The phase I’m in right now, a late middle age filled friends and family and music and beautiful, striving, impossibly spirited older children, is yet another turn on the slide. Every tune I scratch out on my fiddle with pals is a turn on the slide, each one a little swinging morsel of forever.

Everything is. Every breath, every laugh, every moment spent learning at work or at home. If I’m lucky, and all my bodily bits and pieces continue to function properly, I’ll take many more turns on the slide before the cosmic kitchen timer rings for me. I have no idea how many, or what sort, or where they’ll take me. My only plan is to savor them.

 

 

holy moly

amybiancolli random philosophizing, Uncategorized 8 Comments

Growing up in an atheist-agnostic household, I learned that love, kindness and generosity were the only working gospels, and I learned that they do indeed work. But only if you choose to love, and you choose to be kind and giving,  and you choose to set aside judgment of others and bend to help when they’re down. I also learned that people of faith don’t exactly have a lock on these gospels, a truism demonstrated by generous atheists and ruthless believers since the dawn of the frontal lobe.

So, no, whenever we happen across some homeless pandhandler slumped against a wall, looking despairing and exhausted and famished,  we don’t need religion to tell us what to do: Love. Give. Don’t judge. Bend down to help. We don’t necessarily need God in those moments. But here’s what hit me the other day: God needs us.

Let me explain.

Rewind to late last week, when I happened across this fine piece of 1 Corinthians during my regular bedtime bible-flip:

This got me thinking. It got me thinking, because A) like 99.9999999999999 percent of the population, I struggle with self-acceptance; and B) “I yam what I yam, and that’s all what I yam,” is one of my all-time favorite literary quotations, right up there with “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” and “I’m nobody! Who are you? / Are you nobody, too?” (And do you suppose that’s the first time anyone has crammed Popeye, Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson into the same 68-word sentence?)

It got me thinking, too, because lately I’ve been dwelling on the problem of hate and discrimination — the tendency to demonize people, declare them sinners or define Them against Us. As though we weren’t all Us! As though we weren’t all Them! As though we weren’t all struggling with this beautiful but oh-so-pissy business of being alive and imperfect, frustrated with our own shortcomings and irked by the flaws of others.

I’m especially baffled by self-proclaimed Christians who do the demonizing. I wonder which bible they’ve been reading. Certainly not the one on MY night table, the one where Jesus tells us to feed the poor and help the stranger and not judge and not hate and sing kumbayah around a campfire while making daisy necklaces. There must be some other, Exxtreme Edition Bible where jujitsu Jeez-Us rips off his shirt to reveal his bleeding pecs and then instructs his disciples in the rules of Fight Club.

So I read that snippet from 1 Corinthians the other night, and I thought: hmmmm. I yam what I yam by the grace of God. God made me this way. God made you that way. God made everyone every which way, even the most annoying people in the most annoying ways, and if you believe in God, you gotta believe God did this for a reason — some divine reason we can never divine. Then I thought: Holy moly! Wait a sec. Maybe God made us all in this crazy patchwork of singular personalities and predilections and shortcomings because God needs us to be different! God needs you. God needs me. God needs us.  

God needs us to be our most essential selves. Our best selves. Our selves most engaged in life, most available and willing to pitch in. I was already chewing hard on this when, on Sunday, I heard a terrifically insightful homily on the Holy Trinity (Father Richard Vosko, St. Vincent de Paul, tip o’ the hat to both) and the importance of being present in moments when we’re called to help.

The Trinity is something that Catholics accept while quietly and simultaneously fearing that non-Catholics regard us as wacko polytheists slathering ourselves in oil under the full moon. But this time, the God-in-three-persons paradigm kicked me in the teeth (and in the best way!) as I realized, a mere 27 years after converting, that all three guises are present in us at every moment: the God who made us; the God who talks to us; the God who came here, suffered and showed us how to love.

So, okay, let’s say I run across some homeless panhandler on some hot summer morning. In that moment, Creator is present in the panhandler, in me, in the sunshine, in the air. The Holy Spirit is present in the still, small voice that says: That poor guy is hungry. Go buy him a sandwich. And as I hand him the sandwich, each of us is Jesus — the hurting and the helper, both. On some other occasion, he might bend to help me.

I yam what I yam. He is what he is. We are what we are. God needs us.

 

 

 

hope versus optimism

amybiancolli random philosophizing 4 Comments

I passed this sign on a New York sidewalk. “Have hope,” it said in scrawly black chalk on an orange wooden trapezoid. “Have hope,” it said under three upright ichthys symbols, perhaps meant to denote Jesus, perhaps just the author’s need to embellish. “Have hope,” it said to no one in particular and everyone who passed.

“Have hope,” it said to me.

I am always telling myself to have hope. I need it. I know I need it. By knowing and saying I need it, I claim it and make it mine. Hope is in my hands. It isn’t always easy to carry, just as faith isn’t always easy, just as life isn’t always easy. But hope is a function of the one and a fuel for the other. Hope drives me. Hope is the promise of a new wave cresting beyond my sight. Hope is the forward tick of present into future, no matter what that future brings. What it brings could be everything or nothing. What it brings could soothe me or slay me. But what it brings is immaterial. Hope is simply the promise of bringing, and I cannot live without that promise. I cannot live without that hope.

Optimism, on the other hand: I can and do live without that. Despite appearances and occasional accusations to the contrary, I am no optimist. Not about myself, anyway, although my brother swears I am about everyone else (and yes, he’s usually swearing). But no. If I were an optimist, I would look to the distant, cresting wave and expect it to bring me a golden yacht filled with chocolate cupcakes and hot men in tiny clothing poised to do my bidding. Instead, I half- or three-quarters expect that next wave to arrive with a slimy tangle of toxic flotsam, gag me with seaweed, grab me around the ankles and drag me and/or multiple people I love out to sea. Because, frankly, that’s exactly what’s happened with numerous previous waves. The hot men with cupcakes have yet to arrive.

In other words, life has schooled me in the fine art of pessimism. But it’s also schooled me in hope. Each death and departure has taught me three simultaneously lessons: that loving means losing; that losing hurts like holy hell; and that, even as we hurt, life blunders onward indefatigably, pushing us forward with an obdurate insistence known as hope. The hope lies in the pushing. The hope lies in the obduracy. The hope lies in the peculiar human need to search for meaning in the darkness, to find some poetry in the pain, to land in our stumbling upon some little joy or corrective insight that makes all that happens to us just a little less senseless.

Hope isn’t optimism. It isn’t faith in a happy ending; it’s faith in an ending that matters, that bears weight, that limns what it means to be human. Hope is the engine of narrative. Hope is a creative fugue. Hope is the unreason driving every book, every symphony, every artwork. Hope is the thrust and yaw of sex, an urge in search of an outcome. Hope is every grieving, lonely soul who ever turned from a burial site and smiled at a baby. Hope is the baby. Hope is the tongue of a lover, reaching around a mouth in search of home. Hope is the reaching. Hope is the search. Hope is the blood lapping inside us, the lungs swelling within us, the heart beating even as it breaks. Hope knows that death is on its way, but hope is the life we live in spite of it. So, yes. As the sign says:

Have hope.