(written at my first visit to a healing writing group on 10/23)
This sacred waiting. The altar built to Mary, to Gaia, to Grandma Elsa who birthed eleven strong children from the earth of her body. I light candles, I pray, I sleep before the altar every night. In me, the candles burn. Time, days, pass. Preparations are made, bills are paid, parents called but in me, really, just the candle at the window. Just the sacred, waiting, pregnant moment. Innocence of all worldly things is held in this waiting and no rhythm matters but that of the sea tides within, holding the miracle - the miracle to be so alive, to be part of something so unavoidable, undeniable, unstoppable. Something without deadlines, or shopping malls, or any controls. Dancing with the Shekinah and knowing myself blessed to be her stardust daughter.
That sacred waiting, in the home we made of work, overcome fears, and love, made together for our coming son. The sacred hours, pushing, undulating, unfolding. These waves will never be mine again, no child will ever squall into life between these walls. Just cold scalpels, just white coats and disinfectant. No sacred waiting with uncontrollable unfolding. Just scheduled dates and surgery plans.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Tattered and Torn
I need to be of "use".
I went straight from high school to the working world and something about it made me feel pretty awful inside right away. A few jobs were alright. Being a daycare assistant for a sliding-scale, low income daycare was alright, I was loving and playing with kids who soaked it up like parched earth. That was a good work, paid less than $6 an hour, of course, so it was a shit job, but it was good work. I worked in a natural supplements store for a while back in the early 90's in a poor to lower-middle class town where we helped families that could not afford "Western" medicine learn about cheap herbal teas and vitamins to help themselves where the damed system would not. That was good work. Shit job though, think I *might* have made $6 a hour for that one, no health care, no benefits of any kind.
I had such low self esteem for so many years that I mostly lacked any ambition at all when it came to work. I had lots of big ideas, and, in retrospect, they were good ones with good instincts behind them, but I had no confidence in myself to ever amount to much. Eventually, after more than a decade of job life, I scraped together enough self-respect to climb up a bit, put a little ambition into my work. I worked my ass off to make someone else profitable and I was good at it, did real well for them. But something still felt sick in my gut. I wasn't going "good work", I had this deep knowing that I wasn't, but I didn't know where to find that good work and still support myself slightly above the poverty line.
To find good work, you've gotta know what it is, first. The definition I had come to was all about what I knew good work wasn't. A job that offered good work didn't exploit or demean its workers or ask me to do so on its behalf. A place where you could do good work didn't make profits be selling things that robbed poorer people and countries of their natural resources for its own gain. Fiscal health, not profit, was the golden rule in a job that offered good work, but never at the expense of others. Finally, a decent job would allow me to go home at the end of the day knowing I'd done something to enrich my community and that I had at least attempted to be part of solutions to the ending injustice.
When I found the job opening that became my current position where I own my paycheck right now, I thought I had found good work. And I had. Good work, as I defined it above, was the best I'd ever known to hope for. My relationship with Spirit was just beginning to blossom after years of dormancy and I felt I had been led to this work. My boss has quoted back to me what I said in my cover letter a time or two, that this job was my "dream job." It was, at the time. It was good work. For once, I would be able to sleep at night knowing I was supporting my family helping something I believed in and that I could be good at doing it, that I could be of "real use" to these folks that were hiring me. I wouldn't be working for any greedy corporation's or individual's profit, I would be working to make something a rich resource for the greater community. I could put into practice my desire to work from a place of respect and support to my co-workers. It *was* my dream job, it was literally all I had ever dreamed a job could be, at that point in my life.
I entered into this job with all the enthusiasm and "can-do" attitude any boss could have hoped for. Of course, it didn't turn out to be all I hoped it was or even all I was told it was by my employers. Yet, I fell in love with the people who made up the organization and with their love for the organization and that made it worth doing anyway. That, and the fact that I *needed* the job real bad to support my family at the time with a baby on the way. I would simply make it work and there were many days I loved it. I was the great crusader, I would come into this broken mess of an organization and save it, I would be Mighty Mouse! And, mostly, I was.
I gave my notice back in April that I was quitting. The stress of the job had become unmanageable. I told myself it was the stress and the fact that I wasn't really making enough to pay all our bills even after all the stress and long hours. I told myself it was how this job sucked and sucked and sucked at me and I could really never work enough and how I felt I had to constantly chose between this job and my family and my family almost always lost when I had an infant child at home.
I ended up not leaving and my current job was offered back to me. I took it. Why? Well, yes, because I needed to support my family but that wasn't really it. It was good work. I wanted the organization to survive the very delicate times it was going through and there was no one to replace me. It was selfish of me to be putting my wants in front of the survival of this organization, didn't I believe in and love this organization. Yes, that I did, without a doubt. So how could you leave it, Jacqueline. I couldn't. I thought, I will get the organization through this trying time, two, three years tops, and then I can pass it on to another's shoulders. It should have been a clue to me when their was no joy in taking this work back up. But what did joy have to do with anything? I was doing good work, I was being paid enough to survive, I was being of use. It was all that I had ever dared to hope for from a job and a lot more than I often had known to hope for from a job.
So, here I am. I am good at my job. It is worth doing. I love the people I work with, even when I want to throttle them. And I am miserable.
I am trapped in this job for at least 16 more months of my life, 16 more months that will prove as stressful and hard, if not more so, than the first 13 months in this job. If I leave any time before that, the organization will have a very hard time surviving. If I leave before that, people will feel I killed it, and some part of me will agree with them or it wouldn't hurt so much to think on. Just 16 more months, I tell myself, and I get up, go to the office, and try to give it all of me. I feel a burdensome weight on my shoulders, I stoop more everyday.
There is something beyond "good work", or, it is more that good work is one piece of the greater work that is spirit-led work, divine work. I thought I knew that when I took this job, but I did not not know myself as a child of God when I took up this task. I thought it was sacred work if I was being "of use" to the world. It was a blasphemy to me that what gave me joy had anything to do with it. I did not understand taking joy in something beyond proving that I could be useful, that I could support myself doing good in the world instead of aiding destruction.
The last 13 months of my life have been a dance on the burning coals of spirit for me. The intense heat and friction has begun to burn away so much of the worthlessness that has clung to me like a diving suit all my life. Under the worthlessness, I find someone else, someone who is more "me" than I have ever been. I've dreamed of this someone else at times, but put her away for fear of how selfish it was to pursue joy before all else. I find a someone else who believes creating our lives in joy *is* our work. Someone who believes the work of our lives, the work we were born to do, sets our soul alight with joy. I do not find dance, song or joy in my current job. I have tried very hard, tried to force it, but now know myself too well to try to will that fairy tale to be true.
It is good work, it is not the work that lives in my spirit, it is not the gift I am hear to give. I awaken to the work of my spirit as of late and I hide it carefully under the dirty ashes this job leaves all over my skin so no one will see. In furtive hours of night I pursue the path of my spirit work but I find it hard, because it makes it all the more painful to go consign whole days away to work that burnt and dry on my tongue. I see or hear others speaking about the work my spirit sings to do and I cry because I am shut out of that eden.
Its less than two more years of my life, then I will have done a *good thing* and can pursue what my spirit leads me to as my daily work for the first joyous time in my life. I try to convince myself, but is this honestly as Spirit wants me to do? I try, but I cannot give more than half of myself while I am at work and when I am home I am often consumed with the depression of being unable I now feel is shaped to the very core of who I am. No matter, I am doing good work. Good work. I feel split in two, torn down the middle of my life and the half of my life that gives me joy is tied up and tied down, "just wait my love, just two more years." Like a prison sentence. Like a tomb.
Is self sacrifice for the greater community an act of Spirit or no? There is no one way to answer that question. I had to turn to psychitry for the first time in my life a few months ago and the doctor put me on medication and said, "you need to stop working such a stressful job, you need peace to heal." No time for peace, there is just this job. I had a cancer scare last spring and now they tell me I need more tests, that I got another bad pap. I was suppose to do that a month and a half ago, but I still haven't found the time. There is just this job. I feel exhausted, I eat terrible, I feel worn down and old. No time to solve that, no time to take care of my body, there is only this job.
Spirit, am I doing the right thing? Do I deserve to do work that brings me life? Am I allowed to grow, to say that this is no longer my dream job? Or, if I am any kind of decent person, am I obligated to stay no matter how exhausted and broken I feel under its weight? What is right?
Spirit, where is your voice?
I went straight from high school to the working world and something about it made me feel pretty awful inside right away. A few jobs were alright. Being a daycare assistant for a sliding-scale, low income daycare was alright, I was loving and playing with kids who soaked it up like parched earth. That was a good work, paid less than $6 an hour, of course, so it was a shit job, but it was good work. I worked in a natural supplements store for a while back in the early 90's in a poor to lower-middle class town where we helped families that could not afford "Western" medicine learn about cheap herbal teas and vitamins to help themselves where the damed system would not. That was good work. Shit job though, think I *might* have made $6 a hour for that one, no health care, no benefits of any kind.
I had such low self esteem for so many years that I mostly lacked any ambition at all when it came to work. I had lots of big ideas, and, in retrospect, they were good ones with good instincts behind them, but I had no confidence in myself to ever amount to much. Eventually, after more than a decade of job life, I scraped together enough self-respect to climb up a bit, put a little ambition into my work. I worked my ass off to make someone else profitable and I was good at it, did real well for them. But something still felt sick in my gut. I wasn't going "good work", I had this deep knowing that I wasn't, but I didn't know where to find that good work and still support myself slightly above the poverty line.
To find good work, you've gotta know what it is, first. The definition I had come to was all about what I knew good work wasn't. A job that offered good work didn't exploit or demean its workers or ask me to do so on its behalf. A place where you could do good work didn't make profits be selling things that robbed poorer people and countries of their natural resources for its own gain. Fiscal health, not profit, was the golden rule in a job that offered good work, but never at the expense of others. Finally, a decent job would allow me to go home at the end of the day knowing I'd done something to enrich my community and that I had at least attempted to be part of solutions to the ending injustice.
When I found the job opening that became my current position where I own my paycheck right now, I thought I had found good work. And I had. Good work, as I defined it above, was the best I'd ever known to hope for. My relationship with Spirit was just beginning to blossom after years of dormancy and I felt I had been led to this work. My boss has quoted back to me what I said in my cover letter a time or two, that this job was my "dream job." It was, at the time. It was good work. For once, I would be able to sleep at night knowing I was supporting my family helping something I believed in and that I could be good at doing it, that I could be of "real use" to these folks that were hiring me. I wouldn't be working for any greedy corporation's or individual's profit, I would be working to make something a rich resource for the greater community. I could put into practice my desire to work from a place of respect and support to my co-workers. It *was* my dream job, it was literally all I had ever dreamed a job could be, at that point in my life.
I entered into this job with all the enthusiasm and "can-do" attitude any boss could have hoped for. Of course, it didn't turn out to be all I hoped it was or even all I was told it was by my employers. Yet, I fell in love with the people who made up the organization and with their love for the organization and that made it worth doing anyway. That, and the fact that I *needed* the job real bad to support my family at the time with a baby on the way. I would simply make it work and there were many days I loved it. I was the great crusader, I would come into this broken mess of an organization and save it, I would be Mighty Mouse! And, mostly, I was.
I gave my notice back in April that I was quitting. The stress of the job had become unmanageable. I told myself it was the stress and the fact that I wasn't really making enough to pay all our bills even after all the stress and long hours. I told myself it was how this job sucked and sucked and sucked at me and I could really never work enough and how I felt I had to constantly chose between this job and my family and my family almost always lost when I had an infant child at home.
I ended up not leaving and my current job was offered back to me. I took it. Why? Well, yes, because I needed to support my family but that wasn't really it. It was good work. I wanted the organization to survive the very delicate times it was going through and there was no one to replace me. It was selfish of me to be putting my wants in front of the survival of this organization, didn't I believe in and love this organization. Yes, that I did, without a doubt. So how could you leave it, Jacqueline. I couldn't. I thought, I will get the organization through this trying time, two, three years tops, and then I can pass it on to another's shoulders. It should have been a clue to me when their was no joy in taking this work back up. But what did joy have to do with anything? I was doing good work, I was being paid enough to survive, I was being of use. It was all that I had ever dared to hope for from a job and a lot more than I often had known to hope for from a job.
So, here I am. I am good at my job. It is worth doing. I love the people I work with, even when I want to throttle them. And I am miserable.
I am trapped in this job for at least 16 more months of my life, 16 more months that will prove as stressful and hard, if not more so, than the first 13 months in this job. If I leave any time before that, the organization will have a very hard time surviving. If I leave before that, people will feel I killed it, and some part of me will agree with them or it wouldn't hurt so much to think on. Just 16 more months, I tell myself, and I get up, go to the office, and try to give it all of me. I feel a burdensome weight on my shoulders, I stoop more everyday.
There is something beyond "good work", or, it is more that good work is one piece of the greater work that is spirit-led work, divine work. I thought I knew that when I took this job, but I did not not know myself as a child of God when I took up this task. I thought it was sacred work if I was being "of use" to the world. It was a blasphemy to me that what gave me joy had anything to do with it. I did not understand taking joy in something beyond proving that I could be useful, that I could support myself doing good in the world instead of aiding destruction.
The last 13 months of my life have been a dance on the burning coals of spirit for me. The intense heat and friction has begun to burn away so much of the worthlessness that has clung to me like a diving suit all my life. Under the worthlessness, I find someone else, someone who is more "me" than I have ever been. I've dreamed of this someone else at times, but put her away for fear of how selfish it was to pursue joy before all else. I find a someone else who believes creating our lives in joy *is* our work. Someone who believes the work of our lives, the work we were born to do, sets our soul alight with joy. I do not find dance, song or joy in my current job. I have tried very hard, tried to force it, but now know myself too well to try to will that fairy tale to be true.
It is good work, it is not the work that lives in my spirit, it is not the gift I am hear to give. I awaken to the work of my spirit as of late and I hide it carefully under the dirty ashes this job leaves all over my skin so no one will see. In furtive hours of night I pursue the path of my spirit work but I find it hard, because it makes it all the more painful to go consign whole days away to work that burnt and dry on my tongue. I see or hear others speaking about the work my spirit sings to do and I cry because I am shut out of that eden.
Its less than two more years of my life, then I will have done a *good thing* and can pursue what my spirit leads me to as my daily work for the first joyous time in my life. I try to convince myself, but is this honestly as Spirit wants me to do? I try, but I cannot give more than half of myself while I am at work and when I am home I am often consumed with the depression of being unable I now feel is shaped to the very core of who I am. No matter, I am doing good work. Good work. I feel split in two, torn down the middle of my life and the half of my life that gives me joy is tied up and tied down, "just wait my love, just two more years." Like a prison sentence. Like a tomb.
Is self sacrifice for the greater community an act of Spirit or no? There is no one way to answer that question. I had to turn to psychitry for the first time in my life a few months ago and the doctor put me on medication and said, "you need to stop working such a stressful job, you need peace to heal." No time for peace, there is just this job. I had a cancer scare last spring and now they tell me I need more tests, that I got another bad pap. I was suppose to do that a month and a half ago, but I still haven't found the time. There is just this job. I feel exhausted, I eat terrible, I feel worn down and old. No time to solve that, no time to take care of my body, there is only this job.
Spirit, am I doing the right thing? Do I deserve to do work that brings me life? Am I allowed to grow, to say that this is no longer my dream job? Or, if I am any kind of decent person, am I obligated to stay no matter how exhausted and broken I feel under its weight? What is right?
Spirit, where is your voice?
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