Search Results for: I Saw An Angel Last Night

It’s been a good week in many ways. Many people I know are freaking over the trial in New York; I’m not. The children’s food drive was a great success, and that’s great. I just got a money order for $400 from a blog supporter, which is helpful. I am getting in shape for the main event: my raised garden beds. Maria and I are having a quiet and peaceful day.

I’ve also decided not to hide from my Dyslexia; my writing about it with some humor has driven off the Correction Squads and Spelling Police of the Social Media Secret Police, our very own Stasi. I am guilty of letting lesser people shame me. Not anymore.

These people can’t handle humor and run away; it makes them crazy. But I  need to be more upfront about it. Making crazy people crazier isn’t a worthwhile pastime; it’s not who I wish to be.

Every Dyslexic has a different series of issues. Some struggle with numbers, some with words, and some with both.

One of mine is numbers; I need help with additions or multiplications. I have a problem seeing words that are sometimes scrambled at times; another is only seeing what is in front of me, which often causes me to buy things I don’t need because I don’t know they are already here. Maria and I have worked out a promising program: I buy nothing without telling her first, and she will check to ensure I don’t have one. I’m embarrassed to say I have been buying many things I don’t need.

Dyslexia has shaped my life in so many ways for most of my life, and I was never diagnosed until I was nearly 60 years old. I never mentioned it because I never knew what to do about it, and I saw it as shaming myself. I didn’t want to face it. Better late than never. It explains a great deal of the anxiety I had had for so long and the awful panic attacks that followed the knowledge that something was very wrong and kept me from doing the things other people can do.

It was especially tough when I was a child. The creepy and broken people on social media finally forced me out of the closet and convinced me to confront it. They can go feast on someone else. I’m sure they already are.

But this awareness has triggered a realization about how to face it, live with it, and improve my life all at once. Maria is an angel; she wants to help. She was one of the first people in my life who tried to help rather than make fun of or criticize me.

Many books, shoes, shirts, and lotions go out the door.

Dyslexia is curious and difficult.

I have more bad news for the Corrections Squad. When I write their names—Zip and Bud—I often replace Zip with Bud, although that is not happening much anymore. When I joked about renaming them Zud and Bip, I was astonished that I never got their names out of order or misspelled them. I have to think about this. Maybe I need to change names I can’t quite see or get straight.

The excellent news is that now I am doing a better job of learning what I have and what to do about it—better late than never. I’m also reconsidering what I need, something Maria and I are both eager to deal with. She has no problem with this; she wants or needs little. I’m the problem.

But I’m also very proud of what I have been shedding and do not miss or need: A partial list, a week and a half’s work, there is much more to come:

1. Cannabis is an expensive plant often used to promote sleep and soften anxiety. I found it affected my memory also and general cognition. I decided it wasn’t for me a couple of weeks ago. I threw mine out today. They cost $20 or $30 a tin, usually only nine or ten gummy bears. It’s a lot of money and was doing me no good. Thanks to a kind pharmacist, two Benadryl allergy tablets are getting me to sleep every night.
2. They cost 18 dollars for a pack of 60; I take one or two a night, sometimes none.
3. Dog Treats. I was buying the dogs, especially the large Zinnia, marrow bones, dental treats, and the other dogs’ various expensive treats. I realized they cost up to $50 a week. Instead, I got some Milk Bone Dog biscuits and ten 10-pound bags for all three. I break them in half, and they last about two months. Zinnia, Fate, and Bud are pleased to eat them with no complaints.
4. Expensive treats are something people need, not dogs.
5. Shirts. I threw out boxes of shoes, pants, and undershirts I did not need and wasn’t using. I didn’t even know they were there.
6. Underwear, sweaters, and hats. They had accumulated over the years, and I kept thinking I was running out because I didn’t see them. My clothes were all over the place.
7. Paper towels. I don’t need them; washed and cleaned rags and old shirts are just as effective. I buy tissues, not $1-2 dollars a box at the dollar store. They are just as good as the expensive ones I’ve been buying for years.
8. Plastic Water Bottels. I’m using our perfect healthy water and metal water containers for the car instead.
9. Pediolyte. I was buying a pack of Pediolyte for dehydration (an aging issue) (hard to get them here sugar-free) and am drinking eight or nine glasses of water a day. It’s working fine.
10. Cheese Puffs were my favorite snack, but I’ve stopped eating them. It’s not a weight issue; they are quite light. I don’t need them. Very few snacks are healthy or necessary; they are all over the place with enticing labels like “plant-based” and “organic.” Mostly, those are meaningless labels.
11. Five different kinds of so-called “plant crackers” are my favorite snack. I get one kind now when I get hungry. The ingredients are all good and natural.
12. Dinner. I’ve given up dinner and had a good solid lunch and breakfast. My sugar numbers are consistently low and growing lower.
13. My photography is a blessed exception, as are my cameras. I get what I need, know what and where it is, and use it every day of my life. It stands out. I never tire of it or buy something I don’t need or can’t use.

Oddly, I’m not needy; I only need a few things. I need to remember these things as soon as they go out of sight. Now, all my clothes are stacked on open shelves where I can see them. I have more than enough.
I’m looking forward to considering what I need and responding accordingly. Selling off the books stacked in the house is another response and a way to pay back the people who have stayed with me for so long. Photography has altered and enriched my life and given me purpose and comfort.

_____

It’s always possible to grow and learn. We live in a consumer and corporate culture that forever throws things we don’t need at us and convinces us that we really do need them. Lenin wrote that the problem with capitalism is that 90 percent of the things we buy are things we don’t need. Plastic water bottles are a great example.

Up here, at least, we have plenty of fresh water. The corporate appetite is ravenous and can never be sated.

This dramatic change of life addresses three or four issues: controlling and saving money (donations to the blog have been down since the pandemic and inflation) and simplifying my life, which is the most significant thing in the long run. If I’ve learned nothing else these past few years, it’s that less is more. The more I simplify, the happier I am.

As usual, I see most of the country going one way while I go the other. My spiritual work has soothed me and helped me.

This also happens to be good for my diabetes and is teaching me how to live much better with my dyslexia. I will never be shamed again by the heartless and unknowing people who think people who misspell or confuse words must be dumb or lazy. I should also add that I am 76 and healthy, but I feel what older people think. Some people hate and deny the realities of aging, perhaps because it suggests sickness and death. And sure, I sometimes have trouble with short-term memory. But then, I always did.

Few people want to get old or be around those who are.

Ageism is perhaps the last acceptable form of bigotry. I am not one of the aging deniers, but that doesn’t make me infirm or indifferent or drooling or suffering from Dementia. Of course, I have talked to doctors about it.  I have to pee more often. I don’t need surgery. I’m just getting older.

I’ve never cared much about spelling or grammar, and now I understand why. I’ve never written better or written more. Go figure. I am grateful to the good people who have supported my blog from the beginning and continue to support it. Bless all of you.

I have to thank Maria for helping me make these very significant turns. She has never had or wanted much more than she is wearing and needs to sew. She’s an inspiration and a support system. No one else in my life has tried to talk to me about these issues, and how could they? I never wanted to see them myself.

I’m just beginning this process, continuing to learn. Stay turn if you wish; as always, I share my life as honestly as I know how to do. Misspelled words might anger some people, but they are not as frustrated as I have been for so long. I’m getting past that and the anger at people who have tormented me. That is one great gift of the spelling wars.

And now, and at long last, I can be myself. There are difficult things about aging and beautiful things about it.

One of the beautiful things is the gift of self. I finally figured out who I am. The challenge is to stop pondering and start living.

For many years, there was a voice inside of me to find my selfhood.

I  have never trusted the idea of selfhood, I had the idea that the belief that my broken and damaged self would always be selfish, confused, and frightened unless healed by the external forces of death and or heaven, depending on what I believed.

I didn’t trust heaven either and did not expect and do not expect to go there. And I’ve never embraced the idea of God.

My idea of self was ravaged by the way other people – including my parents and those my age – treated me. I had no self to help me navigate my life.

Even now, I can’t forget the dreadful beating my best friend Eddie endured in the schoolyards during recess, or my shame is not helping him.

They got me occasionally, but I was faster than Eddie and more alert. Terror can do that.

If I was a good person, why were my friends and I so bullied, why did my family ignore me and the other children taunt and laugh at me, and why did my father shame me every night for the wedding of my bed? I never understood what the trigger was.

Even the bullies had a sense of self.

Inside of me was a voice deep down pleading with me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me by God or the angels, the self I fantasized about every night to get to sleep, the brave and robust self who fought back and chased the bullies out of the schoolyard.

 

It wasn’t until a few years ago, when I met and married Maria, that I received a wonderful gift; I began to accept this original selfhood given to me at birth and still alive inside me. It was the beginning of my transformation.

It is a confusing gift, one’s self, something I was given at birth but didn’t believe. How, I wondered, will I recognize it if I can find it?

Accepting it was even more demanding and complex than attempting to become someone else, which was my goal for much of my life.

I had a dream a few years ago that rattled me; in the dream, I had died and was being interviewed for a spot in heaven, and the angel questioned me, looked through some files, and then asked me: “Why were you not Jon?” Initially shocked, I understood the question and then woke up. I had no sense of self.

I never figured out if I got into heaven or not.

Shortly after I left the ordinary and moved to the alien, I got more serious about figuring out who I was. It was like digging in a sinkhole; the deeper I got, the more confused I was. I was playing with fire, unleashing old demons.

My deepest calling has always been to grow into my authentic self – a searching man, meaning but not always succeeding in being genuine, but still solid and compassionate, whether or not it conformed to the self that others wanted me to be and demanded that I be.

Or whether I was told I ought to be.

After some hard work, I began to find the joy I had always sought and found my path of authentic meaning and service in the world. It was always there, right inside of me! It was waiting patiently for me to grow up.

Henri Nouwens wrote that vocation was “where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” And my own deep need.

I began exploring the nature of my human self, which brought me happiness and the deep joy of knowing that I am here to use the gifts I was given but were buried so deep inside me that I could not feel or see them.

As I learned more about the seeds and source of my selfhood, the one I was born with, I was thrilled to meet him later in life. I learned more about the world in which I grew up and was formed and in which I am called to live – responsively, accountably, and joyfully with other beings of every kind.

I hope to embody the great idea of loving my neighbors and myself one day.

I have to give credit to my blog and to the bullying and hostility I encountered early in life and what I recalled while trying to write about my hero journey. The blog threw me into contact with the real world, sometimes wonderful, sometimes brutal.

When someone sent me a cruel or hostile message, I would tell myself, “Think of Eddy in the schoolyard,” and lash out at the new kind of bully, the ones I never saw. I thought it was about vengeance and punishment. I thought being strong was the same thing as being tough. It isn’t.

I knew I was getting closer to being myself when I dropped this idea of justice and vengeance for my early life and focused instead on the self I was born to be. That self did not argue with strangers who wrote hateful messages. It just wasn’t who he was born to be.

And today, as I write this, it is no longer who I finally am.

This search for self was a journey into darkness, a hero journey through strange and dark places. That is how Joseph Campbell described the hero’s journey, as a frightening and dangerous journey from which many people never return whole or at all.

“The first fact that distinguishes the human species from all others is that we are born too soon,” wrote Campbell in an early Transformational Bible of mine, Pathways To Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation. Transformation, he wrote, is always painful and always dangerous. If it works, it can be glorious and affirming. Magic helpers, often in the form of animals, will try to help me guide me.

“We arrive, incapable of caring for ourselves for something like fifteen years. Puberty doesn’t come along for twelve years or more, and physical maturity doesn’t come until our early twenties. During the greater part of this long arc of life, the individual is in a psychological situation of dependency.”

We are trained, he wrote, not to think but to react. Everyone is raised with an attitude of submission to authority and fear of punishment.

The people torn between dependency and responsibility grow up to become neurotic, says Campbell.

Joseph Campbell presented the first pathway for me on my transformation from a crippled neurotic to a whole and functioning human being, finally free to be his better self and accept who he is. The transformation is not all rosy.

I am who I am, sometimes good and sometimes bad. The big difference is that I came to accept me, a form of love that goes deep.

But I am always me.

As I tiptoe towards the end of life, I am finally me.

 

 

 

 

 

I had been living on the first Bedlam Farm for nearly six years when I finally broke down in a gruesome, lonely, and fearful way. I had left everything behind and then lost everything I had.

My then-wife Paula, who suffered faithfully through much of my mental illness, was living in New Jersey; her work was in New York, and she had no desire to live in the country.

When I moved to the first Bedlam Farm, I told myself and my family that I was going there to write a book and then would sell the farm I had just bought for that purpose. I believed that. After six years, I still felt it, even though it was clear to everyone who read my books or knew me that my wife wasn’t moving up there with me.

I had come to love the country, solitude, nature, and animals. I needed all of those things in my life.

With the help of a rugged and plain-speaking Saratoga shrink, I finally realized that I was no longer married and proceeded rapidly into a delusional nightmare and a breakdown.  By that time, I had given away all of my money and was convinced I was carrying out the work and wisdom of Jesus Christ.

The good news, and the only good news, was that I finally got help and began the long and intense recovery process.  I am still recovering, and perhaps for the rest of my life. Most mental illness is treatable but not entirely curable.

The best thing about being mentally ill is that if you are fortunate and work hard, you can recover a bit every day.

A friend noticed my breakdown and struggle, suggested I attend the United Presbyterian Church in Argyle, New York, and asked the Pastor, an almost legendary man named Steve McLean for help.

Reverend McLean had an great reputation in our county. He was a member of the Fire and Rescue team and rushed out at all hours of the day and night to tend to injured people in accidents and plunge into the dark and dangerous work of the rural volunteer firefighters.

He didn’t just talk the Jesus talk, as so many Christians do, he lived it.

There was no time of day or night when the Reverend McLean would not rush out to help someone in his congregation. He was their shepherd, and they came to him and adored him.

He talked openly about the difficulties in his marriage and preached against divorce and people who abandoned their marriages. I wondered why he put up with me.

He was an old-style pastor, the country kind,  strict, and unyielding in his faith, and generous to his congregation. He would go to widows’ houses and install their storm windows in the winter.

He was stern when he needed to be, loving when he wished to be.

He invited parishioners into his house – just across the street from the Church – to talk at any hour, sit with him, and eat peanuts in his backyard. He was forever rushing out to fires and car crashes, often to give the last rites to the injured and dead.

I was in a dreadful state when I went to Church to meet Steve. We met in his office at the church, and afterward, I spent a lot of time in his house across the street.

My religious background did not fit well or naturally into the Presbyterian liturgy or Steve’s beliefs. And I didn’t dare talk politics.

When we met, he saw how much trouble I was in – my shaking, my panic, my sadness – and he generously invited me to Church on Sundays and offered to meet with me once a week.

I told him I was born Jewish, converted to Quakerism, and followed Jesus Christ and his beliefs but did not worship him.  He didn’t blink, but he knew he was in for it.

I was searching for God. I wanted to find him. Steve had obviously had a lot of experience in crisis counseling; he made me comfortable and asked all of the right questions.

Steve made himself clear. I was welcome to attend Church, and he was happy to meet with me. “But I should tell you that I am a Jesus man,” he said to keep the record straight.  I knew what he meant. He expected my search would lead to accepting Christ as the son of God. He was after my religious soul.

Steve, I learned, was a soul savior.

He took in the lost and vulnerable – anyone who showed up in trouble –  and brought most of them to Jesus.  That was what he did.

I suspect he knew I wouldn’t end up embracing Jesus as a God, but he also noticed, he said, that I was more faithful to the teachings of Jesus than many people who called themselves Christians.

Steve had faith in what he did. It was all, after all, in God’s hands.

He never expected to fail. He was, after all, a “Jesus Man.”

Steve and I became almost instant friends. I admired his conviction mixed with compassion and his unwavering commitment to his flock. He lived to worship Christ and was devoted to helping needy people.

His congregation, which was enormous when I got there, was crazy about him. He was the real deal.  He preached that we were all born sinners, even children coming to be baptized.

We talked on the phone, e-mailed one another, and had lunch. I was starting with my blog, and my desire for good works.

Steve read it, commented on it, and gave me some good advice. His was one of the first photographs I ever took. I had just purchased my Canon 5 D, the first camera I owned.

I invited him on one or two of my Hospice visits (I am a hospice volunteer, but he came only with the understanding that the patient accepted Christ, not that he wanted some insurance. He meant it.

When I told him that I was dating Maria, whom he had invited to dinner with me at his house, he asked to meet me at a church picnic up on a hill and sat down with me.

He said Maria was wonderful and he was pleased that I was seeing her. But, he said, he wanted to caution me against having sex with her. “Sex out of marriage is a sin,” he said. I loved Steve so much by then that I wanted him to marry us, but Maria and I agreed it would be awkward.

I believed he would have to say no. This wasn’t a person who compromised his principles, especially his religious ones.

I realized that Steve had not given up on me, a Jesus man. The sex talk was probably the last chance to steer me away from sin, something he couldn’t overlook.

I leaned over and touched his hand, saying, “Steve, I respect you, but I will be  honest. I haven’t had sex for a long time, and if Maria wants to have sex with me, I can assure you, I’m going for it.”

He didn’t smile, but he didn’t frown either. We had a nice lunch and a warm goodbye.

Steve would be would be uncomfortable marrying two non-believers out of the Presbyterian faith.  Maria is a lapsed Catholic; she is not a Jesus woman. He could not have abided this by marrying two sinners, much as he liked them.

I didn’t want to put him in that position. I did invite him to our wedding.

I was so glad he came to the wedding; he offered a prayer for us, a touchingly gracious gesture given his feelings about his faith.

Talking to Steve, whose faith and empathy were so powerful, I sometimes considered accepting Jesus and joining his Church. I wanted a place to land, a place of comfort and safety and faith. I couldn’t do it.

Steve was a religious person I loved and respected and perhaps could follow.

I should say that Steve helped save me during that awful period.  Sometimes, knowing I could go and talk to him kept me going.

I didn’t know Maria when I first met Steve, and I had nowhere to go, no one to talk to but the friend who had introduced us.

Steve took me in when I was lost and stayed with me until I found myself again. I’ll never forget him for that.

The friend who brought me to Steve told me the Church was her life, and our friendship didn’t last long after I  met Maria.

She was an Evangelical Presbyterian, and there was too much distance between us.

Steve was the closest I came to a genuine religious revelation. He was the real deal, bristling with integrity, faith, and a sometimes ruthless conviction. He was a hero who saved lives and turned others around.

If anyone could have brought me to Jesus, he could have. Yet I did feel that he and I were cut from the same cloth in many ways. I guess I’ll never know how close I could have come.

After I got married, I continued with my therapy work and began to recover. I felt I had no right to go to his Church if I didn’t embrace the faith. We stayed in touch, but as a Jesus Man, I knew Steve would put his energies into Christians in need, not in a Jew-turned-Quaker with a blog, something quite strange to him.

That was his calling, his faith.

He wasn’t a social worker for the world. He had a mission.

If I wanted to be close to him, I needed to accept him and who he was. I wish I could have; I have rarely met a better man than Steve.

I seem to tend to get close to the pastors who worship Jesus.

I am good friends with Ron Dotson; we are always getting more intimate. Ron is more accepting than Steve. He is also a “Jesus” man, and a pastor, but shows no interest in persuading me to embrace Jesus as a God or in trying to affect my religious beliefs. Then there was Bishop Moise.

We accept each other as we are. As I got healthier, I stopped going to Church.  The congregation there mostly stayed away from me. I decided I needed a therapist more than a pastor. They each treated me very differently.

I am ever grateful to Steve for taking me in like that, listening to me, welcoming me. As a writer, he was fascinated by me, and we spent some beautiful hours sitting in his backyard eating peanuts together.

He was a tease and a wiseass.

Like me, the irony of it all is that I have read and been driven by the preaching and beliefs of Jesus Christ for much of my life.

I see Christians all around me abandoning him, but I can’t and won’t. I love what Jesus said being a Christian means, even if it often doesn’t mean what he said.

I’ve gone from one faith to another and back, but I’ve never dropped Jesus or stopped being inspired by him.

Perhaps that what God means, but it’s beyond me for now,  I’ve found my place with it. My relationship with Jesus is longer than any other in my life.

Steve left the Church a few years ago and moved to Philadelphia to be near his parents.

The last I heard of him, he was doing missionary work in Texas and the Southwest. That sounds right. Steve would never stop taking on the complex and thankless job of helping people nobody wanted to help.

Nor could he ever retire. There were way, there were too many people who needed to have their souls saved. Jesus preached that on the Mount.

I knew our friendship couldn’t hold up for too long any more than my friendship with Moise, a Bishop in the Amish faith. Both are true “Jesus Man.”

Steve wished me well; we shared the same sense of humor and a  human drive to help the needy.

But I was drawn to these men, I think, because of their great faith.

I remember the last time Steve and I had lunch.

“I’m sorry, I can’t be a Jesus Man,” I said. “Don’t be sorry,” he said. “You ARE a Jesus Man. You’re just not a Presbyterian Jesus man.

We hugged and said goodbye. I will always remember this good man for being able to help me when I was the neediest I have ever been.

That’s what a true “Jesus Man” would do.