My feet are my freedom...

Freedom

I am in a box and it has no windows and no doors, no mode of escape and really poor ventilation. Like the ones you see on magic shows with David Copperfield, only he's an escape artist and just my luck, magic school is not taking any applications. So what do I do? I kick and scream and hope that somebody hears me; that somebody will come and rescue me from this prison. To no avail my screams go un-heard, so I relent and become lost in dreams the vast expanse of my mind provides. For a short time that becomes my freedom until reality returns with its brute force slapping me back to consciousness. I really hate that. If I could live in my dreams I would, it is only there that I feel truly satisfied...

But why? This is the question - a thought that I have been pondering for probably the majority of my life. Why is it that I am so unsatisfied? The game of life keeps giving me new hands to deal and, truthfully, in a game of poker I wouldn't be doin' so badly - so why the constant need for change, for challenge, for adventure? It never stops, my mind a whirling collage of dreams orchestrated by my inner-most self. She wants out. No more cages, no more bars, just freedom, pure and simple.

I look at my life and it seems I’m waiting for it to start. I constantly trick myself into believing that life is in slow-mo, that I’m doing what I should be doing and when I’m done I can finally do what I want to do. The pressures of this world are so great at times I feel like giving up. The expectations too high to meet; the challenges too great to overcome. So I move, or I take a new job; I make plans that I know will never carry through – just to feel like things are happening, that I’m not getting stuck in the monotonous rat race that inevitably seems to consume everyone.

Once a month I cross the small bit of ocean that separates the mainland from the Islands. I go there for many reasons, but perhaps the most important is the sense of harmony and purpose I feel on those rocky shores. For the hour and a half it takes to navigate through passes, channels and the open sea, I am lost in contemplation. I think and think and think some more. It seems as though it is the only time that my mind is clear and I feel connected to the world around me. That ocean knows my secrets, it knows my heart. I stand against the railing and cry out to the rolling waves of the deep blue begging for answers. The sea swells with my angst and anxiety, the sun spreads its warmth on days when I feel at peace. I feel free in those moments, but perhaps that is only because my shackles are loosened. They are never fully released.

Freedom is a powerful concept. One that is drenched in a bloody history of philosophical musings and conquest. It is a concept that contains a different meaning for everyone from individual independence and free-will to national sovereignty and self-determination. Freedom. You hear it whispered softly behind the prison bars at night, you see it on the faces of abused children and in the eyes of soldiers, you smell it in the alley ways amongst the hookers and addicts and you read it on the blog of a girl who can’t get her shit together enough to realize that her freedom is right in front of her, she’s just too scared to admit it.

What to do about God?

A few months ago I read a book, some of you may know it - its called "Blue Like Jazz", and its written by a man who has been searching for a true relationship with God for the majority of his life. It's actually a miracle that I ever even opened the book, it was a gift from my mom who over the years has given me numerous 'christian' books, many of which I have not read. For some reason though I began to read this book, probably because of its description as "non-religious thoughts on christian spirituality". It took me three days to finish it - one of those "couldn't put it down" books, you know. It wasn't that the book was particularly inspirational or thrilling, rather it gripped me because it felt like I was reading my own journal. I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders as the realization came that there was someone else out there who felt the same way I did....

I'll explain.

I grew up in a very strong Christian family, full of daily devotionals, church picnics and family prayer time. Looking back I see the blessing in this; however, for majority of my life I saw it more as a curse. I felt that Christianity was forced upon me, just as I was forced to go to youth group on Friday nights and church on Sunday mornings. I never felt close to God, nor did I ever really understand what He was or how He could be a part of my life. There were times where I felt the presence of God - going to Camp Tulahead every summer was probably the only 'churchy' thing I enjoyed and it was only there that at times I could see some sense in the whole Christianity thing. However, I would return to "the bubble" (my hometown) and that fire never failed to go out when school started again and things began to take importance over my relationship with God, namely, ME!

I remember sitting in church time and time again listening to the pastor preach about following God's calling, and living by what God tells us in the Bible. Well, for me I subconsiously viewed this as basically doing whatever my parents wanted me to do. Because Christanity and God was so closely connected to my parents, as well as the rift in our relationship during my teenage years, I was unable to separate the two; therefore, God got lumped into the big bucket of authoritarian adults whose sole purpose in life was to judge me, scold me and ruin my life. Subsquently, the moment I left home, I also left God. To be honest it was a freedom I had never experienced before, partly because I think I also left behind my conscience, but I felt that I finally I could be who I wanted to be. I could make my own decisions, I could 'hang-out' with whoever I wanted to hang-out with, I could behave and dress and talk however I wanted to. It was my long-lost independence returned and it felt wonderful!

I think a part of it too though, was that I never felt I belonged in Church. It's hard to explain and when I was younger I certainly didn't understand it, but it just didn't seem to fit with me. I don't know, there was something about going to a building every Sunday morning, having to get dressed up just to listen to someone lecture on how to be good, just bothered me. Probably because it made me feel bad. It created this belief in me that you were either good or bad and other people around you were either good or bad and if you didn't go to church and if you liked to hang-out in friends' basements and if you liked the taste of beer and if you used a swear word when you were angry, you were bad. I didn't like that cuz I didn't think I was bad, I just thought I was different. When I back-packed across Europe I was introduced to the world outside of "the bubble", and I instantly felt like I was lied to. The world wasn't full of bad people and evil religions, they were just different, like me, and that made me feel really good, like it was o.k. that I was different because the rest of world was different too.

Over the next few years when I went to university I began to think that it was Christianity that was bad. When I began learning about how many indigenous peoples around the world have been abused, their cultures torn apart, their languages beaten out of them all in the name of God, the Christian God, I became angry. When I saw Campus Crusade for Christ showing pictures of aborted fetuses and calling it genocide and murder and then handing out pamphlets about how Jesus loves you - I got very angry. When I heard students from Trinity Western University say to news reporters they are opposed to same-sex marriage because they think its 'disgusting' - I got even more mad! When I read that the states that have continued the practice of capital punishment are predominantly right-wing conservative Christians - I became bitter. When George W. Bush asked his fellow Christians to pray for the U.S. the night the 'shock and awe' campaign began in Iraq and as bombs began to fall on the innocent civilians of Baghdad- I cried.

A year ago I went to visit a family that had sort of adopted me on a reserve island called Kuper Island, off the coast of Vancouver Island. This experience rocked me truly to the core of who I was and what I thought about the world. On this island I was surrounded by an entire community wrought with violence, addiction, sexual abuse and incest - their language had been lost generations before, their culture barely hanging on to the threads of their Grandmothers memories, their homes dirty and decrepit, and their children struggling with the lasting effects of the trauma their elders had experienced. But what tore me up the most was the church that still stood on the highest hill of this island, this church that represented the genocide, the abuse, the separation of families and the loss of culture remained intact, while everything else around it reaked of death and destruction. I remember my sisters holding me as I sobbed in their arms, barely able to get the words of "I'm sorry" out. I felt personally responsible for what happened to that community- what happened to my sisters and their sisters and their sisters - how do you apologize for something like that? How do you apologize for the actions of so many who raped and beat and sodomized so many young children, all in the name of God, when all they should have done is love.

Regardless of whether or not I have lived as a righteous and holy christian, I do know that something has been lost in the Christian faith; and that is love!

I remember a few years ago I became good friends with a woman who practices Wicca, a practice that I was always told was the work of the devil. Regardless of how you feel about Wicca there was an incredible sense of irony when she became the first person to point out aspects of my life that resembled that of Jesus' life. She told me that Jesus was an outreach worker, a prison volunteer, a social activist and really, the first true dirty-hippy! A revelation this was in my life as I and my life always came under-fire when in conversation with my family members. Always the question: "how do you reconcile the way you live with God, Carley?"

I have never fit into a box, a square, or even a circle for that matter, and I suppose I saw the Christian religion as a steel cage. It didn't allow for individuality or difference of opinion . There was always a certain way to pray, a certain way to worship, a certain way to be in the presence of God, and none of these led me to feel like God even existed. A year or so ago I sat in a sweat lodge in the middle of the woods, with my toes deep in the earth, my skin wet with sweat from the heat and my heart surrounded by the love and acceptance of my brothers and sisters who sat with me - it was here that I felt a closeness to God I had never experienced before.

Last summer I went through some really tough stuff, none of which needs to be shared here (I do have a limit on self-disclosure), but it kinda' shook up my life and forced me to re-evaluate so to speak. I didn't like what I saw when I looked in the mirror- so I shaved my head. I didn't like the things I was doing in my life - so I walked away. I knew something was missing, but I didn't know what - so I prayed. Then my mom gave me the book "Blue Like Jazz" and the things that were shared in that book felt like the author was able to take everything I felt about God and christianity and religion and write it down. For the first time, I felt like I could have a relationship with God and still be me and that would be o.k.

I listened to Donald Miller speak this morning, author of "Blue Like Jazz", and he said that we should see God as a being to have a relationship with, much like we have with our earthly fathers, rather than a slot machine or a computer that has certain rules and practices to follow in order to get what you want. This made me really happy, because, like many of you know, i really suck at following rules and being respectful of authority but I do know how to be in a relationship with others. I'd be lying if I said that now I have a strong faith in God, or I'm on fire for the Lord or however people describe it, because I really don't, but I think I'm working on it. My independence really gets in the way at the best of times and my issues with the Christian religion still gnaw away in my head.

And I fully realize that to some of you I am a hypocrite because I judge the Christian religion the same way christians judge others, but thats exactly it. I detest the christian religion- it has a bloody, hateful and venegeful history; the christian faith, or spirituality, is very different. And thats precisely what this man wrote in his book "Blue Like Jazz". He spoke about how we have forgotten the message that Jesus wanted us to know, understand and practice - and that is the message of love. I may not think that homosexuality is wrong; I may love the taste of beer, swear every once in awhile, and I may not like evangilism but I do believe I know how to love.

I've been hearing a lot of about lent the past few days, and I'd be lying if I said I understood what it meant, but I do know that you're supposed to give up something that you really like and that sacrifice will bring you closer to God. Well at this point I don't think there's anything I'm willing to give up for forty-days (except maybe my thesis), but I do know there's something I could DO that would bring me closer to God and that's talk to him, sit down and have a chat, see what He has to say. I may just learn a thing or two, we shall see.

To all of those in my life who have never stopped praying for me I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Autumn

What's So Amazing About Grace?

I find there is a moment in every day that lends itself to gratitude, beauty, peace - whatever it is that each of us search for. Sometimes the moments can seem few and far between but they are always there if we stand quiet enough to connect with them. Lately I have been busy... very very busy. The rat race never seems to end or even subside but yet I feel blessed to realize that I experience those special moments in my day that, forgive the cliche, 'make the world seem right'.

For example, last week I started an 'anger management' program for 12 boys between the ages of 14 and 17 in Surrey - a big task to undertake for any individual let alone a 5" nothin, 23 yr old chick who has her own 'anger management' issues. However, the Creator works in mysterious ways and after much frustation with the bureacracy of Surrey School District, late nights of trying to meet with each youth on a one-to-one basis, and seriously questioning my ability to take on such a task- I had my first session and was once again reminded of how truly beautiful the human spirit can be if cultivated in love, respect and compassion.

The beginning of the night started off with a scenario that somewhat resembled a group of silverback gorillas pounding their chests- each desperately trying to out do eachother with with 'street stories' and tales of hot-wired escalades, drug-induced gang wars, drive-by's and even some tales of annoying mothers. At first I was worried that I had brought a group of boys together merely to swap violence stories and give tips to each other on how to out-run the cops; however, the machoism finally subsided and as we began to lead the group in a series of exercises, some fun and silly, others more serious - a miraculous thing began to happen: they started talking! Each kid started sharing his life experiences with violence and anger, speaking only in terms of how badly they wished things could go differently. This continued to the extent that when four large pizzas were brought into the room, they refused to leave the circle and continued to share for another 1/2 hr. This was amazing not only because these were pissed off teenage boys, but because the group was made up of individuals who, in any other circumstance, would never associate with each other, let alone swap life stories over pizza.

We explored our roots of anger and talked about our reactions to things that hurt us, we talked about the struggles that we have with our families and friends and we talked about things we want to do differently when anger floods our minds. I suppose I underestimated the ability for such a scenario to take place, particularly given the life history's and nature of many of the youth involved - but I never should have. A pissed off 16 year old boy is no different in his need to be loved, cared for, affirmed and encouraged - although at times he may wish to be immune to those needs. Monday night showed me that.

I sat in my car that night listening to 'Jars of Clay' and silently thanked God for the 12 blessings he had bestowed in my life that evening. I don't pretend to think that as an individual I can change these kids' lives; however, there is this really cool thing called grace that has the power over anything else in this world to mend hearts and heal wounds when shared with others. Perhaps that is why it is so amazing!

Full of Gratitude

Autumn