The Shape of Your Despair

I don't know the shape of your despair,
or the sound it makes when it
calls you to draw near.

I don't know its color,
or the shimmer of its dragonfly wings
that catch your gaze and draw you inward,
solitary, silent.
Trapped.

Does it even have wings that flutter and blur
and brush lightly against your skin,
soft, like a kiss, leaving a trail of tears
and tiny scars?

Or is that just the feel of my own?

Let me know it, your despair.
Sing me its siren song
of dissonant notes,
its wordless howl.
Let me know its shape,
and the taste it leaves on your tongue.

I will light a candle, or maybe
just sit in the dark with you
for a while, listening
to the keening wail,
and know you are not alone.

Unseen Edges

I do not feel
My body.
That is--
The outlines of it,
or the inroads
That thread through me
From somewhere unseen
To the edges that end
Beyond some internal event horizon.

There is wind, though,
That dances along my skin.

I do not feel
My body.
I do not feel
The suddenness of ice
That slips upwards,
Pools inwards,
In an absolute zero of fear.
I do not feel
The scattered grit of despair
and grief,
The corrosive grinding against
My heart
that leaches away light
And hope.
I do not feel.

I will not.

There is wind, though,
That dances along my skin.

I do not feel
I will not feel
my body.
There is no contraction,
No breathlessness,
No searing absence
Nor pulsing,
tidal loss.

There is wind,though,
That dances along my skin,
Still carrying the scent
Of you.

Elul Day Nine: Hear

There's a cacophony of noise going on in my head. There are a thousand conversations happening, all at the same time, about everything. Or about nothing. A thousand? Sometimes it's ten thousand. Sometimes it's infinity. The sound swells and recedes like the ceaselessness of the ocean. I can't remember the last time my head wasn't filled with sound.

I would really like for the noise to stop.

That's a wish pulled from the depths of my earliest memories (and I have a memory bordering on the ancient, trust me): please, just make the noise-- that dull, droning, sub-vocalized, just-at-the-edge-of-hearing noise that sets your teeth on edge and your skin buzzing-- make that noise stop. Please. That may be my wish, perhaps my prayer. Thing is, I've never been quite patient enough to wait. I've never been trusting enough to believe that my prayer would be answered (at least, not answered with a "Certainly, Stacey, coming right up!"), or my wish granted. I've always felt the need to help it along.

And help it I did. At least, that was the plan. I threw everything I could at the problem, mostly none of it healthy. Addiction is an insidious creature, whispering of a redemption bought with self-destruction. One more seductive voice (in a myriad of voices) added to the chaos in my head, and I chased that siren song with desperation-tinged despair that I could have sworn was hope.

But that was long ago and far away. Right? Right? 

Still a wish. Still a prayer: please make the noise in my head stop. And I still step right up, to fix it, all on my own. And every time I shoulder the burden of my own prayer, all I manage to do is turn the amps up. To eleven. 

God, but it's noisy in here. It's an ocean of sound and I am drowning in it. Writing helps, some. Singing, too. And prayer. I still have a few dark and twisty places inside, so that my manic attempts aren't always quite so healthy as that. They all tamp it down, make it less whinging and relentless, bring some melody to the disparate notes I hear. That I always hear.

How ironic, then, that the prompt for today, day nine of this holy month of Elul is Hear. Hear? You have got to be kidding me. All I do is hear, ceaselessly, endlessly without respite. All I want is quiet, a moment of silence, a chance to breathe, to think, to be. Just be. 

But this is Elul, and I am called to use a different lens through which to pass my all this: to bend ideas just a little, so that the light reflects and shines differently than before. So that I can see-- or hear-- a new song. And when I do, when I bend all those voices through the prism of Elul, something new:

I am terrified of silence. 

I am afraid to get that quiet, quiet enough so that I can really hear. Really hear the sound of my heart, the song of my soul, the music of God. To be still, to be quiet, to hear-- myself. To hear my hope, my despair, my prayer. And then to wait, in quiet stillness, to hear God's answers. To let the fear go, in my quiet, that there will be nothing there, a cavernous, echoing silence, to realize, in fact, that I am alone.

I surround myself with noise-- a great cacophony, a glorious, messy din, so that I can avoid hearing my fear. I avoid the breathtaking beauty of silence. And for all of that, I miss out on the brilliant sound between the notes-- and it is there that God's voice lives. 

So, on this ninth day of Elul, I am given (I offer?) a new prayer: please-- let me learn quiet enough to listen, let me find courage enough to be still so that I can hear, finally, the music between the notes. 

And into that glorious stillness, I will say "amen."

An Absence of Color and Light

We sat among the willows,
and we wept,
there by the river
that flowed
clear and cold and swift,
--branches dancing,
barely dancing--
as they swayed
and swept the ground.

We stood among the weeping trees,
Prayers mixed with
visions of ash.
and smoke
that rose and billowed,
Black against purple-stained blue
-- the blue of periwinkles
and royalty--
and a sky smudged with soot and
an absence of color
and Light,
and the altars we had left behind.

How can we sing
with no stone walls
adorned with lapis and gold:
-- the blue of royalty
and the blaze of the sun--
How,
before that pillar of fire,
that billowing smoke
that is empty of God
and absent of Light?
That raged in a fiery, metallic storm,
licking at loose rubble,
that once was strong walls,
that once was adorned with
the presence of God?

We wept,
and did not sing,
and found no music
in our unstrung lyres
and broken harps.
We wept,
for how could we sing?

And after the weeping
and the fire
and the absent,
Empty,
broken altars--
Pale morning.
and skies of purple-stained blue
shot through with scarlet and gold.
Mist tangled in those willows,
their branches dancing--
barely dancing--
barely skimming the swiftly flowing waters.

A moment--
A breathless,
silent
sacred moment.
that was a psalm,
A hymn of color,
and holiness
Made anew.
And there was no absence.
And there was light.

And there,
among the willows
by that swiftly flowing river,
We found a new prayer
And sang.


For Tisha B'Av

Light enough (to change the World)

Long ago, I quit graduate school to become a political activist.  I had been working on a PhD in Early Modern English History-- Tudors and Stewarts and Puritans, oh my!  I was totally gung-ho, until I realized that almost the only people who care about Early Modern English History are other Early Modern English historians.  I gave up my full Fellowship to–as my parents so eloquently put it– become a professional street walker and erstwhile  beggar.

I was filled with a burning desire to fight the Good Fight.  I would be Don Quixote; but unlike my hero,  I was going to win my battles rather than simply tilt at stray windmills.  Five years and several thousand miles later, having traversed the country a dozen or so times, I quit the national poor people’s organization for whom I had been working, a little bedraggled, a lot broke and much bewildered.  I kept looking around for all that I had accomplished, all that we, as an organization, had accomplished, and saw… the detritus of really good intentions.

We fought to give people a voice, to find strength and power in numbers.  We got a few stop signs put up, a handful of crack houses boarded up or torn down.  We got enough press that Mayors and Police Chiefs learned to take our calls and listen to our demands.  Mostly though— we demonstrated on bread and butter issues that fed our souls and fired us up.  I was so determined to Save The World and Make A Difference, but really, what I was doing was drowning in a sea of windmills and broken lances.

The issues that plagued us twenty-five, thirty years ago, when I was young(er) and rousing rabble eighty hours a week or more— they’ve grown.  The rift between the Haves and the Have Nots is wider and more treacherous than ever.  Poverty.  Ignorance.  Hunger.  Disease.  Global Warming.  Hatred.  War.  Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?  I wish! They are legion, these Horsemen, and they spread devastation in their wake.  They've had a few millenia to gain in power and scope.  Human history is the story of our inhumanity, a desolate and sere desert of indifference and despair.  My fear whispers for me to throw up my hands in surrender to the enormity of the task, to just walk away.  The need is so great.  I could be devoured by this need that grows daily and swallows hope.

It would be so easy to turn away from this overwhelming and insatiable need.

I could, but I don’t.  Instead, I do what I can.  I light a candle, a flicker of hope in this darkness, the flutter of a butterfly’s wings that becomes a storm.  The task may seem insurmountable, but I can’t avoid it.  The Talmud tells us: “It is not your duty to complete the work, neither are you free to desist from it.” (Pirke Avot, 2:16,15)

My job, as I see it, as I have been taught, is to light the candles and flap my wings.  Again and again and again— because I can, because I must.  Because I change the world every time I do.  And all those candles, mine and yours and on and on— they light the darkness and beat back despair.  They kindle hope:  A stop sign.  A voice.  Hope where there once was none.  It is the best of our humanity.

Are we our brother’s keepers?  Yes.  Having a roof over your head is a right, not a privilege.  Access to medical care, or clean water to drink, or food on the table— all of that is a right, not a privilege.  And no, before some of you get on that high horse of fiscal certitude: no, I don’t have an answer on how to pay for all this. I just know that we must.  It is our humanity at stake, and how could we turn away from that?  How could I look into my son’s eyes if I turned my back on such need? How can I not pass this candle flame to him?

And my son, my fourteen year old— he wants to house the poor and feed the hungry and fight for justice.  He has learned that he has his own candles to light.  He may not solve the riddles of poverty or ignorance or hatred, but he knows, in the face of all that desperate need and billowing despair, he can light a candle or two in the darkness, because he can, because he must, because he, too, can save the world. 

Faith enough

Over the course of a handful or so of years not too long ago, I managed to lose a little bit of everything: stuff, people, things of inestimable value to me-- one thing after the next, again and again.  And then yet again.  Sometimes the pace of loss was so fast I could barely catch my breath or stop long enough to grieve. Worse were the slow and lingering losses. They were excruciating and exquisite disintegrations of heart and spirit.

With each loss, I would hit bottom. Absolute rock-fucking-bottom. I would lay, crumpled and still,  every nerve taut and throbbing, fairly singing with the tension of shame and grief and sadness, until I was numb.  Numb, and relieved, that at least I had finally found the bottom.

And every time-- every single time I sagged in relieved acceptance of  my failure-- I would find the trap door.

There is always a next level of low. Always.

This was not the life I had planned on. Not that I had actually made a plan for my life. But still, this wasn't it. What the hell-- I was a nice Jewish girl from a nice middle class family, living in a nice little suburb. And while I had taken a twistier path than most to that place, there I was: a nice Jewish girl with a husband and a child and a house and a job, living the American Dream.

And then one day, again without plan, I wasn't.

Fuck.

Like sugar in water, I watched it all dissolve. I wanted to yell "Stop!" I wanted to scream "Wait!"  I needed time. I needed something-- someone-- to fix it, make it better. All I had was me. And clearly, I was not up to it. Let me just catch my breath.  Let me just rest for a minute. A day. Maybe another. Please. The light is too bright, and it's dark and cool under these covers. Let me just sleep a little longer. Let me just die a little bit more.  

You know what's worse than bottoming out when you're a drunk, killing yourself a bottle (a glass, a sip) at a time? Bottoming out sober. Everything is raw. Everything is screaming: your body, the voices in your head, the people you love. Worse: the people who love you, who just want you to get it together, get better, stop being so fucking sad all the time. Jeezus, Stacey-- enough! Get over it already. It's been weeks. Months. A year. More. Too long to grieve. Too long to be stuck. There I was, a  butterfly pinned to a black velvet board, raw and defenseless and twitching.

They got bored with me, my friends. Hell; I got bored with me. I wanted to curve into myself, disconnect from the pain that seeped into and out of every pore.

I wanted to drink.

Almost two decades sober, almost two decades of learning how live without drinking, learning how to live with God, and I wanted to drink. Funny thing-- I knew, absolutely knew that I would get, maybe, 37 seconds. Thirty-seven seconds of relief, where all the noise would just stop, and I would be able to breathe and my skin would stop crawling and I would disconnect enough to not feel and not be.  Thirty-seven seconds. And I was in so much pain, it seemed a worthwhile trade: my life, my pain, for thirty-seven seconds.

And I didn't.

I'd lost my marriage, my house, my credit, several jobs, numerous friends and a beloved brother, and I wanted to drink and I wanted to disappear and I didn't. What the fuck?

Oh, yeah: faith.

It sweeps in, peeks around corners, stumbles around blindly, in infinite variety, offering healing and grace. At times, it is cool and resonant, a joyful transcendence that leaps and soars. It is fearless, filled with surety and possibility and hope. It is a glorious and mindful act, all breathless wonder and full beyond measure. It illuminates the darkness. It is intimate as love, brave as love, near as love.

And when I'm in that wonky, spiritually fit place, when life is balanced and I'm not teetering on the edge and unfixably broken, this is the faith that fills me. At these times, in that place, everything fits and flows, endlessly effortless-- God's in the heavens, all's right with the world. Amen, amen.

This was not one of those spiritually wonky places. This wasn't effortless and clean. It was dark and twisty and alone.  This was a dangerous and elusive faith,  limned in pain, dancing on a razor's edge of  hope. This was not a host angels singing loud hosannas while dancing on the head of a pin. It was a much more difficult faith, like pebbles strewn across an impossibly huge plain. Almost insurmountable. Almost invisible. Almost.

But in all these impossible almosts, there was God. In the midst of the jagged edges of my pain (no less so than in the midst of that impossibly joyous and majestic sweep of calming grace), there was God.

So what does that get me? What good is God, or faith, when it is broken despair that is transcendent, driving me? Where was God? And why? Why God, and faith, when we are still stripped and laid bare, when the only prayer we can offer is "fuck you, God?" What the hell does faith get us, when the money is running out and the solitude swallows you whole and the road shifts suddenly, bedrock becoming quicksand in the space between breaths?

What good is faith? Even then-- especially then: there is faith, and God. Faith does not mean that I will never know pain again, or fear. People will die, foreclosures will happen, jobs will be lost. Of course, miracles will happen, too, along with acts of breathtaking kindness and astounding heroism. Life will happen, in all its messy glory. And faith, sometimes a grand, sweeping gesture, sometimes blind and leaping-- faith allows me to put one foot in front of the other. No matter how small the step, no matter how faltering, I put one foot in front of the other, and know that I will be carried through.

And with that act of faith and defiance-- that has everything to do with love and hope and grace and God-- life changes. The world changes. I am changed. Changed enough to put one foot in front of the other, again. And that, I am sure, is faith enough.

Simple Stories: in honor of a couple of decades sober

You'd think that after 20 years, this would be easy.

Well, maybe not you, but I did.  I thought that after 20 years it would be easy to tell the story of these past 20 years.  I am, after all, a writer.  I do the words.  That's my thing.  More than most other things, I know how to tell the stories-- some filled with wonder and light, some much harder, all twisty and dark-cornered, with frayed threads, but which, with infinite and practiced patience, can be woven together into a threadbare whole until a new story can be found.  Sometimes wonder, sometimes hard and tinged with light.

You'd think, after 20 years-- of living this life and mending all these frayed and broken threads, of finding purpose and dancing with God, of unimaginable pain and unbounded joy-- of living this life, actually living a life filled to the very edges with life, with everything: love and anger and doubt and fear, failure and triumph, all the stuff of a life jammed together and barely contained-- you'd think...

So why isn't this easier?

Why is it so difficult to strip away the artifice and just tell the story, spare and unadorned and achingly simple?  Why can't I just say: There was a time, a long time ago, when time was stuck, when nothing moved and nothing changed and nothing filled me and everything failed me.  And this is the story of how that all changed.

I was taught, early on in Alcoholics Anonymous, that when you tell your story, you say what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now.  Simple.

So, what was it like?  I like to believe that that's where the story takes a sharp left turn away from simple, passing complicated in a few easy strides, never looking back.  That's the story I tell myself.  I like the drama of that, the hint of darkness and the veiled promise of lurid disarray. As comfortably as I live in that drama, I remember what a friend told me one night, early in our sobriety, as we sat in my car under cover of a midnight sky, just learning the rules of friendship in a sober world.  I told him  my stories through the lens of my living chaos theory.  And my dear Jonathan, my new and newly sober friend, he listened, allowed me to rant, took my hand when I'd finished and said "Stacey; you're not as evil as you think you are."  I may have hated him in that moment.

That's the thing, really: I want complex.  I want drama and license and chaos.  But the simple story, the easy story is this: There was a time when I was empty, and in my emptiness, time stood still.  No light.  No sound.  Just an eternity of empty. Who needed chaos when I had despair?  Who needs hope when you can chase more-- more anything, take your pick: alcohol, drugs, sex, money.  Strange, but no matter how much I drank, the empty never got filled.  All the despair, all the hopelessness, untouched.  Untouchable.  An infinite void fed by subtraction stew.

And after twenty years of forever, twenty years of standing motionless on a roiling sea of empty, I was done.  That's the "what happened" part.  I was done: I got sober.  Easy-- got sober.  Ha!  Just don't drink, right?  Easy?  How the hell do I do that?.

They told me, those people in the rooms, from their vantage points of a decade, a year, a day, an hour of sobriety "Don't drink and go to meetings."  Don't drink?  What?  How do you not drink?  How do you not chase that thirty seconds, where you finally sit in your own skin without feeling the need to crawl out of it, that singular instant of time where all the noise in your head stops and you can breathe, really just breathe? Thirty seconds-- that's all you got, ever.  Thirty seconds, where you fit and the gears didn't grind against you and you could just be.   And God, what I wouldn't give-- what I didn't give-- to chase those thirty seconds, again and again, with every sip.  Don't drink?  How the hell do you do that?

And they all of them smiled, and they nodded, and they knew-- all of them, from their lofty vantage point of a decade or three, a day or two, an hour or so--- "Don't drink.  Go to meetings. It gets better.  Simple."

I used to not believe in miracles.  I used to believe that God, if God really existed, had set me up to fail my life.  I used to believe that I couldn't live a life without drinking.

It's amazing the changes that happen when you finally can't imagine having to take one more drink.  It's amazing how infinitesimally  the universe shifts when the pain of drinking becomes more than the fear of not.  How profoundly simple life became: don't drink.  Again and again, one second, one minute, an hour or three, and you just don't drink.  No matter how much the pain of sobriety threatens to swallow you whole; no matter how exposed and raw you feel-- every minute of every day, with not even an ounce of anything standing between you and the rest of the world; no matter how much you're tweaking and want to crawl inside that bottle. 

Again and again: don't drink, go to meetings, and the seconds crawl into minutes and stumble into days and bound into years and you suddenly have time.  And you breathe, finally breathe.  My God, you breathe and the air is cool and pure and fills your lungs like light.  You breathe, and  suddenly you have a life, that moves and leaps and dances.  And you look back, and it's twenty years later.  Twenty years, and you say: simple. 

And now?  Now I have a life.  A life by no means simple or easy; it wouldn't be mine if that were the case.  It is a complex and rich tapestry that is filled to its very edges with life-- with love and light and pain and hope.  There has been despair enough to fill a thousand lifetimes, and hope enough to bring me to a breathless stop.  I have been given gifts unimaginable.  I have sought redemption and been offered forgiveness.  I have learned to live with doubt, and revel in contradiction.  I live in the miracle of a day, a day that stretches before me with infinite possibility and endless hope, filled with simple stories waiting to be found and told and lived,   I have found a life that is mine, that moves and breathes and is filled with all the stuff of a life.  I have found God, and I allow God to be.  Just be, just as I believe God allows me to just be.  

There was a time, a long time ago, when time was stuck, when nothing moved and nothing changed and nothing filled me and everything failed me.  And this is the story of how that all changed. This is the story of how it got better.  This is the story of how I came to believe that I was never empty.  This is the story of how I learned to breathe.

Simple.

For all the blessings that fill me, for God's grace that lifts me, for all who teach me, simply, to live a sober life and hear God's voice, I give thanks, with humble and profound gratitude.