Ruth

 I've been thinking a lot about the Book of Ruth lately. 

Part of it is that we sing a version of Ruth's words to Naomi at church most weekends (and let me tell you, for a hymn it's an earworm). Part of it is that I remind myself of Ruth's words to Naomi when I think about David. There are probably a lot more "part of its" that I'm not ready to talk about.

But almost daily I find myself musing over Ruth's words. "Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God" 

* * *

I am spiritually exhausted, y'all. 

I don't know how else to talk about it. I am convinced that the world is going straight down the toilet. I expect the world to devolve into a Parable-of-the-Sower-dying-gasps-of-Capitalism hellscape in the next ten years. I know that aforementioned capitalism is grinding us all into pulp and that we cannot bring ourselves to imagine that there might be something else so there won't be. Inflation is making our already tight budget even tighter. I worry about climate change Every Single Day. I spend my life talking about how to provide healthcare to the homeless, jobs to the jobless, and basic human dignity to everyone and nothing has gotten any better and in many cases things have gotten worse. 

I was talking to my beloved last week about some of my more extreme end-times views a few weeks ago. How I'm teaching myself to identify medicinal and edible plants. My desire to learn to use a firearm. My almost fanatical obsession with water conservation that I can't impact (I'm looking at you, Western United States).

"I know, babe. I feel the same way."

"I am so tired," is all I can reply. 

* * *

I'm on the Amtrak back to Milwaukee. 

It's about a week before Christmas and I'm going to spend some time with my family. But I'm feeling a little . . . I'm not sure. I've left my beloved back at our apartment (he can't get the time off work) and the holidays don't feel like the holidays without him. 

So I've tuned into the livestream of the Unitarian Universalist church we've been attending for the last month. 

I love UU Church. 

I'm a little embarrassed by how much I love UU Church. I'm embarrassed by how quickly this community has found its way into my heart. I'm embarrassed by how much I look forward to services. I'm embarrassed by how much I need this place. 

This week, it's the sermon that gets me. My favorite minister is preaching and his words have managed to grab me more than once. Today he tells us "Everyone needs more than anyone has to give right now, but also, no one can fill those of your needs that you won't let show. I believe that asking each other for help is self love and answering honestly is self love and giving what we can is community love."

I embarrass myself by crying on the train. 

* * *

I want to have a heart like Ruth's. 

I don't want to feel like I have it alone.

Let me explain.

I am tired of being spiritually exhausted. All of the problems that exhaust me are too big for me to handle on my own. Truly, they are too big for even a dedicated community to have much of an impact on. But I don't have the money to run away from climate change and crime and desperation and even if I did I do not know that I would. Community love is the only way I can see out. 

Everyone needs more than anyone has to give right now. 

I am trying to have a heart like Ruth's. 

Instead of telling people that I don't have the spoons or the time or the interest, I am going to start asking how I can help them carry what they have to carry. I am going to remind myself that time alone in the woods is a spiritual practice and so is running an errand for our elderly neighbor and so is speaking truth to friends (and power). I am going to try to draw our family circle so wide that no one feels left out. 

I am going to have a heart like Ruth's. 

In the words of that favorite pastor: let it be so, and amen. 

Soft

I lost someone close to me this week. 

Not lost in they've died but lost in the "well, that was an unforgivable betrayal of my trust" kind of way. 

I've been through so many relationship implosions over the years that it took a little while for this one to hit me. I did all the automatic stuff that I do--blocked them from my phone and social media, put away the things they've given me until I'm less emotional, activated my support group. I thought to myself "Well, that was unexpected" and went on with my day. 

We all know where this is going. 

That evening, after I held it together all day I tried to pickle myself in bourbon (it takes less now than it used to). I got into a horrible fight with David. I cried at a bus stop. I self-harmed in a more intentional way and screamed with grief and sobbed for hours. I've said it before, but going through life with big feelings is a constant fight.

Friday night I lost that fight.

* * *

My favorite Mary Oliver poem is only four lines long. 

"The Uses of Sorrow"

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness. 

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift. 

* * * 

I have fallen a little in love with most of the people I have met and liked over the years. 

What can I say? I have a lot of feelings, sloppy boundaries, and a soft heart. 

Each time someone lets me down in a big way I tell myself that this is it. This is the time that I'm going to put up taller walls, keep people at an arm's length, stop calling that one friend who never wants to hang out. 

Then the next time I meet someone with the same obscure interest, the same favorite book, hell, just someone who looks cute and smiles at me I lose myself all over again. 

I am grateful to have such a loving, supportive partner in David. Every time I get excited about some new friend (or, frankly, crush) he's patient and kind. He gently reminds me that not everyone in the world is worth my time. I laugh and say "Yeah, but this person is."

He throws up metaphorical hands and I let myself be disappointed all over again. 

* * *

I am a walking trope: 

The person who walks around with ohmygodsomuchlovetogive and who gives it to all the wrong people and ohgodsomeonejustloveme. 

Kind of. 

I'm also the person who left her divorce with the determination to keep a soft heart and I've worked really fucking hard to keep it that way. I'm also a person who believes that the more love you let into your life, the more your love grows and reflects in the world. More than that, I believe--no, I know that loving people, even the ones who do not deserve it, has made me a better person.  

So what the fuck am I supposed to do? 

* * *

It isn't until Monday morning that I can really even begin to contemplate my most recent box full of darkness. 

I spend much of the weekend in an emotional and actual hangover, tinged with just a delightful soupçon of self-recrimination and disgust. I manage to pull myself out of it long enough to spend some time with friends on Saturday and go to church on Sunday, but I make sure to make myself feel worse at every opportunity (saddest shoutout to people who use food as punishment, too).

There isn't anything special about Monday. I went outside and felt the ground under my feet and the sun on my face. I went to the park and walked the gravel paths. I observed the mallards, finally home for summer, as they fed and played. I saw a cardinal--a bird that always reminds me of David--and took a short video of its song with him later. 

The whole time I carried that box of darkness with me and thought about how fucking fragile we all are. How stupid and frustrating and maddening we can be when we're hurt and want to hurt someone else. And then I did what I always do, what I hope I will always continue to do. 

I reminded my heart to stay soft and went home.

Grief

 I have a print hanging in my bathroom that's held an outsized significance in my life for awhile. 

It's a quote from a Louise Erdrich book that I love. 

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will break you with its yearning. You have to love. you have to feel. It is the reason you are here on Earth. You are here to be swallowed up. 

Mostly it just sits there on the wall, placed inconveniently for anyone to really notice while they're peeing or washing their hands, but I know it's there. And occasionally I stop and read it and think of when I bought it and how my life has changed. Or I'll read it mindlessly while I brush my teeth. 

Sometimes, though, I read it and my heart breaks open. 

* * *

David and I have started going to church.

I can't remember how it happened. I know that we were both yearning for something. Community was a part of it. A lot of my friendships have changed dramatically during COVID and before COVID. But it was more than just looking for a beloved community for me. "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord" says Mary in one of my favorite bible passages. "My spirit rejoices in God, my savior."

God and I have not been on speaking terms since 2012, but my soul has been proclaiming something recently. 

So David and I have started going to church. We attend a Universalist Church not far from where we live. 

In graduate school, Unitarians were easy targets for derision because "They don't believe in anything." I made this argument as much as any of my peers, and what an arrogant, judgmental little shit I was. I didn't realize how badly people who didn't have my confidence in the One True Church still needed a place for spirituality, hope, and love. Now I find myself regularly attending Unitarian services. 

Who says the universe doesn't have a sense of humor?

Yesterday we had a Service of Remembrance. It was the first in-person one this community has had in over two years (everyone is asked to be vaccinated and masked for the entirety of the service, and we were in N95s, so don't get sassy). The service had some aspects that felt odd to a recovering Catholic (speaking your losses to a stone and dropping it in a bowl of water, profligately having conversations with your neighbors about loss mid-service) but weren't any odder than almost any Catholic ritual I could name. Near the end of the service there was a litany of the people we have lost in the past year, and the congregation lit a candle in remembrance of every person. 

I have never grieved communally. My beloved grandmother died in May of 2020 and I was stone faced throughout her entire service. When I came back to Minnesota I screamed with grief. I cried and retreated from David and held on to my grief like a weight. The worst of it passed. 

It always does. 

So when I found myself in the midst of a bunch of very earnest people speaking about loss so openly, I was terribly intimidated. Afterall, the only thing I'd lost was a beloved pet. Listening to people speak the names of their loved ones who had died made anything I've experienced in the past two year seem mild. 

At the end of the service, a little embarrassed, I went up the altar and lit a candle for my beloved kitty. And in the act of lighting and thinking her name, something odd happened. 

My heart broke open. 

* * *

We've lost so much in the past two years. 

Families and friendships. Pets. A civic society. Live theater and music. Jobs we loved. Time. Illusions. That teacher we really wanted our kid to experience. A sense of normalcy. Hugs and shared laughter and warmth. Maybe our conceptions of ourselves. 

I've lost a a grandmother I adored, a pet who got me through difficult times, getting to watch my adopted nieces and nephews grow, the choice about whether or not I'll be a parent, my sense of smell and taste, months to long COVID, a little bit of my sanity, the joy I used to take in my work, more things than I can name. 

And in the act of lighting that small taper candle for a cat who died in November, my heart breaks. 

It breaks and it breaks and it breaks. 

And then it's all there. All the complicated, overwhelming, messy feelings that I've been carrying with me for two long years now. 

Probably for longer than that, if I'm being honest.

Somehow, it's easier in this place. Perhaps it's the message of the day. That the kindness we hold for one another is the only thing that is left after grief. It might be that quote from my bathroom, rattling around in my head and reminding me that these complicated feelings are the reason I'm here. It could just be that it was a cathartic experience and my brain is hit with a wave of feel-good chemicals. 

What I think it is--no, what I believe it is--is that doing this together has somehow made things easier. That speaking our losses, whether to a stone or a neighbor, and lighting our candles for a person or a pet has made this act of grieving lighter. Grieving communally has created a place of compassion, empathy, and love that is so necessary and so lacking right now. 

As we leave I take David's hand and smile. "I'm glad we did that."

"Yeah, me too."

And my heart begins to mend.