From Theospora:

If I could impart a little wisdom to this congregation before I leave it would be this: live kindly, live gentle lives, love each other, especially those whose voices are different from your own, and give generously and freely of the greatest gift God has ever created, give generously and freely of yourself.

I'm thinking that I should start a book for each of my children, and fill it with beautiful quotations like this. This just absolutely made my morning. Thank you, Niebuhrian!

I saw my psychiatrist yesterday, and he and I have agreed to embark on an experiment. About a year ago, we moved my anti-depressant to the morning from the evening, and I started having trouble remembering to take it. I did pretty well over the school year when I had a regular breakfast routine, but once this summer started and things weren't the same every morning, I started missing doses. I realized a few days ago that I hadn't taken my anti-depressant in three weeks, and that I was feeling absolutely fine. I thought about it some more, and I thought about the things that I have lost by going on these meds - my music, my poetry, my creativity, my sex drive, my ability to feel excited about things - and I decided that, after four years, perhaps it is time to give the meds a break and see how I do without them for a while. So when I went to see my psychiatrist yesterday, he seemed okay with this idea. We've stopped the anti-depressant at this point, and when I see him next in October, we'll look at weaning down my mood stabilizer, too.

I am naturally apprehensive about this. It took 27 long months of trial and error before we arrived at my current med combination. Stability has been hard won, and I consider it a blessing from God for which I give thanks every day. This is one of the places where my fellow bipolars and I have a little trouble with so-called "normies." A normie is someone who doesn't understand the huge head start he or she has been given, just by being able to start from a position of stability, rather than mania or depression. A normie just doesn't get how hard someone like me has to work to get to that same starting place. I've been blessed by being boosted to that starting place by modern medications. I hope and pray that I won't lose out on it by taking a break from the meds. I think I'm in a good place right now. I'm light-years ahead of where I was in 1997 and 1998 when I first received my diagnosis and spent six weeks in the hospital. Both my spiritual director and my former psychiatrist (who moved out of the area about six months ago) have told me that it's a joy to work with me because I'm very self-aware. I don't know whether I would ever be as self-aware as I am without having come through the episodes of bipolar (aka "the valley of shadow and death"). I have said many times that while I would not wish the suffering on anyone, I also would not trade the lessons I have learned from this illness for anything. So overall, I'm pretty confident that I can make it through this, and I know that I will call my doctor if I slip into an episode, either way, and need to go back on the meds. I'm stubborn, but I've learned that there are things outside my control that aren't worth beating my head on.

Right now, I'm not worried about going off the anti-depressant. My spotty record of taking it over the last few months, coupled with my lack of symptoms, indicates to me that I don't really need it at the moment. But in a few months, I may be asking you to pray with me as I wean myself off of the mood stabilizer. The fall and winter should certainly be interesting times!

Peace be with you!

Like millions of others around the world, I went out Saturday morning to purchase Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I spent much of Saturday and a few hours Sunday devouring it before my kids got their hands on it. It was an excellent installment, but the ending took me by surprise and reduced me to tears. I won't say more than that there was a death, and that it made me cry.

Meanwhile, in the real world, in Iraq on Sunday, 71 people died in a single, particularly violent attack. I didn't know about it until I heard it on the news this morning, and in the bustle of getting ready for work, there were no tears. Somehow, a fictional death of a fictional character can make me cry, but I cannot find the tears for 71 lives snuffed out and 156 people injured in the real world. Does this seem as topsy-turvy to you as it does to me?

Sunday morning at church, we heard an excellent sermon on the wheat and the weeds, and on what happens when we - who are not the sowers of the wheat or the weeds - try to take it upon ourselves to get rid of the weeds. For some, the weeds are gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in the church. For others, the weeds are American soldiers and Iraqi citizens who choose to work with them. For yet others, the weeds may be Muslims in general. For me, I find that I agree with my rector. There's not one person in the world who is a complete weed. There is not one person here who is not a unique and wonderful creation, a beloved child of God, who does not comprise a mixture of pesky weeds and good wholesome wheat. I don't care if you point out Hitler or Hussein or bin Laden or Manson or the BTK killer who has recently been in the news. Not one of those men is a waste. Even if Voldemort himself walked into my office and slew everybody here with an avada kedavra I would not admit that he is 100% weed, 100% unsaveable, 100% beyond the reach of God's salvation.

But today, I find that there's a weed I'd like to pull, and that's the weed that can hear news like the news of this brutal bombing and not cry. Have we all grown so hardened and cynical that we are unmoved, or is it just me? Have I let myself get so battered by the media that I can't bring myself to care any more? I don't know. And I find myself often repeating the psalmist: How long, O Lord? How long?

This morning I thought I'd let you know a little of what's been going on in my life. In one of my last posts, I mentioned that I was going for an ultrasound. Without giving you all the messy details, I have a couple of small cysts on my ovary, which the doctor expects to go away on their own. I'm not entirely satisfied that these are what was causing my symptoms, but I'm not terribly worried any more either.

Work is getting really busy. Our president and vice president are requesting new reports and slide presentations from us, and I'm getting them set up for the first go-round. In the meantime, there's a database architect working on the architecture of the system we're hoping to build. And I'll tell you - we'd better build it! I haven't spent the last two years mucking about in Excel just to be told that we're not going to build our system after all. That would kill my resume.

I was accepted into the MBA program at Virginia Tech, so I'll be starting classes in late August. In the meantime, I'm doing well in Accounting II at the community college. That class ends next Wednesday. I had been really nervous about getting in to Tech, but my husband had no doubts I'd get in. I really sweated over the two essays I had to write. I gave really counter-cultural answers to the one about what sets me apart from other applicants -- I wrote about the Benedictine values of obedience and stability. I was convinced as soon as I hit the "Submit" button on my application that this essay was going to keep me out of business school.

My son Bear will be going into the Middle Years Program (the early part of the International Baccalaureate program) next year, and he has a community service requirement. Last week he interviewed for a position at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens, and starting in a couple of weeks, he'll be a Library Assistant there. I'm tremendously proud of him for this. He's looking forward to starting. He also served as a torch bearer at our church for the first time on Sunday. It was neat because I was a chalice bearer on Sunday, so we sat together in our vestments, and my heart swelled with pride for him. I served for about 10 years as an acolyte in this church as a child and a teenager, so it means a lot to me to see my children serving in the same way.

I've played the flute for 25 years, and this Sunday I'll be playing solos for the prelude and offertory in church. Rather than the baroque and classical music that I usually select, this time I've picked out Claude Bolling's Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio. As far as the piano trio goes, we've got the piano and bass, but we won't be bringing in the drums. I think that might be a little much for an Episcopal church! I am looking forward to seeing the response from the rector and the congregation. They have no idea what I'm going to play. The organist is excited, as am I. I've wanted to play this piece for a long time. A few years ago, I gave my kids all my cassette tapes, because I don't have a tape player any more, but they do. My daughter picked my recording of the Bolling Suite and fell in love with it. It's actually because of her that I finally ordered the music and started practicing it. That makes me feel all warm and gooshy inside. Bear once wrote a poem that said his mother's love is like macaroni and cheese, because it felt warm and yummy inside. So playing this music for Ladybug is like macaroni and cheese.

(Hey - I've emerged from my long silence! Thank you for hanging in with me until I was ready to write again. It's been a very busy and full couple of months, and although I have had "writing pangs," I just haven't had the impetus to get in here and post. Today, it came in the form of an email.)

There is a lovely post at Irenic Thoughts. Naturally, I think it's lovely because it quotes a post of mine. :-) But there is more to it than that. His closing paragraph sang to me, about sharing a little bit of one's own struggle to help support someone else who is suffering.

My daughter Ladybug shows signs of possibly being bipolar, like me. She has experienced the depth of depression, when you know that you are utterly worthless, a burden on the people you love, and that you not only deserve to die, you need to die to free your family and friends from the worthless sponge that is you. Just a couple weeks ago, she had sunk into the Pit. I recognized the place, and I knew what I had to say to her, just as I knew that she would be unable to hear it. I told her how she is wrapped in our love and in God's love, even though it didn't feel like it at the time. I told her that I would do anything to spare her this pain, but that I knew that I couldn't, that she would have to slog her way through it. I told her that there is hope, she is worth something, and suicide is not an option, just the way my therapist used to tell me. I don't think she was seriously suicidal, just talking about it. And believe me, I know the difference. She seemed to pull out of the black mood and become more of her normal self later in the day.

A couple days after this, Ladybug started asking me questions about my own depressions, most especially about the times I had been hospitalized, back in 1998. She asked why I had to go into the hospital, and whether I was locked up, and how people treated me. I was mostly honest. I have shielded my children from the knowledge that I made an actual suicide attempt; it may be wrong to keep this from them, but I think it would hurt them unnecessarily, so I keep it between Panda and me. But I think she found it helpful to talk about. Maybe it will help her see the mental hospital as a safe place where one can find healing, rather than the dark and scary asylum or loony bin. I think it helps Ladybug to see that I've been in the same neighborhood, that I've struggled through some of the same feelings, and that I'm still here to talk about it.

I don't know whether I brought any healing into Ladybug's life during our conversations, any more than I know whether I have brought healing into the life of anyone who has knelt in front of me during the Eucharist in church. I just try to humble myself and let God work through me. I know that I'll never be able to change my daughter; she is a fiercely independent and strong-willed person. But if I allow God to work through me, then God can mold her according to God's own plan. All I can do is hold her in my prayers, another stone in the river of the Holy Spirit, ready for the waters to shape and mold her.

Peace be with you!

I know I haven't been posting for a couple of weeks. I have many excuses and little inspiration. Life has just been really busy. Yesterday, for example, I worked in the morning, then I quickly drank 32 ounces of water on the way to the hospital for an ultrasound, then went to TCC to pay my tuition for my Accounting II class that starts in two weeks, then picked up my daughter from school, did the grocery shopping, fed her, answered some questions for a study buddy over the telephone, and then went to class for my final exam. It was a full day. Today I worked in the science lab at Ladybug's school, so I was away from work for a couple of hours again. The science lab was a particularly fun one, on force and motion. We did bunches of wonderful physics demonstrations to illustrate concepts they'll see when they go to Kings Dominion next Friday. Ladybug is tremendously excited about that trip, particularly because Panda agreed to chaperone this year. (Bear had an awful experience last year when he took this field trip.)

Today I got my security clearance application back in the mail. The apparent problem is that the signature is more than six months old. As if it's somehow my fault that DISCO sat on it for six months before looking at it! So I have to print a new signature page, sign it again, and send it back in. Maybe this time they'll actually look at it within six months, so I don't have to go through this nonsense again! I just love bureaucracy.

I am excited about the way work is shaping up lately. After two years of producing reports by hand, painstakingly, we're finally getting the budget and hardware to develop the reporting system that I was hired to build. I've been in requirements analysis for a few weeks, and I've just got a couple of final touches to put on the requirements document before it goes to the senior management stakeholders for review. Unfortunately, the person I need help from on getting those final touches in, doesn't appear to be responding to my emails... That's the one problem about working halfway across the country from people; I can't just walk down the hall to his office and bug him about it directly.

But speaking about people I work half a country away from, my boss is in town this week from Minnesota, so I'll get to see him tomorrow. It's always good when he visits, and not just because he always takes us out to lunch. Last time we only had time for Taco Bell between conference calls, but it was still good to have his company. This boss is the best boss I've ever had; when I grow up, I want to be like him. That is, if I ever grow up. :-)

My parish has a semi-active healing ministry. We have a corps of dedicated lay healers who serve on the fourth Sunday of each month, as well as on special Sundays throughout the year, like the first Sunday in Lent. We used to have a monthly meeting, where we got together, read scripture together, learned a little more about the healing ministry, and discussed how the ministry is going in the parish. Unfortunately, we took the summer of 2004 off, and we haven't met since the school year started in September. I miss our meetings, strange as that may sound. They were a good time to connect with one another and reflect on what it is that God is calling us to do.

I'm on the rota for healing on Sunday. Sometimes, this seems like a joke. For instance, just this week it has hit home that the depression I've been slowly slipping into since February is really here. It seems totally absurd to me that a broken, depressed person would have the audacity to stand up in front of the congregation and offer to lay hands on people for healing. Thankfully, our God is a God of absurdity. (Have you ever known anything more absurd than a God being born in a barn? Or a God being condemned to the most painful, humiliating death known at the time? Or even more, a human being coming out of his grave, standing in a touchable physical form, and eating with his friends?)

What will happen is that I will go in on Sunday morning in full touch with the absurdity of the situation, feeling like a faker and a hypocrite. Then, during Eucharist, I will lay hands on the first head that comes before me, and I will say the prayer for healing. And I will be completely present in the moment, which is transported outside of space and time while still being firmly rooted in the here and now, and God's grace will flow through me. I will do this again and again, for each person who comes to me. When it is over, I will realize once again why I continue in this ministry. I am not a faker and a hypocrite. I do not have healing power. All I can do is humble myself, put myself into the background, and let God work through me. And God does work through me, in wonderful ways.

So I don't have to worry about my own brokenness. In fact, it is probably because of my brokenness that I am able to go about this ministry in humility. I know I don't have everything together, any more than anyone coming up for healing has everything together. We're all a mess, we're all in this boat together, and we all need God's healing in one way or another.

Well, as a "J" rather than a "P" on the Myers-Briggs, I must admit that I'm much happier now that the new pope has been elected. All that indecision and not-knowing-ness was draining to me. I wish I were as happy about the man who was elected. I suppose that, as an Anglican, I shouldn't care that the new Bishop of Rome is one who has called my faith deficient. But as a small-c catholic, I can say that I know in my heart that there are many paths to the One God. There is no time or place I know this more deeply than when I am lying in the darkness of my bed, saying Compline in the silence. At once I know that through my prayers, I am connected with every other monastic, oblate, or other person who engages in the night office, and that through Jesus, I am connected with every other person in the Communion of Saints. There's something about the Communion of Saints. It includes every man, woman, and child who has been, is now, or ever will be, who has had faith in God through Jesus. And because I am sure that when we die, God reveals all to us -- even to those who had worshipped money, movie stars, themselves, or other gods during their lives -- that means that the Communion of Saints includes every man, woman, and child who has been, is now, or ever will be, period, with no qualification whatsoever. Because what person, when the amazing elegance, glory, truth, and love of our Almighty and Merciful Lord and that God's creation are revealed to him or her, would ever say no?

I will admit to pleasure that the new Holy Father has taken the name of Benedict. I treasure Benedict's Rule, and I hope that our new pope will take to heart Benedict's words about humility, silence, and hospitality. For in my eyes, the pope is both servant and host to the whole world. There is noone in the world who is more powerfully called to be voice and servant to the poor, the broken, the disenfranchised, the ugly, the lonely, the powerless, than our pope. I do not call him "our pope" lightly, even though I am not a big-C Roman Catholic. The pope is a leader for the world, in a much more visible way than Archbishop Williams. And even Archbishop Williams went to Pope John Paul's funeral, which says a lot to me. Although we Anglicans may not owe obedience to the pope, and although we may not believe in the infallibility of a brother human, he is still a godly man, a child of God, and he deserves our respect and our prayers.

... is right here. It's Archbishop Desmond Tutu's address at the University of Vermont, and it is called Diversity: The Law of Life.

Diversity is the law of life. A tree is not just leaves. It has a trunk and branches, and roots and leaves” none can survive without the others. They are interdependent and perform different functions for the good of the whole. If the leaves were to go on strike and refuse to be involved in photo-synthesis and all that, the tree would suffer and the leaves would discover they were really nothing without the branches and the trunk and the roots. And so also with the human body. We say, "I see", not "my eyes see” "I hear", not "my ears hear” and I am an organism precisely because of the diversity of my organs performing different functions for the good of the whole body. Without this diversity functioning harmoniously I would be nothing.

Now God created us different, some tall, others short, some black, others white (?), pink, yellow and red. What a fantastic array of remarkable difference and diversity, different languages, different cultures, different ethnicities, different this, different that. God wanted us to glory in our differences, to affirm our differences, to celebrate our diversities and to know that we are so obviously interdependent. Even now no single nation however prosperous and powerful can really go it alone. We must trade with other nations. We may find we don't have this commodity but they have it in abundance but lack what we have and God says I made you to be interdependent, to want to cooperate, to share, to care, to know that an injury to one will end up being an injury to all.

Unfortunately as seems always to happen, we perverted a good, our particularity, our peculiarity - some then used it as a reason to justify hostilities. We have used our differences to mistreat one another.

Go read the whole thing. It is awesome.

With props to Pat for the link.

Happy Easter!

I owe you an apology for not posting more over the last week. It's been busy, blah blah blah, and I've been in the doghouse with Panda, which completely enervates me. I could go into all the details, but it would probably bore you and do nothing to help me. Suffice it to say that I'm in the doghouse, and any effort on my part to move out of the doghouse gets me shoved further in. I hate that. I have barely slept the last three nights, which is starting to take its toll. I have a hard time remembering to take my antidepressant in the mornings, but I made darn sure I took it today.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published its annual report on CEO compensation. It was very interesting, and once I've digested it a little more, you can expect a post. I've ranted about CEO salaries before, but there are some positive examples out there of CEOs who don't rake in obscene amounts of money at the expense of their workers.

I asked my accounting prof last night for a recommendation as part of my application to Virginia Tech. I was nervous about asking her, but I figure that since I have gotten 100s on both tests we've taken so far, and I've been turning in phases of my project early, I probably don't have much to worry about. I just need to get to work on those application essays! I'm not sure of the tack I want to take with them. In the shower yesterday (where much inspiration comes to me), I was mentally composing an argument based on my experience with bipolar disorder, but I don't know whether that's a risk I'm willing to take on my application essay. If the admissions people are at all prejudiced by the stigma attached to mental illness, then I'll be sunk. But learning to live with bipolar is the hardest work I've ever done, and it's taught me that my limits are a lot farther out than I had originally thought. There are things I miss, though. The stability is awesome, but my moods seem to have very little variation. Panda misses seeing me excited about things. I can be excited on the inside now, but it doesn't seem to telegraph any more. And I have no sex drive whatsoever. My sex drive is so low that I don't even know if I want to have a sex drive. I know Panda misses that, too. He is patient with me, though.

We had a baptism in church on Sunday, and it was awesome. Baptisms usually move me to tears, and this was no exception. There's a song we usually sing while the clergy and family and godparents are getting all set up, called I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry. It's kind of schmaltzy, but I eat it up. I want this song at my funeral. Speaking of my funeral, there's something my munchkins have said that really touches me. It's not like they think about my death a lot, but Bear has said that he wants my collection of books, and Ladybug has said that she wants the collection of things I've written. She read a bunch of it recently, and she was totally amazed. She said, "Momma, I didn't know you were a REAL writer! This is really good! Why did you stop sending it out?" It made my heart leap for joy within my chest. Think I should include all the technical documents I've written? Then she probably wouldn't be so excited any more. :-)

I wish you grace and peace today.