More from "Threads"

"I'm not ready. I don't even know what I would write," I said in a plaintive tone that another ear might hear as whining. 

She stepped closer to my hospital bed until she was standing directly over me. I could smell the faint remains of her familiar perfume and see the tiny lines I had never noticed before on the edge of each eye. She smiled and the creases around her mouth showed, too; how did she get so old, I wondered. But then chuckled internally with my next thought: we are the same age. 

"Rachel," she said in her firmest voice, her blue-grey eyes looking deep into mine, maybe even beyond. "The words are inside of you. You and I both know that. You were born with them in there. In fact there are so many words, spoken and written, unspoken and unwritten, inside of you, that many of them have joined together to form phrases and sentences that aren't even true. Those phrases and sentences have linked up to make stories that are absolute and total lies. And those are the words you read to yourself over and over, as if they were some kind of sacred text. They've become more real than your actual experiences."

My eyes filled; she was right. She reached forward and gently wiped away one of the runaway tears that escaped from the corner of my right eye.

"Rachel, you who could have, and still can, take charge of all the words inside of you and create meaning with them ... none of that bullshit you've been listening to all these years, but true, real meaning. And you could use those words to  tell stories that are not only true but, when they are read by others, will change both the reader and the writer forever."

I looked away, really crying now. The corner of sky I could see through the hospital window was blue and bright. It was a beautiful day out there and I could picture people walking in parks, playing with kids in yards, lying in a hammock and reading, working hard at their jobs, kissing their lovers, whispering with those they love about the dreams they have for the future.

"I don't have anything to say to them anymore. We both know that. Look at me," I sobbed.

"I didn't said it was going to be easy, Sweets," she said, kindness mixing with sternness in her face. "It's going to mean a bit of a battle, Rach. While you've been lying here, and well before that, even more of those words inside of you formed themselves into new and even more untrue, even more destructive, sentences and stories. And these stories have become veritable chains. They chain your arms to this bed. They wrapped themselves tightly around your heart so that sometimes even breathing hurts, let alone feeling. They've wrapped themselves in tight coils around your mind, giving you the illusory feeling that your talent, your sharp intellect and your grasp of the truth of what it means to be human, are gone."

I nodded, tears flowing down my cheeks, sobs shaking me. She was right; it felt just like that. I had forgotten she could see straight into me and the relief of hearing her say what she saw there. And loving me even more, somehow, because of it. I had felt an almost-blank toward her for weeks now, but I could feel the old movement inside of me, in spite of the drugs that were pumping into my veins through the cords overhead. This was why I fell in love with her in the first place.

She got down on her knees beside the bed so her face was only inches from mine. She reached up and tenderly wiped my tears away with a hankie I knew she'd embroidered herself. She looked me in the eyes again as she smoothed my hair away from face, just the way my mother used to do.

"Rachel," she whispered, a fierceness in her quiet tone that was repeated in her eyes. "Thats why it's going to be a battle. Those strings of words, those sentences and phrases that are paralyzing you right now must be read aloud, even cried over until they are meaningless and have lost their power to define you. Then they can be discarded."

Her voice changed a little and there was a slight smile at the corners of her mouth.  "And then, Sweet Girl, you will find that deep inside you are new words. Fresh words. Buckets and buckets of them for you to sift through to find the perfect ones with which to tell YOUR story, the truth, the one that you and I both know will heal and restore. Not just you, but me, and everyone else who reads them."

I looked back outside and the familiar panic and overwhlem filled me. This was what got me here in the first place. How could I do anything but react to all of what I would find out there in the real world? I'd have to have a kind of strength and energy I don't feel and that I haven't felt in such a long time that I've forgotten what it feels like to feel capable, at ease, confident. Normal.

"I don't know where to start," I said looking back at her, my voice shaking. "Just thinking about it makes me want to lay back down and call the nurse to give me something so that I won't feel for awhile."

She nodded. "I know."


She pulled herself up from her knees by grabbing onto the bed bar and stood over me. She stroked my cheek with her hand and tucked my hair behind my ear. I could see love on her face and feel it in her touch, but I felt almost angry thinking about it.

"Why do you love me?" I demanded.

She looked at me. She laughed.

"Rachel, I don't know how to not love you. I know you don't feel like a whole person right now. But you ARE. I can see the whole of you, even when you can only feel this painful, lost part. It's like one of those novels you are going to write. You are living in a chapter that tells the story of the main character's 'bottom,' when all is dark and hopeless. You, like the character, don't know that the next chapter in the book is when the sun breaks through the clouds, the storm breaks, the insight comes, the love story begins or the thing that was so very dead raises its head to show it is still alive."

I was listening now. "Story arc," I said. "That's called the story arc."

She rolled her eyes. "O.k. smarty-pants. The story arc is what I can see. I can see the whole thing. No, I don't know what happens next, but I know who YOU are, and I know, as you have told me many times while expounding on good fiction and Stephen King, the plot happens because of who the character is."

I nodded.

"So," she continued, "I know you. I know the main character and I know that the plot that will happen because of WHO YOU ARE is going to be something breathtakingly beautiful that will change the world. You've already changed me. The story isn't even close to over, Beautiful Rachel. And I'm going to walk through as much of that story with you as you will allow me to."

She leaned in and kissed me on the forehead. Impulsively, I wrapped my arms around her neck. I felt a corner of hope.


"But how ... " I started to ask, and then left it hanging. I didn't even know how to imagine what was next. Another dose of pills, maybe. Sleep. But that part of me that was beginning to hope had just a little bit of energy behind it.

She smiled. "Now there's my girl."

She picked up a familiar black case that I recognized immediately as my laptop case. I immediately felt panic kick in.

"No way," I whispered. "Not yet. I can't."

She unzipped the case and sat down in the chair next to my bed.

"Rachel, you don't even have to touch it yet. You don't have to do anything. I am going to start. I will type until you are ready to take over. I know you don't know what to write. But that's o.k. I'm going to help you. We, together, are going to write down the stories. At first it will be those bad ones you've been telling yourself, me and everyone else. The painful stories. The horrifying stories. The story of how you got here. Then it will be the stories you haven't even told me. The ones you haven't even dared to let yourself hear, but that are inside of you. You and I are going to write all that pain. All that rejection. All the abandonment. All the violence. All the stolen innocence. All the fears. All the guilt and shame. ALL OF IT."

She looked at me with a look I knew well. The look I'd seen when she'd told me she loved me and wanted to never leave my side for the foreseeable future. It was the look that meant she'd decided. It was the look that meant nothing and no one could change her mind.

"Then what?" I asked. "What happens after that?"

She smiled. "I don't know, doll. But those stories will be outside of you. We don't have to show them to anyone else unless you want to. But they will be outside of you. You will know that someone else besides you understands what you have been through, what you have felt. You will know that I don't just love the parts of you that you've shown me or that I've discovered, but every single tiny piece of you."

I think my face betrayed the anxiety that gave me. This was in many ways my deepest fears. That if, when I showed someone else the entirety of myself, they would ultimately reject me. I had been through enough with her to know she could handle a lot. I mean, God, she was here in front of me, loving me at my weakest point to date. But it still sounded terrifying.

"Rachel, I know that's scary. But you can do it. You've done hard things before. I know you can do it. And when you find yourself at a road block, I will lift you over. We are going to do this together. We are going to do what you, my sweet little writer girl, MUST do, in order to heal, to move through and over the past. We are going to write until there is nothing left inside of you to write. And then..."

It was her turn to get a little teary. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it tight.

"Then," she said, through her tears, a smile on her face, "you will be able to write what you were born to write, what you've been longing to write for your whole life and what the world has been waiting for you to write, even if they don't know it. You and I both know that that is who you are."

I swallowed a sob. She was right, of course; even I knew that somewhere deep down under the pain. But would I have remembered without her help? I didn't know. How could she love me so much? The weight of the gift of that quickened something deep inside of my chest, like a tiny ache between my ribs, but far inside. It felt like something that had been locked up tight or frozen solid had been popped open or come to life. It almost hurt. But not in a way I wanted to resist. Couldn't resist. It felt like an opening up and surge of energy through something in the very core of me.

I recognized this energy: it was love energy, the kind that used to fill me as I, without even meaning to, would rush toward her almost involuntarily. The same kind that would overwhelm me until I rushed to the computer and then let what was inside burst out of my fingers and onto the page.

I looked at her in wonder. "I can't love unless I write. And I can't write unless I love."

She smiled and this time her whole body seemed to smile.

"I know," she whispered as she pulled my head toward her chest. "I know."

Is Institutional Marriage the Opposite of Unconditional Love?

This song by Alanis Morissette is an incredible description of unconditional love. The lyrics are typed out at the end of this post. How does/doesn't this kind of love fit into our views about "normal, healthy marriages?" I'm struggling to think of any marriage I know about in which both partners could say/mean this to one another. There are so many reasons for that. Practical reasons, even. Here's some:

If I love like this

•  My spouse might feel they can just go off with someone else
• I would have to be in charge of my own "personal nest" in such a way that the other person walking away wouldn't threaten my well-being or that of my children.
• I would have to open myself up to the risk of being hurt/left/rejected

O.k. but wait a second ... even in traditional marriage, either spouses can technically still walk out. Even in traditional marriage I can't know for sure that I will be provided for and won't need to have the ability to do that myself if my spouse should get sick, lose his job, or even die. Even in traditional marriage, I am vulnerable to the risk of being hurt/left/rejected.

So what's the thing that makes the love in the song lyrics so incompatible with traditional marriage?

I'd like to say that it's GUILT.

In a traditional marriage, the only thing standing between me and my fear of being utterly alone is the knowledge that my spouse would feel GUILT if he or she broke the vows they made to always love one another. And a lot of other people we know would be pissed off, too.

But here's the deal ... I can tell you with experience behind me and every cell in my body agreeing: knowing your partner is with you because they said they would/don't want to break their vow/don't want to feel guilt is the same damn thing as rejection. In some ways it's worse. At least if I'm rejected I am being freed to find someone who DOES want to love me and I them. But in a guilt-based marriage, I know I am not enough, am not performing well enough, aren't pretty or handsome enough, or whatever. AND on top of it, I'm stuck, too, in this guilt marriage, so I can't even hope that I will be loved by someone else the way I signed up to be loved when I said my vows!

I can also tell you with experience behind me and every cell in my body agreeing: I would rather live with the knowledge that this person I love so much might choose to not want a relationship with me anymore at some point in the future, in a non-guilt-based relationship, because I get to KNOW that they are here today because they want to be in a way I would never be assured of in a traditional marriage.

That is a knowledge with trust behind it that no traditional marriage can give me. In traditional marriage I trade in the sureness of knowing the other wants to be with me. I trade it in for security. The sad part it, it's not even REAL security. It's security based on assuming that the other person is motivated by guilt/vows said at the altar.

One of the ways I "test" things like this is to apply the principle to another kind of situation and see if it holds true there. So let's take our love for our children.

I have written about this before here ("Runaway Bunnies, Breasts & Hell") but let's ask ourselves if the love in this song is the way we love our kids? For me, the answer is a resounding, unequivocal YES.

What about friendships? When I consider the idea of trying to make someone promise to be my friend and motivate them with guilt to fulfill their promise, I see that this notion is obviously preposterous.

Why are marriages any different? Supposedly this is the person you love most in the world. And yet this is the person you want to nail down and box up in an institution that promises the illusion of security.

Institutional, traditional marriage puts the other person in a room and then hands them a key. On the key it says the following:

"Use this key to exit this room but do so knowing that you are going to cause hurt and damage. You are going to be labeled all sorts of bad things and you will be be judged to be a bad person by most people you know."

Do you EVER get to know if you are truly loved with a spontaneous, authentic love in that situation? Hell, no. In fact, as soon as you hand that key to your partner, you are saying goodbye to any possibility of ever knowing for sure you are loved, wanted, adored and desired.

This is the same reason why I don't believe in hell. Authentic, real, unconditional love can not be motivated by fear; fear kills love.

I'd go so far as to say that institutional marriage is the opposite of love. That is not to say that people can't reconstruct their marriages from the inside, out. I believe that's possible. We are mid-reconstruction over here! It's scary. But it's also thrilling. It's making me take responsibility for some things that I wouldn't have when I had the attitude that "he's stuck with me, so I don't need to worry about that." But as I take responsibility for those things, making my own personal nest one that doesn't require him to do any certain thing for me to survive, there is this beautiful result: I get to know that, for sure, he's not with me because I would fall flat on my face with no job, no experience and no confidence that I can take care of myself. I can't put a price tag on that.

I'm not saying we've got this thing figured out. We have no idea what we're doing. We are just taking one step at a time, learning from our failures and following our hearts.

This song would have scared the stuffing out of me twelve years ago as I contemplated my wedding, only a month away this time of year! But it doesn't anymore. It feels exciting and inspiring to see and experience life this way.

Here's the lyrics:

I'll give you countless amounts of outright acceptance if you want it

I will give you encouragement to choose the path that you want if you need it

You can speak of anger and doubts your fears and freak outs and I'll hold it

You can share your so-called shame filled accounts of times in your life and I won't judge it

(and there are no strings attached to it)



You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give

You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have

I give you thanks for receiving it's my privilege

And you owe me nothing in return



You can ask for space for yourself and only yourself and I'll grant it

You can ask for freedom as well or time to travel and you'll have it

You can ask to live by yourself or love someone else and I'll support it

You can ask for anything you want anything at all and I'll understand it


(and there are no strings attached to it)



You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give

You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have

I give you thanks for receiving it's my privilege

And you owe me nothing in return



I bet you're wondering when the next payback shoe will eventually drop

I bet you're wondering when my conditional police will force you to cuff up

I bet you wonder how far you have now danced you way back into debt

This is the only kind of love as I understand it that there really is



You can express your deepest of truths even if it means I'll lose you and I'll hear it

You can fall into the abyss on your way to your bliss I'll empathize with

You can say that you have to skip town to chase your passion and I'll hear it

You can even hit rock bottom have a mid-life crisis and I'll hold it

(and there are no strings attached)




You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give

You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have

I give you thanks for receiving it's my privilege

And you owe me nothing in return

The Redemption of My Rapist ... and Me

My son and I when he was four

In the Spring of 1997 I was raped.

It took me until about three years ago in a very emotional therapy session to be able to even say those words. I've written the story; doing so was an important part of healing, but I've shared that account with only a few people close to me. That's not what this blog post is.

This blog post is about something that happened yesterday, while I ran on the treadmill, that changes the story of how I was raped in a way that I can only sort of embarassedly call "redemptive." Embarassedly, since that sounds sort of pat, trite, religious and ... I don't know ... sermon-y. But I'm not sure of another word. I'll change it if I think of a better one. The point is that everything in the story shifted, including me. Including the man who raped me. But you'll understand better as you read more ...

Yesterday afternoon in my nearly-uninhabitable studio (that's a whole other post about how the fact that my art studio is a place I can't even sit down in anymore, let alone create art in, is symptomatic of what's going on inside of me these days!) I hopped on the treadmill to run my almost-daily 4-mile run, the cheapest of my several anti-depressants.

I clicked on an old playlist and listened to it as I ran and read a book. A song came on that is one of only several left on my itunes that are sort of "Christian-ey" and that I usually skip over and occasionally consider just deleting altogether. It was "Forgiven," by Sanctus Real, and for some reason I let it play.

As I listened to the song, I began picturing, rather than the singer singing about God, someone singing about another human being. Here's the song and the lyrics are super-imposed over the video so follow along with the words and "hear" them as yourself talking to another human being or another human being talking to you.... So when the line comes, "I'm a treasure in the arms of Christ," substitute in your mind the voice of someone else in your life saying, "I'm a treasure in arms of [substitute YOUR name here]."
 

I played it again after I did what you just did, but this time the person who was "forgiven" was someone who I didn't expect to see in my mind's eye. I stopped the treadmill and crouched down as the song played through. Tears ran down my cheeks. My chest was threatening to explode.

The person singing the song to me was Gabriel, the man who raped me all those years ago, the man who continued fucking me even as my head hit the headboard and I cried, "Stop! Stop please stop!"

But this was a different Gabriel who was singing the song. This Gabriel wasn't hurting me, but instead looking at me with a face transformed by MY forgiveness and acceptance. He was tearfully sorry for hurting me, grateful for my forgiveness and clearly someone very different than the man I knew that long-ago Spring.

But then at some point in the song something even more unexpected happened. Gabriel the man, so sure of my forgiveness, turned into a curly-black-haired-boy of about four who was sitting up on my lap while I held and rocked him. This was Gabriel, as well, I realized, a little boy Gabriel he had once been, long before he preyed upon my naivete. A Gabriel who was, himself, naive and innocent.

I looked at the little Gabriel on my lap with compassion, and then a memory came back that I had not thought of for years: in college Gabriel had told me one afternoon (before the rape) after our women's studies class, while we sat and drank sodas and he smoked, that he had been abused in basically every way possible when he was a small boy in Romania. I don't remember details, but I do remember that even as his jaw hardened as he spoke those words, tears filled his eyes. I remember crying a bit that afternoon for that lost, broken little boy.

And then another memory hit me as I crouched there on the treadmill yesterday, my body shaking with sobs. It was a conversation from the evening of the night he raped me. We were "just friends" and I'd told him some of my story, but I remember him telling me a story from his past, as well, that was especially poignant.

He'd been married just a couple years before to a young woman who he'd loved very much and who he felt loved him very much, as well. She came from a strict Christian home and left her family and her faith to marry him. They were very young. He said I was like her in a lot of ways. Dark-haired, petite, sweet.

But then, he said, one day he came home to his wife and her father packing all her things. She wanted a divorce, she announced. Gabriel was shocked. Her father had helped her see the error of her ways, she explained, and she believed she could no longer live in a relationship that was "unequally yoked." God couldn't bless their marriage, she explained, parroting her father. Gabriel begged her to stay. To reconsider. She didn't. He never saw her again. His heart was, yet again, broken.

The young woman that I was that evening, listening compassionately to the story of Gabriel's pain, was probably a young woman very like his ex-wife. I was 19, a virgin, and had very recently left a high-school sweetheart and the faith of my childhood. I didn't know what I believed yet, had no clue if I believed the Bible was true, didn't even know if I thought God was real, but I DID know that I still wanted to "wait" to have sex for the first time with someone with whom I was completely in love and in a committed relationship with. My parents, had they known I was sitting in the bedroom of a "frat boy" who I hardly knew, telling him trustingly just exactly how innocent I was, would be horrified (as would I if it were my daughter sitting there). Now, looking back, I can see myself as he likely saw me: innocent, naive, cute, hopeful, inexperienced, kind and open.

And then it happened. As I crouched there on the treadmill yesterday, the music and the memories pouring over me, I recognized that something very suddenly and in a very deep place had shifted. All at once.

I KNEW, though I can't explain it logically, that when Gabriel was raping me, he was acting out the pain he had endured as a child and then as a husband. I know that's not logical, nor something I can prove. I can't ever know exactly what he was thinking or feeling, and I probably don't want to, but I know in that instant, from the perspective I was in in that moment, little curly-haired toddler Gabriel on my lap leaning trustingly into my chest, that there was a bigger picture than the one I'd carried around of Gabriel, hot and hurtful in the pit of my stomach, all these years. He was no longer the monster I'd made him into in my memory.

Indeed, Gabriel had a choice. He could have seen me as a whole human being who didn't understand what she was getting herself into and, when she realized it, wanted him to stop. He could have stopped.

AND the parents and uncles who raised their hands to him as a little tiny boy and then molested him in the dark had a choice.

The woman who left Gabriel without even having a conversation about it, labeling him "bad," and rejecting him completely, had a choice, as well.

And of course I had a choice. I could have listened to the quiet voice inside that told me to be careful. I could have physically fought him off, rather than laying under him, crying. I could have gotten up and drove away to get help, rather than lying immobilized against the wall all night and then allowing him to do it again the next morning so that I could prove to myself that I was a big girl who could handle "having sex." I could have called it what it was, starting then, rather than telling a story of "when I had premarital sex for the first time" for the next twelve years and carrying the accompanying guilt and shame for doing so.

So many people had so many choices. Sure, some of us were more innocent than others. But we were all afraid. All hurt. All victimized. I wasn't the only one who was hurt that day. Gabriel acted out hurt that had been done to him, on me. And as he did that, I know the wound in his heart and mind was once again scraped open.

To know what it feels like to be hurt in a specific way and then to do that to someone else, especially someone innocent, might have felt to his ego like a form of relief in a way I can't understand. But instead it hurt him all over again. I don't know how I know this, but I do.

I let the song play again, tears streaming down my cheeks and onto my treadmill, but this time it was a different Gabriel singing the song. He was somehow all of those forms of himself (toddler, abandoned husband and unfeeling opportunist) all at once. And it was that him, the "The Whole Story Gabriel" who was transformed even further into a man with bright eyes, lit-up face, apology on his face (because he, too, could see the "The Whole Story Gabriel," as well as the "The Whole Story Cheryl"), gratefulness and even love radiating from him when he looked at me.

I don't know what comes after life. I don't know where (or if!) I will wake up after this life is over. In a kind of heaven? A new earth? But however that works, I'm just sure that there will be a reality in which I can ONLY see everyone - those who hurt me and who I hurt - as they really, truly are. Under their pain, the abuse they endured, the cruelty they suffered, the psychoses and wounds that they lived with. And they will see that way, too. We will see THE WHOLE STORY.

In the meantime, I think we get glimpses of this "Whole Story." Usually they visit themselves upon us the way it happened for me on the treadmill. Usually we aren't knowingly "looking for" the whole story. But once we see it, even a corner of it, we get to take action. We can choose to keep going back to that "Whole Story Window" into our reality and looking through it, rather than returning to a foggy window we used to see this person or this situation through that only allowed us to see in a "Part of the Story" way.

The tough part about persistently choosing to look at someone who we have been hurt by through "The Whole Story Window" is that that person may not be looking at US through that window. They may still see themselves as the victim and me as the "Bad One." And that's painful. But we can not force them to look through a different window at us. We can only look at THEM through "The Whole Story Window," and then treat and love them accordingly. I believe that sort of love is transformational. And I think this is the only true kind of forgiveness. That will likely be another blog post... :)

Ephipany

In the quiet kind of way that these things do, a simple but life-altering thought crept up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder this afternoon. I wasn't looking for it; I wasn't asking to find it. In the gentlest way possible it just opened itself up, right in front of me.

Here it is:

What if my Real Self is like a candle, just waiting to be ignited?

It couldn't be simpler. Wax, a wick and a flame.

Every part of my body and mind turned and curled around this idea and if eyes could see what happened next it would be like watching a dark, empty house suddenly light up, every single light inside turned on all at once.

Next, the ramifications of this new idea begin to hit, one after another, like a set of cards being tipped over, one right after the other:

What if Jesus was simply a human being with that candle inside, lit?

What if God made us with that candle inside and his deepest longing is for that candle to be lit, not some impossible "complete surrender" or a certain percentage of the mind given over in mental acquiescence?

What if the crucifixion wasn't about Jesus' blood being shed to cover disgusting human beings so that a perfect God could stand to look at us? What if it was simply the repercussions of a human who lives with his candle lit, even in the wind?

Suddenly an old memory verse comes to mind from Matthew 5: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."

and

John 9:5: "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Not Jesus is the only light of the world. Not you will be the light of the world after you....fill in the blank. Not because I'm about to die you'll be the light of the world. Not go scare people into believing in salvation through Christ as the light of the world. No.

 You ARE the light of the world.

Perhaps it's just how my mind works, but this idea is quite simply blowing my gaskets. To this every cell in my body answers, "Yes."

The nature of a flame is to spread. The nature of a flame is cast light into dark shadows. The nature of a flame is to warm. The nature of a flame is to burn away the refuse under which lies a treasure.

I see I've been walking around this simple truth for awhile now. I knew inside in the deepest part of me that our hearts are not "desperately wicked," that truth is not "out there" or "up there," but rather, INSIDE.

My friend, Jonathan Brink, just suggested it's more like a candle hidden under a blanket. It was always there. That gets at the truth of all this in an even different way. I love that image, as well.

Tell me, does this "candle" idea resonate with you? If so, would you share it with me?

Put down the pooper scooper: I'm not shit and you aren't, either!

I was interacting with Ron Hollenbach on Twitter and in my effort to explain why I take issue with this post by Fleming Rutledge about Advent, I ended up realizing something pretty big for me.

Fleming Rutledge wrote, "When a culture of impunity is present human beings become bestial toward one another~that’s not an opinion; that’s a fact." She goes on to say, "Imagine a world without judgment. That’s impunity," and to basically imply that without impunity we'd all be doing atrocious acts of violence.

I just don't buy it. As I was trying to put this into words, I ended up tweeting,

"The problem is not our hearts; Our hearts are the solution."

And then I had that sensation that you get when you have one of those rare but wonderful "a-ha!" moments. The heavens open up. The hallelujah chorus. Rays of sunshine. The whole nine yards.


O.k. so maybe your thought is, "Duh..."


Or maybe it just feels so freaking-super-duper-significant in my funny little mind because of its uniquely goofy wiring and idiosyncrasies. And genius, of course. haha.


But either way, it's really, really BIG for me!

See...I grew up thinking...hang on...here comes a caveat... 

(not because anyone intended to teach me this...I need to preface these "I grew up" statements because I am fully aware my own kids will grow up and say, "I grew up..." and I will say, "What the HELL??? That's the opposite of what I was saying, you dodo-head!" or something along those lines)

I grew up thinking that without Jesus' death, which covered over my sins and allowed him to come into my life in the form of the Holy Spirit, I was pretty much...well...SHIT. To put it simply.

Yes. I was shit. And there I was all stinky and nasty and needing to be picked up with a pooper-scooper and flung straight into...well...HELL.

But Jesus strong-armed the pooper-scooper out of God's hands, calmed him down (he really despises poop, you know, and was always itching to pitch me and all the other shit in the place he specifically, intentionally designed for shit since the beginning of creation...you know...he made us...then made a place to torture us...totally logical) and threw himself on the cross. When he died there, then came back to life, now God looked at me and saw....flowers. Or at least less stinky poop. Depends on the particular brand of theology you subscribe to. But anyway, I wasn't just plain old poop anymore.

IF!

And oh, that's a big "if." IF...I agreed with God, "Yes, God, I am stinky shit and I deserved to be thrown into hell, but thank you for sending Jesus to wrestle the pooper-scooper out of your hands and die on the cross so that you could get those awesome rose-colored glasses you wear now when you look at me."

You see, depending on what church it was, what pastor it was, or how well my ears had been cleaned (you never know where these ideas come from), I vacillated between thinking that God super-glued those rose-colored glasses on his face OR that I had been reconstituted from stinky shit into something different...pretty flowers, let's say. It was usually a funny melding of the two.

Either way, I was stinky shit without God. Either way, I was on the way to hell with all the other stinky shit, until Jesus saved me. And either way, now, on this side of agreeing to all the right things, I'm going to heaven when I die and I'm now capable of maybe possibly doing some good because now God is in me in the form of the Holy Spirit.

But here's the problem I've always had with this idea. That means, if you aren't a Christian, YOU, my lovely bloggy friend, are stinky shit. It's easy to think Sadaam Hussein is stinky shit or the guys raping women in Zimbabwe in the Advent post I am reacting to are stinky shit. But what about....your friend? Your spouse? The lovely, caring man at the nursing home who doesn't have to visit your elderly mother every day, but does anyway...who it turns out is Buddhist? The sweetest angel of a kindergarten teacher who it turns out is an atheist? And what do you do when Stinky-Shit-Atheist-Lady is nicer than you? Or what do you do when you find out your pastor was molesting little boys?

So this has been a really big problem for me. I just don't buy that we are all "desperately wicked," "evil" bastards that, given the opportunity, if no one were watching, would rape, kill, steal, maim and destroy everyone else.

But then people get raped, killed, stolen from, maimed and destroyed by people who it is way easier to just agree are "Stinky Shit." It's much more convenient to believe that if they just accepted the free gift of salvation through Jesus, they would stop being Stinky Shit. It's a lot easier to think that their problem is being HUMAN.

But I'm human. And I don't rape or kill. Guess what? I just checked really thoroughly in my heart and...surprise! I don't even WANT to rape or kill! And here's the inconvenient truth...brace yourself...

I'm not a Christian.

So what to do now?

I'm being all snarky and sarcastic, but now I'm going to stop, sit down and let the tears flow.

Yes. Tears.

How many years did I waste not feeling good enough? How many years did I waste feeling guilty because I clearly wasn't fully surrendered to Jesus if I wanted to make out with my boyfriend? How many years did I spend begging God to take all of me and reconstitute every little cell of me, no matter how long it took, or how painful it was, into who he wanted me to be?

My chest aches thinking about it. Why?

Because I was already who he wanted me to be.

Oh my that hurts.

So today, when I was finally able to say,

"The problem is not our hearts; Our hearts are the solution,"

It felt AMAZING. There it was. All simple and shiny and right.

The truth. What I've been trying to say. What my knowing inside has whispered my whole life.

It's not a removing of my shittiness.
It's not a reconstituting of my humanity.
It's not a covering up of God's eyes so he doesn't see the reality of my shittiness.
It's not a big giant holy fix-up job.

It's a looking into our hearts and finding...oh my goodness...LOVE.

It's looking into our hearts and NOT finding nasty black shit all over. It doesn't mean that we're perfect. It just means the "answer" is that our hearts are good, and the solution to EVERYTHING is already there.

It's a falling back into. It's a laying back in. It's a turning my head toward what I always desired anyway.

It's a, "It was there all along!"
It's a, "I knew it."
It's a, "I've always known it."

And then I can turn to YOU, because I know you are not stinky shit at all, I can look deep into your eyes and I can say,

"You are good. You are very, very good."

"Shaddaim" (A God with Breasts)

Brown. I am falling into a deep chocolate brown.  
Brown, yes, but somehow different than any other brown I have ever seen. It is almost as if it is the first color my eyes have ever beheld. Perhaps it is.
 
It is a deep color, a three-, or possibly three-hundred- dimensional color, something more alive and more real than any of the browns in my life: the bark of the oak tree in the middle of our yard in Clovis, the coat of my grandmother’s dachshund, Shautzie, the brown of my daughter's hair, still damp from birth, or the leathery skin of our housemaid, Mantuya, in Papua New Guinea. Those were brown and this is....somehow different.
 
I am mesmerized. I would be happy to see only one color forever, if it could be this color.


I feel myself being pulled and tugged, as if a rope is tied to my heart and the brown is holding the other side. I give in, letting myself be drawn I know not where by the invisible rope. As my skin, my bones, my mind and even my soul, are moved by this unseen force, I am filled with a feeling that can only be described as pure, ultimate joy. It is the feeling of finally moving in the direction I have always tried to move in but could never quite find the door to. It is the feeling of an aching need that has been as part of me as my own flesh being finally fulfilled more exquisitely than I could ever have imagined. I am not fighting. I am joyfully going where I am being taken, with every fiber of my being. It is a feeling of falling, deliciously, into joy.

And then I land. I am in The Brown. The Brown is all around me, enfolding me and caressing me. I have never known this deep, brown joy. I never even dreamed it. I spread my arms, my legs, my mouth, my pores in a joyous acceptance of The Brown. I drink it, eat it, breathe it in, spread it all over my skin and then turn my body around and around in it. I am wanting to be full of this Brown. A warmth fills me as every cell of my body willingly absorbs The Brown.

Now I realize: this has been my only unfulfilled desire. I thought I desired so many things, but now that I am here in this moment, I realize those desires were really only one. And here I am, being utterly satisfied. Every moment in The Brown is more lovely than the last, and as my heart and mind embrace the multi-dimensions of this realization, it is as though my capacity to desire grows. I desire more; it is fulfilled. I desire even more; it is fulfilled. I am fuller and fuller, yet I know I can never be too full. I know now what in some part of myself I have always known: Joy is The Brown; The Brown is Joy.

And then from The Brown, comes a voice. Not like any noise I have ever heard, but like every noise I have ever heart, all at once. My body responds without my mind willing it to. It turns of its own volition, toward the voice and moves toward it. My eyes strain, for in that voice was a call to look, and of course I must do just that. My body is full of eyes, it seems, all of them, looking, looking. I will know when I see what I am looking for. My ears were made to hear this sound and I have been, without knowing, straining to hear this voice all my life. Now, suddenly, it is close. It’s so close I can almost touch it, taste it and hold it.

And then it is here….right here. It was there all along, I realize, but my ears were not ready until this moment. My eyes didn't know how to see until this moment. They dance: here is what they were made to see. A feeling of deep knowing overtakes me, temporarily banishing all other thoughts and I can not help but weep with the emotion of it. Through my tears, I see the source of that voice. I see The Brown. I know what it is, and I remember that this is not the first time my eyes have seen this sight, after all. It was this memory, almost forgotten, that drove me on for a lifetime. And it has all been leading up to this….

Oh! I realize all of life was a wall with little cracks through which, every once in awhile, I could see bits of this. I remember seeing those cracks in the beauty of a sunset on Nissan Island, reflected in the pink, purple and orange waves. I saw a corner of this in the face of my newborn sister as she took her first breath. I saw a speck of it in a friend’s artwork, the colors and shapes mixing and meeting in a way that touched something deep inside of me.

I see Her.

The voice was Her voice. The Brown was her eyes - deep, dark eyes. Each second, more of her comes into focus. Everything makes sense, fits perfectly, and seems so achingly, beautifully familiar, more familiar than my own body.

My eyes drink in this beauty, but they can't keep up. My eyes seem to see in slower motion than the beauty is growing. Every nerve in my body responds to Her, moves toward her Brown, breathes Her in and is breathed in by Her. I realize that I am becoming lost in her at the same time that I am becoming more real, more solid, more alive than I have ever been.

Then I look deeper into the eyes. This is The Brown I saw first. This is what pulled me as surely as a magnet. This is what has always been pulling me. I gaze deeply, unblinking, into a pool of something both strange and familiar. Where have I seen those eyes before? I can not remember, but I know that I have seen these eyes, as surely as I know this is the first time I have seen them. This is not a contradiction. Both are somehow equally true, equally real.

I realize that she is looking at me. I relax, burn and become in her gaze. This is what I have always longed for: to be looked full in the face and to feel that I am understood completely, not loved in spite of that understanding, but because of it.

The Brown is love. Just as this Brown is different but truer than any brown I have known, so this love I see, feel, and know, coming from her eyes is different and true. I feel it settling into me, but it feels like a new feeling. As if I've gained a seventh sense.
I know even as I feel this love that without it I would never be happy or content again, yet I find within myself no fear at all. I have never known a love without fear. Love and fear are two sides of the same coin in my world. To love is to risk losing, to risk being betrayed, hurt, rejected and left behind. But these things are impossible to feel as she gazes at me, love in her eyes. I look for the familiar tell-tale signs of anxiety and suspicion in my heart and mind but they are nowhere inside of me. I am full of love and it is overflowing. I am so full. There is no room for fear.

She opens her mouth to speak and my entire body listens. My whole being becomes an ear, taking in this sound. It is a voice I know, that I have always known, I realize with surprise. From deep within me bubbles up a response that I can’t hold back, can’t not say. It erupts form me involuntarily.

“Mother…” I sob.

Another word wells up inside of me and explodes from my moth, from every pore in my body.

“Shaddaim,” I hear myself say.

And then what I have been longing for all along, but didn’t know to ask for or even want….what I have been hungering and thirsting for since my first breath in this world... fills my mouth, my heart and every part of me, utterly and completely.

It is flesh: soft, warm flesh and from it comes a taste that transcends any and all tastes I have tasted before. It is how truth tastes, I realize. How joy tastes. How pleasure tastes. How completeness and fulfillment taste. When I was hungry, I was hungry for this. When I was thirsty, I was thirsty for this. When I felt there was something I desired…something more…but couldn’t pinpoint what, it was this.

This is the milk I was made to drink and I drink deeply.

Survey Says: Better Not Play Bible Trivia with Un-Believers or You Might Lose

Contrary to common Christian belief, the average atheist is not in fact someone who needs to have the Gospel presented to them in a clear way. They don’t need to have “the bridge illustration” doodled on a napkin for them. The average agnostic is NOT “not sure about God” because he or she doesn’t want to think too hard or is chronically fickle. In fact, according to an article in today’s L.A Times, “a survey that measured Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths.”

Say, what? Yup…you read that right. Why, you ask, would an atheist or agnostic know more about religion than a Christian?

The L.A. Times interviewed Alan Cooper, the associate director for research at the Pew Forum, the organization that released this survey earlier this week and he answers this very question. He thinks the reason atheists and agnostics know more about religion than those who ascribe to those religious beliefs is because they are more likely to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and went through a process of reading, reflection and decision before leaving that tradition. In other words, atheists and agnostics are not in fact people who don’t want to hear about, read about, or understand the “Gospel.” Rather, they are people who have grappled with it in a more serious way than the average believer; their atheism and agnosticism is something they came to thoughtfully.

“These are people who thought a lot about religion,” Cooperman said. “They’re not indifferent. They care about it.”

The study also found a correlation between atheism/agnosticism and being well-educated. However, this is not to say that the most educated people became atheists and agnostics, since Christians with similar education levels still knew less about their beliefs than non-believers.

The L.A. Times article also quotes Rev. Adam Hamilton, a Methodist minister and author who, commenting on the survey’s findings said, “I think that what happens for many Christians is they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it’s already accepted to be true, they don’t examine other people’s faiths.”

I’m someone who, as an evangelical Christian, assumed that, if atheists/agnostics just examined Christianity, they would get on board with it. I also told myself that atheists and agnostics liked sinning and therefore found their unbelief more “convenient.”

Today, as a not-atheist-and-sort-of-agnostic-but-definitely-not-Christian, I can say, looking back at my former thought process, that I couldn’t be more wrong. I’m not interested in finding an excuse for sinning. I ate, drank, breathed and lived the Christian gospel for the first 30 years of my life and very thoroughly understand it. I have beyond-average knowledge of biblical facts and Christian theology. I wanted to believe it, more than anything I’ve ever wanted.

When I say I’m not a Christian, this is not something I say lightly. It’s something I say a little sadly, because I wanted so much to believe it. I can’t. That’s not because I want to live in a certain type of “sinful” lifestyle and need to believe things that make that lifestyle o.k. If only it were that simple. My belief/unbelief came at a high cost. It’s something I wrestled with for decades. My saying that I’m not a Christian is very simply, honest.

These days I’m reluctant to publicaly state that I’m not a Christian anymore, mostly because my hard-won belief/lack thereof is immediately written off by most Christians as “lack of understanding.” I can’t even explain the process I’ve been through without a Christian trying to “better explain” the Gospel in a condescending voice, no less. I’m not stupid, believe it or not, and neither are most other atheists, agnostics and otherwise “un-believing” folks. More knowledge about the Bible or Christian theology isn’t going to convince me to change my mind. That’s because, according to this survey, chances are I understand Christianity better than the average Christian does and, with brain intact, I’ve opted out.

**You can go here to take a quiz that represents a sampling of the actual Pew Survey of Basic Religious Knowledge.

Revisiting "Tattoos & Unconditional Love"

I can't stop thinking about the post before last and the concept of a community that is based on something besides common theological belief. Is it possible? If so, what would it look like?

It struck me this morning that there are ways I already know what such a community would look like. I've written about it before. It's kind of an allegory, but still...it says exactly what I've been trying to say. So I'm re-printing this blog-post and hoping you will want to join me in or continue in the dialogue about the kind of community we all long for, even if we've never been able to put that longing into words.

I'd love to hear what you think after you read it...

Tattoos and Unconditional Love
 

“I recalled a morning years ago in a boxy church in Tujunga, the fluorescent lights, chipped folding chairs. Starr charmed as a snake while Reverend Thomas explained damnation. The damned could be saved, he said, anytime. But they refused to give up their sins. Though they suffered endlessly, they wouldn’t give them up, even for salvation, perfect divine love. I hadn’t understood at the time. If sinners were so unhappy, whey would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life. It wasn’t like I didn’t know where all this remembering got you, all that hunger for beauty and astonishing cruelty and ever-present loss…I had already seen more of the world, its beauty and misery and sheer surprise, than they could hope or fear to perceive. But I knew one more thing. That people who denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger. They were blind sleepwalkers on tightropes, fingers scoring thin air. So I let them go, got up and walked away, knowing I’d given up something I could never get back. Not Ann and Bill Greenway, but some illusion that I’d had, that I could be saved, start again.”

(Fitch, p. 306)

I've been thinking a lot about who I am. Like...really, who am I? The answer to that somehow lies in the life I've lived so far, the things I've seen, the things I've heard and read, the places I've been and the people I've loved and been loved by. All of that is in me.

Like Astrid in the passage above, I say, “Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life.” Somehow this is very connected to my altered vision of God, to the wall I have always seemed to run up against. I used to intellectually say that I am sorry for my sin. Yet somewhere inside of me, I didn't feel sorry. Isn't it those things, as well, that make me who I am?

Somewhere inside of me, I feel the longing to live in a tribe where women gather and paint on their bodies the stories of the pain, the anguish, the joys, the surprises and the beauty of their lives. I know the feeling I would have as I looked at my friends’ and sisters’ bodies, the pleasure and the pain they have known represented on their skin, blending together, making something so beautiful tears would fill my eyes.

I would wear my own stories proudly, my regret and my gladness mixing inside, just as the stories on my body ran into one another, making a new, more beautiful story than if one had happened and not the other. No one would know where one story and one emotion left off and where others began. I would be a beautiful tapestry and I would not be ashamed.

I would paint honestly and clearly the truth of my life and I would read the truth of the others’ lives that they painted. I would know myself. I would know them. They would know me. We would know one another. And we would love one another for telling the truth, for being alive. We would call what we saw, the result of the bad and the good in our lives, beautiful, for that’s what it would be.

At twilight all of us women would go and meet all of the men in one central place. The men would have painted their stories on themselves, as well, and there would be a palpable excitement about seeing one another.

We would sing. We would read one another’s stories. We would laugh and cry together. And then we would dance.

I would get up and walk toward him. His eyes would be soft and gentle, filled with a loving look and lit by the fire. Our hands would touch and I would lean against him. Our stories would blend together as we danced to the music in the firelight.

“Cheryl,” he would whisper, love in his voice, as I looked up at him.

“You are wholly beautiful, my love,” he would tell me tenderly and I would know what he meant.

It would mean that he had read all the stories, that he saw it all, that he knew me. That he looked at not just the story on my arm or my left thigh, above my right eyes or across my belly. I would know he had looked at the whole picture, that he saw all of me…the truth of me.

And seeing all that, he would think I was beautiful and love me. Not in spite of the “bad” parts, not because of how much better I became after the bad parts. Not because he avoided looking at some parts or tricked his mind into not feeling anything when he saw them.

Instead, he would love me because of the whole of who I was. Because of everything and because of the beautiful design that no one else wore. Because of every part of me, each bit a result of my life, good and bad. I would be loved unconditionally.

More on "Understanding"

Thinking more about this topic and just have a simple question:

What do you most wish that someone in your life understood?

Let me elaborate just a bit. In my experience a lot of pain comes from feeling misunderstood. Broken relationships can often be traced back to someone grossly misunderstanding something about the other person.

Yesterday I felt some serious discomfort upon finding out that I have been misunderstood by someone in my life, perhaps for years. Immediately, I felt defensive, hurt and even angry. The questions swirling in my mind were along the lines of: don't you know me better than that? does that sound like something I would do? what kind of a person do you think I am?

So I had to take a look at that. Why did that bother me so much? On the surface I felt mostly offended. But what's underneath that?

It's the pain of feeling misunderstood. I don't need a therapist to tell me why it's painful to feel misunderstood. We interact with others and we develop relationships in which we feel safe and part of that safety comes from knowing we are seen for who we are and loved. When I feel most loved (i.e. safe) I feel that someone sees to the center of who I am...the REAL ME...and loves that Cheryl. I am then...well, SAFE.

The opposite of course is feeling unloved...unsafe. That's why it's so painful to find out that someone with whom I've shared myself, who has experienced me, who I trusted to see me as I am, misunderstands me. There is an immediate flash of fear...WHO have they been experiencing all this time? It wasn't ME. They've been experiencing another version of me, not seeing who I really am. I trusted them with myself, believing that they truly saw/loved me; to find out they didn't when I thought they did is just plain painful.

So back to my question. But think about it in a slightly different way. What makes you feel teary or emotional when you imagine that person in your life really "getting" you, seeing you, understanding you? I can think of a few people/situations that make me want to sob.

If that person could somehow understand what I was feeling when I did what I did....
If this other person wanted (really, truly wanted) to understand the pain I was feeling when....
If that person met me with a desire to understand ME, not approve of everything about me...

Of course I can't make that happen. If I've learned anything, it's that we don't understand one another unless we WANT TO. I can't force someone (or even ASK them to, really) to want to understand me.

But there is something I can do. Something you can do. It isn't easy. It's not comfy. It stings a little because it means putting ourselves out there with no guarantee we will be "met" in a reciprocal way.

We can approach people in our lives with an honest desire to understand them.

We can say things like:
"What do you wish I understood?"
"I want to understand how you felt. I won't say anything in response. I just want to hear how you felt and what you experienced."
"I have no desire to change you. I want to "get" you - the REAL YOU."

Typing those sentences makes me cry. Why? Because if someone approached me with that sort of desire to understand ME...it would utterly change the inside of me, help to heal wounds in a way nothing else can and make me feel loved in a way nothing else would.

So I want to give that to others. Not wait for them to reciprocate. Not expect them to do that for me in return. But freely give that to them.

I know, I know...that's hard as hell. But isn't that love, after all? Seeing the one who hurt you curled up in a ball of pain and rushing toward them with comfort you have the power to give, even if they don't comfort you in return? I don't mean lying down and taking more abuse from them. I don't mean sitting there while they tell you how rotten they think you are. That's not what I mean. It is offering an ear, an open mind, an open heart and a desire to understand the other person....with no conditions.

If we all did this, I can't help but think our world would be an utterly different place. I can't know that for sure, but I do know it would most certainly change ME. And YOU.

The End of Suffering...

A Buddhist friend told me that, "Right understanding is the end of suffering." Not pain, of course. Suffering. Jesus said, "The truth will set you free."

I've been thinking about this a lot. I see over and over the way this is true. If I have the courage to say what I really feel, think and want, and then live out of that, I am experiencing relationships with others in ways I never have before. Old wounds are healed I thought were impossible to heal.

When I want to understand others, my view of them falls away and I see them as they are, usually more like me than different. When we want to understand one another and we walk into a conversation or interaction with acceptance and love for one another, no matter what, something amazing happens. There is a connection. Something clicks. Something falls into place. New things happen. A sort of richness of relationship that is different than anything I've encountered before.

I have realized as I've left behind religion the way I experienced it that I truly never learned to trust myself. Or others, really. The Bible says, "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" I believed that literally. So I grew up believing that if I am honest, if I really listen to what I feel, if I go after what I want, etc. I will end up in the very pit of hell and probably drag a few dozen others along with me in the process! I simply didn't (don't still in many ways) trust myself. It's been and continues to be a process of learning to listen to the real me inside, and then, gradually, learn to trust that.

It was as though I had these muscles inside of me that had never developed or even atrophied from lack of use; Christianity told me I wasn't allowed to use them or that I didn't even HAVE them. I was deeply and totally BAD inside, I read and heard. The only goodness I was capable was when I tapped into/surrendered to God, who, if my heart was right, would infuse his own goodness into me. But I'm finding that that's just not true. I am finding "God" (goodness, truth, compassion, love) inside of ME. Not "out there." Not infused by a sky god who is separate from me and must be appealed to.

It's not changing who I am; it's uncovering who I am.
It's not ignoring the inside of me; it's falling back into it.
It's not a big "clean-up"; it's a peeling off of layers or a birth of something inside of me.

Now I am going through some "physical therapy," I guess! Learning what those muscles, that were there all along, are and do. Strengthening them. Letting blood flow into them. The book/film, "The Secret Garden" is a beautiful allegory of all of this growth and change for me.

Watch for:
-Letting light flood into dark places.
-Truth being revealed and lies being dispelled.
-The miracles that happen as we say the way things really are, challenge what we've been told is true and walk boldly into places we thought we couldn't.
-The way other people in our lives can BE the courage we don't have sometimes.
-Old, desolate places being uncovered, opened and cut back until a beauty that was there all along is revealed.
-Suffering ending.
-Muscles being found and what happens when they begin to strengthen.

As you watch the clips from "The Secret Garden" below, what else do you see/feel/hear/notice? What causes a warmth in your tummy as you see or hear it? What brings tears to your eyes? What do you find yourself wanting to have, to do, to see? What causes something that feels like what someone striking the lowest chords on a piano sounds like?



and then...