Life of the Mind: I have one. Humanless Theology Part I
The story: Part One
Do you remember when I said I was exfoliating and all this toilet stuff was coming up? Yeah. Do you remember me talking about some vague piece of art on a black background with a woman with funeral flowers in her hair? What? You don’t? Oh, oh, you do? Oh good. Back in 2017 my parents sold their house and decided to move to a land far, far away. Okay, it was Idaho - not that far away. In the midst of the moving panic - and it was a panic - my mother fractured her foot. This instantly compounded lots of pre-existing emotional pressures. Add in grief over losing the house, some anger, some fear, and stir wildly and quickly and Voila! - a mess. Once we discovered my mother had fractured her foot, it meant we were down one person for packing possessions and moving furniture around. [1] This elevated the stress of the situation into the stratosphere. We did not have the proper equipment for the rocket launch.
It’s important to know this move preceded other stressful events. This included my mother having a heart attack in September of 2016, my father’s own precarious health, and my increasingly ever present nightmare story. My story revolved around being in a small and larger movement of people who were pleasantly unhelpful. They are called NAR-lings. Frankly, I was in the process of a complete mental breakdown. The house sold quickly leaving my parents scrambling to find other housing in a tough market in Idaho. There was a lot of high strung, lingering, and evolving stress as we plummeted to earth wondering if our parachutes were going to work.
Late 2016, an acquaintance telephoned wanting to reconnect over the Feast of Trumpets. I was hanging out with her off and on processing some shitty things that had happened and I was trying to have a good time. In all of that social social, the idea of her helping us move came to mind as something prophetic. Now, the prophetic is a complicated issue since this is a charismatic woman that comes from the Pentecostal version of Christianity. This version believes in apostles and prophets and is really big on prophecy. It’s more like an addiction and it has rock star status when it comes to the gifts. So, my describing it as “prophetic” is roughly to say that it felt like a Jesus thing - something God wanted. At any rate, let’s call this acquaintance Margaret [not her real name].
While I won’t go into the particulars about why Margaret would benefit by going with us to Northern Idaho [she did have her own reasons which were in play], she was willing to help us move over at least a two week period. We would pay all of her expenses for the help and she’d get a free trip to Idaho. Well sorta. Work you know.
I should say, I don’t come from a functional FOO. [2] We are all dysregulated and products of inter-generational FOO FOO issues that involve a range of unhealthy parenting, community, and natural events. I personally have PTSD, most of which is childhood related, smashed together with more recent religious based trauma. Moving makes the normal family dynamics more extroverted and nutty due to all the stress and poor stress management. Self-care? What the hell is that? Communal support and nurturing? Only if you’re desperate and can’t boot strap yourself through it all. We simply descend into our own personal spaces when trouble is brewing. I was already in cosmic chaos. This person got to witness all of this plus some. There was shame; a lot of shame.
On the day of moving we had the movers loading along with each of us loading a vehicle. Something insipid happened related to my own trauma over a relatively minor decorative towel rack. Yes, a towel rack. It wasn’t the towel rack, mind you. It was a cascade of treatment over things that mattered to me the towel rack symbolically represented under high stress and dysfunctional family foo-ing. That symbolic thing I mention - really matters to the way my brain processes information. Just remember this.
I became upset about this decorative towel rack not fitting into one of the cars for personal transport. I was dismissed by my parents. Suddenly I was 8 years old losing my cat. I mean seriously, this is where it went. I wasn’t standing there in all my adulthood. The emotions, bottled up and corked into grinding teeth and clenched jaw, surfaced. My body stiffened. I’m pretty sure my nose crinkled. If all of this could make sound, it would sound like crumbling steel under the weight of demolition and maybe some hissing. The towel rack was much more embodied and present in the present than I was in this moment. It didn’t give a shit. I did.
In real land, was this minor? Yes. Of course. It’s a towel rack. But I wasn’t focused on the towel rack, but on a collective set of “things” and beings that had been dismissed across my childhood. It was relational, not material. It became historically symbolic, emblematic, of all my outrage, hurt, despair, and the like of wanting what I cared about to be seen. It was a poor mountain to stand on but I was triggered and triggers are just - melted ice cream down my jeans. Yes, I piss ice cream thank you. Margaret was standing there - confused. It’s a towel rack for gawd’s sake. I’m sure my displeasure and now triggered state was written across my face - crinkled nose, upset jaw, and me blubbering about the towel rack. Somehow I began to pull out of it as Margaret expressed her confusion largely minimizing the situation out of ignorance and practice. Her own journey largely interfered with mine such that acceptance, presence, and curiosity were just as void for her as I stood at the chasm of a bunch of pain represented by a decor item that held towels. That’s deep water and that towel rack was empty. I needed a goddamn towel, I had melted ice cream down my jeans and I was swimming in some deep emotional and historical water.
We were in the garage. I went and put the towel rack on the moving truck floor for them to throw in the back with the rest of our shit. Margaret remained stoically in the garage, a stiffened shadow in my blur. She was, I would imagine still confused, I’m sure thinking all manner of strange things about me and the towel rack. It was painted on her face frozen in the glacial melt of my past. I looked at her in the driveway by the moving truck and said, literally, “What?, I’m just being me.” I beat back the shame for once thinking I could trust her. I was real - real triggered - unstuffed, writ large across the furrow of her brow.
After I said this she put her head down and walked back into the house. She was clearly downcast. Now it was my turn to be confused. Something inside told me I hadn’t done anything wrong to create that kind of reaction, so I stayed confused. At least the full memory land freeze had thawed and I was back in adult-land. The towel rack was dutifully placed on the moving truck for transport. If it got lost, so be it.
The next day, the moving truck was gone and we were waiting for some finalizations on the real estate. It was just Margaret and I. I was bothered by what happened the day before and I thought it would be good to clear the air. I brought up the towel rack, the truck, and her walking away looking upset.
She told me she was upset. At least I got that right in my towel rack, memory land, relational blur moment. Because she’s a Christian and a prayerful person, she was praying to the Holy Spirit about how she had just been treated by my person; how I had been mean to her. After all, she explained, she was there to help. She told me she was praying because she didn’t come to help us to be treated meanly by me. Understandable! My question though, was when was I mean to her?
I was now really confused. I’m not sure how I had treated her meanly, but she continued to explain that when I turned around and said, “What, I’m just being mean” she walked away feeling upset and mistreated. In fact, I don’t recall being mean to her, only upset about my relational meltdown over a towel rack which didn’t actually involve her. I wasn’t angry at her. I was allowing myself to be upset in front of her, but I did not attack her. I didn’t even attack my parents. I just suck it all in like a sponge on the edge of a turbulent sea. It didn’t really occur to me at the time, that she may have been in her own wonderland mess [e.g. triggered by something].
I thought, happily, this was going to be easy to clear up. I told Margaret, I didn’t say I was just being mean, I said I was just being me. In other words, in a triggered moment, I chose to be real in spite of my insecurities with her. I decided to trust her in a vulnerable space. I was being real - real triggered.
It was at this point things got unsavory. She began to insist that is not what I said and began to intimate that I - me, myself, and I - didn’t remember what I had actually said. That instead, I had said that I was just being mean. She then reported that when I started to talk to her about the towel rack, my face became all distorted and nasty. I was, in essence, manifesting a demon. Yes, that is what she said - I was manifesting a demon. My facial expressions and behavior were all signs of this “manifestation.” As a result of this experience, I didn’t know what I had said and even, perhaps, what I had done.
Inside my being, I freaked out. I didn’t freak out so much about the demonology thing, at least not at first. All of this was standard fare for Margaret and the communities she had lived with and ministered to for decades. I was familiar with it - very familiar. What I became panicky about was I wasn’t being believed while being accused of something I didn’t do. Her magic painting of me and the situation was in full swing and what I said about my own personal experience was entirely irrelevant to her worldview- her paint. She was the master painter, I was her artwork - however unwilling. Another trigger. Let the glacial freeze begin! Then, splash in the demon sprinkles and I was now triggered by feeling helpless to convince her I wasn’t demon possessed. It mattered to me here. Paint matters. It impacts how others will treat you.
I insisted I did not say what she said I said. I insisted I was fully present and knew what I had said, no matter what the expression on my face appeared to be to her. It was clear she thought I was being petty about a fucking towel rack. She said as much, but put nicely and in context of her own life journey. It was, after all, something relatively minor to all the big things she had to give up in her life to serve God. This went on for a few minutes - her insisting I was demon manifesting [and that’s why I didn’t remember what I actually said] and me saying I wasn’t manifesting some demon and that I knew what I had said. She finally relented and the situation was worked out, but not before I was triggered and re-injured by someone who supposedly knew better what I was doing than myself. In the outside world where normal people live - this is actually called gaslighting.
From here, as things fell apart on this moving journey, she would continue to attempt to deliver me from a spirit of trauma -a demon. But she would fail to see my humanity. How do you see someone’s humanity through a demon? You know, you don’t. That’s the power of shitty magic paint.
My humanity, my being, who I am and how I live, was extinguished by mere brushes of her hand upon the canvas of life.[3] This brings me to the life of the mind and the power of constructs created with magic paint. It brings me back to the poster which now has a name - The Life of the Mind.
Notations
[1] She did try to help pack but she just wasn’t as able-bodied as she wanted to be and we needed.
[2] Family of Origin (FOO)
[3] What I was feeling, doing, and saying was overridden by someone who had the “truth” on the situation. I clearly didn’t know what I was talking about regarding my person in the situation. I did not come anywhere close to suggesting this about her being upset. Her emotions in the matter were human and normal. It was a mis-hearing and a misunderstanding. And how was I mean to her? It never came up. It all centered on the single statement that was misheard. My emotions in the situation, however, were demons - well, a demon.