-18- The Lost Pieces of the Puzzle

No place for the nobodies

 

Having spent forty years in his own personal wilderness, Aaron was lost and needed to find the pieces of his scattered life so he could put them back together again. His life was like that of a broken puzzle fanatic who kept picking up boxes of yard sale puzzles, as he looked for the one or two pieces in each one that would fit the empty holes in his own confused life. He never found them, but he was possessed of an incurable optimism and kept the search going. He couldn’t keep all the pieces with him, however, for his street life precluded carrying all these broken parts. He had to keep moving, so letting go of those things that didn’t fit was an imperative. The pieces that didn’t fit anymore needed to be cast away and new ones had to be put in their place.

Well Tended Garden

Letting go of our old pieces of our puzzle leaves an empty hole, however, and we feel the loss of that part. We can either look for a pre-made part, or we can make our own. This is why so many people move from experience to experience, for they are looking for the perfect shape to fill that empty hole. They seek new age religions, old age religions, health foods, sexual unions, cleansing cures, purity, hedonism, drugs, or anything else that someone claims will fill this empty hole. If we decide to make our own missing piece, we have to be fashioning the new portion even before we recognize that the old one doesn’t fit us any more. This is the art that Michael understands so well. He can recognize the missing shape even before the one who is searching is aware of the emptiness.

It is a gift from the god of all care and compassion, for not all people can read the hearts and minds of those who are hurting. Most of us just feel their hurt and want to leave the vicinity as quickly as possible, for that much pain is too much for us to bear in addition to our own burdens. Michael is called, however, to stand with the hurting and the broken over a long period of time. He has the mind and heart of a farmer, who knows that while the planting may be the work of our hands, the growth belongs to god. Sometimes we will work our best and the harvest will be poor, other times the harvest will be great. We always work in hope, however, trusting that the god of all grace will bring the seed to full harvest in god’s own time.

Michael would tell me of those early days with Aaron during our planning times. His first impressions of Aaron were of his woundedness, inside and out. “He has the heart of a warrior, however,” Michael said over our shared meal of fowl and first wild greens from the valley below. We were just beginning our outer year after our winter sanctuary retreat. The fresh salad was a delight to my mouth and I was lingering over each morsel.

“Why do you say this?” I asked.

Michael answered, “He hasn’t given up on life, but has found a way to survive. Others may see him as down on his luck or as beyond help, but even as despised as he is by the conventional social world, he still retains his moral code.”

I raised an eyebrow at this statement, indicating both an interest and a certain suspicion of the existence of an actual moral code in a street person. From my own experience serving in the cities, the street people would come into the temples and tell their hard luck stories to the priest. These stories were always well rehearsed and designed for maximum emotional pull on the heartstrings of any who heard it. The congregants of the temple were “hard hearted” or immune to these pitches because they had heard the same story over and over, sometimes from the very same street people. The priests, however, always seemed to be a “soft touch” or more tender hearted.

In my own experiences, I had learned that people were usually one of two types who came seeking help at the temples of the gods: those who stole from everyone, even god, and those who were honestly seeking help to have a need met. The first would rob god, their parents, or their best friend if they had one. The latter became your friend for life because you stood with them in their time of need. Since I serve the god of all comfort and compassion, my goal is to stand with those in need and to help them when I can. However, I don’t have to help the robbers who would steal from the poor to make themselves rich, or who would take from those who have true needs.

“So what exactly is Aaron’s moral code?” I asked, suppressing my disbelief that this ragged fellow could even have a moral compass after all these years on the street. After all, I know and trust my friend Michael. His gift of discernment has never been wrong. Our god seems to test the even the most confused spirits through my coworker in the faith. Nothing seems to get past his watch.

“He does no harm, he seeks to do good, and he loves his god,” Michael answered. “He says he keeps it as simple and uncomplicated as he can, because life as a warrior means you don’t have time to think about what’s right and what’s wrong. You have to know it in your heart deeply so that you can act quickly. Likewise, on the streets, life is the same way,” he said. “It’s like a battleground, for your survival is at stake. Some people will do anything to stay alive on the streets: lie, cheat, steal, sell their body, or sell drugs to get by or get high. They do whatever they can to get through the days and nights and not experience the complete degradation of their lives into nothingness as they are reduced to living on the back steps, doorways, and underpasses of the cities. To become nothing and completely numb to who you are is to be dead. As long as you remember who you are, you are still alive.”

“And his god?” I asked. “How does he love and serve his god?”

“He is a warrior, so he feels called to protect the weak. The children who ended up on the streets looked up to him. He said they reminded him of the ones he taught on the Hot Continent, but their eyes were so haunted from the abuse and misery of the homes they fled. He protected them from worse predators who were out on the streets until they were able to face their fears and seek help from the homes for runaway children.”

I knew of the places that he spoke, for my own daughter had spent time in such a home. Not that it did her much good, for she was a wild one. She didn’t want to live with me and didn’t want to live with her father either. I guess she wanted to be on her own, but she was too young. Since she wouldn’t stay, they couldn’t keep her. Finally she got the reputation as a persistent runaway and no one would take her in. One day I keep thinking she will see the light, but that hasn’t happened yet. The street life isn’t the sweet life.

Gone To Weeds

“These are all the good things, but surely not everything is peaches and cream in this early time with him? We are asking him to adjust from a freestyle life to an ordered life.”

Michael laughed. This is one of the best qualities of my friend, his easygoing manner. He never gets frustrated, but takes all things in his stride. Things that might irritate me just seem to roll like water off his back. I have to consciously set aside these aggravations everyday in my quiet time, but they never seem to even touch Michael. This is why he is so good at healing both the body and the mind.

It’s also why Michael is a wonder in our garden. He knows that weather happens and that nothing we mortals can do will control the storms and droughts that are part of our growing season. He has invented some wonderful irrigation contraptions and has improved our soil content to overcome the lack of water, but he can’t do anything about the hailstorms that ravage our salads or beat down our grain crops. I really hate it when the torrents drop out and wash out our freshly seeded furrows. All our good work goes for nothing. “Not for nothing, Miriam! We have improved the land below, and grain will volunteer on the hillsides. We’ll have a free harvest there also!” I fret and Michael always thinks positive! I am learning from him everyday.

“Yes, not all things are as they seem. As much as our new friend wants to believe his life is still pure and unsullied after all his time on the streets, he is in denial about his dependence on the slow death. We have him on a concoction of herbs that mimic the effects on the mind and the body as the actual drug leaves his system. Once he is physically clean, then we will taper off this herbal brew that he’s been drinking.” Michael can see into a person’s soul, no matter how many walls or doors it is hiding behind.

“Moreover, Aaron isn’t used to our order’s daily routine just yet. He is still on street time, so he wants to sleep late. I roust him out of bed anyhow. I think a week or two more will reset his clock to our schedule. The good new is that he is eager to work at whatever task that I assign him. He says that keeping busy keeps him from thinking too much.”

Michael and I agree that Aaron has deep wounds that need healing, so we end our meeting with a prayer to the god of all compassion and comfort:  “Touch Aaron’s heart with tender hands of healing power, take away his pain and sorrow, and give him the joy of a new today and a better tomorrow. Help us to walk with him in both the smooth and rough places of his healing journey.”

As Michael left to return to his garden, I thought about his deep connection to the rhythms of the soils and growth. I can always find him turning the soil when the last remains of the winter snows are still on the ground. “Isn’t that hard work? Why don’t you wait until the whole thing melts off and the ground is soft?”

Michael laughs at me as he leans on his long handled shovel, which he has worn smooth from years of this early routine. “I’m working a good manure into the soil to prepare it for planting. The snows will melt and distribute the nutrients throughout the depths of the ground. Good preparation means a good harvest!” He wasn’t working hard; he was working smart. I just didn’t know enough about gardening to know the difference. He also had been in the caves all winter along with the rest of our order, and he had energy to burn. The garden was a very good place for my friend.

Most of us think being spared the manures of life is the best preparation for a good later life. This isn’t the life in a garden, however. Plenty of manure gets spread about and the ground is spaded and turned upside down. Transformation is the norm in the garden, not sameness. If a seed is planted, it too must be transformed to bear its harvest: flowers, fruit, herb, or vegetable. If it remains only a seed, it isn’t growing. If it transforms, it is living out god’s highest purpose for it.

I’ve never understood why some people quit growing in love, grace, care and compassion. Instead they begin to grow angry, mean hardhearted, stingy, and hateful. Rather than growing in love, their love seems to die daily. In the garden of life, they would be weeds, choking out the good growth that feeds the world’s hungry, hopeless, hurting and homeless peoples. These weeds would keep all the food for themselves. Perhaps this is why the gardener pulls up the weeds and casts them aside to be burned, for the weed in the garden thinks only of itself, and not of the world beyond the garden. The seeds grow up to give their lives for all, even those beyond the boundaries of the garden itself.

Instead of cursing the manure that falls into our lives, perhaps we should see it as the nutrients that make us stronger. Just as athletes add repetitions, weight, intensity or a combination of all three of these to their training practices, getting “dumped on” is an experience ripe for reframing. How we perceive tough times can help us go from surviving to thriving, from staying fixed to making growth. If we think of these manure times as an opportunity to make our soil more productive and healthy, then our lives can take off and grow. If we think of them as times of punishment and scorn, we won’t grow, for we’ll close ourselves off to whatever nourishment might be available. Like the Miracle Grow Fertilizer of earth, our new bodies and souls will be taller, wider, and more colorful than the plants that haven’t received the other generous potion.

Perhaps the lost piece of the puzzle is accepting that the journey won’t be smooth. Transformation means radical change, and that is a rocky road also. For some of us, the lost puzzle piece means learning to love our deepest selves as god loves us. If we have never loved anyone or anything unconditionally, finding this piece of the puzzle is overwhelming. For others of us, this radical transformation will mean not only a new life and new habits, but also a new calling. Only the god of care and compassion knows what path Aaron is going to choose, but that bridge will be crossed in the days and weeks to come.

-17- LEARNING TO LOVE THE ROCKY ROAD

I assigned Aaron to Michael for several reasons. First, Michael works in the garden and on the grounds, so Aaron would get to work outside. This would help Aaron manage the anxiety from his voices, which seemed to arise when he was in a confined space. Only during meals, worship, and sleep would he be inside. During these times, Aaron would have the benefit of the herb tea to help calm these feelings, as well as activities to help him focus his thoughts. Although Aaron’s evening sleep period would be unstructured, our healers would be giving him extra draughts of tea in these early weeks until he was able to sleep through the night unaided. Michael also has the gifts of discernment and guidance, so he is both able to know what people need and how to direct their spiritual growth. These attributes made him the ideal mentor for Aaron’s transition and transformation.

We often imagine that transformation is an ideal journey, which is “easy or without challenge.” Our people are fond of saying, “the gods swept the way clear” for someone who has a quick success. In the world I’m traveling on in this day and time, I hear a similar saying that has its roots in their ancient times: “keep straight the path of your feet, and all your ways will be sure” (Proverbs 4:26). Another saying I have heard from their common wisdom, but not from the received text of their holy book, is “if God closes a door, he will open a window.” The closest actual text I can find to this saying is “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purposes” (Romans 8:28).

Sometimes this verse has been translated as “God makes all things work together for good,” or “in all things God works for good.” The hitch is the latter part of the verse, “for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” For those believers who trust their god, and god’s purposes for their lives, all things will work out for good over the long haul. They are like the warriors of Sparta, the champion athletes or the unrivaled adepts of any field: failures or setbacks are merely opportunities to proves one’s true merit and inner strength, but these are nothing if you aren’t open to the moments when it’s possible to seize the victory.

For those who sit and wait for their god to open all the doors at once to make their journey one easy step after the other, I suggest the history of this world’s Israel as a reminder. God called the father of this nation to “go to a land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). There god promised him the whole length and breadth of the land and as many descendants as “the stars in the sky” (Genesis 15:5) and the “sands of the sea” (Genesis 22:17). Yet at the end of his long life, Abraham owned only a cave for a burial ground (Genesis 50:13). Yet the book of Abraham’s god says that Abraham believed in god’s promises even though he was childless (15:6).

Those promised descendants seemed unlikely, for his wife Sarah was barren. Abraham tried to fulfill this prophecy by his own means through his slave girl, but god’s promise was going to come true in god’s time and in god’s way, not through any human noodling. Abraham was ninety-nine and Sarah was ninety years old when they had Isaac, their firstborn son. “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” the visiting angel asked the disbelieving mother to be (Genesis 18:14).

Only after many generations and a period of time in Egyptian slavery, did god seem to remember his promise to his chosen people. In the midst of a worldwide famine that had brought everyone to Egypt, Pharaoh had forgotten that Abraham’s people had saved Egypt from hunger. Everyone was Pharoah’s slave, but god protected Moses. God called Moses to deliver the people from slavery. As god fought the Egyptian gods in the battles of the plagues, the powers were equal until the final round of death and life. The Hebrew god was able to both take and preserve life, but the Egyptian gods were powerless. This is the great feast the Jews remember today as the Passover. After this the Pharaoh let the people go free.

Did they march straight to the Promised Land and set up homes and businesses? Of course not: they wandered in the wilderness for “forty years.” This is a metaphor for a “very long time,” or what we might call “time enough to get their acts together and find out what they really wanted to do with their lives.”

This is where Aaron and Michael began: somewhere in Egypt and ready to leave for the Promised Land. There might be a period in the wilderness, a wandering, but it would be a wandering with a purpose this time around. His life in the city streets was also a form of wilderness wandering, but it was also a time of slavery to sin and death. When he wakes up from the poison of the slow death, he will understand it. Right now he will take his days as they come, morning and evening, another day without a drink and another day of building hope instead of digging his grave.

Addiction is a powerful illness. Some of us are addicted to a substance, like Aaron, while others of us are addicted to relationships, work, sex, pain, shopping, pornography, exercising, food, computers, games, gambling, fame, money, or power. Almost anything can become an addiction if it becomes a higher priority than god, normal human relationships, a balanced life style, and a decent night’s sleep. We can make anything a god, even ourselves, if we make it a higher priority than the god who made us in god’s own image and likeness.

Even spirituality or religion can become an “obsession” or an addiction if it destroys our health or family relationships. From my experience as a priestess of the god of all care and compassion, our priests sometimes care for the temple families better than they care for their own families. I speak not only for my own family and my own healer father, but for all of us. Our calling to care for others is sometimes so strong that we neglect the care of those under our own roof. Our desire to love others with the same care and compassion of our god means that we often spread ourselves so thin that we have very little left when we cross the threshold of our own home. We are acclaimed in our community, but we have little to give once we return to our homes. We may receive laurel wreaths in the public arena, but at home we wear the poison ivy.

Keeping a healthy balance between the competing demands of all who think the priest or priestess is an inexhaustible source is a challenge best met by those who have a strong relationship with the god of all care and compassion. Those who aren’t under holy orders, but are over working or over controlling in their own environments or employments, can also benefit from this same relationship. Having a higher priority than one’s self and someone to whom we answer beyond this physical realm means that we have ultimate purposes and not just immediate needs of the moment.

Not everything is necessary now! No matter how much someone thinks it needs to be done yesterday, if they have come to you today, they didn’t think it was important enough to schedule their time to ask for it in a reasonable time. Pointing this out won’t change them, of course. Being angry with them for being unreasonable and demanding just makes them worse. Smiling and putting this on your calendar for when it can be reasonably done is the best solution. When they object, suggest the appropriate date for bringing it in the next time. If they want to move heaven and earth to get it done, let them take the task on themselves. Otherwise, suggest a date change. If that doesn’t work, let them call all the folks themselves or get a group together to call.

Next year they will most likely do the same stunt, but you can call them in time and remind them to start early to head this whole thing off. People seem to wake up in a new world every day, as if they are time travelers who have never visited this place before. The fact that they have been in charge of this one ministry or project for the last five or ten years doesn’t seem to matter, for they will repeat them same motions every year without fail.

Perhaps this ongoing frustration with people who never seem to learn from past experiences is what leads the priest or priestess into growing control over the body of their temples. We attempt to schedule the events and the celebrations so that these won’t all happen at the same week, or fall back to back. We hope not only that we won’t be overworked, but also so that our people won’t get worn out from helping with the celebrations. We also know that families need to have time at home for rest, recreation, and recovery. If we are at the temple every time the altar is sanctified, then we may be neglecting the home altar. It too has a sacred fire that has to be tended and blessed by prayers.

This is why each new home or living arrangement is blessed with a fire brought from the temple’s eternal fire. This fire burns all day and all night as a symbol of the enduring care and compassion of our god. One of our order always stands watch before the Holy Fire, not only to venerate it, but to keep it burning. We remember that we are called out of darkness into god’s marvelous light. We can always fall into darkness as we walk along the rocky road of life, and our message of grace and compassion will lack the light of life and hope it once had. Our only hope is to rest and recover anew the hope for ourselves again by the healing power of god. No one of us is so far gone that god cannot heal the bruises and cuts that the road of life has inflicted upon us. If we are in pain, we will be bitter and angry. We may “blame god,” or blame “the priesthood of all believers” for all our woes. In reality, we have forgotten that our first ministry is to our own body, then to our family, to our temple and to the world.

My Aaron may have seemed a hopeless case to the medical specialists in the big city, but they don’t subscribe to the mind-body theory of healing of our temple infirmary. We believe that all illness has both a physical and a spiritual component to it. This isn’t to say that good people aren’t ever sick and evil people get all the dread diseases. However, we do believe that if we physically cure a body, but don’t help the soul to heal also, the body will return to its original state of dis-ease because the soul is not at ease. We also know that is the soul is at ease, if the body’s disease returns, the person is better able to handle the recurrence.

We are all a work in progress, just as we all walk a rocky road. None of us get a smooth path in life, not even those born with the famous “silver spoon in their mouth.” They may have more means, but they also have the ability to get into more troubles. Some of those perdicaments will be different from those you and I can imagine, but money can’t keep us free from trouble. The garage owner who fixed my car when I lived on the great plains had a poor woman who would fill her water bucket at his alley spout. I thought it odd, but he explained, “They came into an inheritance and everyone became their friend. They lived high, bought houses and cars for everyone. Now they don’t even have running water at their one home. Remember all those friends and family? No one helps them now. It’s the least I can do for them.”

As a traveler, I’ve learned that my own unique condition is just part of who I am. I used to worry about it, but now, I am learning to relax and accept that it may be a gift for this time and place. I have always trusted the god of all care and compassion, even if I haven’t always served god as part of an order. I have sought god my whole life, so if god is going to make all things work for the good, even my seizures that send me zooming across space and time to planet earth will be used for good, for I have always loved god and been called according to god’s purposes. No matter where I go, on this world or another, I trust that I am in the hand of the god of all care and compassion. If I could only bottle this feeling and sell it! “Elixir of Trust!” No, don’t think the order would find that acceptable snake oil.

16—MEMORIES OF A ONCE AND FUTURE TIME

As I pack up the vehicle and clean out the rooms I’ve inhabited the past few days, I think about Aaron. This extra large bed with the iron stars and the hide scraps of the meat animals of the “steak houses” that are a dime a dozen on this planet are no substitute for the full meat flesh of my well-endowed bondmate. These sheets I now strip from this comfortable resting place has certainly felt lonely without him. I thought I had a full and complete life, totally dedicated to the service of my god, before he came into my world. Indeed, when I first met him, Aaron wasn’t looking for a relationship with anyone, for he needed to recover and to find his true self most of all.

If ever there was a lost soul, he was a classic example. He no longer was in touch with the reality of this world, this world’s god, or the people who tried to give him a helping hand up. The hands out he slapped away, as if they were going to hurt him, and the helping hands he feared, as if they would steal what little that was true he could still hold on to with his declining faculties. His days became nights and his night’s days, but neither were soothing sleeps or active work, for both the day’s constructive activity eluded him as did the refreshing and restoring slumber of the evening. In short, he was a man in constant turmoil, fighting the inner demons of his mind and soul on one front and the outer demons of the world on the other front. Besieged before and behind, he rested poorly and was awake even less well.

Aaron came in rags to our temple. His outer clothing was worn and torn from living on the streets and sleeping out in the open. He hadn’t held a steady job in several years, but swept sidewalks for meals from the restaurants in the business section of Starez, the capital city of our province. At night, he slept on their back entries, until the law officers made their rounds. They moved him along, but once they were gone, he would return to the dim corners of these hospitable doorways. The police knew his routine and he knew their part in this play, but the show of force must go on, for this was civilization and the capital was expected to be law abiding. Safety for the citizens and their property was important to the powers that be. Concern for the poor and for the veterans of the wars that kept these citizens safe wasn’t as important as keeping the city clean and safe for the good citizens who walked the streets to spend their money and keep the economy thriving.

Over his years on the street, Aaron’s body and mind deteriorated from the lack of good nutrition, the surfeit of the slow death, and the tensions of always being “awake” even if he were asleep. Then he also had his memories of his war experiences that filled his mind. At one time he was able to push these from his mind by doing good for others and serving as an educational liaison to an underdeveloped country, but when he returned to our land, his reentry to a more modern civilization wasn’t easy. It moved too fast for his taste, a fact that reminded him of past battles’ quick pace and loud clashes. Just navigating the streets in a vehicle reminded him of moving toward the enemy lines.

This was enough to set off a panic attack, send his heart racing, and confuse his feet. Then he was as quick to hit the accelerator as to hit the brake, so the car might take flight at the most inopportune time, such as going around a curve in the road, and end up beyond the road itself. At a tree beside the road, passers by would find him dazed at the wheel, with the smoking, crumpled heap of his front end wrapped around the trunk. His vehicle was trashed and the local law would take him down to their offices. After several of these incidents, he lost his license, and then he couldn’t get to work any more and lost his job. That’s when he ended up on the streets.

The “slow death” is a pain and soul killing beverage that this world calls “whiskey.” Both of these destroy a person’s body, mind and their spirit as well. Over a period of years, this slow death is a poison that kills the person who once was and leaves behind someone else in his or her place. Even if the drinker becomes sober, he or she is never quite the same person again, for their whole brain chemistry has been changed. It’s a disease that is a “thought disorder” as well as an addiction, for even if the addict no longer drinks, behaviors such as secret keeping, not trusting others, impulsiveness, intolerance, and judgment of others still remains. The slow death of alcohol even attacks the liver, as well as the brain. Because the liver filters out toxins from the body, if it’s impaired, our sleep patterns, moods, attentions spans, and our coordination get affected negatively. Aaron was no different from any other street dweller who had been self-medicating for a long period of time. The only problem was that he needed ever increasing amounts to feel better, but he was at the point that amount would kill him if he drank that much. Somehow, deep in his heart, he still had a spark that could be called back to life, but only if it were not being drowned by a steady stream of the slow death.

Aaron found his way to our temple in the Shadowy Mountains because the Starez city authorities dumped him in our village. How else does a person with no money or means suddenly show up hundreds of miles away from the seacoast with no memory of how they got here? The healers of the city aren’t supposed to do this of course, but we know it happens. They get tired of the revolving door, of seeing the same person over and over, but never making a difference in their lives. They can patch them up, clean them up, and even sober them up, but the addicts just go right back to the same old behaviors. They tell them, “You must choose to be clean. You must want to get better.”

Yet these folks have nothing to live for, no reason to want to clean up, to live, or to go through the agony of healing. If it were a choice, these broken men and women would have picked wellness over illness all day long, but they have a dis-ease of the heart, the soul, or the mind. This is what needs to be addressed before they can heal and “choose” to live as whole people. There is an ache in the deepness of each and every human life that must be met first before we can choose a better path. The problem in the great cities is that they have great needs. They have many resources also, but they live in a culture in which no one is willing to devote the time to be with one person long enough to make a difference.

In the big cities the numbers count, the big programs that reach the most people count, and these are valued. “Treat em and street em.” That is the big city motto of the healing hospitals attached to the temples of the city gods. In the smaller temples located in the backcountry areas, life is slower. We can value each and every person who comes into our provenance. We can take on the lost causes of other places and spend the time that others cannot “squander.” We have all the time in the world, for our world doesn’t run on human time, but on the infinite time of the god of all care and compassion. We don’t bother to think big, but think that the one life god has brought to us is worth saving for the good of the community. If god has brought a person here, then god has a purpose in this work. We are given the task to help this person find their truest and best self so that they can contribute to our community to the best of their ability.

I remember the day our acolytes found him lying in the gutters of our village in the Shadowy Mountain as if it were yesterday. When they brought him into our care center, they first removed his filthy clothes. His body was no cleaner than his outer dress. Dirt was ground into the creases of his skin and open sores were scattered across his body. His unkempt hair was twisted and matted together from natural oils and with food greases from his unwashed hands. He was both gaunt and flaccid in build, for even though his ribs showed, his muscle tone was loose. He wasn’t well at all. I could smell his illness even through the alcohol that seeped from his pores.
His physical appearance of illness was matched by the rawness of his mental state, for he kept muttering about the “enemy out there” and the “death stench of the village.” We gave him a soothing herbal tea to calm his nerves. Then we took him to the baths for a good scrubbing. Afterwards, with another cup of tea in his belly, he was more settled in spirit, so we were able to treat his outer wounds with salve and trim his hair. We gave him a close cut to make sure he had no vermin or scalp wounds that needed treatment. With another cup of tea, he even quit mumbling out loud, and began to express a desire to eat real food. Now that he was communicating from his right mind, our healers were feeling more confident that he was not a danger to himself or others.

I stopped by the care center to visit and to ask about his story. Each of us has a story. Sometimes the tale we tell is the truth of our reality, and other times it is the fantasy of the life we wish we lived. Often we only tell people what we think they want to hear. When I was first bonded, I participated in a mother-baby playgroup with my little girl. All of these women reported perfect lives, perfect bondmates and perfect babies. I asked them, “Am I the only one here who has a baby that spits up after eating? And if I could just get my bondmate to take ONE feeding at night, I wouldn’t be so tired all day long!” These porcelain dolls with their toy plastic babies looked at me with unblinking eyes, as if I were a crazy person upsetting all the apple and vendor carts in a country marketplace. Their carefully constructed personas, their public faces of “competent and perfect motherhood” couldn’t be ripped off by my willingness to tell the truth about my life as a first time mother.

Some of us have always been truth tellers. We see the truth and we want to tell the truth. We aren’t good when we are told that what we see isn’t so. We also don’t do well when we are told that we can’t speak about something, that it has to be kept “secret.” Especially when we get the mixed message that we should always also tell the truth. This is life in the family of a hidden drinker of the slow death. My family believed in truth telling except in this one thing, and keeping the secret of my daddy’s struggle with the slow death was very important for his public image as a healer. When my parents had their loud arguments over how much he drank, I would retreat to my room, close the door, and wait for the thunderstorm to pass over. The next morning at the breakfast table the sun would be shining brightly, all would be bright and forgiven, and my parents would have blown off whatever steam they needed to get off their chest. It was pretty frightening for a small girl.

Later I bonded with a drinker, but he couldn’t tell the truth about his life, his behavior, or his drinking. I couldn’t stay with him. I can deal with most anything, as long as you tell me the truth. I figure we can hash it out, compromise, and come to an understanding, a separation, or an alternate path if we all lay our cards down on the table. If we don’t tell the truth, if we keep our feelings hidden, or don’t share what we really think, then we can’t deal faithfully with whatever we need to do because the unknown thing will jump up and bite us unexpectedly.

As Aaron spoke, I listened. “My life hasn’t been too good lately. I’ve been on the streets for four or five years. Before that I was on the Hot Continent, where I taught village children to read and write. I also taught farming to their parents. I went there to escape the demons from the war that kept circling in my head. While I was in the village doing good and seeing life, I could forget, but when I came home, the memories resurfaced when I worked inside. I couldn’t keep a job, I couldn’t keep my apartment, and then I ended up on the streets of Staretz. I guess the law brought me here?”

When a person has hit rock bottom, they no longer care about impressing anyone else with their perfect life. Their masks of competency have long been ripped away, and their true selves have emerged. Aaron was no longer afraid of who he was, for he knew the truth of his broken self. If he no longer cleaned up for the world, it was because he no longer cared for this world or for himself either. He accepted himself as he was, just as he offered himself to others just as he was. We who serve the god of all care and compassion have all given ourselves just as we are to the god who loves us just as we are. In turn, we offer ourselves to others just as they are, just as we are.

As I took Aaron’s hand in mine, I held it gently and looked into his eyes and said, “Come,” I said. “We will let you eat and rest. Tomorrow you will begin work in the gardens and on the grounds of the temple. Michael will be your guide and helper while you’re here. Follow him. Blessings on your healing journey.”

With that I left them, for I had many other duties to attend as the leader of the temple.
Most of us in the world today see our mask first. We have become so accustomed to wearing it, day and night, that we wouldn’t recognize our true self if we took it off. God sees beyond our outer masks, however, down to our true self, as the bible of this world says “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

As I throw the sheets from the lonely bed into the dirty clothes hamper, I check my look in the mirror. Can I see my true self beyond the makeup and the fashion that I wear? When I speak, do I reveal my true nature in my words and are they followed up by my deeds? I hope I don’t speak one thing and do another, like that road rage Ram truck that cut me off on the highway the other day; the fish with the cross emblem was not a good witness for that person’s faith! “Love your neighbor as you drive!” now that ought to be a bumper sticker! Better, can I still find love and compassion for that road rage Ram driver? Now I am starting to meddle with myself, so I check my look in the mirror again…Fuzzy Wuzzy was a Bear…