November Evening

Just to have a new post, I am going to write something not profound.

p.s. I am moving to Denver in 2 weeks.

Matisya-who?

"Ever heard of Matisyahu?" Josh asked me about a year ago.

"Who?"

I hadn't.

After a conversation with him about the name Jerusalem, he emailed me a youtube link which I innocently clicked on. It was Matisyahu's video of his song 'Jerusalem'. I was undone.

Born Matthew Miller to two Jewish parents, this now famous music artist went through the usual religious rebellion growing up, considered himeself a Deadhead, followed Phish and was a 'trouble teen'. At one point during his teenage years, however, he reconciled himself with Judaism, became Hasidic, went to Israel, changed his name to Matisyahu (which is Matthew in Hebrew). This 30 year old guy is married with a handful of kids and lives in Crown Heights, NY. He also beat boxes and sings about justice and how it relates to traditional Judaism, all with a reggae beat. I cannot paint a vibrant enough picture of who Matisyahu is or what he can do, so you're just going to have to listen. In fact, here's that same link Josh sent me last year: Jerusalem

I had no idea when I was planning my trip to Colorado (been here 9 days and LOVING it) that Matisyahu would be coming through Denver on his Light tour. Many people may scoff at Facebook, but as I was browsing photos last week, an add popped up on the side saying that Matis was performing here, at the Fillmore down on Colfax and Clarkson, Tuesday, Oct. 27th. I went down to the box office that same day and bought a couple of tickets. My good friend Christine and I went last night.

Oh my word.

The Fillmore is a beautiful old indoor venue that looks like a gently refurbished roller skating rink with balcony seating. The open hardwood floors make it easy to find just the right spot to listen to music and groove. Which I did for the full 3 hours. And so did Matis. He is beautiful to watch as he intuitively moves with the music surrounding him. At one point, during an extended play on the song So Hi So Lo, he walked to the back of the stage to adjust the sound equipment to enhance the various intruments. He stayed back there for about 10 minutes playing with the knobs so that each musician was pushed forward in intervals. The weave of it all was mind-blowing. Then he crowd surfed during his last song One Day.

I am still on a Matis high.

My Dad was John Doe

We got a call from a detective this morning, a detective telling us, well, telling my mom, really, (since its she whose number they had on file and whose number they dialed), that yes, the California Drivers License number that she'd somehow rattled off from memory to them brought up files, brought up records of fingerprints, fingerprints that matched those of a body they had found in a place I don't want to name over three years ago; a body they'd already burned and sent out to sea.

Over three years ago we were still waiting for him to come back. Over three years ago no one had made a report because we thought he'd gone on one of his longer walks and would eventually call and have someone come pick him up-- surely he'd call like he always did. He didn't call, but we still waited. Over three years ago we were still talking like he'd just show up one day, walk into my work to surprise me. "He's probably on his way down here, " my mom would say, hopeful. I had my doubts, but wanted to hope all the same. Even when he was a less deluded man he rarely came to visit us; even when he still had a car and would drive; before he set out on his walks. He was kind of over family. Except when I'd go see him from time to time, just after a holiday so it would seem like I wasn't visiting because of a holiday, yet I'd still bring him a present. One year I even knit him a scarf and cap. When I visited the next year, he was still wearing them, only they'd never been washed and smelled like something you don't want your face next to, but I put my face next to them anyway because they adorned him and him is where I wanted to press my face. He held me close and even though he talked of the world ending in ten years, of how aliens created us, of how he didn't feel safe sharing what he believed with anyone anymore because we were all against him, I knew he loved me and wanted to make things right. He just didn't know how. He could never forgive himself for not being a good enough dad (from a man who never hit us, never hurt us, made us laugh all the time and saw us as people) and no matter how many times he apologized, he'd never let me respond-- he'd just keep on talking so he couldn't receive the atonement. Nothing was more frustrating to me than to hear him wander off at the mouth when all I wanted was for him to really really hear from me, "Dad, I forgive you for not being there all the time. I forgive you and I love you." And then he wandered away.

I didn't know what to do for the longest time. What do you do in a situation like this-- where your father, who has been hospitalized because of a psychotic break, is given meds to stabilize him, is sent home with prescribed drugs, never takes them because he believes he's on a spiritual journey and won't accept that you can be both on a spiritual journey and have a mental illness, starts preparing to 'walk the earth' and then disappears without a trace? How do you search for someone who says he does not want to be found? In the month between his leaving and his death, we were still here waiting. No one made a report because we were convinced (in denial?) that he would come back. Finally, a missing persons report was filed. But it was too late. He was already John Doe. Only we didn't know it. We didn't know it until today.

I have been in a state of delayed grief for over three years. Most of these years I assumed my dad was dead. It's easier to assume than to know. It's easier to go on living just thinking your favorite dad is in Never Never Land and that maybe one day you'll see him again in Heaven, without ever really having to deal with the reality of his death. Sort of like the Rapture, but not.

My dad was Fred Babb. He played air saxophone at the dinner table in Cambria's nicest restaurant. He made Easter baskets out of chocolate and shredded wheat emulating rabbit turds. He made everyone who walked through our family door take the Myers-Briggs personality test because he was fascinated by the hearts and minds of people. He made the best Tuna Runners in the world and painted a fake fireplace for us for Christmas just so we could pretend we were warm in our one-bedroom shack. He always told me I had a beautiful neck and wanted me to keep my hair short just so I could show it off. We would sit together, mute 90210 and make up the dialogue until we laughed so hard we peed. He was an amazing artist whose one desire was to use his art to validate people in their true selves-- to free people from the man-made traditions that bound them. He lived to speak truth and to love others despite his struggles with depression, grief, loneliness and eventual spiral into schizophrenia.

I am angry about the way my dad died. I am angry I couldn't save him from his pain. I am angry that my kids will never know him, that he'll never walk me down the aisle (though he probably would've done interpretive dance down the aisle, but anyway...), that I'll never get to share my joys and woes with him.

For a while I will probably continue to look hard at scraggly, homeless men, searching behind all the grime and overgrown hair for my beloved father's face. I will continue to pray for them, for their families who are out there waiting, wondering. I will continue to see the nameless, faceless Jane and John Does out there as mothers, fathers, brothers, uncles, sisters and ask God to not let them go on unnamed, to not let them go unfound.

C'mon, Guess!

Much has happened since my last blog entry. Much I wasn't necessarily anticipating to happen so quickly. I am pregnant. I jumped out of a hot air balloon. I rode shotgun all the way down to the southern tip of Mexico with a random stranger and caught Swine Flu. I got accepted to the Academy of Art University Fine Art program. I am moving to Denver. All my hair turned white. I had a vision of the four living creatures.

Two of the above things are true.

I'll let you figure out which ones.

Refresh Me

The last two days have been really hard for me-- hitting a wall of depression that is a mix of crazy grief missing the DR and all it held for me, feeling out of place where I am, and a general malaise of the emptiness that comes from not knowing where you're headed.  Everyone keeps telling me to 'rest', but to rest the soul is much more challenging than resting the body.

After having breakfast with a loving friend this morning, I was invited by some other friends to go on a ride out to See Canyon to go buy apples.  Hmm, go on a long drive through beautiful country, letting the ocean breeze whip through my hair as I breathe deeply the spicy scents of scrub oak, eucalyptus and fresh orchard apples, or sit at home and mope.  I went for the windy road adventure.  As I sat in the back seat and let the conversations of others mill around my head, I silently put my mind and soul on cruise control.  Meanwhile, my spirit prayed.  God, I love you and I just want to feel you close.  God, I'm scared and I need you.  God, I miss my friends.  God, thank you for making me the apple of your eye and for caring about me even like this.  God, thank you for all this beauty.  God...

After a few hours I felt a bit of the heaviness lift.  My migraine went away.  Instead of taking a nap, I am blogging.

Today my soul, echoing the Shulamite, cried out to God, "Refresh me with apples, for I am lovesick!"

He answered me.

I am my Beloved's and He is Mine

The hand-woven hammock chair beckons me to come sit in it this morning.  "Amy, the sun is shining!  Come, let me rock you and hold you while you dream and feel the warmth on your face and listen to the wings of birds!"

How can I resist?

It has been days since I arrived back in Cambria, the little town that helped raise me, and these few moments in the swinging sunshine are the first in which I feel rest.

I have been going going going for a really long time.  Going for God, going for others; going because of good things and should things, could things and would things and I'm so thinged out that my mind has become like the web of the chair beneath me.  Today, I start unhooking the corners of that web so that I can see the landscape behind it more clearly.

This corner represents serving God out of fear. Unhook.

This corner formed when I adhered to the idea that to die for others meant forsaking my soul. Detach.

This one over here is just physical stress. Rip.

Down here are the hidden agendas that drive my will. Major undo.

Upper left is uncried tears, unanswered prayers, earth-shattering disappointments, disillusionments, anger.  Gently lift off and offer to the Wind.

The process of undoing and relearning who I am-- why I do things, what it is that motivates me--will be lifelong.  I know this.  I understand it.  But today...today I am committed to it because the process is not separate from me.  The process IS me; and it is God, and it is He and I together in the deepest, most honest, most vulnerable places that exist.  He is still hovering over the face of the deep.  He is still crying out, "Let there be light!!"  He is still forming boundaries around me, proclaiming what is good about me and resting in what He has made.  I want to rest in that goodness, too.

I climb up in His hammock, let the Son shine down on me.  I enjoy His creation and I breathe in and out.  I allow the Master Craftsman to put His hands all over me and laugh along with His joy in forming me.  I give thanks for what was and I let it all go, knowing that when I am still, I will know He is God.  I will know that He will be exalted among the nations, He will be known in all the earth.  And I can just be   His    Beloved.

I carry you

5 of my friends and I just spent an entire week at the beach.  We rented two condos right on the sands of Cabarete.  We cooked together, got sunburned together, took naps, read books.  It was wonderful (despite the fact I was still fighting the bacteria blues).  We ended our week at an annual staff retreat at Hacienda Lifestyles Resort just an hour down the road in Puerta Plata.  My yellow plastic 'bracelet' allowed me to eat or drink all I could (sadly, my battle-weary stomach didn't allow for much), plus access to their 5 pools, and the beach.  The best moments were watching one of my Dominican nieces (Priscila) swim for the first time, the other niece, Ysmayar, swim toward me, learning how to bring her head up and breathe, and watching Natan, my nephew, dunk his head under water for 2 seconds over and over again.  Amazing.

I don't have kids of my own.  I want some-- very badly, but God hasn't allowed that to happen, yet.  But, He gives me other kids.  Lots of other kids and today was a day of saying my last goodbyes to some of them.  I didn't cry in their presence, but I bawled as I drove my roommate's Jeep out of El Callejon for the last time.  I hate this.  No amount of money in the world is worth the same as when a little girl of 10 whose mom has cancer and who is helping her older sister to take care of her little brother look up at me in the eyes and say, "I'm never, never, never going to forget you."  I was struck today by just how much loneliness is the greatest poverty.  Relationships are food for our souls.  Families are what keep us alive, even if we don't have a roof over our heads.  There is something innate in humans that needs other humans.  Even God said, "It is not good for man to be alone."  

He wasn't talking about just men (as much as women like to joke that this is true).  Humans need each other-- not just to survive (look at Nebudchadnezzar) but to maintain our 'humanness'.  I saw in this little girl's eyes a sadness of knowing that the place that I filled in her heart would not be filled by another.  She, as well as I, will both experience a loss that is greater than the loss of any material thing.  I will never again be able to rejoice with her over her good grades.  I will never again feel her sneaking up behind me and wrapping her arms around my waist for an extended embrace.  I will never again see her pushing other kids off me so she can have me all to herself.  I am not saying I am her world.  What I'm saying is that we each make a difference when we extend ourselves and give of ourselves.  We can give things and it helps a little, but when we give of our time, our hearts, our listening ears, our shoulder to cry on-- when we give a relationship, it changes lives forever.  S

he and I have become one in a sense.  I have become part of her story and she has become part of mine.  I cannot change her circumstances, but I can leave behind an imprint of love and acceptance that she will 'never, never, never forget."

El Callejon:   "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it"  e.e. cummings