Saying "Yes"

The Catholic school where I teach imposes a variety of interesting "disciplines" on my life. One of those is that we take our children to worship once every week. So it is that this "heathen" gets dragged off to church on a regular basis.

I am more and more clear that I'm not a believer in the mythology that gets peddled there. I am however, enough enough inclined to the Jungian view of things to be fascinated by the cycle of stories that get told throughout the liturgical year. This time of the year, of course, we are immersed in the stories that surround the traditional Christmas tale.

Today, the gospel was from Luke (1:26-38) --

The angel Gabriel was sent from God

to a town of Galilee called Nazareth,

to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph,

of the house of David,and the virgin’s name was Mary.

And coming to her, he said,“Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.”

But she was greatly troubled at what was said

and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

Then the angel said to her,“Do not be afraid, Mary,

for you have found favor with God.

Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son,

and you shall name him Jesus.

He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High,

and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father,

and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever,

and of his Kingdom there will be no end.”

But Mary said to the angel,“How can this be,

since I have no relations with a man?”

And the angel said to her in reply,

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,

and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Therefore the child to be born

will be called holy, the Son of God.

And behold, Elizabeth, your relative,

has also conceived a son in her old age,

and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren;

for nothing will be impossible for God.”

Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.

May it be done to me according to your word.”

Then the angel departed from her.

Yeah. Right. Does anyone actually think this scene would have gone down just like that? Really?

Because I've got to tell you -- if someday (or anyday) an angel popped into my line of vision and announced that I was (without benefit of even a little roll in the hay), now with child and about to bring "THE SON OF GOD" into the world as a squalling baby, I think I'd have a couple questions -- at least a couple. I think I might be scared out of my wits. I think I might just get all the way to mad as hell. I'm thinking that no one in their right mind would just sort of smile sweetly and say, "are you sure you have the right girl, Mr. Angel?"

But then, this morning, sitting in church, surrounded by my students, listening to this, I was struck by that "full of grace" line. What would it mean to be greeted by an angel, as "full of grace?" What is that exactly? I tend to view the "Mary" story as just that, and I'm inclined to believe that as an archetype, she has something to teach me. Because I do believe that Mary is, in her tough and gritty nature, in her willingness to be in her life, in her willingness to risk for something barely imagined, a fair approximation of all of us who step off into the unknown of our lives without any assurance at all about how it will all end up...

Grace. The sure knowledge, somewhere deep in our beings, that we are fine exactly as we are -- that being our truest selves is sufficient, enough. It was that "grace" that gives the girl/woman of the gospel the fortitude to say, "Yes" to her life. It is that same grace that takes me into the fullness of my life when I am sure of it in myself. When there is that sense of internal fullness of grace, I too, say "Yes," and go forward with calmness and serenity.

Perhaps it is the greeting we ought to all use with one another -- "Hail, full of grace!"

swan

Christmas Things

Anyone who has spent anytime at all reading this Blog knows that I have the reputation of being the "non-Christmas" person in our family. I am easily overwhelmed by all the fuss of the season, and I am easily put off by the highly commercialized nature of the whole business. I'm much happier when we are wrapped up, warm and snug, within the confines of our household, and I am driven to distraction by the drumbeat that pushes us to shop and spend way beyond the reasonable limits of our capacity.

This year, though, I am feeling somehow more in tune with the season. Not giddy, by any stretch, but feeling some gentle sense of joy and wonder at it all. Our home is warmed by the strains of Christmas music on the stereo system, and I am trying to just cruise along and enjoy the whole business. Part of that is the presence of my little Christmas tree. Usually, our family puts up two trees: a giant, tall, extravagant tree that goes up in the condo that belongs to Master and T, and my little, simple, kind of "Charlie Brown" tree. This year, it is my little tree that is THE Christmas tree for our family as the other side of the household is "under construction."

It isn't really a bad little tree, it is just small and covered in ornaments that have no particular theme or relationship to one another. It is a pretty old-fashioned sort of tree.

Through all the years of my marriage, through all the years when I was raising young children, the annual exercise of putting up our family Christmas tree was about telling the stories that went with the oddball and ecclectic collection of ornaments that dressed our tree. Every year, we added to the collection, and once our children were born, our annual ornament purchases included special ornaments for them. Other people added to the collections when they gave gifts, and over the years, the collection grew and grew. As we put up the tree, we would tell each other about the ornaments, one after the other, cherishing the stories even as we cherished the delicate baubles that called them to mind for us all.

One year, when my kids had grown to adulthood, I took the giant box that held all those ornaments, and went through them one by one, creating for each child a box of ornaments that were special for them. I included the ones that had been purchased for them over the years, the ones that they had made through all the years of their childhood, and a scattering of "family" ones that they would remember and (I hoped) cherish and someday share with their own families. When I was done, the collection of ornaments that I had left was significantly smaller -- and that year, I went and bought a much smaller, (4 foot tall) artificial tree. It was a right of passage for us all. I still put up that little, homey tree each year, and each year as I put it up, I tell for myself and anyone who will listen, the story of all those ornaments that tell the story of my life to this point...

I don't know that anyone really cares about all my silly Christmas "pretties." I can't imagine that there is real interest in these odds and ends, but tonight, I am in a mood to ramble and share some of my little treasures...

Here's one of the few remaining yarn pom-poms that I still put on my tree each year. These date back to the mid-1970's when I was in college. My roomates and I wanted a tree in our college dorm, and none of us had any money. Some of the guys we knew went out and "acquired" a big old, rangy evergreen for us. We never asked where or how they came by it -- we simply put it up in the dormitory living room, and then began scrounging around for things to decorate it. We bought some orange and yellow yarn and made pom-poms to hand in its green boughs. We strung popcorn and cranberries. We clipped various bits and pieces of costume jewelry among the greenery. It was a poor tree, but we loved it, and long after college, I continued to hang the yarn pom poms in every tree I've ever had. Years ago, my roommate died from ALS, but each year, I put these soft reminders of our youth and friendship on my tree.

My tree is also adorned, every year, with a group of hand painted, wooden ornaments. They were a gift to me from my father when I was in the 8th grade. I dislocated my knee that year (playing tackle football with the boys from the neighborhood), and spent about 4 weeks in a cast. My dad came home from work one evening, shortly after I'd hurt my knee, with the set of wooden tree decorations. I spent hours and hours painting them as I recuperated, and when I was done, he sealed them with shellac. They were on my parents' tree until I left home -- and then I took them with me.

When "he who shall remain nameless" and I were first married, we lived in Casper, Wyoming. The year of our first Christmas, there were no Christmas trees available in the city. Some sort of shortage, I guess. I ended up buying a Norfolk pine (potted plant) and we decorated that for Christmas. One of the very first ornaments we ever bought together, and the one that started our tradition was this one that depicted a Currier and Ives scene. I've handled it with great tenderness since 1975, and while the marriage did not survive, this ornament remains.

My brother, Gregg, was a great fan of Christmas angels. On a regular basis, he'd gift me with a new bunch of odd and interesting angels for my tree. It has been 17 years since Gregg died, but every year, I festoon my tree with "Gregg's angels."

When my daughter was in her mid-teens, she spent about nine months in a locked ward for mentally ill adolescents. It was terribly difficult for her and for us, but it was also a period of time during which I slept at night, knowing she was relatively safe. She was terribly angry with me and us for making the decision to place her in the hospital. However, when Christmas came around, she gave me this sign language ornament -- exprsssing her love, and I wept. Each year when I hang it, I give thanks for her life, and her relative state of wellness and health today.

This amazing cobalt tear drop is probably one of the best finds from my days as a thrift store rat. I loved haunting thrift stores as my kids were growing up. We never ever seemed to have enough money, and scoring some awesome treasure for a couple of bucks always made me feel like I'd beat the system somehow. These might be one of the very few real finds I ever snagged at the thrift.

There are lots of other goodies on the tree, but these little metal springy things remind me of my wonderful old cat Rudy. Rudy was half siamese, and he was meaner than shit, but he loved Christmas. We'd put these on the tree, and then battle throughout the season to keep them on the tree. Rudy loved them, and would steal them and run off with them. Finally we relented and gave him one of his very own. It was his favorite until the very end of his life.

Wishing you all the very brightest blessings of the season --
swan

Pitbull

It was the, eventually, terribly cliched throw away line of the late presidential election campaign: Sarah Palin's "joke" about how one might tell the difference between a pitbull and a hockey mom -- "lipstick." Groan...

But, when it is all said and done, sometimes it is a good thing to have a "pitbull" in your corner.

Just ask my Master...

I know that my moniker tends to bring to mind a very graceful, very calm, very serene, and usually lovely creature. My swan personna is the one that most people hearken to when they try to describe and explain my way of being in the world.

But, like most of us, I have a many-faceted personality, and one of those "faces" is probably very closely aligned with the common perception of the aggressive pitbull terrier.

One of the places where I get to let the pitbull range relatively freely is in my role as vice president of the board of directors for the advocacy agency that Master directs. No one on the board knows of the nature of my relationship to Master. To them, I am His neighbor, but more than that, I am the parent of a child with a developmental disability, and I am an advocate with a growing history in the local DD community. I have earned some significant credibility within that circle for being dedicated, reasonable, intelliegent, considered, and well-informed. That is a foundation of which I am very aware, and from which I move to advace the cause, but also from which I work to protect His interests and advance the welfare of our own family. Some might see that as an ethical "issue," but I am convinced that His continued success in His role with the agency is absolutely essential to the well-being of those we serve and to the continuing advancement of our cause.

Over the last few weeks, I've had occasion to speak to the board on a variety of issues -- and my input has influenced the direction that we have chosen to take the agency. It is one of the very interesting, and somewhat odd parts of my role within our family's life. Precisely because I am, by definition, prohibited from having a "legitimate relationship" to the Man I call Master, I am able, from a position of being alone (in the eyes of the world), to make real impacts within His world. It is good for us, gratifying to me, and I sincerely hope, helpful in very concrete ways to the people we seek to support and serve.

So, maybe the "throw away line" is more like this: what is the difference between a slave and a pitbull -- the pitbull is "off the leash." GRIN!

swan

There Be Dragons Here -- Reprise

"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him."- J.R.R. Tolkein

For a great many people who are connected through the circle of bloggers that write about BDSM, kaya and Scott have been mainstays of daily reading for a very long time. If you read there, then by now, you've surely read this post that details major changes in their relationship and their lives. It is very hard to know that people I've come to care about through this medium are struggling at such a deep and personal level.

Kaya first appeared, at least as far as I know, on Live Journal on April 6, 2005. She has posted daily, or almost daily, ever since -- although she did move from Live Journal to the current site (hosted by Laughing Squid) along the way. She and I were "born" into the public journal universe within just a very few months of one another, and we've journeyed as companions for a good long while now.

I feel for the pain that is part of the current transition between these two people. At a very personal level, there are parts of the story that kaya (now, once again, Tess) can tell about her life and her family that are very resonant with my own experience. I really do hope that all of it can work out for them all in some way that is good -- and I know that it is likely that a long and difficult path is ahead of them.

In the last few days, as all of this has started to unfold for us to see, I've pondered what there was to say, not about this family, but about how our lifestyle community does this business of forming and then dissolving relationships. Somewhere, in my mind and in my heart, I have the sense that there must be some sort of "support" that could be offered in the beginning passages of a relationship forming, that might reduce the risks of it all ending badly for all concerned. For me, this ending is less about the inability of these two people to "make a go of it" than it is about some essential missing piece of lifestyle knowledge or "wisdom" that we ought to have some sense of as a community. I can feel a persistent, questioning "why?" in my mind, and it just will not quiet down. Somehow, it feels like WE missed something with kaya and Scott, and a myriad of others who have set sail into the lifestyle with high hopes -- only to run aground in uncharted waters.

The truth is that we know all kinds of things about getting together and setting out on a BDSM path with a new partner. We spend hours talking about and educating people on things like safewords, and safe calls, and scene negotiations, and limits, and all the rest of it. We are experts at so much of the nitty gritty of getting into a lifestyle relationship. The Internet makes it ridiculously easy for us to find one another and connect across whatever distances might separate us geographically. Except that we have no mechanism that I'm aware of for guiding people through the maze of personal needs, wants, committments, and issues that must be dealt with if they intend to make a life together. Whatever our drives, desires, dreams, hopes, and fantasies, we all come to the BDSM arena with connections and obligations and expectations and assumptions. All of that really ought to be talked about in the beginning days, even as we are discussing our interests in whips and ropes and needles and hot wax.

How to do that? This is what I've been wondering.

It seems to me that one process might be something similar to one used by the Quakers (with whom I spent a good number of years). It is a process used to help an individual discern what to do when faced with a dilemma or a challenge or a major life decision. Friends refer to it as the "clearness" process, and it works inside a small committee of people who come together with the purpose and intent of helping that person reach personal clarity.

Theologically, Friends assume that each of us has an Inner Teacher who can guide us and therefore that the answers sought are within the person seeking clearness. Whether or not that particular bit of "mumbo jumbo" does it for you, there is something to be said for believing that a group of caring friends can serve as channels in drawing on our own interior wisdom.

Quaker clearness committee members don't give advice or attmpt to "fix" the situation; they are there to listen without prejudice or judgment, to help clarify alternatives, to help communication if necessary, and to provide emotional support as an individual seeks to find the right course of action. The process is always initiated by the person seeking clearness.

A clearness meeting usually begins with a period of centering silence. When the focus person is ready, s/he begins with a brief summary of the question or concern. The role of committee members is very simple: members may not speak in any way except to ask the focus person a question, an honest question. That means no presenting solutions, no advice, no “Why don't you...?”, no “My uncle had the same problem and he....”, no “I know a good book/diet/therapist that would help you a lot.” Nothing is allowed except honest, probing, caring, challenging, open, unloaded questions! And it is crucial that these questions be asked not for the sake of the questioner's curiosity but for the sake of the focus person's clarity. Caring, not curiosity, is the rule for questioners. It is usual for such a gathering to last several hours.

What if? What if, in the beginning days or weeks of a new BDSM, power-based relationship, we could find ourselves in the midst of a set of knowledgeable, grounded, lifestyle-savvy friends who could help us find our way to clarity about the nature of the dynamic we were trying to create? What if we could spend time with people who would ask us about the existing marriage that doesn't accommodate our desires, the children still growing up under our roofs, the nature of our connections to our families of origin, our financial obligations and the implications of all of that, our ability to maintain employment opportunities, our health issues and concerns, the complications of combining households and property and bank accounts, our plans for eventualities like death and aging and chronic illness, things like wills and guardianships and medical powers of attorney, etc.?

Why is it that we spend hours figuring out how to signal a partner that we are in distress while gagged and bound, but never seek guidance or clarity about what to do when a "family" level challenge intrudes upon our lusty fantasies?

I believe that the impediment to that sort of community based mentoring of one another is our almost universal "hiddenness." With the exception of the "A" list lifestylers who make their livelihoods by being kinky, most of the rest of us have to report to regular jobs and earn a regular paycheck. We have kids and families and connections throughout our communities. The vast majority of us need to remain discreet about our lifestyle choices. I hope and believe that, if you met me, out in my day-to-day life, you would never guess about the nature of my lifestyle. I sometimes wonder about people I meet -- when I suspect that they might be "one of ours," but I am clear that I can't pick out the kinky folk from the vanilla ones when I walk down the street. How can we connect and ask for what we might need in the earliest days of a new relationship coming into being, when we can't see one another?

We are locked away from one another, and that isolation sets us up for potential disaster. Each and all of us are on our own, mostly. There's no place for most of us to go for the kind of one-to-one conversations that any "regular" set of folks can call up out of the group of friends and associates that people their everyday world.

It is a sure bet that the vanilla world doesn't care about any of us or our relationships. For them, we are simply a bunch of sick fucks who haven't got any right to exist. There's a conviction that when things go south for us, we somehow had it coming.

I've watched too many friends crash and burn -- struggling to make it work, all alone in the face of huge challenges, unable to ask for or find the kind of help that might give them a shot at surviving the inevitable hurdles that come to us all. It just isn't good enough to circle the wagons after it all goes down the tubes, and express our sympathy and support. I believe that we need to figure out how to reach out with help and guidance and support before things come to the point of being irretrievable. I believe that we must figure out how to ask for that help and guidance from those who would know and understand what it is to live as we all choose to live.

For Tess, for Scott, for all those others whose friendship I've valued and who have walked the path they are walking now, I am tired of offering impotent sympathy. I want somehow for the future to be different and better and more hopeful for our kinds of families.

swan

Marriage Equality For All

On the way home tonight, David Bender was hosting "The Rachel Maddow Show". His topic was Marriage Equality/Prop 8. His guest was the man who came up with "White Knot":



"The White Knot is the symbol for marriage equality. It takes two traditional symbols of marriage—white and tying the knot—and combines them in a simple way to show support for the right of gays and lesbians to marry. All loving couples deserve the same legal rights, benefits, and respect that civil marriage bestows."



Well said.......



Make your own "White Knot" and start the conversation in your world. The directions are easy and inexpensive and can be found here : http://www.whiteknot.org . They are not looking for donations, just support.

Works for me...

T

Something Fun

This one came in my email box from my darling daughter. It made me smile. Maybe it can do the same for those who come this way...

"sick of angel emails? Ok BE HONEST...how many of you REALLY ENJOY getting little angel love notes from every person in your address book? You know the ones with 'I love you so... here's an angel... and some mushy poem crap.... ' And like the cute wasn't bad enough, they then THREATEN you with bad luck if you don't send it on to others and back to them to prove you read the email! A vicious tactic! So here's my version:

Take the fairy dust: =
Add it to one of those angels

And PHOOF!!!!....

He's good luck because he probably made you smile. When you're finished trying to see up his loincloth, (AND YOU JUST LOOKED AGAIN, DIDN'T YOU??), why not forward this ANGEL on to all the others folks you know who could use a day brightener?"

swan

Toy Collection #3

Going forward, here's another paddle that was originally intended as a toy. This one is from a popular game from the 1950's and 1960's -- Jokari. As far as I know, like the Cracker Barrel paddle, these paddles are no longer being manufactured or sold by the original company. I think ours may have come from E-Bay.

It is a very big, very heavy, very not subtle paddle. If there is something "interesting" about this particular paddle, it would be in the sort of antique-y, folk craft image it carries. I didn't like it when He first bought it. I don't like it. It is simply mean.

But, here it is. Done.

swan