Some days it's a struggle

As we pulled into the Lund's parking lot, I saw an older woman inching through the muddly slush with a walker. I said cheerfully, without thinking, "There I go, in a few years!" My daughter was horrified: "Way to see the worst of things," she said. What I didn't say to her was that I had a flash of fear and awareness, of how hard it had been to get around with my broken foot a few years ago, of the limits of the last two years of physical therapy for my shoulders and hip, of recognition of a relative's rheumatoid arthritis, the news that two dear people had recently suffered the same broken bone in a shoulder through falls: my own fear that what is currently a manageable chronic pain syndrome could engulf my life as it has those of others. And of course, one day I will probably be unable to walk without support. It's a question of when, not if. We all decay and die.

I told her that I was grateful for my health, not expecting the worst, but she wasn't buying it. On the one hand, it could be said that I was seeing the worst. On the other, I was also (at least internally) feeling grateful for my health. But I was also repeating a gesture I'd seen my mother make many years ago, when she said cheerfully, "I'll be one of those ladies pushing a shopping cart in the Tenderloin" and we, her daughters, had reacted with the same horror at what seemed like a fatalistic expectation of the worst, but now, I see, was a kind of magical conjuring: "I'll say out loud what is my fear, and thus dissipate its power over me." Because my mother is not one of those homeless women on Ellis street; she has worked hard and taken good care of herself. And I am doing the same. But the power our words have on our children is not only that of our muddled intentions, and I need to remember that.

After thinking about this incident, I recognize that lately I have re-activated my "cynical defense mode." It's a form of shielding myself from all the pain that I'm afraid would overwhelm me if I really held it in consciousness without defenses. On some level, the jokes about shoes flying at Bush make me laugh, but the reality of the torture inflicted on the shoe-thrower horrifies me. The recognition that his rage is felt by millions who contemplate the deaths of all those killed and maimed as "collateral damage" in Iraq is almost too much to bear. And after the long drawn-out struggle to elect a person who symbolizes our desire for change, the pain that I hear from so many who feel betrayed because Obama has invited an activist for bigotry, Rick Warren, to read an invocation at his inauguration is also my pain (but think how many people would scream if he'd invited Rev.Wright!). I can't shut it all out, and sometimes I feel as if I am écorchée vive. But I am most profoundly aware of my gratitude because I am trying to be mindful of my fears, and transform them into compassion. Unfortunately, what I am doing to defend myself is experienced by others as cynicism at best and anger at worst, but certainly as negativity and not compassion. (So I talked to my daughter about this and we hugged each other and reminded each other that we love each other very much).

My hat's off to Phoenix Woman for reminding us all that along with Rick Warren, another person who has been invited to participate in the inauguration is Rev. Joseph Lowery. She linked to this incredibly thoughtful post by a young man named Matt who describes the effect that Rev. Lowery had on him.