How do we lose connection with god? With our runaway minds, our imperfect thoughts, our loses piling up around us, how do we set back our minds to null? What is the passcode? Spirals of sadness heading endlessly downward.
My self-soothing has become a process.
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom
to know the difference
I first dabbled in recoding the sequence in my mind as I was sleeplessly anxious in bed next to the alcoholic. Ambien helped a lot. I needed more, however. To catch and slow the racing of my own anxious mind. There was no way to calm the choppy sea as I bobbed up and down. Drowning. Storms darkening all around. What had I become? How did I get here? Will I survive?
Nothing in my past or present could provide navigation. A blank sky. No northstar, as my companion snored gently in her intoxicated liminal state. I wanted to reach for comfort. She was no longer safe. I could not set out for any shore without some bearing. Compass. Hope.
Like a simple melody. I began with god.
My favorite sister had learned of and invited me to a Transcendental Meditation workshop when I was a young teenager. A golden mantra. A repetition. A calming series of sounds.
In my loss and longing I learned to soothe myself with a new mantra. One that did not require any belief. Or magic sounds. Just the willingness to participate and open to the possibility. I curled around my pillow, watched the nightsky through a portal like window, and began repeating the prayer.
Over and over.
I allowed my mind to attach to the ideas and voice in my head. The freight train began slowing. The letting go. So much of this life I could not control. So much sadness. So many players dancing off the stage before I understood the orchestration of my own life. I am the conductor. My actions and interactions the only part of the symphony I had say over. Perhaps the score was/is written by god. The performance now, in this moment, in this place of great loss, is mine alone.
Today, in the mountains, with a hundred or so other wounded celebrants, I rebounded. Again. And again. In this beautiful place, among these majestic trees, singing and playing in chorus and verse, I am able to release my own ambition, my own son, my own performance. All the things I cannot control. Dreams and ambitions that did not offer quiet.
I am alone in this universe.
Except for you.
I have some agency over my own actions and words. I have no way to give my son the nourishment he needs at the moment. So I give up. It is all there is left to do.
Rains keep sweeping through the valley. I hear the whisper of my little boy, my own boy. Myself. I know I am loved. In this place. At this moment. I have done all I can. I have not made contact with my family tribe for several days. I have nothing to do but trust in god. I am no longer swimming toward the shore. I am not treading water either. I am held here by a power greater than myself. And my trust.
My son will find his way. It is not for me to guide him. I have tried advice. Anger. Enticements. I have failed in my rescue attempts. That’s how it works.
Tomorrow morning I return to the living and the dead, leaving behind this tribe of song. I have learned my lesson. Found another level of peace in the banging songs of my mind. Singing a song of soothing to myself this time. A theme repeating and echoing the melodies of my father, his father, and my son. I am the connecting thread. I am the end of the long line of violence, addiction, and disconnection.
I am still weaving the wisdom into the fabric of my neural net. Like a prayer unceasing. All of those bits and bytes I cannot control I must release. All of the things I no longer want to do, no longer want to distract myself with, I will repeat the coda until the long fade takes me off stage as well.
For now, for this moment, that is all there is. Enough. A soul at rest in the arms of god.
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