Tempest In A Pee-Cup

Each of us faces adversity in our lives. Some of us seem to face more of it than others, and to varying degrees. We're unhappy with our relationship statuses (stati?), jobs, family life, or how our preferred sports teams are performing. Someone cuts in front of us in line at the coffee shop, or we get caught in a rainstorm without an umby. 

However, on this day, I can think of no greater challenge, no greater frustration than having to pee on command. That's right, this entry is about pee.

This morning I went to the hospital in order to have blood work done - my cholesterol is "off the scale" at times according to my doctors - and peeing was not the only obstacle that I faced. I had to fast for twelve hours before having my arm poked in a not-so-random act of vial-in-ce. That's right, I had to forego my toasted tomato sandwich, banana, yogurt, and soy milk (at this point you may be thinking "Good for you, Mark Andrew! That's a fairly healthy breakie!") And you'd be right. 

However, immediately after having my blood drawn by some prick (ahem), I faced the dreaded task of having to slip into the side washroom and attempt to take a leak into a small plastic jar. I hate doing this. I've hated it for as long as I can remember. And that's because I'm almost never able to do it. Call it performance identity or call it by any other name - I just can't do it. Knowing that I would have to go through the stream-lined process before going to the hospital, I drank three and a half cups of water before the short walk down the street to the lab, but to no avail. After about fifteen minutes - yes, fifteen - of remaining in the washroom attempting to contact Flo (it was such a long time that I could have written an epistle,) I gave up and sheepishly walked out of the washroom with the empty cup. The nurse - or technician - or phlebotomist - looked at me approvingly, thinking I had done the deed, and motioned me to place the cup on the silver table beside me. I had to reveal my frustration, and she was kind, but also gave me the look that a mother gives when she has to tell you that Fluffy was very sick and wouldn't be coming home anymore. 

I felt so defeated.

I proceeded to walk the three minutes to the local Tim Hortons in order to have some lunch, now that I could at least eat, and there was a swarm of high school students in front of me on their lunch break. I kept thinking, "I bet none of these kids would have difficulty peeing into a cup." I had my lunch, consisting of a sandwich, a Canadian Maple donut, and a dark roast coffee (with two creams and two sweeteners, because I knew you'd ask), and I found a paper and read several articles. And then it came. NO, not literally!!! But all of a sudden, because I wasn't being prompted, I felt the relief to, well, relieve. 

After completing the task, I walked back to the hospital and walked into the lab - something that I do often with other people's various samples, as I volunteer at the hospital. However, it was strangely different this time. When I went to hand the biohazard bag containing the cup which therein contained my pee, I felt a sort of pride, the kind of pride that a child must feel when they finally master the art of using the potty. I then felt a strange kind of disappointment that no one was giving me a sucker or ice cream in order to reward me for my accomplishment. This had been a day to remember, and it was only 12:30pm. Needing some validation, I asked the lab technician: "On a scale of one to ten, how fabulous do I look today?" 

"Well, I'd have to say... 'yer an eight." 

Mark Andrew Nouwen

Pretty In Pink? Cancer Is Not Cotton Candy

It's that time of the year again. No, I'm not talking about Remembrance Day, nor am I talking about Christmas, though by the displays in many stores, December 25th is just around the corner. What's with that? It's early November.

It is the eleventh month, so that can only mean one thing: men across the country will bid adieu to their Gillette and Schick razors, and take up the call to rise for Movember. Yes, Movember. I too have decided to grow my beard out again (you're welcome ladies).

However, I am not doing so for "cancer awareness."

According to Prostate Cancer Canada, "Movember is the month formerly known as November, where men and women across the globe join together to raise awareness and funds for men's health, specifically prostate cancer, testicular cancer and men's mental health. Men (also known as Mo Bros) sign up online at Movember.com." Yes, that's right, Mo Bros.

I was similarly unsettled several weeks ago when I went to a local hockey game in my small city and they were making a big deal of the players wearing pink jerseys as well as skate laces, etc to "raise awareness" for breast cancer in conjunction with an event called "Bowling For Boobs." (It makes me wonder what's next - Ninjutsu for Nuts?)

My problem is two-fold when it comes to campaigns such as the popular Pink Ribbon campaign as well as the countless runs, walks, fundraisers that dot the landscape each and every year. (Each month seems to be an awareness month for a certain type of cancer).

1) And I'll put this in bold, though I'll refrain from using capslock: We're "aware" already, for god's sake! What it is about awareness? Do organizers think that just because we hear an announcement for a benefit barbecue in the park, that thousands will steer their cars to the side of the road and say, "Holy Shit! There's a breast/colorectal/lung/prostate cancer crisis in this country?!" Who among us has not either been personally affected or known someone very close to us personally affected or who have died of this horrible disease? Enough awareness, it's time that more is done to actually see it and tackle it for the terrible disease that it is. More research, more money, stronger commitments. Now, I do realize that some of these fundraisers and benefits and campaigns do support and provide money for research. I guess I would just like to hear the usage of the word awareness disappear. In the last two years alone, I have had two cousins, a great-aunt, an aunt, and a good friend die of cancer, with other friends or family members surviving lengthy battles with it. I'm aware.

2) My second point is that cancer is not pretty. But there it is, pink pink, everywhere! According to the source of all things, Wikipedia, the pink ribbon was adopted as the official symbol of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 1992. Since that time, you see pink on everything from t-shirts to teddy bears to car decals to toilet paper packaging. What you may not be "aware" of is that the Pink Ribbon movement is also a big money maker, with a significant amount of your donations not going to cancer research. Another interesting piece of history is before the dawn of the pink ribbon, Estée Lauder and Self Magazine initially approached Charlotte Haley, who had begun a peach-coloured ribbon campaign to press the National Cancer Institute to increase its budget for cancer prevention research. Haley refused to be part of what she felt was a commercial effort, so Estée Lauder and Self changed the colour of their ribbon to light pink in 2005, to circumvent Haley's efforts to stop them. Since then, billions of dollars have went to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, with consumers thinking that just because something has the colour pink on it and the words "cancer awareness" or "cancer research" on it, that your money is going to those things.

But back to the "cancer is not pretty" notion for a minute. Let me say now that I am sure that supporters wearing pink and rallying around family members and friends has helped millions of women and men throughout the years, and it will continue to do so. But there is a large group of people for whom this is not the case. I have not personally had cancer, but many who have or who have been affected by it say that "dolling" the disease up by slapping pink on it is not helpful to them.

To this effect, I highly recommend that you go to this link and watch the extremely eye-opening and somewhat shocking 2011 documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc. which talks about where the money is going, as well as how dolling up cancer is more than a little frustrating for many who have had or currently have the disease. It's worth skipping a movie on Netflix and watching this hour and a half doc.

So this November, I'll grow the 'stache, but I'll call it an early playoff beard.

Our Need To Reinvent The Wheel

"What I have discovered by following the call to consciously discover and live the meaning in my life is not something unique or new. It echoes the experiences and insights of seekers and students and teachers on many different spiritual paths. Sometimes, when I write in my journal of some insight I have had into my own experience, I realize that it is familiar, similar or identical to something I have read or heard from a spiritual teacher. And I laugh at my own sense of discovery. One morning, shaking my head at the length of my journey to discover the truth in something I had been told years before, I think to myself, 'Does each of us have to reinvent the wheel?' Even as the question comes I know the answer is yes. Yes, each of us needs to experience the truth for ourselves, each of us needs to follow our own path to self-realization even though the self we realize is in essence identical to and not truly separate from all others. There is simply no way to get there except by going through the process yourself."

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer, "The Call: Discovering Why You Are Here"

Allow Yourself To Be Fully Received

Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932 ~ 1996)

"Giving yourself to others without expecting anything in return is only possible when you have been fully received. Every time you discover that you expect something in return for what you have given or are disappointed when nothing comes back to you, you are being made aware that you yourself are not yet fully received. Only when you know yourself as unconditionally loved–that is, fully received–by God can you give gratuitously. Giving without wanting anything in return is trusting that all your needs will be provided for by the One who loves you unconditionally. It is trusting that you do not need to protect your own security but can give yourself completely to the service of others.

Faith is precisely trusting that you who give gratuitously will receive gratuitously, but not necessarily from the person to whom you gave. The danger is in pouring yourself out to others in the hope that they will fully receive you. You will soon feel as if others are walking away with parts of you. You cannot give yourself to others if you do not own yourself, and you can only truly own yourself when you have been fully received in unconditional love.

A lot of giving and receiving has a violent quality, because the givers and receivers act more out of need than out of trust. What looks like generosity is actually manipulation, and what looks like love is really a cry for affection or support. When you know yourself as fully loved, you will be able to give according to the other’s capacity to receive, and you will be able to receive according to the other’s capacity to give. You will be grateful for what is given to you without clinging to it, and joyful for what you can give without bragging about it. You will be a free person, free to love."

~ Henri Nouwen, "The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom" 

Welcome To Wild Open Spaces!

Welcome to my blog, Wild Open Spaces. I'll be writing about spirituality, politics, social justice issues, and life in general. In the past I have tended to be rather polarizing in my writings; I am looking to change that, while still remaining passionate! Thanks for Liking my page, and I look forward to our conversations!

That Time When I Gave Up On Giving Up

Maybe you're a little like me. Once upon a time you dreamed big dreams, you envisioned yourself in a career or a relationship, or pursuing that thing that you were passionate about. You were young and you were awkward and your clothes didn't always match, but that didn't matter, because your ego hadn't completely taken over and you were still impervious to the World of Success and Dream-Crushing. When you were three, maybe you wanted to be a fireman or princess; when you were sixteen, maybe you wanted to travel to Africa and set up malaria clinics or be a Hollywood actor.

But at some point, you gave up on your dreams. Maybe it was the Dream-Crushing World, or maybe it was one or two people who beat you down, little by little each day, and you learned, like me, to settle. Yes, you showed signs of passion and inspiration, because the light inside never really dies, but storm clouds became the norm. First it was a few days without seeing the sun, then a few weeks, and then maybe twenty years. Life refused to slow down to let you somehow get out of this stunned and shocked feeling, in fact it sped up as you began to get a little older.

Your dreams became mere fantasies rather than a life that was achievable. Somewhere in there, you learned to retreat deep into your head, over-thinking your obsessions, and obsessing about your over-thinking. Living turned into thinking.

Whatever the reason that it happened, it happened. Maybe it was a result of being the ugly duckling at school. Maybe it was major depression and other mental illnesses. Maybe it was a parent, like the one at the coffee shop today who looked at her maybe-seven-year-old boy and told him "Stop being a friggin' ass, you're never coming here with me again." Maybe someone stole your innocence when you were completely powerless.

Have you settled? Have you given up? Giving up can take many forms and it has many faces. Maybe you stay in bed everyday until two in the afternoon and refuse to get help. Maybe you carry yourself very well in a decent career, but quietly you hate it and wonder "How did I ever get here?"

As long as there is breath, there is something in our favour. There is choice, and a chance to start dreaming again. What is it that you want to do? Who is it that you want to be? When will you allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to fall madly in love, even if it means getting your heart broken?

I'm not sure of a whole lot of things today. But in a week, in a month, in a year, I can look back and say, "Remember that time when I gave up on giving up?"

Mark Andrew Nouwen

Easter: Our Yearly Reminder That We Really Are Trash

Here we are again in the middle of Easter weekend, and throughout progressive Christian churches and circles you will hear sermons and read articles which try to shed a different light on the Jesus story. They will focus on liberation theology, how Jesus’ mission was to reach out to the marginalized, and how he was so inwardly free that he was able to give himself up totally, even to the point of death. Many of these sermons and articles will hold a measure of insight and truth.

But this isn’t that kind of article.

This evening a Facebook friend of mine who I attended a fundamentalist Bible college with posted one of those dreaded meme’s – you know, a cutesy or even powerful picture with an equal cutesy or powerful/insightful quote. But it’s holy week, so the flippancy and absurd nature of such meme’s have found their way into my Facebook feed. This particular meme featured a picture of Jesus on the cross, accompanied by a quote by the American Calvinist theologian and author R.C. Sproul. The quote reads as follows: “Why do bad things happen to good people? That only happened once, and He volunteered.”

There it was – the essential message of fundamentalist Christianity this time of year. In order to raise up Christ, we must naturally denigrate every single human being who ever lived or whoever will live. The rest of us are bad boys and girls who deserve a spanking – an eternal spanking at that. Fundamentalist evangelical Christian preachers and authors thus become bully-enablers.  Jesus is the most powerful person on the playground, and you must submit to his awesomeness at the expense of your own dignity.

I don’t know about you, but I’m so over the idea of original sin. Does anyone with a rational mind still believe that a long time ago in a place far far away (to most of us), a woman was given a piece of fruit by a talking snake, and that this woman then handed it to her husband, who upon taking a bite, ensured the filthiness and depravity of each and every person who would ever live from that time forward? (It was also probably convenient for the author of the creation myth to blame “Eve,” simply on the basis that she was the subordinate woman.)

Ever since this teaching of the fall of humanity became popular and then vastly accepted as traditional Christian doctrine, guilt and shame has been burned, etched into the psyche’s of those of us who were fortunate enough (tongue-in-cheek) to grow up within fundamentalism. “Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving!” as Bishop John Shelby Spong is fond of saying.  We are wretches, worms, unworthy of gathering up the crumbs from God’s table – that is, until the supposedly perfect Jewish Christ relented and finally granted the Gentile woman her wish after a clever reply that she managed to give.

This guilt complex has often invaded us at almost every level and in almost every instance at one point or another in our lives. Not only have we often heard from one or both parents that we’re a “bad boy” or a “dirty girl,” but it is reinforced with a divine devastation. We’re guilty of acts of commission, we’re guilty of acts of omission. We’re guilty for being sexual beings, we’re guilty for using our brains and questioning our pastors or a centuries-old worldview. We’re guilty for only praying for 15 minutes and not 20.

If we’ve had religious guilt pounded into our psyche’s and hearts by those we consider our holy leaders, it has seemed only natural that we turn to them for some way – ANY way – out of our dire predicament in order to escape this earthly guilt as well as eternal hellfire.

And so we bought into the idea of blood atonement. Many of us heard and sang about the blood of Jesus so much growing up that we were practically "brain-washed in the blood" of God’s only son. And it seemed like a perfectly natural idea, probably because it drastically reduced (at least for a fleeting time) our unbearable guilt complex. However, once we give up the notion that every person within every belief (or non-belief) system must be redeemed through what was originally an ancient Jewish atonement ritual, the grotesque and macabre nature of the crucifixion story begin to be realized. Growing up as a fundamentalist Christian teenager (the word Christian has been bastardized by others such as Paul, but I digress,) I joyously and fervently sang hymns like “Nothing But The Blood Of Jesus,” “Power In The Blood,” and “The Solid Rock (My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less).” I had no problem with the imagery.

Today it seems bizarre and, again, grotesque. The only way for all of humanity to be saved is to be “washed in the blood” or “cleansed by the blood”?  It sounds like something more out of the latest horror film than it does out of any sane and rational thinking. As Spong points out, Catholics drink the blood (with the official doctrine stating that when one partakes in the Eucharist, they are literally drinking the actual blood of Jesus,) while Protestants choose to immerse themselves in it.

Another disturbing element of the Easter story which I never questioned at all when I was a fundamentalist was the idea that God the Father sent his only begotten son to die on the cross for my (and the whole world’s) sins. Perhaps you are familiar with the popular modern hymn “How Deep The Father’s Love For Us." Its first verse reads: "How deep the Father's love for us/How vast beyond all measure/That He should give His only Son/To make a wretch His treasure."

Basically, God the Father loved me – ME – so much that he put his son in my place on the cross. Here are two questions: Is such a supposedly all-powerful and great God unable to forgive to the point where he needs shed blood to atone for sin? Secondly, is this not a dolled-up, glorified example of divine child-abuse?

The holy week, including the crucifixion and Easter may or may not be salvageable. Re-interpreting the symbols and language may be fulfilling for you.  A message which focuses on Jesus’ inclusive, compassionate, and loving nature may help a lot of people, as well as his penchant for a refreshing downward mobility. But for me, at least this year, the long-told stories only bring anger, as the “good news” of Easter only further excludes non-Christians such as myself, as well as those who Jesus may very well have died for.

For the fundamentalist, there is no room at the foot of the cross or at Christ’s table  for the untouchables. Those who are called the heathen, the whores, the sick, the queer - we shrug our shoulders and look for a welcoming home elsewhere.

Mark Andrew Nouwen