“Healing” and “Recovery”

“Re-cover.” I don’t like the word, and how it impels us to chase it – more running, which is the root of our pain to begin with.

When we seek to recover from something, what does it mean? A wound was exposed, and we want to cover it again (re-)? To re-store our identity, or sense of self? Be more self-ish? Yeah, I do think that’s what people seek in recovery. To feel again as they once felt before. The illusion of strength once held. To make the masks of personas as impenetrable as before. To acquire more masks that falsely convey strength to onlookers, even when looking upon our own selves. To return to fooling ourselves and others. To return to being better actors (hypocrites). To feel better via false feelings. To substitute positive feelings for the negative ones.

I don’t like the word and notion of recovery. Or healing. Especially when they mean those things.

In the upper room where Doubting Thomas encountered the resurrected Christ, Yeshua invited Thomas to probe his wounds with his fingers. His wounds were not absent in his risen body. He did not run or escape from them. No recovery or healing erased them when he was saved from hell and death, born again, a new creation. They are part of him for eternity. He carries them now and forever. So, now, what is it you want to cover?

To heal is not to fix our wounds. It is instead to grow large enough in awareness (consciousness) to carry those wounds in their rightful embodiment. Now, and for eternity. We already are enough to do that. And the evidence is plain: Our wounds have not killed us. We didn’t need to move on, move forward, leave that baggage behind. We may wish to, but we haven’t. And won’t. Any more than the risen Jesus did.

When Yeshua healed others, he did so by awakening them to their enoughness already. You are already enough to carry your wounds. The evidence is inarguable. Perhaps you just want it to be easier. Like a pill to fix us.

Heal the disconnection from our pain, so our pain no longer feels separated, abandoned, lonely, orphaned. When we carry it with us like a tender baby, it knows we love it.


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Neil D. 2021-11-24

Do you have affection for the words “healing” and “recovery”? Do they mean something very different to you? Share a Comment with us, below, please…

Sacramental Ceiling Cnidaria – Chapter 4, A Bleeding Jellyfish

[2.5 minute read]

Continuation of Chapter 3, “Dear Teacher: F for you”

Don’t put your faith in any writings, ideas, books, rules, or laws of religion or state.

YOU have been incarnated to fulfill the law.

The law of love is made flesh, incarnated, by you and in you – as part of “all things.” Believe in your SELF.

Don’t try – artificially with your brain – to extract some ideals of goodness from your actions and your character. There are no “parts” of you, good or bad. There is only you. You are a whole. You are complete. The human condition’s tragedy is that we are the last to realize.

Because you have been indoctrinated and brainwashed, at some level, by the notion of original sin, you want to peel away your bad “parts” and wash them away, or to claim pardon by professing some grotesque human sacrifice as propitiative ransom. That’s all mental gymnastics, not real.

What’s real is your own completeness as you are.

You have been brainwashed by cultural conditioning to revile your negative emotions, and so run from them or seek comfort by some external Sky Wizard. But a spark of that very wizard is what animates you and is the very “ground of your being” in existence.

You are infinitely more than enough to carry your negative emotions, and to carry the cross of suffering which others hoist upon your shoulders as you journey along your own Via Dolorosa toward the death of your false beliefs about your self. Then your core beliefs about who you – and neighbors and enemies – are can rise to new life, as authentic love bleeds out of your very own divine heart.

Take on your own crown of thorns, and watch in a mirror as life-giving blood runs from your pierced and wounded “head” toward your heart. Believe in your self, teacher. Shine your light in the world as a lesson – not only to your students, but a lesson to your own self. You can fulfill the rules by loving your wounded self, and that love is too much of a wellspring not to overflow abundantly onto your life’s insurrectionists and law-enforcers.

Love, and only love, conquers your enemies… And, at the pace of trickling blood… Authentic love trickles no more quickly.

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Neil D. 2021-11-12

Sacramental Ceiling Cnidaria – Chapter 3, “Dear Teacher: F for you”

{~4.5 minute read}
[continuation of Classroom Control Kicks (Ch.1), and Paradise Lost (Ch.2)]

When we get exasperated by subversive clowns in our lives, oh my… what gifts!

But the idealists – including the one in your head – have different eyes:

“Dear Teacher,
Because you failed to enforce the rules, we will do poorly on our standardized tests about tropical ecosystems. You should have smote… You could have had them marched to the office… Instead, we had to witness how you treat your enemies. What kind of teaching is that?”

What kind of teaching IS that, indeed. You get an F. Fantastic? Fabolous? Far-reaching.

THE “Teacher” has told us we too are brothers and sisters in – and of – him, the Annointed One. To control others, we can point to the rules and enforce the law. Yet, as sisters and brothers of The Master rabbi/Teacher, we have been incarnated into flesh not to replace The Law, but to fulfill it (Mt 5:17, excerpts below).

What kind of teaching is THAT?

“Where is this messiah as he fulfills the law? I’m looking for him, but I don’t see him.” Why, this Christ is in all things. One piece of all things is YOU. You were brought into being – incarnated – with “a divine spark,” as your soul is often called. The basis of connection, as brothers and sisters and children of One. As are uncontrollable rebels and insurrectionists. Enemies.

Think of how you gracefully manage disruptions in life’s classrooms as you read these excerpts from Matthew 5 [ESV], The ‘Lesson’ On The Mount, and its afterwords:

2And he opened his mouth and TAUGHT them,…
5“Blessed are the meek [who don’t pound fists explosively to insist on following rules, dominating by power and control, fear and shame], for they shall inherit the earth…
7“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
8“Blessed are the pure in heart [who are not *faking* love by acting how love looks], for they shall see God [in jellyfish and all things].
9“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called [children] of God.
10“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. [Is righteousness adherence to rules? Only one: The Greatest Commandment.] …
13“You are the salt of the earth…
14“You are the light of the world… 16…let your light shine before others, so that they may see…
17“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18For truly, I say to you,… not an iota,… will pass from the Law until ALL is accomplished. [And we, as incarnated into existence, are part of the “all.” We are to be “accomplished.” To inspire.] …
20For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees [who enforce the rules hypocritically, not living them in their hearts], you will never [see] the kingdom…
22…everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment [this means to the judgment of other judgmental people, not God; THAT is what hell is]; whoever insults his brother…and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire [from those brothers and sisters, and from your own internal voices that know of your secret hypocrisy]… 25Come to terms quickly with your accuser…, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge…and you be put in prison [of your very own conscience, the “law” of God written on your heart by your incarnation with a divine spark]. 26Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny [until you have come to love your own self in mercy as you love your neighbor, enemy, and as God loves you.]
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Next, Sacramental Ceiling Cnidaria – Chapter 4, A Bleeding Jellyfish
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Neil D. 2021-11-08

Sacramental Ceiling Cnidaria – Chapter 2, Paradise Lost

3 minute read
[Sequel to prior Chapter 1, Classroom Control Kicks]

Halloween is past, and the holiday season is ahead. Christmas. The Incarnation. Not just the birth of Jesus, but the infusion of all which exists – past, present, future – by the Alpha and the Omega, the Logos, Word made flesh, visible, Jesus sanctifying human flesh because it is foundationally good, not bad. Christ in everything, by loving all things into himself. Christ IN all things.

With utter completeness Yeshua loved people and jellyfish and rocks and crêpe paper and whales and palm trees and olives.

Today if you sense judgmental eyes on you, or the weight of expectations and demands, turn away and raise your eyes to imagine crêpe paper Cnidaria hovering above. Imagine they have the eyes of Christ – as all things do – looking at you. Watching you. Lovingly. With actually absolutely nothing EXCEPT the fullness of Love itself.

Imagine that. Christ’s loving eyes adoring YOU. Look away from that ceiling, and still feel those eyes of nothing-but-love, looking your Way. And the incarnate face of God smiling at you.

Almost grinning, even.

Look into the eyes of those disturbing you. They are the face of Christ. Grin back at them.

Smiling at one another, you know that sacramental secret.

They and you are enormous. We must be, to be so loved by God that the air all around us is over-loaded and crackling with that Spirit…

Why else would those tissue tentacles shimmy?!

Beyond the shadow of a mind’s doubt – in the blinding light of the heart – we each know this Spirit envelops us.

Periodically, we each forget, for a moment…

Now you remember,
Right now, in November…
Jellyfish are cool

She chose them. They chose her. Inspiring.

Who says guardian angels can only have wings? I bet plenty have tentacles. How else can they reach down and surround and envelop and warm us with so loving an embrace…

Tickling touches
as tender as
tissue tentacles
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How are we to “control” a dozen wondrously restless souls out of control in a classroom? Putting down the insurrection instigated by a few mischievous instigators…

“Now there isn’t enough time to watch the video as part of the lesson on tropical island ecosystems!” You worked so hard and scrambled so intensely to prepare it! Your lesson, lost.

November ain’t so tropical. But Paradise? Indeed. It is not lost.

Next: Chapter 3, “Dear Teacher: F for you”

Neil D. 2021-11-06

Sacramental Ceiling Cnidaria – Chapter 1, Classroom Control Kicks

{3 min read}

It’s not imperceptible if you’re looking for it… Merely a child passing beneath can subtly disturb enough air surrounding them, and those tissue-paper tentacles will dance, dangling lightly from the rainbow bodies of party-decoration jellyfish, suspended from her classroom ceiling.

Each August for a couple decades, as the schoolyear’s start looms, the excitement of her vocation to the hearts and minds of God’s children with single-digit ages and eternal souls bubbling over with distraction and wonder… Well, it all makes her a little anxious. Aye, on a precipice of overwhelm. How couldn’t it, really?

She has the right hardware to hang a dozen of them from the rails of the drop-ceiling, but she’s barely 5 feet tall, and in her late fourth decade, so how the hell will she hang them? Same way as always. Marshaling the gifts God sprinkles onto her journey’s path. That’s how her divine hair cooperates with its Source.

She will conform the retired math room – mostly cleaned out now – to her chosen theme:

Tropical Paradise.

Two additional souls tenderized by her invitation and very being, plus a borrowed hammer to tap the pushpins through the beach tapestry and fresh paint, high on a naked wall… An unwieldy hot glue gun to adorn with a grass skirt the back table on whose ocean-blue surface will rest the inflated palm tree, destined to wilt slowly, a slow air leak stealing its turgor. But her delight is firm.

Her November opens by receipt of a commendation letter from an organization to which she was recommended by a former student because she inspired him. She inspires children. Not easy.

Two days later, exasperated, her head throbs because of “regular” work stress, and the antics of a few troubling students – the sort of episode she has *regularly* defused for decades.

Mortal, as she is, the exceptional hugeness of her soul has slipped her mind.

Her head throbs more loudly than her heart.

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Next: Chapter 2, Paradise Lost
{~3 minutes}
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Neil D. 2021-11-04

Big D. Dad. Bob. Dad’s Boys. The sport of kings

At dinner, Bob asked eventually if I follow politics. “Not if I can avoid it.”. Then I found out he’s from Virginia, and I told him it fascinates me politically, next to the beltway, yet the rural areas in its west. Told him I have a decent sense of Virginia, because I lived in Frederick, Maryland where our firstborn, Joseph, was born, and one of my goddaughters now lives in Beltway Virginia. But we often drove through the western back-country on our way to family vacations in North Carolina from Pittsburgh. Restaurants, gas stations, and driveways there are a little different than nearer Mount Vernon and the Potomac 🙂

He said he’s originally a New Yorker, so I asked upstate or not. Since I grew up 5 miles south of the upstate border. He has driven on I-81 through Scranton and within 10 miles of Susquehanna on his way through Binghamton for wrestling tournaments. And he said upstate should be a different state also.

And here we were in California, which is the fifth largest economy in the world, and should be several states.

Bob is out here to see the Breeders Cup at Del Mar, which is blocks from the last hotel I stayed at in San Diego, and rode a rented motorcycle closer to the track, and wondered if it was a significant track. Well, the breeders cup, yeah. Biggest purse (monetary prize) in the “sport of kings,” of which my dad was an irrepressible fan.

He recommends Saratoga for a trip from Pittsburgh, but Laurel is a stone’s-throw away from Joseph in Columbia. Pimlico where they run one of the three legs of the Triple Crown (The Preakness stakes), is a bit rundown, but so is Laurel. After the rise of casinos and online gambling, the racing industry has suffered, he says.

I asked why he was in California; for business? He doesn’t do business anymore. Retired. So, no. I asked if he was just a horse fan, or in the business. He was small in the business a while ago, but now he’s just a fan in retirement.

So my chat with him sealed the deal. My boys have to see thoroughbreds run live, from the fence (1100 pounds of life moving at 35 mph, as Bob puts it), and then, since you can’t see the backstretch from the fence, a couple of races high in the stands. If they wanna place bets for fun, Bob suggests I make a college graduate spend his money on that.

Bob knew the Scranton area, as well as the Pittsburgh North Hills area, because his son was a wrestler when he lived in Virginia. He knew about the choice you have to make in middle school, because you can’t wrestle and play basketball, and he suspected I took the basketball track 🙂 I did, but missed wrestling dearly.
We discussed what a lonely sport wrestling is, and he reminded me of the remarkable character that loneliness builds when there’s no one else to blame like there is other team sports (except cross country and track in a lot of cases).

I was reading John Pavlovitz’s book at dinner when finally, after he finished his lamb chops and I finished my imported Italian spaghetti dish, we broke the silence from two seats away.

I was turned onto John Pavlovitz by recent Facebook posts by one of my high school English teachers (from 3 1/2 decades ago). I’m pretty sure that my notion of wrestling’s loneliness came from her older son, through her, or perhaps through her husband with whom my dad commuted to school, and to me from my dad she has called “The Big D.”

Thanks Mrs. K. Big or little

Thank you Bob.

My goodness, Louis Armstrong was right. What a wonderful world.
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Neil “little” d. 2021-11-02