Tag: Choice

Unselfies

Rita Sommers-Flanagan5 Comments 

“No, turn your head this way.” The Creator pointed as she positioned her phone for one last shot. I felt silly playing along, but on the other hand, it’s unwise to alienate God first thing in the morning, so I tilted my head obligingly. 

The shift of perspective floored me. My eyes beheld my unformed substance at the base of the flowering clematis. The existential struggles of transformation were underway, and it was obvious that my role is miniscule. I matter and I don’t.

This was overwhelming. I grabbed the wings of sunrise and flew toward the ends of the earth. But there, I was greeted by the forces of good and evil. “Hello, Side-Effect,” they yelled cheerfully. “We saw your selfies. Not bad.”

“Those weren’t selfies,” I said. “And I’m not a side-effect.”

My Coauthor rode in in high on the breakers of an incoming tide, waving like royalty. The forces of good and evil waved back. I did not.

“Ah, why the long face?” my Coauthor asked.

“I don’t want to be a side-effect,” I said. “I want to be the pinnacle.”

“You’re both,” God smiled. “Life itself is a side effect of passion. But don’t worry. Every side effect is different. Even desperately desired descendants don’t turn out exactly as imagined, and clones individuate. Each blade of grass is a pinnacle.”

She pulled her phone out of her waterproof fanny pack, threw an arm over my shoulder, and took a series of selfies as we emerged from the depths. 

“Choices,” God said. “Even side effects have choices. And those choices will have choices. That’s why I take so many pictures.”

“And that’s why I always feel like I’m to blame,” I moaned. “Choices are hard.”

“Innocence and intention coexist,” God said. “Culpability is a carriage with draped windows pulled by a team of wild horses. It’s a rough ride.”

“Aren’t you angry with the choices we’re making?” I asked.

“A little,” the Holy Hungry Immigrants shrugged. “But we’ve already laid ourselves down on the tracks. Now, we just wait for the train.” 

They handed me a phone. “Could you snap a couple shots of us?” they asked. “No one will believe this back home.”

I heard the train in the distance. “Get up,” I shrieked. “Don’t be stupid.”

“We can’t.” They gazed lovingly at my horrified face. “You know we can’t.”

For Those Who Find Forgiving a Real Pain

Rita Sommers-Flanagan6 Comments

Sometimes, the Beyond and I find ourselves in agreement on human nature and human agency. And then we write a poem. WordPress makes poetic formatting a serious challenge, so we finally did a screenshot instead. Grandma Margaret often said, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” She didn’t add that the way would be rugged and nearly impassable sometimes–both in the realm of formatting AND in the realm of forgiving.

The Amoeba Ate My Homework

Rita Sommers-Flanagan8 Comments

I was reading up on amoeba and discovered to my horror that there are brain-eating amoeba floating around in fresh water ready and eager to devour human grey matter. I have an active imagination. I think I let some in. They’ve eaten what I would have written. In their single-celled existence, they may have achieved world peace by simply following their destiny

I am neither single-celled nor invasive, but every fiber of my being and all 30 trillion cells are inflamed. Sometimes, I can grasp the interconnectivity of all things, but I don’t relate well to thieving neighbors, deadly viruses, fascism, or pastries made with refined sugar and bleached flour.

Most mornings I arrive at consciousness gradually, in disbelief at the insolence, ignorance, and greed snarling just outside our door. The warm blankets and the dent my body makes in the mattress form a Godlike exoskeleton that I am loathe to surrender.

I linger, considering amoeba reproduction. Under favorable conditions, the amoeba divides in two. When things aren’t favorable, the amoeba body produces around 200 spores and then disintegrates. Even those lucky enough to gorge on human brains ultimately disintegrate. Maybe they produce smarter spores. I don’t know. Who cares?

“OMG,” God laughs. “Are you trying for the worst set of excuses ever? You aren’t an amoeba, and there are none in your brain. Amoebas have very few choices. You have many.”

“That’s the problem,” I sigh. “Humans pretend to cherish freedom, but choices that require sacrifice are hard. It appears that many would rather trust the wealthy or have a Big Daddy Dictator make choices for us: Define the bad guys. Kill them. Reduce tax burdens, increase buying power and meet our every need because we’re special.”

“You aren’t an amoeba. I’m not the Big Breast in the Sky. Dictators are not benevolent. There are no easy answers. And it’s time to get up.”

This is true. It is time to get up. I don’t want to leave my safe space, but as the saying goes, you can’t take it with you.

I dress for the day and turn to God.

“You coming?” I ask her.

“Always,” she nods. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Dictator brains on toast,” I mumble.

God laughs. “Amoeba envy?”

“Maybe,” I admit. “Some days, it’s hard to be evolved.”

“Ha! Well, regression is always an option.” God slugs my shoulder. “But it’s more interesting to put one foot in front of the other and lean in.”

I am aware this means to lean into compassion, joy, and sacrifice. I grimace, stare into the abyss, and offer God more toast, but she’s already gone. I take one last bite and hurry to catch up.  

Knucklehead

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

(For Pete)

Today, Class, we are discussing the term knucklehead.

Put your hands out, palms down,
fingers stretched wide,
and observe the miracle of the knuckle.
Bend your fingers into claws and pretend you are a cat.
Make fists. Punch the air. Right jab. Left jab.
Lie down on the ground, palms up.
Let the hands relax into that easy gentle curl
of knuckles at rest.

Our bodies are a plethora
of joints, ligaments, tendons, and cartilage,
a sinewy mass of soft tissue and bone,
skull held aloft by spine
sheltering the heavy gray matter
of God and similar cogitations.

And thus, Class, we combine knuckle and head.
This is a joke. You may laugh.

Ha ha, chuckles my star student,
the God of Some Sort, the one
who is always studying me.

Some Sort continues. May I suggest we include
arthritis and dementia in the curriculum?

No, you may not, I answer crisply.
But then I realize this is inevitable.

Wait. Yes, We can include the underbelly.
But YOU have to own it.
Own the disease. The deterioration.
Own the porosis, the vertigo.
Own the broken. Own the pain.
Own the death.

Some Sort responds, firm. Unafraid.
No Problem, Knucklehead,
I’m right there. It’s my pain, too, you know.
My design. My fire.
My death. I own it.
I nod. Not elated. Not defeated.

Class dismissed, I write on the board
in dusty blue chalk.

The God of Some Sort and I begin
a vigorous cleaning of the erasers
and the world disappears
in a cloud of bluish haze.

Revelations

Rita Sommers-Flanagan3 Comments

“Morning, sleepy.” God rubs my head, smiling. “Time to wake up!”

“Stop,” I mumble, covering my head with my paisley blue sheet. “I didn’t sleep well. Thoughts of the Antichrist kept rolling around in my head.”

“Yeah. Rough week. Satanically healed head wounds. Fake hysteria. Spellbound followers of malevolent beings. Beasts in sheep’s clothing,” God signs. “I’ve seen it all before. It’s a bit passe.”

“Maybe for you,” I say. “But not for me. Not for us. This could be the end times.”

“Nah,” God laughs. “Satanic healing is an oxymoron, and it’s always the end times. But the Book of Revelation would’ve made a great screenplay for your current crop of dark-hearted fanatics. The author could have made millions scaring people. Too bad he was so far ahead of his time.”

“Time is definitely the issue,” I say. “We’re running out of it.”

“You might be. I’m not,” God counters with a selfish grin. “Even if your world runs out of time, I won’t. I play with time like you play with frisbees.”

“Well, Mr. Laissez Faire, a lot of people are begging Various Versions of You to do something about, um, everything. Soon.”

God groans. “You would not believe all the contradictory prayers clogging up the prayer-o-sphere.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” I say sarcastically. “This shiny blue marble with all its evolutionary splendor may be just a twinkle in your creative eye, but it’s everything to us. Everything.”

“Then act like it,” God says. “You’ve done a terrible job of fulfilling your potential so far. There’s a draft of your Official Eviction Notice on my attorney’s desk as we speak. And don’t ask for a recommendation if you move elsewhere. I love you all. I really do. You’re intriguing. But if you continue to be so easily duped, I’m afraid you’re not worth the risk.”

I bow my head as if to pray, but it’s just an excuse to break eye-contact with the Truth. Why ARE we so easily duped? Vicious selfishness and blind hatred have been rebranded as faith. Lying buffoons and feckless billionaires are praised and adored.

The sound of galloping hooves in the distance chills my soul. I gasp.

“Relax,” God says. “It’s not the four horsemen. It’s the Budweiser team. We’re having a big kegger on the beach tonight. I’ve ordered seven pizzas and seven golden bowls of chips. You should come.”

“What beach?” I ask. I don’t like Bud, but a little social time might be nice.

“Gaza,” God says.

“GAZA!” I shout. “You’re a fool, God. They’re not even letting necessities in. They’ll kill the horses.”

God shrugs. “They always kill the horses,” he says. “I’m used to it.”

The (Human) Race

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

My superpower is reasonable restraint when it comes to cheesecake and dark beer. I also have x-ray vision for seeing the artistic potential in sticks, stones, and rusted metal. I possess both grandiose aspirations and impressive amounts of self-induced humility. As far as I can tell, God’s superpower is stealth. And maybe patience, though I’m less sure of that.

Arguably, my superweakness is asymmetry in a world that demands alignment, hierarchy, and singular definitions. Luckily, this is one of God’s superweaknesses, too. It’s challenging to stay balanced with eyes that are not horizontally level and ears that don’t match. My right hand is overly dominant and the same can be said of my Coauthor. We dig far better holes handling the shovel from the right. But then, who’s to say what constitutes a better hole?

Someone close to me was born ambidextrous with a leaning toward the left. At the time, this was perceived as a correctable birth defect rather than a rare gift. The prescription for people born with such amorphous qualities was to crawl around on all fours, supposedly rewiring their brains. To this day, tucked deep in the psyche of my loved one, there’s confusion. What could have been a superpower was turned into self-doubt. A shameful reason to hide.

“Balderdash!!!” God yells. “I’m sick to death of simplistic dualism and brutally enforced conformity to false binaries. There are males, females, and those between. And there are exquisite crossovers and crossbacks. Right handers. Left handers. Both handers. No handers. Isn’t it glorious? I love them all just the way they are. They tickle the bejeezus out of me.”

A song from the 1930s pops into my head. “You say tomay-to, I say tomah-to,” I sing with a lopsided grin. God joins in. We bellow out the old tune. “You say ee-ther, I say eye-ther…You like potayto, I like potahto…Let’s call the whole thing off.”

We’re unhinged, offkey, and happy.

“You’re no Ginger Rogers,” I tease.

“And you’re no Fred Astaire,” God teases back. “But you’re on the right track, sweetie. Sing louder. Run harder.”

“I try, God. You know I try.”

To demonstrate, I stop cavorting around the dance floor and kneel like a sprinter, poised to run in the next heat, waiting for the crack of the starting gun. But there are handguns, rifles, and machine guns firing all over the world. It’s impossible to discern the one clarion shot that will signal when I should dash my whole nonbinary heart and soul into the next battle.

“Use your better ear, baby,” Coach God says, leaning in. “And keep in your lane. You’re perilously close to being disqualified.”

Weeding

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

God and I are in jovial moods today, philosophizing aimlessly as we work in the garden. My new thrift-store pants are perfect for pulling weeds on my knees, and the weeds are loose because it’s muddy.

I don’t love weeding, no matter how easily the weeds pull. I wonder if there are robots programmed to pull weeds yet. I bet they won’t like it either. Or will they?

“Will robots eventually have souls?” I ask God. “Or do they already?”

“Depends on what you mean by soul,” God says. “Do you think soul is a limited commodity? Soul flows into whatever you touch, play with, or program. It isn’t confined. It isn’t zero-sum.”

This does not surprise me. I talk to rocks, and sometimes in their own ways, they mirror back an answer. I pat the dashboard of my vehicle. I thank my eyes, ears, and knees for hanging in there, and I swear at the Internet, mildew, and uneven surfaces as if they are choosing to cause harm or hurt me. I speak politely to Alexa.

Notions of soul, volition, culpability, choice, and human cruelty roll around in my head. There are people far worse than invasive weeds. I think of them as soulless.

“Is it possible to spring a soul leak and dry up?” I ask.

“Yes, unfortunately, soul hemorrhaging happens,” God says. “It’s usually caused by fear or the lust for power. But unlike O-negative blood, there’s an endless supply of soul, available for the asking.”

The image of God at a soul-donation center, sleeve rolled up, needle forever embedded in the rich vein, liters of soul being rushed out the door…this makes me laugh. And cry. And even though I often donate my O-negative blood, I’m needle-phobic, so this imagery is making me a little woozy.

God notices me fading and embodies the mountains to distract me. Warms into sunlight to comfort me. Uses the iris to top off my soul with a generous splash of purple. This steadies me. I rise to the occasion of the unfolding day, knowing it will require kindness when I don’t feel kind. Patience. Generosity.

“Hey, God,” I say. “Could you make sure whoever is programming whatever is coming next values compassion over profit, mercy over revenge, humility over victory, and collaboration over hierarchy?”

“It can’t be absolute, sweetheart,” the Programmer says. “But these will always be options. Always have been. Always will be.”

Why Do I Have This Heart?

Rita Sommers-Flanagan1 Comment

When I have time on my hands, I try to squeeze the moments into a softball-sized orb but like particles of sand, the individual instances won’t stick together. Eternity may be circular, but apparently, my life is not. It’s entirely up to me how to use my time, but it won’t roll up like a river rock or a bowling ball, I can’t hold on to it, and it won’t come by again. This adds an unwelcome gravity to my choices.

Volition is a terrible curse. It’s right up there with self-awareness, God, and the nutritional labels on packaged foods. Humans have debated the correct basis for making the right choices for as long as they could articulate the question.

“But can you articulate the question even now?” asks the Issuer of All Questions as he stomps snow off his boots and sniffs the air.

To my chagrin, my hands smell like liquid nails, creosote, and chlorine—all toxic. There are plastic containers and dried brushes on my counter. I’m doing laundry with warm water and fabric softener, eating chocolate laced with lead. I designed our house to let the sun warm it, but there are days when the sun doesn’t shine. My carbon footprint remains larger than my feet.

“Probably not,” I admit. “But I ask a lot of questions. That’s safer than locking down on one anyway, right?” I’m trying to shelve the chronic shame I feel for various shortcomings and hypocrisies. “

“I hate to say this, little buddy, but that sounds like rationalization,” the Issuer says. This could come across as judgmental, but I know him better than that. He’s just trying to help.

“Of course it is,” I admit. “But then, why do I have this brain?

The Issuer smiles. Wrinkles upon wrinkles define and deepen the beauty I’ve come to expect from that weathered face.

“That’s a fair question,” he says gently. “But here’s a better one: Why do you have that heart?”

Uncle Bud

Rita Sommers-Flanagan16 Comments

Just days ago our beloved Uncle Bud fell and did not regain consciousness. This past year his body and mind had started giving way, and our collective family grief began. Now it’s in full force. He’s gone.

Among his many achievements and passions, Uncle Bud was a master fisherman. I walk by the river, seeing it through his eyes, feeling his hand-rubbing oh-boy enthusiasm from the inside out. God walks alongside, quiet.

“It wasn’t all rosy,” she says. “For him or your mom…”

“I know,” I interrupt. “They didn’t talk about it much, but I know.”

Uncle Bud was generous, kind, and positive. Filled with good humor and gratitude. In contrast, his childhood included poverty and difficulties most people don’t have to face. In a moment of rare self-disclosure my mom told me that she and Uncle Bud had a pact: They would be there for each other, and they would never, ever give in to the negativity and deprivation they experienced as children.

I’ve known a lot of bitter, unkind people, who constantly blame others for their troubles. Their parents, the government, teachers, partners, neighbors, children—anyone but themselves. Fault-finding is a toxic hobby; blame obliterates gratitude. This is ironic because gratitude lifts the spirit. But for some reason, finding fault is simple, and blame is easy. Gratitude takes effort.

“Why is blaming so seductive?” I ask God.

“That’s a no-brainer,” God answers. “It’s lack of center. Lack of compassion. Insecure people crave admiration. They focus on what’s wrong around them to build themselves up. They’re takers, not givers. Enough is never enough and they are never to blame.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I feel that tension all the time.”

“What tension?” God asks with false innocence.

“I want to be positive and cool like Uncle Bud, but I also want everyone to notice how much I give, how hard I try. I tell myself it’d be good for them to be grateful. But that’s not how it works is it?”

“Being positive is a choice, and gratitude’s a choice. You can’t demand gratitude,” God says with a knowing grin. “Trust me. I’ve tried!”

 “Ha! You’re almost as funny as Uncle Bud.” I smile sadly.

“Thanks,” God says. “He really was amazing.” I nod. We watch the trout rise. And together we remember Uncle Bud with sadness, love, and deep well-earned, willingly offered gratitude for the courageous choices he made and all the ways he added happiness to the lives around him.

Aftermath

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

God flaps long black wings and lands gracefully on a large pile of debris while I gaze at what was once a fence but is now a line of uprooted bushes, broken promises, sticks, and mud. I wave. God takes human shape and waves back. A wide-brimmed hat shades her eyes from an ambitious morning sun. The FEMA people have come and gone.

We are creatures of the seasons, drawn along by the unstoppable orbit of earth and the long and short of things out of our control. We’ve learned to adapt. Even the meanest among us is glad for a cold drink on a hot day. Even the bravest does not welcome frostbite. When a season runs amok, and our shelters collapse, burn, or float away, we stand stripped of familiar, protective layers. Our dreaded smallness is revealed.

Both “aftermath” and “seasons” have etymological roots in agriculture. Knowing when to plant and knowing there will be a smaller, second crop available after harvest–these are as essential to survival as breathing—though not as automatic. I survey the aftermath of this season so far. It has severely eroded riverbanks, civility, and the pillars of our democracy.

I settle beside God. We say nothing. Not long ago, the flat surface we’re sitting on was a bridge plank from somewhere upstream. Now it’s woven into what the river has lifted, tossed, and left behind. It will not be a bridge again. I do not know which bridges will hold. I’m tired and afraid. God takes my hand, and we walk to the garden where seeds are belatedly sprouting. I am astonished to see the Lower Salmon River squash seeds I saved from last year making a go of it. I was sure they were rotten, infertile, or dead.

“Never say never,” God whispers, gently touching the sprouts.

“Never say always,” I counter. “I’m not sure what’s next, but it won’t be the same river, ever again.”

“Nothing is ever the same river,” God says.

I give God an ironic look and push my hand through her ephemeral chest. On the other side, there’s a new season as yet unnamed. At some point, I will call it home, but even so, it will be temporary.

God leans down, pulls a weed, and squints up at my wavering being. “There is no final resting place,” she says. “But the painted ponies love having riders like you.” She hands me a golden coin. I hand it back. She laughs, swallows the coin, and flies away. I have flotsam and jetsam to clear, wells to cleanse, and fires to build. So many fires to build.