Arctic Entryway

In Alaska we lived off post in a military neighborhood. My non-army friends called it the projects because all of the duplexes looked just alike. Aluminum siding, beige paint, they were not interesting enough to be ugly.

The one feature that was interesting to me when we first moved there were the front doors. You'd walk in from the cold and instead of a living area you were in a room roughly the size of a walk-in closet. Then you passed through another door to get into the living area of the house. It's called an Arctic Entryway. They're pretty useful. It gives you a place to kick the snow off of your boots so you don't track a mess into the house. It also provides a buffer between the frosty air outside and the warmth of the house. The idea is you don't have both doors open at the same time. Think of a pressure lock on a spaceship. The idea is you don't bring the cold in from the outside.

I've written before on how hard this season is for me. Christmas Blues, SAD (seasonal affective disorder) whatever. If we could just skip ahead to January 3rd or so, that'd be okay with me.


The problem is that my sadness pours over onto people close to me. I try to keep it from driving my personality. I don't ever have unhealthy thoughts, I don't go on drinking binges or swallow pills. Nothing like that. Usually what happens is I go out to a mall or a bookstore and some Christmas song comes on and WHAM, I feel like crying. Or I get angry. It doesn't happen every day. It doesn't drive me to behave poorly. But I smile less. I don't participate, spiritually, in the season. I pray for it to pass and then celebrate survival of another Christmas season.

Maybe what I need is an arctic entryway. Perhaps this season calls for a buffer zone, a vacuum lock that allows me to knock off the chill before I encounter someone else's warmth. I'm perfectly willing to come in out of the cold, I really am. I try not to sulk (or pout or cry thus putting my name on Santa's naughty list) - I try not to wear my winter coat inside.

So let's try that. If you see me isolating myself. If I'm not getting into the spirit. Call me in from the cold. Let me know you've lit a fire and that there's room for me near you. And then, give me a minute. I need to knock the snow off of my boots. I need to close one door before I can open the other. It helps knowing that my family, my girlfriend, my friends, are on the other side of the inner door. It's good to know that when I close off the outside chill, my fingers may still be a bit numb from the cold, but when the next door opens, there's something good waiting for me and nothing has to follow me in unless I let it.

I hope that in midst of spending money, and driving around trying to give due time to our friends and family that we all have a good Christmas in spite of the season. I hope those of you with a little bit of extra warmth in your homes will let the rest of us in from the cold.

Peace,

Caulfield

Thanks, Mr. President

"Status quo, you know, that is Latin for "the mess we're in." - Ronald Reagan

It's one of my favorite quotes.

I've been maintaining status quo for as long as I can remember. I've learned to call the mess of my life home. For all the energy I spend maintaining - treading water, that is - I'd be nice to get on top of things. It's as if I need one strong push to reset the counter to zero. Accomplishing that, I can maintain zero. That's the theory any way. Maintaining zero sounds so simple, in theory.

The reality is that messes are a by-product of work. Any amount of energy used will create some waste.

My apartment is a wreck. I've gained way too much weight. I barely graduated from high school. When I did, I didn't celebrate, I relaxed. I breathed the sigh of relief normally reserved for survivors.

That has become my M.O. - doing enough to get by. As a result I've learned to celebrate mediocrity and mourn success. Success is scary and foreign.

My guru says that I operate in the system I've developed for myself. The disorganized desk, the messy apartment, the neglected car, these are safe places because they cannot go wrong.

Of course the problem with status quo is that I never really get anywhere. The reprecussions range from embarrassing to threatening.

Watch this - When I moved in to my new apartment, for some reason, I didn't get a chest of drawers. I've just been stacking clothes here and there. The stacks didn't last long. Clothes are everywhere. I'll do just enough laundry to have clothes for work, but I never get ahead. The mess gets worse. I know I need to buy a dresser or chest or something. Buying furniture will require me to clean for two reasons: 1) There's nowhere to put a chest because I've got too much stuff in the way and 2) I'd need help moving the furniture and I don't want anyone seeing my apartment. My girlfriend of 6 months has never seen inside my place. That's not good. I recognize that.

How's that for a Catch-22?

I recently helped some friends paint the inside of their house. That's really cool of them. I'm nowhere near the maintenence level of painting. I've got to start with vacuuming.

I took care of the inside of my car recently. I've done a good job of maintaining a clean interior. But man if it isn't one thing, it's another. I got hit in a parking lot a month ago and have yet to take it in for repair. Why? Can't seem to organize my time. (But Caulfield, couldn't you do it now, instead of blogging about it? Shut up, voice.)

The good news is that I'm discovering why the mess is so cozy, what motivates me or de-motivates me.

The status quo is changing. I'm looking forward to the new, next mess. To be able to go from catching up to getting ahead is the goal. It is of course slow going. You take the small steps and celebrate the small victories. The status quo changes and I change, hopefully, along with it.

Peace
Caulfield

Dwellers

I was asleep until I felt a little pressure on the side of my bed. My mom had come home from her night shift in the ER. She either worked the 11 to 7 shift or the dreaded 7pm to 7am shift. Either way, it was early and she was tired. She usually didn't wake any of us. This morning something was wrong and she needed to wake me. She didn't say my name or ask me to roll over, she simply pulled my little 10 year old body closer to her and held me for a little while. Then she kissed my head and told me she loved me. She went to bed and I fell back asleep.

That's how I remember it.

I later found out that a little boy my age had been in a car accident, no seatbelt, he was blonde like me and was alive like me when my mother first met him. He'd died of his injuries by the time her shift ended.

I once dated a girl who worked in the emergency room. She would sometimes stay with and even cradle babies that had died until the coroner could come and claim the body. I asked her why and her answer was simply that she wouldn't want her baby left alone and couldn't bear the thought of someone else's baby going unheld. At first that seems a bit dark, but grace has a strangeness that is only familiar to those who deal it out the most.

I just watched the new movie Gone, Baby, Gone. It's about child abduction. It got me thinking that there are good people who must dwell in dark places in order for us to function as a culture.

My dad performed CPR on a two-year old who'd been run over accidentally by her own father. The girl died and my dad continued to push and to breathe and beg with his efforts just so her watching parents never had to question that nothing else could have been done. I don't know how I'd handle seeing a dead child. I can't imagine telling a mother her that her baby is gone.

There are good people who must follow bad people to the dark places they dwell in order to save the rest of us.

My mother watched a boy like me die, probably more than one. Her empathy allowed her to understand the pain that an event like that must cause a parent. Her sense of gratitude made her come home and hold the boy she'd been given to love.

I have a friend who lost her son to suicide and is now a part of a grief counseling network. She dwells in the lives of those who've lost, she's equipped because of something that was taken from her. In her loss, she gives. She revisits her loss so that newcomers to dispair don't walk alone.

I think those that dwell in these dark places, these heroes of the sorrowfields, I think they must have a light in them. But I don't know where that light comes from. I know that most medical professionals have a warped sense of humor. It's a coping mechanism. But I think that there's a presence of character, something greater than even bravery that allowed my mother to return to work knowing that another car crash could bring another little blonde boy to die in her presence. My father puts on his uniform knowing that he will go out and encounter bad people doing bad things in bad places - places he hopes his grandchildren never have to see.

I hope, working in child care, that I can bear the site of atrocity, should it ever come to me. I've seen very little evidence of abuse - and have dealt with it professionally and with compassion that I've learned from my parents' examples. But that's about as dark as it gets for me.

I don't know how anyone dwells in a dark place without letting some of the darkness in. I think Nietzsche said that you can only stare into the abyss for so long before the abyss stares back into you. Well the people I'm thinking of don't stare into the abyss, they run to it, calling out for the attention of whomever may be lost there.

I hope for two things and in this order:

I hope when asked to dwell, for another's sake, in a dark place, I do so with grace and strength and return intact and able to serve again.

I hope I never have to dwell in a dark place.

I pray for two things and in this order:

I pray that those lost in the darkness are found.

I pray that those who dwell in darkness in order to find the lost can always find their way out again.

This post is a little sad.

I'll do better next time.

Peace,

Caulfield

Let us Pray (Applause)

My problem feels like a bad relationship. I broke up with Church a little while ago because she wasn't putting out.

That's terrible.

I broke up with Church because what once was sweet became sour. Heartfelt worship and times of repentence became times of prescribed motion.

What felt organic has become what I can only describe as religious theatre. Sunday morning church became a play in 3 acts. David Mamet has tought me how to dissect drama in our lives. If you havn't read "3 Uses of the Knife" you should. Mamet demonstrates how we create drama where there may not be any and why we do it.

I'm going to take a stab (terrible terrible pun) at using the Knife on the Church.

Act I

We praise God. We make noise, we put ourselves in a place where we act boldly. We are the hero protagonists of our own faith drama. Either collectively (this is happening to us) or individually (I come before God) we begin by singing not true praises to God, but about ourselves in context to God. We exalt God. We are the champions.

Act II

But wait, there may be a problem. The music changes to a minor key, slows down in tempo, and a soloist sings about her short comings and inability to be worthy to praise God. She is singing to God, but she is singing for us. We sing along, she is our vehicle and stirs up shame and remorse about our weaknesses in light of the greatness we've spent Act I proclaiming.

Act II continues seemlessly into the sermon. The sermon itself is a play in 3 acts. It tells of a common man (act I) who faces difficulty (act II) and is saved by faith (act III). If the pastor is really good he'll tell a story. He will put us in the story. We will see ourselves in the tale of the man who fell and was lifted up again. If he's really slick, he won't tell us the third act of the story.

Act III

He'll suspend the story - a spiritual cliffhanger - and we will have to Do Something to resolve the third act. He will shine a light on our shortcomings, we will identify and weep and long for a last minute dramatic solution to come from an unseen source. We want the second string quarterback to throw us a hail mary. The pastor has told us that we have forced God into the position of underdog (undergod?). We've benched our only salvation in favor of winning the game on our own, which we can't do. So now, in the last quarter, the darkest moment of the third act, the pastor invites us to send in the underdog. And what does the underdog do? Something that was cleverly hinted at in the first act. He behaves in a way that is worthy of the praises we sang about him earlier on. He delivers. The music swells, we rise from our knees to our feet (or go from our seats to our knees) and celebrate victory. Act III concludes and we're better than we were when arrived because we encountered drama and emerged, Hero Protagonist Victorious, ready to face another week in light of what took place Sunday morning.

It works. Man it works.

I can't do it anymore. I cannot contribute, in the face of real fears and dissonance, to the Theatre of Suburban MegaChurch.

It's okay in art. It's not okay in my life. I can't have my heart broken vicariously through the pastor's 3 act play.

But, I do miss communion. Holy Communion and communing with others in the drama are part of something bigger than me. I long to be part of something bigger than me.

But the church is that ex-girlfriend that with some distance, you only remember the good times. Go see her and it'll be nice again, for a little while. But eventually, she's gonna start up the same old crap again.

If I go out and try a new church, they'll sell the drama, and now that I know, I can't unsee the machine. I can't buy in. Tyler Durden couldn't cry with another faker in the room. I can't invest in religious theatre and call it worship.

This post has no Third Act. I remain unresolved, but hopeful of a third act hail mary pass.

I'm open. I'm wide open.

Peace,

Caulfield

Getting it underway...

I can't decide which is truly my problem. Have I got no stories to tell or have I been lazy in telling the stories I've got. I'm pretty sure I've got stories to tell. I do. I have them. Why aren't I telling them?
It's got to be laziness right? Distractions? John Lennon said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." He died before the age of television shows on dvd. The quote, otherwise, may have turned out to say, "Life is what happens when you're watching season 1 of Miami Vice."

Laziness isn't all of it. I think I'm a little afraid of haters, but only a little. If some anonymous jag-off wants to flame my blog, I guess that's fine. I mean, it's always a little hurtful. Kanye's got me willing to admit that we're all a little self-conscience. But what bothers me more than resistance is indifference. If a writer writes and no one reads, has he written anything? I'll be a falling tree in the huge forest of the internet. Not even a blogger - a blah-ger at best.

I'm getting this journal started today. I'll update it when it's time. I'll shake the leaves off and hope someone will pick them up and press them in an old dictionary or a photo album. The leaves will decay but hopefully not before someone, some of you, find one or two you like more than others. The leaves will decay, a tree will fall in the forest.

You listening?

Timber.

Caulfield's Brother