Month: May 2014

I was thinking today about a young woman I knew some years ago.  She worked in a bar, and I would bring her poetry every Sunday, stuff I had written.  It was purely for me–as I think I have shared, sending energy out somehow is healing for me–but I did run into her several years later, and she said she had kept it, which made me feel a bit less ridiculous.  I am ridiculous, to be clear, but I try to keep visible reminders to a minimum.

She had some pretty obvious emotional traumas she was struggling to deal with, and I have often wondered if she wound up on heroin.  I was having an imaginary conversation with her tonight, and what I would answer if she asked me if I knew how to get off heroin.

I think I do.  It is as simple as it is complicated (remember this is my week of confusion, so go with it): addicts need to know, at the core of their being, that they are understood, accepted, and loved, and ideally by multiple people.  They need a core context where they feel welcomed.  They need a home.  They need a true family.  We all do, of course, but they need it more.

This is what I want to build in the Church I have spoken of.  Bohannons: that is what I will call the groups.  I have put a ton of thought into the logistics, but am not ready to share the details.

I thought I would put that out there.  I understand addicts.  I really do.

Unless, of course, I am confused.

I will add that in solving any problem, you always need as one option “I am being a dumbass and have fucked the whole thing up.  Full reboot.”

Princeton and Harvard (and of course others) would do well to keep this in mind.

Sometimes I think it is important not just to admit that you are confused, but to enter it consciously, to embrace it.  Confusion is a luxury that one can sometimes afford.  It can be a fine champagne, in its own way.

Confusion is a place where you are not sure where you are going, or why, or how long it will take.  You are not sure who you are and what you believe.  Confusion allows you to try on emotional costumes, form new constructions, no longer confined by what you have always taken to be true.

We need to be clear–I say this constantly.  Clarity is a core value of mine, but I am seeing, increasingly, the yin and yang.  Actually, I think I have said this, but clarity sometimes comes from confusion.

Is it not true that most confused people are unaware of it?  I was reading a Facebook conversation where someone who had lost his phone repeatedly asked anyone who found it to call him; and he was unable to understand why people were mocking him.  The ability to receive calls was so rooted in his experience and consciousness that he was not getting it.  I myself find myself turning on the light switch over and over when we have power failures, even though I KNOW it won’t work.  Habit is both a friend and an enemy.

And I think it is OK to be weak sometimes.  The trendy word is vulnerable, but for some of us weak is a better word.  Not in control, not seeking to be in control, drifting, wandering, like a rudderless boat down a dark river.

So often, I feel, we fear confusion, we want to drive it away, come back to the land of light and clarity.  We crave an end to it so much that we finish the work of being confused prematurely, and reach wrong conclusions, in varying degrees.

Today–this week–I am confused.  Unclear.  Obfuscated, blocked, in the dark, ignorant, lost, drifting.  And I’m going with it.  Time is a luxury I have this week.  It truly is a luxury I would wish on more people.

I am stupid.  Dumb.  Imbecilic.  And it’s OK for now.