So today I want to talk to you about my awesome priest, PTSD, and the New Moon in Aries. Here we go.

There’s a kind of helplessness that comes from PTSD. You get triggered. You can’t help it. You get triggered. You can’t stop it. Well, maybe you can. We can. We can get therapy and train ourselves to sit through what now feels primal, what feels fight or flight. Maybe.

So this morning I’m going for a ride with my friend and I love this friend and we are going to have lunch, but before we got in the car he noticed his credit cards were gone and my friend, Mars in Aries, has a TEMPER, and he was understandably upset, but soon he was raising his voice and yelling and banging the steering wheel and he was yelling at ME as I was offering some meager explanation for what might have happened. I think I even touched his shoulder at one point.

Long story short. He found the cards. They had fallen out of his wallet in the kitchen but his in-car temper outburst, directed at me and what I was saying to “try to help” (one or two sentences before I stopped talking) triggered me big time and when we got to his house I got out of the car and said: forget it. No lunch.

While we were in the car, I nearly told him to pull over and let me out. Wow. I waited THAT long. Sitting with my FLIGHT that long. A minute or two.

I wanted to burst into tears. I held it back. In such situations it’s one or the other. Burst into tears or dissociate. And we were about to have lunch. I figured if I cried he would get mean (guessing this from experience) and if I dissociated, I would be miserable, numb, not myself, not relaxed.

I left him at his place and walked to the store which I had planned to do anyway. I felt numb, in shock.  Started to talk about it in the chat room and then my tears started to flow, which felt good.

These were tears not just for my PTSD and how I wound up with it, but for my inability to handle this temper, to “handle” this person who I also love — even if I know, from experience, that this wish is impossible.

I realize such tales will trigger others. They will want to protect me or protect themselves or come up with labels for him from their own experiences, but I find such responses inadequate because life and people are far more complex.

At the store I texted him because despite my flee, I knew he was confused and frustrated as well. I told him the truth: I love you but when I’m around temper I freak out. Fight or flight.

I know people will judge me or him. They will say: oh he is abusive. But you know what? Sometimes things aren’t that simple. This is the same person who drove me and my Cleo to the hospital and back from the hospital and dug a grave for her. In fact, he is the one who suggested I take her body so we could bury it. He buried my Cleo. I will always love him. I’m fine with that. No one else has to be.

(I bet 10% of my readers will actually read this, get it, and not judge. We’ll see…)

Now about the mud gospel. 

So in today’s lectionary class we were reading this passage from the Gospel of John. I hadn’t been to class in a while but felt in the mood today and then lucky me my favorite priest was leading the class because the regular facilitator was out sick.

And I want to make a point here. I’m not making a point about Christianity or Christ or any religion or what YOU or anyone should believe.

Think about it as a story. I’m not a proselytizer and my spiritual life is… precious to me. I’m not going to lie and pretend I had this revelation at Target. I was at CHURCH. I go to church. And if there was a Catholic Church in walking distance from my house, I’d go there too.

So I’m reading this story in class about a miracle, a blind man who is no longer blind after getting mud put on his eyes, and I was fascinated by this image. The idea that… we can see again after mud, after dark, after earth, after sloppy and dirty. THEN we can heal.

Now of course since this is the “new” testament, it’s JC who is doing the healing but through the medium of mud. Think about that. What is mud? How is it that we see, that we heal, after mud?

The last strand here is about tomorrow’s New Moon and it’s a pep talk and it’s as much to me as it is to you, and it’s about second chances. That if you don’t like what you did or what you said, you can always go back to do it again. It is no guarantee that that person or place or thing or situation will respond the way you would like them to! But that’s not the point of rebirth. Rebirth is not about forcing others or controlling others. It’s YOUR soul that gets refined. Your learning.

Saying “I love you” is rarely the wrong choice and here comes the New Moon and we’re supposed to set our INTENTIONS for our DESIRES and I intend, I desire, to be courageous, and PRESENT, to not shy away from the mud. It’s only through death, we come back. It’s only through experience and knowledge of EARTH, reality, dirt, grime, mud, sickness, pain, death that we find out who we are. We are children until then. And yet children love mud. Ironic, yes?

Set your intentions. It’s a beautiful New Moon conjunct Venus. It’s about love.

xx