Angels and Devils

This week I have completely given into the dualities of my emotions, becoming completely ecstatic by beautiful mini-miracles that have been blossoming before my eyes but then completely being overtaken by anger and sadness at how lost people and society are. Just as soon as the angel on my shoulder tugs me one way, the devil on the other tugs me the opposite way, never finding a sense of equilibrium or rhythm.

Today that climaxed when I zoomed into the Candidacy Formation Committee Meeting with the Uniting Church of Australia. I went to this meeting last year with hope but, because of my Visa issue, was rejected. This year, still without a Visa, I have been okayed to go forward with the caveat that I receive it sometime this year. Of course I understand why they have been tentative with my application but it was still hard to swallow the reality and wait another year. And this year has been a tough year, and it continues to be so in more ways than one.

It has allowed for some amazing opportunities, like being able to finish a Master of Arts of Public and Pastoral Ministry back in Canada, undertake a 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training Course… and combine the two for a thesis. I have been able to work with holocaust survivors and hold presence as they shared their stories and their pain with me. And I continue to be a part of spectacularly progressive and animated church community.

But, as yogis would say, karma’s a bitch.

Westerns seem to think that karma derives from the term what goes around comes around. But really karma is about what our individual lessons are and, if you don’t learn it the first time, it will keep coming back until you do learn it. And this year has been and continues to be a big learning towards two very hard, if not impossible, lessons for me: 1.) how to work with narcissists and 2.) how to be patient. The later is required for the former but I don’t have patience or care or love for people who are dickheads. I simply report them to HR and try to wash my hands from it. But, like Pontius Pilate, I don’t think I’ll ever be clean from it (nor can you expect HR to pick up the slack). Narcissists keep popping up in my life no matter how hard I try to avoid them. It was the reason why I left my last job and, as it so happens, a similar personality has popped up in job #2. Thank God she is not in my department but the 30 minutes I have to deal with her everyday does my head in completely. She is particularly a worry as, rumour has it, she has somehow still been able to keep her job even though she’s hit a co-worker.

What has been keeping me sane is isolation.

I am in no way stating the pandemic is good. It is horrible and absolutely tragic that the most vulnerable in our society suffer at its hands more than anyone else. It is painful to see people I know and so many people I don’t lose their jobs and suffer through the stress of lining up at Centrelink for cheques, not knowing if they’ll be able to afford rent next month.

And something has shifted.

I hate to label myself as a sadist but I’ve kind of wanted something like this to happen for nearly a decade. Ever since I worked in a developing country, it disgusted me to come back home and watch how capitalism, consumerism, apathy, nihilism, consumerism and boredom have completely occupied the minds and bodies of Westerners. This enraged me but ultimately left me depressed for 4 years. We are (I include myself) completely disconnected from what lays just beneath the surface: our mortality. When we deny death and the hard questions of life, we’re not embracing what’s real: that our lives have a beginning and an end. Because, when we start to think about how finite our lives are we simply can’t operate in the way we have been. Suddenly, everything has meaning or gravitas because time is finite. But we continue to be distracted by flashy For Sale signs and products that we don’t yet own. And it’s not just death that we are denying, it is also our birth, our beginning. Most of us have stepped away from institutional religion and this has been an absolutely necessary step towards stopping oppression and healing in some way shape or form. However, what comes with a moving away from this community sometimes is a moving away from all communities. There are very few places that seep and saturate a re-telling of our birth and creation, whether we came from Adam and Eve, fish, monkeys, stars, dirt, wind or unicorns, we have lost the ritual of coming together and affirming our existence and how we are a part of this overarching mystery that is existence.

And so, in some ways, I am fairly excited to see what happens in the face of the atrocity that is covid-19. I am excited to see how the church has to change and adapt to a people who are now lonelier than ever and more isolated than ever and I am excited to see how I might respond as I try to balance the bad with the good, light with darkness and angels with devils.