My Name is Everybody

We were learning about Mickey Mantle last week, and I don’t know why, but that course of study always makes me really emotional. I don’t know why the story of people in recovery is so close to my heart, but it just is.

Mickey Mantle said "I put everything into my
swing, even my teeth."

Part of it is that the recovery story is a story about transformation as it really is. It’s not some luck and pluck and spunk and whatAlger BS. It’s the story about how the real things are real work, and what the real rewards are.

Part of it is that he truth of the 12 steps and the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer represent this kind of home-grown, nicotine fingers buddhism that is the most vital spirituality I know.

The very first step is to see things as they really are. To tell the truth. All faiths ask us to do that, to bear witness, not to bear false witness. Integrity is the I in the Quaker spice. Buddhism and Daoism, at their core are a minute by minute attempt not to cloud what is. And it is to accept that as things really are, you are not the most powerful thing in the universe. 

‘We accepted that we were powerless over our addiction.”

Submission is at the core of my faith. I love the poses in yoga that are about putting your head on the floor, just as Muslims pray. I learned to do this in China, where I would ke tou (literally knock my head on the floor) in front of giant statues of Guan Yin. Although I was raised Catholic, this posture of submission feels so right, and so much like coming home. I love the feeling of releasing all my weight into the floor. One time when we visited a Chinese temple a secular Jewish friend that I was traveling said ‘I could never do that- my people don’t submit like that.”

I think this is a common American response to postures of submission. We are so obsessively mindful about not submitting to the wrong thing, which is a wonderful part of our character, in ideal if not always in execution.

And of course, it’s easy for people who act like middle managers in corporation god to take advantage of this idea.

You probably shouldn’t ever submit to people.

But as buddha and Bill Wilson well knew, some things are not in your control. To believe anything else is not just a delusion, but a destructive one.

If you believe that, our theologies are pretty much in line. I am really not fussed about what does control those things that you do not control. A sentient creator? I doubt it, but maybe. A mechanical universe? That’s a good partial answer. I don’t know. And I don’t care. X is the variable force, but you don’t need to solve for X to respond to it appropriately.

Knowing this truth is the point. And know it you can respond in two ways- you can reject it, you can work to wrest control from X, or you can accept it. To accept it is to submit. That sounds easy, but it is not. Wrestling with the illusion of control occupies a good part of my day, and it has occupied a good part of my life. The only relief from that struggle is in submission, and when I can achieve true willful submission what I feel is peace. Peace knowing that I’m responding to the truth regardless of how much I like it.

What a perfect, visible allegory for the struggle of being alive recovery is. Addicts, predisposed from their family lines, shoved by trauma or shame or anxious depression enshrine another reality. Not out of weakness and not out of the true pleasure of being high, but because the truth of what is is unbearable.

For most of human history there was no help for addicts. Just, as Jossy from Philly Fight says “prison, institutions or death.”

And Bill Wilson was just a drunk. Only a drunk could have come up with the realizations that he did.

Bill Wilson

That alcoholics would never be ‘cured.’ No American Makeover Miracles here. Alcoholism never goes away, it can only be managed. Those with 30 years of sobriety still say “I’m Bill and I’m an alcoholic.”  That submission, that humility, is key to keeping them real.

That only a drunk can talk to another drunk about drinking. AA has no outsiders, no professionals. People who get it talk about it, and people who get it listen. A network. A listening community that doesn’t prescribe advice.

These ideas are a counter cultural American spirituality. And although they reject our rags to riches and altar call ideas of transformation, they really are American. Because they’re practical. Because they’re suspicious of human power.  Because they’re conscious of human limitation. Because it’s a user-made innovation rooted in experience.  

I really hate it when I hear people piss on AA because it requires a relinquishment of one’s struggle to a ‘higher power’ or to ‘god as we understand god.’

Bill Wilson was right. There’s no peace without submission. As long as we believe that we are responsible for what we actually do not control, the only result is that patented American anxiety that comes with that false belief. The anxiety of rape victims who are told they could have made choices to avoid their rape, of people with mental illness who are supposed to grab their bootstraps and heal, of cancer patients who are told that they can save themselves with ‘positivity,’

‘Higher Power’ isn’t some metaphysical tyranny. It’s straight up common sense reality. Something is more powerful than you. It just is.

Watching the way that every little boy and grown up man in America, starting with his own father put the burden of perfection on Mickey Mantle, how he played through crippling injury and drank through the pain of carrying around everyone’s dreams on his little boy shoulders, and then watching how he came out of Betty Ford a breathing human- finally at peace even though he was sick and dying-- that’s the story I want America to love. It would do us good. All his talent and fame were ornament the true treasure of the person. And we’re all people.

Hoes in the Pews

I’m not right these days. Living your life with depression, like I did for most of mine, is like living on the perimeter of a big fucking hole. Getting better, therapy, taking your medication is learning to stop hanging around on the hole’s edge, and to stop every once and a while being like “I’m gonna jump in there.” But you are never not living near a big hole.

As I try to figure out what the F, I have signed up for a course in Pastoral Care and Recovery at the Community College of Philadelphia. The class, as an academic experience, is pretty crappy. No structure, no lesson plan, a lot of the teacher, who is also a minister, holding forth on a random trail of subjects. The textbook, which reads like an essay from a student (half nonsense half plagiarism) is totally useless. But I decided that I would take it for the experience it was, and not the one I had hoped it would be.

And that was good in ways. There were lots of new experiences to be had. Being in a majority Christian environment. Being in a majority black environment. Sitting in a class without taking observation notes on the teacher.

And then there was last week. Last week, I don’t know how it started, but the teacher was talking about a book called “Pimps in the Pulpit.” It was about ministers who take advantage of women in their congregations who come to them for counseling. And my teacher, in the middle of her lengthy description of the book and it’s contents, said that we need to understand that “if there’s pimps in the pulpit, then there’s hos in the pews.”

And everyone laughed. Not like ‘clever turn of phrase’ laughed, like knowingly.

“That’s a fucked up statement,” I said loudly, which was out of character for the quiet, wide-eyed white girl persona I’d been working on.

“What you’ve got to understand,” my teacher who, in addition to being a minister is also a psychologist, said “is that if you’re going to be in that role you need to protect yourself from women who want to take advantage.”

“Some women,” she further illuminated “need to understand that they’re hoes. That’s what they are.”

Look, gentle reader, I’m not gonna spend a  lot of typing on your knowing that that is fucked up.

I had some back and forth with my teacher about how I didn’t want to hear women referred to as hoes, and the other white girl in the class also objected, but the teacher stuck to her  “hoes got to face that they are hoes” guns so I just shut up.

That is a cool strategy I have developed for when I feel small.

After class, I pulled my homework out of the pile on her desk. I didn’t feel like handing in my homework. And then I bolted. Then I stood outside of CCP crying. My female classmates were talking to me, trying to console me by explaining that I didn’t understand the word. It has a cultural use, they said. Like you would call a man a dog, they said.

So yeah, I don’t understand the word, no lie. I only know it as an alien. Like sometimes I have to explain “faggot,” to my students and they get the idea but they don’t.

So I don’t fucking know. Maybe it is not my word to hate.

But that doesn’t really feel right.

Is it patronizing that I don’t want anyone calling black women hoes, either?

Am I a crybaby because I don’t want to go back to class ever?

I’m pretty depressed that at some point, some broken woman might go to this professional and to this religious leader and say “I went to Pastor John for help, and he invited me back to my place and got me drunk and…” and that my teacher will gently let her know that she is a ho.

We are so fragile. We’re so fragile.

It’s so hard to ask for help.

It’s such a hard fight even in the hands of generous spiritual leaders and mental health professionals.

It’s so hard when you have the privilege of whiteness and safety and money.

It’s fucking hard enough.

This whole idea has sent me curling my toes over the edge of that deep-assed hole that I haven’t seen in quite some time.

She’s the TEACHER.

What’s the point in even trying?

I wrote my teacher an email that said this:

Dear Professor,

I wanted to write to you because I am still feeling upset from our discussion in class last night.

I feel very embarrassed because I made myself vulnerable in previous classes and was feeling like it was a safe space.

But it don't feel safe in a place where the word 'ho' is used.

You've been talking to us these last three weeks about how we should never call someone anything other than what they want to be called. If Karen wants to be called Karima, we call her that. If a transgender person wants to be called "her," we call her that.

I don't think anyone wants to be called a ho.

I am particularly scared by the idea that a woman might be called a ho because she is in a relationship with a man who has power, like a pastor.

I understand that 'ho' is a cultural word, and maybe it's not a word I can totally understand. I promise to spend this week reading abut the history of that word and what it means to black people.

I hope you can understand how that word makes me feel, when it is said about any woman.

Respectfully,

C

My teacher responded thusly:

Good Afternoon Cara:

First let me begin by saying how much I admire you and know that you are in the right place every time I see you on Tuesday.

As you recall, I was repeating a comment that was made by another individual who attended the workshop with  Ms. Shannon Bellamy. You may want to look up her book  "Pimps in the Pulpit."  I truly understand how certain words can affect others.  I certainly want you to understand that it was not meant to be offensive.  I was just sharing information.  Just allow me to shed some light when you responded by saying,  "That's Fucked Up" as a minister, how do you think that made me feel?  However, I did not take it personal nor was I offended.  We must allow ourselves to be open in this field.  I hear that word everyday at the college by students.  It is not as uncommon as you may believe.  I agree, however, that it is not pretty either.

I want you to know that you are definitely in a safe space, and I do believe that when you are in the room with us you are definitely SAFE.  

So. Yeah.

I don’t feel better.

I feel shitty.

I feel really shitty.