My Struggles

Here are my struggles — ongoing and rambling because it is so murky for me.

Demonizing does not work. Worse, it backfires. Arguments don’t work either. We need something deeper, and I just can’t get there. And I refuse to give up.

When I hear the complaints about “woke” or about empathy — I struggle mightily to understand. I struggle to understand what my cousin is thinking and so many others. I struggle to remember my own being in the world at age 13 campaigning for Goldwater.

I struggle regularly to understand the evangelical attachment to purity culture and what their sense of god must be.

I struggle with a judgmental daddy in the sky vs some light of love that beckons.

I struggle to understand those unable to see us in a network of systems that are such a deep part of who we are — that every transaction of money and work and ownership is part of a system that involves exploitation, that we are enmeshed in historical inheritance which is far from pure and cries out for reparation and healing.

I struggle to see a worldview that sees us as isolated individuals with a legalistic view of sin — we have to get it right and pay when we do not — and it is so very hard to see this, but my heart aches as I try to see the soul caught in this world view—and it feels like I am touching something that needs to be touched.

I cry out trying to understand the fear that must live in those hearts and the self-righteousness that is used to defend against that fear.

I try to dig deeper and look at our culture and our current circumstances which are without a doubt UNSUSTAINABLE and how we ALL know that on some level — our population, our consumption, our reaching for solutions — to feed the starving masses in Africa by developing industrial farming—our greed to live as long as possible. When looked at squarely in the face, we can blame some of it on greed of opportunists, but it is also our compassion to not let people die, to not let people get sick, to find more and more ways to extend our lifespan, to insist on continuing to grow, and to fight the natural ways that nature has to cull the herd when it gets too numerous to be sustained… and my heart just keeps breaking and keeps wanting to understand and wanting to not “OTHER” anyone — my heart for inclusiveness is deep and steadfast and breaking — I am in a stage of life which I think mirrors where we need to be — no longer building and growing, rather seeing what we have and sharing and seeing what is possible while caring for the earth and each other — that means a radical shift in consciousness and practice.

I cry out — yes — we need to tear it all down and start over — the apocalyptic vision makes sense to me — and then I look at what is happening and see that the current affairs are again saving the rich and sacrificing the poor — we seem to want to sacrifice billions of people so we can keep growing and raping the earth— that is not the vision Jesus gave us— but it is what we are creating.

Carolyn Bluemle has been a student of phenomenology and Greek philosophy, a lobbyist in DC, a dancer, a yoga instructor, and a practicing Buddhist. In recent decades, she reclaimed Christianity (with which she enjoys fisticuffs) and led integrative retreats exploring body and spirit at Holy Cross Monastery (Benedictine, Episcopal) in West Park, NY. She currently lives in Pacific Grove, California.