Rain and All

Stories from the Old Testament don't sit well with me. This is primarily because they involve a God that tests humans. A God that keeps score, practices quid pro quo, and then doles out punishments for the sinner and blessings for the obedient. It has never felt good to think of God in such ways. 

I just finished reading the book of Job from the Old Testament. It's something that my girlfriend Shamanie and I decided to do together to try and better understand human suffering. She and I have kept our phone lines open to support one another during all hours of the night, as our lives have become marred in ways that we never could have imagined. And suffering feels bottomless.

The first chapters of the book of Job set up an upsetting scene. One where Satan triple-dog-dares God by saying that if he were to take away all of Job's blessings, that Job would end up showing his true colors by turning against God.

God takes the stupid dare and Job's suffering begins. 

Why, if there were a God, would he allow suffering? That is a question related to a line of study within theology called theodicy. We humans are centered on ourselves. Which is why when we suffer, we ask questions like:

•God, what have I done to deserve this? Tell me.
•Why are you making me suffer? It's unfair.
•What can I do to make you stop this pain? I'll do anything.

Our fixation on ourselves makes us believe that the only thing God cares about is us. But in the book of Job, we learn that God cares about other things like the wind, fire, rain, animals, etc. And sometimes, for reasons we don't understand, God commands the rain to go forth, and drench the earth. As a result, maybe a parched field can grow a harvest. Maybe the fish in the almost dried-up river can flourish. Maybe flowers can bloom. Also as a result maybe a baby drowns. And maybe a house get destroyed. 

And when we are privy to only the latter, we don't understand and we utter, "Why God, have you drowned my baby? Why God, have you destroyed my house?"

Because we humans are centered on ourselves we think suffering is a personal affront when it's not personal at all. Rain isn't personal. It just is. And the results of rain are part of something beyond our understanding. The results just are.

Job passes the test. And his blessings return. Neither the ending nor the beginning nor the middle impress or inspire me. Because the nature of the tricky test is oppressive and convoluted.

The story of Job and other Old Testament stories help me better understand why the New Testament has become such a force. Its message is one where we don't have to do anything to earn something. In fact, there is no way to earn something or pay for anything. Because it's already been earned and paid for us by fiat. All that is left to do is to accept it. Rain and all.

MUDDLE THROUGH & GRAPPLE WITH

ZARNA
Comedian Zarna Garg says that she has never said "I love you" to her husband of more than 23 years and asks, "What's the rush?" She goes on to explain that like many immigrants from India, she wasn't raised with that phrase. Nor was she raised with other things like hugs and candlelight dinners. I'm so happy that Zarna has become famous because she explains a lot of things that help me explain my upbringing and how that has affected my relationships. Gerardo was also raised similarly, which is one of the reasons I felt so comfortable with him more than 30 years ago when we met and fell in love.

Fast forward to today where we have evolved into people who say it more. We also hug more. Maybe because we've both met people who help us practice the hugs and sentiment. And also maybe because we realize how few days each of us have on this earth. As my favorite tweeter (@death_reminder) on Twitter tweets every day the same message: "You will die someday."

LAST & THIS
Last December, Gerardo was at the UCI hospital for days and nights where he was in an exhausting amonia-buildup loop where the words from his mouth started to say "The probability ..." and never concluded into a complete sentence as gibberish took over. Those words repeated endlessly. It was not scary. It was terrifying. This December, he was at the UCI hospital for an incarcerated hernia that thankfully stabilized without surgery. 

HOLLOW
Christmas felt best when I was a kid. Maybe up until I was about 12 it felt good. And then every year since then, it started feeling strange and weird. I think it's because I see more vividly every year, the commercialization, materialism, over-indulgence, over-spending, and wastefulness that eventually pile up into a heap of meaninglessness. Hollow.

WORTHY
When I see Gerardo finding hope through his faith, I don't see hollow. Speaking of faith, I recently attended a church service where from the pulpit came words that moved me. The words were about how when faced with an incredible gift, we humans have assorted ways of responding. We sometimes respond with initial glee followed by apathy. At other times, as we cite wrongs from the past, we respond with hostility. The pastor delivering this sophisticated message noted with humility that historically, the church has been at the epicenter of sin that has bred understandable hostility. Because the church isn't God. The church is human. And all humans are deeply flawed. Another way we respond is with worship. The pastor dissected the word to explain that it is rooted in the word "worthy" and that to be in worship is to be in a state of being worthy. And to be worthy is to strive toward the original nature of God, not human.

SOLID
I also don't see hollow when I see Gerardo having good moments with clean food that lands well ... like the homemade chicken and potato soup that I made for our lunch. I also don't see hollow when I hear his uncontrollable laughter as he watches comedians' specials. And mostly, I don't see hollow when he and I struggle to process the tremendous pain and loss that have been ours this year and accept that all we can do is muddle through somehow. I think it's ok to occasionally talk and weep about the intense feelings of hurt that life has dealt us. That's what therapy is. The processing of feelings. Except we don't get an invoice for doing it when we allow ourselves to do it on our own. Solid. 

BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES ENDS BEGINNINGS
Everything has a beginning, middle, and an end. I think that sometimes when I think something has ended, other things begin. My hope is that everyone I love and care about will experience many new and wonderful beginnings.

Before 12, when Christmas didn't feel weird, I had faith. Lately, I find myself seeing glimpses of that faith making cameos in my life and heart. Like that sermon. Like my ability to hug and say "I love you." Like Gerardo's laughter. Like my friend with whom I'm reading the Book of Job and sharing our thoughts about it all who wrote to me to say she thinks religion is for people who are afraid of hell while spirituality is for people who have gone through hell.

As I muddle through and grapple with, I sometimes pray. Not for the granting of wishes or a list of parlor tricks I want God to perform by preventing this or strong-arming that. Rather, I pray that I can better understand the bigger picture. That I can marvel at it. That I can even worship it.

Jab Cross Hook Cross

 

Years ago Alan, Sheny and I became friends through boxing. We go way back to LA Boxing days. Over the years the three of us with our significant others would go out to dinners and/or host dinners at our respective homes.

For the last several rounds, I’ve flown solo to these dinners, happy to still be included and grateful for the generosity that Alan and Sheny show me. (No need to @ me when I share that in these types of dinner settings I enjoy having the men figure out the tab.) 

Last night I expressed how much love and protection I feel when Sheny or Alan always pick up my tab without having me rotate in to take a turn at paying. In Gerardo's absence, they remind me that Gerardo had always been quick and generous with rotating himself in when it was his unspoken turn to do so. I wouldn't have had it any other way. (Again, no need to @ me about gender stereotypes, feminism, blah blah blah.) It’s not that I can’t pick up the tab flying solo, it’s just that these friends understand that in this season, it’s more than my tab that they are picking up. They’re picking me up. And making sure I feel all the dignity, care and love.

It's Like That

 

In a few more days Thanksgiving will be here. Then Christmas. Then a new year. With liver disease, it's hard to look too far ahead on a calendar. It's hard to look too far ahead on a clock. It's truly one moment at a time.

As I am writing this, I'm amazed that the immediate past moment was one where Gerardo and I took a mini walk right outside our house. Maybe it was a quarter of a block. Maybe it was an eighth. The sun and air felt fresh. I saw evidence of wind's existence by looking at the moving leaves. Immediately before that, he devoured the lunch I made him. 

And now, immediately after the short walk, pain and discomfort are back. Maybe Tylenol will be all he needs. Or maybe oxycodone. Or maybe the pain will become a runaway train so far gone that we end up at the hospital.  

It's like that.

Two good moments in a row, followed by a bad one.

Sometimes, when the pain becomes the monster that it can be, his cries take on a sound that no one should emit and no one should hear. 

Two things that seem to comfort Gerardo is his copious note-taking and newfound faith. These days he writes every single thing down in his kraft-colored Moleskine and #2 pencil. Everything that he observes and everything that happens to him goes into that journal. Sometimes when he's really out of it, he will look at his notes and see illegible marks he made in his altered state and laugh. But so what? It's not the precision of the notes or their efficient retrievability that comforts him. It's the PROCESS of taking them that comforts him. 

He recently thanked me for not judging his newfound faith but rather supporting it. Though I don't share his faith, I don't think it's certainty that comforts him, but rather the PROCESS of opening himself up after having been closed for so long, as he experiences a genuine shift from possibility to the thrilling probability of something greater. 

Humanity is Trying

When I first saw this book, I interpreted the title as meaning that in spite of all obstacles, humanity is trying. Trying what? Perhaps to get through to me. Perhaps to let me know that it's ok at times to feel feverishly certain (even with no evidence) and at other times to feel nervously uncertain (even with mounting evidence) as I sit and wonder. The insights that Jason Gots puts forth in this exquisite memoir help me feel simultaneously feverish and nervous about my initial interpretation of the book's title as well as about every damn thing in life. Sometimes nervousness combusts into fury for me when I realize how in the scheme of eternity, 100 years is nothing, making my attraction to skepticism seem cowardly and stupid. Can feverish passion do any real and lasting damage, given that everything is nothing? 

In the first part of the book, Gots describes how he was raised in a highly educated family of Explainers, which I understand all too well. A big portion of who I am appreciates the values of sensibility and skepticism upon which Explainers are built, and how those two es words save me from becoming swindled, taken advantage of, or tricked into joining time-sucking and soul-crushing cults. 

As Gots introduces readers to the significant people in his life and some of their unfathomable suffering and beauty, I am able to see that even in the context of living as a logic-based Explainer, life is illogical and unexplainable. Why else would we try anything when everything is arguably nothing? Why else would we continue to learn when nothing matters? Why else would we pursue love when love hurts? 

And why else would we pursue the creation of art? Says Gots:

"There's something beautiful about our stubborn refusal to stop making these things in spite of their apparent uselessness and inexplicability ... art just IS: one of us makes it and others come along and relate to it, subjectively and idiosyncratically. As such, art is honest because it speaks to what we all are on the inside: strange and inexplicable. Unreliable and beautiful."

In other words, maybe the actual interpretation to the title of this book—Humanity is Trying—isn't about how Humanity is trying to reach me with a message. Rather, maybe the very act of MY trying ... THAT VERY ACT is how humanity gets built.

The Dark Side of Kindness

There are some who assume that the terrible nurse I battled on day 4 of Gerardo's hospitalization/recovery was terrible because perhaps she had been "unkind." That is an incorrect assumption and speaks to our society's infatuation with the notion that kindness is the salve to most of society's ills.

The nurse hadn't been unkind. She was full of gestures that are characteristic of kindness—like smiles and  polite greetings. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if her wardrobe contains a graphic tee that says "be kind." 

Coupled with such characteristics were incompetence, exaggerations, incomplete information, and a nervousness of knowing she was in over her head in terms of a specific medical intervention that she tried to fix though she was unqualified to do so, and made worse, causing unnecessary pain and suffering.

When I called her on it, she dialed up the belittling care by putting her hand on my shoulder and amping up the "kind" and "let me nursplain to you what you don't know" posture.

When I told her to take her hand off of my shoulder, she was shocked. 

And perhaps some would argue that I was being unkind.

And I would argue back that kindness has nothing to do with it. The reason I take issue with our society's blind infatuation with kindness is because it doesn't recognize the dark side of kindness, which frequently leads to turning a blind eye to what is wrong in the moment, as we or our loved ones become walked all over, in the name of nice.

Language is another tool that people use to dispense belittling care. Which is why I'm skeptical of strangers who use terms of endearment (e.g., honey, sweetie, babe, my love, etc.) too quickly. Such language (like the hand on the shoulder) has a way of creating hierarchy and distorting the specifics of reality.

//

After an exhausting week of hospital recovery, Gerardo is home and resting. This incident of having survived surgery for a strangulated hernia adds a new dimension of care at home. 

Thank you to my loving and supportive friends. 

Ready? Ready. Let's go.

2:32AM, April 14, 2022

JENNY: Hello?

DOCTOR C: Hello, is this Jenny?

JENNY: Yes. It's Jenny.

DOCTOR C: Hello, Jenny. It's Dr. C from UCI. I'm calling to tell you your husband is out of surgery. The surgery went very well. He is in the ICU and likely he will be here for 3-5 days as he recovers.

JENNY: Thank you, Doctor. I'm so relieved and grateful. 

11PM-ish, April 13, 2022

GERARDO: If I don't make it, tell everyone I love them, especially the kids. And I love you. At this moment the only thing that matters is all our good memories with the kids.

JENNY: I love you. And you're going to make it. You've made it through worse. You go in there with your Tijuana strength and you show them how resilient you are. The best doctors are here. The best ones have convened to do this for you. You will come out of it and we will get you strong and we will celebrate our 30th anniversary in June.  

9PM-ish, April 13, 2022

NURSE O: I have liquid morphine for him. That should help with the pain.

JENNY: Thank you, Nurse O. 

DOCTOR C: It's a strangulated hernia. He needs immediate surgery. It's a risky procedure and there is a 30% chance he won't make it. But if we don't operate, there is a 100% chance that he won't make it. We need to do this tonight.

5PM-ish, April 13, 2022

JENNY: I think I have everything packed. Ready?

GERARDO: Ready.

JENNY: How's the pain?

GERARDO: Extreme.

JENNY: Let's go.