Stars

Renée Altson May 21st, 2012

It was the early 1990’s. I had desperately fled from the life I had known in Southern California, and found myself living and working in New England. The dichotomy in my life was overwhelming– In my new life I experienced living with snow. I traveled everywhere on foot. I saw my first snowstorm. I didn’t know where I could find a single palm tree. I was alone and new somewhere for the first time. I stopped teaching piano and began painting. I worked a job that helped me support the environment and environmental legislation. I had a small studio apartment in a building that had once been a house.

I loved the apartment because it was the first place that was all mine. I bought canvas and stretched it on frames so i could paint as much as I wanted. The smell of oils and turpentine mixed with the smell of incense and patchouli and became my natural scent. I had a futon bed, and the tiniest kitchen and bathroom I’ve ever seen (still, to this day).

My next door neighbors (who had 3 different rooms in the old house) were a lesbian couple who took to me instantly. They would bring a guitar over and serenade me while I painted. They had a VW bug, so if I ever needed a ride, I could ask them. I’d eat dinner with them, and afterwards we would lay on the floor in their apartment together and look up at the stars.

Because of them, I ate my first sunflower spaghetti (yep, that’s spaghetti made out of sunflower plants), began to feel safe, and accepted my new life and my new reality.

Just when things were going really well, the past began to slither its way into my contentedness. I received music sheets of the latest love songs in the mail from my father. I remember the first one I opened… I saw the music and lyrics and fell to the floor of my studio. I sobbed as I had never sobbed before. The very idea of my family of origin back in my life made me physically sick. At the same time, I missed the “love” that they gave me; I had grown up knowing nothing else. That same week, I had also had a terrible fight and break-up with my significant other. It was a nasty, horrible thing full of pain and anger and hurt. We yelled at one another for hours, both of us crying, and she stormed out and slammed the door.

That afternoon, I started to paint, then stared blankly into the room. The sheet music my father had mailed to me bellowed through my mind, and I experienced a feeling of pure desperation and emptiness.

Blankly, and without drama or fanfare, I rose to my feet, and methodically took all the drugs I could find in the apartment. I had leftover medications from a psychiatrist I had been seeing, herbal remedies and antihistamines. I swallowed them slowly and deliberately with a glass of water, again collapsing to the floor, but not really realizing it.

That evening, I swore I had locked the door. Somehow, it was unlocked, and my next-door-neighbors came in, finding me unmoving on the floor boards. “What did you do?” they pleaded, “What happened?” I slowly came to, but everything was fuzzy. I was coughing on the vomit in my mouth, trying to re-swallow it, I couldn’t keep my eyes open and woke up to find them pumping my stomach in the hospital. I lost consciousness once more. When I came to the next time, I was in a hospital bed in a room with a woman sitting in a chair. I didn’t know why she was there, but when I asked her with a raspy barely working voice, she said, “I’m here to make sure your heart doesn’t stop beating.”

I was devastated to have failed so badly. As I drifted back off into drowsiness, I wondered who had broken open the door? How did they find me? No one was supposed to know I was home that day. I wasn’t dead.

Throughout the next hospitalized days, my neighbors came in with flowers and songs. They stayed with me the whole of visiting hours, and then returned as soon as they could in the morning. The doctors who were working with me were frustrated at my refusal to answer any of their questions about why I had tried to kill myself. I was terrified and worried that I would lose a secret and everything would unravel and I would find myself institutionalized. After some time of not talking about anything, the doctors let me leave “AMA” (against medical advice), and I rode home from the hospital with my neighbors.

They invited me over to their place that evening, and I was comforted by their closeness, by the love that was evident between them, and the love that they both shared for me. Hours turned into days, weeks, and soon the seasons changed. I was still painting and working, but I was spending most of my time with my neighbors. We did many things together and I started throwing my father’s letters away unopened.

One night, months later, after dinner at their place, they broke the news. They were moving, and they very much wanted me to go with them. In a bit of shock, I said, “No. I can’t do that.”

They considered me part of their union, told me how much they loved me, and begged me to change my mind. “What is holding you back here? What will you do when we are gone?”

I spent the next few days hiding in my room, lying on my futon with pillows and blankets stuffed over my ears to block their incessant knocking and frequent “Are you okay?”s.

Before I knew it, they were loading their car. I thought of not watching them go. The truth was that my heart was being pulled into two directions– the first, the indescribable longing I had to go with them; the second, the awareness that I would be once again running from my problems.

I walked down the stairs with tears streaming down my face, and both of them held me tight. “Its not too late to come with us,” one of them said.

After more tears and silent regrets, I stood silently — waving as they got into their overfilled bug and slowly drove away. I heard the Indigo Girls all the way down the block, and smelled the sweetened oils even farther.

I loved those women. It was one of the first time that I understood the depths that love contained. Accustomed to my family of origin’s “love,” and the manipulative “love” of friends before, I was astonished at how different they were.

I slowly walked back upstairs into the house, and completed my painting. Later that night, and for the next several weeks, I would go into their empty apartment, lay on the floor, and stare out their beautiful big windows. I could feel them with me, even though they were gone. I could hear their laughter, even though they weren’t really there.

For the next few months, I thought of them frequently, and with great gratitude. They had given me a gift that no one could take back – a belief that I was an actual person and that I could be loved unconditionally. They had saved me; quite literally kept me alive, and shown me that worth was possible, even for someone like me.

Their influence in my life was the first tiptoe of the first step of the beginning of my journey toward wholeness. I had been loved, and had loved in return. They gave me peace and friendship, community and love. They gave me the stars.

Renée Altson is the author of Stumbling Toward Faith, a photographer, and a web developer. She lives with her husband, daughter, and 2 cats in Southern California. Click here to listen to Renée on Steve Brown Etc.

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cartoon: God at gunpoint

nakedpastor May 14th, 2012

(If you're on the front page of the site, click the title of this post to see the cartoon.)

These guys are using the bible to hold God hostage. They are using the bible to affirm their own ideas about God, then imposing these ideas on God. Their God is not free, but a god who does everything they believe and say.

Convenient and rampant. But catastrophic.

nakedpastor is David Hayward. David is an artist, cartoonist and writer. Go to nakedpastor.com for more cartoons, blog posts, art and in … (Read More)

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A Biochemical Watch Found in a Cellular Heath

Fazale (Fuz) Rana May 8th, 2012

Kai ABC Proteins Re-invigorate the Watchmaker Argument for God’s Existence

Suppose I discover a Rolex™ watch lying on the sidewalk in front of the Reasons To Believe offices. Without hesitation I would pick it up. My lucky day! My first inclination would be to keep the watch. But, I would like to think that after the initial excitement of finding such a valuable time piece, I would decide to make a reasonable effort to find the person who lost the watch.

Apart from a sense of right and … (Read More)

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Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan: An Interview with David Dalton

John W. Whitehead April 30th, 2012

“Like Bob Dylan, the authentic American genius is a synthetic personality. They’re all hybrids, hence, inevitably, charlatans. It’s the chameleon nature of the American hero—the confidence man, the hustler. His solution to the question of identity is that of the three-card monte player. Anyone looking for the Grand Unifying Theory of Bob is just going to have to keep looking.”—David Dalton, Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan’s … (Read More)

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Our George Bailey

Susan Isaacs April 24th, 2012

A month ago I had milestone birthday, one of those digits that officially disqualifies you from making another youthful blunder, like wearing a miniskirt or growing a hipster beard or thinking you have forever to live out your dream.

I have terrible timing. I left the Groundlings comedy troupe, to pursue an MFA in screenwriting so I could learn to write stories beyond the “three-minute sketch with wigs.” Six months later, several of my cast mates got hired on Saturday Night Live, as actors a … (Read More)

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Is Christ the Center in Your Life?

John H. Armstrong April 17th, 2012

One of the chapters in my widely-discussed book, Your Church Is Too Small, is taken from the title of a book by the famous German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Christ the Center. I argue that the Christian faith is first about Christ. "Who do you say that I am?" asked Jesus. Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Before we argue about the doctrine of the church, the nature and seat of authority or even about the nature of faith and grace … (Read More)

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