Chop Wood, Carry Water for Love

This photo of Lisa and I was taken in 1993 by our friend Matt Russell. We are at the place I call home, Rocky Mountain National Park. I have eight years of drinking still ahead of me. I was also ignorant of the miracle of kilts and am trapped in uncomfortable jeans. No wonder I was drinking!

To what lengths would I go for love? Well, I can tell you this—I would not be willing to make a bullshit deal with the Goddess that I was going to undergo some kind of torment if She would spare my loved ones from disease. So; no “spare my wife from pain and I will take the pain on myself” nonsense from me. And that has nothing to do with love, or my wife or any of that.

If I did that, I would be back to the old, angry, vengeful god of the Old Testament. That god is a cruel and callous god who seems to enjoy sadistically punishing us for his pleasure. He would be the type of god to go for that kind of a deal and say, “sure, you can suffer in her place. So long as someone suffers, I’m happy.” I also reject the idea that god inflicts hard times and suffering on people deliberately. That's the concept of god that kept me away from the possibility of a loving Goddess.

Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book some time ago called Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. This is an extraordinary book, it is a life changing book and it is a challenging book because it calls upon the reader to inspect their notions of who and what god is. To make the book even more amazing is the fact that being a Rabbi, Kushner is stuck with only the Old Testament as material. All of his evidence for who and what god is comes from the Old Testament. Unless you know how bloody and violent the Old Testament is, it is hard to appreciate how difficult it must be to find a loving god in those pages.

Obviously Kushner sets it up better in the book than I do here. What he does is he goes through the book of Job and tells us how he interprets that book. He asserts that asking “How could god to this to me?” is the wrong question to ask. Essentially he is left with contradictory possibilities about the nature of god:

a) god is all powerful, all knowing and everything that happens is willed by god

b) God is not all powerful, all knowing and not everything that happens is willed by God.

The first option negates the possibility of a loving god. If nothing can happen without being willed by god, you have a god who builds concentration camps, gives children leukemia, and hands drunks like me “one more for the road” before giving me my car keys. That god must by a cruel and evil god and that is the god I reject.

You’ll notice that I start to capitalize the name God with the second possibility. That is because that is the Goddess that I believe in. The first possibility does not allow for love. The second possibility allows for things to happen in the world beyond the control of the Goddess. It allows for human free will, which puts the responsibility for our decisions where it belongs. god did not make you punch your wife. I guarantee it. You made a poor decision and hit your wife and that’s why you are now sitting in jail.

That second possibility allows for a Goddess with a sense of wonder and awe Herself. I can't picture the god of the first possibility dancing for joy. I can picture the Goddess of the second dancing with ecstatic abandon, perhaps as a young girl with flaming red hair or as a silver haired grandmother. It's all the One no matter how I see Her.

I highly recommend Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. At some point in everyone’s life, things are going to suck. And that is a good time to make hot chocolate and break out this book.

Back to love. If I am not willing to bargain with god to end the suffering of those I love, do I love them and how do I know it?

I question how much I love and I wonder if I am really a good man. I do this a lot—I seem to have a lot of trouble believing in myself. But I am going to give myself credit here. When my wife, Lisa, is sick, I want to do what it takes to help her get well and I still want to be by her side. When she is well, I want to be by her side. When her job sucks and she needs to bitch about it, I want to be by her side (although I might want something to occupy my mind if it is the same endless work problem with no change from the last time I heard it—hey, that’s honesty there).

There is a Buddhist saying, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” They are talking about developing spirituality there. I would borrow that to say that love is all about chopping wood and carrying water. Doing the crummy things so that you can then do the good things. Hey, I’m not in love with Lisa every day. Some days, I don’t even love her. But I always want to love her and I am willing to chop wood and carry water for the relationship. I may feel the need to bitch about the chopping wood and carrying water, but I am willing to do it and do it to the best of my ability.

That is how it is in all relationships. If I want a relationship with the Goddess, I have to make the effort to make it work. Same with friends. Same with my parents, just the results there still suck. I’m not going to give up though, I will still work for that relationship.

Sometimes it seems that all of this effort garners no reward. That is not true. Sometimes just the effort is the reward in that you can relax knowing you have done all you could and the relationship could not be made to work. Often the reward is much, much richer and better. It is a hand in your hand when you are sad. It is strength from nowhere when you are weak or tired. It is the feeling you are no longer alone.

Chop wood, carry water. Repeat as necessary. There you go: Andy’s secret to a good marriage.

Goddess, it’s me; Andy, one of your alcoholic kids. Do You get to go to Al-Anon? Do You have to work the steps? I bet You do, in some form or another. If I have to work to make this relationship between human and Divine work, I bet You have to work much, much harder. I am glad that You are willing to work to have a relationship with me, it fills me with emotion knowing that You want me as a part of Your family. That is amazing and terrifying all at once. Thank You for my sobriety, my wife, my family, my sponsor and my coven. I am grateful for these things and so much more. I hope I serve You. Thank You, Blessed Be.