EPISODE 434: MY WHAT A LOVELY BABY CTHULHU
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hello from the middle of Labor Day weekend. Hope yours is going better than Ronald's. (I've had this meme for a while. Every time I look at it I hear "Buh-dup-bup-bup-buh.")
As I write this on Sunday afternoon a little slip of a cool breeze just slid past, like the curious tentacle of a baby air octopus*, wondering what exactly is in this strange stone box that the two legs keep wandering in and out of. It’s overcast in my little part of Southern California today, and my secret ocean café is mostly empty, every open chair just the footprint of someone clinging somewhere to these last dregs of summer like a kid to one of those whirl-a-gig rides at a nighttime carnival, his mouth covered in fairy floss**, the air thick with the smell of popcorn.
*Really looked for something slightly less creepy to describe that momentary curl of air through the room. Almost went with Baby Cthulhu. Is there anything with tentacles that isn’t somehow instinctively scary for humans, I wonder?
**Australian term for cotton candy, which I love for the way it brings together the what of what we’re eating with the magic of the context in which that happens.
A lot going on in the world. Meanwhile another school year begins at Loyola Marymount, where I live. Yesterday my Jesuit community had our start of year community day, in which we each share a little bit about what’s going on in our lives right now. You can almost see the hives erupting on some of the older guys’ arms in the days beforehand. Much of my community was never really trained to talk about their interior lives outside of maybe with a spiritual director or a couple good friends. These are guys who were told when they entered that they if they wanted to take a walk with another novice they needed to bring a third person along, lest there develop a “particular friendship”. The anxieties that underlay such an idea were neither spoken about it nor I think probably even consciously considered. But wow.
Some of those guys have gotten more used to it over the years, and some have just learned to tolerate the occasional check-in. We’ve done it enough years now that pretty much everyone seems to appreciate it for how much it helps us clean our slates and start fresh.
There’s something very reassuring in listening to other people talk honestly for a few minutes about where they’re each at – you realize how much you are not alone in whatever it is you’re going through. If you have a group of friends that are important to you but maybe you’re talking past each other or just feeling kind of alone or crazy in the midst of it all, I highly recommend it.
(In fact I’ll tell you what, if you're interested at the bottom of the newsletter today I’ll give you a little guide to how we do it.) ++ This Week in What Twitter is Actually For:
Thanks to Buckslip for redeeming the internet for another week.
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Not a great week writing wise if I'm being straight with you. I’ve started keeping a bunch of different journals for work projects and other things. (I might actually right about some of that in an upcoming newsletters; it’s been really helpful.) In one I’m trying to look back at the end of each week and see what I accomplished, then suggest some plans for the week to come. It all looked good until the week actually began and then, well…
Dead ends and false starts and distractions, oh my.
One thing I did do was finish reading The Exorcist. Yes, that Exorcist. I’d never read it – have I mentioned how much that stuff scares me? But I’m doing an article on the making of the film and so it seemed like probably the right place to start.
Biggest surprises: I didn’t fit nearly as scary as the movie. I thought it was a pretty great read. And wow is there a lot in there about Jesuit life.
I remembered Jesuits figuring in the movie, but I don't recall a sense of our companionship surfacing too much. But there are some wonderful moments of it in the book, particularly between Karras and a peer at Georgetown called Fr. Joe Dyer. (Weirdly, Fr. Lankester Merrin, the Max Von Sydow character, a.k.a. the Exorcist, has actually a very small role in the book. You meet him only at the beginning and at the end.)
Truly, after reading this book, if I had to teach a class on the Jesuits, I would definitely assign The Exorcist, along with The Sparrow (a.k.a. Jesuits in Space) and maybe ‘Salem’s Lot. (Stephen King doesn’t write about Jesuits per se, but that book gets some of the wrestling within being a priest like no other book I’ve read.
Also there are vampires.)
I look forward to watching the film again now and also digging into Making Of research. Just in googling the name of Max von Sydow’s character I came across this story about all the horrible things that happened during and after the filming, which is, um, unsettling.
*begin self-rocking, mumbling to self*
happy thoughts happy thoughts happy thoughts ++
++ And speaking of happy thoughts, a newsletter I read pointed me to this piece on everyone’s favorite good news story, climate change. Most of what the author has to say is pretty familiar at this point, but at the end there’s a bit about how dystopias are fundamentally seductive – who knows why but we seem to love to read/watch them – and that we need to create other, more hopeful narratives of the future too. Narratives that imagine whatever change is coming doesn’t have to mean robot overlords or years spent wandering the arctic tundras of Milwaukee and sleeping in a tent with Dennis Quaid.
I wonder if the key to hope in the midst of the brutally nightmarish news stories piling up – Thanks, President of Brazil! -- is to stop looking out to the distant future where all seems lost and instead look down to the road before us and consider just my next step, and then the step after that. Crystal balls have a way of making us feel powerless when the fact is the future is still unwritten and we never know where our tiny individual choices might lead.
Case in point: this article about a gay florist living in a small town in California. The piece is almost as much a profile of other people in the town as it is of him, and in a lot of ways it seems to be a story about how just in choosing to be out and himself, despite the harassment he gets – this man has enabled others to feel like there is a space for them in the world as they are, too. ++ In the midst of everything else last week there was a new Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker trailer. Believe it or not I actually forgot about it almost as soon as I was done watching it. It’s not really a trailer; there’s only about 40 seconds of new stuff, which has a couple cool shots – a sky filled with star destroyers; Rey and Kylo fighting on top of an undoubtedly sinking ship in the midst of crazy seas; Threepio with a severe case of pink eye. But otherwise…
I know I’m supposed to be going nuts over that last shot, but it just seems so preposterous at this point. Plus, is it me or does that light sabre look super awkward? Maybe it’s some dark vision of Kylo’s, his own Dagobah Tree moment. I don’t know.
Only 109 days until the new film. Can’t quite believe it.
++ LINKS ++
Here is what happens when a vacuum cleaner promotion goes bad. Like, really, really bad.
I don’t know how to describe this, other than to say that is a very funny article is about commercials, and I wish I were clever enough to have thought of it.
The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders is a restaurant where the wait staff all have dementia, and so your orders may not end up being exactly what you asked for. I know, whoever heard of a restaurant which promises you will not get what you order, but watching this two minute video about it makes me question whether the need to have things exactly the way we think we want them doesn’t maybe miss a huge opportunity to be surprised and delighted.
(If you’re interested, here’s a slightly longer piece on it, with more footage of the waiters; it’s really lovely.)
For those of us in Hemi-North, here comes autumn. It's my favorite season, actually. By its end summer is like a party you've stayed at way too long; spring is like adolescence, always too much of one thing or the other; and winter is eventually just one long punishment.
Meanwhile in autumn everything seems to kind of fall away; it's a time we shed our past a bit, and yet somehow it's not painful or something to be afraid of. It's gentle and lovely and freeing.
You're on the right track. Make sure you take time to enjoy it.
See you next week.
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FIVE STEPS TO GROUP SHARING a.k.a. WE IS SHARING AND YOU CANS TOO!
PICK A SPOT: Find a place where people can sit in a circle, hear each other and be honest. A coffee shop might work, but somebody’s home or a library study room is probably better. Ask yourself, Is this a place where I would feel comfortable talking about something really personal, like loss, God, the struggles my kids are having? You may not have that kind of stuff to share, but at some point someone else very well might.
MAKE SPACE: Start with a little silence to just let everyone settle in. If God is a thing that makes sense to everybody, someone could offer a little prayer, like “God we thank you for our friendship, be with us now as we try to share a little bit of where we’re at. Also please help Chet to stop checking his phone.”*** Or someone could play a song or read a poem.
SHARE: Each person in the circle is given some time – five minutes, ten minutes, your mileage will vary – to share whatever is going on with them. They can share as much or as little as they want; the only real expectation is that it’s somehow personal. This isn’t a time for laundry lists – This is What I Did This Month, These are the Books I Read, You Guys Really Have Got to See this Movie. You want to share at a level that feels safe for you, but also in terms of you. If I really want to talk about a book or a movie or a trip, I’m going to ask myself, What is it about that thing that has spoken to me in some personal way? Why is it important to me? One easy way to go: Since the last time we met, what have been my Highs and Lows?
FEEDBACK (OPTIONAL): After everyone has shared, if you’ve agreed as a group beforehand*** that this is part of your practice, you could have a second round where people can comment on what they’ve heard – ask a question, offer a reflection. Some groups try to do that after each person speaks; but reacting to one person’s sharing can take so much time that other people don’t get equal time to share. (Some groups I’ve been in don’t do feedback at all, and I have to say, I think I like it even more. Often the really cathartic thing is just being able to say out loud what’s been going on with you, and to hear everyone else.***)
GIVE THANKS: End with little moment for gratitude, whether through, quiet, prayer or something else.
***The Three Absolutes of a Sharing Group aka Things To Tell Chet
DECIDE THE IMPORTANT STUFF BEFOREHAND: You have to decide beforehand together how you want things to go. Chet is not allowed to spring “Hey, can we offer feedback today?” on your group in the middle of a session. It’s a lot harder for people to say no when it comes up out of the blue.
NO ADVICE. Advice is not proper feedback on someone’s sharing, Chet. You want to offer comments that tell people they’ve been heard and they’re cared for. Sharing is not problem solving.
NO PHONES. Turn off and put away your phones beforehand. I don’t mean set to vibrate, either; airplane mode, Chet. Get it together. There’s no way to make people feel like what they’re saying is not important than to have someone with their phone out in front of them, glancing down as new messages pop up.