The following blog piece is in three parts. I have backdated this post based on the middle expression which is from 2006, though all else is formed today (September 18, 2022).

Part One

During the past two days a series of thoughts and interactions led me to think about the song Maria from The Sound of Music. In my imagination of inwardly amused parody, I changed up the name to “Elena” which was the Spanish translation my Mexican family gave to me during my two-month missions trip the summer of 1984.

As I reflected on different things I was somewhere between amused and bemused within my own inner world at the idea of my personal intimacy through beautiful (and biblically grounded) imagination with Jesus, my Good Shepherd.

My Jesus understands me (when others do not) and never gets frustrated at me – and even smiles upon me as His beloved. When I break bread with Jesus I see the face of My Heavenly Father, and am free to be both child and adult. An adult child, beloved of God.

The lyrics of this song (if I may put for a moment in some form of personal identification and parody), are wonderful.

I also pause for a moment to think about each one of us how we might at times be subject to the question “How do you solve a problem like _______?” Yes fill in the blank with your own name! In a very real sense, we are all His problem children!

I love musicals and this is one of my all-time favorites. I just love the clever construct of this song with all the different voices popping in to give their opinion of poor Maria! In my mind, quite a lyrical high note is achieved when the one nun interjects the seeming pile-on to speak a word on her behalf!

Isn’t that what Jesus does for us? Speaks a good word to the Father on our behalf?

*pauses to imagine Jesus telling the Father…“you know…Eileen…makes me laugh!!!”

Rodgers And Hammerstein – Maria lyrics (in parody)

BERTHE:

She climbs a tree

And scrapes her knee

Her dress has got a tear.

SOPHIA:

She waltzes on her way to mass

And whistles on the stair.

BERTHE:

And underneath her wimpole

She has curlers in her hair!

SOPHIA:

I ever hear her singing in the abbey.

BERTHE:

She’s always late for chapel,

MARGARETTA:

But her penitence is real.

BERTHE:

She’s always late for everything,

Except for every meal.

MOTHER ABBESS:

I hate to have to say it

But I very firmly feel

BERTHE AND SOPHIA:

Maria’s not an asset to the abbey!

MARGARETTA:

I’d like to say a word in her behalf.

Maria makes me laugh!

SOPHIA:

How do you solve a problem like “Elena?”

MOTHER ABBESS:

How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?

MARGARETTA:

How do you find a word that means “Elena?”

BERTHE:

A flibberti gibbet!

SOPHIA:

A willo’ the wisp!

MARGARETTA:

A clown!

MOTHER ABBESS:

Many a thing you know you’d like to tell her,

Many a thing she ought to understand.

MARGARETTA:

But how do you make her stay

And listen to all you say,

MOTHER ABBESS:

How do you keep a wave upon the sand?

MARGARETTA:

Oh, how do you solve a problem like “Elena?”

MOTHER ABBESS:

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

MARGARETTA:

When I’m with her I’m confused,

Out of focus and bemused,

And I never know exactly where I am.

SOPHIA:

Unpredictable as weather,

She’s as flighty as a feather,

MARGARETTA:

She’s a darling,

BERTHE:

She’s a demon,

MARGARETTA:

She’s a lamb.

SOPHIA:

She’d out-pester any pest,

Drive a hornet from his nest,

BERTHE:

She can throw a whirling dervish

Out of whirl.

MARGARETTA:

She is gentle,

She is wild,

SOPHIA:

She’s a riddle.

MARGARETTA:

She’s a child.

BERTHE:

She’s a headache!

MARGARETTA:

She’s an angel!

MOTHER ABBESS:

She’s a girl.

ALL NUNS:

How do you solve a problem like “Elena?”

How do you catch a clown and pin it down?

How do you find a word that means “Elena?”

A flibberti gibbet!

A willo’ the wisp!

A clown!

Many a thing you know you’d like to tell her,

Many a thing she ought to understand.

But how do you make her stay,

And listen to all you say?

How do you keep a wave upon the sand?

Oh, how do you solve a problem like “Elena?”

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand

Part Two

In the middle segment of this piece I put forth a writing, unredacted, that I formed in 2006. I want to give a disclaimer here that the emotions and thoughts I expressed in that immediate post-divorce time are simply my own feelings and expressions in real-time post-divorce grief and I share as a creative writing expression from that time period in my own life. The things expressed are about me, not about anyone else. They are in no way representative of any actual facts or any actual actions concerning myself or the first person I made marriage covenant with during my lifetime. Divorce is always messy and there is always shared blame. I simply write and express for my own processing and in hopes that others who have walked in similar pathways and experiences and thoughts and emotions may in some small way know that these feelings are pretty common as they relate to divorce and recovery issues, of which I often write about here.

__________

When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now,

Will you still be sending me a Valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine?

If I’d been out ’till quarter to three, would you lock the door?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

When I’m sixty-four?

Hmm——mmm—mmmh.

You’ll be older, too. Aaah, and if you say the word, I could stay with you.

I could be handy, mending a fuse, when your lights have gone.

You can knit a sweater by the fireside, Sunday mornings, go for a ride.

Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

when I’m sixty-four?

Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight if it’s not too dear.

We shall scrimp and save.

Ah, grandchildren on your knee, Vera, Chuck, and Dave.

Send me a postcard, drop me a line stating point of view.

Indicate precisely what you mean to say, yours sincerely wasting away.

Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me,

when I’m sixty-four?

~ by John Lennon/Paul McCartney

The Hamburger

(Written 1/30/06)

I cooked four hamburgers today.  I didn’t cook them in the past and I didn’t cook them in the future but I cooked them today.

Years ago I heard it said that when you share a meal with someone that it creates bonds, that one doesn’t sit down to a table with their enemy.  That is why businessmen entertain clients over dinner, and that is why husbands and wives share their food in familiar ways. 

I am a tossed salad.  I exist…a gamut of thoughts and emotions that are all torn into shreds and covered with the bluest cheese dressing.  Sometimes I feel I make no sense anymore.  Sometimes I feel everything around me and in my life makes no sense anymore.  I am angry, frustrated, confused, lost, weak-willed, lacking hope, fearful.  I am tired.  I am so emotionally and physically tired in a way I have never been before.  I am sad.   I am both relieved AND sad, I don’t want to turn back but sometimes I wonder how I will go on.

How can one be sad about the loss of something they don’t really want back?  I gave him what he really wanted.  I divorced him.  He would have probably never done it, he would have just tormented me forever.  When someone wakes up one morning and tells you after twenty years that they don’t know if they love you and might move out, what is left to say?  Does one try to plead them not to go, or convince them that they might love you?  No, one just says “leave me alone” and “please go.”  End of conversation, considering all we had already been through.   And as he leaves, he says, “it doesn’t have to be this way, I still love you.”  No wonder I am confused.  I pulled the trigger on a puppy that was licking my hand while peeing on my leg.  And I’m left wondering how I’ll feel twenty years from now.  I did what I had to do, I responded to the threat of a mad dog that had growled at me for years while wagging his tail in affection.

Friends just can’t really know what this is like, and even if they do, there is a limit to how they can help.  Only I experience what I feel, therefore I am ultimately alone.  It is my internal life, my memories which I must process and make sense of, and my private pain.  Friends can sometimes just take the edge off, and for that I am grateful.

Someone said that being depressed is like being hungry.  When you are hungry you can never remember being full, and when you are full you can never remember being hungry.  Jesus fed a lot of hungry people, but He cannot feed me.  He cannot feed me because I have no idea where He is or who He is to me anymore.  He has gone, vanished, fled and I will not be the one who has to make Him reappear.  Themes of betrayal, abandonment, protection, trust, security, shame and guilt just can’t be in the equation right now…therefore He cannot be in the equation…He’s out of my room and the doors and windows are barred.  I’m His problem, He’s not mine, and He can just pace around out there until He figures out what to do about this “problem child.”  He can just listen to me bawling in my room and screaming for Him to go away.  And if He gets sick of it I guess He can walk away.  I’m not going to pretend anything more about Him.  There are moments I thirst for escape but I cannot drink enough to make it better.

Maybe my life is the proverbial “damned if I do” and “damned if I don’t.”  If God only responds to faith and all the acts and attitudes that go with that, then I am damned.  And if I somehow manage to believe as I should and live the life perhaps I am not living in this moment, then He makes no guarantees of anything that I need other than salvation, so in this life I may still be emotionally or physically damned as well.   I want to be happy but I cannot even comprehend what that means any more.  Why is God so hard?  Why do I feel un-protected and unloved?  Why do I feel He is against me?  Am I bad?  Am I a bigger problem than all His millions of other children?  I cannot walk toward Him, there is no place for me anymore.  Intimacy with God is just another word for imagination. 

The meaning has gone out of my world.  If I only knew whether it would get better and when, but it may even get worse.  The thing I have always needed is security, and nothing in my life is secure anymore. And I sit and ponder the meaning of one leftover hamburger.

Part Three

This third section is simply some excerpts from another piece I tried to form two nights ago wanting to title it The Divorce Casket (Part II), but found the organization of my expression too daunting. I was attempting to form something additional to a piece I wrote in 2020 called The Divorce Casket, and am not currently up to this writing challenge.

So, I simply want to put a few parts here, for the moment…

“Divorce is a death that presents itself in many ways that are similar to the physical death of a spouse, yet it is set apart in some very particular ways that present challenges that can seem more difficult to navigate….

“It has been my experience through two divorces that thoughts, emotions and other forms of disruption, destabilization are deep, ongoing (but changing) and with a variety of long-term impact.

“The marriage covenant is entered into with an understanding that only death is to separate one from their life partner.

“I think of what God created to be the most beautiful of all earthly relationships – that which is between a man and a woman – and then I think of how south of Eden so many of these covenants devolve into. The idea of a dead marriage is also included – that seems to be when the partners do not break the letter of the marital covenant (ie, they do not divorce) yet whatever exists between them and for whatever reason, can be just a painful as being divorced or being a surviving spouse.

“It all falls into the category of death(s).

(written in draft form, September 16, 2022)

__________

In re-reading my Part II called The Hamburger, I also think on this hauntingly poignant song about leftovers as it might relate to the reeling sense of aloneness people experience following the death of a marriage and the death of dreams. It is by an artist Melanie, called Leftover Wine.