God is God is God, Until You Can Prove Otherwise, Which is Never.

It was a long-shot dream, but goddamnit, it was MY dream. MY musical vision. I'd spent a decent part of the last 3 years plugging for "My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison to be covered by my band at church, arranging the song (against my grain) to fit the Christian perspective, Bob learning the slide guitar parts, me offering to sing the lead with my not-so-great, but peppered-with-vigor voice.

When I brought the song up to my guitarist last week, I mentioned that I wanted "My Sweet Lord" played at my funeral, with the chants to Krishna left intact. (And that I wanted Wayne and Steven to perform it...) "Why would you want to praise Krishna?" he innocently asked me. "Why WOULDN'T I?" It's just another one of God's names." I said, "God is God is God is God." He just about fainted, unstrapping his "Jesus" embroidered guitar strap. ANNIE, YOU'RE SCARING US! SWEET, SUCCULENT JESUS SAVE ME NOW!

I posted this brief story to my Facebook, and my new Pastor, Dave, chimed in. I'd said I appreciated the beauty of other religions, and he commented back with a "Beauty is one thing, truth is another. Isaiah 44:6" A litany of lengthy comments followed between the two of us, during which I raised very valid religious questions with him retorting nothing back but "But Jesus said..." "But the Bible says..." My main point about the truthfulness of other religions hinged on this example:

There's a tribe of African pygmies living in the jungle, and for generations, they've been worshiping a twig. It's a sacred twig, which they revere and honor and pray to. It's all they know. They've taught their children and their children's children to pray to the twig that is their God. Christian missionaries never made it to this remote part of Africa, and thus, the tribe never heard the message of Jesus Christ as the one and only Savior. I raised the following question: "Does that mean that this tribe and all of their generations are banished to Hell just because Christians never arrived to convert them?" "Because if that's true," I said, "God's really kind of a prick."

The dumbfounded Pastor came back at me with this: "In Matthew 28, Jesus gives The Great Commission to his 11 disciples to 'go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.' This passage indicates that, indeed it is possible for the whole world to hear the good news of Jesus as Lord and Savior."

Ok, now that we're back from our trip to La-La-Land, where everyone in the whole universe hears the Gospel of Jesus Christ, let's examine this further:

I'm an educated person. I studied both Western and Eastern religious scriptures and philosophies in college (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, enough to almost have a minor in Religious Studies), and have long since firmly believed one simple principle: God is God is God. God has many faces, many names, many versions, cross-culturally. This radical approach to religion has ruffled the feathers of an awful lot of my Lutheran brethren, especially my new, fresh-from-the-Bible-Belt-Conservative Pastor.

God exists, in a myriad of manifestations, across the universe. Those of us who believe in and worship God have each been brought up in what was the cultural version of God. I and my fellow Christians were raised and educated, exposed to the European, Judeo-Christian version of God that professes salvation only through Jesus Christ. I practice Christianity as my version of religion, because that's the God I was taught to believe in. The Hindis on the other side of the Ganges worship Krishna and a million other Gods, have their own sacred texts, prophets and leaders (yogis). The Muslims have Allah and Mohammad. Buddhists have the Buddha and the monks, et al. The Jews believe in God, but are skeptical about the whole Jesus thing, and that's totally ok. The African pygmies are worshiping the Twig of Life, because that's the God they KNOW.

In conversation with my Christian therapist (I have a secular therapist and a Christian therapist), I brought up my vision of religion, and she agreed with me that it'd be presumptuous and narcissistic of Christians to think OUR way is the ONLY way. And she's right.

With regard to the "truth" of the Bible and it's place in fundamentalist Christianity, we believe it is the Divine Word of God inspired into people who wrote it down. It's God's Word, taught to us in our own cultural tradition. That said, who's to say God didn't also inspire the Bhagavad Gita and the Koran in other cultures? Can we prove conclusively that God didn't? No. Can we prove that He did? No. It's a heated question that will only be answered when we die and go to Heaven, or achieve Nirvana, or wherever the afterlife is. It's a question God can't answer for us. Having faith in God is inherently mystifying.

My progressive, liberal thinking has gotten me into trouble more than once at my uber-conservative Lutheran church. I challenge people too much. I make them uncomfortable by asking deeply intellectual questions that mortals can't adequately answer. I upset and crack their ingrained belief systems, sometimes to the point of alienating myself. Sometimes Christians lose sight of what a radical punk Jesus Christ was. HE was an iconoclast. He ruffled feathers all the time, and it landed him on a cross. Martin Luther, the founder of my denomination, was a radical who refused to accept all the doctrines and practices of Roman Catholicism. (He was also a raging anti-Semite, but we like to gloss over that part in our church.) Radical thinking has been part of religion from the inception of a higher being in humans.

I have a dear friend, Aliya, who's a Muslim. She came to visit me with her cousin in the hospital a few months ago, and we had a lovely conversation, and I adore her dearly. She brought me a get-well gift. A mug that says on it, "With God..All Things Are Possible." And we both believe that. Her God and my God. It's a gift I treasure. I wouldn't dream of attempting to woo her or convert her over to the Christian version of God, for I am satisfied that she believes in God, and is saved, and is loved.

After Bob, my guitarist, told me last night at practice that the Pastor vetoed "My Sweet Lord" entirely, I was shell-shocked and angry. It's a beautiful song with a beautiful message, and has universally been accepted as a loving hymn to one's Savior. Bob said he'd explain over dinner tonight what Pastor's reasoning was behind nixing it, and I told him that whatever the reason was, it was likely I wouldn't be satisfied with the answer. Thus I stormed out of the sanctuary after practice last night shouting "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna!" at the top of my lungs.

It wasn't simply me being an egotistical musician who was spurned; it was a knee-jerk reaction to what was ultimately a really unfair decision that left a bitter taste in my mouth. It was my attempt to bring something beautiful and meaningful to my congregation, a song that doesn't sound like every other contemporary Christian pop song that we cover, which all eventually sound exactly the same. (Contemporary Christian music is largely banal and insipid, and I'm the only one in the band who doesn't listen to it outside of the context of the band.)I arrive at band practice and the church service on time, I volunteer a dozen hours a month to enhance the congregation's worship experience, and drumming is one of my favorite things to do. I've been playing in the band for 5 years--drunk and crazy and sober and stable, sicker than a dog and thriving like a champion. My bandmates have seen it all from me. Bob no sooner finished a spiel about how everyone has an equal voice in the band, how he didn't want to be "the leader," played 6 tunes and then shot "My Sweet Lord" down at the Pastor's bequest.

Sometimes I think I'd make a better Unitarian Universalist than a Christian...

"Do You Realize" we're playing in a cemetery?

Just a hauntingly beautiful rendition of The Flaming Lips' "Do You Realize?" recorded live in a Hollywood cemetery a few weeks ago. Chilling video, beautiful as always with my favorite band.

Not only did I stand up and say, "YEAH!" I put it next to my (not a secret anymore) secret Alcoholics Anonymous sticker on the car. Visit coynedrozd2012.com for more information on how you can whoop America into shape with the help of confetti, balloons and a whole lotta love.

"Not Talkin' 'Bout My Generation..." Being Friends with a Boomer

What's it like when one of your most trusted confidants is a 55-year old Baby Boomer, while you're a (still, somewhat) crazy Generation X'er? Totally terrific in some respects, for he has wisdom and knowledge and more life experience under his khakis with which to dispense advice and extend care. Sucky in other respects, for he is not part of the texting/techno world. In a lot of ways, we're operating on the exact same wavelength; in others, we're polar opposites. I told him that's half the fun of being friends with him. It's also, at times, frustrating.

I text him with some regularity, and am lucky to get a brief response 1/10th of the time, which I find gravely aggravating. It's not that he doesn't read my texts...he gets around to them eventually, and has said that he finds them, if nothing else, always entertaining. Texting in general, I think, annoys him, whereas it's yet another medium by which I express myself personally to my friends and family.

I texted him recently while he was on vacation, something to the effect of "I feel like I'm talking to myself." I heard nothing. He isn't chained to his cell phone like I am, and frankly, as are all of the rest of my friends. He rarely has it on, and doesn't check his messages with any frequency, and what he views as freedom and tranquility, I view as isolation and abandonment. Sometimes, I wish he'd just respond with a gentle, "Yes, I'm listening."

Purely coincidental, but my dear girlfriend Patti was just texting me about my day today, and asking me if I got to hang out with him at all and catch up, and I said we didn't have much time this week thus far. "Text him!" she texted me back. If only it were that simple. I have friends in different time zones, with conflicting schedules, doing things all over the world, with whom I text and Skype and communicate as if it were just as easy as dialing a rotary telephone.

I realize he's got a crazy, hectic, long-hours job, a family and a lot of commitments outside of our friendship, which leaves me as sort of low-woman on the priority totem pole, and I accept that, begrudgingly. But I seem to recall us coming to the conclusion recently whilst in conversation that we'd both like to become better friends and do more stuff together that we both enjoy, that other friends of ours don't, necessarily. In order for that to happen and be successful, which is the goal, we have to learn to give a little more, even if it's in very small doses. Damn it all to hell, I'm important too!

Admittedly, I'm sort of a high-maintenance pal to have in your posse. My life is laden with drama...some routine, some catastrophic, some just a pain in the ass. Other times it's rich with adventure, passion and intense awesomeness. I tend to turn to this friend most in times of heavy drama, though what I want is to include him more in the awesomeness. Because bipolar delusions of grandeur aside, I'm a very interesting person to be around. It's a guarantee that he has no one else in his life anything closely resembling me, which I hope he appreciates for it's uniqueness rather than seeing me as a daunting albatross around his already over-extended neck.

He's not old enough to be my father, but I forcefully declared him my Tatus, pronounced "Tah-toosh" a Polish term of endearment that loosely means "Yo, Big Daddy." He is like a father figure to me in a number of ways, but the more I get to know him, the more of a contemporary and peer-like he becomes. So our generation gap is muddied a bit. We have a lot of the same interests: artistically, intellectually, humorously. We're both Christians, active in our respective congregations. But I hang out with rock stars for fun. He goes blueberry picking.

All that said, I'll probably text him over the weekend about *something*. I don't expect him to respond. Those days when I feel like I'm talking to myself, I have to try and remember that it doesn't mean he loves me any less, and I don't love him any less because he doesn't respond...he just rolls differently like a lot of people his age do. Sigh...

Damn, I was crazy. Lovable, but crazy.

My last official blog entry was in May of 2009, 2 months after I started taking meds for bipolar disorder. I've strongly felt that the meds sapped me of every ounce of creativity I had in my insane brain. Prior to that, I was a verbose lightning stream of manic and disconnected thought, often rambling, often entertaining, frequently witty. I think I still retain that side of me that's charming, but now is more focused and stable than almost 3 years ago.

In the interim from that last blog post, I got a job, I settled into home life at my mom's with Luke, I decided to go to grad school to get a PsyD in Counseling Psychology to help addicts/alcoholics like me, blossomed into a great mom to Luke, who's now 11 1/2 and starting 6th grade, fell in and out of love, was embroiled in a majorly abusive relationship with someone I used to adore and admire, saw my finances improve, continued to play drums and make music...all of that good. But I didn't write. I didn't bother. I didn't feel as if I *could.*

Nonsense, said a dear friend of mine recently. "Just fucking write." And he's right. It doesn't have to be perfect, or linear, for that is not the way my brain is wired. But my mind is so perpetually filled with thoughts and ideas, perhaps it'd be an integral part of my psychotherapy to put them down online.

So that's where I'm at right now. Time to get ready for another work day at the medical practice. More on that later.

It's Time Again...

...to get back to blogging. Mind races, heart races, a lot of crap on my plate. Stay tuned.

Where I've Been. Where I'm Going. Thoughts on the anniversary of my father's death, 2010.

It doesn't matter how old you actually are when you lose one of your parents. Your gut reaction is going to mimic the stamp of a helpless child. I am almost 38 and yet, 26 years after the fact, I'm still very much the 11-year old my father abruptly left behind. I still grieve. You get better at processing the devastation as the years press forward, but the ache never goes away. I think about that sometimes when I ponder my own son, who is perilously close to the age I was when my Dad died. I can't even fathom Luke going through something like that.

Yet he almost did.

Two years ago in January, my doctor angrily threw my lab results down on the examining table with her fist, urging me to look at the results of my liver function tests. "You keep drinking like this and you'll be dead in two or three months." A full-blown alcoholic, my liver was close to acutely failing. I told no one. Instead, I continued to get drunk and proceeded to lash out at anyone and everyone who crossed my path as I edged closer to rock bottom. I couldn't muster the energy required to have hope that I could turn things around. Part of me was ready to go, regardless of the wake of consequence I would leave behind.

Then the anniversary of my father's death was once again upon me, and whilst regaling the story and history of it to my best friend, something finally clicked. Even with the secret knowledge that I, too, was most likely to succumb to alcoholism sooner rather than later. Historically, I'd latched onto not only the sadness of the situation, but also the regret that lingered because I believed that if I just had done something differently, just had stopped enabling, my father would still be alive. I'd made it all my responsibility, which in retrospect was completely unrealistic and unfair to have expected of an 11-year old little girl. I'd no sooner allow Luke to assume such a responsibility with regard to me and my alcoholism. No kid should have to bear the brunt of his parent's mistakes. My best friend remembers me saying aloud to myself, "Stop it. It doesn't have to be like this." And at that very moment, I began to forgive myself. Even as an active alcoholic and an unmedicated bipolar.

It most certainly didn't have to be like that. My life, that is. With a lot of help and guidance from those who loved me, I checked into rehab on February 21, 2008. I am now just on the cusp of being clean and sober for two years. My liver has regenerated to showroom-new. And I have hope.

After two failed interventions, my father finally decided to check into an in-patient rehab setting. My mother had bravely moved us out of our house the week or so before, in his presence, leaving only dozens of empty liquor bottles we'd found all over the house on the kitchen countertop, as if to tell my father it had to be us or them. For years, I was livid at my mother for taking us away from my father for what would turn out to be his final days. But now I see that as the most selfless move she could've made, not the most selfish. Whatever it was, it finally worked. Surely at that point, my father himself believed that it wasn't too late for him to start over.

My Dad was in rehab for less than 48 hours before suffering a massive heart attack brought on by delirium tremors from the alcohol withdrawl. Now, I have significant short and long-term memory problems from my own drinking, but my memories of 2/2/84 are as clear as day.

My brother and I were annoyed at my Dad. He incessantly called us on the phone from rehab, just to emphasize how much he loved us, and how sorry he was for what was happening. Over and over again. I remember Steven and I trying to watch the "WKRP" episode where all the Who fans got trampled at the concert in Cincinnati that afternoon. We'd trade who had to get on the phone with Dad, listen to him ballyhoo, placate him and hang up. Over and over again. Over and over again. It's plain spooky, though, that he died just a few hours later.

Part of my determination in rehab was to not repeat that situation with my own child. The hospital allowed Luke to visit with me while I was doped up on Librium in the loony bin warding off my own DT's. How scary and awkward that must have been for my son. Yet how important for me. And for Luke. Even if I didn't choose to recover to save myself, sitting beside me was a greater, more concrete reason to move forward. I owed that to myself. To Luke. To everyone who had a vested interest in loving me. And to my father as well.

I never go back to the cemetery where he's buried because I find it largely pointless. His bones are there, marked with a stone that bears his name. But *he's* not there. His soul's not there. His spirit is wherever I choose to reach out to it. He's beside me when I listen to Gene Krupa, when I watch reruns of "The Gong Show." When I play my drums. When I look at my son's remarkably similar clefted chin. He's there every time I have an alcohol craving and make the decision not to take a drink.

My father wasn't an intellectual. Kicked out of 3 high schools, he ran the gamut of civil service jobs--mail carrier, advanced firefighter/EMT and finally a sheriff's police officer. He was too nutso to make it in the Navy. He took risks and often failed. He had delusions of grandeur. He cheated on my mother and ran our family into deep debt. He slowly killed himself. He abandoned us.

But inside he was incredibly gentle and hilariously funny. Slapstick was his passion. He did a better Joe Cocker than Belushi and loved to entertain. He had the heartiest, high-frequency giggle, the meanest drum chops, the most gorgeous baritone, an unfailing sense of bravery towards his fellow man, the biggest blue eyes and ultimately loved his family more than he could ever have properly expressed.

I forgive my father all of his many sins and still manage to adore him for all of the good stuff.

Luke sometimes prefaces remarks or memories to me with, "Remember when you were drinking, and..." Most of the time I don't remember. But he does. I sense that he always will, even as time perhaps muddies those memories. I also sense that my son has emphatically already forgiven me for the pain and suffering I placed upon our own family. He is acutely aware of where I was, and how far I've come to change our lives for the better.

He asked me not long ago what my favorite hospital was. I said Resurrection, since that's both where I and Luke were born, and it's where I work now. His favorite? St. Joe's. "Because they saved your life, Mommy." I told him, "True, but *I* saved my life." I did what my father couldn't do. He and I are incredibly similar creatures, down to the way we walk, according to my mother. But I'm not him. I was determined not to become him. That, to me, is the finest tribute I could ever pay my Dad.

Especially today.