But, damnit, I *do* care.

I’ve had “I’ve got you, babe” stuck in my head for the last few days. I’m catching up on the 2nd half of the final season of House, and one of the characters was singing and playing it the other day. I’ve been thinking about it, vaguely, in relation to the whole “turning it over” concept that’s asked of me in my current work. Turn it, everything, present, past, future, over to something else, something “caring,” it tells us because, as we’ve learned by now, trying to do it, to finagle it on my own, doesn’t work out too well.

However, this “care” business... Well, we heard me gripe about “god” the other day. And luckily I still have a few prompt questions to write through and maybe get somewhere with around … “god.” I just don’t know what will come of it. Although I’ll do it anyway.

I know I’m “not alone,” I know that there’s healing and progress and momentum in doing this work without knowing the outcome. But, I’ve had to up my own woo-woo-ness to help get me there a little. Because, as I’ve said, sometimes “god’s plan” includes some really fucked up shit. And fuck trusting that “thing” whatsoever. Asshole.

Jews are supposed to “wrestle and grapple” with god. It’s part of what we’re asked and allowed to do.

On Saturday night, I saw a play that was focused around a Catholic family in the 50s and their relationship to each other, Catholicism, and a nun with a heart condition. The main character is a 12 year old boy, heading to confirmation, and he keeps on questioning the doctrines. Why did god put us here, is one of the questions the nun asks. He replies, To have fun. – That’s not the proscribed answer, by the way.

If you don’t learn this, you go to hell. Well, I’m not sure I believe in hell, he replies.

He isn’t quashed at the end; in fact, his questioning helps to open everyone else up.

And so, I have to believe that my questioning, my hesitance, my ire will do the same.

I am past a point of blind faith. But, sometimes there’s nothing else than that either. So, what then?

There’s a billboard I drive past on the way to work. For about a month, it was an ad for a casino, portraying simply the eyes of a ravenous, coy, coaxing woman. The copy read: Luck will find you.

Each time I drove past it, I said aloud, No it won't.

Luck doesn’t find us. We find Luck. To quote the 80s: “There is no fate but what we make.”

And yet, … I’m past the point of blind willfulness, too.

I know that a belief in hope and change, in love, lead me to show up for things that are uncomfortable. I know that my knowledge that I really can’t do it alone leads me to call people, write this homework shit, and hope that the next right action will open up to me.

I know I’m not hopeless, or a hopeless case. I know I’m not throwing off the mantle of faith in favor of self will-ing myself through my life. I’ve spent plenty of torn-up hours trying to “make it work.” Trying to change others, my past, present, and future.

So, I know I’m at surrender. I know I’m at the place of letting go, and trusting “what is.” Or trying to trust it, rather.

But, I’m scared. I’m scared for me, I’m cautious with my hope for others; I’m a great scoop more apathetic about the god thing, at the same time I’m more charged about “moving forward” in many places in my life.

I’m tired. I’m grieving the loss of innocence. I cannot yet believe in the (fucking) “care” of a higher power. I think Fate is an asshole. The schmuck who pulls your chair out from beneath you when you’re about to sit and, like Nelson on The Simpsons, cackles, “Heh Heh!”

I thought I’d given up that one, that punitive idea, that pull me closer/push me away god.

I could decide to call this all evidence of that god, and therefore defy and reject the whole concept. Every day I go to work with a woman who lost her baby at 8 months pregnant. Every day, she and I, simply by our presence, remind one another that nothing is certain in this life. Joy is not guaranteed.

So, like I said, I’m ramping up my woo-woo tools again. I’m reading affirmations, listening to them, signed up for the Oprah/Deepak meditation month. I’ve got to. I’ve got to give myself some pudding in which the medicine is slipped.

I’ve got to tell myself, in a fake it till you make it way, that I am alright. That 5-year mortality statistics don’t mean anything to a bad-ass like me. That I am cooler than I think I am, and worth every effort and so much 'then some' that I take toward my health and my goals.

I’ve got to say, I believe in the care of these simple things. In the care of a little self-love. In the care of a coffee date with a friend, the soft breathing of a baby.

Anything else can go fuck itself.