Prozac Monologues: grace

Showing posts with label grace. Show all posts

My Holiday Wish for Us All - Trip the Light

In my darkest bleak midwinter, I find the following. And I believe again. I do believe we can get back to this. And if the video were made again, with everybody in masks, it would not detract from the joy. It really wouldn't.

PS - While you are watching, dance!

If all the days that come to pass
Are behind these walls
I'll be left at the end of things
In a world kept small

Travel far from what I know

I'll be swept away
I need to know
I can be lost and not afraid

We're gonna trip the light

We're gonna break the night
And we'll see with new eyes
When we trip the light

Remember we're lost together
Remember we're the same
We hold the burning rhythm in our hearts
We hold the flame

We're gonna trip the light
We're gonna break the night
And we'll see with new eyes
When we trip the light

I'll find my way home
On the Western wind
To a place that was once my world
Back from where I've been

And in the morning light I'll remember
As the sun will rise
We are all the glowing embers
Of a distant fire

Come on and trip the light
We're gonna break the night
And we'll see with new eyes
When we trip the light

Music: Garry Schyman©
Lyrics: Alicia Lemke and Matt Harding©

Source LYBIO.net

Between Stimulus and Response

I went searching for a Viktor Frankl quote. Mental health pro-tip: When desperate, Google "Viktor Frankl quotes." I mean, how does even the most desperate, darkest depression argue with a Holocaust survivor?

Here is what I found:

Okay, I confess, when you put an inspirational quote on top of a beautiful peaceful scene, it loses its inspirational value for me. That's just the way my brain works.

So I'd make my own image if I were inclined to that sort of thing, like if I were having a hypomanic episode. It would be three boxes, left to right.

On the left would be a screenshot of a webpage saying something like, Cannot open page because search timed out. Maybe, Cannot find printer. I saw those images on my laptop a lot last week.

Last week I just couldn't. Well, my laptop was dying. And then my printer wouldn't install. But all that within the context of everything that well, you know... So last week there was no new post.

This week, I still can't, not really. I can't find any new research that intrigues me. I can't bear the thought of yet another rant. I am determined not to spread any more pain.

But there's pain out there. There's pain in here. And this blog is about the things I can change. So this I will do.

I have a spiritual discipline that I am using to walk through these days. I am a Christian, and this is a Christian discipline, or series of ancient practices - though my guess is that nonChristians can find something of value here. I will do my best to do some translation.

It's called the Way of Love.

Fifteen years! From the hypomanic first draft of Prozac Monologues on a yellow legal notepad to a published book, and the nail file that inspired it all.

The book was officially released into the wild this week and will be celebrated in two launches, one sponsored by Paulina Springs Books in Sisters, OR, and the other sponsored by Prairie Lights in Iowa City, IA.

It's a good time to talk about gratitude. Forgive my self-indulgence. It is a day to reflect.

First, people have asked whether it was hard to write about such dark times in my life, if it retriggered some of those emotions. Occasionally, it did. Occasionally I would have a sleepless night remembering, in particular, difficult encounters in treatment. One can forgive sincerely. One can forgive over and over. Still, the brain remembers. I don't harbor resentments, but I can't always hop off the time travel machine that is my brain, how it repeats the tracks laid down by past traumas.

Landfill Harmonic

I promised a series --

If the world sent you garbage, send back music.

Ring The Bells That Still Can Ring

Liturgical Christians, Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians keep a season called Advent, four weeks before Christmas. It is a difficult practice, because it calls us to be thoughtful. Thoughtful?! You mean making a list and checking it twice? No. Advent is a time to acknowledge the truth that we hide from, behind our shopping lists and party schedules, the truth of emptiness and brokenness, in ourselves and in the world. We are surrounded by Ho Ho Ho. Advent says Hmm.

Advent says, Yes we will rejoice, because the baby, The Baby is born. And yet. And yet...

This has been a hard week. Our defenses against the darkness have been found wanting. And yet. And yet...

Seventeen Keys to Recovery

Margalea Warner is one of my partners, along with Carol Porch, for a Mental Illness Awareness Week presentation in October, Recovery: Rewiring the Brain. Margalea is active in the Mennonite Church in Iowa City. They have been supportive on her journey in recovery. She says there were some years when she was hospitalized so often she bankrupted their flower fund!

This week I am reposting her recent contribution to ADNET, Anabaptist Disabilities Network. Margalea's story is one of those lights I hold up when things get dark. I hope it shines for you, as well.

Keys to Wellness and Friendship -- by Margalea Warner

On August 12, 2012, a group of my friends gathered at the home of my friend Becky for a celebration of two major life milestones. My friend Sherry had achieved twenty-two years of being clean and sober. I had reached the milestone of seventeen years outside the locked psych ward.

Ode to the Brain

Something about this seems sacred to me.

Those Who Have Eyes, Let Them See

Yes, I said I was on sabbatical. But I do have to write. Like, I do have to breathe. My facebook page this morning, somebody posted an Ernest Hemingway quote, There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. I have learned there is more than one way to bleed. Teresa of Avila's stigmata, by the way, were interior. Mine (writing) seems better than other alternatives.

So yes, I am on sabbatical. That means I don't have to post. I might anyway. Oh well.

NAMI National Convention 2012

It started with Shepherd. He stood straight tall. Life has taken a lot out of him, including a lot of teeth. But he stood straight tall. I remember him as a black man, with piercing light blue eyes. I know that's possible, a black man with blue eyes. Maybe it isn't true in this case. My brain really isn't that dependable anymore. But the piercing part is the most important. I am so glad I wasn't afraid to look in his eyes.

I must be one of ten people with mental illness in the United States of America who does NOT have holiday trauma issues. My personal desperate darkness starts each year in late July and breaks some time in late October, with mild depression fading out through November.

Thanksgiving to New Year's is pretty much my best time of year.

Nevertheless, this year I have been sad, not depressed really, just sad, as I read on Facebook the hostility that has come to be the litmus test of Christian fervor. Evidently inspired by Fox News, Merry Christmas is no longer an expression of joy and good cheer, but a battle cry against the First Amendment and the great American experiment of freedom and tolerance of difference.

Irony abounds here. One of my own ancestors came over on the Mayflower, as a matter of fact. The Puritans wanted freedom to practice their religion, not anybody else's, just their own, including a prohibition against Christmas, which they outlawed in 1659. They knew their religious history, that the holiday originated as a pagan festival, full of excess of every sort, with the thinnest wash of Christian appropriation added later to assure pagans they could still celebrate the Winter Solstice after they got baptized.

The Puritans had mellowed by 1712, when Cotton Mather, whose credentials are as Christian as you get, preached tolerance for other Christians who did want to celebrate the baby's birthday. I do not now dispute whether People do well to Observe such an Uninstituted Festival at all, or no, he said.

He went on to encourage a Romans 14 attitude: Good Men may love one another, and may treat one another with a most Candid Charity, while he that Regardeth a Day, Regardeth it unto the Lord, and he that Regardeth not the Day, also shows his Regard unto the Lord, in his not Regarding of it...

According to Cotton Mather, he believed in "political correctness", because he found it in the Bible, in Paul.

The Brain And Christmas, Or At Least Something, Anything

Christian, Jew, Zoroastrian, Wiccan, Druid, "spiritual but not religious," and plain old capitalists, as the days get shorter, our pineal glands go into overdrive, pumping out all that melatonin that makes us want to hibernate. Our brains cry out for relief. Push back the darkness! Light a candle! Light a bonfire! Wait a minute -- just a log. Nothing in the brain requires that anybody get burned at the stake.

Regular readers know that, while Prozac Monologues is not for the purposes of evangelism, I make no secret of my Christian faith, and even defend religion and the disciplines of church membership as resources for mental health.

But not any religion. Not what passes for Christianity but looks suspiciously like, well -- fascism. There, I have said the word. When the cross gets wrapped in the flag, no matter whose flag, you know that the frontal cortex is offline, the lizard brain is in charge, and somebody is about to get crucified.

Which is so not what Jesus would want for his birthday present.

I mean, the first guests invited by heaven to his party were the scruffiest low lifes of the neighborhood, who had probably been passing the bottle to keep warm that night, and some foreign fire-worshipers, for crying out loud!

Theology Alert

He came as a baby. He came vulnerable. He came helpless. In the core and mystery of what Christians call Incarnation, God-in-flesh, that very vulnerability is how God tells us how much God loves us, that the great Almighty would set almighty aside in order to pitch his tent among us.

That God desires to be with us, and will pay whatever price that requires, and would indeed require, is the core of the Gospel, all we need to know that we are beloved. We are worthy. Knowing that, then we can exercise the courage it takes to treat others as beloved and worthy.

We can even say, to show our rejoicing for the worth that God gives us and our rejoicing for the worth that God gives our neighbors, Happy Holidays!

These days are holy, they are graced by God's presence among us, whatever days you keep. That is what I believe. And I hope for you that these days are happy.

Research on Vulnerability

So here is where the deep truth about God-With-Us and mental health research come together: Brene Brown, research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work on The Power of Vulnerability.

That baby who slept in the cold and all the babies who tonight sleep in the cold call us to look deep, deep into our hearts, the hearts of our neighbors, the heart of the world, the heart of God.

Happy holidays.

painting of Announcement to Shepherds by Gaddi Taddeo, c. 1327, in public domain

mezzotint portrait of Cotton Mather by Peter Pelham, 1700, in public domain

photo of Luminaria at Lake Washington from Seattle Municipal Archives, used under the Creative Commons license

painting of Madonna and Child with Cherries by Jan Gossaert, c. 1520, in public domain

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer, Consumer, Blogger, Whatever

As in the days of Amos, John of Patmos, John of the Cross, it's the poets who will save us, those of us who have ears to hear. For the rest, it's the poets who will preserve the evidence, in hope that there will yet be ears to hear.

So today, Wendell Berry's Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.

First, one liner note: Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a drawer. In the early days of computers, data was recorded by punching holes into cards, literally, card stock, roughly 3"x7". This was before web crawlers could find the word bread in a Facebook comment and then put up ads for kitchenware on your page. The line in the poem, first published in 1970, is truer than ever. The technology has simply got more efficient.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love somebody who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

And your homework for this week, gentle reader --

What does it mean to Practice resurrection? What tuition will you pay?

Johannes der Evangelist in Patmos from a triptych by Hans Memling, 1479

photo of punched computer card by Litrefs used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

photo of Immortal Tree, Humboldt Redwood State Park by Jan Kronsell, public domain

photo of fox from US Department of Interior, public domain
book cover from amazon.com

Jared Loughner -- It Doesn't Have To Work This Way

The man who wants to put Jared Loughner to death is concerned for his health.

The United States attorney for Arizona, Dennis K. Burke, wrote to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that despite being under suicide watch, Loughner’s unmedicated behavior is endangering him.

It has been determined that Jared suffers from schizophrenia, and is unable to participate in his defense against the 49 charges stemming from the Arizona shootings that left six people dead and thirteen wounded. Now somebody wants to get this desperately sick young man some help. Because if he can't stand trial, then he can't be prosecuted, convicted and executed.

Jared's attorneys think it is not in his interest, under the circumstances, to take Risperidone, a standard antipsychotic medication given to people who think that somebody is trying to kill them. It might have been in his interest earlier on. But the community college that noticed his bizarre behavior, including the speech salad that is the dead giveaway of schizophrenia, simply expelled him.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the prosecution, and Jared is now being forcibly medicated.

I intended to return to my NAMI Convention reporting this week. But wow. This story lands on my laptop, the very essence of the Prozac Monologues spirit.

There are so many layers of meaning here. I don't think I am up to the task of analysis. Instead I will tell another story, the original sequel to last week's rerun.

This is how a Christian community responded to the violent act of a mentally ill man. -- as they understand what it means to be Christian. From January 21, 2010 --

The Miracle of Gheel

Once part of the family, the person shares in family activities, chores and church. The church doesn't have special bible studies, services or programs for the mentally ill. They are fully integrated, regular readers, members of the choir, ushers, etc.

But What About Relapse?

What if the person's symptoms flair? We say s/he is having a bad day. Because the person lives in a family, not on the streets or alone in an apartment, problems are caught and addressed early, not after getting fired or evicted or arrested or in a bloody mess. If needed, s/he can go back to the hospital for a while. In fact, the hospital is not the place of last resort. When the foster family has to go out of town, say, for a funeral, the person can stay at the hospital. There is continuity of care. There is care.

Three years ago I wrote a chapter for Deep Calling called, If This Were Cancer. I detailed all the ways that hospice patients receive the support of others, and that people who have suicidal depression do not. If this were cancer, there would be casseroles... I imagined the total collapse of care for the mentally ill, under the weight of our crazy health care system. In fact, it's happening as I write.

I imagined that the Church would step in to meet a desperate need, to create hospice for the mentally ill, as the Church originally created hospice and hospitals. I claimed that the Church has the resources to organize for such care on a local basis. It has the faith to imagine such a thing, the love to cast out fear, and the values to demand it. I will have to rewrite that chapter. I didn't know it had already been/is already being done.

I am ever so grateful to Janet, whose last name I don't remember, who gave me Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories of the Search for Healing and Home on the Streets by Craig Rennebohm, the source of this story.

Lord God, Who has graciously chosen Saint Dymphna to be the patroness of those afflicted with mental and nervous disorders, and has caused her to be an inspiration and a symbol of charity to the thousands who invoke her intercession, grant through the prayers of this pure, youthful martyr, relief and consolation to all who suffer from these disturbances, and especially to those for whom we now pray. (Here mention those for whom you wish to pray.)

We beg You to accept and grant the prayers of Saint Dymphna on our behalf. Grant to those we have particularly recommended patience in their sufferings and resignation to Your Divine Will. Fill them with hope and, if it is according to Your Divine Plan, bestow upon them the cure they so earnestly desire. Grant this through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

... I think maybe Jared could use our prayers, too.

photo of Risperidone by V1ND3M14TR1X and used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

image of Dymphna in the public domain

A Kitchen Interior by Joachim Beuckelaer, 16th c., in the public domain

book cover from amazon.com

Mazie -- Run Free!

Mazie came to us on August 1, 1996.

She left us on March 1, 2011

And in between she blessed us.

I wrote about Mazie a couple years ago. She lived longer than we anticipated she would at the time. She suffered a stroke a year ago, but recovered and went on to raise $250 in last year's NAMI walk.

Here is an edited version of that earlier post, with new bits in italics.

This dog reminds me of Mazie/Amazing Grace. Except there are too many stars in the lower right corner of the constellation, a leg that she lost a long time ago. Move those stars up to form her crown chakra. For twelve of her thirteen years, people have watched her run and said, That's Amazing!

Therapy Dog

Mazie is a therapy dog. Not officially, she never received the training. Now she has renal failure and it's too late. But everywhere she goes, she finds the person who needs her. When I took her to visit the shelter during the Iowa floods in '08, she stopped to visit with each one. After an hour, I was depressed and weary -- the start of another relapse. I thought it was time to go. But no, she pulled on the leash and told me she hadn't talked with that man who was isolating, sitting by himself under that tree. And she had to hang around until the Red Cross worker got off shift, to share some grace with her, too.

People have to ponder a three-legged dog. After a few years, I stopped making smart remarks to the same question I heard over and over. How did she lose her leg? I came to realize that through her, people consider their own experiences of loss, and the consequences of loss, and the life she leads without even noticing her loss.

How did she come to be a therapy dog? We don't know the before story. We only know the after, the kindness of a farmer who went out of his way for an injured stray, a no-kill shelter that is very picky and does home studies before they let people adopt, a vet and staff who treat her as a queen, the strangers who are drawn to her and, I believe, bring their own need for gentleness to the gentleness with which they approach her. And she responds in kind.

Disabilities And Heaven?

Will she get her leg back in heaven? I don't think so. On earth, her only handicap is that she can't pivot to the right at a full run without falling down. I think her one wish for heaven is to lose the leash, so she can do what she loves to do, run like the wind in three quarter time.

I knew somebody who was born with a foreshortened arm. It ended at the elbow with a stump of a hand. She always bristled when some religious person reassured her she would be whole in heaven. She said she already was whole. And she was.

Maybe what heaven will fix is our lack of imagination.

Loss And Heaven?

What does it mean for those of us with mental illness to be whole in heaven? All the life experience that makes us who we are includes the experience of mental illness. Will we lose that? Who then will we be?

All the loss in this world -- a friend is reading a midrash of Exodus. In midrash, the rabbis explore the meaning of Scripture through story-telling, expanding and deepening the levels of the text. In one interpretation of the burning bush, initially Moses refused the call to go free the Israelite slaves in Egypt because -- what about those who died while building the pyramids and were buried in the walls? Who would let them go?

To Lose One's Memory

A psychiatrist once tried to reassure me about Electro-Convulsive Therapy, ECT. She said that usually the only memory loss is of events immediately preceding the treatment. And usually people are so unhappy before treatment that they are glad to lose those memories.

It was not a convincing argument. Such an argument would be abhorrent to somebody who is Jewish. I am not, but it is abhorrent to me, too. To forget is to lose one's people and one's self. I don't want to forget. I don't want to lose any of it. It is part of me, even the pain. I guess I want for it to mean something.

No, I don't. I don't want God to explain it. I want to ask God to answer for it -- like the Holocaust survivor who insisted he be buried in his Auschwitz uniform instead of the traditional Jewish winding sheet. He wanted to stand before the throne of judgment wearing the evidence that would itself say, who is judging whom?

To Be Found

Maybe what I really want, for Mazie, for those lost in the walls of the pyramids, and in the ashes, and for those who are in such pain that they want to lose their minds, for all of us, is to be found.

Good-bye, sweet Mazie. Run free.

Happy Christmas to my Readers

Feliz Navidad

ميلاد مجيد

圣诞快乐

С Рождеством Хрисовым

Vrolijk Kerstfeest

Feliz Natal

One Last Song -- Joy To The World
This one is signed, as well.

The Miracle of Gheel -- Humane Treatment for Mental Illness

It was seventh century Ireland. The Queen died. King Damon's grief was so deep that it moved into depression and then psychosis. He thought his daughter Dymphna was his queen. Rather than submit to his advances, Dymphna fled to Belgium, to the town of Gheel. But her father followed. When she again rebuffed him, he killed her, cut off her head. Dymphna was buried in the local church.

Six centuries later, her coffin was found during renovations. Signs on the coffin demonstrated her holiness. She began to be venerated. Cures of the sick were attributed to her. She was canonized in 1247 as the patron saint of the mentally ill.

Okay, here the one last bit of unrecovered Catholic in me demands to be heard, to note Rome's fascination with girls who prefer death to rape. Even as a nine year old, that made me uncomfortable.

Moving on. People came to Gheel for healing. Many brought family members who were mentally ill. Sometimes they left them there. The priest housed these abandoned ones next to the church. When the job of caring for them became too much for him, townspeople started bringing in food. They built a hospital in the 14th century. When it was full, the real miracle of St. Dymphna occurred, or rather, began. Townspeople took some of the patients into their own homes, reserving the hospital only for those most ill.

All across Europe, people with mental illness were thought to be possessed. They were exorcised, tortured and burned at the stake. But not in Gheel.

Imagine it! A psychotic foreigner commits a terrible deed. But the townspeople do not close the borders. No, they open their homes.

And they still do. Through plagues, wars, revolutions, recessions, depressions, during the Napoleonic "Reform," when all the mentally ill people in the country were ordered into one big hospital, during the Nazi occupation, with their "final solution" for mental illness, during the latest reform when the U.S. of A. was/is dumping all our mentally ill people out of the hospitals, onto our streets and into our jails, the people of Gheel developed and continue genuine community-based mental health care.

Today, there are 700 foster homes for 1000 people with mental illness. A person will enter the hospital for evaluation and stabilization. S/he meets the psychiatrist, psychologist, nurse, social worker and family practitioner who staff one of the five neighborhood community mental health centers. Each of these staff people spends half a day each week in the hospital, so everybody gets to know everybody. The potential foster family and patient meet at the hospital, then over tea at home, then over a meal, then over a weekend before placement. Outpatient care, medication monitoring and therapy continue at the neighborhood center. If possible, the biological family participates in the treatment plan.

Once part of the family, the person shares in family activities, chores and church. The church doesn't have special bible studies, services or programs for the mentally ill. They are fully integrated, regular readers, members of the choir, ushers, etc.

What if the person's symptoms flair? "We say s/he is having a bad day." Because the person lives in a family, not on the streets or alone in an apartment, problems are caught and addressed early, not after getting fired or evicted or arrested or in a bloody mess. If needed, s/he can go back to the hospital for a while. In fact, the hospital is not the place of last resort. When the foster family has to go out of town, say, for a funeral, the person can stay at the hospital. There is continuity of care. There is care.

Three years ago I wrote a chapter for Deep Calling called, "If This Were Cancer." I detailed all the ways that hospice patients receive the support of others, and that people who have suicidal depression do not. "If this were cancer, there would be casseroles..." I imagined the total collapse of care for the mentally ill, under the weight of our crazy health care system. In fact, it's happening as I write. I imagined that the Church would step in to meet a desperate need, to create hospice for the mentally ill, as the Church originally created hospice and hospitals. I claimed that the Church has the resources to organize for such care on a local basis. It has the faith to imagine such a thing, the love to cast out fear, and the values to demand it. I will have to rewrite that chapter. I didn't know it had already been/is already being done.

I am ever so grateful to Janet, whose last name I don't remember, who gave me Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories of the Search for Healing and Home on the Streets by Craig Rennebohm, the source of this story.

Lord God, Who has graciously chosen Saint Dymphna to be the patroness of those afflicted with mental and nervous disorders, and has caused her to be an inspiration and a symbol of charity to the thousands who invoke her intercession, grant through the prayers of this pure, youthful martyr, relief and consolation to all who suffer from these disturbances, and especially to those for whom we now pray. (Here mention those for whom you wish to pray.)

We beg You to accept and grant the prayers of Saint Dymphna on our behalf. Grant to those we have particularly recommended patience in their sufferings and resignation to Your Divine Will. Fill them with hope and, if it is according to Your Divine Plan, bestow upon them the cure they so earnestly desire. Grant this through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Dymphna's feast day is May 15.

Loss

John McManamy has been on a theological kick. So I thought I'd take a turn, it being my profession anyway.

The relationship between GoD and DoG is one of those enduring theological themes. Here is one contribution to the discussion:

This dog reminds me a bit of my own, named Mazie -- Amazing Grace. Except there are too many stars in the lower right corner of the constellation, a leg that she lost a long time ago. Move those stars up to form her crown chakra. For twelve of her thirteen years, people have watched her run and said, "That's Amazing!" -- the inspiration for her name.

Mazie is a therapy dog. Not officially, she never received the training. Now she has renal failure and it's too late. But everywhere she goes, she finds the person who needs her. When I took her to visit the shelter for victims of the Iowa floods in '08, she stopped to visit with each one. After an hour, I was depressed and weary -- the start of my latest relapse. I thought it was time to go. But no, she pulled on the leash and told me she hadn't talked with that man who was isolating, sitting by himself under that tree. And she had to hang around until the Red Cross worker got off shift, to give her some of her grace, too.

People have to ponder a three-legged dog. After a few years, I stopped making smart remarks to the same question I heard over and over. I came to realize that through her, people consider their own experiences of loss, and the consequences of loss, and the life she leads without even noticing her loss.

How did she come to be a therapy dog? We don't know the before story. We only know the after, the kindness of a farmer who went out of his way for an injured stray, a no-kill shelter that is very picky and does home studies of the people who want to adopt, a vet and staff who treat her as a queen, the strangers who flock to her and, I believe, bring their own need for gentleness to the gentleness with which they approach her. And she responds in kind.

Will she get her leg back in heaven? I don't think so. On earth, the only handicap it causes is that she can't pivot to the right at a full run without falling down. I think her only wish is that in heaven she will lose the leash, so she can do what she loves to do, to run like the wind in three quarter time.

I knew somebody who was born with a foreshortened arm. It ended at the elbow, with a stump of a hand. She always objected when some religious person reassured her that she would be whole in heaven. She said she was already whole. And she was.

What does it mean for those of us with mental illness to be whole in heaven? All of the life experience that makes us who we are includes the experience of mental illness. Will we lose that? Who then will we be?

All of the loss in this world -- a friend is reading a midrash of Exodus. [In Midrash, the rabbis explore the meaning of Scripture through story-telling, expanding and deepening the levels of the text.] One interpretation of Moses at the burning bush is that he initially refused the call to go free the Israelite slaves in Egypt, because -- what about the ones who were already dead and buried in the walls of the pyramids that they died while building? Who would let them go?

Will God have an answer to your question? I don't know that I want an answer. I want it all, us all to be gathered up, none of it and none of us to be lost.

A psychiatrist tried to reassure me once about Electro-Convulsive Therapy, ECT, saying that usually the only memory loss was of the events immediately preceding the treatment. And usually people are so unhappy before treatment that they are glad to lose those memories.

It was not a convincing argument. I don't want to forget. I don't want to lose any of it. It is part of me, even the pain. I guess I want for it to mean something. I want to be able to ask God to answer for it -- like the Holocaust survivor who insisted that he be buried in his Auschwitz uniform instead of the traditional Jewish winding sheet. He wanted to stand before the throne of judgment wearing the evidence that would itself say, who is judging whom?

Maybe what I really want, for Mazie, for those lost in the walls of the pyramids, and in the ashes, and for those who are in such pain that they want to lose their minds, for all of us, is to be found.

Prozac Monologues