Eps 142: Guest, CJ Casciotta; Finding Your Sacred Weird

Today my guest is CJ Casciotta.

To get the EXTRAS for this episode and more info about CJ’s work, go the Spark My Muse Podcast support page HERE.

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EPS 26: When Childhood Suffering is Transfigured into a Thriving Life

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~Lisa


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INTRO TO THE EPS 26:

Melissa Wilson didn’t just survive mistreatment as a child, she worked to heal from it, redeem it, and establish a platform to help sufferers and advocate for those who are suffering now or wounded from the past.

Melissa converses with me about how she found healing and the joy of transforming her pain into a thriving website and podcast that shares stories of victory, triumph, and overcoming great odds.

Don’t let your past define you. Here are some ways you can move forward and even find a valuable mission in life.

MelissaWilson


SHOWNOTES with links

(These are approximate times in this audio broadcast.)

MIN 1:30

The Grass Gets Greener is Melissa’s project that has and continues to redeem and heal her past.

How did she begin to sense this path of helping and advocating for others?

2:00

Getting therapy and then being able to think about helping others.

10:00

How forgiveness played a huge part in the process of getting to a point of thriving and peace.

“If someone’s hurt us we forgiven for ourselves and not for the person who caused the pain.

13:20

The aspect of the continual forgiveness process.

15:00

Every story of surviving is important.

17:00

What helped her most in the process of healing and the first barrier that stood in her way was stigma.

18:00

The crisis event that sparked clarity to get therapy to heal.

20:00

How talking it out helped her and gave her confidence, and she even spent some time traveling in Europe alone.

22:00

How she developed social anxiety problems and then came to overcome them.

23:00

Post-Traumatic Stress symptoms and high adrenaline responses.

23:30

Finding a safe place and an outside perspective to find space from the trauma and grow in self-awareness.

25:00

The impact on relationships, trust, and bonding.

28:00

Rebounding and developing good friendship and meeting her now-husband as she got well.

31:00

On deciding what to make public.

33:00

Becoming who you really are and meeting new people at that point.

33:30

We attract people who are healthier because we are healthier.

34:00

“You have to connect with people who aren’t going to try to hurt you and who are going support you.”

35:30

Creating a family of choice, the core people who will help you be most well.

36:00

Connecting unawares with people who remind you of old pain.

36:30

You are most vulnerable on the road to recovery.

37:20

Feed your mind with the right stuff that’s going to inspire and motivate you and shift your mindset and body.

Here are resources that helped Melissa.


On Camping and “The Chatter of the Mind”

boating

For the last 10 years in a row, we’ve gone to Camp Swatara to…almost rough it as a family.

We just got back yesterday afternoon and began the de-camping process. 6 loads of laundry and putting things away for 3 hours. It’s more tiring than camping, and camping includes foraging for firewood to sustain your life.

For the first time, I didn’t take a single picture of our time away. (The photo above is from the camp website. It’s nondescript enough to resemble us.) It seems strange that I didn’t take any now that it’s done.

It’s an interruption to take photos sometimes, so honestly, I didn’t even think about it. My mind was chattering and I was more “in the moment”.

Later, off course, the photos come in handy to help you remember what happened. Right now, I think I remember something about killing 30 flies with the swatter and the surge of gratification that gave me–and something about S’mores.

 

My least favorite things about camping:

1. Too much humidity (Towels dry outside on the clothesline….never.)

2. Feeling covered in dirt and sweat 95% of the time

3. Feeling covered in sunscreen and bug spray over the layers of dirt and sweat

4. Bugs and all sort of biting and buzzing insects

5. Walking outdoors to use the indoor bathroom facilities

6. Thin mattresses that cause aches and pains

7. The hyper-vilgilengce about poison ivy and occasionally getting it.

(It all sounds like a dream-come-true, right?)

 

(some of) My most favorite things about camp

1. Having friends visit

2. The hospitality inherent in the camping community (sharing, chatting by the fire, friendly greetings as you walk around)

3. Family togetherness. Yes, it’s forced on you, but you can really start to enjoy it, usually.

4. The way things smell when the dew evaporates off the leaves in the morning.

5. How the day eases into the night and the darkness that comes to ease you into sleeping

6. Overcoming crisis together. Yes, it’s pretty awful at the time, but great memories and bonding come later.

7. Making fire and cooking with it, or using the firepit as a homing device. It’s hypnotic and primal and warm.

8. The refinement that happens when you realize what you truly need, compare to what you think you need. It turns out that you want things you don’t need.

What you really need: water, food, dry shelter and clothing, each other. What you think you need: a faster laptop.

 

In the end, you have kids that look forward very happily to the time away, and two parents (me and Tim, obviously) who are happy it’s part of our summertime, even though the whole process is challenging.

It’s actually the challenge that creates the satisfaction later, but you don’t know that unless you try it the whole way through.

If you aren’t psychologically ready to endure, you can get bitter or regretful (…um…so I’ve heard). Plus, it’s a dry camp, so there’s no wine to easy you into it.

 

The other thing is that intact families tend to camp together. I didn’t have this growing up and it’s a gift I give my children and myself now.

Yes, sometimes “split-up” families camp, too. But, mine didn’t.

Usually broken up families have a lot more scheduling issues and conflicts. Camping as an activity gets pushed to the side, unless you are very dedicated about it and keep it up.

 

And then there’s the Chatter of the Mind

And sometimes, though not this time, I get to hear less from the planning and inner monologue part of my “chattering mind”.

In general, this chatter may be telling you that you forgot ziplock bags at home or that, or that despite your efforts, you really aren’t worth much in the world, or that you should have cleaned out the vacuum filter more thoroughly, or that you made a mistake in explaining something, or that the people you were just talking to think poorly of you, or that you have to cook something that requires 14 steps… and how will be working out anyway, or the plans for the afternoon and where and how to apply sunscreen properly for it, or any number of things.

There isn’t much quiet in and about our minds, and not for very long. 

It’s called thinking. It can be incessant. It’s not just me, right?

If you finally reach that place in time and space where the chatter dies down, it’s almost deafening, actually. At first.

It tends to happen, not on family camping trips, but when I retreat away from home and I go alone. After 2-3 hours of intensional quietness–dialing down everything things improve. But that’s only when I’m being disciplined about getting away and pushing every nuisance thought back, or submitting it to paper, each time one surfaces. If not, it can take days, and too often never happens at all.

And after you tamp down or divert each thought pelting your brain you realize you’ve been breathing all wrong for much too long. You haven’t been able to separate the planning from the enjoying and looking around. You’ve forgotten the things you love or you have not noticed the things you should.

It doesn’t happen all at once that the chatter starts bullying you, but it happens.

(To come to my next retreat trip, click here.)

The chatter is an adversary that comes in pretending to be helpful and careful, as if it has your best interests in mind. But really, it’s just making you weary by using up too much valuable “mental RAM”, like (foolishly) running windows on top of a Mac Operating System.

How’s your mental RAM these days, anyway? Up to snuff?

Can you remember the last time you didn’t experience “the chatter of your mind” for some length of time?

(If you’re thinking about that now, or much of anything, then now is not one of those times.)

And if settling it all down sounds too close to death, then it’s been too long.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

 

Clementi, bullying, and ethics

It would be easy to say the case of Tyler Clementi–the talented violinist, who recently killed himself after an intimate encounter, and streamed online by his roommate–was about Tyler’s homosexuality, or just technology run amuck. It would be easy to focus on a bullying issue, or a sexually based hate crime.

Even though those factors surround the incident, a root problem is overlooked if these aspects get the most attention.

Why did it happen? Because people didn’t act according to proper ethics. They had no understanding or appreciation to act ethically. It was an easy laugh to embarrass a roommate, and technology made it so simple. The choice to record and stream this video was possible, and that–to the perpetrators–made it acceptable to do. But there is more:

The obvious question is “why”? The simple answer is “a blatant lack of respect for another.” Selfishness.

Ethics teach to do right by another, not because we like it, or because we benefit from it, but instead because every human being has this unalienable right. Because we are human, we are endowed these quality, and must act accordingly.

Some people think sensitivity training will stop bullying. It’s just not enough. It calls attention to those who are different, but it does not provide a satisfying reason to treat them well. Treating a special education student, an immigrant, or a homosexual young adult in a “tolerant” way, or with unique deference, alone, misses the most important point:

We don’t respect others, be kind, because this makes us nice people. We don’t do it, simply because we wish to be treated that way. We don’t do it because people will like us more. We engage as we ought because it is right in itself. And that’s enough.

Ought is the word one cannot skip. The fact that we all comprehend an ought, points to a source outside ourselves as the barometer of ethical standards.

Who determines this? Who are the rule makers?

Sometimes it’s special interest groups; sometimes religious groups, sometimes it’s educated experts; sometimes it’s the presidence of laws. All arbitrary starting points, in and of themselves, that can be expected to fold, like a house of cards.

The bullies continue. The “good citizen” character building taught often in schools falls flat, or is soon overshadowed by self-interest.

Rather, it is a birthright to be treated properly, even before one is born. It’s a non negotiable imperative to which we must all abide. As a basic feature of our makeup and purpose, it is a meta-edict for humankind. A dialectic of grace.

Nathan is a child who attracts peer ridicule. My son speaks and moves in odd ways. He’s sensitive, and obsessed with trains. Recently, he was punched repeatedly in the crotch and taunted by 3 boys who were screaming a train song in his ear.

I could envision a similar fate for Nathan which happened to Tyler. Both were exploited for sport.

Share you comments about this case, or bullying.

Have you ever been bullied

[Did you know] Mark Driscoll is Gay?

Rachel Evans is calling for a response to Marck Driscoll’s recent bullying of effeminate men, here: But I have to mention….doesn’t this sound a lot like an episode of GLEE?

Does this gay bully look like Mark Driscoll?

“macho man: Mark Driscoll”            Wait! Is that a flattering blouse?

Mark Driscoll is gay? Don’t kill the messenger…I didn’t come up with this.

You can find a pretty solid case HERE, compiled from his friend Don Miller, who–years ago–coined him, “the cussing pastor” in his best-selling book Blue Like Jazz. (When I say “case”…I mean Donald seems to refer to Driscoll, with some detail, right along with [other] male leaders associated with…well, gay scandals. Maybe it’s a connect-the-dots thing.)

Another person to recently point out Mark’s hyper (and perhaps suspicious) masculinity, is Brett McCracken, within the pages of his new book Hipster Christianity, (pages 103-105.)

  • “There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” –Mark Driscoll [4]

  • (There’s a common theme of guy-on-guy fights/violence with Driscoll. You may remember he showed, the hot and sweaty brawl movie “Fight Club” as an official church event. Hum.)

Is Mark Driscoll’s Jesus Tough and Buff? 

Mark, if you’re reading this, you can stop over-doing it to throw us off track. Don and I both realize you’ve painted yourself into a corner, Mark. The gig is up, dude.

 

(A bit like gay twins?) Driscoll and Gay WWF wrestler “Giant Gonzales” (Both picts are just so creepy. Sorry about that.)

Nevertheless. IF Driscoll was gay, we would love him anyway. Right, everyone? Right?

There’s a punchline in here somewhere. Can you spot it?

Is Mark Driscoll too overtly macho, and (like recent pastors caught in self-created sexual hypocrisy -Eddie Long and Ted Haggard), too anti-gay to be straight? (This is where you start to realize how silly the whole topic is.)

Disclaimer:
Am I joking about Driscoll? Sure. Of course. I’m a humorist. (I’m upfront about that here at the blog.) And despite loads of circumstantial evidence, and the writing stylings of Don Miller, Mark’s certain proclivity could remain a mystery, much like Theodicy, or atonement theories. This is all probably just a loooong series of coincidences. No biggie. If Mark is gay, or tempted with homosexual thoughts or feelings, I’m sure we could trust that he’d just open up and tell us–straight out. Or, maybe, like his marriage book, he’ll hold out on telling us that he’s had some trouble until he writes a book on the topic. I”m honestly NOT worried about it. The point is, neither should any of us be!

Cue the “It’s Raining Men” ditty.

:)