If you live, God will live with you.

Oddly (because I don't usually do this), I have been reading two books at the same time: Life of the Beloved, by Henri Nouwen, and this one I'm referencing today, Veronika Decides to Die, by Paulo Coelho, and both are written with the absurd and ironic backdrop of mental illness and psychiatric institutions (something I didn't know when I first started them, at least not consciously). One is a non-fiction, real-world community called L'Arche in Canada, where Henri Nouwen spent the last 10 years of his life serving and learning, much to his own amazement, and one a fictitious hospital in Slovenia called Villete (based on a real-life experience the author had in Brazil during his youth in the 1960's), and, strangely enough, the common ground of these books is that you often find much more sanity on the inside of these places, in their so-called madness and fantasy world, than you do on the outside in the so-called real and sane world.

Meet Mari, a lawyer and wife, who had herself placed in Villete supposedly to deal with her terrifying panic attacks, but mostly it was just to escape her life's relentless drudgery and responsibilities. Here, she appears ready to move on and out and back to her life, and is reflecting on that possibility with a friend, a schizophrenic, yet brilliant young man named Eduard (many of his experiences happen to match the authors in early life):

"'I feel like starting to live again, Eduard. I feel like making the mistakes I always wanted to make, but couldn't, or at least felt that I couldn't, but I just never had the courage to take risks, while facing up to the possible feelings of panic that might very well come back, but whose presence now will merely weary vs. defeat me, since I really do know now that I'm not going to die or faint because of them. I can make new friends and teach them how to be crazy too in order to be wise. I'll tell them not to follow the manual of good or appropriate behavior but to discover their own lives, desires, adventures, and to take the risk to really live. I'll quote from Ecclesiastes to the Catholics, from the Koran to the Muslims, from the Torah to the Jews, from Aristotle to the atheists. I never want to be a lawyer again, because I was so dead while doing it, even while being good at it, but I can use my experiences in the profession to give lectures about men and women who knew the truth about this existence of ours and whose writings can be summed up in one word: Live. If you live, God will live with you. If you refuse to run His risks, He'll retreat to that distant heaven and be merely a subject for philosophical (even occasionally theological) speculation. Everyone knows this, but no one takes the first step, perhaps for fear of being called insane. At least, we haven't got that fear, Eduard. We've lived quite comfortably for quite a while here, haven't we? But we've already been inmates of Villete, and what worse than that could they call us?'"

-- Mari to Eduard, in Paulo Coelho's Veronika Decides to Die

And here's Zedka (another not really insane inmate) ready to move on, and for such eloquent reasons, as she describes to Veronika:

"If I stay here any longer, I won't leave at all. I'm cured of my depression, but in Villete, I've learned that there are other kinds of insanity. I want to carry those with me and begin to see my life with my own eyes. When I came here i was deeply depressed. Now I'm proud to say I'm insane. Outside, I'll behave like everyone else. I'll go shopping at the supermarket, I'll exchange trivialities with my friends. I'll waste precious time watching television. But I'll know that my soul is free and that I can dream and talk with other worlds that, before I came here, I didn't even imagine existed. I'm going to allow myself to do a mfew foolish things, just so that people can say: 'She's just been released from Villete, you know.' But I know that my soul is complete, because my life has meaning. I'll be able to look at a sunset and believe that God is behind it. When someone irritates me, I'll tell them what I think of them, and I won't worry what they think of me, because everyone will say, 'She's just been released from Villete.' I'll look at men in the street, right in their eyes, and I won't feel guilty mabout feeling desired by them. But then immediately after that, I'll go into a shop selling imported goods, buy the best wines my money can buy, and I'll drink that wine with the husband I adore because i want to laugh with him again. And laughing, he'll say: 'You're crazy!' And I'll say: 'Of course I am, I was in Villete, remember!And madness freed me. Now, my dear husband, you must have a vacation every year, and make me climb some dangerous mountains, because I need to run the risk of being fully alive.' People will say: 'She's just been released from Villete, and now she's making her husband crazy, too.' And he will realize they're right, and he'll thank God, because our marriage is starting all over again, and because we're both crazy, just like those who first invented love."

-- Zedka to Veronika, in Paulo Coelho's Veronika Decides to Die

And one final tidbit from a letter that Mari left for Eduard:

"When I was still a young lawyer, I read some poems by an English poet, and something he said impressed me greatly: 'Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains.' I always thought he was wrong. It was dangerous to overflow, because we might end up flooding areas occupied by our loved ones and drowning them with our love and enthusiasm. All my life I did my best to be a good cistern, never going beyond the limits of my inner walls. Then, for some reason I will never fully understand, I began suffering from panic attacks. I became the kind of person I had fought so hard to avoid becoming: I became a fountain that overflowed and flooded everything around me. The result was my internment in Villete, where, quite thankfully now, I have seen things that have set me free. ... And now I am off in search of my adventure, even though I'm sixty-five and fully aware of all the limitations they say age can bring. I'm going to Bosnia (this was during the violence, massacres, and genocide in the early to mid-90's). There are people waiting for me there. Although they don't yet know me, and I don't know them, but we really need each other. And I'm strangely sure that I can be useful, and the danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort."

Yes, and I can speak from intimate personal experience, sometimes it takes a little dose of insanity to kick us into gear, ... and life! Speaking of which, check out this crazy madman who is fully alive at the top of Mt. Washington (elevation 6,288 ft.), with no one else around and winds howling and whipping him and his little jeep around at about 100mph!

Man, did I feel Him up here, at just one of about a dozen or so places He brought me to be totally alone with Him to check out His amazing wonders, one of which was ... ME!!!!! Talk about a "peak" experience!

Gifting, Lifting, and Shifting

And since I've been dealing a lot in "three's" lately, here's a wonderfullittle "three-in-one" - and thanks, Annie, for getting this one started - referring to our opportunity in life to really live, remembering that, "The person who believes God, is set right by God on the inside—and that's the real life." -- from Gallatians 3 (The Message)


When you are invited into someone's heart and life as a voice of truth,

G - get more fully

I - involved, and always

F - follow

T - through


When their pain is just too great for them to hear you,

L – listen to them deeply and well

I – intuit and feel God's presence

F – follow His guidance precisely

T – trust His hand completely


When you get caught up in your own pain,

S - set your sight

H - highest,

I - in pursuit of

F - full

T - transformation


Allow yourself to be your whole self for others, which is always truly magnificent (vs. the cold, distant, hardened, "know-it-all" - the scared, shut-down "imposter" who shows up from time to time as an angry, ineffective "body and soul guard").

Put yourt wide-open heart on the line, gifting and lifting others up at every opportunity. There is nothing real to lose. And allow yourself to be "blown up", "set right", and "totally transformed" when you need that.

With a little courage and some heart, we get to be such a huge, mind-blowin', world-shakin' presence for each other, and why not, eh? It's a short trip, folks! Enjoy it to the fullest!

On living wisely and well

Another 3-parter, beginning with this one, on the art of living well in community life.

When you get a glimpse of a life you'd like to emulate, a life worth living, lived wisely and consistently well, you shouldn't "rush" to "follow," for the way to live wisely and well can be brutally difficult at first, as you wrestle life away from your past bad habits and blindness, and it's really important to "measure the cost" first, as Jesus said, because this will cost you everything. And rushing into "teaching mode," to pretend that you "get it" now, is the best way to kill and maim others while you die an agonizing second death. In other words, try not to "give it away" before you've "fully received it." Or, to wax poetic, "Don't try to be giving what you're not even living; don't try to be teaching that to which you're still reaching." Focus on taking it all in before giving it out; breathe it in deep first; let it own you first, before you attempt to own it and speak it. I didn't listen to this in the beginning of this 11-year ride I'm on. I was too busy trying to heal a life of destruction and shame, and wanting to look so "over it" and so "better now." It cost me at least three years of frustration and humiliation. They were useful experiences in the end, but not necessary. The last paragraph of James 3 says it all; it is the daunting truth of living a life of teaching, serving, guiding.

Whoa! Dignity and honor - everyone - under any and all circumstances.

What a measuring stick!

James 3 (The Message)

When You Open Your Mouth

1-2Don't be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you'd have a perfect person, in perfect control of life.

3-5A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it!

5-6It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.

7-10This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can't tame a tongue—it's never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!

10-12My friends, this can't go on. A spring doesn't gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don't bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don't bear apples, do they? You're not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?

13-16Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here's what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It's the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. Mean-spirited ambition isn't wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn't wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn't wisdom. It's the furthest thing from wisdom—it's animal cunning, devilish conniving. Whenever you're trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others' throats.

17-18Real wisdom, God's wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not ever two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.