Although I do have some Cunt Days, luckily most of my days are God Days. One of my spiritual advisors suggested a prayer at the end of the day;

"Thank you God for everything that happened today, regardless of appearances."

A very Buddhist bent prayer, the idea being non-attachment to results. It's certainly what I strive for, although it's a battle because I like the many victories I have in my life and love to celebrate them. I'm afraid of becoming some kind of Orwellian Middle-Middle automaton. I like to drop literary references from one of the four books I've read in my entire life so I feel smart enough to be a writer. In eleventh grade I took an Orwell course. I read parts of all his books but only Keep The Aspidistras Flying in its entirety, thus the middle-middle class reference. Jaws, Rubyfruit Jungle and Even Cowgirls Get The Blues round out my library. I realize it seems from that reading list that I took a course in lesbian literature from a teacher who thought that Jaws somehow was a metaphor for the struggles of the lesbian community, but that wasn't the case. It was a random group of books I happened to read all before I was seventeen and haven't read anything since. I hate reading. I feel as though I'm missing something in the world I could be seeing when buried in a book. I'll read snippets of Eastern philosophy and other spiritual literature but that's it. I know it may seem strange that as a writer I hate to read but it shouldn't. I love to write, so I'm a perfect fit for all of you who love to read. My reading shouldn't need to enter into the equation.

And let me clarify that when I talk about God, I just use that term to express my belief in a non denominational, very amorphous and unknown entity that I struggle to believe exists in the midst of my nihilistic existential doubt. Faith is just that. Faith. A shot in the dark. It's not called "Absolute Knowledge." People don't talk about having Absolute Knowledge in God, they talk about having Faith in God. So that's the deal with that. I wasn't raised in any religion but have always been a seeker of the Great Spirit and usually step out in faith in spite of my fear that it doesn't exist. And I believe in the power of prayer. I've seen it evidenced many times, but then on the other hand, why does it work sometimes but not others. I don't know, I just know that living a life of faith seems the only real alternative and I feel better and certainly am a better person to the world when I do.

So I went to the dentist a few days ago to get the results of the dental surgery he did last month. He wasn't going to do the surgery initially because he said my tooth was so fucked at the root I would need a miracle recovery to grow bone back there and he just thought I should have it pulled as he'd never in 25 years seen such a recovery. I said fuck that, do the surgery and we'll all pray. He did it. I called all my friends and family and asked them to please pray for my tooth and I sent white light to it and all the new age stuff, did yoga practices, meditation on my tooth's recovery, blah, blah, blah. Cut to: My dentist rushing around his office, breaking into other dentist's office's in mid-surgery, their patients lying with gums filleted open as mine had been last month, shaking my ex-rays in all of their faces screaming, "You remember this guy?! FULL REATTACHMENT! FULL REATTACHMENT!" He turned to me. "You're going in my news letter dude. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."

So I get to keep that tooth. In doing such a good job fixing that tooth he did have to scrape the nerve of the neighboring tooth which had been fine before the surgery so I'll need a root canal on that one now it seems. Though I'm praying again for life to come back to it, I don't want to use up my quota of miracles on a lousy root canal since as you know, I love root canals, it's teeth being pulled I don't love. (And just FYI, my friend Donny and I decided to change the name of root canals to "Internal fillings" because we decided it's really the sound of "root canal" that freaks your shit out. The actual procedure isn't really that painful, it just sounds so fucking scary. And really what they're doing is filling a cavity, it's just on the inside, so, "internal filling" from now on. Claim it as your own my friends. I'm here to help. Our gift to you.)

The moment I saw my dentist's reaction to my miracle recovery, tears welled in my eyes and I felt a rush of God consciousness. I knew People's prayers had been answered, which meant this was God. I felt it with Absolute Knowledge, no Faith needed. But then that feeling was washed away by the thought,

So, he fixed your tooth but let a million babies starve to death today? No one was praying for them besides you?

And I was back in doubt. I'm sure it was just my good, healthy immune system. It was my body; it had nothing to do with God... As if the human body itself isn't a miracle enough. This is the war of conflicting beliefs that's waged every moment in my mind. I try not to attach to any of the thoughts and just be... it's hard, but when successful, worth the effort because I get to experience the precious moment... where I usually feel the grace of God. It helps when someone or some activity can, as Pema Chodren says, nail me to the here and now. Sex does it. Watching and playing sports does it. Meditation and yoga sometimes, and acting in front of the camera or on a stage does it. And once in a while, God shows up (well he's always there so I guess I should say that sometimes I am in a present enough place to see him).

He was everywhere the day of the dentist. He wouldn't let me go. He wasn't going to let the Devil take me away from the Knowing I had felt so he next evidenced himself on my subway trip home from the dentist in the form of The Screaming Jamaican Lady who has taken to riding the 2 and 3 trains lately. I got on the train and there she was...

To be continued...

Posted by Eric Schaeffer at 3:36 PM

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