Dice Were Loaded from the Start

My therapist, recently, said that the universe is rigged in my favor. The energy I put out into the world is absorbed by an ever-loving, ever-growing, and balanced universe. I might find nuggets of love and little shoves forward hidden under rocks or in tall grass. That this whole big thing is some how tilted in my light.

My therapist, who recently, saved my life, said that to me in all seriousness.

I looked her straight in her eyes and told her, "I don't buy it." I don't mean to be contrary -- but come on. I didn't have time to recreate images of my childhood: alcoholism thick as humidity, emotional manipulation heavy on my little towhead, losing my dad to a hungry fire, my tiny best friend dying in my lap when I needed her most, holding on to what I could until my little finger nails were ripped from their beds... If the universe is rigged in my favor, why did I (why do WE) have to fist fight with it outside on the playground with rusty swings screaming in the wind?
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Riding bikes downtown yesterday, I came across the carcass of this female Belted Kingfisher. It sickened and unsettled me in a way I can't really describe. She was roasting on the hot asphalt outside a bank pretty distant from any river where she should be diving. Yes, I took a picture. Yes, I screamed FUCK to the construction guys who were 4 stories up and heckling me: we shot it, they laughed. Yes, I took it as an offensive omen from the universe.  What an aggressive affront. A dead kingfisher might symbolize anything: my death or an act of terror at the winery via terrible customers or a foreboding cloud above my little head or plague or famine or drought. It might not, though. Who really knows. It could just mean everything is chaos and nothing makes sense.

In which case, nothing is rigged in our favor.

Heaven's Waiting on Down the Tracks

Jesus was either 30 or 32 when he volunteered to hang on a crucifix and die for me. Not SPECIFICALLY me -- not that he had visions of a small blonde sometime in the future, pouring wine, bad mouthing creeps, wearing all black and bright lipstick, and writing poetry -- but ME in the large sense. ME meaning you and me and my black cat and your mother and your mother's best friend's brother and his wife and his side chick and the person who checks out your library books. You get the meaning. The man was 30 (or 32).

Now, whether or not his dying for ME did anything in the cosmic scene  -- he felt he had to do it, so he damn well did it. He was a kind man, or at least he was rumored to be (except that one time he lost it and flipped tables (but who HASN'T done that)), who thought about other people constantly. He told the truth, though he sometimes talked in puzzles. And, if you ask me, suffered with anxiety. (How can one be part of the holy trinity and NOT have anxiety? Especially if you got the human third.)

This isn't about Jesus. It's about me. You knew that already, but I needed to point it out just in case. I'm a 32 year old human being. Let me be honest: there are only a select few of you I'd die for -- there are even more of you I'd NEVER think about dying for. I'm not like Jesus at all. But I'm going to start embracing his fervor for doing what I need to do.

I don't know exactly what that means though I have some ideas. And I feel the stir. I feel the stir and I know it's happening.