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When I was a child, my parents would take us to the Mardi Gras fountain on Lakeshore Drive and they would buy us an ice cream or popcorn and then we’d stroll around and around the fountain. I remember those visits as encompassing almost the sum total of my childhood. It would just have become dark, the humid air would still be warm from the day, the colors of the fountain were exciting and mesmerizing. All of us children felt as if we were on a big outing.

The fountain has been defunct for a while and I just found out it was restored.

I’m looking forward to taking Tin to see it – where I hope he feels the same indelible magic I did.

My father would have been 90 years old this past January, and my mother would have been 78 years old this December. They are the bookends to the book I’m still writing.

A friend told me that in Greece when you say “Hello, how are you?” the response is ypoféroume (ipo fer me), which means in common speech, “We are fine.” But in reality its real translation is, “We are suffering.”

So today, those of us about to die (at some point in life) salute you with ypoféroume. My life is fabulous, and still I suffer. I have too many people close to me who are battling cancer. I am reading too many blogs/books about racism. I am earning in a year what I used to make in a month and though I feel free, living is not free (easy, yes, but not free).

Yes, we are fine, and we are suffering.

Perhaps, this goes without saying.

The other night in the throes of two projects, I received a text from a friend’s fiancé asking me what I was doing. WORKING, I text back. He asked if I wanted to do something fun with my friend but I couldn’t tell her what it was, which was a burlesque dance class.

Oh, alright I said. Not too thrilled about leaving my desk.

My friend and I went to the class in the rain, we arrived with high heels in our hand. She still didn’t know what it was all about and I wasn’t quite sure either.

There was a substitute teacher and women who had obviously been in the class given their attitudes and attire. We moped in. The sub said that she was going to work on “walking” and then we began. She taught us how to walk angrily, seductively, sassy, serious and I was not having too much of it. I didn’t know if my friend was enjoying herself or not, but I was feeling put out, like I had just paid $10 for this, and that I wasn’t enthused. I felt the sub was just taking a cop out doing these walk exercises and I just didn’t feel a vibe for the whole occasion.

And then a switch flipped. I was doing the walk and supposed to stare into the eyes of my partner, who was a petite blonde with a smirky smile and as I approached her I thought, why not? Why not give into the moment? And so I did and my arms started swinging more naturally and my head started tilting more artfully and I actually found myself smiling.

And then we got to the end when each one of us had to get on stage by ourselves and do a performance to music the teacher would select individually. NOOOOO, my mind screamed. I will leave here, I won’t do it, I will not dance burlesque in front of these experienced dancers, or my friend who is a dancer, I simply will not do it. And then each one went – one a ballerina with long flowing legs and arms and imaginary gloves that went up to her arm pits, another who had an overarching love of her derriere and shimming it, and then it was counting down and it was me and my friend and I popped up and said I’d go. I didn’t want to follow my friend or anyone there as the last act. And so I asked for R&B – the sub didn’t have it – and so she played some New Orleans style jazz and I decided I was going to dance like a Baby Doll and I took huge strides, and moved my shoulders back and forth and I walked up and down that stage and ended with a shimmy shimmy shake eyes on eyes to my audience.

And I got a resounding applause.

Later, I was speaking to my friend and rehashing the denouement of the evening – the fear and fight to succumbing and indulging. She had made the same transition. We talked about how resistance to what is in the here and now is what causes the most pain, because once we both gave up our resistance, the fear drained away, and we passed a good time.

I have on my blackboard in my kitchen C.S. Lewis’ quote that says: “Hardship prepares ordinary people for extraordinary lives.” That quote has sustained me through some troubled times and has actually come to make me view suffering, my own and others, as not as bad or not to be feared as I had previously thought. It is definitely worth noting that those of us who live in New Orleans have come to know transformation through suffering – from our own worst possible scenario – many of us have lost homes, loved ones, material memories to the 2005 Federal Flood – and this collective suffering is still manifesting itself.

Someone was recently speaking to me about “the way of the cross” – a term I’m surprised to say I was unfamiliar with until now. The concept is that many people have found their way to God through suffering. And I have to admit my newfound spirituality came to me from that same form and reading the tomes of racial history lately has shown me how many African Americans have come to define religious as their first identity.

I do believe that suffering is universal and inevitable — it is at the core in the teaching of Buddha:

The Four Noble Truths comprise the essence of Buddha’s teachings, though they leave much left unexplained. They are the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. More simply put, suffering exists; it has a cause; it has an end; and it has a cause to bring about its end. The notion of suffering is not intended to convey a negative world view, but rather, a pragmatic perspective that deals with the world as it is, and attempts to rectify it. The concept of pleasure is not denied, but acknowledged as fleeting. Pursuit of pleasure can only continue what is ultimately an unquenchable thirst. The same logic belies an understanding of happiness. In the end, only aging, sickness, and death are certain and unavoidable.

But I am struck by the term the way of the cross because I had always (mis)understood that Christians believe the way of Jesus was he died for our sins and so therefore, he suffered so we wouldn’t have to – which is differently conceptually than the way of the cross or suffering to find God. Or maybe it’s not different and I just don’t know Christianity as well as I thought I did.

I read an interesting passage in the Power of Now this morning that I thought was very appropriate to the way I feel about my own spirituality and belief:

THERE ARE many accounts of people who say they have found God through their deep suffering, and there is the Christian expression “the way of the cross,” which I suppose points to the same thing. We are concerned with nothing else here.

Strictly speaking, they did not find God through their suffering because suffering implies resistance. They found God through surrender, through total acceptance of what is, into which they were forced by their intense suffering. They must have realized, on some level, that their pain was self-created. [emphasis added]

How do you equate surrender with finding God? Since resistance is inseparable from the mind, relinquishment of resistance – surrender – is the end of the mind as your master, the impostor pretending to be “you,” the false god. All judgment and all negativity dissolve. The realm of Being, which had been obscured by the mind, then opens up. Suddenly, a great stillness arises within you, an unfathomable sense of peace. And within that peace, there is great joy. And within that joy, there is love. And at the innermost core, there is the sacred, the immeasurable, That which cannot be named.

I don’t call it finding God because how can you find that which was never lost, the very life that you are? The word God is limiting, not only because of thousands of years of misperception and misuse, but also because it implies an entity other than you. God is Being, itself – not a being. There can be no subject-object relationship here, no duality, no you and God. God-realization is the most natural thing there is. The amazing and incomprehensible fact is not that you can become conscious of God, but that you are not conscious of God. [emphasis added]

The way of the cross is the old way to enlightenment and, until recently, it was the only way. But don’t dismiss it or underestimate its efficacy. It still works.

The way of the cross is a complete reversal. It means that the worst thing in your life, your cross, turns into the best thing that ever happened to you, by forcing you into surrender, into “death,” forcing you to become as nothing, to become as God – because God, too, is no-thing.

At this time, as far as the unconscious majority of humans are concerned, the way of the cross is still the only way. They will only awaken through further suffering, and enlightenment as a collective phenomenon will be predictably preceded by vast upheavals. This process reflects the workings of certain universal laws that govern the growth of consciousness and thus was foreseen by some seers.

It is described, among other places, in the Book of Revelation or Apocalypse, though cloaked in obscure and sometimes impenetrable symbology. This suffering is inflicted not by God, but by humans on themselves and on each other, as well as by certain defensive measures that the Earth, which is a living, intelligent organism, is going to take to protect herself from the onslaught of human madness.

However, there are a growing number of humans alive today whose consciousness is sufficiently evolved not to need any more suffering before the realization of enlightenment. You may be one of them.

Enlightenment through suffering – the way of the cross – means to be forced into the kingdom of heaven kicking and screaming. You finally surrender because you can’t stand the pain anymore, but the pain could go on for a long time until this happens. Enlightenment consciously chosen means to relinquish your attachment to past and future and to make the Now the main focus of your life. It means choosing to dwell in the state of presence rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is. [emphasis added]

You then don’t need pain anymore. How much more time do you think you will need before you are able to say, “I will create no more pain, no more suffering”? How much more pain do you need before you can make that choice? If you think that you need more time, you will get more time – and more pain. Time and pain are inseparable.

So it is not as if you have to suffer to come to a place of freedom from suffering, it’s that you have to stop resisting suffering to get to the point where you can say  “whatyagonnado?” and mean it.

I know I said the words once, twice, and three, and four times, and even here live:

But I lied them.

Now when I say whatyagonnado – it has meaning, it has depth, it is profound, it is the way.

I spoke with a furloughed government employee yesterday who said that last time this happened – with Gingrich and Clinton – that salaries were actually restored to furloughed employees. Really? I said, somewhat vexed that now with the debt crisis we would be paying for an extended vacation of government employees. It’s not that I don’t sympathize with them not getting a paycheck but since I work for myself, and I never got to even take an evacacation for the 2005 Federal Flood, much less for Gustav or even Isaac, I’m loathe to have my tax dollars paying for untold government employees getting their yardwork done.

So I propose all of the furloughed employees use their time off to do the handiwork that those of us still in the trenches do not have time for – call your Congress person, call the Senate, call the President, write letters, march, protest and tell these politicians you think it shows a lack of emotional maturity for them to stop the government from functioning while they cannot come to an agreement. Tell them that we all deserve universal health care. Tell them that we are sick of this country being run by a privileged, mostly male, mostly white, elite who thinks it is okay to build their wealth on our backs and then give us nothing in return.

Tell them for me.