Category: Digging for Courage

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Mosh, Sucka

Jordan Peterson has this amazing point about nihilistic punks (musically speaking) who go to concerts and dance with a fervor that undermines their insistence that nothing matters. They’re acting out a primal religiosity, enacting an inescapable meaning. I wasn’t a nihilistic punk, but pretty close to it in my teens and twenties. As a scrawny kid in mosh pits and raucous dance floors, it didn’t make sense that I never got hurt. I wasn’t using Christian language, but I would let go and trust that I wasn’t in danger. I wasn’t thinking, but I was experiencing the Holy Spirit.

That might sound crazy, it might sound one step from snake handling (it probably is), but I now have friends who came out of the Christian and Straight Edge hardcore and punk scenes. There are some serious thinkers in that set. Maybe there are immunities to be found in mosh pits. Exposure to germs, togetherness in beat, individuality in dance, a realization that while you may get hurt…most people aren’t out to hurt you, a letting go of ego…although you are surrounded by people…none are really watching…unless you pose a danger.

Exposure outside your comfort zone. Exposure to death, ideas, varied perspectives, tragedy, and as many dangerous things as you can stand. We each have what we know and it is a tiny patch of light surrounded by darkness. When you step one foot into that darkness, your patch of light gets a little bigger. When you lean into the darkness, you start to learn how inifinitely large it is. That’s scary. No matter how awake you are, there is a new monster lurking in the unknown.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Dance, Sucka

“Dancing is for those who are free.”
-Scarlett Johansson as Rosie in “Jojo Rabbit”

“You dance differently when you know you won’t live forever.”
-Maeve in Wonder Woman: Warbringer, by Leigh Bardugo

As a complement to the many derivations of my surname (Zerbs, Zerbster, Zerbmeister, a full-throated ZERBEY!, ad infinitum…), Spaz was a common nickname in school, with varying degrees of playfulness and derision.

I’m always moving, dancing in my mind or in the world. Dancing in soccer, mosh pits, conversation, sex, quidditch, wrestling my sons, listening, problem solving, kite flying, hiking, running, thinking, talking, cold showers, and the occasional dance floor.

The sunset above lead into the night of last dance I would share with my wife before she died. We danced like we were free. We danced like we knew we wouldn’t live forever. We always danced like that.

The first time I saw Mary she was dancing with her sisters in a bar in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. I thought, “Wow, there are some seriously cute hippy lesbians in this town. I wonder how that’s going to work out for me.”

Our first dance was at a Toots and the Maytals concert in neighboring Dewey Beach. I sweat myself right through on that summer evening as we were falling in love.

So often we were in a crowd at a concert or a party. Making friends in the movement, or moving on our own in a room of stodgy WXPN listeners. That was a Carolina Chocolate Drops concert at The Grand in Wilmington. Everyone sat very politely and, well, I don’t know what the hell they were doing. Appreciating the music? It’s dance music from the mountains, a gift from the Appalachian gods to the city folk who couldn’t make their own music (i.e., me and Mary). We moved off to the periphery to not block views and danced so fervently that we ended up on the television broadcast.

I don’t know the importance of dancing with one another. I am contemplating all the memories. My younger son on my shoulders as we pounded the mud and slid on the continous precipice of falling in front of Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, tears flowing with sweat as they played, “Lay Your Burden Down.” Bowie’s “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me,” as Mary and I shared our first dance as a married couple. My older son easily recalls weddings and music festivals where we danced from the first song to the last. A car alarm can inspire a pogo. A boxing match guarantees an Ali (with a strong chance of a Curly) shuffle. Sinatra came on while I made dinner with my girlfriend and a slow dance break was the most important thing in the world. There have been a hundred mosh pits from Pantera and Slipknot to Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails.

I don’t know how deep this runs. My life is set to the rhythm of dancing with friends, family, strangers, and lovers. It is heart beat. It is transcendent motion. It is outside ego, the untethering of the Self. Spiritual, euphoric, psychedelic. It is beyond reason and words, primordial, pre-lingual, the soul’s cry for return to the Infinite.

When we move together, we are together.

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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Playing the Widow Card

Metaphor is safer than reality. I can personify Fear and negotiate with it, write it down into small bits and throw open the windows to let Love pour in once again. Reality is people I don’t know how to talk to. The young man who labelled my home as “comfortable,” when he doesn’t know the first thing about a widowed parent’s life. The dear family member who said my parenting was acting in “pure ignorance.” The strangers and friends who have claimed that I don’t care about vulnerable populations when they know the volunteer work I do in my community. The father who moved away. The father figure slowly choosing lonely death over a populated life. The so-called family who turns me away when I come to town to visit. The friends who insist I am up to no good when I ask questions. The family who won’t return calls for help.

I haven’t let myself voice these grievances. I’ve tried to take Don Miguel Ruiz’s advice, “Don’t take anything personally.” I know he is right. I know that people act according to their own needs, traumas, and fear, not mine. I know I can’t control someone else’s negativity, I can’t save anyone. Nonetheless, I have allowed these slings and arrows to pierce me. Metaphor, Shakespeare…a sea of troubles…the safe poetry of my mind, where things can make sense again. A sunny Sunday morning where I can see Jesus calming the storm. I can feel myself at the edge of that sea, lying on my back in the surf, knowing that the tide will come and go whether I am there or not. The water is crystal clear and the sand smooths under my palms. I often use this imagery at the end of my yoga practice. I miss being in that hot room at the end of an intensely hot session. I miss lying back in savasana when the teacher opens the door and I feel the fresh air pass over me. She would lay a cool towel over each student’s eyes. In those moments I have felt a contentedness that has been a difficult to maintain in widowhood. During months without intimate touch, just the action of receiving a square of cloth, carefully prepared with gently cooling scents, reminded me that I am not alone. It was a small punch to read that that will now be one of the forbidden practices of life. Hugs, handshakes, high fives…we will be treating each other as if WE are the dis-ease. We will be protecting ourselves from others when the dis-ease is within us. We look at our neighbor as the problem when we are the problem. We blame those who will not obey or conform when it is our own self-hatred that weakens us and speeds our bodies’ decay.

My wife died from complications around influenza and bacterial infections. I don’t know if the prescriptions slowed the inevitable or sped it. I don’t know if the ventilator kept her alive or killed her. I don’t know how much self-love she was lacking. I don’t know how much pain and trauma she was carrying. It took me almost a year before I started looking at my own traumas, destructive patterns, and self-medications. It started with guilt. What could I have done differently to not have a dead wife? I knew Mary didn’t like my drinking. She never asked me to stop, but she asked me to get control over it. When I finally stopped, eight months after her death, it took weeks before my mind began to clear. I saw the path forward. I saw the lack of self-love that I was suffering at my own hands. I saw problems in brighter light and found solutions with more ease. Guilt again. What if I had done this work a year earlier? What if I had loved myself and loved Mary better? Could it have been that simple?

Of course, it ain’t simple. While on my guilty little trip of self discovery I fell in love with a woman who had a secret boyfriend. We tried polyamory, secretly, of course. While seeking truth I was building a life in the shadows. The journey is messy. That’s not enough, the journey sucks. I don’t want to write this. I want to go about my day, loving myself and my sons and my girlfriend and everyone in the world and see rainbows everywhere I go. I want to get along with people and hear their stories. Hug them when they need it. I don’t want to be called names when I am sincerely seeking the truth. I don’t want to be the bad guy.

“If you’re not pissing off the punks, then you’re a punk.”
-Ted Nugent

Living out loud will piss someone off. That’s their problem, not mine. I’m trying to see the Light, be the Light, and share the Light. At my best, that’s the Light of Jesus and The Word shining through me, the Light of Truth. At my worst, it’s loud, destructive noises.

Today I’m digging down to find simple kindness and releasing the pain and fear I’ve let into my life.

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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Lego Covid Files #1

We are Lego Maniacs. We started at Hockessin Public Library with piles of pieces at our disposal for a couple hours every other week. My younger son, Isaac, could hardly walk, but had no interest in the big blocks on the floor. He wanted in on the action at the tables full of colors and tiny shapes. Builders had to break down their creations at the end of each session and we always helped to clean up with the teenage volunteers. The boys developed a sense of impermanence about Lego. It shouldn’t gather dust. It should be put to work on a new, or at least modified, creation.

Isaac is nine now and a wizard with bricks. From structural integrity and color coordination to collaboration and flat out creativity, he is always building with magic. It was his idea to include a staircase down into our as-yet-unnamed UFO project. I built the trap doors and left space inside for him. Now he’s got the stairs in place and working on his scene. In the hours since taking these pictures, the stairs have been strengthened and lowered so the doors can close more fully.

I plan another post devoted to a tour of our UFO.

His older brother, Westen, is the storyteller. He takes elements from comics, audiobooks (presently Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology), videogames, and movies and works them all together to create worlds full of characters. His latest modification is to an Overwatch set. He kept the mech frame and color palette and added lots of textures, rockets, and, why not, a battle axe. While experimenting with Bionicle elements, he learned some tricks to help me to beef up the stabilizing legs for our UFO.

Isaac never seems to break from playing and exploring new techniques. This late-day build started with interlocking gears, acquired a studs-not-on-top (SNOT) knob, added wheels and belts, then got dressed up with Isaac’s gigantic initial. It is far from finished (he was reluctant for me to share it at this stage), but it showcases his skill in design and engineering.

We’ve spent a lot of time in our workshop. The afternoon light pours in and we get lost in audiobooks and building.

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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Digging for Courage: Learning About Myself

1. I’m pretty much more of everything I already knew I was.
1a. Extra AF
1b. Trouble-making
1c. Extroverted
1d. Contrarian
2. I can’t believe hiking is boring me, little hikes everyday are less and less exciting.
3. I need team sports: soccer with friends and enemies, quidditch with the children…I need to run around with people, laugh, smile, collide.
4. Unschooling all day every day. I don’t know where we’d be without a freedom mindset focused on each of us as individuals.
5. My type of wild likes a balance, someone who listens to my madness, accepts it, and loves me for it, but doesn’t say Yes to every crazy idea. That person came into my life right before this madness and her support keeps me sane.

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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Mary’s Tree at St. Mary’s

I had to escape my boys the other day. Things had gone sideways and we all needed space and time to come down from terrible heights.
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With little plan I ended up at St. Mary Magdalen Parish. Weeks ago I had read a neighborhood post asking a simple request: Does anyone have magnolia leaves they would be willing to donate for Easter decorations? I DM’d the man who wanted to do something special outside the church that would stand empty on the most important day of the Christian year.
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When he came by, I didn’t expect him to want much contact, but we chatted for a while and he told me of his son recovering from coronavirus in NYC. In his 40s, strong, you wouldn’t expect it, he said. We stood under my magnolia and I couldn’t tell him my story. I couldn’t tell him that that tree had picked Mary and Mary had picked that house before she saw much more than the tree. I couldn’t tell him about how she was strong, in her 40s, and killed by an unexpected virus.

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That tree has bloomed more in the two years since we lost Mary than it did in previous years. Those weeks are coming soon again. I don’t know how many times I’ve been resurrected in these two years, but I know much of me has died away.
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I’m going through another one of those deaths now. It seems the whole world is on the ride this time. Even Spring is dreadfully lacking in color and life. These deaths don’t get much easier, but I’m getting better at valuing them. And like each of my resurrections, I expect a brighter world to emerge.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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A Shakespearean Journey

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2866202660095562&id=242145642290

The deepest thanks to Delaware Shakespeare for their virtual Shakespeare Day event and including the Zerbey boys.

A few years ago, Westen charged the stage on Market Street in Wilmington to volunteer to read a line of Shakespeare. Westen had just turned seven and could hardly read. I was nervous as I hadn’t expected this. I was terrified to be exposed as a homeschooler who hadn’t even taught his son to read. David Stradley fed him his line. Westen wasn’t anxious. My wife and I had worked hard to conceal our anxiety over his inability to read. We hadn’t yet come to an unschooling mindset. In that moment, when his desire overpowered any perceived inability, I started to realize what children are capable of.

Since then we’ve been to nearly a dozen productions and both boys have become paid actors with a talent agent. I dreamed of sharing my nerdy, sitting-alone-with-a-good-book love of literature with them. They dive into those worlds and resurface to bring them to life.

Thank you, David and Delshakes, I could never express all the magic you’ve inspired in our lives.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Why I Resist

Biases. Traumas. Limbic responses. I’ve become increasingly open to the idea that free will is rare. I’m also exploring Sam Harris’s concept that it doesn’t exist at all. His argument is complex and pushes my processing power to its limits. What I do grasp of it comes to this: We are emotional, instinctual, pattern-based creatures whose actions are determined well before rational thought and decision-making come into play.

I have found this approach to my own existence to be helpful. What are my motivations? If the “rational” move doesn’t “feel” right to me, do I still make it? Do I trust my heart over my brain? Am I terrified by the places my brain can take me?

There are my theoretical caveats. I don’t think there is enough information available to make rational arguments concerning grand gestures regarding our current health, economic, psychological, sociological, and spiritual concerns.

Nevertheless, rationality aside, with insufficient information, I choose to act, think, and write.

I do not trust a government of any size. I’ve been lied to by government officials at every level. I do not trust any given media outlet. I’ve had my words distorted. At 15 I was a nerd watching C-SPAN, listening to Newt Gingrich late one night. The next day I heard a news report using his words out of context in a disgusting twist. I was put on alert that day and have since seen this tactic over and over. I do not trust the health care system. They are heavily regulated and beholden to the government. Perhaps, this is my least rational distrust. Anecdotally, I have side stepped conventional wisdom and taken a more natural and holistic approach to my health and the health of my sons. I’ve ditched all pharmaceutical products and taken a broader look at health as an integrated system of mind, body, and spirit. All parts not only affecting each other, but no divisions, full Unity. It is the Holy Trinity working in practical self care. After the most challenging two years of my life I am stronger, happier, healthier, and more content than ever.

I boil down my resistance to government, modern health care, and media to one concept: conventional wisdom (CW). If not rejected at every instance, I attempt to question and analyze CW at length. I have an emotional response to CW. If I hear the same words, in the same order, out of multiple mouths, I am inclined to look elsewhere for the truth. Truth isn’t bumper stickers, it isn’t easy, and we each need to put it in our own words to make sense of it. Truth takes a piece out of you, or your family, or your friends, or your past, or your future, or all of it. Truth is a knife that cuts off a poisonous part of you, one that is alive and will hurt like Hell to lose.

Truth is always elusive. In the world’s response to current conditions, it feels more clouded than ever. If what governments and media are reporting is true, the reactions appear unbalanced, irrational, and misguided. If these organizations are not being truthful, than the reactions could be far deadlier than the perceived threat.

We are not having honest discussions about any of it. Friends and neighbors are not listening to each other. Restrictions make face-to-face conversations difficult and online discussions lack the empathy that occurs due to nonverbal communication. Empathy, that’s one of those limbic responses that stops us from hurting each other with words. Empathy is not activated when words are disembodied, we’re reacting to black symbols on a white field, inhuman, easily transformed into our personal monsters. This is a traumatic time, unique to our species in being able to communicate with one another in very limited fashion. We are learning bad habits and destructive patterns of communication. In person, we stand at distance, hardly daring to look at one another, with half our face hidden. Under the guise of keeping some healthy, we are making a society sick.

I don’t think this is a close call. It matters how you live, not how long. Is there a line to draw? Is there a personal decision to make? Maybe you want to be the oldest living human, the last man standing, okay, do what you need to do to live a long life. I choose the life that best feeds my soul and shines light to all who care to see. That means sitting on a museum floor with my sons and talking about one painting for half an hour. That means colliding with other humans on a soccer field, testing myself against passionate competitors. That means Bible study, grief therapy groups, and home education meetups. That means learning about myself in a grueling hot yoga class, lying still at the end of that class in a room full of still people, and receiving wisdom from the stillness. That means witnessing my sons experience their own best lives through acting, jiu-jitsu, quidditch, book discussion groups, Lego Club, and play.

I’ve got more on resistance. This is my starting point. A declaration of sorts.

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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Toss It

I’ve pretty much thrown out homeschooling entirely. We’re just trying to actively better ourselves and create every day.

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He Didn’t Mean It That Way

Bob: What is the value of your life right now?

Me:
This is a legitimate question.

How do we measure quality of life versus quantity? That’s what we’re really debating. We only have so many days on this planet. I only have so many Springs with my sons. This one is pretty crappy. We visit museums, friends, family, gymnastics, jiu-jitsu, parks, and new places every week. We go on road trips, we camp, and we adventure. They both have birthdays during the lockdown. I can hardly get them a decent ice cream. I can’t get them the piles of books they find on our many trips to the library.

This is precious developmental time. I’m doing everything I can to love on them and give them opportunities to explore their vast curiosity, but time is wasting away. They were supposed to start going on on-camera auditions last month. They worked hard to earn an agent. Their dreams, their passions, and their curiosity is being bootheeled under fear.

And maybe this sounds too fantastical to believe, that these kids are over privileged or I’m exaggerating something. They lost their mother to viral and bacterial infections two years ago. No underlying, no preexisting, no autoimmune issues…boom…two weeks. Dead. The flu. That killer of the young and healthy.

They know about death better than anyone who is willing to give up one day in the sunshine to live a couple more days in the dark.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason