#his perspective is so unique it can be debilitating; does that make sense? i really try to emphasize that

[constellationcrowned]

((All signs point to Kariom being a lot like Serban in his youth. Was he a stern kid? Yes. Grumpy? Yes. But he also had fun and was mischievous. He made pinwheels, he wanted to fly kites, he drew and colored in one of Flynn's gardening books (he drew constellations ofc but no doubt other things too) he ate so many cattails by the lake he almost choked to death, he ran around and got into trouble, he tried to make friends, and so on.

It's important to remember that he was a kid and he wasn't always so obsessively driven by his duty---and I mean driven to the point of where he, as an adult, considers all of that stuff as stupid, inconsequential, etc, and prefers not to think on it, driven to the point of self degradation (whether he acknowledges it or not and let's face it; he doesn't), etc, etc---such a severe reaction has to have a cause. Something changed him, something shifted his focus and it was definitely something huge. I imagine it's in part due to whatever happened to the Solomonari and his involvement on top of a variety of other things that built up over time until he could hold nothing else.))

[nakhiphop]

how john calvin helped me figure out that i have obessive-compulsive disorder

Drowning. Dying alone. Small holes grouped together. We all have a “worst fear.” Mine? Being forsaken by God.

Among the cornerstones of Christian doctrine is the concept of “salvation,” or the state of being pardoned from the consequences of sin- the direst being separation from God. The equation is simple: the saved enjoy Heaven, the unsaved go to Hell. Though the Bible partly alludes to “Hell” as a place, I personally think the essence of Hell is God’s absence. In other words, Hell is where God isn’t (and conversely, Heaven is where God is).

Since the beginning of my faith journey, I’ve always feared that my faith was phony, or I mistakenly equated an emotional spiritual experience as evidence of salvation (it isn’t). Essentially, I was afraid of being unsaved… or worse, forsaken by God due to all my sinning. The sermons I remember most are based on precautionary Bible stories suggesting that God allows the heart to become hardened by habitual and intentional sin (Exod. 7:3, Rom. 1:28)- a habitual and intentional sinning that I believed I was guilty of.

“How could a real believer continue to look at pornography?” “How can a Christian have such cruel intentions?” “How could a regenerate mind still harbor thoughts of unspeakable depravity?” I’ve examined the evidence at every thinkable angle. And the more I assess and reassess the fruits of my living, I notice deeper corruption with every inspection, fortifying my conclusion: despite my many failed attempts at repentance, I’m no Christian. God has forsaken me. I’m damned.

For those of you unfamiliar with the contemporary Christian worship service format, there is often designated periods of time in which the speaker invites the non-believing attendees in the audience to dedicate their lives to Christ. In some churches, the speaker invites the non-believer to physically stand at the foot of the stage, heightening the symbolic impact and solemnity of the moment (there’s a lot of other reasons why we do this, but that’s for later). This “altar call” signifies the moment(s) of transformation. The moment(s) the soul is reborn. The moment(s) of salvation.

A Billy Graham Crusade, Greg Laurie’s Crusades, like two or three different youth summer camps… I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone up to the altar to dedicate my life to Christ.

Throughout my journey, I have discussed with every spiritual mentor my persistent fears of being unsaved. Though each of them had their unique style about them, every response was sewn with a common thread: I need to accept God’s grace. 

“Grace,” you ask? Christian “grace” is receiving from God any good thing that is undeserved, unearned, and unmerited. For example, the salvation I was speaking of earlier is an act of God’s grace; in other words, being “saved” is a gift of God- no particular action that I can (or cannot) do makes me worthy (or unworthy) of God pardoning my sins (Eph. 2). Through gentle counsel, I gradually discovered that my perception of God might be contorted, and I have adopted illegitimate conditions of salvation contingent upon moral performance (or lack thereof). “Legalism,” they call it. And for Christians, that’s baaaaad.

Though this truth made sense in my head, I still doubted my salvation and continued to reevaluate my life, respond to every altar call, repeat every sinner’s prayer, fast, pray... nothing worked. I often heard that a “peace that surpasses all understanding” is a sign of God’s exploits. I frankly don’t even know what peace means- can’t say I ever felt it. Ever. What’s wrong with me?!

In my mid-20’s, I was introduced to the Reformed Theology of the Protestant Reformation and the writings of John Calvin and his contemporaries. Since sentience, I was inculcated with Christian ideas so though discovering nothing “new” about God through the eyes of the Reformers, I believe I began to see aspects of God more correctly. Aspects such as God’s sovereignty, His elect, His predestination- concepts I previously thought little of. However, in exploring this new perspective, the pivotal realization that God’s absolute sovereignty could mean that God ultimately decides who goes to Heaven or Hell, made me uneasy. I have even heard statements to the effect of: “whoever God saves, He will save, no matter what that man does.” This, in Calvin’s terms, is called “irresistible grace.”

To my devastation, this also implies that whoever God doesn’t choose to save cannot be saved (no matter what he does), like Esau who cried bitterly but was unable to repent (Heb 12:17). I believed that this explained my perpetual feelings of being unsaved: perhaps I was just not destined to be saved. No matter what I did. I can’t be saved. It was God’s plan since the beginning to forsake me.

(Sorry in advance) This skewed interpretation really ****ed me up. My mid and late twenties was the darkest night of my soul, spawning crippling seasons of debilitating paranoia, and brooding creative projects (“I don’t need your help I’ll be okay. You’re too late to save me anyway.”). I pleaded for God while simultaneously believing that His face was turned away. In this perceived absence, I felt I was truly in Hell.

In 2020, I had somewhat of a psychiatric breakdown. The simultaneous resurfacing of past paranoias, the unravelling of new heartbreak, and a looming sentiment of doom created a perfect storm of hopelessness. I began to manifest profound physical symptoms like unilateral weakness, clonus and fasciculations, insomnia, and seemingly progressive loss of muscle function. My knowledge as a nursing instructor abetted catastrophic self-diagnoses and obsessive fixations upon my symptoms, convincing me that I was literally dying in August of 2020. Social media fueled my panic, forcing me to abandon my online networks and isolate from the world. But while I was alone, I did nothing but think and re-think. Examine and re-examine. Assess and re-assess. I didn’t sleep much.

*Takes a deep breath* Let’s skip ahead. Not long ago, I decided to seek therapy. In therapy, I discovered something that would change my life.

I strongly fit the criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

There are different variations (I have specific ones I won’t get into now) but the gist of OCD is the alternation of “obsessions” and “compulsions.” An obsession is a repeated, intrusive thought. A compulsion is performing a certain action in response to the thought. Like many people, when I think of OCD, I think of irrational fears of asymmetry and disorganization, a fear of contamination or uncleanliness, or peculiar habits like checking the stove ten times before leaving the house. Then it hit me…

Wait. That IS me.

But there’s more to it. A compulsion to an obsessive thought doesn’t necessarily mean a physical action. It could be a mental action- in other words, certain thoughts (or “triggers”) invoke certain mental responses. For example, in the “religious” or “moral OCD” subtype, whenever a person commits a morally reprehensible act, their mental response is the crippling fear that they have angered a deity (or questioning their salvation), and their physical response could be persistent, ritualistic behaviors of absolution (like confessing sins to a priest, reciting religious incantations, participating in religious ceremonies [like altar calls]). Then it hit me…

Wait. That IS me.

Suddenly, the agony of being unsaved since a youth, my tireless self-diagnosing and fear of imminent doom, my habit of checking doors, lights, air-conditioners, faucets, and burner controls several times before leaving the house, my meticulous perfectionism and punctuality, my obsession for cleanliness and organization, my strict minimalism, and a slew of other unmentionable problems that causes me to overthink, catastrophize, and agonize… it all makes perfect sense now. I’ve had OCD since I was kid.

With this new discovery, I realize that I am saved. I do believe I am swallowed by God’s grace! But my obsessive-compulsive tendencies have been berating me since the beginning. There’s still a lot I need to figure out. My journey has only begun.

Before I wrap this up, this discovery opens major questions. I would love to hear your opinions:

To what extent (if any) can mental health disorders be categorized as “spiritual warfare?”

Why do some sects of Christianity tend to diminish the plight of mental health disorders?

Why are mental health disorders especially stigmatized among some Asian-American Christians?

Aaaaand that’s how John Calvin exposed my OCD. Now you know the story behind “faith and paranoia.”

nak.

[056crowshit6556]

I love this scene because it reminds the audience of Edward’s limitations, both physically and emotionally. He's intelligent, hot-headed, naive, and earnest, and even though it’s subtle, he is aware of how small he is compared to his opponents (to the point that it becomes a recurring insecurity, and I don’t mean when he’s in denial, but when it’s suggested how aware he is of his vulnerability). The fight in the laboratory with Prisoner 48, he clearly thinks to himself about what he can do to get out of the fight, since he knows he physically can not win against his opponent. This fight with Scar shows how vulnerable he really is because it takes his weak spot and exploits it.

Like...sometimes I forget that Ed only has one arm and one leg. Well, not necessarily that I forget, but rather, I forget the limitations he has. That he is, for all intents and purposes, a double amputee. That his sense of touch is impaired, that he can't actually feel pain with his automail, like a bee sting or a paper cut, sensations that would require skin and flesh. There’s an exception to this, to my understanding, when it gets completely blown off at the 'stump', as shown in this scene. I assume that sensation is actually really, really painful. 

I always thought the look on Ed's face at 2:36 was from shock, as in, ‘wow, my arm just got fucking blown off’, as he was caught off-guard from Scar’s unique ability, but re-watching FMA:B I realized, that's the look of shock right at the cusp of unbelievable pain. This is the first time Edward's automail has been desecrated like this and hoo boy. He goes completely paralyzed, tries to crawl away, falls over, lays on the rain-soaked ground and doesn’t move. Which again, when I first saw this scene, I was disappointed. I thought it seemed a little uncharacteristic of Ed. I thought he was going to get back up and start fighting! But that made me question, why have I been conditioned to see the protagonist always get back up no matter what, even if he’s on the verge of death, especially in anime.

Watching the scene again, whether in the manga or anime (and here, I think the anime gave this the right pacing it needed), he's demonstrating a pretty normal reaction: 1. He's a fifteen year old kid and he's terrified of dying (mostly because he hasn't fulfilled his promise to Al), 2. He knows he is useless in a fight without both of his arms, and 3. The last time he felt the unimaginable, paralyzing pain of having his arm decimated like that was when he attempted human transmutation. And so what I think we're seeing is Edward completely shutting down because he's reliving that trauma and pain all in a matter of seconds.

(It’s a combination of those 3 things, but I could see PTSD being an underlying, more subtle cause for Ed’s reaction).

At the beginning of the chapter, Edward wakes up from a dream where his mom says “you failed to put me back together”; Edward wakes up shocked, and does something I find interesting.

He holds his leg and says “It hurts.” He could be talking about emotional pain or physical pain, but I don’t think those two operate independently of each other. The loss, shame, guilt, and sadness he feels is directly correlated to the pain of his arms and legs, or perhaps, the strange phantom pains that can occur from an amputated limb. (Plus, the ‘real’ pain Ed feels in his joints where the automail meets flesh). In the character of Edward Elric, the boundaries between physical pain and emotional pain are very thin. This is a part of his struggle, as his body has been ruined and debilitated; as such, it’s why his character embodies one of the overarching themes of FMA:B, which is that a person’s soul is unique to their body and their body is unique to their soul. Depression, fear, anger...these aren’t solely reserved to experience mentally, such difficult emotions affect the body too. Some would say that physical pain is more “real” than emotional pain, but I think Ed’s character demonstrates the relationship between the mind and the body experiencing pain, not as separate entities but as one organism communicating that pain-- in Edward’s case, his body is a testament to the emotional pain he endures.

(As a further, small side note: One of the reasons why I thought Edward’s leg and arm specifically were taken was because he was a kid, and kids are supposed to run and play and be free. And losing two limbs immediately put limitations on his body-- he eventually recuperated through therapy but the loss of those limbs put indefinite restrictions on him, especially when it’s made clear that he has to have adjustments made with each growth spurt, followed by time for recuperation, and he can’t always fight and travel the way he wants because of the automail, and worse, without the automail he is even more confined. Yet despite this, he continues to push forward, as we would hope from the story’s protagonist).

Thinking about it, that’s one of the reasons why FMA:B is so special. Edward doesn’t make a weakness out of his disability, he knows it is a hindrance but he works to overcome it, and the story makes it known that he does have limitations, and we as the audience can come to appreciate him, and empathize with him. When moments like this fight with Scar happen, where he physically and emotionally cannot do anything but go paralyzed, the audience can understand that it’s not because he’s weak but because the situation is really that drastic. It’s not that he doesn’t have to get up and keep fighting at the brink of death, it’s that he literally can’t. His reaction to pain is realistic-- in fact, his reaction is what makes the pain itself more real. And from my memory of the manga/anime, this is the last time Ed goes paralyzed and speechless from pain, until this scene in Chapter 76:

I won’t get into this scene since the post is originally about his fight with Scar. (And plus, I’ve written a whole other thing about why I believe, from a narrative perspective, Edward deserved to get injured like this by his foil, Kimblee). This was another great portrayal of how pain affects and how one responds to it, and his reaction of disbelief in this moment is similar to when he had his automail arm blown apart by Scar. 

I think Edward Elric differentiates himself from alot of anime protagonists out there because he shows moments of real fear and real human weakness.

And that’s what’s relatable among everyone-- limitations and seeking to overcome them.  

[saeculorum-amen]

Gaslighting, Otherness, and Gospel

Experiential literature.

The Gospels are not persuasive. Although Matthew may in places attempt to fit Christ into Jewish prophecy in order to place him into the context of the messiah long-awaited, that is at most something necessary, a foundation for the actual argument, and an argument which does not appear explicitly. There is no recounting of facts, there is no framing of what exactly one should do in response to reading them. It feels to me less like they are trying to persuade you about something, and more that they are inviting you into something.

I feel that most acutely in the Gospel of Mark, with its immediacy, and in the Gospel of John, with its intensity of emotion. These are works of experiential writing which try to bring you into the experience that the apostles shared. They cannot name how this will transform you, but they hope that it might, by the experience of it, do so nonetheless, as it transformed each of them in their individual ways. If we imagine the foundation of the synoptic gospels being records of the sayings of Jesus, this is all the more clear: not statements of fact to be absorbed, but the experience of listening at the feet of Jesus, and feeling flashes of insight, glimpses of the Kingdom, as he spoke.

Perhaps the religious as a whole is of that nature, an experiential reality which can be glimpsed, but not measured and recorded — but which can, perhaps, be shared.

I find that in the letters of Paul, certainly, as I enter into his struggle to lead Christian communities, and feel the sense of responsibility that he felt, by virtue of the love that he felt for each and every person. I hear not only what he said to them, and how he told them to live, but what it felt like to say those things, to implore them. What his hopes were, so much more so than his teachings. What he taught is only sometimes relevant to my life, and the lives of those with whom I preach and teach, but the posture of love and hope and concern, of steadiness and urgency, of patience and frustration: that is always relevant. So, too, to imagine what it felt like to be in those communities, and to hear Paul’s letters written to us and our fellow-travellers in this strange and difficult way.

Much of the religious record, indeed, is concerned with the efforts to convey the experience of something which may be universal, or may be profoundly rare, but which nonetheless cannot be collapsed down into a set of facts and figures. The bush which burns and is not consumed. The flood. Ezekiel’s calling. John’s revelation. The experience of being Jonah. The experience of being the crowd which calls for the execution of Christ. We enter into and share of these things, however familiar or foreign they may be. We gain a facility with inhabiting them, whether to find our way to awe, or to gain the conviction required to decide to live differently.

Enlightenment and disappointment.

I am very much a child of the enlightenment, although I am at an age where it feels increasingly preposterous to call myself a child of anything. I was, though: I grew up surrounded by personal computers, in a household led by a deeply gifted engineer who had worked on the Apollo program. My family talk about how I was programming using the macro language of an early text editor before I had even entered school. I tell that story, too, as part of the foundational mythos by which I continually recreate my own life. It captures something very real about who I was raised to be, and perhaps hints at some more elusive things about who I deeply am.

I am no great and gifted historian or philosopher of the Enlightenment, but it seems a meaningful referent for that upbringing. I was taught to see the world in an exacting and scientific way, and to reject things which were mere superstition, or otherwise irrational. I was formed to master language, not as a way to communicate with other people, but as a way to be precise about ideas and facts. If something was true, there would be some evidence for it which could be clearly described, and provably measured — and if it was true, it would be true always and everywhere.

That is a very narrow world, more narrow than the world of Hume or Locke or Spinoza — a kind of fundamentalism of objectivity, in which there was very little room for a person to live, for a person to exist as a subject, rather than an object. The ideal human being was a data logger, not even a flawed individual striving after objectivity.

It grated at me that I could not determine whether other people experienced colours as having the same perceptual quality as I did. I was acutely sensitized to the ways in which adults seemed to be arbitrary and capricious, and to engage in proof by assertion of the legitimacy of all their rules. There was no rigour, no structure which really captured the rough edges I continually ran up against in the course of living. Indeed, I had my own experiences rejected as fabrications and lies, even experiences that would have been readily measurable, like allergies that were present from my early life, and instantly recognized once I sought diagnosis as an adult.

This created all kinds of inward and outward problems. I doubted my own reality, to the point of living with debilitating panic attacks in which my own perspective seemed to fight for control with some other realm of possibilities. I could not trust the ground beneath me, because what if some hidden law, some unknown variable, were to govern it to give way instead. I felt swallowed up in the ocean-like waters of the universe itself, as though there was no way for me to get to dry land, to real life, to the right plane of existence. I had to work hard to learn that the world, and I, would continue to exist as I went from one point to another, rather than disappearing in a kind of unstable variation of Zeno’s paradox transposed into the cosmology of simulation theory.

This introjected doubt was projected onto the world around me, too. How could I know whether what someone else said was true? How could I trust anything which happened outside of my view? Hell, how could anyone know anything?

The politics of doubt.

This pervasive hermeneutic of suspicion was not unique to my objective fundamentalist upbringing. The authority of measurement is almost unquestionable in our society, which prefers technocracy to anything more sentimental. While public debate may take on the rhetorical character of aesthetics, we find a way to turn our rules for action into something you can quantify. You will always be able to know whether or not you can cut down a tree, or dump waste into a waterway, by using a published table of figures. You don’t have to stop and think about whether you should or not, which might be unsettling and subjective, only whether you’re allowed to, which is knowable.

In the grip of my epistemological wounds, I found as a teenager that a certain kind of defiant libertarianism held enormous appeal. Political correctness was a favourite topic in the discourse I was exposed to at home and at school, which is perhaps the ideal target for this politics of sneering contempt and doubt. How was anyone supposed to know what they could or couldn’t say? Who got to decide, who got to make the list? How could someone else tell you not to say a word when they couldn’t give you criteria for deciding so? Where was the proof that words did harm?

You could prove to someone that words were meaningless by shouting the words you weren’t supposed to say, over and over. It’s just a sound, after all. It only signifies something if you let it, and it’s only dangerous if someone does something real and measurable while they happen to be saying the word, at which point the word doesn’t much seem to matter, does it? So you make the sound again and again, while behaving in an upright and respectable manner in all other respects, so that you are above reproach. Whoever hears it and feels pain has inflicted the harm upon themselves.

It’s one of those things that’s true as far as it goes, but doesn’t actually lay claim to as much as it thinks it does. It’s like treating science and religion as overlapping magisteria, as though their claims and methods existed within the same realm and spoke to the same things at all times and in all places. We recognize that doing that does violence equally to religion and to science, because the tools of one are not the right tools for the other. God exists beyond measure, but if God is calling us to build an ark, we had better use tools and measures to guide its construction, and not our ecstasy and wonder. Science sinks in the deep water of religion and vice versa.

This doubting suspicion loves not only to attack what seems arbitrary to it, but to mistake subjectivity for a compromise of objectivity. Hume thought that art was not entirely objective, but that an art critic could, with sufficient dedication, strive for objectivity in how they engaged with their work. You can use your subjective experience to serve something other than your personal biases, albeit imperfectly.

However if someone claims a subjective experience which is outside of the sort of teenage libertarian I was, someone steeped in suspicion and anxiously desperate for the objective, then perhaps it simply does not exist. If a Black person describes their systemic oppression, that seems like a fanciful and implausible explanation for the material facts of their existence. If an Indigenous person describes being shot at by strangers, that seems to border on the fantastic or the farcical. I think of the oft-repeated anecdote about Freud deciding that if all of the daughters of upstanding men claimed to have been sexually abused, this was a sign of rampant gendered delusion, and not rampant sexual abuse by upstanding men. That seemed more likely.

It always seems more likely, to the person who is troubled by the great divide between their own subjective experiences and the subjective experiences of others, that the other is at best confused, but perhaps more likely is lying and being manipulative. It stirs up a cognitive dissonance about the limitations of our own reality, when in fact it is not a threat to the objective reality of our existence, but merely to our omniscience.

So it is that the suspicious person rejects the subjective accounts of others as being inherently untrustworthy. They might engage in what has been called “sealioning”, in which they ask repeatedly for proof, they state their willingness to be convinced, and simply demand that the other person gain legitimacy by finding a way to do so. If their claims were real, after all, they would be able to find some way to do so. The fact that they cannot is not recognized as the game itself being rigged, but as proof that the suspicion was warranted.

To lie and to illumine.

We talk in the information age about information warfare, about the ability of governments to sow doubts about basic facts and to generate confusion about what is true, to the point that coördinated action becomes impossible, and the whole is weakened. We know full well the danger of conspiracy theories, for individuals and for our collective health and well-being, whether it takes the form of anti-vaccine agitation, or paranoid collective fantasies which lead to people ending their own lives, or others’, to stem the tide of global corruption. To someone committed to a politics of doubt steeped in their own epistemological wounds, even this may be a challenging statement: who is to decide who is allowed to make facts, and how? How can you know whether something is a conspiracy theory? How is a conspiracy theory any different to claims of systemic racism? Either they’re all fantastic and unfalsifiable, or none of them are.

The most deeply wounded will not settle for simply resisting belief of others’ subjective accounts, but in fact feel a deep pressure to convince others to lose their faith, too. Governments and market manipulators may know the value of lying, but the wounded make lying itself their weapon. Their goal is not to convince someone of a different truth, but that no one is to be trusted.

They do this by lying, by being disingenuous, to the point of gaslighting, i.e. of trying to get people to doubt their own sanity. They talk about this among themselves as a kind of clownishness, as though they were jesters for the masses, who could bring out uncomfortable truths by defying convention and expectation. It is a chaotic clownishness, however, with no principles and unspeakable truth. There is a reverie in disruption itself.

Some of them end up promoting a kind of sadistic nihilism, but equally common seems to be falling back on an anti-intellectual faith in the status quo. The former seems obvious, but the latter is more surprising. In essence, since there is no grounds on which to make the fuzzy decisions about society, those things should not be changed. There’s no way to engage in creation from a blank slate of how a society should be ordered, but we happen to have a society nonetheless. Therefore there is no position from which action to change society can be taken, except by objective and rational means.

If someone advocates, then, for deviance from the status quo for subjective reasons, it is useful not only to demand that they prove themselves (which they cannot), but to remind them and everyone around them that people are unreliable. They will lie brazenly, even openly, like the teenage libertarian saying a swear word or a slur repeatedly. They want to show you how effortless it is, that anyone can do it, that anyone can make themselves do it. They want to show you that mere words are meaningless, and other people are not to be trusted.

The demands of empathy.

I do experience these people (and I have had more dealings with them than I would like) as wounded, rather than as master manipulators. I think that they are telling the truth, albeit perhaps not intentionally, when they say that they would like to be convinced. They would like to be surprised by an argument, to find out that there is something they have been missing. They do so feel like something is missing, but nothing seems to be able to make it appear.

They watch videos of people suffering, even dying, wondering how it can be that it has ceased to stir up emotion. They read with delight accounts of the stalking of people who don’t seem entirely real to them. In a way, they have fallen into the perennial trap of the gnostic heresy: the belief, perhaps, that there is a divine spark in them, but the suspicion that it is not present in everyone.

Their rhetoric talks about non-player characters, people either not enlightened enough to be fully alive, or who are perhaps not actually people at all. This language comes from the world of role-playing games, in which some characters are directed by the dungeon master or the game itself in order to provide a backdrop for the hero’s life, and to create the difficulties that impede their progress. The non-player character is an explanation both for the seeming absence of the divine spark in others, and also for the frustrations and failures of the individual’s life, for which no other explanation can be accepted.

There is something so innocently wounded at the core of this, like the teenager who discovers at their first kiss that the music does not swell, the lighting does not change, and their perspective does not shift as the camera pans in or out. There is an intensity which is missing from life itself that we know must exist because we see it in movies. Where has it gone, and who has taken it? This leads either to a solipsistic nihilism, or to a politics not only of doubt but of resentment. Someone else is programming the game to be against me, which I know because by every objective measure I should be winning.

The trouble is that the experience of other people’s subjective realities, the thing that lets you glimpse the divine spark in them, is to be open to the experience of them. You have to move beyond the world of ideas and wishes. You have to stop watching from afar. This seems pointless or even destructive, though, when you expect only another disappointment. Empathy comes slowly, and starts with the leap of faith of seeing the other person as a subject like you, too. There is a self-reinforcing structure to these things, and their reality is purely relational. It is not the case that if it were real you’d be able to directly apprehend it against your will.

The pain.

I spent several hours recently dealing with someone engaging in sealioning who was being openly dishonest, with the goal of displacing outpourings of empathy for a marginalized community, and creating a landscape of doubt instead. I thought that that was the end of the story, but as I digested the experience and let myself think about what was going on in the interaction, I found something truly unpleasant come over me. For the rest of that day, I became enraged at interactions which felt emotionally insubstantial, or in which another person seemed to be acting by rote. This caught me by surprise, as although those things might annoy me normally, the intensity of my reaction was wildly out of proportion. Indeed, I found a part of myself almost felt compelled to show that I could act out of proportion.

There were two forces at work there. In the one instance, I had simply spent time exploring a pattern of mind that I then found myself inhabiting a little bit. After all, it wasn’t a world of ungrounded fantasy, but an outlook which has a few kernels of truth that have been massively distorted, and that massively distort the experience of the world in turn. In fact, it was a world view I had known very well, and had worked hard to leave behind, through developing relationships with other people, through my theological development, and through lots, and lots, of psychotherapy.

I have probably even been primed by the pandemic to return to that experience of the world. I don’t leave the house much, I don’t see friends, and I spend too much time in front of computer screens. People exist as ideas, as abstract things I think about. My own feelings feel very far away when my life starts to fall back into that shape, and I normally work hard to keep it from being that way. And yet.

So those old disappointments were present to me, and brought their emotional weight back up to the surface. They were accompanied by a double urgency, however, in the form of a second force: reality testing.

I wanted desperately to remember what it was to feel, to feel empathy, to experience the subjective reality of another person’s life. I urgently needed to remember that the wounded worldview was wrong, and I lashed out in hopes of finding something that would make me feel something. I did — I felt bad. That repeated a few times, until it started to feel almost absurd. I knew better, but it all felt less substantial than I wanted it to.

That was very hard at the time, and it’s very hard to share. It’s still a little challenging, no doubt worsened by the limitations of pandemic life as I have experienced it, but I know what the path back looks like. I’ve let myself talk with friends to remember what other people are like, and I’ve got plans to see some friends for a connection that will be more substantial. Something where my attention isn’t split between a dozen open tabs, or with all the work tasks hanging over my head, or with the task of driving, or thinking about how to respond to a violent troll on social media.

The hermeneutic of curiosity.

It is a core religious value for me that other people exist, and that they have an interior life like mine, and a subjective reality that is every bit as full and real as mine. Jung talks about psychic reality, i.e. subjective reality, as being the most real thing there is, because it is the very thing we apprehend and experience most directly, entirely unmediated. I find that powerfully compelling, and as a religious person I find it enticing.

The religious task, after all, involves that sharing of experiential reality which cannot be reduced to facts. Gregory of Nyssa talks about the inability of the mind to grasp things which are beyond spatial metaphors and reasoning. So it is that I find other people a holy thing: filled with otherness, but enticingly close. But if you engage with another person as an object, you will not find those secret and elusive things: their interiority, their soul. You can glimpse, though, and how glorious it is to glimpse, something of the inner life and the spirit by opening yourself to them, by listening deeply to them, and by engaging in substantive conversation and exploration together. This is the religious task itself.

We might think of the religious task as contemplation of the divine, and looking for something of the divine subject to reveal something of themselves to us, but as the First Letter of John reminds us, we can see one another, and we cannot see God. If we are going to learn how to experience the intersubjective reality of union with the divine, we surely start by being open to doing so with the other person. After all, if you will not experience the interior reality of the other person, who is so like you in every respect, how can you expect to experience the interior offering of the divine, who is utterly unknowable in every respect?

Perhaps it’s easier with God because there’s no material distractions, no illusion that the other person exists primarily to be beautiful, or primarily to frustrate us. There is no possibility that God is a non-player character. A non-player character has substance but no essence, while God is pure essence. God is the energies which make the game go, and is not programmed by anything, as we, ourselves, are at least a little programmed, by language, by culture, by society.

We have rightful yearnings for the other, but they ought to be mutually reinforcing. We are captivated by the beauty, by the difference, or something else enticing about the other, but we are not to mistake them for an object to be possessed, a way to access beauty or something we lack within ourselves. We are called to relationship, to the interpenetration of mind and spirit, by our yearning, and to let ourselves yearn for the transcendent beauty the same way we are enticed by material beauty. The transcendent other, too, loves and made each and every living being, and fills them with breath, so if we are curious about God, we ought to be curious also about God’s people.

This hermeneutic of curiosity has to not only be open to the subjective, but has to not count the cost. Paul talks about this as foolishness, as something which is wise in God’s sight, but which the world will look at and think is absolutely reckless. This is being willing to try to help someone even if it might not work. This is giving of your own resources even if you might get nothing in return. This is being willing to risk believing someone, even though you know that people lie.

Yes, Christ sent the disciples out, and sends all of us out, with an admonition to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves. You can wonder about the motives of others. You should be curious about your own suspicion, even, because it might be telling you something valuable. The question is if you are willing to be transformed for the Kingdom of God: if you would rather believe something which causes you to act more kindly than is required, or if you would rather avoid taking any material risk, even if it causes you to disbelieve someone whose suffering you could have alleviated.

The empty tomb.

Martin Buber shares a piece of Hasidic wisdom which suggests that everything that exists, everything that God has created, has some purpose for the person of faith, some religious value, which must be found, even atheism. The value of atheism being that it calls us to act as though we were responsible for the state of the world, rather than God. It can be so tempting to engage in spiritual bypassing by displacing all responsibility off to God, but we are sojourning together on this little piece of rock, and whether we like it or not, this coëxistence is what we have been called to live rightly within. It’s not about whether we would live well together in the Kingdom of God, but whether we are willing to live as we would in the Kingdom even now.

This brings us to the knife’s edge of disappointment once again. What if it doesn’t feel good? What if it doesn’t feel right? What if it isn’t good enough? Perhaps it is better not to try.

That would be foolishness in the wrong realm. That would be expecting things to feel right, here and now, when in fact it might be very uncomfortable to do what God calls us to. This bitterness may, like the scroll Ezekiel eats, come to taste sweet once we let ourselves enter into it, but it may just be difficult. I think of how many of us in adulthood expect that at some point all the grown-up tasks will become easy and effortless, because they looked that way to us as kids, when in fact they remain a slog and a time-sink, and that’s just part of the sad reality of life.

There has to be something we believe in more than gratification, and more than that our success and our feelings of meaning look like the climactic scenes in movies. For me it is the joy of encounter with God and with other people. It is the substantial beauty of seeing what is real and loving it because it is real, and not because it appears as I wish it would. I do not always manage that. Still, I know that is what I want to give my heart to, even if it’s difficult.

If you love something, you can follow where it leads, instead of perpetually being frustrated that it isn’t going down the path you expected. If you really need to go down that path, go down it, but don’t imagine that something else owes it to you to make the way clear. This is the realm of the Holy Spirit, which may lead you to two divergent paths, not to test you, but because that is what is real. Something which is beyond the spatial things the mind can understand, but which may exist in the reality of God. It may be that the paths will merge after a time, and it may be that we could take either path just as well, and that they really do diverge. Perhaps there is more to us than just one thing.

We are invited to experience the reality of what is, not what we expect. This is what the Gospels call us to: to share in the slow revelation by Jesus of some truths about us, about God, and about the world, and the image of a life which awaits us, and a life which is possible for us here and now. Jesus points out again and again that these things are all the out-pouring of a single truth that cannot be named, but that can be gestured at and felt among us all the same. He tells us that love made us and calls to us, and that we can live according to love, too, but that this is not the path of light and life. Love encompasses all that is, and love leaves nothing out.

You cannot tell someone that. There is no fact to be conveyed. There are a set of truths which must constellate in your mind, and which as soon as they seem settled, suddenly become elusive once again. You can feel disappointment and suspicion, that this thing which should have been true always and forever has changed, or you can let yourself be curious, and follow after it down a different path. It may all at last make sense once more, only to yet again appear fragmented and destroyed. It may not make sense at all except in hindsight. It will probably not all fit in our perspective this side of death itself, but this is the journey we are called to.

So it is that the women who came to Christ’s tomb found it empty. The empty tomb had its own reality to reveal, a baffling revelation, an unnameable experience. Some of the other disciples would not believe it until they saw it themselves, but found that the women’s account had been true all along. The empty tomb could be a disappointment. The empty tomb must be the path to life. That is something that we may experience, by the experiences shared by people we have never met, now long dead themselves. It is something we can never, fully, know. Beyond measure and explanation, so foolishly we place our hope in the absence of something, someone we never met while he was alive.

All of this is in God, as Christ is in God. May we meet Christ in one another. May we yearn across the chasm. May we find Christ in the empty tomb. Amen.

[whendoestheaftermathend]

13th March, 2020 // Friday

I think I’m going to lose my mind. I currently have a subtle headache, to start things off with. Meaning, it’s the headache from yesterday—but it’s sort of… repressed or pushed down, not on the surface, but it’s clearly there. I’ll probably be fine if I just get the right amount of sleep, eat healthily, and not take too much stress.

But let’s go back to the first sentence. I think I’m going to lose my mind, or I’ve already lost it. William Lilly said that Mercury is the fastest when he moves at about 1 degree 30 minutes, if I’m not wrong… and my Mercury, is well… its speed is 2 degrees, 34 seconds… so you can just imagine how fast my mind is since Mercury rules over the mind. But also, it puts into perspective—how easy it is for me to get anxious over every little thing, how the reason why I can be so meticulous with my words… or at least, appear that way to others, is because I constantly have anxiety over being wrong, over not citing correctly, over not being knowledgeable enough, not doing justice—enough, I don’t know. It would surprise me if humans fail to understand this. Everyone just needs to listen to my words seriously for a second to completely understand how unnecessarily anxious, my mind gets. It is a mental torture to me. What is the salt to the wound, rather, is the fact that I know that my knowledge isn’t ideally enough, maybe not in the eyes of the people around me, but surely—I know just how much one can know… or I mean, to what lengths one can go, intellectually. I know that if I try harder, I can reach those heights—and have depth to my words—even though, honestly, I don’t need to. I don’t need to go an extra mile just for this. But my mind… my mind tortures me too much, it makes me tick, in a very impulsive and negative way. I wish people would understand that, I wish whoever gets to be my teacher would understand that. I wish I would understand that, even, so that I could be lenient towards myself. I don’t know how to calm myself down… I wish I knew ways to do so. 

I want to cry. I feel like I don’t even have enough inside my head for me to worry this much, for me to cry over it all—even. I genuinely might have imposter syndrome, and I hate it because I don’t know how to tackle it. Words don’t soothe me. Actions don’t either. It’s just numbing the pain for a second until it comes back up again. I repeat, it’s a mental torture. I say I can’t bear it but ironically, I am bearing it seeing as how this hasn’t killed me yet. Though, overthinking can physically kill at times, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how I went down.

I just want others to feel it, I want others to understand it, I want others to truly feel and know what goes on inside my head whenever I’m anxious like this and what it does to my heart… I shouldn’t have to go through this because my purpose in life isn’t even to do anything intellectually—at least, that’s what I feel. I’m not even supposed to do anything meticulous—life purpose-wise, I mean, and yet here I am… crying because I’m afraid to get even the smallest thing wrong, I’m afraid to make mistakes because my mind is too harsh on me… when it doesn’t make sense. Making mistakes… well that’s how you learn. Not being able to meet people’s expectations, the thought of it—petrifying. Though I guess I know, why I’m so adamant at getting everything right—just to get my teacher’s approval. It’s because my own expectations for becoming a good traditional astrologer are very slim… and not very solid. It’s because I don’t believe in myself that I seem to turn over to what my teacher thinks, ignoring my own—approvals and disapprovals… trusting his word and not mine, trying to take his word as a final thing—as if it’s the truth that I should abide by, as if what he chooses to say, sets the potential for me to become a good astrologer or not. God, how fucking pathetic, Sabrina. I thought I was stronger than this. Though I guess, I know why I’m like that. It’s the subject that’s too complex, too methodical and yet—too abstract. You have to remember a lot, and no chart’s ever the same. No placement’s ever the same. Sure, you can generalize the placements here and there, but ultimately, every chart is so unique and so different, that it’s like you’re reading a chart for the first time ever. Natal Astrology deals with people and their lives… it scares me to not do them justice, or provide them a fair reading. It scares me to get things wrong when reading for them because there’s so much prejudice about Astrology out there and I don’t want to contribute any more hate towards it because there’s already so much of it out there. I suppose though, astrology doesn’t care haha. It really can’t give a fuck and yet here I am, clearing losing it over wrecking its already damaged reputation. The world is too cruel to give the student a chance to freely learn and grow from their mistakes, the world that surrounds me, to be more precise. 

and my mind. My mind. My mind doesn’t think I remember enough, do enough, learn enough, it doesn’t. It’s too fast, remember? It’s faster than what normally one can handle. So while I can know that I should at least applaud myself for knowing something at least—my mind’s always the one to tell me, “no, you need to know more, this is nothing.” In the eyes of the many—it’s everything, everything else that I need to learn, to know, to do, just might be for extra credit or me being too “assiduous and meticulous.” 

and I guess I’m afraid of someone else other than my mind, supporting what my mind says—harshly to me. I’m afraid of it all being real, because it sounds so much closer to reality because reality is so negative whether we like to admit it or not.

But this is so wrong lol. I don't want to be told a bunch of sweet nothings, either. I want the truth; I want to be honestly told whether I’m right or not. It’s just, my heart’s so weak that it can’t take it when it comes to astrology. It hurts because I’m extremely passionate about astrology. It hurts to see me have constant panic attacks over the subject that I love all because of this. I chose a subject that is complex to begin with, that I’m doomed to fail in over and over again just like—every other, good and bad—astrologer out there. They said traditional astrology wasn’t for the faint-hearted. They weren’t wrong, but my reasons are purely different than what they had in mind when they said that. Dear God, please give me the strength to get through this, to reconcile with my mind, to get past this—to have a strong heart, to be thick-skinned. Otherwise, surviving in this world, in general, is going to be super hard for me. I already feel like I wasn’t made for this world…

So right, I don’t believe in myself, and my mind can provide logical reasons as to why. But even those logical reasons shouldn’t be the reasons why I stop. People with debilitated Mercury in their chart are skilled astrologers. It would be stupid of me to stop. For my mental health, I can probably put studying it on hold, but even then, it would feel like me running away. I guess that’s why I went ahead and submitted my assignment today even when I planned on not doing it because I knew I’d end up like this. But the thought of prolonging it—the thought of not being able to think about it even, just made me feel so guilty and so disappointed in myself. I felt like I was running away and not facing the situation at hand, properly. Now, given the circumstances I’m in currently, sure, I can be excused for running away, especially since this sort of thing… is really not that big of a deal compared to the life-and-death situations people I know are facing. If anything, this should be the least of my worries. Even then… even then, knowing it would be fine, even then—my mind was not having it… I wasn’t having it, either. “I don’t expect myself to be good even though I really want to be good at astrology… so I want others to recognize the potential and the capability in me that I can’t, for them to say it as if it were a fact,” –probably what my heart thinks, but even then, this is so risky. People’s feelings and thoughts are so fluctuating. Who are they to decide whether I’m good at something or not? Even if they’re in the field I’m studying? Even then? Logically speaking, their words have some weight on them, knowing they are experienced and what-not, but even then… whatever they say, isn’t an “end” point for myself—for what I want to be.

I’m trying to convince myself. But it seems nothing gets through to me.

It’s funny, isn’t it? I’ve cried, panicked over this, and yet my teacher probably has no idea that I’ve been a mess during our concise email conversations. as if I don’t get anxious enough on my end, for myself already, my mind decides to get anxious just because he didn’t properly read my messages and didn’t reply directly? Even when I specifically stated everything—properly? That’s not something I should get anxious over. I do feel like I have a genuine problem concerning all of this. I just don’t think people are willing to take me serious.

He has yet to check my assignment though. I’ll know his thoughts by the end of the day. The stupid thing is, he hasn’t even said anything negative to me. The positive comments, being told that I’m one of his greatest students—really makes me more anxious because I’m afraid to disappoint even more so because my mind is convinced that I’m doomed to disappoint because remember? I don’t believe in myself. I hate my mind. I hate it so much. I probably shouldn’t hate it if I’m looking to reconcile with it and sort my life together but still. I’m so frustrated, give me a break, already. No, I don’t want to be indifferent, but I also don't want to be a mess like this, all the time. It never ends. The worrying, the anxiety, the panic, it never ends. 

If he says something positive, I become happy, reassured for a second but then I start doubting him the very next (second)—I pray that he doesn’t say anything negative today lol, but I’m afraid of how I’ll react if he ever does. I hope he doesn’t. I seriously hope he doesn’t. I won’t react explosively on the outside, of course. I’ve never been the type to be like that, unfortunately. I say unfortunately because exploding internally—suffering internally, whilst on the outside, appearing as if I’m fine, and composed—is the most annoying and isolating feeling ever. But hey, let’s hope for the best. 

I’m so sorry. I’m so into this… aren’t I? I’m not looking at the big picture, this thing’s gotten me so absorbed. I have so many flaws I need to work on. This, surely, being one of them. I pray for more wisdom… actual, useful wisdom, for my mind to be more open-minded.

[lowvillegolfclub]

Erin Walker on the ups and downs of life as a PGA Tour wife

A lot of people have this assumption we just shop and go to the spa," laughs Erin Walker, wife of two-time US Ryder Cup star Jimmy Walker.

Erin is a vivacious and often outspoken voice on social media, an acerbic sometime writer in the golf press and the author of a blog called Tour Wife Travels, for several years a travelogue of life on the pro golf circuit.

Her Twitter bio reads: "Professional golf watcher. Amateur show jumper. Married to @jimmywalkerPGA. I'm opinionated. He's not." 

A lively and lengthy phone chat with CNN from Utah confirms as much.

Up until last year, Erin spent roughly 30 weeks a year on the road with Jimmy, having forgone her own dream of going to law school.

But instead of settling down to a life of hotel-coseted luxury, the journalism, advertising and marketing major took on the role of CEO in Team Walker.

Among her "many hats" are financial controller, contract reviewer, travel planner, event organizer, sometime swing guru, chief motivator, psychologist, wife and mom.

"I'm the one who runs his ship. I'm doing everything else, just making it as easy on Jimmy as possible so all he has to do is go play golf."

'Adventurous' 

The couple, based in Boerne, Texas, traveled around the circuit full time in an RV when the kids, Mclain (now seven) and little brother Beckett (four), were younger. Kindergarten has curtailed the road trips, but Jimmy still uses the RV for select weeks. He has a driver because coach Butch Harmon is "very anti" him taking the wheel himself (too stressful).

"It's a house on wheels," says Erin. "We have our own bed, our own pillows, a washer-dryer, a dishwasher, an American-size residential refrigerator, four TVs, the kids have bunk beds, we've got four pairs of rain boots, stuff you can't pack week to week.

"I think you have to be a little bit adventurous because there's always something broken."

At the Masters they park across the street from the Augusta National.

"Augusta is amazing," says Erin. "Jimmy walks in every day and it's great for the boys to have a huge yard to be able to kick a soccer ball in or play baseball. For us it makes sense."

If life wasn't already enough of a juggle, Erin fits in her passion for showjumping, competing in about 15 events a year around the US.

Keeping her horses with her trainer in Virginia adds another level of complexity to the operation.

"It's hard, I don't get a lot of practice," she says. "I just kind of show up at horse shows and hope it goes it well. Luckily I'm athletic enough but it's difficult. I want to be better and jump bigger jumps but I have to adjust my expectations.

"But I'm lucky I have a husband who is supportive of it because for me I have to have a hobby and kind of do my own thing a little bit."

Erin is a nationally ranked showjumper and competes in about 15 events a year.

'Bucketlist'

Erin's fire comes from her parents, both competitive skiers in Utah in the 1970s. Her dad Mark Stiegemeier was the world freestyle skiing champion in 1975, and she and her younger brother Sean grew up ski racing, crossing paths occasionally with a young Lindsey Vonn.

In 2015, Erin walked around Augusta with Vonn, then girlfriend of Tiger Woods, and swapped tales of mutual friends.

The obvious upsides to a successful pro golfer husband are the riches -- Walker's career earnings are just north of $23 million -- and the perks that come with the fame.

Erin ticked off a "bucket list" VIP trip to the Kentucky Derby this year, while Mclain was able to meet his Nascar driver heroes when Jimmy attended the US PGA media day as defending champion. There's also the Masters tradition of partners and children donning the white suits to caddie in the Wednesday par-three competition.

Then there are the trips abroad and the camaraderie of the team events, such as a "hysterical" wives' day out eating squid and other unidentified food during the 2015 Presidents Cup in Incheon, South Korea.

Or the electricity around the stadium-like first tee on the opening morning of the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles. "It was an incredible feeling," she says. "Even right now I get goose bumps. You never want to miss another one."

'Thick skin'

But the downsides to the lifestyle come not from travel hassles or time apart, but from an unexpected quarter. Social media, a force for good used in the right way, has become the biggest trial to life on tour. It's caused several "bumps in the road," she says.

"I knew when I married Jimmy he would be traveling, I knew when we had kids he would be traveling and I would be a short-time single parent, so I can't exactly say that's a negative," she says.

"But the bigger name you become, the more people want to tear you down, which I just don't really understand. People have their assumptions and there's no recourse for what people say.

"Even somebody as popular as Rickie [Fowler] has the haters. I'm like, 'What do you mean Rickie? He's the nicest guy out there.'"

Erin says they have both had to develop a thicker skin, and admits she has had to "curb" the instinct to fire off replies to every detractor. "I'm pretty politically correct," she says. 

"I'm not going to say things that are going to irritate him and his sponsors but I am going to say things that apply to our everyday life."

"She does a good job. She sticks up for me," Jimmy, 38, told CNN at the British Open at Royal Birkdale, where he was sharing a "frat" house with eventual champion Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, Justin Thomas and Zach Johnson.

Stresses & stargazing

For some Tour wives, life in someone else's paradise is not always a bed of roses.

Erin knows of other spouses who have given up ambitions to be attorneys, dentists, even pro golfers to support their partner.

She says she can "1000%" empathize with Brittany Horschel, wife of PGA Tour player Billy Horschel, who recently admitted she was an alcoholic, and spent two months at a Florida treatment center. She has been sober for more than a year now, but says the drinking was aggravated by loneliness of caring for a baby daughter out on the road. 

"Everybody deals with the stresses in a different way," says Erin, who met Jimmy when she was a volunteer at a second-tier event in Salt Lake City in 2004.

"I absolutely can see how -- especially going from where she was, a very good college golfer -- having to suddenly be like, 'OK, I'm giving up my dream to go support your dream.' That's a huge transition.

"That's why the horses have been so important for me. It gives me a positive outlet.

"I really applaud Billy and Brittany for putting their story out there."

Erin believes it's vital for the players to have other interests alongside golf, too.

Jimmy's is astrophotography, and he's won awards for it. Three times NASA has made his pictures its astronomy photo of the day

"I love it for him that he has a hobby besides cars and wine because every pro golfer likes cars and wine," she says. 

"This is something that's unique and gives him a way to get away from golf and be creative and find his zen place. 

"It gives him perspective on everything. There's a lot bigger stuff going on out there than golf and making birdies and bogeys."

Coping with Lyme disease

Jimmy's nights spent at the telescope -- and on the golf course and range -- have been curtailed since November as he has battled a debilitating illness which has sapped his strength.

In April he was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease, a bacterial infection spread by infected ticks.

Walker told the PGA Tour the disease "feels like you've got the flu. No strength. Just got nothing. And it comes and goes in waves. You never know when it's going to pop up."

He is on a cocktail of drugs and vitamins, and told CNN at Royal Birkdale he was operating at "75-90%."

"I just don't feel myself, I don't feel strong," he said.

"It's been hard," added Erin, who has become a vociferous campaigner warning people to beware of ticks.

"Jimmy is not vocal and he's not a complainer so he's not going to be the one that says, 'this has kicked my butt this year' but it has.

"It's been affecting his mood because he didn't feel well, and that's straining on a relationship and straining with the kids. I'm happy we're heading in the right direction and he's starting to feel better."

Erin's had to add pharmacist and nurse to her long list of roles.  Just don't try telling her that all she does is shop and spa 

A lot of people have this assumption we just shop and go to the spa," laughs Erin Walker, wife of two-time US Ryder Cup star Jimmy Walker.

Erin is a vivacious and often outspoken voice on social media, an acerbic sometime writer in the golf press and the author of a blog called Tour Wife Travels, for several years a travelogue of life on the pro golf circuit.

Her Twitter bio reads: "Professional golf watcher. Amateur show jumper. Married to @jimmywalkerPGA. I'm opinionated. He's not."

A lively and lengthy phone chat with CNN from Utah confirms as much.

Up until last year, Erin spent roughly 30 weeks a year on the road with Jimmy, having forgone her own dream of going to law school.

But instead of settling down to a life of hotel-coseted luxury, the journalism, advertising and marketing major took on the role of CEO in Team Walker.

Among her "many hats" are financial controller, contract reviewer, travel planner, event organizer, sometime swing guru, chief motivator, psychologist, wife and mom.

"I'm the one who runs his ship. I'm doing everything else, just making it as easy on Jimmy as possible so all he has to do is go play golf."

'Adventurous'

The couple, based in Boerne, Texas, traveled around the circuit full time in an RV when the kids, Mclain (now seven) and little brother Beckett (four), were younger. Kindergarten has curtailed the road trips, but Jimmy still uses the RV for select weeks. He has a driver because coach Butch Harmon is "very anti" him taking the wheel himself (too stressful).

"It's a house on wheels," says Erin. "We have our own bed, our own pillows, a washer-dryer, a dishwasher, an American-size residential refrigerator, four TVs, the kids have bunk beds, we've got four pairs of rain boots, stuff you can't pack week to week.

"I think you have to be a little bit adventurous because there's always something broken."

At the Masters they park across the street from the Augusta National.

"Augusta is amazing," says Erin. "Jimmy walks in every day and it's great for the boys to have a huge yard to be able to kick a soccer ball in or play baseball. For us it makes sense."

If life wasn't already enough of a juggle, Erin fits in her passion for showjumping, competing in about 15 events a year around the US.

Keeping her horses with her trainer in Virginia adds another level of complexity to the operation.

"It's hard, I don't get a lot of practice," she says. "I just kind of show up at horse shows and hope it goes it well. Luckily I'm athletic enough but it's difficult. I want to be better and jump bigger jumps but I have to adjust my expectations.

"But I'm lucky I have a husband who is supportive of it because for me I have to have a hobby and kind of do my own thing a little bit."

Erin is a nationally ranked showjumper and competes in about 15 events a year.

'Bucketlist'

Erin's fire comes from her parents, both competitive skiers in Utah in the 1970s. Her dad Mark Stiegemeier was the world freestyle skiing champion in 1975, and she and her younger brother Sean grew up ski racing, crossing paths occasionally with a young Lindsey Vonn.

In 2015, Erin walked around Augusta with Vonn, then girlfriend of Tiger Woods, and swapped tales of mutual friends.

The obvious upsides to a successful pro golfer husband are the riches -- Walker's career earnings are just north of $23 million -- and the perks that come with the fame.

Erin ticked off a "bucket list" VIP trip to the Kentucky Derby this year, while Mclain was able to meet his Nascar driver heroes when Jimmy attended the US PGA media day as defending champion. There's also the Masters tradition of partners and children donning the white suits to caddie in the Wednesday par-three competition.

Then there are the trips abroad and the camaraderie of the team events, such as a "hysterical" wives' day out eating squid and other unidentified food during the 2015 Presidents Cup in Incheon, South Korea.

Or the electricity around the stadium-like first tee on the opening morning of the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles. "It was an incredible feeling," she says. "Even right now I get goose bumps. You never want to miss another one."

'Thick skin'

But the downsides to the lifestyle come not from travel hassles or time apart, but from an unexpected quarter. Social media, a force for good used in the right way, has become the biggest trial to life on tour. It's caused several "bumps in the road," she says.

"I knew when I married Jimmy he would be traveling, I knew when we had kids he would be traveling and I would be a short-time single parent, so I can't exactly say that's a negative," she says.

"But the bigger name you become, the more people want to tear you down, which I just don't really understand. People have their assumptions and there's no recourse for what people say.

"Even somebody as popular as Rickie [Fowler] has the haters. I'm like, 'What do you mean Rickie? He's the nicest guy out there.'"

Erin says they have both had to develop a thicker skin, and admits she has had to "curb" the instinct to fire off replies to every detractor. "I'm pretty politically correct," she says.

"I'm not going to say things that are going to irritate him and his sponsors but I am going to say things that apply to our everyday life."

"She does a good job. She sticks up for me," Jimmy, 38, told CNN at the British Open at Royal Birkdale, where he was sharing a "frat" house with eventual champion Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, Justin Thomas and Zach Johnson.

Stresses & stargazing

For some Tour wives, life in someone else's paradise is not always a bed of roses.

Erin knows of other spouses who have given up ambitions to be attorneys, dentists, even pro golfers to support their partner.

She says she can "1000%" empathize with Brittany Horschel, wife of PGA Tour player Billy Horschel, who recently admitted she was an alcoholic, and spent two months at a Florida treatment center. She has been sober for more than a year now, but says the drinking was aggravated by loneliness of caring for a baby daughter out on the road.

"Everybody deals with the stresses in a different way," says Erin, who met Jimmy when she was a volunteer at a second-tier event in Salt Lake City in 2004.

"I absolutely can see how -- especially going from where she was, a very good college golfer -- having to suddenly be like, 'OK, I'm giving up my dream to go support your dream.' That's a huge transition.

"That's why the horses have been so important for me. It gives me a positive outlet.

"I really applaud Billy and Brittany for putting their story out there."

Erin believes it's vital for the players to have other interests alongside golf, too.

Jimmy's is astrophotography, and he's won awards for it. Three times NASA has made his pictures its astronomy photo of the day

"I love it for him that he has a hobby besides cars and wine because every pro golfer likes cars and wine," she says.

"This is something that's unique and gives him a way to get away from golf and be creative and find his zen place.

"It gives him perspective on everything. There's a lot bigger stuff going on out there than golf and making birdies and bogeys."

Coping with Lyme disease

Jimmy's nights spent at the telescope -- and on the golf course and range -- have been curtailed since November as he has battled a debilitating illness which has sapped his strength.

In April he was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease, a bacterial infection spread by infected ticks.

Walker told the PGA Tour the disease "feels like you've got the flu. No strength. Just got nothing. And it comes and goes in waves. You never know when it's going to pop up."

He is on a cocktail of drugs and vitamins, and told CNN at Royal Birkdale he was operating at "75-90%."

"I just don't feel myself, I don't feel strong," he said.

"It's been hard," added Erin, who has become a vociferous campaigner warning people to beware of ticks.

"Jimmy is not vocal and he's not a complainer so he's not going to be the one that says, 'this has kicked my butt this year' but it has.

"It's been affecting his mood because he didn't feel well, and that's straining on a relationship and straining with the kids. I'm happy we're heading in the right direction and he's starting to feel better."

Erin's had to add pharmacist and nurse to her long list of roles.  Just don't try telling her that all she does is shop and spa.

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