Writing in Faith

Nom­i­nated by Viola Jaynes at Spir­i­tual Things Mat­ter, our Jan­u­ary 1, 2009, Win­ner

Sandy Carl­son

Iron­i­cally, I had already selected Sandy Carl­son to be the next recip­i­ent of the Post of the Day Award when I received an email from Viola Jaynes nom­i­nat­ing her. Viola wrote: “She has some incred­i­ble poetry and writ­ings. I have so often been blessed by her gift to the blog­sphere.” Indeed, like Viola, Sandy could receive this recog­ni­tion for vir­tu­ally any of her thought­ful writ­ings. But in par­tic­u­lar, both Viola and I picked Sandy’s Decem­ber 30, 2008, entry, Kill Your­self and I’ll Feel Bad.

Be fore­warned that it is not easy read­ing, and you will find your­self think­ing about the post long after you have read it … sev­eral times, at least. Sandy responded to the Christ­mas Eve 2008 sui­cide of Suzanne Horne, a pop­u­lar blog­ger who wrote Liq­uid Illuzion. As her read­ers have noted, it is a “brave post” express­ing “intense feel­ings on this sub­ject.” Indeed, the com­ments are as thought-provoking and, in some instances, dis­turb­ing as the post itself.

Suzanne Horne (1966–2008)

Sandy opines that sui­cide is a “group project,” some­thing most of us hate because we “pride our­selves on our indi­vid­u­al­ity, inde­pen­dent think­ing, and self-reliance. We make our own deci­sions; we hold our­selves respon­si­ble.” Tak­ing one’s own life is, accord­ing to Sandy, “the care­less and cruel act, word, and ges­ture of one per­son after another heaped onto a vul­ner­a­ble soul that is keenly aware of the weight.” But Sandy chal­lenges her read­ers to turn away from the stan­dard hand-wringing, pos­tu­lat­ing, and, ulti­mately, cal­lous­ness that fol­lows such a tragic end­ing to the life of some­one as tal­ented, inspi­ra­tional, and loved as Suzanne. She chal­lenges her read­ers to con­sider anew our inter­con­nect­ed­ness and depen­dence upon each other. Stub­born, pride­ful Amer­i­cans gen­er­ally reject group projects.

Group projects in a cul­ture that prides itself on thriv­ing on com­pe­ti­tion seem ridicu­lous. Yet they get to the truth we in our inde­pen­dent glory hate to admit: that we depend on each other, that our sur­vival depends on coop­er­a­tion and mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tion, that we live or die by the love we make. Or don’t.

Ulti­mately, whether or not you agree with Sandy’s main the­sis is irrel­e­vant. She has coura­geously broached a sub­ject around which most peo­ple only dare tip­toe. Instead of hid­ing from the wound, she has opened it wider, exam­ined it, ques­tioned its ori­gin and, ulti­mately, chal­lenged her read­ers to do the same. In so doing, she has brought aware­ness to the most dif­fi­cult of all sub­jects and, because she has chal­lenged read­ers to think about it from a unique per­spec­tive, might save a life … or a few.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Liq­uid Illuzion, Post of the Day Award, The Ris­ing Blog­ger, Writ­ing in Faith

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