when no one is watching

The Function of Religion

2011-01-19T07:21:00.000-05:00

Ken Wilber says that he believes the function of religion is to grease the wheels of history so that we can move toward nondual consciousness, or what I would call the contemplative mind. Quite simply, we are supposed to move toward love. Mature religion’s function is to make us capable of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, nonviolence, and care for others. When religion is not creating people who can reconcile things, heal things, and absorb contradictions—then religion isn’t doing its job.

When we stopped teaching the contemplative mind in a systematic way about 400 to 500 years ago, we lost the capacity to deal with paradox, inconsistency, and human imperfection. Instead, it became “winners take all” and losers lose all. Despite all our universities and churches in Western Christianity, we learned to choose one side over the other and if possible, exclude, punish, or even kill the other side. That’s dualistic thinking at its worst; and it’s the normal mind that has taken over our world. It creates very angry and, often, violent people. Peace and happiness are no longer possible, because there is always a crusade to be waged and won. That is ego at work and surely not soul.
—Richard Rohr

Yes.

2011-01-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

By teaching “do not judge,” the great teachers are saying that you cannot start seeing or understanding anything if you start with no. You have to start with a yes of basic acceptance, which means not too-quickly labeling, analyzing, or categorizing things as “in” or “out,” “good” or “bad,” “up” or “down.” You have to leave the field open, a field in which God and grace can move. Ego leads with no, whereas soul leads with yes.

The ego seems to strengthen itself by constriction, by being against things; and it feels loss or fear when it opens up. No always comes easier than yes, and a deep, conscious yes is the work of freedom and grace. Spiritual teachers want you to live by positive action, open field, and studied understanding and not by resistance, knee-jerk reactions, or defensiveness.

Words and thoughts are invariably dualistic, but pure experience is always nondualistic. You cannot really experience reality with the judgmental mind, because you are dividing the moment before you give yourself to it. The judgmental mind prevents you from being present to the full moment by trying to “divide and conquer.” Instead, you end up dividing and being conquered.

—Richard Rohr

Today, I'm grateful for

2010-11-25T17:06:00.001-05:00

friends.

(who use vacation days to spend time with me.)

(who teach me yoga.)

(who teach me fun.)

(who put up with my clumsiness.)

(who cuddle me.)

(who gather around my table.)

(who let me hold their children.)

(who help me to celebrate.)

(who help me to cry.)

(who help me to love myself.)

(who trust me enough to tell me their secrets.)

(who are gentle with my secrets.)

(who think a quick hug from and 15 minutes with me is worth a trip out of the way.)

(who make me tea.)

(who drink my wine.)

(who listen to my story.)

(who let me hold them.)

(who read my blog.)

(who wonder what's up when I leave my blog mostly untouched for 5 months.)

(who are willing to work things out with me.)

(who cook me dinner when I'm sick or sad or there.)

(who keep in touch.)

(who keep me grounded.)

(who keep me.)

I'm grateful for friends, whose love is an experience of the divine. Thank you, friends. Blessed be.

Hard Times; Not End Times

2010-11-25T14:40:00.049-05:00

So Kevin and I went to this thing a few weeks ago. It was this big thing. BIG. A-zillion-and-a-half-people big. And it was loud, and hilarious, and inspiring, and fun. Fun!!

And sane.

I'd love to write something profound about the experience, and I've been trying for weeks to come up with something, all the while depriving you all of our awesome pictures. So I'm just going to post pictures.

Rockin' literary references abounded.

So did Waldos.

And gay terrorists.

And beautiful, beautiful people.

(I couldn't keep my eyes off this woman. There was just something about her.)

And peace, and love.

Here I am, looking oh-so-sane.

And here's my handsome husband, putting on his most rational of airs.

This is Shag, our excellent rallying companion, from whose shoulders I took most of these pictures. Shout out to Shag! Thanks man!

The Roots (from Philly, yo) performed this, and it was incredible. Sorry, YouTube didn't have a video of the performance.

And this makes me cry.

Oh, yeah. Cat Stevens was there and did perform "Peace Train." Sort of.

And I love this man. I love him.

It was good, friends. Crazy good.

One Ugly and Two Beautifuls

2010-11-17T08:35:00.006-05:00

I'm thinking of reviving my advent-season Beautiful Things series, beginning this morning (yes, I know, Advent starts on the 28th). This afternoon, I'll be sitting in a courtroom, looking on as a privileged white man passes judgment on a broken, wounded woman for making an unwise choice when she thought she had no other.

And my job is really hard right now, and I have some Stuff coming up.

So I'm trying to cling to the beautiful. This morning, a friend made it easy.

First, there was this. You can't not swell with joy.

And then there was this.
Let us all partake.

Please, oh please, read

2010-11-16T10:58:00.003-05:00

this.

And then, please, let's all try.

What would your sign say?

Holy Mother of All Coolness, I JUST GOT TO PLAY WITH A MONKEY!!!!!

2010-11-10T18:18:00.004-05:00

So, I stop at Menard's to pick up a full-spectrum bulb for my office lamp. I'm standing in front of rack of batteries because I need one for my ... nevermind ... when I look up and I see one of these

sitting in a cart, drinking from a bottle, reaching his bitty gray hand toward me and chirping.

And I reached back, and he took my hand and started talking to me. And his owners let me play with him for like, five solid minutes. With their monkey. I just had a five-minute-long conversation with a monkey. He fiddled with my fingers and kissed my hand, hugged my arm and tickled me with his tail.

A monkey. A monkey at Menards on a Wednesday night in Warsaw, Indiana.

Holy Mother of All Coolness.

Just Call Me the Rodent Whisperer

2010-11-10T06:57:00.007-05:00

Rachel, you might not want to read this post. You've been warned. ;.)

Back in September, a friend of ours came to stay with us for a few days, just to hang out. She lives two hours away, so visiting generally requires an overnight stay.

A few days before her arrival, as I was merrily preparing the house for her, this thought invaded my consciousness:

I bet Calvin will catch a mouse, the first night Kendra is here. I hope she's okay with mice.

Huh? What the?? Friends, there is no reason why I should have had this thought. We don't have a problem with mice. Calvin has caught exactly one mouse in the three years we've lived here. But have the thought I did. And then I finished dusting.

And she came to us, hooray! I'm blanking on what we did together that night, but surely it was lovely. And then, we all went to bed, she in our room downstairs and we in the library upstairs.

The next morning, as I lay in bed in the dark, languishing and happy, I heard

Rustle, rustle.

Rustle.

Clunk, rustle.

Clunk.

Clatter, clatter.

Clunk-rustle.

Oh, Calvin. Such a pill in the morning when he wants to be fed. So, up from my grave I arose, and down the ladder (our house has a ladder to your house's stairs, because it's cool like that) I went. Close the bedroom door, turn on the lights.

Aaaaaaaand this is what I saw:

Mommy's little hunter.

Oh, mother nature.

We watched him play with it for about half an hour before scooping the poor dear up into a shoebox and liberating it to the out-of-doors. Calvin refused to speak to us for exactly 20 minutes. K slept through the whole thing and appreciated the photos, as I figured she would. She's pretty dang tough.

So, apparently, I am mouse-clairvoyant. My fee is $129.95, plus travel expenses, for a complete assessment of whether your cat will catch a mouse in your house in the next few days.

I'm Still Here

2010-10-27T21:30:00.005-04:00

What is it about summer? Even though the academic rhythm no longer moves me, life still seems to morph into something other during the summer. This one was no exception. I've spent the last four months learning to be happy. I've spent the last four months letting go of all that I thought was absolute, discovering that what is ahead can be more beautiful than what is behind.

I've always believed that love cannot be boxed and categorized. This summer, my love came unboxed, shed its categories. My love ran away with me, grabbed me by the hand and ripped me through wild, exquisite terrain, down through valleys and soaring over mountains, basking on dunes of sand and bobbing along the soporific waves of a placid ocean. And I'm catching my breath now. What a ride.

I've learned to be truly okay with myself. I've learned to smile in the mirror, make a sexy face, sing out loud (still working on doing it in public, but give it time). I've learned to hold my pose when the person in front of me is foundering. I've learned to hear the person whom I couldn't hear before.

I no longer feel like I have to know. In fact, the more I learn, the less I know, and the less I know, the more okay I am. I don't feel like I need to voice what I think and feel, and I've been practicing keeping to myself mostly. Hence all the unanswered emails. Soooooo sorry about that. I've just really needed some space. I think I'm almost ready to come back now. A little longer. Thanks for holding me, loves. Thanks for asking. Knowing you're out there and that you care and that you haven't forgotten me ... well, there was a time when that got me out of bed in the morning. More and more, I get me out of bed in the morning, and I'm loving you all more and more as I do.

Since July, I've

seen two fireworks displays
seen four onstage performances
been hiking in an old, old, old forest with a(n old?) friend
read a few books
curled my hair
been paid for my artwork
said no to someone who wanted something from me
held hands
held space
held silence
held a friend
drawn a picture
fallen in love (twice)
decided to become a healer (of a yet-undetermined nature)

skipped through the woods
cried a little with a friend
cried alone a lot less than I used to
been radically, revolutionarily honest
said goodbye to a dear one over Mumm and the Decemberists
agreed to something crazy and spontaneous
let it go
embraced myself
embraced life
embraced grace
slept and slept and slept

I'm pretty sure that God is so much more and so much more loving and so much kinder than we give her credit for being.

I'm back (I hope). Please bear with me, as I learn to talk about the world with new words, with better words, with light and freedom. Please pray for me, because here come the holidays, Lord save us. Please keep holding me, friends. Please keep holding me.

Thanks, K

2010-09-13T12:22:00.004-04:00

"Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day … we become seekers." —Peter Matthiessen

Hot

2010-09-03T21:37:00.001-04:00

Just Try Not to Smile

2010-08-31T18:00:00.003-04:00

Home, Only Sweeter

2010-08-26T20:50:00.007-04:00

Whew. What a summer, folks. And what a fall, coming up. I keep starting this blog post and then, realizing that I don't have the mental capacity to write, deleting it. I haven't had much mental capacity lately. As you poor souls whose emails yet go unanswered know all too well.

My house is a mess. It's been a mess for about a month now. I'm slooooooooowly putting it back together, but the chaos of it is seeping into me. I'm not myself when my house is a mess.

A lot of people I love are hurting right now. There are divorce, terminal illness, abuse, dementia, poverty, and exhaustion plaguing people all around me. And this week, my body up and kaput on me, and here I lie, feverish and achy and wheezing, praying that I'm well enough to make the weekend trip I have planned, to visit one friend in prison and watch another friend in a play. How's that for whiplash?

I've taken the plunge, filled out the time-off-request form, made the announcement: late this fall, I'm headed home, to eastern Pennsylvania, to visit my family. And when I say "family," I mean my sister, my best friend from college, and a woman I like to pretend is my mom but isn't, not biologically anyway. When I say "family," I never mean the people to whom I'm related. For the record.

Christmastime in eastern Pennsylvania. Oh. Sweet. Lord. The baggage. Ohhhhhhh, the baggage. We'll be staying in downtown Philly for part of that time. Right in the middle of where soooooo much happened. And then in Easton, where soooooo much more happened. Just, so much. I fear the trip, the place, that it might swallow me. And I love the place too, and long for it with all my intensity, because I fled in such a frenzy, like leaving a play just before the denouement. I never found out how it ended, the life I was living there. The friendships cut off so abruptly that some people still have no idea what happened to me. Some people thought I was dead, can you believe it? I hope no one thinks that now.

I can't wait. I miss these people so much, people who are like extensions of my own soul. People I think about every single day and haven't seen in years. I've never taken a trip like this before, a trip when I only see people who love me. People who didn't abandon me. People to whom I my heart opens freely, to whom I don't wrench it open for obligation or guilt. People who want me. There aren't too many of those, where I come from.

I feel well now. Even when I meet the darkness that swims in my veins, I can still see the light. And still in me it is, that darkness. But it tastes different now, smells different, feels silky on my palate. Where there used to be old, tepid, cheap coffee, there is now dark chocolate. Still dark, but a welcome, worthy darkness. And now to learn what I am, who I am, with the sweetness and the softness. To do that, I'm going back to the place where I was, to feel it around me, to swim in it, and to feel myself in it. I know I must have something to offer to others, to the world, some way that I can reach out, give back, extend. But, Lord knows, I have no idea what or how.

And that's the

Achoo!

That's the

Achoo!

That's the news

Achoo!

Grrrrrr. That's the news from 'round here. I'm spent. I still promise pictures of my creations, when there's a bit more of me to go around. Off to

Achoo!

bed.

Every single one of us

2010-08-17T18:59:00.003-04:00

could use some

Also

[Please ignore the picture and just listen to the song; Michael F. doesn't make many videos.]

Don't let it go.

The song on my mind today

2010-08-16T11:45:00.006-04:00

is my favorite, and I finally understand why.

And every day, you gaze upon the sunset with such love and intensity. Why, it's almost as if you could only crack the code and you'd finally understand what this all means. But, if you could, do you think you would trade in all the pain and suffering? Ahh, but then you'd miss the beauty of the light upon this earth and the sweetness of the leaving. —Jane Siberry, "Calling All Angels"

The Grind

2010-08-09T13:00:00.004-04:00

I know it's been a while. I've been drowning in stuff. This is just a quick-and-dirty update, for you dear souls who care about the mundane details of my life. I'll write some more in-depth thoughts about this stuff when I get some time. For now, I'll do what, I believe, is called "goin' Lori-style."

The hormones are working. Oh, friends. There are no words to describe how beautiful it feels to have gone through an entire cycle without a giant emotional breakdown and the days and days of recovery it entails. How good it feels to have gone an entire month without convincing myself that everyone whom I love is repulsed by me. An entire month of being gentle with myself, caring for myself. It's been so long. The metaphor I've always used to describe how that darkness feels is that I am a fly trapped in amber, straining to move my wings and getting nowhere, suspended, imprisoned, watching all my fellow flies flit about, crushed by my incapacity. It feels like the amber has shattered, and the breeze is brushing my back, and all the colors look like they should again. I do hope it lasts.

I still can't sleep. Three weeks now. It got a little better, but it's gotten worse again. Four hours a night, five, three, then seven, then back to three. Last night, it was two and a half. This has to stop, because

I'm working on an artistic commission. I'm making jewelry for a play that runs for two weeks in Indianapolis at the end of this month. There will be a whole post on that, with pictures, when my work is done. It is a Big Job, and it's most of the reason why I've been scarce.

I'm learning Acroyoga. Oh, man. Let me tell ya. Acroyoga is the most intensely communal thing I've ever experienced. The sharing of energy and emotion, the complete trust in and of another human being, the feeling of supporting and being supported psychologically, spiritually, and physically, the intimacy and safety and love. I wish I were a writer, so I could tell you what it's placed in my heart. Tamie dear, if you're reading, take note: try it. You won't be sorry. Then please write about it, so someone with a far-finer grasp of the language than I have can communicate it.

I sit on a balance ball at work now. So far, my back is very grateful.

Sometime before the end of the year, I'm taking a trip to the east coast to visit the people who love me, them and only them. No obligations, no guilt or trying to please others. No visiting my mother. Just a two-week (hopefully)-long bath in love.

I am doing well. I am feeling strong and peaceful.

Shalom, brachot, and namaste.

If They Can Do It, Why Can't We?

2010-08-08T13:54:00.002-04:00

Also, my spirit animal is definitely the elephant. If you're into spirit animals.

Richard Rohr on Words

2010-07-29T06:17:00.001-04:00

As a rule, most people are afraid of silence. That’s our major barrier to prayer and to depth. Silence and words are related. Words that don’t come out of silence probably don’t say much. They probably are more an unloading than a communicating.

Heavy

2010-07-28T11:36:00.002-04:00

What a heart-heavy week. Among people for whom I care deeply,

someone is sitting beside her tiny son in an NICU, struggling to infuse him with life.

someone is having a long, difficult labor, for days and days and days, and is suffering.

someone's daughter, a little younger than I am, died of breast cancer this morning.

someone is sick.

someone is tired.

Sometimes it truly feels that there is so very little that we can do for each other. So terribly, terribly little.

Whoa, Baby

2010-07-26T20:56:00.002-04:00

Today, I found a primary care physician, in my insurance network, who told me that, if my pregnancies are healthy and low-risk, it makes absolutely no sense to deliver my babies in a hospital or even visit a doctor simply because I'm pregnant.

In other news, the world may end tonight.

Prayers Please

2010-07-26T07:39:00.003-04:00

If you all would send prayers and loving thoughts for my friend Christi, a lot of people would really appreciate it. Christi's been in labor (not active, but still intense) for more than a week now, and no one can figure out why the baby isn't coming. She's holding out to birth vaginally, and she's being so strong, but she's suffering, exhausted, and feeling defeated. They've tried every known natural means of helping labor to progress, to no avail. I know I can count on you all to surround a momma with your love and prayers.

Thanks guys.

Sometimes Yoga Is Cheeseburger in a Bar

2010-07-22T20:01:00.003-04:00

Tonight, my yoga teacher flew me. As in, she lifted me up by my hips with her feet and held me in the air while I hovered over her. For about five minutes. She held me in the air with her legs for five minutes. It was incredible.

All week I've been very, very tired. I stopped progesterone on Monday, and my energy levels have been sharply sliding down ever since. I've also been craving a cheeseburger like a drowning person craves air. Nothing else could possibly do. A cheeseburger. Aaaaaall week.

I had a very significant conversation this afternoon. The voice of the spirit, tender and persistent, finally took root: you are okay. I am okay. There's nothing wrong with me. I've been toiling tirelessly for nearly a year to find out, really and truly, I'm not messed up. I'm fine.

And I had planned to go to a group class after my private yoga class tonight. But my body was begging for rest and a cheeseburger. So my yoga, my union of body and spirit, tonight was sitting in a bar, alone, eating an organic chili cheeseburger with a locally grown organic salad, listening to indie rock and people watching. It was the first time in my thirty years that I've ever sat in a restaurant alone for a meal. And I was okay. I was happy to be alone there, resting, feeding my body. I felt so utterly not-alone: My husband was waiting at home for me. I'm making a beautiful new friend. I have all the old friends; I carry them with me everywhere. And the spirit, she just keeps breathing me, holding me, holding me until I hear her, holding me until I know.

Something is happening to me, I think.

P.S. In a few weeks, I'm going to a workshop to learn to do the yoga-flying thing. Anybody wanna come?

To Survive

2010-07-19T13:11:00.001-04:00

"All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up."

—James Baldwin

This weekend, I

2010-07-19T07:41:00.005-04:00

was wisely and kindly guided toward the next leg of my spiritual journey by a mentor I trust
drove for two hours while cranking Spearhead, twice
cheated on my diet majorly and enjoyed it sooooo much
confessed
collected myself
gave
received
meditated
prayed
taught
learned
made tea for a friend
spent most of a day hiking there → with someone who also stops to bow to the miracle of fungus and ferns and fish in a stream and makes me feel okay being me
had a higher concentration of incredibly satisfying conversations each day than I have since ... uhhh ....
had a real hug
laughed so hard that I inhaled my beer
and cried when it was all over.

Richard Rohr on Saint Bonaventure on Love

2010-07-15T08:00:00.003-04:00

Why did Jesus command us to love?

We must learn to move beyond ourselves, to set limits on our own needs and somehow to meet other people's needs. We actually need to do this for our own good! That's why Jesus commanded us to love—to get us started. So love is not a feeling, but a decision, yet a decision that increases our inner freedom each time we do it. You will know this only after you act on love.

Jesus didn't say when you get healed, love; when you grow up, love; when you get it together and have dealt with all your wounds, then love. No, the commandment for all of us is quite simply, “Love!” Once we know it is not a feeling, but a grace-empowered decision, we can all do it. And each time it is a growth in freedom—and flow.

St. Bonaventure’s vision of creation could be stated in this way:

God created in such a way that there would be free agents who could freely choose to love God in return, and thus become like God themselves—sharing in the divine perfection. The whole venture proceeds on the basis of our inner freedom to love, but we do not know we have that freedom and power until we, in fact, act on it.

—Richard Rohr

But for the Birds

2010-07-12T21:41:00.004-04:00

The Holy One speaks all languages. One of her most intelligible, in my life, has been birds.

When I was 16, I went to Ocean City, Maryland, with my foster family. It was a trying time for me, because I didn't fit in particularly well with this group of people, and they were brazen and chronic in reminding me of my outsider status: when the rest of the family ate steak, I had spaghetti, that sort of thing. My personality is of the sort that I need to know that I am special, wanted; feeling mediocre or insignificant or unwelcome is unbearable to me. Well, two weeks in a recreational vehicle with five of them was a perfect nightmare.

On the last day of the trip, I was feeling rather low, and I decided to walk down to the bay to hide out for a while. Even as a child, an undisturbed natural landscape was a balm to almost any of my aches. This bay had a small, deserted beach where sand dollars and hermit crabs washed ashore with every wave, tall grasses and cat tails pulsed and quivered in the salted Atlantic wind, and the rhythmic whisper of the water drowned the din of the consumer wasteland and coastal highway. It faded into marshland on one side. I crouched against a log, feet jammed into the wet sand, weeping and brooding with all the artifice of a dejected adolescent bohemian, when an emissary of the divine swooped over my head and alighted in the marsh: a towering, majestic whooping crane, no more than 50 feet away. I froze, awestruck, and forgot my misery. We sat in stillness together, the crane and me, appraising each other. He preened; I tugged at my stringy hair. He plucked morsels from the water; I chewed my fingernails. He whooped; I whimpered. He watched me, and I watched him, and there we sat in stillness.

As I kept company with the crane, I was struck by my loneness, my separateness. I felt special. How many people keep company with a crane? Certainly not anyone I was with. How many teenagers would cherish such an experience as I did? I felt like the only girl in the world in that half hour. Sure, I ate spaghetti when everyone else had steak, but I kept company with a crane.

The crane never left me. I knew that, eventually, someone would come looking for me, and I knew I needed to keep our secret, the mystery of our rendezvous. So to give sanctuary to my new friend and to defend his sacred haunt, I crept away, and he watched me go.

This is not the only profound experience of company with a bird I've had. You may recall the evening I spent with a community of geese last winter. A few months ago, I was walking in the woods with a friend after a difficult experience, and a hefty blue heron mounted the air above our heads so closely that I could feel the wind of his wings on my face; and I knew that everything would be okay. There have been cardinals and bluebirds, bald eagles and baby robins, hummingbirds and wild turkeys, and birds, and birds, and birds. So many messages have come to me in encounters with birds. When I see birds, I have to watch them. I have to hear them. I'd follow them if I could, anywhere they'd take me.

I may need to take up bird watching in earnest as a means of spiritual seeking. For real.

Pondering.

I'm Listening

2010-07-12T13:04:00.003-04:00

I've noticed that, when people don't comment on people's blogs, the authors get a little nervous. People like comments, and I feel the same way. When no one comments here for a while, I feel like posting this:

Hello-ooooooo! Is anybody out theeeeeeere-ere-ere-ere? Echo-ooo-ooo!

And I tend not to be the most vocal of blog readers. Often, I just don't know what to say. It's like a great conversation that's happening all around me; I love to listen, and if I don't think I have anything useful to say, I usually just shut up and listen. But I'm a very faithful blog reader. Very faithful. I even have one of those Google reading-thingies that tells me when people update their blogs. Sometimes, I want to leave a blank comment, just to let the author know that I'm listening, if it makes a difference. But I'm not sure that it does. And anyway, dumb Blogger won't let you do that.

All this to say, now I have a blog roll. It's not long. It's made of the blogs that I keep in the reading-thingie, of which I read every post.

So, to you on my blog roll: if it matters to you, I'm listening.

The Battle Continues ...

2010-07-11T21:24:00.003-04:00

I've officially been on progesterone for a week and a day. With the exception of day 1 (last Saturday), I've felt insanely calm and stable and on top of the world, like, what is this alien entity that has taken over my brain?

The Cyclical Week of Doom and Despair is still yet to come, and I'm shaking in my shoes about it. This is it. The test. Will it ever show its hideous face again? Has Progesterone Power vanquished the Nefarious Premenstrual Scourge of My Sanity? Or will I yet be undone?

I've not been feeling quite as skippy and light since Friday night. So I'm nervous. If you're a pray-er, I could use a few kind thoughts, I think.

Cross your fingers for me.

You Eat What???

2010-07-08T07:39:00.004-04:00

Kevin and I get a lot of raised-eyebrow inquiries and "but-what-about"s and "does-your-doctor-know-you-drink-raw-milk"s when we talk about our philosophy of food and how we eat.

Our philosophy of food is that we eat everything in as close to its natural state as possible. Our beef never ate grain. Our eggs come from free-wheeling local chickens, and they have yolks that are almost orange. Our milk isn't pasteurized, homogenized, skimmed, or labeled with a smiling cow. Our tomatoes are lumpy and tasty, our spices aren't irradiated, our yogurt has fat but not aspartame, our butter is butter.

We believe, with Hippocrates, that food is the first medicine. Right now, I'm treating impending diabetes with diet and supplements, and I can feel it working. What goes into our bodies matters, has a direct effect on our health, our relationships, our society, and the whole world. The violence done to us and the earth by a bag of Doritos is not worth the momentary msg high.

On Monday, I used a bookstore gift certificate that I got for Christmas to buy two books that I now recommend to you. They describe and are written from the perspective of our philosophy of food and would make valuable additions to the library of anyone who cares about these things and wants to learn to eat as nature intended. Cara dear: take note! 8) Andree: thanks!

They are

What to Eat by Marion Nestle

and

The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods by Michael Murray et al.

The first discusses things like what organic means, the difference between farmed and wild fish, bottled water, raw dairy products, rBGH, food processing, whole foods, whole grains, fair trade, country of origin labeling, supermarket layout, food politics, food safety, refining of sugar, infant formula and baby food, marketing food to children, and so on, and so on. The author teaches nutrition at NYU.

The second is a chunker, and it discuses specific foods, their chemical makeups, and the effects that those chemicals have on the body. Fans of the classic Prescription for Nutritional Healing should find it riveting. It's more up-to-date than that work, discussing glycemic index and load, and it has a friendlier, more-nuanced approach to fats.

Enjoy!

Everything

2010-07-06T17:31:00.006-04:00

I guess it's kinda been a while, huh? The last few weeks have been so full and so draining. This last year has been so full and so draining. Overall, I'm feeling optimistic and excited about what's happening in my life, though, with some other things, not so much. Here is everything that's on my mind right now, most of the reasons I've been so scarce.

I'm beginning to settle into my spiritual pilgrimage. For so long, I was finding who I'm not, reacting against, rejecting, abandoning, recoiling, running away. I feel now that I'm seeing who I am, I'm opening to, embracing, standing still. I truly believe that I am good and holy, who I am made to be, and I am complete in my createdness. I'm learning how to pray, how to sit with God in stillness and be, how she comes to me, and how her voice sounds. I'm learning how wide and broad and open is her heart, that there is a place for me in it, and a place for everyone I love. I'm learning how to rest my own love for others in her love for us all and that our connectedness is perfect in that love. There is real connection, and I do have access to it, even while crying out in the loneliest of moments. I've discovered spiritual kindred in Thomas Merton and Kathleen Norris and in a few people in my life. I've become confident that grace extends beyond, around, and through us all. I've stopped fretting over my fallenness. I am free to roam, free to question, free to doubt, free to wonder, free to love how and whom I love, and I am not beyond grace or holiness or wholeness. And I am not, in fact, any more deficient or defective than any other person. I am not the chief of sinners; we are all the same, all precious in our uniqueness. I let go to the mystery.

Last night was my first class in which my new yoga studio is my home. I've been attending classes there sporadically ever since I found out how soon I'd be needing a new home, six weeks ago. I'm looking forward to knowing new people and new teachers and learning more and growing stronger, becoming more able to bend. It's a good studio, with good teachers. Something, of course, is missing there, something that was part of my practice for a time but can no longer be. How I long for that missing thing right now. Savasana last night was so hard. (And long! Oh, mercy, the relief when Angela rang the bell!) But I will hold this pose, and I will keep breathing. I've signed up for ten weeks of classes and twenty weeks of private lessons. This change of scenery seems to be bearing with it a few new friendships, which is so nice. Good friends are few around here for one who doesn't fit in with the Bible-conservative crowd. And I need more friends.

Two friends who are very dear to me moved away last week. My heart doesn't privilege blood relations like most people's do, and my friends are my family, especially friends who live nearby and share life with me. You know, the cup-of-sugar-(or, in this case, beans)-borrowing friends. I feel the absence of a sister and brother, and I'm hurting. But I do know that I haven't really lost anything, and they're gaining so much, and I'm truly thrilled for them, and this too shall pass. Helping them prepare to move was a very sweet blessing to me, and I'm thankful.

And then there's the ol' bod. Readers, you may have noticed that sometimes my blog is a bit of a downer. It's because, sometimes, I can be a bit of a downer. But there's hope now that my downer days are numbered. A month ago, through a series of referrals (that is, "I can't help you, but here's a business card for someone who might"), I ended up in the office of a group of naturopathic doctors, one of whom, Kelly, specializes in hormonal disorders. See, for as long as I can remember, I've had all these weird symptoms, like acne and insomnia and low energy and mood swings. They've all gotten more and more severe in the last seven or so months, and the worst is intense depression and anxiety in the second half of my cycle. Friends, I just can't begin to describe how awful it feels. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't concentrate on anything, I have no energy, I feel like all of my friends must hate me, I can't stop thinking all these dark, tragic thoughts. I'm too exhausted to move, but I'm so nervous and restless that not moving is torture. And forget about sex. Well, in the last three months or so, it's been three quarters of my cycle. Last month, I never came out of it. I've lost 20 pounds since November. I've cried on more shoulders in that time than I have in my entire life. (You all know who you are: I'd have lost it completely without you. Thank you, thank you.)

Let me say again: my husband is a saint. I've married a saint.

God bless Kelly's kind, compassionate heart. The woman is a genius. She didn't chide me or argue with me or talk to me like I'm twelve. She honored my intelligence and what I know about myself, listened to me, reassured me. She let me keep my clothes on and didn't pressure me into an unwanted pelvic exam. And she tested my blood to find out what's actually wrong with me! It turns out that I have insulin resistance, hyperthyroidism, and polycystic ovary syndrome, which sounds like a lot, but really, it's not so bad. Because now I have something to do, something that she says should fix everything! All I have to do is cut carbohydrates and sugar completely out of my diet, eating mostly raw foods, protein sources, and healthy fats. I have to take supplements to control my blood sugar and bioidentical progesterone for half of my cycle. That's it!

I started the progesterone on Saturday. Duuuude. I feel like a completely different person. I feel like I can cope with life! And I like the diet. I don't care at all about sugar. Giving up pasta is hard, but after a few months I'll be able to cheat once in a while. This morning, I had plain full-fat organic yogurt with blueberries and a cup of black tea with raw milk for breakfast. Lunch was a salad with greens, tomatoes, a small carrot, and an avocado with olive oil and vinegar, and a small can of smoked wild sardines in mustard (yum!). Dinner will be vegetable soup with beans and a little grass-finished beef, a glass of wine, and cherries for dessert. And I munch on raw nuts all day. You may beg to differ with my sardines-in-mustard addiction (which I developed while still toddling), but doesn't the rest of it sound delicious? Since I started the diet a week ago, I've slept through the night three times. I haven't done that in months!

On Saturday night, Kevin and I and a friend of ours and her brother snuck into the yard of an under-construction lakefront property and had a perfect view of two fireworks displays. I let the water caress my feet and the laughter of my companions caress my soul. Through biting sadness, I felt hopeful, and I knew I wasn't alone.

In August, I'll be heading down to Rockville, Indiana, for a weekend to visit two friends of mine who are in state prison. I've never been to a prison before, and I'm nervous, but I love my friends, and I want to be with them.

Yesterday, we found out that a close relative of Kevin's is very sick and probably won't live more than a few years. Four other of his relatives may be moving a few states to the south very soon, including one that I had dearly hoped to get to know.

My baby sister will be 21 in a few weeks!

My mother called twice today to cuss me out because someone pissed her off and she needed to take it out on someone, and that's usually where I come in. There was a time when I didn't care so much when she treated me like this, but now I care a lot, and I don't know what to do about it. Because it's not like she's going to change, and it's not like I'm going to have another mom. I really want to call my mom and tell her about all the stuff that's going on in my body. I want to garden with my mom and go shopping with my mom and cook with my mom and watch movies with her and go for walks with her and get to know her and let her know me. I want to cry on her shoulder when I'm sad. I want her to call me "sweetheart" and listen when I talk and be proud of me. But I can't, and she won't, and I hate it. I'm the only one in the world who knows the real her, the her that's trapped beneath the monster, and I really like her. She's witty and creative and passionate and empathetic. She loves art, philosophy, history, politics, and music, and she's the most amazing cook. She taught herself to speak and read Latin. She plays tennis and paints and sculpts and reads all the time. She's a genius. (No, a real one. She's gotten perfect scores on IQ tests.) She wants to be a lawyer so she can defend people who are being hurt by more powerful people. She used to volunteer in group homes for people with cognitive disabilities. Her favorite color is blue. God, I wish the monster would just die, so I could have her.

And finally, Kevin and I have decided that, come fall, we will have been camping several times. And so we bought a tent.

Blessed Are The

2010-06-21T20:48:00.005-04:00

My rad friend Jon has some beautiful, encouraging ideas about church, reconciliation, and a consummately spiritual life. Jon and people like him, with ideas like his, give me hope that there may be a place for me in the world, a safe, welcoming home where I can contribute and grow. Hope that this pilgrimage from fragmentation to holiness may yet culminate on this earth. There isn't much else right now that offers me that kind of hope.

Read this

and then this

and then this.

Amen.

I'd really like to give it a go. Is anybody with me?

The True Society of Charity

2010-06-17T08:42:00.003-04:00

The more we are alone with God, the more we are with one another, in darkness, yet a multitude. And the more we go out to one another in work and activity and communication, according to the will and charity of God, the more we are multiplied to him, and yet we are in solitude.

The more we are alone, the more we are together; the more we are together, and the more we are in society, the true society of charity, not of cities and crowds, the more we are alone with him. For in my soul and in your soul, I find the same Christ who is our Life, and he finds himself in our love, and together we all find paradise, which is the sharing of his love for his father in the person of their spirit.

—Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

With help from Mr. Merton and moved by the Holy Spirit, I've been dwelling lately on solitude and aloneness, crowding and community. This past weekend, resting at a monastery in southern Michigan with a friend, breathed life into so many of these nebulous musings, and my mind and heart are still bending in the heaviness of that wind. Here are a few of those thoughts.

Healthy, life-giving solitude and healthy, life-giving community cannot exist apart from each other. Without the grounding of "the true society of charity," solitude is only aloneness; without the soul-space of holy solitude, the collective is nothing but a crowd. I think that most of us in this life experience neither solitude nor society. Rather, the introverts among us withdraw from the crowd that jostles us, nursing our bruises in the solace of aloneness. The extroverts among us drink in the analgesic of the crowd to numb the empty pangs of isolation.

I am beginning to think that introversion and extroversion are actually the same: they are the reactions of overwrought human beings to this pathological cycle of crowding and aloneness and anesthesia and withdrawal. But where there are abundant love, support, and nurture from many nearby sources, a person can be secluded but not isolated. And when a person attains the openness that only solitude brings, she can give of herself with abandon to love and the well-being of the collective.

I am an introvert, and I seek solitude. But when I am alone, I feel Alone. I never experience the true solitude I crave, because my solitude is not punctuated by the society of charity, living love flowing around and through me, ever-present and full of grace. I only withdraw to nurse my bruises. My dear, precious friends are so lonely, though we eat together and sit together and hold hands and say over and over "I love you, I really do." They are alone, and I am alone, and we can do nothing to relieve each other's aloneness because we are but a collection of alone souls and not a community. We do not share life so much as we comfort each other in our shared isolation. And we leave each other behind, seeking the togetherness that we do not have together, and all our hearts break, again and again, as we see each other off to the next seclusion or crowd, and the next.

This weekend, I spent a lot of time by myself. I walked and walked and walked among the trees, I sat in stillness and read and wrote and slept and sang to myself and to my God. And I felt whole and peaceful. I spend most moments of most days fleeing an encroaching inky gloom, a black beast that threatens to swallow me each time I let my guard down for a rest. But this weekend, the beast took leave of its pursuit, left me to my solitude, and I was Not Alone. I was Not Alone because I was not alone. This weekend, I glimpsed With.

A monastery is a keenly With place, a complex and harmonious chorus of solitary lives melded in a communal Life. I felt a bit of this With, in part because I was there with someone. Not only was the With present, but I belonged to it, and it to me. This With sustained my solitude, allowed me a depth of soul-space and rest that I never experience. It permitted me the gift of bowing to, altering my behavior to benefit and nurture another. It was a shelter in which to be humble, to bow beside. What rare treasures are opportunities to love and be loved quietly, in mundane, unseen ways, to share the small things of life and faith, to bow to and to bow beside again and again and again. Rarer all the time.

For 48 blessed hours, I couldn't ache or cry.

Returning to the aloneness and crowd was a shock; the world felt strange, like cardboard and molasses, and I wanted to flee it. I don't know what it means, what to do. I don't know how to find the true society of charity. Has anyone out there ever seen it? Can true society be had outside monastery walls? Can it be had regardless of geography? Can it be had though hundreds of miles separate its members? Is there genuine, abiding connection? Is there hope?

I came across this on the monastery's website, and I've been considering writing my own liturgy of life, that my life may be an embodiment of the true society of charity. But my isolation and increasing distance from most of the love in my life discourage me from it. I wonder if a virtual monastery is possible: friends and soul-siblings all over the world sharing life by embodying the same values and walking in the same rhythm. Like the one sun. Like the one Christ. I'm not good at starting things, but maybe I ought to try. Maybe this ravenous hankering of mine is the high and holy purpose of the One.

Let us pray.

Untitled

2010-06-14T07:47:00.023-04:00

Saturday

2010-06-10T20:08:00.014-04:00

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."
—Mary Oliver

Hi, Honey!

2010-06-03T22:27:00.001-04:00

Kevin is in Ohio right now to help his parents with some remodeling, and here I rest, alone in our living room in Winona Lake. Sniff. We're on Skype together, doing our respective own things and not really talking. He doesn't know that my respective thing is to write about him. Heh heh heh. We just passed our fourth wedding anniversary, and I was going to write this to post on that day, but life intervened, as life tends to do. So here it is, a little late and a little less eloquent than I would like, because I'm tired: a tribute to my kind, sincere, thoughtful, mindful, faithful, gentle partner, lover, soulmate, and dearest friend.

Kevin is the best listener I know. If you need someone to listen compassionately and without judgment to your life story, for hours and hours, give him a call.

Kevin is as respectful as they come. He is a true egalitarian: he acknowledges and bows to the worth and dignity of every soul, without regard for gender or lifestyle or prior convictions. When I met him, his best friends were all women. Not fluffy cheerleader types either; his friends were intelligent, articulate, humble women of substance. I (and only I) know in whom he was interested before me, and I can tell you that he's always only ever noticed intelligent women of substance.

Kevin is a nuanced thinker. He rejects fundamentalism in all its manifestations and considers every tiny complexity of an issue before forming an opinion. He's crazy intelligent and is good at most things.

Kevin is a peaceful man. He'll never carry a gun, and he doesn't raise his voice. He is verrrrrrry slow to anger. In four years of marriage, we've had one fight. He never, ever attempts to dominate me or anyone or anything else. Our home is placid and safe.

Kevin has an amazing sense of humor. It's dry, intelligent, and never lewd. He's so playful: he chases me around the house, does funny dances to make me laugh, and fireman-carries me to bed. He just made a goofy face at the Skype camera thingie, because I have a serious face when I write.

Kevin has a great body. And he takes very good care of me. If you know what I mean.

Kevin is an actor. He's good at it too! Any of you who have ever hung out with us theatre peeps know how rad it is that he's a theater peep. Fo sho.

Kevin gave away our tv. Huzzah!!!!!

Kevin puts the seat down, takes out the trash, puts the cap back on the toothpaste, does the laundry, cuts the grass, washes the dishes, cleans the litter and feeds the cat, makes me tea every morning, gets me a glass of water before bed every night, and brings me unsolicited hot foot baths.

Kevin has the guts to be my partner. He wasn't intimidated by my past, isn't intimidated by me. My relatives don't freak him out, and he's genuinely fond of my remarkable baby sister. I can just be me, all of me, and I'm safe. We have lively, long, intense discussions about all manner of things, and we have quite a few divergent perspectives, and he's never insecure.

Kevin works as an au pair for a single mother of three boys. He takes such good care of those boys. He's wise when they're difficult, tender and nurturing when they're hurting, patient and understanding when they lash out because they're bothered by life and don't yet know how to express their pain. He bikes with them, plays catch with them, takes them to the zoo and the park, teaches them what he knows, keeps the tv off, and hugs them goodbye. Please pray that I can get pregnant so I can make him a dad. If any man was ever born to be a dad, he was.

Kevin leaves me alone when I need to be alone and lets me cling when I need to cling, and never complains about either.

Kevin touches me a lot. He rubs my shoulders and my feet, hugs me at least once an hour, holds my hand, and lends me an arm as we walk in the street. When we walk together, he always walks between me and the traffic.

Kevin lets me feed him a flexitarian diet, even though he grew up eating meat three times a day. He eats vegetables! Lots of them!

When my grandfather died and we spent a week with my grandmother in Philadelphia, Kevin spent days taking care of things around the house that Grandpop normally would have done for her. He even recorded her new answering machine message so that a male voice might mask the fact that she was living alone.

When my grandmother died nine weeks later and I inherited her house and then it flooded, Kevin carried me through those wretched six months. He made phone calls, reminded me of everything I forgot to do, kept my mother at bay, drove me to and from Philadelphia over and over and over, hauled carload after carload of junk from their house, sorted and lifted and scraped and scrubbed and recycled and read documents and picked up meals and put up with my relatives.

When my mom is being particularly nasty, Kevin tells her off for me (kindly but firmly). The last time she physically attacked me was four and a half years ago, and he hasn't let me be alone with her since. No one on earth has ever defended me before.

When a friend of ours was fresh from a breakup last year and had dinner at our house, Kevin came home from work with four pints of the best organic ice cream he could find, because he wanted to comfort her.

When he talks to a child, Kevin gets down on his knees and looks her in the eye.

When someone is cold, Kevin gives up his jacket.

When someone is tired, Kevin gives up his seat.

Happy, happy four years. Happy fifty or sixty more!

On Being Alone Together and Together Alone

2010-05-30T08:07:00.004-04:00

Thomas Merton, The New Seeds of Contemplation:

Physical solitude has its dangers, but we must not exaggerate them. The great temptation of modern people is not physical solitude but immersion in the mass of other people, not escape to the mountains or the desert (would that more people were so tempted!) but escape into the great formless sea of irresponsibility which is the crowd. There is actually no more dangerous solitude than that of the person who is lost in the crowd, who does not know she is alone and who does not function as a person in a community either. She does not face the risks of true solitude or its responsibilities, and at the same time the multitude has take all other responsibilities off her shoulders. Yet she is by no means free of care; she is burdened by the diffuse, anonymous anxiety, the nameless fears, the petty itching lusts, and the all-pervading hostilities which fill mass society the way water fills the ocean.

Mere living in the midst of other people does not guarantee that we live in communion with them or even in communication with them. Who has less to communicate than the mass-man? Very often, it is the solitary who has the most to say; not that he uses many words, but what he says is new, substantial, unique. It is his own. Even though he says very little, he has something personal which he is able to share with others. He has something real to give because he himself is real.

Where people live huddled together without true communication, there seems to be sharing, and a more genuine communion. But this is not communion, only immersion in the general meaninglessness of countless slogans and clichés repeated over and over again so that in the end one listens without hearing and responds without thinking. The constant din of empty words and machine noises, the endless booming of loudspeakers end by making true communication and true communion almost impossible. Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility. She doesn't care, she doesn't hear, she doesn't think. He does not act, he is pushed. She does not talk; she produces conventional sounds when stimulated by the appropriate noises. He does not think; he secretes clichés.

Mere living alone does not isolate a person; mere living together does not bring people into communion. The common life can either make one more of a person or less or a person, depending whether it is truly common life or merely life in a crowd. To live in the midst of others, sharing nothing with them but the common noise and the general distraction, isolates a person in the worst way, separates him from reality in a way that is almost painless. It divides him off from his true self. Here the sin is not the conviction that one is not like other people; it is in the belief that being like them is sufficient to cover every other sin. The complacency of the individual who admires her own excellence is bad enough, but it is more respectable than the complacency of the person who has no self-esteem because she has not even a superficial self which she can esteem. She is not a person, not an individual, only an atom. This atomized existence is sometimes praised as humility or as self-sacrifice, sometimes called obedience, sometimes devotion to the dialectic of class war. It produces a kind of peace that is not peace but only the escape from an immediately urgent sense of conflict. It is the peace not of love but of anesthesia. It is the peace not of self-realization and self-dedication but of flight into irresponsibility.

A Meditation

2010-05-29T07:55:00.003-04:00

I find this both formidable and freeing.

If you keep listening to the love, if you keep receiving the love, trusting the love—even with all your limitations, with all your unworthiness, with all your limited intellect or whatever you feel holds you back—you start to experience within yourself a sense of possibility. Whatever life is inviting you into, you have this sense that it’s okay, and even better, that you can do it! That’s the joy of the saints. Now you don’t have to do it by the world’s criteria of success or performance. As Mother Teresa loved to say, “The only real success is faithfulness.” To be faithful to this inner love is in itself the greatest success. It is of itself the possibility. No outer successes are necessary to be happy.

This is what makes the mystics sort of dangerous. It’s not just possibility they experience—but permission. It’s permission to color outside the lines. It’s permission to be who you really are. It’s not just gay people who have to come out of their closets. We’re all in our closets. They’ve just given us a good metaphor for what we all have to do. We’re all afraid to come out of our various closets. It’s not the need to be outrageous or rebellious. It’s so much better than that. It’s just permission to be that image and likeness of God that you really are. You are unlike any other image or likeness. God is saying, “I’m expecting you to return to God simply but totally who you really are!”

—Richard Rohr, Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate

In This Moment

2010-05-28T08:49:00.005-04:00

A cool, damp breeze is quietly but firmly sweeping the sleep from my mind, with the help of green tea, honey, and lemon.

I'm praying for inner peace today, certainty, faith, connection, pure love, and strength. I'm praying for the people in my heart, one by one.

I'm looking forward, so gratefully and humbled by the grace I enjoy, to a haircut.

I'm breathing and trying to be mindful.

I'm remembering where I was four years ago today, which truly was the happiest day of my life (to that point). I'm thinking of the green cymbdium orchids with which my dear husband surprised me at my office yesterday, for the occasion.

I'm sitting with this exhortation from Thomas Merton, with introspection, questioning myself and my motives.

True solitude is the home of the person, false solitude the refuge of the individualist. The person is constituted by a uniquely subsisting capacity to love—by a radical ability to care for all beings made by God and loved by him. Such a capacity is destroyed by the loss of perspective. Without a certain element of solitude there can be no compassion because when one is lost in the wheels of a social machine he is no longer aware of human needs as a matter of personal responsibility. One can escape from people by plunging into the midst of a crowd!
Go into the desert not to escape others but in order to find them in God.

I'm clinging to the knowledge that everything is going to be okay.

What a Day

2010-05-22T18:40:00.001-04:00

I woke up at 12:30 and 1:30 and 2 and 3 and 3:30 and 4 and 4:30. I gave up, got out of bed, showered, and sat with myself quietly until 7. Then I left for Goshen.

In Goshen at 8, I met with a wonderful Anusara teacher to talk to her about my chronic (and infuriating!) back and hip pain. She was so helpful and uplifting. It turns out that I have an injured first chakra, which dissociates me from my body (which I already sensed), causing all manner of unpleasantness in all areas of my life. Healing my first chakra should go a long way toward healing the rest of me. I learned, among other things, that hot baths, hugs from friends, foot massages, yoga, organic apples, lovemaking, and the fragrance of trees are not just happy additions to life; they're crucial elements of my spiritual formation and personal actualization. I'll take it!

I went from that appointment to another appointment, with a local spiritual director to talk about that possibility for me. The meeting ended with a resounding "yes, please!" and an exciting homework assignment. It feels so right to invite a wise and objective someone into my life who can help me to discern my path and my blind spots in a gentle, kind way.

I came home and thought and read for a few hours. Then I went to the woods by myself and climbed through the brambles for a few more hours. And supper is scrambled eggs with gruyere cheese, roasted sweet potatoes, and green salad.

I am encouraged, friends. Today, I felt myself emerging from loneliness and woundedness into connection with the earth and her people, with God and her people, with my own life and her people. I am encouraged that healing for me is taking the form of feeling my body, caring for my self, reaching out to people I love for help and support when I need it, and living an integrated life. I've always thought it has to hurt if it's to heal, and that has been true of late, but it's also been true that healing has come in the form of resting my head on the shoulder of a friend and breathing there, sitting alone with my back to a tree and digging my toes into the mud, eating when I need to, playing with blocks and a teddy bear like I should have done when I was 5, standing on my hands.

And speaking of eating when I need to, I think the sweet potatoes are ready. Time to make the eggs.

What a day.

Hey, Strangers

2010-05-19T21:46:00.004-04:00

I know, I know. It's been a while. Do you ever have times when you fold into yourself and just don't want to talk? I do. I haven't wanted to talk much lately, at least not the kind of talking that fizzles through the ether and flashes, sterile, soundless, scentless, and abstract, across my laptop screen. The internet has been making me lonely. Crazy lonely. I've been craving company. I want to sit with a person, walk side by side, arm in arm. I want to hear a voice. Smell someone's body. Part with a hug, knowing it'll only be a day or two until the next time.

Opportunities for that are so rare and precious. They're becoming rarer and more precious all the time. I'm not okay with that. I don't think I can be. And I don't know what to do about it.

I'm grateful for the sun today. I needed the sun so badly. I've been so cold for the last few weeks. You know what I love most about the sun? There's only one, and we all share it. You and I, no matter who or where you are, share that one sun. Look up at the sun tomorrow, if you can. I will too. It'll be the same one. Have you ever seen An American Tail? Remember that song the two mice sing, when they're far apart and longing to be together? It helps me too, a little, to think of everyone who is not here, whom I can't see or smell or hear or touch, sleeping underneath the very same big sky as I do. God. I hope heaven really is the place where we're all together forever.

Title of the Post

2010-05-15T09:24:00.001-04:00

This, friends, is why I can't stand pop music.

Sunday Morning

2010-05-14T08:26:00.000-04:00

Heh. Heh heh. Hehhehhehhehheh. Hmph. Hm.

The Message

2010-05-10T22:36:00.003-04:00

I've been hearing this message lately, everywhere. From friends. From teachers. From incidental people I encounter as I live. From God.

Follow your heart. The answer is already in you. You are doing everything right. Lean into yourself. Be.

Tonight, I want to stop fighting it, because everything I see is beautiful and pure, holy and free and so, so right. But I don't know what it means to stop fighting it. I don't know how to trust myself.

I want a tree. A thick, reaching, towering, ancient tree. A kind, soft, fragrant, whispering tree. A tree that will nurse me, shelter me, let me nest in her arms. I want to build a house in her, and hang a swing from her, and play with her like I've never been able to play before. I want her roots to be my roots. I want a tree that will never go anywhere as long as I live, never stop holding me as long as I live, never stop being my home as long as I live.

And it's okay. I'm okay. I'm really really really really really okay. It may be unusual, and it may not be what everyone wants. But it's okay. Even if I want a tree more than anyone else has ever wanted a tree or does or ever will again, even if a tree means more to me than it means to a single other person on earth. Even if I devote all my life and everything I have to the tree. It's holy and good and okay. I know it is.

Maybe she's out there somewhere, my tree. If I never find her, grace of the Lord be with me, I will never stop looking for her.

Untitled

2010-04-29T14:02:00.001-04:00

I want to ask for your prayers and positive energy today. My heart is gravid.

This morning I joined about 20 other people at the county "justice" building, to sit with a dear friend of ours, a gentle, humble, open, loving, compassionate, gracious, optimistic, strong, intelligent, talented, insightful, curious, diligent, always-improving, always-healing, always-growing, always-seeking woman, as she was sentenced to six years in state prison (for doing something that is unwise and technically illegal, but not wrong at all and that she did as an act of compassion). A well-spoken elder woman from our church took the stand, vouched for our friend's beautiful character, and begged for mercy; the judge looked annoyed and didn't even glance up from his desk. All he said was (my paraphrase) "Look how long your list of prior offenses is! I don't care how good a person you really are. I think the law is fair. Next!"

The officer who took her away at least let everyone hold her for a time, let her say goodbye to her mother, and didn't put handcuffs on her. With her overnight bag, a shoebox, and her Bible, she turned and walked to the front of the room, behind a wall where the officer was waiting, and that was it.

We came home to an email from our pastor. His dear, sweet wife has cancer, and the doctors don't know where it's coming from, so they can't treat it.

So please pray with me. But not for me; I am hurting now, but this suffering is not mine. Pray that grace and love flood these circumstances, that I can somehow be a conduit.

Thanks for listening.

Would you like a peek at my sketchbook?

2010-04-25T15:46:00.004-04:00

Here's a doodle I did yesterday, part of a larger project I'm brewing.

It's prettier in person, but you get the idea. If the whole project turns out to my liking, I'll show you that too.

Congratulations, Little Boy

2010-04-24T15:00:00.002-04:00

Two weeks ago, my brilliant and uncannily cool friend Dave judged the 2010 Cherry Blossom Festival haiku competition in Fort Wayne. Though the competition was open to all ages, Dave chose as the winning entry a haiku written by a four-year-old boy. Here it is.

Steve is my monkey.
Space Man is in my pocket.
I love mac 'n' cheese.

We discussed the poem over dinner last night. Isn't it beautiful? It captures a quintessential moment in the life of this little boy: his favorite, comfy stuffed animal; the toy that holds his current attention; and what he wants for lunch.

Isn't Dave a genius? Yes. Yes, he is.

Her Room

2010-04-24T14:45:00.005-04:00

Last weekend, Kevin and I spent Saturday afternoon at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. It was unassuming as art museums go, but it boasted a lovely traveling exhibition of the works of N. C., Andrew, and James Wyeth. I am particularly captivated by Andrew's work; it has a haunted quality, a silent desolation and anguished delicacy that one might expect from a person whose childhood and coming-of-age took place in the first half of the 20th century. The painting below, Her Room, was featured prominently in the gallery's entrance hall. I stared at it for a long time, racked with chills.

My struggle is to preserve that abstract flash—like something you caught out of the corner of your eye, but in the picture, you can look at it directly.

I search for the realness, the real feeling of a subject, all the texture around it. ... I always want to see the third dimension of something. ... I want to come alive with the object.

—Andrew Wyeth

A Convoluted Musing on What It Means to Have a Vagina (or a Penis, If You Prefer)

2010-04-24T13:16:00.028-04:00

My friend Jon recently wrote this piece about our culture's obsession with bigness. It complements well something that I think about a lot: the beauty and value of smallness and slowness and femininity. So go read what Jon wrote, and then come back here and keep reading.

I'll wait for you.

. . .

What do you think? He hits it, doesn't he? I think Jon illustrates well the point that "small is better." But how many of us believe this, really? When we think of size and speed and gender, are we indulging in a bit of doublethink? Hear me out—and I beg your forgiveness for my lack of cohesiveness here. I'm really shooting from the hip, as it were. I'll try to make that my last cliché. No promises though.

When I was in art school, I received very mixed messages from the faculty and the greater visual arts community about gender and size and the meaning and place of womanness. I was told in my studio classes to make big art, because small = stereotypically feminine = not liberated = bad. At every turn, I encountered a reflexive raging against the small and "girly." My ceramics professor wanted every cup and saucer to be twice its expected size; his teapots could hold a full gallon (and they were butt-ugly*, but that's not the point). But my muses were the likes of Judy Chicago and Georgia O'Keefe and Mary Cassatt and Camille Caudel, aroused as I was by the engulfing, electric femininity of their work. These women moved me toward embracing and celebrating my own womanness and that of my sisters. Several of my professors embodied this electric femininity and encouraged me to allow it to overtake my creative self. Now, I'm not talking about dresses or underwires or long hair or pink. I'm talking about blood, the vigor and potency deep in belly that gives life, the excruciating drive to sustain and nourish life, and a way of viewing and relating to all of the world and people in light of this gravid impetus. I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't, let's have a drink together, and I'll try to explain it better.

I'm also not talking about a woman/man or butch/femme dichotomy. I think that in every person is a symphony of harmonious masculine and feminine energy. I can't defend this philosophically or biologically, but in my gut I grok it. In the biblical creation myth, God creates humankind (adam) in his image and likeness, and then divides the person in two, creating male (ish) and female (ishah). Adam has traditionally been viewed as male, the woman being created as a secondary being, an afterthought, a partner or helper or tool to please and accompany the man. But I like to think of adam as a genderless being, and the creation of ish and ishah as an equal division of the human; the genders are equal halves of one whole, and their distinction is secondary to their unity. We femme and butch, male and female, women and men are in reality one, all adam, all within and around and through each other. So much so that "each other" makes less sense all the time. We are always only ever we. Thomas Merton says that the person "who lives in division is not a person but only an 'individual.'" The person "who lives in division lives in death." This person is "lost" and "has ceased to be a reality." Thich Nhat Hanh says that "we are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness." Jesus prayed that his followers be one, even as he and the Father are one. Oneness, similarity, interconnectedness is reality, is life. I believe that this applies to gender.

I cringe at discussions of gender that rest on the presumptions that x cannot be feminine because many men feel it, and y cannot be masculine because many women do it. I prefer y is the feminine essence of every person; x is the masculine in each of us. Traditional gender roles and stereotypes may be arbitrary constructs; I think they largely are. But does this necessitate that masculinity and femininity are false? Perhaps people have simply abused the terms, or unfairly limited them, or forced them to be where they ought not be. Frankly, I don't see what is really wrong with a man, even disregarding sexual orientation, embracing and nourishing the feminine elements of himself, or a woman the masculine elements of herself.

Not only does our culture not seem to value what is relatively small, it also does not value what is relatively slow. I don't need to analyze this out; we all know it is true: slower is not better. Furthermore, slowness is often associated with femininity. Women, because of their body shape and smaller musculature, generally cannot run as fast as men. Slowness is inherent to women's sexual and reproductive selves: we often become aroused and reach orgasm more slowly, and our culture pokes fun at this. If you don't believe me, watch a few prime-time sitcoms. Pregnancy, birth, and motherhood make it "hard" for us to "keep up" with the professional and social world around us. Culture has offered to "fix" this for us with pitocin and cesarean sections, daycare centers and birth control pills. Please don't hear in this a condemnation of these things; I am only questioning their use as conveniences that "help" women exit the "dark ages" of vocational motherhood and long natural birth; I am questioning why we have come to view these conveniences as desirable. I am asking: from what are we being held back by what makes us slow? Why do we want those things? Women are praised when they "keep up" with the fast, masculine pace of the professional world. Men often feel ashamed when they exit the rat race and enter the slower-paced, feminine space of nurturing and living by the dictate of the biological rather than the atomic clock.

[I suppose I am rather sensitive to how our culture views the relatively small and slow and feminine because I am all of these things. I am about the size of the average 11-year-old boy, and I am often approached as a child. Though I am 30 years old and I was keeping house and a child (my sister) and taking care of myself entirely decades before my peers, people still try to parent me, speak to me in the same tone of voice they use for their children, try to "help" me to be how they think I "should" be. I also do most things with slow, careful deliberation: I read, write, bike, drive, pray, think, fall asleep, wake up, dress, breathe, cut onions more slowly and deliberately than what seems to be the norm. Sometimes, my slowness is mistaken for incompetence, and I receive a good bit of unsolicited and unnecessary advice and supervision. So, yes, what I observe about smallness and slowness and femininity is partly a personal issue for me.]

So here is the point of all this: why are small and slow and feminine considered inferior, and how does the (even unconscious) assumption that they are influence how we view gender and each other and ourselves? I have no answer. I suspect, though, that at least some of the sensitivity and defensiveness surrounding discussions of gender has a lot to do with the (arbitrary, really) perception that femininity and all that is associated with it is inferior. What is wrong with a person's being relatively small, slow, and emotionally available and yet having male genitals? What is wrong with a larger, physically stronger, more aggressive person with female genitals? Why must a woman do what is "masculine" but be what is "feminine" to be valued? Why is a man ashamed of doing or being what is "feminine"? Why is a woman who is butch or a man who is femme viewed with repulsion? Why is a "masculine" man more or a "feminine" woman less (or more)? I've heard it argued that one source of homophobia is a repulsion surrounding a man's being in the sexually "submissive" role, that being penetrated is weak and feminine and therefore not fit for a person with male genitals. Being penetrated is a vulnerable place to be, yes. But is vulnerability weakness? May we say that being penetrated is feminine and yet does not make one weak, and is not unfit for any person? May we say that a person with female genitals need not attempt to "keep up," that "keeping up" is not itself a virtue, and that slowness is beautiful and valuable? May we say the same of smallness? And in the grand and grandiose scale of history, the universe, and everything, is not all we are relatively slow and small, delicate and evanescent and low?

I think smallness and slowness are precious qualities, having little to do with actual size or speed and much more to do with grace and assailability. I would argue that the reproductive role of the female is power and strength, even though it places a woman in a slower, physically weaker place. I appeal to the New Testament theme of power as weakness and weakness as strength, the first as last and the last as first, Jesus' triumph over death by dying, God's becoming vulnerable and empty (and therefore being in a position to be penetrated???) by taking the form of humankind.

Let me put it this way.

Is this

somehow less than this

Which scene shall we celebrate? Which depicts something more important, more significant, more potent? And why? Which scene, in your gut, would you identify as "feminine" or "masculine"? Why? Is it necessarily wrong or unenlightened to do so?

Why?

*See? Butt-ugly.

Listen

2010-04-23T22:34:00.002-04:00

Go here, and read, and listen, without quibble or verdict. Just listen.

Birthday Debriefing

2010-04-14T18:01:00.002-04:00

I never make a big deal of celebrating my birthday. I never know how, or what is appropriate, or who would want to celebrate with me, or how to ask them to celebrate with me. I stress about these things for weeks in advance, and most of the time, I don't decide anything until about noon on April 13, and by then, everybody's busy. This year, some specialness worked its way in, if at times a bit haltingly, and it turned into a very fine day.

*I rose at my leisure (so, 6:15 am) and Kevin made me french toast for breakfast.

*I talked to my "mom" (who is a friend whom I wish were my mom) for a few hours (actually on the night before my birthday, but I'm counting it).

*A very kind coworker made me a delicious zucchini cake with cream cheese frosting, and I stood around in the break room debating the pros and cons of embracing aging with several other coworkers. They teased me about my resolve, and I totally let it roll off my back. Go me.

*I had lunch with my friend Sharon, in her office at the garage that she manages. I like to watch her be the boss lady. She's such a kind boss lady. She showed me a beautiful bracelet that she made, but I didn't get to examine it well enough to replicate it. I'll have to go back soon to pilfer her design.

*I went to yoga. This, of course, wasn't birthday-special, but I sure am glad my birthday fell on a yoga night. I love yoga nights.

*My friend Tamie gave me a lovely, thoughtful present! I love presents. It was a perfect present.

*I spontaneously (go me!) invited said friend and her dear fiance, Jon, out to dinner in honor of my existence (go me!). I've mentioned before, have I not, how much I relish meals with friends? Two in one day! Weeeeeee!

*My baby sister sang to me.

*I ignored all unpleasant phone calls and let Kevin delete messages from unpleasant callers.

Here is my goal for next year: I will plan a celebration. I will figure out what to do, I will swallow very hard, and I will ask some people to do it with me. Would any of you be willing to come to the Chicago Art Institute with me for a day? Or a Second City show? Or maybe a multiple-couple overnight in Ann Arbor? It will, after all, be the last 30th birthday that I get. Does somebody want to make me dinner? Or just go for a walk with me? That would be very nice too.

What the world needs now is

2010-04-14T17:12:00.003-04:00

this video of our friends. The man was my husband's roommate during and right after college. The woman, his sweet, beautiful wife, is blessed beyond measure.

你現在幾歲？

2010-04-12T07:52:00.019-04:00

No, that's not a weird Blogger glitch or some Viagra spam invading my posts. (Can Viagra spam disguise itself as a post too, or is that just comments?) It's Chinese on purpose.

See, in China, they begin counting whole years when you are born, not after you have been breathing for a year.

You know how 29 is supposed to be the perfect age, and women think they're supposed to turn 29 over and over and over in order to remain valuable and beautiful as human beings?

Well, bullshit.

I'm totally down with maturing. I got my first gray hair when I was 26, and I have a whole bunch of them now, and I can't wait until my whole head is silver. Soon my boobs will start to sag (hopefully from nursing each child for three or so years; and, dude, I finally have boobs to sag!!), and my skin will wrinkle, and my hands will get spotty. And why the heck not? I'll be wiser, kinder, more compassionate, more open, less worried about the silly crap that bothers me now. I'll have gathered more people who love me and whom I love. Childhood will be a more and more and more distant memory, glory be. Some day, I'll have lived more of my life in the light than in the darkness. I'll have little ones, and they'll grow, and then I'll have more little ones. I'll have read more books, taken in more art, basked in more sunsets, made more love, wept more, laughed more, hugged more, tasted more, shared more, breathed more. My life will have meant something to someone, maybe a lot of someones. Every wrinkle and sag and spot will represent something of myself that I've given to someone, a little more love spread among us. To hell with 29. Who needs it?

I sure don't. So I'm skipping it. Until April 13, 2011, I've decided to be Chinese. If you wish me a happy day, do it with vigor, for today is my first 30th birthday.

Here are some photos from the customary post-Easter-dinner celebration of my birth with my in-laws. My mother-in-law worked 3 intentional errors into the cake inscription, thinking it would be fun to have me correct them with red icing. Heh. Heh. Heh.

I found 9 errors. It's what I do. My sister-in-law's reaction was "Huh. Well, it used to be pretty." I don't think she was as amused as I was.

I got presents too!

From my sister-in-law: a tea-light lantern made of recycled cans. So cool!

From my mother-in-law: she made me a yoga-mat bag!

Check out this detail:

And from my extraordinary spouse:

and

No, I haven't been hiding a talent. I don't play a note. I don't even read music. Yet. So I shall toast the next 30 years with one of the century's best vintages of one of the world's finest wines, and then I'll get to work. L'Chaim!

This Nisan 27

2010-04-11T07:04:00.004-04:00

Today is the 27th of Nisan, Yom HaShoah, "Day of the Catastrophe," the day for remembering the Holocaust.

I saw my first real photographs of gas chambers and piles of dead bodies when I was seven. My grandfather's group of soldiers had stormed through the gates of a concentration camp, I don't know which one. Most were carrying rifles; he was carrying a camera. Legend has it that those soldiers rounded up many of the guards, handed their rifles over to the few prisoners who were strong enough to wield them, and stood back while the prisoners slaughtered the guards. I don't know if I believe him, or if that's just what the ferociously angry, traumatized 18-year-old boy in him wished had happened.

He was a Philadelphia Jew, sent to war at 17. He told me that some of my relatives had died in a camp like that one. I believe him on this point, but I don't know who or when; my family never speaks of itself very much.

Bow your hearts with me today, friends. In remembrance of HaShoah, do something active and concrete to grow peace in the world. Hug someone who is angry. Go buy some healthy, fresh food for a poor family in your neighborhood. Think of the most socially awkward person you know, and call him or her, just to chat. Rid your home of violent or misogynistic video games, music, and films. Acknowledge the violence in your own heart, ponder it, and decide to dispel it.

Give this a listen and a read today, and then this. Mr. Wiesel and Ms. Tippett are two bastions of active peacemaking, and two of my personal heroes.

One

2010-04-06T18:43:00.001-04:00

This is what's on my mind today.

A Symbolically Significant Supper Scenario

2010-03-31T17:51:00.004-04:00

Does that alliteration sound forced or corny? I can't decide. It just came to me.

I concocted a triumphant weeknight casserole this evening for supper. I can't tell you proportions, but here's what I did:

I peeled and sliced a few yellow potatoes and a few small carrots and minced half of a large red onion and put them in a greased baking dish. I also threw in about an ear's worth of frozen corn. I salted and peppered that generously. Then I added about a cup (maybe more?) of shredded havarti and Jarlsberg cheeses. I embedded two quartered fresh bratwursts in the top of the cheesy veggie pile (the all-natural kind made by Amish people) and salted again. Then I stirred together about 1/4 cup of arrowroot (it's a substitute for cornstarch) and about 2 1/2 cups of milk and poured it over everything. I baked it at 375ish for about an hour (until it was thickened and all brown on top).

As I happily assembled our dinner, I thought about how I can trace the origin of about 80% of its substance to a kindly farmer who lives no more than 40 miles from me. I was thinking specifically about how glad I was that the pig that became my sausage had never been the property of any conglomerate when

knock knock knock

Odd. No one ever knocks on my door at 5 pm. I dry my hands and go to the door. Standing in my driveway is a rotund, ruddy man in a dirty cap and a thin, white wifebeater.

"Hiya ma'am! I's makin' a delivery in the neighborhood and I thought I'd stop here ta do a little advertisin!"

I glance at his van. It has a silhouetted steer on the side. Uh-oh.

"Y'all them vegetarians, or d'yall eat meat?" I swear I'm not making this up.

"We eat meat that was humanely raised."

"Uh, what now?"

"We eat meat that doesn't come from factory farms. You know, the animals eat what they're supposed to eat, and they're pastured."

"Well, these cows're free range. S'at what that means?"

"If they have free access to pasture and eat nothing but grass for their whole lives, and if they're slaughtered in a low-stress environment, then yes."

He gets this condescending smile on his face and shakes his head a little. "Now ma'am, ya know, all of 'em grain 'em at the end. Fer the marblin'."

"No. They don't."

He chuckles. "Name one."

"Well, we buy our beef from Seven Sons in Roanoke. Call them, and they'll explain to you how to raise cows humanely. Bye."

I went back to the kitchen and continued to ponder my sausage. The man got in his van and drove away.

Thomas Merton is my homeboy

2010-03-27T15:23:00.002-04:00

because, dude. He says it all. Just ... all of it.

There are many ... escapes from the empirical, external self, which might seem to be, but are not, contemplation. For instance, the experience of being seized and taken out of oneself by collective enthusiasm, in a totalitarian parade: the self-righteous upsurge of party loyalty that blots out the conscience in the name of Class, Nation, Party, Race, or Sect. The danger and the attraction of these false mystiques of Nation and of Class is precisely that they seduce and pretend to satisfy those who are no longer aware of any deep or genuine spiritual need. The false mysticism of the Mass Society captivates people who are so alienated from themselves and from God that they are no longer capable of genuine spiritual experience. Yet it is precisely these ersatz forms of enthusiasm that are "opium" for the people, deadening their awareness of their deepest and most personal needs, alienating them from their true selves, putting conscience and personality to sleep and turning free, reasonable people into passive instruments of the power politician.

Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from anguish or doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude, there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false "faith," which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our "religion," is subjected to inexorable questioning. This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which has reached us in the dark ray of contemplation, to examine, to doubt, and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas. Hence it is clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive acquiescence in the status quo, as some would believe—for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia. Contemplation is no pain-killer. What a holocaust takes place in this steady burning to ashes of old worn-out words, clichés, slogans, rationalizations! The worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed along with all the rest. It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing may occupy the place that God has commanded to be left empty: the center, the existential altar which simply "is."

In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that she no longer knows what God is. She may or may not mercifully realize that, after all, this is a great gain, because "God is not a what," not a "thing." That is precisely one of the essential characteristics of contemplative experience. It sees that there is no "what" that can be called God. There is "no such thing" as God because God is neither a "what" nor a "thing" but a pure "Who." He is the "Thou" before whom our inmost "I" springs into awareness. He is the I Am before whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice we echo "I am" ("What Contemplation Is Not," New Seeds of Contemplation).

Be still, my ravenous, stinging heart.

Lord, Have Mercy

2010-03-22T19:45:00.016-04:00

I'm not trying to be self-righteous. Christ have mercy. I'm trying to be real. I've nearly written this post about twenty times over in the past year and not done it because I was afraid of what my spiritual community would think. Because I was afraid of telling my spiritual community that I walk with God by being thoughtful about how I live and what I consume, because the suffering and filth in the world that grieve her grieve me. Well, I'm done. This isn't going to be as eloquent or reasoned as I'd like, but I need to say these things. (Yes, I just called God "her." Lord, have mercy.)

I voted for President Obama. I think free public healthcare cannot come to us swiftly enough. I am a pacifist. I don't shop at Walmart and I buy my food from local sources, or fairly traded food from foreign sources. I buy only used clothing. I use only cloth napkins. I try to eat only organic vegetables and humanely raised meat. I compost. I do my best to be the same person no matter where I am. I'm trying so hard to learn not to force myself into uncomfortable situations. I practice yoga. I resist "christian" subculture. I enjoy an egalitarian marriage. I love my friends ferociously and unconditionally and without condemnation, regardless of how they choose to live their lives. Some of my most beloved friends don't believe what I believe. And I can't say it with enough force: I love them. So much it hurts.

And I consider each of these things, and many more, to be sacred acts, worshipful acts, deliberate pursuits of the holy order. I live the way I live because I love the God who made this place and I care about the people he put here; all of them. I love God and I care about what she made. I care about the animals that wallow in a lake of their own feces, eating garbage for 18 months, only to end up in the meat case at Walmart. I care about the earth that is being raped by Monsanto and Cargill. God made them, and so they are sacred. I care about the people who cannot have chemotherapy because they've been laid off from their jobs, the children who live in fear of their homes being blown up by American bombs, the people who get paid nothing to make junk for Walmart, and the impoverished, hopeless Mexican migrant workers who pick the poison-encrusted strawberries that are sold at Walmart, a small percentage of whom are regularly sold out to immigration by the company that employs them, so that immigration will turn a blind eye to the whole damned, dirty business. It's a damned, dirty business, what goes on outside the holy order of things. But the church, I think, needs to start walking home a different way. It's realized eschatology. It's the kingdom of God at hand. It's light of the world, salt of the earth. It's loving the Lord my God with my heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving my neighbor as myself.

And speaking of loving myself: have you ever noticed what violent language we use to describe our relationship with God? We say that he wants to make us uncomfortable, to use us. We say he wants us to beat our bodies and make them our slaves. We say that he controls us. We say he has authority. We say it's okay if he destroys our lives. We call ourselves depraved, wretches, worms, evildoers, filthy.

Do you know how this sounds to a physically-psychologically-sexually abused person? Do you know what internalizing all this violence has done to my walk with God?? I'll tell you something: God does not want to make me uncomfortable. She does not want to exploit me. She does not want me to harm myself, to enslave my good, beautiful body. He doesn't want to control me. He doesn't crack down on me. She won't destroy my life. He sees me as holy and good. She is gentle, quiet, kind, compassionate. I am a precious human being; not a wretch. You too.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at a table with some fellow Christians. One of them is an x-ray tech in an urgent care facility. He started talking about what a drag it is when the cops bring someone in cuffed. He told a story about a man who was cuffed to the bed. No one knew what he had done to "deserve" being cuffed to the bed. He was so freaked out that he tried to escape. So the cops tackled him and, in the process of restraining him, broke his finger. The x-ray tech at the table chuckled a bit and told us how the nurses decided to set the man's finger without any anesthetic, because "you try to escape, and you deserve what you get." The other Christians at the table chuckled too and issued a collective "right on! That'll teach him!" I was stunned. I cried out a somewhat-frantic "That's a human being in pain that you're laughing at!" The response was something to the effect of "Who cares? He's a criminal." I kid you not: I nearly lost my dinner. I spent a half hour in the bathroom, sobbing, after that encounter, grieving for the man whose pain my Christian brothers and sisters found so amusing, and grieving for the millions of people like him, and grieving for the suffering earth under our feet that God called "good," but his children don't even think of it. I wasn't alone though, because I know that God was weeping with me.

This past Sunday morning, two people made fun of my yoga practice, which is becoming one of the most important things in my life, and one bossed me rather coldly about the white board in the coffee room. All three of these people are leaders in my church in some capacity, and people look up to them. I was already raw when I got to church; I can't tell you how discouraging it all was.

It hurts me to be lectured about private faith and doctrine and evangelism by people who don't care who made their jeans or what is the social and environmental cost of the Mountain Dew in their hand or that they're laughing at something that is unspeakably dear and tender in your soul, and if you plead with them to think about it, they shrug or make fun of you. It hurts me that I've lost friends because I voted for Obama because he genuinely cares about giving more people access to a basically dignified existence, and I think God is pretty down with that. It hurts me that, twice in my life, very dear friends haven't told me that they are gay because my affiliation with conservative Christianity represented certain rejection to them. (Susan, Aaron, if you're out there: I love you. I miss you so much. I won't reject you. Please come back.) It hurts me that some of the people I love most in the world want nothing to do with God because Christians have wounded them so deeply. It hurts me that I was, at one time, so convinced that evangelism was so much more important to God than love and mercy that I evangelized my former best friend right out of my life. (Katie, if you're out there: I love you. I miss you so much. I won't reject you again. Please come back.) It hurts me that the same thing happened to my current best friend.

Please hear me: Jesus isn't like this. Jesus, man. He loves everybody, baggage and brokenness and all. I believe that he made this place, that he breathes it into being eternally, and that the way of life he asks us to live is a way of life worth living. And if he were on earth today, he'd probably have nothing to do with Glenn Beck, other than to offer him love and ask him to shut up. Probably the same with Focus on the Family. If you want to know about Jesus, ask me, because, man, Jesus is really something. Also, please hear me again: I know some off-with-your-socks phenomenally beautiful people who follow Christ. People who love people. People who bring you tea and hold you when you're hurting, people who let you use their bath tub when they're on vacation, people who drive you across the state five or six times a year for four years, people who pay your bills when you're broke, people who ask how your day was and then listen to your answer, people who pray and pray and pray. But friends, I'm just so down, feeling like so few people share my values, feeling like I can't be me and be loved that way, progressive politics and amillennialism and feminism and all. God. I need to be me and be loved, so badly. We all need it, man. We all do.

Lord, have mercy. That's all I'm asking. Christ, have mercy.

To What How Great a Debtor??

2010-03-16T20:04:00.007-04:00

So, at some point today, it dawned on me that, as far as my relationship to myself is concerned, I have no idea what grace is. Like, no clue. Like, say "grace" to me, and you might as well be saying "sakjfh." In fact, I treat myself and go about each day as though I don't even believe in the existence of such a thing. And maybe I don't, really. I don't know.

You can see the problem.

I don't know what to do about this. Help me if you can. Because, dude, if there is such a thing, I think I need to figure it out and internalize it. Like, now. (C'mon, Amy. Off your rump and figure out grace!)

Sigh. At least I have irony down pat.

Last Week

2010-03-15T15:55:00.014-04:00

It's been a while. Last week. Whew. Let me tell ya. Whew!

Sunday morning (the 7th of March), Kevin and I found out that one of our most beloved teachers and spiritual role models died, late the night before, suddenly, of a usually benign virus. He was 60, and he'd been sick only for a few weeks. Dr. Plaster, though a staunch conservative, was one of the most humble, compassionate, loving, thoughtful men I've ever known. He counseled me when I was in seminary. I approached him limping, disfigured, diseased with guilt, and desperate to be taught how to forgive, love, and honor the woman who had invaded my body, poisoned my mind, and shattered my heart. He didn't condemn me. He assured me that I was okay, that I wasn't doing anything wrong, that my anger was a holy anger, and that I was loved just as I was. No one had ever told me those things before, told me that I'm not categorically fucked up. I haven't yet internalized his words to me during that time, but I mark those words as the beginning of my healing journey. I will miss him.

We spent that afternoon in the presence three dear friends, over cake and tea. It was a balm to my aching heart.

Monday, I had a nightmare. I was in my mother's bedroom where we lived in Philadelphia when I was a young teenager. She was screaming, throwing things, threatening. I stood up, shoved her down, and shouted "Why can't you be normal? Why can't you just stop doing this and be normal? Don't you know I'm an adult now, a married woman? Why won't you just be normal?" She didn't answer; she just sat on the bed, babbling and ignoring me. She looked so old. It wasn't frightening, but it was disturbing to me. I didn't eat or sleep much for the rest of the week, and I still haven't stopped thinking about that nightmare.

Thursday was a dark day. I don't want to go into details about it, but it was just not a good day, internally. I won't say it was just pms, because that's not it. I don't believe in "just pms." That dark day every month is an opportunity, a glance at realms of my heart that usually remain hidden. I get to see what's there, what's hurting me without my knowledge, and I'm given a chance to seek help that will bring healing to those realms. I usually can't bring myself to do it. But you know what? This time, I unearthed the courage and self-love to cry out for that help. And it came (willingly!), and some healing with it. Words simply cannot hold the surprising sweetness of that dark day.

Friday was Dr. Plaster's memorial service. It was heavy, as those things are. But I wasn't alone.

Saturday morning, we met the Yutzys. The Yutzys are a kind Amish family who live 45 minutes north of us in Napanee. We signed a contract to "lease part of the herd" that the Yutzys own so we can have raw organic milk, a gallon delivered to us every week. Their (seven!) kids were sooooo cute! The wife, Susan, took us for a ride in the family's buggy (!!!) and talked to us about the church culture of her community. They spent two and a half hours with us, showing us their farm, asking and answering our questions, and just being generally beautiful people. It made me want to be their friends. And maybe to be Amish. If it weren't for those darn bonnets.

Saturday night, we had a lovely dinner at a lovely restaurant with some very lovely friends to celebrate—what else?—love: theirs for each other and ours for them. We had so much fun wining and dining together, three and a half hours of course after course and great conversation. Few things in life make me happier than great food and people I love. Sharing great food with people I love? Stellar. As far as I'm concerned, it was a perfect evening.

Sunday, we went to the same friends' progressive Mennonite church in Goshen. I'm feeling quite private about my church experience and spiritual life right now, but I will say this: it was nourishing, moving, delightful, uplifting, and very, very hard. We sang a hymn that I haven't heard since my ccd class in the Catholic church I attended with my mom when I was 14. We sang it fairly frequently, and it played in my mind after many a confrontation with her, God's tender whisper, anointing my wounds. I was breathless, hearing it again, the whisper, choking as I sang with it, too quietly to be heard. Here are the words:

I will come to you in the silence,
I will lift you from all your fear.
You will hear my voice,
I claim you as my choice,
Be still and know I am here.

I am hope for all who are hopeless,
I am eyes for all who long to see.
In the shadows of the night,
I will be your light,
Come and rest in me.

Do not be afraid, I am with you.
I have called you each by name.
Come and follow me,
I will bring you home;
I love you and you are mine.

I am strength for all the despairing,
Healing for the ones who dwell in shame.
All the blind will see,
The lame will run free,
And all will know my name.

Do not be afraid, I am with you.
I have called you each by name.
Come and follow me,
I will bring you home;
I love you and you are mine.

I am the Word that leads all to freedom,
I am the peace the world cannot give.
I will call your name,
Embracing all your pain,
Stand up now, walk, and live!

Do not be afraid, I am with you.
I have called you each by name.
Come and follow me,
I will bring you home;
I love you and you are mine.

And last night, I slept more soundly than I have in a long time. Did I ever need it. What a week.

The View from Flat on My Back

2010-03-04T12:14:00.005-05:00

I love my bed. My bed is about the most comfortable spot there is. My bed has blue-and-white fairly traded organic-cotton sheets from India, an ecru-colored down comforter, and a pile of blue and tan silk pillows that I found at a yard sale a few years ago for a dollar each. It's made of that Swedish foam (the real brand-name kind), which, I have no idea how that is for the planet, but it sure has saved my back. I promise to recycle it in 15 years when it wears out. They should have a way to recycle polyurethane foam by then, surely. My bed is low, only about 18 inches off the ground, which, I don't know, I feel like I'm resting more soundly when I'm nearer to the earth. If the floor were made of Swedish foam, I'd sleep on the floor.

I'm in my bed right now. I have a chest cold, and here I lie, wheezing and shivering, as bundled as I can bear to be, making my fever burn as hot as it can to make me get better faster. I'm nursing a huge, handmade mug (looks like cobalt, zinc, and iron in the glaze) of Traditional Medicinals Throat Coat and Herba Tussin, my favorite get-better herbal infusion blends. It's almost time for another 2 grams of vitamin C. (Here's a tip: when you're sick, take 1–2 grams of vitamin C per hour, for all waking hours. Yeah, you read me correctly: per hour. You've heard that taking extra vitamin C doesn't actually help you get better, right? Well, that's because your body flushes it out in about an hour, and it only boosts your immunity while it's in your body. It really does help if you keep up with it. And it can't hurt you, other than some GI-tract upset that goes away as soon as you back off the dosage.)

I've opened the shades and drapes in the room, so sunlight is gushing in. My cat is sleeping next to me. Kevin is spending the day in the library (the second floor of our house) so I can have some peace and solitude. I rest better with peace and solitude. I've canceled everything I do on Thursdays (which took a half-hour of emailing and phone-calling this morning!). I have to skip my yoga class tonight. Major bummer. But I'm ignoring my reflex to ignore my body's needs. Two weeks ago, Tamie said that our deepest, most real desires (like resting in peace and solitude) don't always align with our conscious desires (like not missing a class that I love) and that goodness comes when we bow to our deepest desires, at times letting them override our conscious desires. And so—here I lie. I'm still breathing though. Today I will rest and breathe.

My mom has been giving me the silent treatment for the past two weeks, with one rather upsetting but entirely unsurprising confrontation on Saturday morning. She was feeling guilty about some things, and so she had to call me to remind me that it was all my fault, and I only ever got what I deserved from her, and why can't I just be a perfect, compliant, Roman Catholic daughter so she wouldn't be forced to punish me for my filthy fornication in my Protestant pretend-marriage and pay for all the relics that she sends in the mail and monks who pray rosaries to get me to love Mary more and quit having sex? And also, when am I going to stop killing her grandchildren with condoms (which I do not use, let the record show) and come home to take care of her and get my sister to be a better daughter and quit running around with all her boyfriends (of which she does not have a plurality, let the record also show) and be a good Catholic too? When am I going to stop inflicting every problem in my mother's life on her so everything will be wonderful? Why am I so mean and selfish and rotten and bad?

Have you ever seen Carrie?

But nevermind. Right now, life is good. There are sunlight and purring and tea and love coming to me from friends near and far, and all from God. I'm beginning to believe in my core that all good really does come from him, and I can take it all in without fear. So many gifts, so much grace, and I feel myself opening to it. That's all I have to report.

How to Get Attention in Winona Lake

2010-03-01T18:16:00.008-05:00

Man, deviate from convention around here, and people sure do notice you.

I just got back from a hearty gambol about the woods behind my house. I swung on vines, bounced on a naturally occurring see-saw, climbed a tree, and gooshed through mud. It was grand!

The thing about these woods is that there are paths worn through them by hundreds of traipsing feet. Well. If you know me, you know how I feel about walking where everyone else has decided we should all walk, so I'll spare you the cliché. Needless to say, I usually ignore the paths.

So there I was, in the middle of my best (silent) Tarzan impression (which isn't very good, so please don't ask to see it), when I hear (shouted, distant), "Aaarouuuooost!"

I look around. There are two little boys standing on a hill in the trailer park a few hundred feet through the trees.

"Huh?"

"Are! You! Lost!"

"Nope!"

"Who! Are! You!"

"Amy! Who are you?"

"Jay!"

And then they scurried away. What nice boys, checking on me like that! I decided to head back. I hiked through some frozen marshiness and over a hill to emerge at the end of my street. At that moment, an old seminary classmate who lives just outside the treeline pulls out of his garage. He sees me and calls out (faint British-African accent, surprised) "Amy! Are you okay?"

"Hi! Yeah!" (desnagifying my pant legs from some ubiquitous purple thorny sticks) "I was just going for a walk."

"Back there??"

"Yeah. I don't like the trails."

"You mean, you just ... go offroading??"

"Uh, yeah."

At this point, he questioned me about where I'm living now. I told him that I live farther down the street. He expressed incredulity that I'd never stopped by. I pointed out that, every time I see him running on our street (about weekly), I wave, and he never waves back. "Well," he said, "I don't like people." (Which, dude, he loves people. Maybe a little too much.) He flashed his chocolaty-charming smile and drove away.

He's never once noticed me when I've tried to get his attention as we pass each other in the street. Until he saw me walking where people aren't supposed to be walking.

Just, I dunno, interesting.

Just Ordinary

2010-02-26T08:06:00.001-05:00

I woke up at 5:30 and snuggled with Kevin for 45 minutes before dragging to my feet. I went to bed before 9 last night, and only woke once. Full alertness: ahhhhh.

Morning tea is like a fuzzy blanket straight out of the dryer for my tummy. I'm not hungry yet. I'll probably eat yoghurt with maple syrup and coconut when I am.

I like silence in the morning. No radio news or music or computer-video noises. I don't even like to talk in the morning. I've always been this way: noise in the morning is about the most grating thing I can think of. (I know, I know—all you mommas are thinking "Just you wait!") Right now, all I can hear is clicky typing and the humming refrigerator. 8)

I just put on a second sweater, and I'm almost warm. Another pair of wool socks should do the trick. I'm rockin' my mousy copy editor vibe today, in a a gray cardigan and glasses. I love my gray cardigan and glasses.

I just spent an hour reading my current novel (My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok). I read by the whispering, slate-blue light reflecting off the snow and into my living room. I still don't miss the sun. Maybe in a few more weeks.

My back doesn't hurt right now, and I feel loved and hopeful, the kind of hopeful you feel when you're looking forward to something you've wanted, something vague but so real, something that may just come your way after all. Something I want and need may be coming my way.

And now to tame my hair, brush my teeth, find food, put on shoes, and go to work. Peace and love upon you each today.

... found my way downstairs and drank a cup ...

2010-02-22T17:08:00.005-05:00

This morning, I had one of the best cups of tea I've ever had in my life. Maybe the best. This is not hyperbole. My 18-oz handmade tea stein wasn't big enough. And if you know of my passion for fine beverages, you know that this is huge.

It was Dilmah Ceylon Supreme, which is sustainably grown and fairly traded. Yorkshire Gold, PG Tips, Taylors of Harrogate, and Jacksons of Picadilly: step aside.

As always in the morn, it was finished with local honey and milk. Come to my house and I'll share a pot with you.

8)

Be unspeakably kind

2010-02-20T19:52:00.002-05:00

are words that a friend shared with me a few months ago, when I was in a bad space. I didn't realize at the time how they would soak into me; they've been whispering in my ear for months, a mantra. A precious gift.

I'm trying to be gentler with myself. It is not easy to be gentle with myself. Sometimes, it feels like a complete waste. Sometimes, it hurts, like washing a wound to heal it. Sometimes, I fail. You wouldn't believe the things I say to myself when no one can hear me. But I'm trying. Here are some things I'm doing.

I gave all my old outerwear to Goodwill, and I bought new outerwear that is actually warm. As much as being warm means to me, I've always bought cheap outerwear that did not keep me warm. My body would say "Ack! Put more clothes on me!" and my mind would say "Oh, shut up, baby!" Well, no more. I bought a 70%-down-30%-feather coat, two fairly traded alpaca hats, two pairs of fairly traded alpaca gloves, and some warm, sturdy, comfortable hiking boots. None of it was cheap, and I am refusing to feel guilty about it. Another kindness.

I've stopped using an alarm clock. I am blessed with a job that lets me start working in the morning when I want to, and I started allowing that blessing to come to me. I let my body and mind wake me in the morning when they are ready. (And, incidentally, it's never after 6:30.)

I drink warm water now. At work, I've started warming my drinking water with water from the hot-water dispenser. Warming my water keeps me from getting chilled from drinking enough. So that's how I roll.

I've started taking vitamin D-3 to regulate my wishy-washy hormones. I now only have pms for half the month, rather than three-quarters.

I've made a ritual of going to the woods, to one spot, a haven. Every Thursday after work, I go to the woods, sit in my spot, listen to the stream, and breathe for about an hour. Courtesy of my new outerwear.

My back pain is back. But this time, I'm deliberately walking very slowly. Veeeery slooooowly. Meditative. We came to Ohio to visit my in-laws this weekend, and I've taken two hot epsom-salt soaks in their bathtub. I shall take two more before we leave tomorrow afternoon. It would take a separate, long post to explain all the things that a hot bath means for me and does to my body an soul. No simple pleasure on this earth can do what a hot soak can do for me. (It really stinks that I have to come all the way to Ohio for a bath. Grr.) The baths only relieve the pain when I'm actually in the tub. But still. Ahhhhhh.

I'm listening to happier music. Here's a sample. A rockin' sample.

I'm doing some hard internal work right now. Damn hard. Stuff I've never worked on before. And I'm letting a few people in to help me, which is excruciating, because I'm so afraid of seeming needy or being burdensome. It hurts. But I'm tired of limping. And I need some extra grace and gentleness, friends. Maybe an extra hug or two, if you're one of the people who hugs me regularly. It's not easy for me to say that, but it's what I need, so I here I am, being kind to myself by asking. Maybe after a time, I'll be a better me.

And in an example of impeccable timing, a friend who teaches a writing class asked me and some others to write true, kind poems about ourselves for her to read to her students. At first I wasn't going to do it, because, ack! Hard! But then I decided to give it a try, and I kind of like how it turned out. Then I wasn't going to share it with anyone again, ever. But that's a problem, because hiding stuff that I do like it's shameful isn't very healthy, and I do it all the time. (Raise your hand if you've ever seen any of my drawings. . . . Exactly.) So here's my poem. Ahem.

Dear Amy,

Come inside, love.
Pour that wine for me.
Wash those dishes
and bake that bread for me.
Pray a little honey-loving down on me,
with that same thin, simmering blood,
crying in your hair and a gift in your hand,
unbestowed for want of confidence.

Stay warm tonight, love.
Here's a blanket and some tea.
Here's some quiet and a kiss.
I'll hold your hand, baby.
I'll let you know me.
I need you, and I'll tell you so,
'cause there's no shame in touching
skin or souls in stabbing, searing silence.

Quit crouching behind that war paint, love.
Put down that blade.
Break off that satin, patent-leather cell
and have a bath.
Take a little time tonight
to savor all that affect.
Soak and sip and slather on
a lavender reminder of your marrow.

You have a flare about you, love.
You're acid and salt and zest and leaven,
cadmium, chromium, cobalt in the kiln.
You got goods.
A bowl of soup, of fealty and frailty,
of sacred earth and savory fondness
and time. Your spice and travail
are polish and mercy and solace.

And now. Bath time.

My Morning Offering

2010-02-18T07:19:00.003-05:00

I need thee every hour,  most gracious Lord;  
no tender voice like thine  can peace afford.

I need thee every hour;  stay thou near by;  
temptations lose their power  when thou art nigh.

I need thee every hour,  in joy or pain;
 come quickly and abide  or life is vain.

I need thee every hour;  teach me thy will;  
and thy rich promises  in me fulfill.

I need thee every hour,  Most Holy One;  
oh, make me thine indeed,  thou blessed Son.

I need thee, oh, I need thee;  every hour I need thee!  
Oh, bless me now, my Savior!  I come to thee.

Once More, with Feeling

2010-02-06T19:51:00.009-05:00

Sigh. Here we go again.

I love my mom. I do. I don't want to dishonor her. I don't. But my closet isn't big enough for skeletons. If you think it's improper for a person to vent frustration with dysfunctional family stuff, stop reading this post. Because I just have to say. It really sucks.

It really sucks when she's kind and amiable for a few months, and I start to relax, enjoy having a mom, talk to her. And then. I wake up to 3 missed calls and 4 voicemails by 6 on a Saturday morning, all insisting that I "take responsibility" for the "alcoholic dysfunction" in our family. What does that mean? Your guess is as good as mine. I'm just glad I'm not 12 anymore. Because dude. When your mother randomly morphs into a ferocious wild beast overnight, it's frightening when you're 12.

Now, it's just disappointing. Bitterly disappointing. Another 8–12 months of vitriol, verbal abuse, rejection, disdain. Phone calls at 12 am and 4 am. Nasty voice mails galore. Maybe a broken phone or two, launched across the room and shattered on the wall. Accusations, manipulations, delusions, guilt trips. Guilt trips that work. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

And the worst part? She will be engulfed in excruciating darkness, and she will suffer. And I will take that suffering in, and hold it inside, and it will gnaw at my heart, because she's my mother, the only mother I have, and I love her.

I'm tired, friends. Three decades of this: a few months of having my mommy, and a year or so of dodging the monster that descends on her.

So this morning, in the dark, in the security of my bed, in my home, with my husband, I shed my tears. My frustrated tears, my angry tears, my wistful tears, my exhausted tears. My old, familiar tears.

And then I got out of bed. Drank tea. Did some reading and writing. Spent a few hours with friends in the sunshine. Ignored lots of calls, deleted lots of voice mails. Settled in, hunkered down. Reminded myself that this too will pass. Again.

On Union: Why I Practice Yoga

2010-02-06T16:59:00.008-05:00

I don't sleep very much on Wednesday nights anymore. And it is not a bad thing.

See, Wednesday night is yoga night. Yes, the class is relaxing. I consistently come home happy and peaceful (which itself is a miracle). My body feels alive and my heart and mind are brimming with delicious victuals, juicy and fragrant, savory and sweet, crisp and sharp and piquant. And so I sip and stir, inhale and savor, lick my fingers and digest, until about midnight. If only journaling worked for me. I envy you journalers sometimes, with your quick-chicken-scratch-and-then-set-it-aside.

I've been trying for weeks to write all this down, organized, making sense outside my mind. I've been trying to defend my desire to practice yoga to all the people who seem to wonder if I'm balking on my faith in Christ by doing something so "eastern" and "mystical" (who seem not to realize that Judeo-Christianity is an eastern religious system and boasts as rich a mystical tradition as any other world religion—but I digress). But you know what? Yoga needs no defense.

(At this point, I must issue a plea to my dear yoga-teacher and longtime-practitioner friends: if what I'm thinking is out of line, if you must point out a wrong thought or motive, please be gentle. I really need you to be gentle.)

Yoga is something of which I sincerely believe I am capable—another miracle. It's something I need to achieve, something essential, blood and water. Something I lack. The word yoga means "union": body and soul, mind and heart, woman and earth, woman and God. I don't care if I never stand on my head or fold my face through my knees; I'm not in pursuit of physical prowess for its own sake. My mind and my heart operate in isolation from each other, except when my heart rages at my mind and my mind scolds my heart, grenades and rocks flying to and fro, the crossfire bloodying my soul. My body has been violated over and over, and my self-protective escapes from my body have alienated me from it. I don't know it. I don't trust it to hold me kindly or carry me safely.

And all this strife and suspicion drowns out God's constant-but-gentle voice. I am so not down with that.

I want to practice yoga, quieting my mind and returning to my body, hearing and feeling myself, telling myself patiently "you can do this," as part of my journey away from this internal chaos. My friend Andree has been telling me for years to open my heart. She says it all the time, "remember to open your heart." But I didn't understand what she meant until a few weeks ago, when Tamie told me the same thing. My heart doesn't open easily—all kinds of tight muscles and bad habits and padlocks keep it sealed. But here's the thing about this class: my teacher is my friend. And being near a friend does a lot to loosen those locks.

So when she asks me to work my body with an open heart, I can manage it. Man. Doing physical things in the midst of other people is so, so hard for me. Biking, dancing, swimming, whatever. It makes me feel vulnerable, like a mother animal in the throes of childbirth surrounded by peckish predators. But somehow, in yoga class I feel safe. Safe! This is huge! I don't feel rushed or pushed or ashamed. No one is waiting for me to trip. No one shouts at me when I'm not perfect. In fact, there is no perfect. Perfection isn't the point. Efficiency isn't the point. There is no finish line, no "faster, faster," no dominating or losing. No one works against me, and I work against no one. What matters is not how quickly I can get the job done.

What matters is who I am. Who I am matters. What is in me is worthwhile and good. There is something worthwhile and good in me. And what I can do is enough. What I can do is enough. I don't need to be more than what I am to be okay. I can hardly bear the exquisite relief of finally taking this in.

And then there's my breath. Tamie has mentioned the grace in my breath. Sometimes I meditate on my breath, the gift of each inhale, the fullness, the purge of each exhale. This is grace in my life, my continued existence. In meditating on my breath, in embracing the grace it represents, I can accept my existence as good, as a gift. I can be grateful for each moment and release the shame and guilt of being here, occupying space here on earth. I can accept God's kindness to me, honor his presence within me instead of wondering what the heck he was thinking when he made me. Because, really, being ashamed of myself is being ashamed of God's work. Practicing yoga allows me to accept my being made in the image of God, the divine treasure nestled in my frail earthen body.

And I am frail. Frail and inflexible. I am practicing yoga to be strong, to learn how to bend without breaking. To love myself exactly where I am on my journey, and to embrace the journey. To let go of longing for the destination. To let go of what is missing in me, even to realize that nothing is missing and that I am whole, right now, just as I am. To stretch, breathe through the intensity of it, and grow. To hold on when I want to quit, one breath more, one breath more, one breath more.

Tamie said two weeks ago that injury is never part of this process of stretching and breathing and growing. I'm grateful that no one could hear the astonished sob of revelation and relief that escaped my soul when her tender words took root. When it hurts, if I back off, I acknowledge that my body's violators were wrong. Hurting me was not okay, is not okay. When I heed my body's "Stop! No!" I am whole again. When I allow myself to be hurt, I exist in a crippled state, always needing healing, always catching up. But it's okay to protect myself from harm. It's okay to operate within my limits. It's okay to be only what I am, to do only what I can do.

Yoga class is light and joyful. People laugh. There are friends there. There are pregnant women there! Everyone is learning something.

In the final pose, lying on the floor in the dark, I am overwhelmed by the oneness of it all and my place in it. Below me, the earth pulls me to itself, it supports and sustains me, cradles me. All that is above me presses down, blankets and envelops me, caresses me. And there I am in the middle. Supported and protected. Belonging on the earth, belonging to the maker of the earth. Belonging with my friend-who-is-my-teacher, with my classmates, within my body. There is love in that moment, love that I need, and I am blessed.

To Be a Goose

2010-02-02T20:51:00.004-05:00

I when I got home today, I had had it with all this stuffy, cooped-up being inside. Ugh. Triple ugh. And so.

On went the long johns and the thick corduroys and the three undershirts and the hulking wool sweater and the two pairs of socks and the new hiking boots and the gloves and the down coat and the alpaca hat (it was 38 degrees outside, after all). And I made my beeline, friends.

Into the woods, that's where I went. The placid, fathomless, spectral, restorative woods. I climbed down to the edge of a stream, burrowed into a cushy mound of frozen sticks, and had a sit-down with myself. We worked through some twisted-up inside stuff, resting by that stream, myself and I. And then, on down the trail. I found a tree fallen across the stream, which I will surely cross when the water is no longer cold enough to kill me with its breath, and a random old stairway to nowhere. Yes. Right in the middle of the woods.

And then.

Honk. Honk honk.

Honkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonk.

I look to the sky, and hundreds of geese are passing overhead. Hundreds! I've never seen so darn many geese! They darkened the sky with the expanse of their collective. They were headed toward the lake, and, thus, so was I. Wait for me, geese! I cried to them (not really).

And they beat me. By the time I got to the lake, it was covered with geese geese geese, gazillions of geese, all honking and preening and waddling and flapping and snuggling. I settled down on a stone and watched. And listened. They all knew I was there. The closest geese flapped in my direction at first, and turned to honk a warning to their chums. But I didn't move, and they got cozier with me, closer. And then, the symphony. Have you ever heard geese singing? Well, I have. Back and forth, across throng, they honked their little goose-hearts out, in rhythm, a melody. They'd quiet down to a whisper and then crescendo up to a roar, honkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonkhonk!

And never have I wanted so much to be a goose. Geese are never alone. They always have each other, they roam together, the strongest breaking the wind resistance for the weakest, no one ever being left behind. Oh friends, I wish we were all geese, so we could just drop our defenses and be together, all of us, waddling and preening and singing together, eating and sleeping and flying together. If we were geese, I could shroud a fallen comrade with my wings, shield her from the rain, help her to rest, and then nudge her with my beak back up into the starry sky. How I wish none of my friends ever felt like she was facing the darkness alone. I wish it with every tiny bit of my heart.

It started to get dark, so when the goose song ended, I got up to leave. And as I walked away, the geese honked as resounding goodbye to me. They had voted me in, as an honorary goose. I sure will miss my new family. Godspeed to them on their journey to Gooseland.

On "Loving" the "Sinner"

2010-02-02T07:29:00.003-05:00

"When you withhold love to make someone stop sinning, they don't learn to hate sin; they learn to distrust love." —my friend Jen's Facebook status last night

Few things make me sadder than when people reject their friends because they disapprove of their friends' choices. If your love cannot withstand your friend's failure (or growth), it isn't love. Jesus broke bread with the man who had sold him to murderers. He also entrusted the care of his people to someone who had pretended not to know him. And some of his closest companions were prostitutes.

And raise your hand if being rejected by someone you love has ever made you want to change the way you live your life. Raise your hand if being rejected by someone you love has made you reticent in opening yourself to love, even (especially) God's love?

That's what I thought.

Sermon over.

Old Cold, New Cronies

2010-02-01T18:11:00.004-05:00

I've been attempting to write an essay explaining my fascination with yoga for days. It's coming verrrrrrrry sloooooooowly. Like most things I do. I have half a post written on that too.

February is when the relief of January begins to wear off and I start to fantasize about being outside. About five times in the last two days, I've nearly bolted out the door and made a beeline for the woods, hoping to be far enough away from my house before noticing the tiny, tiny temperature that I'd just say to hell with having circulation in my appendages! and stay out for a while. Then, I check to see just how tiny the temperature is. Then, I remember that I have to teach -μι verbs this week. Then I decide, defeated, to stay in and study. I feel like a bug trapped between two window panes, the hermetically sealed kind, and my little bug-lungs are feeling taxed in the low-oxygen environment (do bugs have lungs?). Don't ask how I managed to get my little bug-self trapped between two hermetically sealed window panes. Just get me out of here!!!

Here is the news from Amyland:

Kevin and I have joined a fellowship group. The people are all in our church and all around our age (ish). Unlike all the other small groups at our church, we meet every Sunday, eat a full meal together, hang out for about 4 hours, and won't stop meeting in the summer. (Does anyone else feel frustrated and empty and faked out when you're told "Be in a small group so you can have community!" but you only see the people twice a month and you're expected to stop meeting for 25% of the year, and when you are together all you do is study the Bible rather than talking and engaging in each other's lives?) An integral part of the evening is reading a bedtime story to the hosts' two-year-old son and high-fiving him all the way to bed. So cool.

It feels good to be part of a group. But it's hard to0, on many levels. First of all, making new friends can be an abyss of stressed-outedness for me, especially when those new friends clearly do not share many of my passions, and so I must hold so much of myself inside. But then, isn't that always the case in being-together? I have to remind myself that it is me, really; I'm the one who has a harder time than most at holding myself in. I grab one wayward strand and another whips free in the wind. A tame tongue I have not, nor a tame heart.

Second, I don't love any of these people yet, not in the way I love my loved ones anyway. And so, I wish the people I loved were there. If all goes according to hope, this will change, and they will be new loved ones, and I'll be just as happy with my new loved ones as I am with my less-new and old loved ones.

And third, as usual, my husband and I seem to be the only egalitarian feminist progressive granola-heads in the bunch. Alas. One would think I'd suck it up and get used to this state of affairs after nearly seven years in Indiana. After all, conservatives are people too, and can be kind, compassionate, thoughtful people. Between universal–health care protests anyway. I know, not all conservatives are scrooges. But the scrooges rob me of faith in the whole lot.

And so I hope we will be mutually refreshed and sharpened. I'm always saying that I want my life to be marked by love for the not-like-me. I do hope this becomes that. I need more people in my life to love.

And um. I guess that's all that's new in Amyland. I didn't sleep well last night, so my thoughts are garbled. Please pray for a warmish, dryish day to defer my demise. If I don't see a bird soon, I may develop a twitch.

The Scoop

2010-01-23T08:44:00.007-05:00

So apparently I haven't made a blog entry in these two weeks. What the heck happened? I'm pretty sure yesterday I made that last post, and then I woke up this morning, and it's two weeks later. Sheesh!

My life has recently gotten quite a bit more complicated, what with adding an extra yoga class and a few other things to my regular weekly schedule. But I'm so happy. The new yoga class (the first of which was Wednesday) was a beautiful experience for me, one that I've been revisiting all week. I have a whole post written in my mind about it. Is it okay to blog about a yoga class if the teacher reads your blog (hi, Tamie!)?

I finally finished reading The Poisonwood Bible. Wow. Wow! Read it. Stop reading this, hop on your bike, ride to the local library or used book store, pick up a copy, and start reading it. In fact, walk to the library, so you can walk home with your nose in the book. You won't be sorry. And the world will be a better place. Because for every person who reads that book, the world gets a little better. It's that amazing. I'm not telling you anything about it, so the suspense will kill you until you absolutely have to read it. So there.

I'll tell ya. I've identified with a lot of literary characters, but none in my life so much as with Adah Price in that book. Granted, she is a metaphor for something much larger than one teenage girl or me, but I still think it's okay to identify with her. Toward the end of the book, every time she spoke up, I'd have to put it down and catch my breath, overwhelmed with some new self-revelation. I have a whole post written in my mind about that too.

Hmmm, what else is going on? Well, my wonderful husband is brewing me a pot of Yorkshire Gold with local honey and milk (which I hope will cure me of the effects of having been awake since 4:30 this morning). My cat is rubbing against my feet and gurgling with affection (or annoyance at my refusal to stop typing and feed him—affection and annoyance sound the same in his dialect of Meow). And I like beer now. (Thanks for the peer pressure, Jon and Tamie!) And it's going to reach the mid-40s today, which means that a long walk is in my future. There is a family of bald eagles living on Winona Lake, and I'm going to go look for them. Oo oo, and I'm getting my hair cut at noon. I looooove to have my hair touched, so haircuts are like candy for me. Well. Actually, they're like old tawny Port and toasted almonds. I don't like candy.

Update: I saw one! A big, beautiful male bald eagle, swooping through the air above my head. He alighted on a chunk of ice floating about 50 feet away from the shore and rested a spell. Then, he flew away.

Sail On, Silver Girl

2010-01-10T16:03:00.018-05:00

My grandmother died two years ago today, at 9 o'clock in the evening. Two hours before that, I'd talked to her. She said she was okay, but tired, and was about to eat dinner—grilled cheese and tomato soup, which her friend was bringing to her—and that she'd talk to me the next day, after she'd rested. She was recovering from surgery on her carotid artery, three days before, and the death of her husband of 49 years, nine weeks before. She fell asleep on her sofa with her friend at her side, had a massive heart attack, and was gone. She was 68.

Grandmom is the author of my most, maybe only, cherished childhood memory. Twice a year for about five years, starting when I was seven, she took me into downtown Philadelphia for a day. We went to museums, historic sites, old department stores with marble floors and crystal chandeliers, Christmas plays, parades, parks. We'd take the train into the city (!!!!!!!!), and Grandpop would meet us for dinner at a fancy-pants restaurant. I always got to order from the adult menu, and my little sister never got to come. We held hands and walked down the street singing songs. One time, I struck up a round of "The Twelve Days of Christmas," and by the twelfth day a horde of people was following us down the street, singing along. I didn't know all the words, but someone in the crowd did, and I learned them that day and never forgot. For two days a year, I was just a happy, curious little girl, a special little girl. Grandmom used two whole vacation days a year, just to spend them with me.

I firmly believe that I would not have made it to adulthood with half my sanity if I couldn't cling to that memory.

According to a newspaper clipping I found in her office, my grandmom was the first female officer in the Civil Air Patrol. She was awarded a full scholarship to Oxford University to study English literature and was engaged to a British nobleman named Richard, who gave her a gold ID bracelet that says "Thelma & Dick," which I now possess. As legend has it, in 1957 she visited him in England, and he took her to Liverpool to see the Quarrymen play (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). But she forewent college and jilted Richard for my grandfather (which is understandable, based on pictures I've seen of Grandpop at that time).

them

the topper from

their wedding cake

Together, they helped to organize Woodstock, where Grandmom earned the enduring nickname "The Maharani of Kumquat." I don't know how. Evidently, Gracie Slick was an insufferable prima donna, Janis Joplin was a riot, and Jimi Hendrix was way too stoned to be any fun at all.

some of the loot—their tickets, the Life Magazine special edition,

a bumper sticker, and two of the hand-screened "Festival" signs that they

helped to hang along the last 20 miles of highway 17B

a page from the Life Magazine—this woman's dress is possibly the most gorgeous dress I've ever seen. No, seriously.

them, bottom center,

with their "spirit-family"

the shirt she's wearing in the picture

They also attended the first Newport Jazz Festival. In 1974, they won $40,000 in the Pennsylvania lottery. With it, they flew to Great Britain, bought a motorcycle, and rode around, doing whatever felt good and sleeping on the roadside, until the money ran out. It took six weeks. Then, they sold the motorcycle for money to fly home. Grandmom could put six bullets through the dead center of a target with a revolver at 150 feet. She could fly a plane, stand on her head, skydive, sail a boat, drive a race car, and tap out 50 words per minute in Morse code. She wore a bomber jacket and leather pants regularly, and she went to the office in a power suit and pumps every day until she died. She was so badass.

Grandmom and Grandpop didn't want a funeral. So on a drizzling spring afternoon, we took their ashes to Van Sant Airport, a quaint grass strip for private and vintage aircraft in Upper Bucks County. We blended them together and sent them up with my aunt in a banana-colored '47 Piper Cub. She released them over the Delaware River, and they slid down into the river together and drifted out to the ocean they loved so well. My aunt and I were there for them. My sister and husband were there for me. And there were no other witnesses.

Grandmom was proud of me, never yelled at me, and made me feel special. She called me Tootsie. I haven't really mourned her death, because I've been afraid that I would loose the parts of me that she put there. Even though grilled cheese and tomato soup is one of my favorite meals, I stopped making it two years ago, because it was her last meal, and if I ate it, she was really gone.

But today, that's what I made for lunch. I didn't even think of it; I just came home and started to cook. It was so good. I really miss my grandmom.

This was her favorite song. It's one of mine, too. My heart sings it always, for everyone I love. Today, for her.

You Should Be Proud of Me!

2010-01-06T18:37:00.007-05:00

But I don't want to talk about why. I know, I hate when people are cryptic too! Please, please don't be mad at me.

I just did something really, really scary, something that I've been paralyzed with fear against doing since I was a teenager but something that, I think, needed to be done. And I did it. And here I am, alive and kicking. It didn't kill me! And I'm going to do it again next week, and it probably won't kill me then either!

Is it okay that I don't want to talk about it in public like this? It's just that, a little part of me feels like celebrating, and when I want to celebrate, I want to do it with friends. Can you celebrate with me without knowing why we're jumping up and down?

Yay for me!

Girl

2010-01-05T19:06:00.003-05:00

I first read "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid when I was 14 years old. I used it for the competitive poetry and prose reading I did when I was in high school. It's meaning to me has morphed as I've aged, and it pierces a new part of me with each life stage that I enter.

Girl
by Jamaica Kincaid

Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don't walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn't have gum on it, because that way it won't hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won't turn someone else's stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don't sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn't speak to wharbfflies will follow you; but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a button-hole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father's khaki shirt so that it doesn't have a crease; this is how you iron your father's khaki pants so that they don't have a crease; this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don't like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don't like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well, and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don't squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don't pick people's flowers—you might catch something; don't throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don't like, and that way something bad won't fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn't fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?

On Being a Mom (Some Day)

2010-01-02T11:28:00.004-05:00

I think about childbirth, motherhood, and parenting a lot. I read about them a lot. I daydream about them a lot. I talk about them a lot. I worry about them a lot.

No, I have no children of my own. But I was one. And being a kid, an exceptionally sensitive, perceptive, intuitive serial foster kid who was subjected to about 20 different sets of parenting strategies and values (one set of parents saying "Do this thing! It's great!" and the next set of parents saying "Why the heck are you doing that thing? It's dumb!"), I think, gives me enough perspective to say something on the matter. I've seen it done well, and I've seen it done not so well.

For the past six years, I've taken part in raising the three sons of a single mom who lives in my town. When I met them, her marriage was newly separated and the family had, two weeks previously, moved several states to the north of Daddy. They were 5, 3, and 10 months old, and they needed a nanny, and I needed money. Over these six years, I've dressed hundreds of owies and broken up dozens of brother fights. I've done 3-am 104-degree fevers, a monsters-under-my-bed all-night whine-a-thon (that lasted 4 months), mysterious rashes, three-brother, germ-sharing pukefests, evenings of soccer-basketball-swimming-choir-practice hell, and the three-year-old-with-a-crushed-skull-Medivaced-to-children's-hospital birthday-party nightmare. (Not one of mine, and the kid is fine today. Incidentally, never, ever rent a moon bounce. Ever.) I know how to oversee tooth brushing, vegetable eating, medicine taking, piano practicing, reading, napping, and bubble bathing. I've been pooped on, peed on, snotted on, bled on, barfed on, coughed on, sneezed on, splashed on, spilled on, and drawn on (and most of these on the way out the door in the morning). I've had moments of extraordinary grace and patience, and I've lost it and had to apologize. I love them all. They're incredible kids. Yes, I know that being a nanny is not the same as being a mom. But it's kind of like being an aunt. So bring it on, parenthood.

I hate when I comment on my experience with kids and all the moms and grandmas in the room exchange knowing, patronizing looks and roll their eyes. I may be young and I may be childless, but I am anything but green. The people who raised me have taught me very well what not to do. Here are a few of the many good things that my surrogate kids have taught me.

Early bedtime is totally, totally doable. And worth the struggle. Well-rested children are pleasant, happy children. There is no reason for a 6-year-old to be awake at 10 pm.

Kids do not need sugar or fast food. Furthermore, parents are not bound by any law of physics, biology, or society to buy cookies or happy meals. During the period of a child's life when eating habits are formed, a parent has complete control over what that child eats. No, once in a while will not kill a child. But "once in a while" means every few months, not every Wednesday and Saturday. There is no reason for a 6-year-old to be obese.

There is a huge, major, massive difference between discipline and punishment. All children need discipline, and if you do it well, they will respect and love you. No child needs to be punished, and punishment will make a child lose respect for you and herself.

There is no such thing as a bad child. There is no reason to cut a child down or dominate him. Tell a child he is bad, and he will take you up on it. Tell a child she is good, and she will prove it. Let me say it again, because this is really important: there is no such thing as a bad child.

We should be honest with kids. We shouldn't try to shelter them from what goes on in the world. There is bad stuff out there. Shouldn't kids learn about it right away, while adults are still around the help them process it? I read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl for the first time when I was 8. And it did me a world of good to learn early about evil. If we aren't open about the bad, scary, painful stuff, what comfort is it to a child when we say "Don't worry, it'll be okay"?

A lot of adults lie to kids in order to manipulate and control them. This is never okay. Kids know when we're lying, and it really hurts them. When I learned that Santa Claus wasn't real, I decided that God must not be real either. After all, they're both men you can't see who give you stuff. Makes perfect sense, right? Lying to kids makes them lose faith.

We aren't perfect, and kids really get that. They can and will forgive us. We should be authentic with children, all the time.

***

I can't wait to give birth. Yeah, you heard me. No, it is not just because I've never done it. Yes, I know it hurts. But I won't be doing it on my back, strapped to a fetal monitor in a cold, brightly lit room with people barking orders at me and strangers touching intimate parts of my body. And I know that will make it better. I want to know what it feels like for a human being to grow inside and then emerge from my body, swollen ankles and all. I want to know what it is to share so intense and elemental an experience with my female community. I actually want to feel the sort of agony that sires the ecstasy of clasping my new child to my breasts.

One of my favorite literary genres is the birth story. I love the stories of normal, natural births, when women trust their bodies to do what they are designed to do, shunning the interference of modern health "care" and allowing their astonishing, vigorous, radiant bodies to guide their babies into the world with peace, dignity, primordial strength, and ethereal wisdom. I love to hear of women who give birth with the people who love them at their sides in the intimacy and warmth of their homes.

I know this may sound quixotic and radical. I also know that the modern definition of "normal" birth as told by men and the media, as an emergency, an inconvenience, an accident waiting to happen, a crisis, an illness, disgusting, frightening, dangerous, is purely and simply wrong. Women are disempowered, abused, lied to, and violated if they attempt to take control of their bodies and birth experiences. (I know many women who say they've had wonderful experiences giving birth in conventional medical circumstances. I wonder if any of those women went into the hospitals empowered, telling the doctors and nurses how the birth would be handled, and then didn't back down. Because empowered women are often mocked, punished, threatened, and ignored by hospital staff who think they know what birth should be and don't want to be told otherwise. This is one of my favorite blogs. Read this post and the following five if you need some convincing.) How disappointing and wrong it is that, as advanced as we supposedly are, low-risk women are statistically safer giving birth in their living rooms than in a hospital.

Why is it this way? Well, I guess I know why it's this way. This is still a men's world. Men still run the show, and the women in the club are there on men's terms. But birth can't be more external to the realm of men, and rather than trusting us and listening to us as we scream and cry and rage to bring forth life, the medical community has attempted to fix us, quiet us down, control us. We may have come a long way, baby, but the way is longer still.

Can you tell that I am very passionate about the treatment of pregnant women by the medical community?

***

I read an article in the most recent Christianity Today yesterday about how Christian parents place way too much stock in their role in their children's lives. The article explained that children are autonomous human beings and cannot be programmed by the even-handed application of the "perfect" child-rearing techniques to be precisely what their parents want them to be. Children grow up to be healthy, functional, faithful adults apart from parental influence, and they grow up to be messy, struggling, fearful adults apart from parental influence. And all the time, I was thinking People need to be told this?

But they do. I know this is easy for me to say because I'm not a mom, but maybe that's exactly why I should say it: Moms, your kids will survive you and will love you despite (and even because of) your lack of perfection. Their maker looks after them, and they will be who they will be, and your mistakes will not debilitate them. Your victories will not ensure their victories. I don't know how many moms I know whose primary emotions with regard to their children are guilt and shame. This shouldn't be. They experience so much anxiety because their children's lives are not flawless and peachy, and it breaks my heart. These are amazing moms, kind moms, moms who love their kids so much, who give so much, whose arms and hearts are open, who live each day in the desert so that their kids can swim in the deep. Moms who don't know how far their love goes and so seem to think it doesn't go very far. (Please, please believe me, it goes a long, long way.) Moms whose kids seem to hate them and so think they've done something to deserve that contempt. Human moms who are exhausted and need space and so feel inadequate. But good moms all. I wish I could offer encouragement to the moms in my life. I wouldn't mind having any one of you as my mom! I know what truly bad parenting looks like. Even as flawed as my own mother is, she loves me and did her best, and I know that and understand and love her too, and I am a functional adult despite her mistakes. I hope I can remember to give myself some grace when I'm a mom, to let my children go and be who they are, not to blame myself for their struggles or credit myself with their triumphs. To remember that we're all human beings, sisters, brothers, and we survive because of and despite each other. I don't know how hard that is yet.

***

Here are the lyrics of a song that John Lennon wrote in honor of his mother. She abandoned him to the care of his aunt Mimi, who raised him, and then reentered his life when he was a teenager. She was killed by a drunk driver when John was 18. John's practice of transcendental meditation brought him into touch with his feelings about his mother, and "Julia" is an intimate tribute to those revelations.

Half of what I say is meaningless

But I say it just to reach you,

Julia

Julia, Julia, ocean child, calls me

So I sing a song of love, Julia

Julia, seashell eyes, windy smile, calls me

So I sing a song of love, Julia

Her hair of floating sky is shimmering, glimmering,

In the sun

Julia, Julia, morning moon, touch me

So I sing a song of love, Julia

When I cannot sing my heart

I can only speak my mind, Julia

Julia, sleeping sand, silent cloud, touch me

So I sing a song of love, Julia

Calls me

So I sing a song of love for Julia, Julia, Julia

Advice of the Day

2009-12-31T13:32:00.002-05:00

Ever wonder about the difference between its and it's or what happens when a cow eats a rancid casserole?

Wonder no more.

'Bout to Make the Most Out of a Toaster

2009-12-30T16:59:00.005-05:00

Even we serious people can be pros at amusing ourselves. This was one of my favorite songs in high school. (Yes, I know I'm a total dork.) Anyone remember it? This video is great! Why the heck didn't I think of this???

Nope. It's not profound. Don't look for hidden meanings; you won't find any. It's fun, fluffy, and oh-so-absurd. Boysenberry jam. Yum.

Blah blah blah blah. Blah.

2009-12-30T15:25:00.002-05:00

Do you ever just feel like being quiet? Sometimes, I do. I seem to have dropped the ball on my one-beautiful-thing-per-day commitment. Well, I guess that's life. Who's perfect? Not I. I've seen quite a few beautiful things and had quite a few beautiful moments in the past few days, but haven't really wanted to share any of them. Sometimes and with some people, I think I'm more open than is expected, and it think it takes people aback, and I can't help it, and I don't really want to try to change it. Authenticity or die. But I can be as evasive as the next Jo. Right now, I don't have very much to say. I've been pouring myself out on paper and copper and people. It's been about all I can do.

'Tis the sixth day of Christmas. Six more to go. In some ways, it's been a much better Christmas for me than it usually is. I think that has a lot to do with actually talking about how Christmas makes me feel, which I've never done before. And my mom's having a better time of it than usual this year. I've been rather inside myself this past month, trying to stay afloat despite the ice in the air. I feel like this blog this month has been devoid of content. Sorry about that. The things about which I'm so passionate and I usually want so badly to talk don't have much sparkle to them right now. In fact, I'm only posting this equally-devoid-of-content entry partly out of a sense of duty and partly because, if I let myself get too far out of the habit of thinking "Hey, I have a blog now, I'd better write this down," I'll forget all about it. I'm probably not even going to proofread this. Probably.

I've been in the downward spiral of self-absorption lately. Do you know the one? It's the one where you squeeze your eyes shut and grit your teeth soooo hard against it, try to ignore the voices and the tightness in your chest, but when you peek a little, it's longer and deeper and no closer to going away, because ignoring what your soul is screaming at you to do only makes your soul more angry, more desperate, clingier and hungrier and colder. Every day I'm trudging up to the surface, inches and a few feet and then a few more inches, and then I trip and fall and slide down, down, all the way back down to the ground. Up, up, up, trip, dooooooown, up, trip, down. Argh! (Did I mention that my period should be starting tomorrow, freaking finally? Glory, hallelujah, it can't come sooner.)

The day after Christmas, Kevin's grandmother was placed in the memory ward of a nursing home because his aunt can no longer take care of her. Christmas night, we told her she was going. Oh, she'd heard about it before. But Grandma has no short-term memory. Zero. Zilch. So she thought it was the first she'd heard of it. That, friends, was not a pleasant conversation. And when we all got up in the morning, she'd completely forgotten who Kevin and I were. While the family moved her furniture, I stayed home with her and we chatted about her life, for about 4 hours. We talked about women's suffrage, her work for the Red Cross during WWII, the rationing, her husband's tours of duty overseas, the civil rights movement, integration of schools, racism, sexism, politics, the sixties, the moon landing. It was great. I love to talk to elderly people about their lives. And she told Kevin's mother that I was such a sweetheart, asked who I was, and wondered if I might come visit her sometime again soon. (I don't know why I told that story. I think I'm rambling.)

Last night was a lovely, lovely night. Kevin and I went to an at-home family birthday party (the best kind!) for a beautiful friend and spent time with her relatives from Sweden, which was a super-huge treat! I can't remember the last time I've enjoyed getting to know new people that much. Maybe I never have. They were some premiumly awesomerrific people. I think I might move to Sweden now. The cheer in the air was medicine for me, and there was so much laughter. In fact, I am laughing now, remembering. Yay.

Well, I think that's enough rambling. If you're still reading, thanks for listening. Break time's over, and it's time to get back to ... what was I reading? Uhhh [shuffling paper] ... the indigenous coinages of Persian-period Palestine as an allegory. Wish me monsters!*

*Obscure Joss Whedon reference.

No. 13

2009-12-24T18:56:00.003-05:00

Kevin and I listened to this on our way to Ohio today. I lost count of how many times my heart quivered with the pleasure of discovering a kindred spirit and hearing at last the lyrics of so many melodies of my soul.

Love and shalom to you all, my friends.

Beannacht

by John O'Donohue

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

I Simply Had Nothing to Wear!

2009-12-23T17:52:00.004-05:00

Is it terrible that I made a little present for myself too? It's just that we're going to the theatre to celebrate Kevin's parents' 40th wedding anniversary on Saturday, and I had no jewelry that suited my only warm dress. And so I had to, for them, so that my lack of appropriate accessorizing wouldn't dampen the evening for anyone. Um. Yeah.

Nothing Beautiful to Report Today, But

2009-12-22T19:48:00.005-05:00

Man. I believe I am sapped of all creative energy. This is a good time to be sapped, however, because I just put the last touch on the last gift that I had to make before I leave for Ohio. For the record, Laser Gold "top-quality-made-in-Switzerland" saw blades are complete crap. I broke three in four inches of sawing 24-gauge copper, for crying out loud. Not cool. (I know, you're probably thinking "Huh?" Just humor me and make a mad face, 'kay?)

It's been a good-but-way-too-busy few days. Until today. Today was a not-so-good-and-still-way-too-busy day. Mind if I vent? Well, for privacy's sake I can't do much venting in this public forum, actually, but let's just say my day received a thorough ruining just before I left for work, the kind of ruining that leaves me moody and welling with tears all day, torturing myself with emotionally charged music and talking myself out of calling people just to talk. Sigh. And I was keeping such a stiff upper lip too. It got better when I got home, but now I'm soooo tired. And there are still a house to clean, gifts to wrap, and bags to pack. And eight more hours of work that I get paid to do.

I don't actually have much to say right now. I guess I still just need to talk to someone. Hmmmm. But to talk about what?

Um. Okay, maybe I don't want to talk. Maybe I just want some quiet company. Do you mind if I sit here for a while with you and not talk? Really? Oh, thank you.

Ahh, I needed that. You can go now. Peace.

No. 12

2009-12-21T22:04:00.008-05:00

Behold, the most resplendent Christmas hymn of them all.

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,

It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining.

Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!

O night divine, the night when Christ was born;

O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!

Led by the light of faith serenely beaming,

With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.

O'er the world a star is sweetly gleaming,

Now come the wisemen from out of the Orient land.

The King of kings lay thus lowly manger;

In all our trials born to be our friend.

He knows our need, our weakness is no stranger,

Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!

Truly He taught us to love one another,

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.

And in his name all oppression shall cease.

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,

With all our hearts we praise His holy name.

Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,

His power and glory ever more proclaim!

No. 11: More Presumption

2009-12-20T16:21:00.003-05:00

Finished this afternoon. The pendant will hang from a silver snake chain.

Nos. 9–10

2009-12-19T21:33:00.005-05:00

Um. Is it terribly presumptuous of me to post something I made as part of my Beautiful Thing of the Day series?

(It's a pin. I didn't make the scarf; that was made by some nice lady in India who was paid a fair wage for her work, courtesy of Ten Thousand Villages.) There are many more projects in the works, and several more that are finished. I'll post pictures of those sometime after Friday. ; )

And, for good measure, the snow in my front yard is pretty too. I took a walk in it today—totally out of character for me. And you know what? All those people who like to take walks in the snow are really on to something.

No. 8

2009-12-18T10:34:00.001-05:00

"Better is poverty that gathers than wealth that scatters."

—Syriac text of The Story and Wisdom of Ahiqar

No. 7

2009-12-18T07:32:00.008-05:00

Oops, I skipped another day yesterday. Sorry!

Well, today's beautiful thing is a beautiful thing that I notice every day. And let me tell you, this beautiful things brings so many tiny tingles of joy into my life, it's ridiculous.

It's my amazing, gorgeous, hilarious, adorable, intelligent, neat-and-tidy, affectionate, amiable, perfect kitty, Calvin Gregory. He's my baby. Here are some more pictures.

Who the heck finds a chartreux cat in a shelter? Me!!!

We did not pose him for that last one, I swear. Yay for my kitty, the cutest, nicest cat in all the universe. Cats rule and dogs drool!

(Btw, I actually have about five essays in mind to write and post when I get a spare minute to myself. But don't hold your breath before Christmas.)

No. 6

2009-12-16T07:22:00.005-05:00

I was looking through some old pictures this morning, and I came across this, which I snapped a few months ago.

It was just lying there in my driveway, after a fall rain. It captured my attention so soundly that I ran into the house, got the camera, ran back out, and took about ten photos of it. Isn't surface tension marvelous?

I know, I skipped yesterday. Maybe I'll make up for it. Maybe I won't.

Beautiful Thing No. 5

2009-12-14T11:54:00.003-05:00

I was searching for something entirely other, and I stumbled over this, in my path. Now I need to read Out of Solitude.

When we honestly ask ourselves which people in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. —Henri Nouwen

What could be truer?

Beautiful Thing No. 4

2009-12-13T20:46:00.003-05:00

My favorite verse is the fourth. Sorry about the static.

Beautiful Thing No. 3, and So On

2009-12-12T18:46:00.009-05:00

I was in a tiny gallery in Goshen this morning, full of antique rugs and jewelry from Tibet and pastel paintings and Orthodox icons. Now, I'm not sure how meaningful icons might be to me, even though I know they mean a lot to a lot of people. But boy are they pretty. So here is today's beautiful thing: an icon of the Holy Trinity.

Golly. What a day. What a yesterday. Yesterday, I couldn't have been more up and down. I woke up up, feeling grateful for a moderately restful night. I started to feel a bit down before lunch, but an amazing meal with an amazing friend perked me right back up. Then, two hours after lunch ... well, I was not okay anymore. Crashing-down-through-the-floor not okay. Then Kevin came home. Up again! Up, up, up. Losing-my-bra-behind-the-couch-until-the-next- afternoon up. (My hubby? Total stud!) And then came bedtime. Ugh. Toss, turn, move the cat, turn, toss, until 12:30 am. And then, hello 3:30 am, old buddy, old pal. Lord, was I frustrated this morning.

But here's the thing. What a pain I've been lately! I mean, seriously. This morning, I was like "Alright, self. Cut it out and do it now!" I'm so fed up—with the random crying and the staring into space and the mountain of laundry and the feeling sorry for myself for no freaking reason. So this is Christmas? Yeah, Mr. Lennon. This is Christmas. So what? Christmas is no reason to feel sorry for myself. I've never had a happy Christmas, not one. But that doesn't mean that I never can. It doesn't mean that I can't have one this year. Well, maybe it won't be happy. But at least it doesn't have to make me want to crawl into a hole in the ground until January.

So here's what I did about it. I got off my butt, and I went Christmas shopping at the farmer's market and Ten Thousand Villages and a used book store and an art gallery. I bought gifts for people just because I love them and not because it's Christmas. Then, I came home and cleaned my house. Whoa, Nellie, did I clean my house. Come to my house, if you want to see a clean house. Ever wonder what peppermint castile soap smells like? Stop by and find out. I spent a few hours alone, which I haven't done in weeks, and it felt so good. I had no idea how badly I needed some space. (Hello, couldn't be more introverted, haven't been alone in weeks. Duh!)

This morning, I decided that, at least for today, I need to snap the heck out of it. Because, if nothing else, I am loved. Even though I don't always feel that I am loved, I know I am. Now, 29 years of being told in no uncertain terms how hideous I am by many significant and most insignificant people in my life does not make for a very stable self-image. Being beaten and abandoned and humiliated and despised by so many people for so long takes its toll, and I just haven't healed to the point at which those things don't affect my every relationship and every waking (and every dreaming) hour. But what makes those people's opinions more valid than the quiet insistence of the people who I know do love me? I'll tell ya: nothing. People who love me, you deserve credit for it, especially when I am the way I have been for the last couple of weeks, because even when I am (that is, think I am being) so unattractive, you just keep loving me. So, Kevin, Jeannie, Tamie, and Christine: thanks for showing love to me this week. I love you all too. Despite my recent bout of ill humor, Kevin has still had crazy sex with me (and spent gobs of time holding me every day and did the dishes and fed the cat and made dinner and so on and so on), Jeannie has welcomed me when I randomly showed up at her house in the middle of the day, Tamie has listened to me gently and fed my heart and body, and Christine has let me sob all over her nice, white sweater. Thank you guys, for being so kind and for putting up with my Eeyoreishness. I'm going to try to buck up now. Really, I am.

Am I cured of my intermittent depression? Not even. Do I still need to cry on someone's shoulder? Maybe. Do I still need long, tight hugs and open ears and open doors and a lot of patience and grace? Hell yes. But who doesn't? Oh, friends. We all need so, so much grace. God, do we need grace. Grace and forgiveness and forbearance and a humble approach to each other, and so much love. Please, please let's love each other. We all have so many issues. We are all so broken. Dudes. Hug someone today, because I guar-an-tee you, you'll come across someone who needs desperately to be hugged. Forget about all your inhibitions, and hug that person long and tight. Hold on until you're both crying. Because that one hug just might make all the difference.

Beautiful Thing No. 2

2009-12-11T16:37:00.003-05:00

I wish I had been able to take photos of today's beautiful things. The first the wax pooling around a lit candle on the table where I had lunch with my friend. The second was the warm, toasty homemade tortillas that she made for me. Homemade tortillas! No one has ever made homemade tortillas for me before. They were so good. And beautiful. And so was the candlelight. And so were the conversation and the company.

So far, so good.

Today

2009-12-10T17:52:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I don't feel very much like taking care of myself. You know what helps in those times? Knowing that there are people rooting for me to take care of myself. Because I often can't do for my own sake what I can do because someone I love wants me to. Does that make sense? Lately, I'm just not feeling very well, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, or physically, and I'm not taking very good care of myself. But a few people are rooting for me.

So today, I did a few things to take care of myself. I

made my early (read: 2:30 am) wake time productive by doing some grading and going to work at 6:30 instead of lying in bed and torturing myself all night. Now I don't have to work until 7 tomorrow!

ate breakfast and lunch.

sat at a friend's kitchen table for half an hour, drinking tea and listening to her talk and watching her make bread with her daughter.

went to yoga class (which I've skipped for a week).

And in addition to that, I got a postcard from my amazing baby sister, who is currently meandering around Switzerland, eating chocolate and visiting museums and churches. And in addition to that, I'm having lunch with another friend tomorrow, to which I'm really looking forward. And I've decided that, for the remainder of December, I'm going to make a point of noticing one beautiful thing each day and, in so doing, make it through this most "wonderful" time of the year. Because if there's anything that lifts my drooping heart, it's beautiful things. And today's beautiful thing is this song. I've been listening to it over and over all week. This song positively floors me. It made me cry the first, like, ten times I heard it.

Go here, and click the blue button next to the first item in the queue. (I think you can only listen to it once before it will try to get you to sign up for an account on the site. Sorry. There are no good videos of it on YouTube.)

It's called "It's Never Too Late," and it's by Michael Franti and Spearhead. I don't know why, but it just makes my heart ache (in a good way). Enjoy.

Man, did I need this today.

2009-12-10T09:06:00.003-05:00

A co-worker sent this forward to me this morning. In my line of work, it's funny enough to make you pee your pants. And, for the sake of irony, I left all the typos and bad formatting. Enjoy!

Who did the Proofreading?

(Proofreading is a dying art, would you say?)
Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter
This one I caught in the SGV Tribune the other day and called the Editorial Room and asked who wrote this. It took two or three readings before the editor realized that what he was reading was impossible!!! They put in a correction the next day.

_____

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
No, really? Ya think?
---------------------------------------------

Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
Now that's taking things a bit far!
-----------------------------------------------------------
Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
What a guy!
---------------------------------------------------------------
Miners Refuse to Work after Death
'good-for-nothing' lazy so-and-so's!
------------------------------------------------------

Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
See if that works any better than a fair trial!
----------------------------------------------------------

War Dims Hope for Peace
I can see where it might have that effect!
----------------------------------------------------------------

If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile
Ya think?!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures
Who would have thought!
----------------------------------------------------------------

Enfield ( London ) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide e
They may be on to something!
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges
You mean there's something stronger than duct tape?
Oklahoma's new construction program!
----------------------------------------------------------

Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge
He probably IS the battery charge!
----------------------------------------------

New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
Weren't they fat enough?!
-----------------------------------------------

Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft
That's what he gets for eating those beans!
-------------------------------------------------

Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
Do they taste like chicken?
---------------------------- ---------------------------------------
Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
Chainsaw Massacre all over again!
***************************************************

Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors
Boy, are they tall!
*******************************************
And the winner is ....
Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Did I read that right?
***************************************************

2009-12-04T19:16:00.003-05:00

Tonight my heart is full. Full. It's the feeling for which English does not have a word—both profound contentment and intense sorrow, a love heightened by venom, the sated waiting that invades my rest and drapes a lull over my waking.

This week, I observed a life coming into the world and a life leaving it, a life subjected to judgment and a life torn asunder. And Advent has begun, when a cold pallor settles into my surroundings and a chill into my limbs and a sickness into my soul, and my appeal for deliverance from this body of death draws nearer to its zenith with each tinkle of each silver bell.

Be still, my soul; the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord,
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul; when change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Random, Muddled Musings about Relationships

2009-11-29T18:34:00.004-05:00

Last night, Kevin and I spent several very pleasant hours with four of our friends, and we went to bed with smiles on our faces. This morning, we woke up and went to church, and I spend the Sunday school hour chatting with another friend, a great treat because we attend two separate services and never see each other.

Then we came home, ate lunch, and retired for a nap. And we woke up, and Kevin got to work on some important things. And the house is so quiet.

Now, hear me: I love quiet. But this quiet—it's not a comfortable quiet. It's the quiet left behind by the absence of something good, something intangible, a you-can't-quite-put-your-finger-on-it sort of something, a void that Must Be Filled, but because you don't know what is missing, you don't know what will fit. It's the quiet that makes you want to turn on every light in the house.

And so I wanted to call someone, to talk about nothing, just for a hand to hold. But I didn't. I thought "Hey, I'll call ________. That'd be great. I'd feel much better then." And then I thought "Oh, no you don't." And then I thought "Now wait. Why not?" And my dumb reply was "Because. Shut up. Just don't." And that's as far as I got with myself. I'm so stubborn.

And I started to think about why I refuse to satisfy my urge for relationship so often. It seems that when I am at my most vulnerable and most need to reach out to the people in my life who support me is when I am least likely to go to them, because I feel that I am at my least attractive and don't want to be burdensome or to be mistaken for a Needy Person. In fact, I almost deleted everything I just wrote because I'm deathly afraid to reveal that I sometimes feel this way, because I don't want to be burdensome or be mistaken for a Needy Person. (Have you ever heard The Cranberries' "Ode to My Family"? When Dolores O'Riordan whimpers the line "Do you like me? Do you like me standing there?" Damn. That song kills me.)

Why is it so taboo in our culture to need each other? (Is it? Or should I shut up now before tip my weirdo hand any farther?) Why does it feel so ... dirty? Is it common to feel wholly unworthy of the friends in our lives and to feel like "I should just leave so-and-so alone today, so I don't make a pest of myself"? Is it common to grit one's teeth against the sting of loneliness and bear it solo because the thought of being seen, even by trusted companions, in weak and unattractive moments is just plain terrifying? Is this just garden-variety fear of rejection? Are we really unattractive to the people who love us when we are weak?

I mean, I think the people I love are positively stunning when their weaknesses are on display to me. And I can think of no greater honor than "Hi, Amy. I really need some company right now. Do you have a few minutes?" I also fancy myself to be far more unique than I really am.

And another thing.

I hate that most of my friends don't know each other and live in such diverse places that they probably never can know each other. There's really no cure for this, and I'm just venting. But wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone you loved loved everyone else you loved?

And another thing.

What the heck is wrong with dtr talks??? I had a boyfriend once. He was actually a secret boyfriend, for reasons that are for another post. Before we were a secret couple, we were secret friends. He flirted a lot, and pushed me away just as much. I was so confused! But when I hinted that maybe we ought to talk about what we were doing openly, he mocked me, asking if I needed a dtr talk, like dtr talks are for kids and stupid people (dtr stands for defining the relationship). Little did I know, he was just scared. But I still have a complex from that interaction. What's wrong with sitting down with people and saying, "________, this is what you mean to me. I think you're great, and here's why"?

Here's what I think. I think we should say wildly nice things to each other, and give little random gifts to each other, and say "I love you" when we mean it, to everyone we love and not just our sexual partners and immediate families. I think we should tell people how beautiful they are. I think we should tell people when we're thinking of them, write affectionate notes to people and leave them in mail boxes, let them know when we feel their absence and that their presence in our lives is important to us, tell them when we miss them, even if we saw them last week and it seems totally silly. (Am I the only one who misses people I just saw?)

I'm sorry. I know people don't like to hear shoulds. I don't like to hear shoulds. Anyway. That's what's on my mind tonight.

After Giving Thanks

2009-11-27T12:16:00.005-05:00

On Thanksgiving Thursday, we Americans reflect on all that we have and try to be grateful for it. We offer our prayers of gratitude to our gods and we issue a collective sigh of contentment through a haze of tryptophan and wine and refined carbohydrates. We love our loved ones and we momentarily forgive our enemies.

And then the very next day, we rise at 4, 3, 2 in the morning, rush out in hoards and droves, and purchase ourselves into glutted, indebted, consumerist oblivion, wanting and needing and not thinking of everything we already have that fails to sate our relentless craving to have stuff. We trample the weak and slow in order to snatch our material prizes, because this is what the television networks and toy manufactures and conservative economists say is our sacred right and solemn duty as middle-class Americans.

Does anyone else feel manipulated? My response to this state of affairs is to stay home and read.

Last night, as we sat down to our cold turkey sandwiches and leftover pie, I had just finished talking to my mother, and I felt the most overwhelming sense of satisfaction and gratitude. She usually spends Thanksgiving by herself, and I usually spend Thanksgiving thinking about how she's by herself. I don't dare go to her, but I can't enjoy the day when she is alone. But yesterday, she spent the day with friends. She has friends right now. I can't begin to describe how relieved and happy this makes me.

And as I released my guilt and grief over my mother's loneliness, here are the things that flooded that space in my heart.

I'm thankful for my life.

I'm thankful for a husband who is as wonderful as husbands get, who listens to me and respects me and will make any sacrifice for my well-being. Who married me even though I think for myself and who wouldn't dream of having it any other way. Who eats the vegetables I feed him and turns off the TV when it's been long enough because he appreciates my efforts to do what is best for us and wants to take part. Who wants to know me and who is gentle with my very fragile heart. Who makes me tea every morning, pays the bills, cuts the grass, goes to buy our drinking water, changes the oil, brings in the mail, fixes the house when it breaks, and does whatever housework I ask him to do. (You are my world, honey. I love you.)

I'm thankful for my intelligent, responsible, passionate, loving, kind, talented baby sister, who thinks far more highly of me than I deserve. I really need that. (Don't we all?)

I'm thankful for my friends. I often feel so very alone, but I never am. Friends, your presence in my life keeps me afloat, keeps me humble and my heart open and full. I love each of you so much, and each of you is ineffably precious to me, whether I've known you for a few months or for twenty years and whether I saw you last week or haven't seen you in a long time and whether I know you intimately or have only just penetrated the shell of your public persona. I want to honor each of you by name, but that may be for a different post. If you're thinking "I wonder if that applies to me," it does.

I'm thankful for all the women who have been mothers to me in some capacity, including my own. I'm thankful that together they have taught me how to love my children.

I'm thankful for my education. I'm thankful for every museum I've visited and every library and every lecture and every book. I'm thankful for my teachers and fellow students and for all the people in my life who challenge me to keep learning.

I'm thankful for humor and whimsy and beauty and the ability to experience the emotional and psychological complexities of human existence through them. Humor and whimsy and beauty keep me sane.

I'm thankful for Ben and Rachel, who masterfully coax the vegetables I eat out of the ground, without intervention from Monsanto.

I'm thankful for my little white house on a hill. I'm thankful for my bed and my books and my kitty and my computer and my car. I'm thankful for my kitchen and my table, where I cook meals and share them with beautiful people. I'm thankful for my job and for my health insurance. I'm thankful that I can take yoga lessons now. I'm thankful that I have clean water to drink and enough food to eat, food that is good for my body.

I'm thankful for the amazing world in which we live. I'm thankful for trees and oceans and rabbits and daisies and rocks and apples and onions and tea and wine and warmth and sex and birth and the way sand feels beneath my feet.

And I'm thankful to the God I worship, whose name is Jesus, because I believe he is the source of all things and that he loves us, all of us, and wants us to love and care for each other.

I hope each of you has a blessed, full, contented, peaceful Black Friday. Shalom. Namaste.

Smile!

2009-11-27T08:47:00.005-05:00

Seriously, I cannot stop watching this. (I know you've all already seen it, but, dude, watch it again. You know you want to.)

(I also can't figure out how to get it to embed without cutting off about an inch of the little window, so you'll have to go to YouTube to see it. Sorry. If anyone can help me with this problem, suggestions are welcome.)

I Have No Gift to Bring

2009-11-23T20:26:00.004-05:00

Here we go again.

Every November, I begin to fold myself up. It's an annual ritual of self-preservation, during which I hibernate, emotionally, against the impending onslaught of guilt and hostility and aloneness that rides to me on the backs of these holidays that everyone seems to love so much. I don't love the holidays. They aren't special for me. The traditions in which I take part are not my own, and the memories aren't warm or full of love. Most "Christmas" music makes cry. I don't have any drive to deck the halls with or bake anything.

Please don't think I'm a Scrooge. I just can't love something that brings me so much grief. I think about the lonely people. I think about the people with no homes. I think about the wonderful parents who cope with so much devastation because they can't afford to give their kids a mountain of stuff (and for what?). I think about the people I love whom I can't see. I think about the people who are alone because I won't let them see me. I think about all the different Christmases, in all the different places, with all the different families to which I never really belonged, who are all currently preparing to carry out all those family rituals in which I took part while I was there, and who are not thinking of me at all.

I put on the show every year, go along with whatever is expected, and I smile, and I pretend to be having a good time. And in some ways, it is a good time, and maybe some day I'll grow to love the things that seem to bring so many people joy. But for now, every November, I begin to long for January, when it all goes away.

December does have one thing going for it. "The Little Drummer Boy." It's one of my favorite songs. I sing it to myself all year. It captures Christmas for me in a way none of the other carols can, and it helps me to see a little place for myself in this swirling typhoon of tinsel. "'Come,' they told me; 'a newborn king to see'": a humble, timid little boy, being dragged along by the exuberant, confident people around him, expecting him to be excited about expressions in which he is too poor to have any business participating. "I have no gift to bring that's fit to give a king." But he goes along with it, because he has to. When they shove him into the spotlight before the king, he offers, his head bowed and a blush on his face and tears in his eyes (in my version of the story), the only lowly scrap that he has—himself. "Shall I play for you?" And Mary nodded.

The last lines of the song are a searing hot dagger of of everything unbearable right through my heart, every time they pass through my mind. I love them. I love them so much. "I played my drum for him. I played my best for him. And he smiled at me. Me and my drum."

At Christmas, I feel so terribly poor in the midst of wise men and kings, offering their frankincense and myrrh, their lights and trees and traditions and songs about chestnuts and reindeer. But when it comes down to just him and me, and all I have is this little drum, I think he probably still smiles. Because what I have is enough for him, if for no one else.