The rains came, long and heavy, to the Santa Barbara backcountry, so the Santa Ynez River is running again. In the last two weeks before school vacation, the roof of our rental was frosted white about half of the time I walked my kids to the bus stop in the morning. Our large German Shepherd-Lab has taken to laying next to the wood burning stove at all hours of the day and night, stretched out like an Egyptian Cat, groaning at me when I suggest “a little fresh air and exercise”. It’s that time of the year when I swear I will keep gifts simple, spend only a few dollars per niece or nephew, and focus on the “true meaning of the season”. The only difference this year for me in regards to my inability to keep my money in my wallet is that I started planning “for Christmas” weeks earlier, and therefore am being complemented by friends and family alike for “being so on top of it” as I hand out photo cards or announce that all my packages are pretty much in the mail. Sigh. Sigh again. The truth is, I’m not feeling confident or peaceful or ready in the least for what tomorrow will bring, let alone the rest of this season. Last night after a dinner of good conversation and laughter, I found myself rushing about and lecturing my kids about all their lack of respect and the household messiness. So quick to anger I am; so critical of the ways that my family comes to me in not-so-perfect packages. Even after some mint tea and a stroll in the woods naming constellations with my husband, I lay awake in my bed until 1 a.m., restless, confused and angry about stupid little ways my life is not “on track”. No amount of shopping success is going to cure my longing for security... and no amount of measurable security (safety, shelter, work, food) is going to fill the hunger I have for a life marked by abundant love and grace. So rather than writing about my unsuccessful attempts to make money in shaky economic times, or my crappy rental agreement that leaves my family with new month to month housing insecurity, I am writing to listen to what my heart is trying to tell me through my emotions that refuse to be trussed up or tucked under the fir tree. I am writing to remember the invitation extended to all of us to be part of an event that started out with precarious risk, unpredictable outcomes, and much rejoicing.
PRECARIOUS RISK
My son recently returned from a solo, three-day fast in the wilderness. I see him as the same boy who left at age 12: affectionate, intelligent, slow-paced, generous. Yet I also see a young man marked by maturity beyond his thirteen years: patient and forgiving, compassionate and dedicated to giving and receiving in the context of community. I can learn so many things from him right now, if I can stop picking up the role I laid down when he left me on my doorstep smiling proud—the role of constantly mothering him. I can choose to claim the truth that my job of raising Caleb through childhood was a “job well done”, and that though there is much parenting left to do in the next five years or so, my role in reference to him has shifted. I am more of a mentor or guide to him now; less of a nanny or body guard.
Caleb’s three-day “Vision Quest” experience was part choreographed by his father and I, part initiated by him, and part arranged by the loving force of the universe which we call God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus. It is impossible for me to summarize or categorize or explain how the plan to “initiate” Caleb into the next stage of his life formed and became a reality that blew all of us away in its loveliness, so I will not attempt to do that. Instead I will refer to ways Caleb’s Vision informs mine now, and let you taste the sweetness of shared insight.
Was Caleb in more danger in the woods than he is every day on a highway, in the school yard, in our neighborhood? I do not believe so, though contemporary Western thought might claim so. I believe that Caleb’s intention to place himself empty and listening before God gave him a bravery that sustained him. He was lonely, he felt small and vulnerable and hungry and weak and naked. He questioned whether or not he had it in himself to “make it” through the goals he set for himself. After leaving the men camping nearby (father, grandfathers, uncles, friends), he went through his longest, coldest, hungriest night of his life up to that point. He woke victorious, ready to study his dreams and converse with the unseen but deeply felt presence of his Creator. To believe at that point that he was not alone, and that he would hear and understand messages to apply to his life, was a huge act of faith, hope, and precarious risk-taking. Caleb took that chance, and was rewarded with discernment and wisdom well beyond thirteen-year old development milestones. He is working to apply them now. I want to be a good water-boy, encouraging him up from the sidelines.
“God is at my core… my job is to let him come out of me…” Caleb
Can I believe that--that God is at the core of each of us--, not just my young-adult son, but myself, my neighbor, the person who cuts me off on the freeway?
When I wake to the buzzing alarm, wishing that sleep could be longer, can I stretch my aching back and remember the 5 a.m. mornings I had breathing into the dark, holding up the image of my firstborn alone in forest? I was wide awake then, lighting a candle and praying first by recognizing the sacredness of each and every breath. Life in my chest, life in the chest of the child who was waking up to nature’s sights and sounds of morning. Abundant, simple life. I remembered then that life was no small thing to be grateful for. Life itself is an abundant blessing, even when we complicate it so much that we take basic living for granted. We need to have reason to sit sometimes, just breathing and hoping and praying for life to extend. Precarious risk can scare us shitless, but that is sometimes just what we need to simplify our hopes and dreams, or redefine our regrets.
UNPREDICTABLE OUTCOMES
An outcome I didn’t expect is that adults I don’t even know have been totally inspired by my son’s time in the wilderness. The story is being spread from friend to friend, and acquaintance to acquaintance, and it is having a powerful impact. Good questions are being asked, like: If a teen can go into the wilderness and hear so much purpose for his life, why can’t I do that? Is it true that he initiated instruction for his baptism, and he doesn’t attend church or Sunday school? If those parents can take the risk of letting their son be out there alone, maybe we can too? Is our culture wrong to try and protect young adults from fear, suffering, loneliness, and solitude?
MUCH REJOICING
It is hard to prioritize rejoicing. Mary and Joseph were stuck in a barn when Jesus decided to arrive, and they had to make do with a feeding trough for a cradle. The Shepherds were occupied with sheep, and the foreigners were looking for a king... I wish I could have been a fly on the wall through all of those comings and goings and crazy interactions. I don’t want to argue or analyze theology here, but I have some strong opinions concerning why God chose Mary to deliver his son. She was ready for risk-taking, and adventure. She was capable of hearing (and believing she had heard) God’s voice in her dreams, or in the wind through the trees. She was young after all—possibly 13, 15, 17. I’m guessing that she had not yet started to worry about how to guarantee her security by material things...
I want to be like that again. Like a teen—full of bravado and restlessness not based on regret of the past or worry for the future but based on the current intuitional evidence that life offers more than we hoped or we dreamed when we take the time to listen well and believe. Restlessness based on a belief that we all should be taking precarious risks, trusting not in our own knowledge but in a bigger source of invincibility than calls us to grander schemes. I think about those men "from the East", PHDs in stargazing, who sacrificed a couple years (at least!) of their normal lives to adventure out into the unknown, with the hope and prayer that they would meet a Jewish King. When they found him, there was much rejoicing.
Doesn’t the “nativity scene” make interesting story? Did the Wise Men need to show up to give the whole miracle credibility? Or did God just want the story to be told, over and over again, in many different ways, by friends to friends and acquaintances to acquaintances? Are we remembering to tell our own crazy stories of the adventures we’ve embarked on and the things we believed in those moments that we could achieve?
As I look back and count the days of my unemployment, I see failure. As I look forward and contemplate the idea of moving out six months early, I feel fear. As I stop, and breathe slowly and deeply, I began to see the foolishness that tries to temp me to check that last item off my “to purchase” list, as if that act will make me “ready for Christmas”. As I stop, and breathe slowly and deeply, I start to hear the beating of my own precious life. I start to notice how the oak tree’s limbs are swaying in the wind. The rain came heavy and long out here, and the grass will grow green for a long, long time. I can accept my restlessness, my confusion and my anger in this winter season... I can mix it in with my laughter and my stories of amazement. I am making plans right now to hearken to my memory of Caleb’s face when I get discouraged today—to remember his pride in himself and his gratefulness for his community that was so evident in his expression the moment his father and I pulled him out of the frigid Santa Ynez River where he chose to be baptized. He had completed a “job well done”, and wasn’t afraid to celebrate and claim it. After gasping for breath, he beamed at the small crowd gathered around, and said loudly, “Now-- That will be memorable!”
It was.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Lies, Doubts, and Worrying
ON BEING A FIBBER
I am such a liar. I am not even trying to post on my blog every day this month. I have all kinds of reasons and excuses that wonderfully explain why I’ve been unable to meet such a goal: a faulty internet connection one night, surprise company for a few days, the power button I didn’t know about that disabled the soundproof window my internal editor was trapped behind.... I think there is another truth as to why I have already thrown in the dish rag. I think it is important for me to find. I want to understand why it is that writing is my best very friend and very worstest enemy. I’m tired of carrying around a fantasy that one day I’ll awake in a real author chrysalis, and then struggle rather effortlessly out into publishing flight-hood.
ON BEING A PESSIMIST
I am so ungrateful. I’m not even trying to enjoy the view outside my window, which could knock the socks off a centipede. We got loads of rain back here in the canyon, and the San Rafael foothills can be seen through the live oak’s branches, washed clean of all the dust and haze. The birds are going crazy in relief, because it was hotter than Kansas up here for a few weeks preceding the rain. Now the smell of sage and bay and growing things is intoxicating. Also, the tarantulas are coming out to mate again. I’ve already seen three of them this week. I like seeing them, even though they are a little creepy. I also like the family of tiny bats nesting in a corner of our carport overhang, and the adorable squeaking they make when we bother them in the daytime. My oldest niece is twelve now, and has a good command of subtle sarcastic humor. She noticed the bats one day, and the influx of cobwebs (spiders are working overtime to catch the first-rain insect hatches), and she said, “Wow, you guys decorate for Halloween early—nice decorations.”
Why can't I have child eyes like that, and see the wildness around me as decoration and celebration? why is gratefulness so far from me this week? How do I have patience with myself when my gut is rain soaked and fuzzy gray with a tarantula sized anxiety that can’t be walked away from?
ON BEING A WORRY-WART
Some of you will laugh in disbelief when I say this, but Caleb is failing Algebra. If you know my son, and the speed at which his brain stores mathematical information, you will understand my confusion over this situation, and how it adds to my general feeling of disillusionment and irritation. When my son was age 2 ½, he could play quietly for 45 minutes unsupervised, organizing matchbox cars or plastic toys into size, shape, and color categories. He could then spend another 1/2 hour making the categories more complex(i.e. alternating three trucks to every one motorcycle)... you get the picture. In fourth grade, when the kids in his class started leaving their hands in their laps and saying, “Just ask Caleb,” during every math lesson, we convinced his teacher to let him sit at the back of the classroom during math time, reviewing the fifth grade textbook. He aced all chapter tests of both grades that year, and has continued getting a perfect score on the yearly State math assessment since then. However, my son is considerably challenged by quick transitions and detailed organization of daily routines and tasks. Seventh grade has been a never-ending obstacle course for him, and a nail biting routine for Jason and I on the bleachers. It makes me a bit insane to not be able to “fix” the problem of roller coaster grades, and to watch such knowledge count for almost nothing on the educator’s success-o-rama scales. I am alternately inspirational speaker and Law Enforcement; rubbing his shoulders one minute then giving him the "You don’t even want to think about setting that pencil down” glare the next.
Perhaps the hardest part for me is not the Jekyll and Hyde act, but rather being forced to see the ways I too fail at succeeding at the things Caleb is worst at...planning ahead, sticking to the routine when more interesting things manifest themselves, shutting down the side-brain to similes, metaphors, and creative ponderings of the unseen mysteries of the universe when there is tedium to accomplish. I can relate to the rebellion that overtakes him. I wish the two of us could spend a week each month traveling the country and discussing great literature, providing fireside “talks” of poetry, essays, and theatrical reading entertainment, while raking in the dough. I wish I knew how to help myself fit in to this practical and pragmatic Western World we live in, so that I could give my son infallible coping skills. When I alternate between pity and punishment for his choices and behavior, I am not at my best. My best knows that he, (like all of us adults who made it to somewhat functional adulthood despite our teens)will find the clues he needs to adapt, and (hopefully) succeed in Algebra class. But in the meantime I ache for a thing that seems so reasonable yet so currently unachievable for a brilliantly unique kid like Caleb: a way for him to be true to himself, yet sail through the academic part of Seventh Grade.
I am such a liar. I am not even trying to post on my blog every day this month. I have all kinds of reasons and excuses that wonderfully explain why I’ve been unable to meet such a goal: a faulty internet connection one night, surprise company for a few days, the power button I didn’t know about that disabled the soundproof window my internal editor was trapped behind.... I think there is another truth as to why I have already thrown in the dish rag. I think it is important for me to find. I want to understand why it is that writing is my best very friend and very worstest enemy. I’m tired of carrying around a fantasy that one day I’ll awake in a real author chrysalis, and then struggle rather effortlessly out into publishing flight-hood.
ON BEING A PESSIMIST
I am so ungrateful. I’m not even trying to enjoy the view outside my window, which could knock the socks off a centipede. We got loads of rain back here in the canyon, and the San Rafael foothills can be seen through the live oak’s branches, washed clean of all the dust and haze. The birds are going crazy in relief, because it was hotter than Kansas up here for a few weeks preceding the rain. Now the smell of sage and bay and growing things is intoxicating. Also, the tarantulas are coming out to mate again. I’ve already seen three of them this week. I like seeing them, even though they are a little creepy. I also like the family of tiny bats nesting in a corner of our carport overhang, and the adorable squeaking they make when we bother them in the daytime. My oldest niece is twelve now, and has a good command of subtle sarcastic humor. She noticed the bats one day, and the influx of cobwebs (spiders are working overtime to catch the first-rain insect hatches), and she said, “Wow, you guys decorate for Halloween early—nice decorations.”
Why can't I have child eyes like that, and see the wildness around me as decoration and celebration? why is gratefulness so far from me this week? How do I have patience with myself when my gut is rain soaked and fuzzy gray with a tarantula sized anxiety that can’t be walked away from?
ON BEING A WORRY-WART
Some of you will laugh in disbelief when I say this, but Caleb is failing Algebra. If you know my son, and the speed at which his brain stores mathematical information, you will understand my confusion over this situation, and how it adds to my general feeling of disillusionment and irritation. When my son was age 2 ½, he could play quietly for 45 minutes unsupervised, organizing matchbox cars or plastic toys into size, shape, and color categories. He could then spend another 1/2 hour making the categories more complex(i.e. alternating three trucks to every one motorcycle)... you get the picture. In fourth grade, when the kids in his class started leaving their hands in their laps and saying, “Just ask Caleb,” during every math lesson, we convinced his teacher to let him sit at the back of the classroom during math time, reviewing the fifth grade textbook. He aced all chapter tests of both grades that year, and has continued getting a perfect score on the yearly State math assessment since then. However, my son is considerably challenged by quick transitions and detailed organization of daily routines and tasks. Seventh grade has been a never-ending obstacle course for him, and a nail biting routine for Jason and I on the bleachers. It makes me a bit insane to not be able to “fix” the problem of roller coaster grades, and to watch such knowledge count for almost nothing on the educator’s success-o-rama scales. I am alternately inspirational speaker and Law Enforcement; rubbing his shoulders one minute then giving him the "You don’t even want to think about setting that pencil down” glare the next.
Perhaps the hardest part for me is not the Jekyll and Hyde act, but rather being forced to see the ways I too fail at succeeding at the things Caleb is worst at...planning ahead, sticking to the routine when more interesting things manifest themselves, shutting down the side-brain to similes, metaphors, and creative ponderings of the unseen mysteries of the universe when there is tedium to accomplish. I can relate to the rebellion that overtakes him. I wish the two of us could spend a week each month traveling the country and discussing great literature, providing fireside “talks” of poetry, essays, and theatrical reading entertainment, while raking in the dough. I wish I knew how to help myself fit in to this practical and pragmatic Western World we live in, so that I could give my son infallible coping skills. When I alternate between pity and punishment for his choices and behavior, I am not at my best. My best knows that he, (like all of us adults who made it to somewhat functional adulthood despite our teens)will find the clues he needs to adapt, and (hopefully) succeed in Algebra class. But in the meantime I ache for a thing that seems so reasonable yet so currently unachievable for a brilliantly unique kid like Caleb: a way for him to be true to himself, yet sail through the academic part of Seventh Grade.
Company
You will agree that five inches of rain over a couple of days is more than the average camping family can handle. Now imagine being a parent alone with a nursing newborn and three other children…. No wonder I got the privilege of surprise company for three days at my lovely canyon home near Paradise.
Our routine was punctuated by the changes that come naturally when company arrives. We stay up late, play card games, emphasize mealtimes. I could do these things in my daily life, but don’t usually. I find this interesting enough to expect you to bear with me as I speculate...
I am almost always grateful for last-minute invasions of friends and family into my space and schedule. Company at an unexpected time helps me put a new rhythm in my life; redefine what I can accomplish and re-prioritize basic elements of life like good food and conversation. I am reminded that when I think of folks as guests to be received, I don’t mind the extra sacrifice of time to feed them well and catch up on their life. In contrast to this, I sometimes begrudge this same sacrifice when it concerns the people I live with daily.
Why is that? In my current arrangement, Jason and I pitch in together to make most dinners happen, yet they seem like such a chore some nights, rarely a celebration. Conversation becomes a ritualized exchange of information vs. the thing I find when guests arrive: a spacious place to talk about one’s life.
I need to be reminded that the daily tasks of cooking, cleaning, eating can overlap with the talk of hopes and fears, disappointments and dreams. I need to have that extra motivation to pick up all the clutter in the house and make a space for sitting, dancing, reading.
I am reminded of a day five years ago, when my daughter strutted to the kitchen one Saturday morning and announced, “I am the guest today!”
I could avoid the growth to be gained by pondering that statement, and gloat over the good way I treat my family, friends, and neighbors. Or I can use this” teachable memory” to say, “Are my children still wishing they could be the guest who visits me?”
It is a sobering thing to think about. Most days, I think I forget to greet them with all the love I carry for them daily. I want the chores done, and the bills paid. I want gratitude and appreciation. I suppose I want from my husband and kids the very thing that is so hard to extend to them sometimes: the gracious invitation to sit down and relax, and catch up on life. I want to know this: when do I get to be the guest?
I think the answer to my question is startlingly obvious now that I ask it. I get to be the guest when I’m willing. I live in a family of folks who love to play games, go outside, listen to music, or snuggle up in front of the T.V., so the invitation to do those things is offered to me almost daily. The problem is, I’m worried about the household falling apart if I stop managing it. It is as if I think people won’t eat or sleep or pick up their things if I stop arranging it. Not that there isn’t some truth in that statement....
I relax most when I’m alone, and when the house is empty. Then I know no messes can grow unsupervised, or then I know that I’m not getting in anyone’s way. I’m grateful for an empty house today, even though I’m missing my friend and her kids who came to live with us for three days. It's good to value alone time again, and be grateful for it.
Our routine was punctuated by the changes that come naturally when company arrives. We stay up late, play card games, emphasize mealtimes. I could do these things in my daily life, but don’t usually. I find this interesting enough to expect you to bear with me as I speculate...
I am almost always grateful for last-minute invasions of friends and family into my space and schedule. Company at an unexpected time helps me put a new rhythm in my life; redefine what I can accomplish and re-prioritize basic elements of life like good food and conversation. I am reminded that when I think of folks as guests to be received, I don’t mind the extra sacrifice of time to feed them well and catch up on their life. In contrast to this, I sometimes begrudge this same sacrifice when it concerns the people I live with daily.
Why is that? In my current arrangement, Jason and I pitch in together to make most dinners happen, yet they seem like such a chore some nights, rarely a celebration. Conversation becomes a ritualized exchange of information vs. the thing I find when guests arrive: a spacious place to talk about one’s life.
I need to be reminded that the daily tasks of cooking, cleaning, eating can overlap with the talk of hopes and fears, disappointments and dreams. I need to have that extra motivation to pick up all the clutter in the house and make a space for sitting, dancing, reading.
I am reminded of a day five years ago, when my daughter strutted to the kitchen one Saturday morning and announced, “I am the guest today!”
I could avoid the growth to be gained by pondering that statement, and gloat over the good way I treat my family, friends, and neighbors. Or I can use this” teachable memory” to say, “Are my children still wishing they could be the guest who visits me?”
It is a sobering thing to think about. Most days, I think I forget to greet them with all the love I carry for them daily. I want the chores done, and the bills paid. I want gratitude and appreciation. I suppose I want from my husband and kids the very thing that is so hard to extend to them sometimes: the gracious invitation to sit down and relax, and catch up on life. I want to know this: when do I get to be the guest?
I think the answer to my question is startlingly obvious now that I ask it. I get to be the guest when I’m willing. I live in a family of folks who love to play games, go outside, listen to music, or snuggle up in front of the T.V., so the invitation to do those things is offered to me almost daily. The problem is, I’m worried about the household falling apart if I stop managing it. It is as if I think people won’t eat or sleep or pick up their things if I stop arranging it. Not that there isn’t some truth in that statement....
I relax most when I’m alone, and when the house is empty. Then I know no messes can grow unsupervised, or then I know that I’m not getting in anyone’s way. I’m grateful for an empty house today, even though I’m missing my friend and her kids who came to live with us for three days. It's good to value alone time again, and be grateful for it.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Recomending "The Soloist"
I watched “The Soloist” last weekend. It is a brilliant movie about a true story—a true friendship—that dramatically changed the lives of two men. In the beginning, one man is defined by his homeless and mental illness, while the other is defined by his job as a popular newspaper columnist. By the end, both are defined by the friendship they have made and the way it has completely changed large things in both their lives. It is movie that sheds light on a group of people normally in the dark: the homeless. It is a story that resonates with the truth that I’ve been discovering together with a group of friends here in Santa Barbara: friendships built between the “housed” and the “homeless” tend to throw open doors of possibility in the hearts and minds and lives of everyone involved.
That is pretty much all I have to write about today. Take my advice and watch “The Soloist” as soon as you are able. Watch the special features afterward, where you get to see and hear the real people that the actors played, or learn about the way the “extras” were located. Be amazed by the financial component of what it would save our country to end homelessness—how much less money it takes to offer services and support to individuals living in more stabilized situations.
Here are a couple quotes from a book about friendship that has me re-examining a lot of my beliefs and actions lately.
“Being genuinely present to someone also means being willing to be touched by him or her. If I genuinely bring myself to a relationship, I must be prepared to be changed by it.... Professional neutrality seeks to minimize this sort of influence on the one offering care, making all impact unidirectional. “
“Dialogue involves shared inquiry designed to increase the awareness and understanding of all parties.... In this process each participant touches and is touched by others. This result in each person’s being changed.”
from "Sacred Companions", by David G. Benner
That is pretty much all I have to write about today. Take my advice and watch “The Soloist” as soon as you are able. Watch the special features afterward, where you get to see and hear the real people that the actors played, or learn about the way the “extras” were located. Be amazed by the financial component of what it would save our country to end homelessness—how much less money it takes to offer services and support to individuals living in more stabilized situations.
Here are a couple quotes from a book about friendship that has me re-examining a lot of my beliefs and actions lately.
“Being genuinely present to someone also means being willing to be touched by him or her. If I genuinely bring myself to a relationship, I must be prepared to be changed by it.... Professional neutrality seeks to minimize this sort of influence on the one offering care, making all impact unidirectional. “
“Dialogue involves shared inquiry designed to increase the awareness and understanding of all parties.... In this process each participant touches and is touched by others. This result in each person’s being changed.”
from "Sacred Companions", by David G. Benner
Friday, October 9, 2009
foolishness, friendship and forgiveness
I found this reflection in a folder labeled “potential blogs”, and was encouraged and inspired by it. Since my current mental and emotional state can’t touch this level of insight and articulation, (due to past-my-bedtime T.V. viewing all week of “So You Think You Can Dance” and “The Office” episodes) I am posting this past reflection for you edification…
I hurt my back again this weekend. It is a common occurrence for me; every three or four weeks I do something that throws my body slightly out of wack, and am set back anywhere from 24 hours to a week, depending on the infraction. I have suspicions that no matter what kind of shape I get into physically, my back will remain a liability to my active lifestyle, until I change my belief systems. You see, I carry around too much mental responsibility on a regular basis, and it is completely natural that this imbalance would manifest itself in physical disability. How strange that knowing this, I do not change the way I think about myself and the world of people and things I interact with. How strange that I stay in this cycle: too much mental weight=painful injury=willingness to let go of too much responsibility= needed rest.
“As we observe our mental and emotional flow over a period of disciplined time, we recognize that we largely create our own experiences. I know this is embarrassing and some of us deny it, but it’s true. We have the power to decide what each moment means and how we will respond to it. We have power when we know we have the ability to respond freely.”
~Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, p. 106, The Crossroad Publishing Company~
I am grateful today for my friends who pray for me when I hurt my back. I don’t mean that they get down on their knees with hands clasped before their faces and their eyes shut tight (although if any of you are praying that way for me, by all means, don’t stop). I mean they are carrying me around in their thoughts, and wondering how they can encourage me. They are taking time out of their normal routine to ask the question, “How can I be a friend to someone who is suffering?”
I appreciate the phone calls, where there are offers for help with groceries and child care. I am touched by the empathetic verbal responses to my description of where I’m in pain, and the medical advice concerning icing, drugs, stretching. Mostly though, I love the non-judgmental space created by the conversations that allow me to see the reality underlying my cycle of injury and healing. My current set of friends are hopeful, patient people who are not trying to fix or reform me, rather willing to show up and get their hands dirty in the garden that is my life, pulling a weed they see here, or watering a sapling that is drooping there. They want me to know I’m not all alone in the process of encouraging new growth, so that I might enjoy the hard work; breathe deep and see clearly what needs to be pulled out or nurtured.
It is humbling to be accepted and loved in this way, and very freeing. It makes me okay with the fact that I am stubborn and foolish, and even laugh at that. It makes me forgive myself for being such a tyrant to my husband and kids, in the initial stages of the “last straw” being laid upon my back. Because when the pain really hits, my ordinarily calm self turns into an unpredictable tornado of responses. I go from patient to angry to patient almost instantly; from apologetic to accusatory, then accusatory back to apologetic. My husband and kids have learned a new routine for the times when I’m injured: they get me my journal, a Bible or a book of ancient Suffi poetry, a lawn chair and a cup of tea or ice water. Then they help me out the door to filtered sunlight, or into a quiet bedroom. They give me permission to do what I’m resisting giving myself permission to do in the hours or days leading up to my injury:
*stop being in charge of anything or anyone other than myself for a moment or an hour or a day
*stop answering questions and making decisions for anyone other than myself
*isolate, meditate, and do whatever it takes to remember my humanity: my limited capacity to accomplish any task without proper rest
“We have defined freedom in the West as the freedom to choose between options and preferences. That’s not primal freedom. That’s a secondary or even tertiary freedom. The primal freedom is the freedom to be the self, the freedom to live in the truth despite all circumstances.”
~Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, p. 108, The Crossroad Publishing Company~
The truth I come to when I enter into rest is the realization that life is a gift, and there are reminders of life everywhere to sweep me away in gratefulness. When I stop worrying about the role I play with everything and everyone I’m involved with, I start noticing things like wind and sun painting shadow pictures on the leaves of the oak trees, or steam swirling inward and outward and up into the infinity above my teacup. I start remembering crazy things I did in my childhood, or kind words emailed to me by my friend from Pasadena. I stop taking things for granted, without even trying to, and find myself forgetting to be angry at even the most obvious things, like my back pain that can’t be touched by Tylenol with Codine. This is the truth I come to when I rest, but it wouldn’t be my truth if I was still caught up in the restrictive web of unforgiveness.
What do I mean by forgiveness? I guess I mean a letting go of all the people and things that have maimed you in your past and embracing the possibility that despite all of that, you are exactly who you are supposed to be in this moment of present existence, and a whole world of healing is open to you. I also mean a letting go of all the people and things that you have maimed in the past and an embracing of the idea that you can be free not only from cycles of violence you’ve participated in but also from all the shame and guilt and condemnation spoken against you because of them. I mean a state of grieving, celebrational acceptance, where you humbly agree that nothing else matters right now except the fact that you are alive and have more life to live. Forgiveness is the hardest and craziest thing we are called upon to participate in in this life. It is the most rewarding thing too, because forgiveness opens the heart up to gratitude, and gratitude changes our perspective on everything.
I hurt my back again this weekend. It is a common occurrence for me; every three or four weeks I do something that throws my body slightly out of wack, and am set back anywhere from 24 hours to a week, depending on the infraction. I have suspicions that no matter what kind of shape I get into physically, my back will remain a liability to my active lifestyle, until I change my belief systems. You see, I carry around too much mental responsibility on a regular basis, and it is completely natural that this imbalance would manifest itself in physical disability. How strange that knowing this, I do not change the way I think about myself and the world of people and things I interact with. How strange that I stay in this cycle: too much mental weight=painful injury=willingness to let go of too much responsibility= needed rest.
“As we observe our mental and emotional flow over a period of disciplined time, we recognize that we largely create our own experiences. I know this is embarrassing and some of us deny it, but it’s true. We have the power to decide what each moment means and how we will respond to it. We have power when we know we have the ability to respond freely.”
~Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, p. 106, The Crossroad Publishing Company~
I am grateful today for my friends who pray for me when I hurt my back. I don’t mean that they get down on their knees with hands clasped before their faces and their eyes shut tight (although if any of you are praying that way for me, by all means, don’t stop). I mean they are carrying me around in their thoughts, and wondering how they can encourage me. They are taking time out of their normal routine to ask the question, “How can I be a friend to someone who is suffering?”
I appreciate the phone calls, where there are offers for help with groceries and child care. I am touched by the empathetic verbal responses to my description of where I’m in pain, and the medical advice concerning icing, drugs, stretching. Mostly though, I love the non-judgmental space created by the conversations that allow me to see the reality underlying my cycle of injury and healing. My current set of friends are hopeful, patient people who are not trying to fix or reform me, rather willing to show up and get their hands dirty in the garden that is my life, pulling a weed they see here, or watering a sapling that is drooping there. They want me to know I’m not all alone in the process of encouraging new growth, so that I might enjoy the hard work; breathe deep and see clearly what needs to be pulled out or nurtured.
It is humbling to be accepted and loved in this way, and very freeing. It makes me okay with the fact that I am stubborn and foolish, and even laugh at that. It makes me forgive myself for being such a tyrant to my husband and kids, in the initial stages of the “last straw” being laid upon my back. Because when the pain really hits, my ordinarily calm self turns into an unpredictable tornado of responses. I go from patient to angry to patient almost instantly; from apologetic to accusatory, then accusatory back to apologetic. My husband and kids have learned a new routine for the times when I’m injured: they get me my journal, a Bible or a book of ancient Suffi poetry, a lawn chair and a cup of tea or ice water. Then they help me out the door to filtered sunlight, or into a quiet bedroom. They give me permission to do what I’m resisting giving myself permission to do in the hours or days leading up to my injury:
*stop being in charge of anything or anyone other than myself for a moment or an hour or a day
*stop answering questions and making decisions for anyone other than myself
*isolate, meditate, and do whatever it takes to remember my humanity: my limited capacity to accomplish any task without proper rest
“We have defined freedom in the West as the freedom to choose between options and preferences. That’s not primal freedom. That’s a secondary or even tertiary freedom. The primal freedom is the freedom to be the self, the freedom to live in the truth despite all circumstances.”
~Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, p. 108, The Crossroad Publishing Company~
The truth I come to when I enter into rest is the realization that life is a gift, and there are reminders of life everywhere to sweep me away in gratefulness. When I stop worrying about the role I play with everything and everyone I’m involved with, I start noticing things like wind and sun painting shadow pictures on the leaves of the oak trees, or steam swirling inward and outward and up into the infinity above my teacup. I start remembering crazy things I did in my childhood, or kind words emailed to me by my friend from Pasadena. I stop taking things for granted, without even trying to, and find myself forgetting to be angry at even the most obvious things, like my back pain that can’t be touched by Tylenol with Codine. This is the truth I come to when I rest, but it wouldn’t be my truth if I was still caught up in the restrictive web of unforgiveness.
What do I mean by forgiveness? I guess I mean a letting go of all the people and things that have maimed you in your past and embracing the possibility that despite all of that, you are exactly who you are supposed to be in this moment of present existence, and a whole world of healing is open to you. I also mean a letting go of all the people and things that you have maimed in the past and an embracing of the idea that you can be free not only from cycles of violence you’ve participated in but also from all the shame and guilt and condemnation spoken against you because of them. I mean a state of grieving, celebrational acceptance, where you humbly agree that nothing else matters right now except the fact that you are alive and have more life to live. Forgiveness is the hardest and craziest thing we are called upon to participate in in this life. It is the most rewarding thing too, because forgiveness opens the heart up to gratitude, and gratitude changes our perspective on everything.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Saved
I am saved daily by so many things:
The great oak near my backyard
“Live Oak” it is named,
perhaps to emphasize the way
it stretches out its bark
to breathe in sky
The finches too,
untie my knotted heart
because they do not scatter in strong winds
but flow and flex around each other’s
wings and breasts and necks as if
their very life depended
on togetherness
And clouds!
From dragon claws to kitten’s paws
kitten’s paws to pillow fluff
pillow fluff to hands
Cloud hands
How wonderfully they shift without
addiction to the past or future plans
I’m learning how to live like that
I’m learning how to give the things I have:
the touch of human hands
the words from human tongue
the love that comes from being freed from grief too large
to carry on my back
(sometimes I choose to carry grief and hurt my back)
But
I am freed from that
when I believe it
The great oak near my backyard
“Live Oak” it is named,
perhaps to emphasize the way
it stretches out its bark
to breathe in sky
The finches too,
untie my knotted heart
because they do not scatter in strong winds
but flow and flex around each other’s
wings and breasts and necks as if
their very life depended
on togetherness
And clouds!
From dragon claws to kitten’s paws
kitten’s paws to pillow fluff
pillow fluff to hands
Cloud hands
How wonderfully they shift without
addiction to the past or future plans
I’m learning how to live like that
I’m learning how to give the things I have:
the touch of human hands
the words from human tongue
the love that comes from being freed from grief too large
to carry on my back
(sometimes I choose to carry grief and hurt my back)
But
I am freed from that
when I believe it
Monday, October 5, 2009
A poem I found in my journal
This is not a test
This is your life
This is not a fail or fly but rather a fight for what is right
It’s right to be given a fair chance
It’s right to have a choice
Not because you’ve worked hard
Not because you’re nice
Not because you came to the right place at the right time
Oh Jesus
This is about obedience
Standing Up
Learning how to stand my ground when decency is threatened to be bulldozed out
There is a cavern in my mouth that screams in disbelief
There is a bayonet that sits inside my ribcage
How careful I must be
How ready now to wrap myself in full humility
And yet
How willing I must be to do the deed so foreign yet to me:
To fight and fight and fight for
my own justice
This is your life
This is not a fail or fly but rather a fight for what is right
It’s right to be given a fair chance
It’s right to have a choice
Not because you’ve worked hard
Not because you’re nice
Not because you came to the right place at the right time
Oh Jesus
This is about obedience
Standing Up
Learning how to stand my ground when decency is threatened to be bulldozed out
There is a cavern in my mouth that screams in disbelief
There is a bayonet that sits inside my ribcage
How careful I must be
How ready now to wrap myself in full humility
And yet
How willing I must be to do the deed so foreign yet to me:
To fight and fight and fight for
my own justice
Continued... Pink Elephants
This one is especially for J.J.
I know I promised not to apologize, but I feel compelled to break my own rule and say, “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry because I can’t write about my broken neck right now, even though I left you hanging in the middle of my story. I tried to pick up where I left off, but everything I typed tonight was as boring as plywood. I tried three times. So to those of you who don’t know the rest and are now left in a state of suspended curiosity… I owe you one.
Ahhhh. It feels nice to take the pressure off. The muddle in my mind is already un-muddling, now that I’ve stopped trying to force an ending. Perhaps there is a different tale wanting to be told, pushing on the doorbell of my mind. What if I just open that door and write about the first thing that strolls in when I get to the end of this sentence, like… (Drum roll, please)… pink elephants.
I’m remembering the time I saw some on the ceiling of my grandparent’s bedroom. My grandparents were living in Oregon at the time, and my sister and I had gone to stay with them for a few days while my parents vacationed. I got very sick that week, and couldn’t bear my own heat, so I was moved out of the steamy guest bed onto the cool, white sheets of grandma’s. They were fluffy like clouds. I felt myself floating up toward the ceiling. I was happy.
Then the elephants came, blowing horns and riding tricycles. The elephants were pink, and that didn’t seem right to me, so I called grandma in. I had to call many times, because my voice was echoing and weak, and the elephants were getting noisier. Finally I saw her, leaning down close, asking me what was the matter. I’m not sure exactly what I said, but it went something like this: “The elephants make me dizzy. Their horns hurt my head, and I want them to stop riding their tricycles on the ceiling.”
Clearly, I was not seeing too straight, due to the influence of my fever. But it didn’t help me one bit to have grandma explain that I was seeing imaginary things, nor to perceive that she was worried about my condition. It did help when she brought grandpa in, and he made a joke about the elephants, filling the room with his laughter. It also helped to know that my grandparents would stay with me until the elephants quieted down, bringing cool rags for my forehead and speaking soft words of sympathy.
What good advice this story suddenly gives me! I’m often sitting with folks whose reality has been bent by homelessness, alcoholism, or severe forms of trauma and rejection. Whatever the elephants on the ceiling may be—an immense inheritance that was stolen away or a wife who kidnapped their children—it doesn’t do a damn thing for me to reason away the pain. Nor does it help when I’m too worried about their sanity to listen. What does help are kind sighs and words of sympathy; cool rags of time spent sitting there together. Sometimes, after the stories get so noisy and pink they make me dizzy, a joke comes bubbling up between us, and we laugh together. That laughter helps a lot. It heals something inside them that I can’t fix. It can quiet the trumpeting elephants.
Of everything I remember from that vacation I spent at grandma and grandpas, nothing is as vivid as the memory of those elephants. The other images are fuzzy: going to see the strange doctor, then feeling well again. Before I got sick I played outside with my sister on a wonderful teeter totter my grandpa had made that also spun around in circles—even that memory is as gray as the rain. But the cool sheets like clouds, the tricycles and horns held by pink pachyderms, and my grandparents staying with me until the elephants left—these things are positively unforgettable. When I look back, I mostly feel like giggling at the absurdness of my comments to my grandma. The elephants look so harmless from this angle.
Harmless elephants. I want that for my friends who are constantly battling sickness of one type or another. I want to partner with a community of people willing to stick around long enough to be part of a vivid memory of healing. I want to have faith enough to believe that someone can overcome a 20-year meth addiction, and humor enough to laugh with them, even in the midst of it.
I want to tell stories about living, walking miracles—not just the one I carry around in my bones, but the others out there waiting to happen. I don’t want to miss my chance to be the one to see at last the x-ray that matters most. Brokenness needs protecting.
There is nothing wrong with a story that ends (or begins!) with a person becoming a paraplegic. But that wasn’t my story to live. I’m taking you out on a limb here (and you may believe that I’m seeing the world through crazy pink elephant lenses) when I say to you:
PEOPLE HAVE STORIES THEY’RE MADE FOR.
To be continued…
I know I promised not to apologize, but I feel compelled to break my own rule and say, “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry because I can’t write about my broken neck right now, even though I left you hanging in the middle of my story. I tried to pick up where I left off, but everything I typed tonight was as boring as plywood. I tried three times. So to those of you who don’t know the rest and are now left in a state of suspended curiosity… I owe you one.
Ahhhh. It feels nice to take the pressure off. The muddle in my mind is already un-muddling, now that I’ve stopped trying to force an ending. Perhaps there is a different tale wanting to be told, pushing on the doorbell of my mind. What if I just open that door and write about the first thing that strolls in when I get to the end of this sentence, like… (Drum roll, please)… pink elephants.
I’m remembering the time I saw some on the ceiling of my grandparent’s bedroom. My grandparents were living in Oregon at the time, and my sister and I had gone to stay with them for a few days while my parents vacationed. I got very sick that week, and couldn’t bear my own heat, so I was moved out of the steamy guest bed onto the cool, white sheets of grandma’s. They were fluffy like clouds. I felt myself floating up toward the ceiling. I was happy.
Then the elephants came, blowing horns and riding tricycles. The elephants were pink, and that didn’t seem right to me, so I called grandma in. I had to call many times, because my voice was echoing and weak, and the elephants were getting noisier. Finally I saw her, leaning down close, asking me what was the matter. I’m not sure exactly what I said, but it went something like this: “The elephants make me dizzy. Their horns hurt my head, and I want them to stop riding their tricycles on the ceiling.”
Clearly, I was not seeing too straight, due to the influence of my fever. But it didn’t help me one bit to have grandma explain that I was seeing imaginary things, nor to perceive that she was worried about my condition. It did help when she brought grandpa in, and he made a joke about the elephants, filling the room with his laughter. It also helped to know that my grandparents would stay with me until the elephants quieted down, bringing cool rags for my forehead and speaking soft words of sympathy.
What good advice this story suddenly gives me! I’m often sitting with folks whose reality has been bent by homelessness, alcoholism, or severe forms of trauma and rejection. Whatever the elephants on the ceiling may be—an immense inheritance that was stolen away or a wife who kidnapped their children—it doesn’t do a damn thing for me to reason away the pain. Nor does it help when I’m too worried about their sanity to listen. What does help are kind sighs and words of sympathy; cool rags of time spent sitting there together. Sometimes, after the stories get so noisy and pink they make me dizzy, a joke comes bubbling up between us, and we laugh together. That laughter helps a lot. It heals something inside them that I can’t fix. It can quiet the trumpeting elephants.
Of everything I remember from that vacation I spent at grandma and grandpas, nothing is as vivid as the memory of those elephants. The other images are fuzzy: going to see the strange doctor, then feeling well again. Before I got sick I played outside with my sister on a wonderful teeter totter my grandpa had made that also spun around in circles—even that memory is as gray as the rain. But the cool sheets like clouds, the tricycles and horns held by pink pachyderms, and my grandparents staying with me until the elephants left—these things are positively unforgettable. When I look back, I mostly feel like giggling at the absurdness of my comments to my grandma. The elephants look so harmless from this angle.
Harmless elephants. I want that for my friends who are constantly battling sickness of one type or another. I want to partner with a community of people willing to stick around long enough to be part of a vivid memory of healing. I want to have faith enough to believe that someone can overcome a 20-year meth addiction, and humor enough to laugh with them, even in the midst of it.
I want to tell stories about living, walking miracles—not just the one I carry around in my bones, but the others out there waiting to happen. I don’t want to miss my chance to be the one to see at last the x-ray that matters most. Brokenness needs protecting.
There is nothing wrong with a story that ends (or begins!) with a person becoming a paraplegic. But that wasn’t my story to live. I’m taking you out on a limb here (and you may believe that I’m seeing the world through crazy pink elephant lenses) when I say to you:
PEOPLE HAVE STORIES THEY’RE MADE FOR.
To be continued…
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Cont. from Oct. 2: Surprised by Gratitude
Gratitude. It is the great magician in our lives. It can pull joy out of sadness, and laughter out of weeping. It can surprise us with hope when we think despair is winning.
When I broke my neck at age 19, I didn’t expect to be grateful. I didn’t think my active, super-independent self could survive such a drastic change of plans. Six days after my ill-aimed dive into the Okanogan River near Canada, I was lying in a hospital bed in Spokane, WA instead of riding my bike like the wind down Idaho back roads. I was pleading with nurses for early doses of pain medication instead of packing my bags for a study abroad in Latin America.
It was a nightmare, yes. It took me a week to get my x-rays for the very fact that I KNEW my life could drastically change in the instant I found out the facts; I delayed for five days in excruciating pain in an act of denial so great, my dad still shakes his head, amazed. To be told that the surgery I needed was serious enough that I’d have to wait three MORE days wrapped in IVs until the man who could fix me came back from vacation… that was unbearable, yes. Yet more than that, it was a miracle almost too large for me to grasp. I was not only alive, but I had the use of both my hands, and feet, and head. I had the ability to hear what was said by folks who visited a 21 year old boy across the hall. He had also dived awry (into a pool nearby), yet had not yet opened his eyes to complain about the bedpan, or all the ways his accident had changed his plans. The knowledge of the fact that he was lost in some place between life and death, while I was still able to talk and cry and laugh, was not lost on me. I grieved for him. I celebrated for me. I was overcome with a gratefulness I couldn’t help but have. I don’t like to take credit for the shift that happened then--my next six months of fearlessness and peacefulness and sense of good things happening amidst the bad--because I wasn’t using my willpower to choose an “attitude of gratitude”. I was grateful. Just that. I was grateful for the life I had.
In three days time the surgeon came to talk to me about the vertebrae displaced inside my neck. He explained about the way it could be linked (by metal plate) unto the strong and stable bone beneath. I did my part of fasting and of waiting for the surgery that never came that day because he was delayed by NINE emergencies. There were nine surgeries performed that day that couldn’t wait because they were not the same as mine--they were labeled “life and death”. While I waited for my turn the nurses brought me in to get more x-rays, (cat scans? MRI’s? I actually don’t recall the shot that saved the life I had....) They said the surgeon thought it best to use the time to gather evidence. Thank God. I still thank God.
The surgeon would have tried to seal my wiggly bone unto a bone that was not strong or stable, rather BROKEN. He probably would have sealed my fate as a quadriplegic on that day. Which may have turned out okay. But I am here to say that I am grateful for the night he saw that break and stopped the anesthesia.
To be continued…
When I broke my neck at age 19, I didn’t expect to be grateful. I didn’t think my active, super-independent self could survive such a drastic change of plans. Six days after my ill-aimed dive into the Okanogan River near Canada, I was lying in a hospital bed in Spokane, WA instead of riding my bike like the wind down Idaho back roads. I was pleading with nurses for early doses of pain medication instead of packing my bags for a study abroad in Latin America.
It was a nightmare, yes. It took me a week to get my x-rays for the very fact that I KNEW my life could drastically change in the instant I found out the facts; I delayed for five days in excruciating pain in an act of denial so great, my dad still shakes his head, amazed. To be told that the surgery I needed was serious enough that I’d have to wait three MORE days wrapped in IVs until the man who could fix me came back from vacation… that was unbearable, yes. Yet more than that, it was a miracle almost too large for me to grasp. I was not only alive, but I had the use of both my hands, and feet, and head. I had the ability to hear what was said by folks who visited a 21 year old boy across the hall. He had also dived awry (into a pool nearby), yet had not yet opened his eyes to complain about the bedpan, or all the ways his accident had changed his plans. The knowledge of the fact that he was lost in some place between life and death, while I was still able to talk and cry and laugh, was not lost on me. I grieved for him. I celebrated for me. I was overcome with a gratefulness I couldn’t help but have. I don’t like to take credit for the shift that happened then--my next six months of fearlessness and peacefulness and sense of good things happening amidst the bad--because I wasn’t using my willpower to choose an “attitude of gratitude”. I was grateful. Just that. I was grateful for the life I had.
In three days time the surgeon came to talk to me about the vertebrae displaced inside my neck. He explained about the way it could be linked (by metal plate) unto the strong and stable bone beneath. I did my part of fasting and of waiting for the surgery that never came that day because he was delayed by NINE emergencies. There were nine surgeries performed that day that couldn’t wait because they were not the same as mine--they were labeled “life and death”. While I waited for my turn the nurses brought me in to get more x-rays, (cat scans? MRI’s? I actually don’t recall the shot that saved the life I had....) They said the surgeon thought it best to use the time to gather evidence. Thank God. I still thank God.
The surgeon would have tried to seal my wiggly bone unto a bone that was not strong or stable, rather BROKEN. He probably would have sealed my fate as a quadriplegic on that day. Which may have turned out okay. But I am here to say that I am grateful for the night he saw that break and stopped the anesthesia.
To be continued…
Friday, October 2, 2009
Continued from Oct.1: Good Living
I ended yesterday's post with a quote of my own, "Good writing comes from good living." In my case this is true. When I’m not living well then my writing spells it out--stale sentences, cliche word choices, and insights that sound all too familiar. I find myself frustrated with the process of putting thoughts into words, instead of swept away by the magic of rhyme, alliteration, and metaphor.
But what do I mean by “good living?” What does it consist of? I’ve been mulling this around in my brain, and reflecting on the strangeness of my truth: good living doesn’t usually FEEL good in the moment. Quite the opposite. Good living often feels PAINFUL, SCARY, OUT OF CONTROL IN EVERY WAY when I am living it. I shall explain.
A common theme I find when I reflect on the most profound times of “goodness” in my life is this: suffering. Also this: surprise. And of course… the ways I fought like dynamite to PROTECT AND DEFEND myself from what later became—you got it—GOODNESS.
For example, there are circumstances that I would not have prayed for in a zillion years, like that day I displaced a vertebrae in my spine, and fractured another one below it.
There are surprises that felt like curses, like the unplanned pregnancy of my first-born son. His heart is now a well of mercy so deep I am constantly catching my breath and wondering how it is that he can forgive me the way he does--how I ever got so lucky as to be his mother.
Conversely, I’m reminded of times of comfort, happiness, and predictability, and struggling to remember anything REALLY GREAT in them. I find that those periods of good and plenty aren’t impressively memorable. Maybe it’s just me, and I’m a drama junkie, or I struggle from emotional-historical amnesia. You can believe that if you need to, if I’m MAKING YOU UNCOMFORTABLE.
I believe something so much bigger is at work, and it has EVERYTHING to do with...
(to be continued tomorrow)
But what do I mean by “good living?” What does it consist of? I’ve been mulling this around in my brain, and reflecting on the strangeness of my truth: good living doesn’t usually FEEL good in the moment. Quite the opposite. Good living often feels PAINFUL, SCARY, OUT OF CONTROL IN EVERY WAY when I am living it. I shall explain.
A common theme I find when I reflect on the most profound times of “goodness” in my life is this: suffering. Also this: surprise. And of course… the ways I fought like dynamite to PROTECT AND DEFEND myself from what later became—you got it—GOODNESS.
For example, there are circumstances that I would not have prayed for in a zillion years, like that day I displaced a vertebrae in my spine, and fractured another one below it.
There are surprises that felt like curses, like the unplanned pregnancy of my first-born son. His heart is now a well of mercy so deep I am constantly catching my breath and wondering how it is that he can forgive me the way he does--how I ever got so lucky as to be his mother.
Conversely, I’m reminded of times of comfort, happiness, and predictability, and struggling to remember anything REALLY GREAT in them. I find that those periods of good and plenty aren’t impressively memorable. Maybe it’s just me, and I’m a drama junkie, or I struggle from emotional-historical amnesia. You can believe that if you need to, if I’m MAKING YOU UNCOMFORTABLE.
I believe something so much bigger is at work, and it has EVERYTHING to do with...
(to be continued tomorrow)
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Plan A revealed: Getting out of the Dead Marshes
I’m going to try a little experiment here from now until Halloween. I’m going to force myself to post a blog each day for the next 30 days, whether or not I like what I write, or think it is worth posting. I’m going to make my Draconian internal editor sit behind the soundproof window so that when she starts lecturing me about how boring I am, I can turn my back, start singing the lyrics from Peter Tosh’s “Get Up, Stand Up , For Your Rights,” while she pantomimes the “hand-drags-knife-across-the-neck” to her lonely heart’s content. For the sake of your reading sanity, I’m going to apologize now for making you read what may or may not be boring, tedious, repetitive, or offensive in any way... and then delete any future apologies that come flying off my fingertips (“limping off” would be more accurate, considering my typing abilities). I think the risk of writing dross is worth the taking, because I have been wandering in a bog of writing resistance for so long that I don’t even remember what the Shire looks like anymore. Soooo, even if I have to look up the lyrics to Hannah Montana songs and start singing them at the top of my lungs to gain compliance.... I’m going to start blogging again this month and keep blogging.
For those of you who are my loyal supporters, yet unable to accompany me through the Mordor of my psyche, I’m going to make one request. I’m asking you to participate in this experiment with me this month by reading my smorgasbord as often as possible (or staying up late on Oct. 30, letting my blog be the entertainment to justify your microwave popcorn and Milkduds ) and send me your list of the things you hate(d) and love(d) when we get to the end of the journey. I’m not interested in politeness here, just honesty about what is profoundly refreshing and immensely annoying to read. If you do this for me, I will be deeply grateful. I may also be feel obligated to serve up yummy morsels all November.
I’ll end today with a quote that has been running around in my frontal lobe: “Good writing comes from good living.” More on that, tomorrow...
For those of you who are my loyal supporters, yet unable to accompany me through the Mordor of my psyche, I’m going to make one request. I’m asking you to participate in this experiment with me this month by reading my smorgasbord as often as possible (or staying up late on Oct. 30, letting my blog be the entertainment to justify your microwave popcorn and Milkduds ) and send me your list of the things you hate(d) and love(d) when we get to the end of the journey. I’m not interested in politeness here, just honesty about what is profoundly refreshing and immensely annoying to read. If you do this for me, I will be deeply grateful. I may also be feel obligated to serve up yummy morsels all November.
I’ll end today with a quote that has been running around in my frontal lobe: “Good writing comes from good living.” More on that, tomorrow...
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Squash Humor in Paradise
This one’s for Noelle. And Michael. And Ben.
I have been trying to pollinate my yellow squash for days now. The task is harder than it sounds, even for an Idaho farm girl. But I’m determined, because just as our garden was starting to look fabulous, and ready to burst with edible delectables, the squash started to shrivel, and that damn gopher found our corn. Two stalks have fallen, and the zucchini plant went from ill to cadaver in an eerie stretch of hours between dusk and dawn. But the yellow squash and pumpkin plant are far from the gopher’s haunt, so I think I have a chance with them, if I can figure out the pollination. I guess some more explanation is in order.
I got a new job. I feed horses, drive big trucks, and remind people not park on the rocks by the river (even if the parking lot was full and they had a lot of beer to carry and it made them tired). With my new job came a general realization in the office that I might be qualified for other prospective jobs in the future that had seemed a bit, well, out of my skill set to various co-workers (they didn’t know about my past life with A.I. training since they hadn’t read my March 20 blog post). All this to say, I got my rental contract extended, and my family gets to stay in Paradise. Yay! Among other things, we celebrated with various purchases, one of these being satellite hi-speed (relatively) internet.
How does this relate to squash pollination? Hold your mouses now. We’re getting there.
I had been told that over-watering could cause squash shriveling. So I let things dry out while my family took a 4-day vacation to the Phoenix area to be with relatives. I came back to plants that looked as if they’d taken a road trip through Nevada without air conditioning (believe me, I know first hand what this does to one’s looks). They had survived my absence—just barely. And yet, after all that sobering up, more squashes than ever looked like child toes just out of the bathtub. Since I studied a bit of investigative journalism in college, I decided it was time to put myself on a serious investigation of the problem. Thus, I went inside, changed into my pajamas, and sat down at the computer to google “squashes”.
Lo and behold! Within 20 minutes I had found enough reports of similar shrivelings to feel confident in my need to assist nature in one of her most intimate acts of procreation: pollen transfer.
So we have come to the part you have all been waiting for, when I began to discuss the birds and the bees of my recent endeavor. I’ve already talked enough about birds in past posts, (If you have been following my blog at all, you know we have a plethora of them here). But bees... not so much. Wasps yes, biting flies, affirmative, black widows, numerous, but good old-fashioned bee in your bonnet, bee in your pants, diligent busy specimens, I do not have. Or I have not seen. So the pollen that in a perfect world would get passed from “male” pollen flowers to “female” fruit bearing beauties is just accumulating listlessly. Poor male blooms. I suppose their perfect world scenario would enable them to move…
Now to part of the story where you begin to question whether I actually am a farm girl from Idaho, or just someone with a vivid imagination who takes large artistic liberty.
I can’t figure out how to get the pollen from one place to the other. I have dug up a small paintbrush from my art supplies, as was suggested, but when I catch the male blooms showing off, I find the female ones closed up tight. And vice versa. And on the cucumber plants—saw some shrivels there too so I thought I’d be proactive-- I can’t tell the difference between the pollen bearers and the pollen receivers (even when I run inside to compare them to the color images on my monitor). So I am a bit of a reproductive failure, with my poor timing, and my gender confusion.
What can I do? I resort to my tried and true backup for all of life’s failures: prayerful listening. I’m trying to become more attentive to the rhythms of the squash plant. Rather than expecting it to participate in my success plan, I’m trying to learn what it can teach me. There must be a reason for all the opening and closing of flowerheads, and just because google can’t enlighten me, it doesn’t mean I can’t find enlightenment.
Enough deepness. This is supposed to make your gut ache. So I’ll end by saying that I’m not giving up on my attempt to play the role of squash birth coach, but I’m turning it over to the ultimate mid-wife, the great God creator. I’m asking for bees, please, to come and do what I seem so incapable of. Not wasps, but those creatures who can see through even the best cross-dressing routine without batting an eyelid. And, before that damn gopher finds out he has missed the best feast this side of Paradise (Road, of course), I am hoping for fat bottomed men who will buzz in and take charge of my squash problem.
Unless, of course, you have other suggestions…?
I have been trying to pollinate my yellow squash for days now. The task is harder than it sounds, even for an Idaho farm girl. But I’m determined, because just as our garden was starting to look fabulous, and ready to burst with edible delectables, the squash started to shrivel, and that damn gopher found our corn. Two stalks have fallen, and the zucchini plant went from ill to cadaver in an eerie stretch of hours between dusk and dawn. But the yellow squash and pumpkin plant are far from the gopher’s haunt, so I think I have a chance with them, if I can figure out the pollination. I guess some more explanation is in order.
I got a new job. I feed horses, drive big trucks, and remind people not park on the rocks by the river (even if the parking lot was full and they had a lot of beer to carry and it made them tired). With my new job came a general realization in the office that I might be qualified for other prospective jobs in the future that had seemed a bit, well, out of my skill set to various co-workers (they didn’t know about my past life with A.I. training since they hadn’t read my March 20 blog post). All this to say, I got my rental contract extended, and my family gets to stay in Paradise. Yay! Among other things, we celebrated with various purchases, one of these being satellite hi-speed (relatively) internet.
How does this relate to squash pollination? Hold your mouses now. We’re getting there.
I had been told that over-watering could cause squash shriveling. So I let things dry out while my family took a 4-day vacation to the Phoenix area to be with relatives. I came back to plants that looked as if they’d taken a road trip through Nevada without air conditioning (believe me, I know first hand what this does to one’s looks). They had survived my absence—just barely. And yet, after all that sobering up, more squashes than ever looked like child toes just out of the bathtub. Since I studied a bit of investigative journalism in college, I decided it was time to put myself on a serious investigation of the problem. Thus, I went inside, changed into my pajamas, and sat down at the computer to google “squashes”.
Lo and behold! Within 20 minutes I had found enough reports of similar shrivelings to feel confident in my need to assist nature in one of her most intimate acts of procreation: pollen transfer.
So we have come to the part you have all been waiting for, when I began to discuss the birds and the bees of my recent endeavor. I’ve already talked enough about birds in past posts, (If you have been following my blog at all, you know we have a plethora of them here). But bees... not so much. Wasps yes, biting flies, affirmative, black widows, numerous, but good old-fashioned bee in your bonnet, bee in your pants, diligent busy specimens, I do not have. Or I have not seen. So the pollen that in a perfect world would get passed from “male” pollen flowers to “female” fruit bearing beauties is just accumulating listlessly. Poor male blooms. I suppose their perfect world scenario would enable them to move…
Now to part of the story where you begin to question whether I actually am a farm girl from Idaho, or just someone with a vivid imagination who takes large artistic liberty.
I can’t figure out how to get the pollen from one place to the other. I have dug up a small paintbrush from my art supplies, as was suggested, but when I catch the male blooms showing off, I find the female ones closed up tight. And vice versa. And on the cucumber plants—saw some shrivels there too so I thought I’d be proactive-- I can’t tell the difference between the pollen bearers and the pollen receivers (even when I run inside to compare them to the color images on my monitor). So I am a bit of a reproductive failure, with my poor timing, and my gender confusion.
What can I do? I resort to my tried and true backup for all of life’s failures: prayerful listening. I’m trying to become more attentive to the rhythms of the squash plant. Rather than expecting it to participate in my success plan, I’m trying to learn what it can teach me. There must be a reason for all the opening and closing of flowerheads, and just because google can’t enlighten me, it doesn’t mean I can’t find enlightenment.
Enough deepness. This is supposed to make your gut ache. So I’ll end by saying that I’m not giving up on my attempt to play the role of squash birth coach, but I’m turning it over to the ultimate mid-wife, the great God creator. I’m asking for bees, please, to come and do what I seem so incapable of. Not wasps, but those creatures who can see through even the best cross-dressing routine without batting an eyelid. And, before that damn gopher finds out he has missed the best feast this side of Paradise (Road, of course), I am hoping for fat bottomed men who will buzz in and take charge of my squash problem.
Unless, of course, you have other suggestions…?
Friday, June 5, 2009
Gaga over Finches
My family is gaga over finches. If you recall, we lost one set of chicks to tragedy; this second set is like discovered treasure. The three who sit inside the nest have passed the roly-poly fluff-ball cuteness stage yet they have kept us wrapped around their chirping corn-kernel beaks of sleek attraction. They are not loud by any means, but when we freeze and listen hard the cheeping, tweeting, pleading can be heard in bedrooms down the hall. Two days ago I noticed that the wobbly elbowed arms had been replaced by feathered lengths of brown and tan and black. Their eyes are shiny ebony equipped to see the danger posed by ladder escapades and so we limit heavily our curious looks from inside of the glass. It’s all happening so fast....
We are in love with all that’s taking place. Tonight a baby stood where mother stands to feed his beak and flapped his tiny wings and looked as if he might consider leaving. We are excited for the flight that’s eminent. We don’t forget that mother nature took the life of former chicks or that our family is witnessing a sweet metaphor of life—hope after disaster. And yet, we are losing lovely friends and thus at times we sigh in premature depression. I must admit that though I want the chicks to fly I do not want to lose the mystery and company and constant entertainment of these birds we’ve come to love as pets.
Now that the fear of eggs un-hatched and chicks unfed has passed, we are noticing the nastiness of feathers gooped in bird poop in the window. It is clinging like cement to wood and glass around the nest built right above the place where we eat and serve our guests. My children do not mind but Jason and I are tempted to make plans for how to clean up all that mess… tempted to move on to the next task and miss the miracle of waiting now with baited breath for the chance to see a lift-off. How amazing will that be to get to see the chicks take off into the open, sun-drenched sky? I want to be a witness.
But the time! There are so many items scheduled into my agenda! There are so many cheeping, tweeting, chattering demands to cloud my vision of the place I ought to be right now. Or the way I ought to be right now. Or the one I want to please right now. It is a sacrifice divine when I take the time to watch the house finch parents raise their chicks… I am reminded then that I have the time it takes to raise my kids. I become convinced that rather than postponing all my dreams, I am watching my own mystery unfold in all the craziness of daily feeding.
I make it sound so simple and appealing. Don’t be deceived: “watching and waiting” is the hardest thing of all to be achieved. I feel the tension of the wait as I resist the restless space inside my head that pesters me with questions like, “What’s next? What is your plan? When do we move? Where do we get to land?” I am impatient for the answers to such things and sit sometimes as if I had the quills of porcupines under my ass. To pass the time I worry and work and talk to my friends and hike and write and boss around my husband and my kids.
I’m hoping to grow out of the worry and bossing, because it is so horrible for everyone concerned. The antidotes are numerous: reading, sleeping, eating well and evening walks into the woods with Jason. But the time! It is hard to schedule in between the bills and TV shows, 4H record books and end-of-year school talent show rehearsals. The list of all that’s left undone can squeeze me into full anxiety, and then I start to boss and worry....
Thank God for morning finches! They bring me back to humbleness. This life I live is a risky, crazy gift that changes every day I live it. Nothing can be completely planned on or predicted. But certain things can be trusted. Certain things can be obeyed. Like Sabbath time: to breathe in trees and birds and stroll down wooded paths with my dog Louie. He likes to play a game of “tiger in the grass”, stalking water bugs in river holes. He makes me laugh and let go of all delusion. I am not the one who’s sent to save the world. I can then resist the tyrant voice inside my head that says, “worry, hurry, worry, hurry”.
All I have is now. Now contains so many griefs I cannot name for you, but also this: a home on National Forest land with a window full of finch song. I have a heart that’s healing from so many broken dreams, but in their place I have a family raised on prayer and tears and laughter. Mostly I have been the prayer and tears; I want to learn to be the laughter.
So I start small today, with deciding to stall on the responsible task of arranging to get that ladder back to my friend Jamila. I continue by not standing demurely aside in model-mother-sacrifice when the chance comes to argue and shush and fight for my turn to scramble. I decide to feel proud, not foolish about the comment I made yesterday that made the whole family laugh. I was watching that chick that stood on the rim and considered the window ledge beneath him. He was flapping his wings so hard and fast they were a blur of brown against the sun-lit screen. I gasped and said, “Look at him! Look at him! We are watching history!”
We are making history. Maybe you have a dead-end job, a crushing mortgage, a messy divorce, or a 20-year addiction. Maybe you feel as if you can’t stand one more day of cheeping, pleading mouths to feed and hands to clean and hearts to fill with model-mother-sacrifice. Maybe you need some finches.
Maybe you are jealous of me with all my simple, daily pleasures. Maybe I am I succeeding in my plot to start a chain reaction from your heart to make you look above your normal line of sight....
Are you, like me, tempted to make plans for how to clean up all that mess… tempted to move on to the next task? Will you, like me, try to bear the tension of the waiting?
Left to our own means, we are the ones who vacillate between extremes of impulse-driven “win” and fear-induced “I quit”. But if we schedule in the time to be amazed by nature’s metaphors of life, we can stay brave enough to stand up to the tyrants in our head that whisper things like, “worry, hurry, worry, hurry!”
I’m telling you that more than half the time, the wait is where it’s at. It is the place where we can fill our time with business of heart and mind or watch until we catch our breath in pure delight at hope that’s hatched where it’s least expected. The wait is where we see or miss miracle coincidences we could never dream of. To bear the tension of the in-between is to learn to see through poop-smeared panes and screens into a space where dreams are bursting at the seams and can’t help but stretch out necks and wings in impatient anticipation.
That’s where I’ll be, whenever I can swing it. For the sake the sake of my mystery miracle life I have to live, I want to be a witness....
We are in love with all that’s taking place. Tonight a baby stood where mother stands to feed his beak and flapped his tiny wings and looked as if he might consider leaving. We are excited for the flight that’s eminent. We don’t forget that mother nature took the life of former chicks or that our family is witnessing a sweet metaphor of life—hope after disaster. And yet, we are losing lovely friends and thus at times we sigh in premature depression. I must admit that though I want the chicks to fly I do not want to lose the mystery and company and constant entertainment of these birds we’ve come to love as pets.
Now that the fear of eggs un-hatched and chicks unfed has passed, we are noticing the nastiness of feathers gooped in bird poop in the window. It is clinging like cement to wood and glass around the nest built right above the place where we eat and serve our guests. My children do not mind but Jason and I are tempted to make plans for how to clean up all that mess… tempted to move on to the next task and miss the miracle of waiting now with baited breath for the chance to see a lift-off. How amazing will that be to get to see the chicks take off into the open, sun-drenched sky? I want to be a witness.
But the time! There are so many items scheduled into my agenda! There are so many cheeping, tweeting, chattering demands to cloud my vision of the place I ought to be right now. Or the way I ought to be right now. Or the one I want to please right now. It is a sacrifice divine when I take the time to watch the house finch parents raise their chicks… I am reminded then that I have the time it takes to raise my kids. I become convinced that rather than postponing all my dreams, I am watching my own mystery unfold in all the craziness of daily feeding.
I make it sound so simple and appealing. Don’t be deceived: “watching and waiting” is the hardest thing of all to be achieved. I feel the tension of the wait as I resist the restless space inside my head that pesters me with questions like, “What’s next? What is your plan? When do we move? Where do we get to land?” I am impatient for the answers to such things and sit sometimes as if I had the quills of porcupines under my ass. To pass the time I worry and work and talk to my friends and hike and write and boss around my husband and my kids.
I’m hoping to grow out of the worry and bossing, because it is so horrible for everyone concerned. The antidotes are numerous: reading, sleeping, eating well and evening walks into the woods with Jason. But the time! It is hard to schedule in between the bills and TV shows, 4H record books and end-of-year school talent show rehearsals. The list of all that’s left undone can squeeze me into full anxiety, and then I start to boss and worry....
Thank God for morning finches! They bring me back to humbleness. This life I live is a risky, crazy gift that changes every day I live it. Nothing can be completely planned on or predicted. But certain things can be trusted. Certain things can be obeyed. Like Sabbath time: to breathe in trees and birds and stroll down wooded paths with my dog Louie. He likes to play a game of “tiger in the grass”, stalking water bugs in river holes. He makes me laugh and let go of all delusion. I am not the one who’s sent to save the world. I can then resist the tyrant voice inside my head that says, “worry, hurry, worry, hurry”.
All I have is now. Now contains so many griefs I cannot name for you, but also this: a home on National Forest land with a window full of finch song. I have a heart that’s healing from so many broken dreams, but in their place I have a family raised on prayer and tears and laughter. Mostly I have been the prayer and tears; I want to learn to be the laughter.
So I start small today, with deciding to stall on the responsible task of arranging to get that ladder back to my friend Jamila. I continue by not standing demurely aside in model-mother-sacrifice when the chance comes to argue and shush and fight for my turn to scramble. I decide to feel proud, not foolish about the comment I made yesterday that made the whole family laugh. I was watching that chick that stood on the rim and considered the window ledge beneath him. He was flapping his wings so hard and fast they were a blur of brown against the sun-lit screen. I gasped and said, “Look at him! Look at him! We are watching history!”
We are making history. Maybe you have a dead-end job, a crushing mortgage, a messy divorce, or a 20-year addiction. Maybe you feel as if you can’t stand one more day of cheeping, pleading mouths to feed and hands to clean and hearts to fill with model-mother-sacrifice. Maybe you need some finches.
Maybe you are jealous of me with all my simple, daily pleasures. Maybe I am I succeeding in my plot to start a chain reaction from your heart to make you look above your normal line of sight....
Are you, like me, tempted to make plans for how to clean up all that mess… tempted to move on to the next task? Will you, like me, try to bear the tension of the waiting?
Left to our own means, we are the ones who vacillate between extremes of impulse-driven “win” and fear-induced “I quit”. But if we schedule in the time to be amazed by nature’s metaphors of life, we can stay brave enough to stand up to the tyrants in our head that whisper things like, “worry, hurry, worry, hurry!”
I’m telling you that more than half the time, the wait is where it’s at. It is the place where we can fill our time with business of heart and mind or watch until we catch our breath in pure delight at hope that’s hatched where it’s least expected. The wait is where we see or miss miracle coincidences we could never dream of. To bear the tension of the in-between is to learn to see through poop-smeared panes and screens into a space where dreams are bursting at the seams and can’t help but stretch out necks and wings in impatient anticipation.
That’s where I’ll be, whenever I can swing it. For the sake the sake of my mystery miracle life I have to live, I want to be a witness....
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Fire Birds
Week 1
There are birds above our dining room table. Not literally of course, but their activity in the window is of such an intensity that it is hard to focus and jot down my thoughts over my morning coffee. So I stop trying, and start watching what they are up to. Twigs and moss, hair and feathers being stuffed into a corner space. They are building a nest, I guess. They have figured out that the bend in our screen leaves them space to fly in between it and the window, and make a place to raise a family of …?????
Week 2
I found a photo in my California bird book to verify the name of our new freeloaders: Carpodacus mexicanus. For those of us who struggle with such combinations of letters, they are also called “Housefinch”. The male is oak-bark brown with fire-red feathers on his head and chest, while the female’s brown is speckled with cream and traces of lemon yellow. The male loves to sing on the low slung telephone wire right within my morning coffee and evening meal line of sight, and it makes me feel as if I’m on the set of a made for TV, (Hallmark) feel-good movie.
Week 4
The eggs are hatching. The blue with brown speckled eggs the size of pistachios are breaking open to reveal little bouncy brown feather-fluff mounds. They wobble and squeak when the mother comes back from her food finding excursions. She stays most the time on her nest on our window, nestled between the glass and the bent-open screen. She lectures her mate when he comes bringing grubs… is he late? Not enough? Or is all the fuss really her complements?
The babies look fragile as moss to our eyes so we wait ‘til she flies to peak in and count heads. Three now! Or four? There ‘s at least one more egg. Will it hatch? Is it dead? We borrowed a ladder and placed it inside, right next to the dining room table. We argue and shush as we scramble our turn to the place where we peer through the glass. The scary part is not climbing above the ladder’s safety line—my whole life has been about finding my wings by falling off from some place of comfort or safety. I know my kids might get careless and break an arm sometime. But better that than a life of safe predictions and well-laid plans. I want them to learn at an early age to not shy away from climbing. Be it trees, walls, or the places in their minds and hearts where pain and loss can expand their capacity to celebrate life, with all it’s knock-the-wind-out-of-your-chest moments.
We climb. We watch. We celebrate the life of the babies.
Week 6
Why is it so quiet? Is it possible the babies could have flown while we were gone over the weekend? Last I heard, they couldn’t help but peep like squealing piglets, at every little sound that might be food. Last I saw them, their eyes were straight dark lines on wobbly heads on skinny necks supporting giant beaks. Their wings were folded at their sides like feathered elbows. There is no way those alien peeping things could enter the cloud galaxy yet. So why is there no movement from that nest now? Dare we climb the ladder and survey a scene of disaster?
Week 8
There is a bird sitting above my head in the corner of the window. It is a second chance bird by the fact that the one who was there two weeks ago left, and never came back. We had watched her babies, hatch (my husband, kids, and I) and waited for the miracle of flight. A miracle it seems when you get to see the wobbly, huddled, helplessness of the chicks that look more like aliens than prodigy of finches. We waited with anticipation for the transformation to arrive one day and change them. But the mother was caught by a hawk. Or a snake. Or got lost or whatever else you might speculate. The nest grew quiet, and when we climbed the ladder placed next to our dining room table, we saw silent mounds of feathered fluff, and the single, solitary, bluish pistachio-sized egg that had never changed since it was laid. We mourned alone for two long days before the father bird returned. My husband was the witness to the male’s lament of the lifeless place in the corner our window. I don’t want to claim that I know the first thing about how a finch feels heartbreak (and annoy all you biologists) with my personified projection. Yet I have to report that Jason said it sounded like the cry of one who has encountered a sudden and significant loss, and can’t help but wail out in protest at the cruelty of such undeserved devastation.
How does one recover from such a loss? I’m thinking now of the folks whose houses turned to ashes in the fury of the Jesusita fire that swept across the front side of the foothills at my back while I watched finches in the wind. More than 80 homes devoured, and the ground in Montecito is still hot. Out of the more than 30,000 people forced to evacuate, only a handful of them were close family and friends, all of whom are now back in their houses intact. Out of these residences spared, I’m most grateful for the structures that came closest to the flames. Why is that I wonder? Do I take those places and the people they house less for granted now that I’m convinced they can be easily taken away?
I’m imagining the burden of compassion that I would feel if I lived across the street from someone whose house went down in flames. What a strange sort of “luckiness” that is, to be like the second chance bird in the window, while the neighbors return like the father Housefinch, and cry out in protest at all the devastation.
I think the wailing takes an immense amount of bravery. To decide to be vulnerable that way, and really fall apart under the observing eyes of friends and neighbors who want to help but don’t have a clue about what you are really going through… that is immensely courageous. We all are alone in our grief, whatever the loss, and to let others in is to let in the wind and the sun and the rain before the wreckage is cleared. In our perfect comfort-zone worlds, we would have everything organized and thrown away and the ground tilled before we invited the neighbors. Accordingly, we would live 900 years and have time for that. But we don’t. So we can’t wait—we have to be brave, and admit our dependence on other members of the human race to carry hope for us when we have no more faith. It’s not necessarily the “American way”, which calls for confidence and action. Quick reaction. Safe predictions, well-laid plans, and staying below the safety-line. Which doesn’t take into account the spark that ignites the flame that burns up more than 8,000 acres in less than five days…. it gives no blueprint for how we ought to behave when we are not “the lucky neighbors”. When we have been hit by a knock-the-wind-out-of-your-chest-moment, we need something more authentic than a freedom based on what is earned or deserved… we need a promise that we will not only survive but thrive; we will grow more, not less, hopeful, grateful, wise. Then we can be brave in times of crisis, and not hide our fear-stricken alien eyes as we wait patiently for transformation.
We can choose this: to open our starved hearts and receive the freely given love that is offered to us in our times of great need. It’s okay if we are too blind at first to recognize the face of generosity, or too wobbly with fear to get past squeals of self-protection to expressions of gratefulness. As my friend Lorraine says, “It takes what it takes.” Meaning, of course, that we have to forgive ourselves when despair drags us under for a while, makes us close up to all the wonder of a world that gives second chances. Or third. Or fourth. Or infinity.
I’m banking on the infinity chances, especially for my friends who live on the streets of Santa Barbara. Most are folks who had homes to live in once, and now they don’t. Most had jobs and families. Many have lost not only possessions but also the sense of self-worth and self-ability needed to succeed in walking away from a seemingly endless cycle of tragedy. Despite this, many of these friends have bowled me over with their compassion for those who could lose the very things that they themselves live without day after day. While they are criticized and despised by many folks who have houses to live in, jobs to work at, and functioning families, they are praying and hoping and checking in with those of us who consider them friends to emphasize their desire to help in any way they can. They are grieving as people who do have a clue what it means to lose “everything”—they are interceding to hold up hope for those they think may be at risk for losing it.
I can’t even describe how humbling it has been to be a witness and a recipient in these conversations. Or how transformative it is to the areas in my belief systems where I am choosing to judge and be stingy, or to the places in my life where I’ve given only out of obligation or excess, vs. out of empathy. The more I grow in friendship with those I know who live on the streets, the more I curb my need to either avoid their suffering, or try to save and rescue them from their individual tragedies. I can’t rescue anybody, but I can spend time, share tears and laughter, and talk honestly. It’s refreshing to be with these “survivors”, because so many of them are more courageous and generous with the way they give and receive love than I can yet dream of being. They humble and inspire me. I’m guessing that the folks who’ve lost their houses, but not the people most dear to them, are becoming like those friends: holding less tightly to the false securities of possessions and titles, and more securely to relationships that sustain their happiness.
I want to be like that when I grow up. I want to be brave enough to accept the love of friends and neighbors when I am stripped of all the things that keep me feeling safe. I want to stay in my home on the edge of Paradise watching the finch chicks fly, safe from the fires of sudden and significant change. But as my rental contract nears it’s expiration date, and I remain without a guarantee of housing past July, I am aware that the important thing to believe in is this: there is a universe of love out there big enough to sustain me, whatever takes place. Like homeless friends who prayed for mansions to be saved. Like finches building life on top of death outside my window. It’s time to put the ladder up again, and climb above the safety line. It’s time to peak inside and see infinity.
There are birds above our dining room table. Not literally of course, but their activity in the window is of such an intensity that it is hard to focus and jot down my thoughts over my morning coffee. So I stop trying, and start watching what they are up to. Twigs and moss, hair and feathers being stuffed into a corner space. They are building a nest, I guess. They have figured out that the bend in our screen leaves them space to fly in between it and the window, and make a place to raise a family of …?????
Week 2
I found a photo in my California bird book to verify the name of our new freeloaders: Carpodacus mexicanus. For those of us who struggle with such combinations of letters, they are also called “Housefinch”. The male is oak-bark brown with fire-red feathers on his head and chest, while the female’s brown is speckled with cream and traces of lemon yellow. The male loves to sing on the low slung telephone wire right within my morning coffee and evening meal line of sight, and it makes me feel as if I’m on the set of a made for TV, (Hallmark) feel-good movie.
Week 4
The eggs are hatching. The blue with brown speckled eggs the size of pistachios are breaking open to reveal little bouncy brown feather-fluff mounds. They wobble and squeak when the mother comes back from her food finding excursions. She stays most the time on her nest on our window, nestled between the glass and the bent-open screen. She lectures her mate when he comes bringing grubs… is he late? Not enough? Or is all the fuss really her complements?
The babies look fragile as moss to our eyes so we wait ‘til she flies to peak in and count heads. Three now! Or four? There ‘s at least one more egg. Will it hatch? Is it dead? We borrowed a ladder and placed it inside, right next to the dining room table. We argue and shush as we scramble our turn to the place where we peer through the glass. The scary part is not climbing above the ladder’s safety line—my whole life has been about finding my wings by falling off from some place of comfort or safety. I know my kids might get careless and break an arm sometime. But better that than a life of safe predictions and well-laid plans. I want them to learn at an early age to not shy away from climbing. Be it trees, walls, or the places in their minds and hearts where pain and loss can expand their capacity to celebrate life, with all it’s knock-the-wind-out-of-your-chest moments.
We climb. We watch. We celebrate the life of the babies.
Week 6
Why is it so quiet? Is it possible the babies could have flown while we were gone over the weekend? Last I heard, they couldn’t help but peep like squealing piglets, at every little sound that might be food. Last I saw them, their eyes were straight dark lines on wobbly heads on skinny necks supporting giant beaks. Their wings were folded at their sides like feathered elbows. There is no way those alien peeping things could enter the cloud galaxy yet. So why is there no movement from that nest now? Dare we climb the ladder and survey a scene of disaster?
Week 8
There is a bird sitting above my head in the corner of the window. It is a second chance bird by the fact that the one who was there two weeks ago left, and never came back. We had watched her babies, hatch (my husband, kids, and I) and waited for the miracle of flight. A miracle it seems when you get to see the wobbly, huddled, helplessness of the chicks that look more like aliens than prodigy of finches. We waited with anticipation for the transformation to arrive one day and change them. But the mother was caught by a hawk. Or a snake. Or got lost or whatever else you might speculate. The nest grew quiet, and when we climbed the ladder placed next to our dining room table, we saw silent mounds of feathered fluff, and the single, solitary, bluish pistachio-sized egg that had never changed since it was laid. We mourned alone for two long days before the father bird returned. My husband was the witness to the male’s lament of the lifeless place in the corner our window. I don’t want to claim that I know the first thing about how a finch feels heartbreak (and annoy all you biologists) with my personified projection. Yet I have to report that Jason said it sounded like the cry of one who has encountered a sudden and significant loss, and can’t help but wail out in protest at the cruelty of such undeserved devastation.
How does one recover from such a loss? I’m thinking now of the folks whose houses turned to ashes in the fury of the Jesusita fire that swept across the front side of the foothills at my back while I watched finches in the wind. More than 80 homes devoured, and the ground in Montecito is still hot. Out of the more than 30,000 people forced to evacuate, only a handful of them were close family and friends, all of whom are now back in their houses intact. Out of these residences spared, I’m most grateful for the structures that came closest to the flames. Why is that I wonder? Do I take those places and the people they house less for granted now that I’m convinced they can be easily taken away?
I’m imagining the burden of compassion that I would feel if I lived across the street from someone whose house went down in flames. What a strange sort of “luckiness” that is, to be like the second chance bird in the window, while the neighbors return like the father Housefinch, and cry out in protest at all the devastation.
I think the wailing takes an immense amount of bravery. To decide to be vulnerable that way, and really fall apart under the observing eyes of friends and neighbors who want to help but don’t have a clue about what you are really going through… that is immensely courageous. We all are alone in our grief, whatever the loss, and to let others in is to let in the wind and the sun and the rain before the wreckage is cleared. In our perfect comfort-zone worlds, we would have everything organized and thrown away and the ground tilled before we invited the neighbors. Accordingly, we would live 900 years and have time for that. But we don’t. So we can’t wait—we have to be brave, and admit our dependence on other members of the human race to carry hope for us when we have no more faith. It’s not necessarily the “American way”, which calls for confidence and action. Quick reaction. Safe predictions, well-laid plans, and staying below the safety-line. Which doesn’t take into account the spark that ignites the flame that burns up more than 8,000 acres in less than five days…. it gives no blueprint for how we ought to behave when we are not “the lucky neighbors”. When we have been hit by a knock-the-wind-out-of-your-chest-moment, we need something more authentic than a freedom based on what is earned or deserved… we need a promise that we will not only survive but thrive; we will grow more, not less, hopeful, grateful, wise. Then we can be brave in times of crisis, and not hide our fear-stricken alien eyes as we wait patiently for transformation.
We can choose this: to open our starved hearts and receive the freely given love that is offered to us in our times of great need. It’s okay if we are too blind at first to recognize the face of generosity, or too wobbly with fear to get past squeals of self-protection to expressions of gratefulness. As my friend Lorraine says, “It takes what it takes.” Meaning, of course, that we have to forgive ourselves when despair drags us under for a while, makes us close up to all the wonder of a world that gives second chances. Or third. Or fourth. Or infinity.
I’m banking on the infinity chances, especially for my friends who live on the streets of Santa Barbara. Most are folks who had homes to live in once, and now they don’t. Most had jobs and families. Many have lost not only possessions but also the sense of self-worth and self-ability needed to succeed in walking away from a seemingly endless cycle of tragedy. Despite this, many of these friends have bowled me over with their compassion for those who could lose the very things that they themselves live without day after day. While they are criticized and despised by many folks who have houses to live in, jobs to work at, and functioning families, they are praying and hoping and checking in with those of us who consider them friends to emphasize their desire to help in any way they can. They are grieving as people who do have a clue what it means to lose “everything”—they are interceding to hold up hope for those they think may be at risk for losing it.
I can’t even describe how humbling it has been to be a witness and a recipient in these conversations. Or how transformative it is to the areas in my belief systems where I am choosing to judge and be stingy, or to the places in my life where I’ve given only out of obligation or excess, vs. out of empathy. The more I grow in friendship with those I know who live on the streets, the more I curb my need to either avoid their suffering, or try to save and rescue them from their individual tragedies. I can’t rescue anybody, but I can spend time, share tears and laughter, and talk honestly. It’s refreshing to be with these “survivors”, because so many of them are more courageous and generous with the way they give and receive love than I can yet dream of being. They humble and inspire me. I’m guessing that the folks who’ve lost their houses, but not the people most dear to them, are becoming like those friends: holding less tightly to the false securities of possessions and titles, and more securely to relationships that sustain their happiness.
I want to be like that when I grow up. I want to be brave enough to accept the love of friends and neighbors when I am stripped of all the things that keep me feeling safe. I want to stay in my home on the edge of Paradise watching the finch chicks fly, safe from the fires of sudden and significant change. But as my rental contract nears it’s expiration date, and I remain without a guarantee of housing past July, I am aware that the important thing to believe in is this: there is a universe of love out there big enough to sustain me, whatever takes place. Like homeless friends who prayed for mansions to be saved. Like finches building life on top of death outside my window. It’s time to put the ladder up again, and climb above the safety line. It’s time to peak inside and see infinity.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Finely Shaped
Like dried clay, earth toned, not yet fired
Like eggs, hit together, then pulled apart
I see myself cracked this way
spaces made where I can fall
where new color,
light and water
can get in
What will make the difference
now that I am fragile?
Can I choose
the sky blue glaze
the green sea foam
the steely gray
to fill in all the gaping places?
I ask to choose these things because I value what
I have not lost
and what there is that I might gain by
bearing up under the heat
The fire takes
the guilt and shame and love and hope
and makes
the promise of redemption
A trial by fire is just that:
a trial
nothing more, nothing less
But
time it takes
and patience
patience
patience
I want to paint myself
with prayer and tears,
friends and full relinquishment
No more accusations
No more isolation
I see the hope
though I can’t grasp it
I see the wholeness
finely shaped
~Christie Tarman~
February 2008
Like eggs, hit together, then pulled apart
I see myself cracked this way
spaces made where I can fall
where new color,
light and water
can get in
What will make the difference
now that I am fragile?
Can I choose
the sky blue glaze
the green sea foam
the steely gray
to fill in all the gaping places?
I ask to choose these things because I value what
I have not lost
and what there is that I might gain by
bearing up under the heat
The fire takes
the guilt and shame and love and hope
and makes
the promise of redemption
A trial by fire is just that:
a trial
nothing more, nothing less
But
time it takes
and patience
patience
patience
I want to paint myself
with prayer and tears,
friends and full relinquishment
No more accusations
No more isolation
I see the hope
though I can’t grasp it
I see the wholeness
finely shaped
~Christie Tarman~
February 2008
Confessions from Paradise
I have some confessions to make.
First, concerning my last posting, I never had a dream about Simon. I made that up as part of my strategy to make you smile (maybe even laugh?). But if it’s okay with you I’d like to take little liberties like that… with the promise (of course!) that I’ll fess up once the story has achieved its objective…
Second, I haven’t been posting every week(obviously!) like I promised a whole slew of you I would. I haven’t even been pretending to write posts these last few weeks—my laptop has not left the protective cushioning of her backpack except to chatter through emails or tantrum through taxes. I have lots of reasons I could parade for this long time of no-blog-land, but as I stare them in the eyes, I find they are lying about their weight and validity. My reasons are no more than a smoke screen of excuses hiding my fear of failure.
Perhaps you are now wondering this: what is there to fail at? A blog is just a place to jot down thoughts, experiences, opinions, whatevers. The only way to fail is by not… blogging. Not metallurgy here. But for me there is this constant driving need to become better than I am as a human being, with each day I live, and I can’t seem to escape my own loopy measurement of this “bettering”, when I’m writing in a place outside my journal. The things I write become a sort of proof of whether or not I am growing into more of what I “should” become—a strange and intangible thing that not even I can defend. I’m like a mission statement that has no end because it’s always trying to state a mission that doesn’t exist yet. As long as I keep my thoughts, experiences, opinions, whatevers un-published in any form, my failure or success is kept at a safe (unreadable) distance. Once I finalize anything for the public eye, there is no escaping my own inner tyrant of a perfectionista …
And yet there is hope for me. Even as I confess to this egocentric obsession with trying to be better than I am I find myself compassionate and accepting toward what I really am—a unique and lovely creature who deserves to be freed from all her self-defeating standards.
I hope this inspires you. Not those of you who already have all your shit together (you know who you are, and more importantly, WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE), but for those of you who have your own nifty form of self-annihilating conversations and premonitions… I confess my weakness now in the hopes that you will find some power in validation from my articulation.
”Huh?”
Exactly.
I should confess this too: for at least two weeks I’ve been bitter at and envious of my laptop. She has spent time in a veritable spa of relaxation, while I have been moving from item to item to item in my list of responsibilities necessary to complete in order to earn the right to rest, reflect, write….
But before we go too far into ponderings about the woman who’s husband went back to school to get a degree in marriage and family therapy...
I WANT TO WRITE about the bluish-purplish-pinkish mountain lupines blooming on the steep South sides of Figeroa mountain. They are courting all the orangish-yellow poppies popping up to drink the sunlight of this month between the evening frosts and mid-May mid-day HOT that’s soon to flood us in this canyon.
I WANT TO WRITE about the birds who built their nest against the glass of our top window on the right above the table where we drink our steaming coffee to the music of the finch-song. Five blue eggs will stay above our heads like sky-blue prayers for life that gives us second chances to be kids until we hatch out of our fears into our passions.
I WANT TO GIVE you some of all the Paradise that comes when breezes sway the grass as tall as cats and purr between my legs as sweet as sweet peas ripening with shooting stars that point at things that you might miss:
The firmness of the earth
The mystery of shadows
The wanderlust that calls the feet to kick off shoes and feel the mud that billows up like love around black tadpoles
I CONFESS my need for you who had the sense enough to let me vent and thus become a part of what I absolutely need: a community of folks who want to risk the time it takes to find the love between the toes of frogs who are not frogs just yet
I CONFESS
my absolute failure
my absolute success
at being one
who can write
to make you hungry
First, concerning my last posting, I never had a dream about Simon. I made that up as part of my strategy to make you smile (maybe even laugh?). But if it’s okay with you I’d like to take little liberties like that… with the promise (of course!) that I’ll fess up once the story has achieved its objective…
Second, I haven’t been posting every week(obviously!) like I promised a whole slew of you I would. I haven’t even been pretending to write posts these last few weeks—my laptop has not left the protective cushioning of her backpack except to chatter through emails or tantrum through taxes. I have lots of reasons I could parade for this long time of no-blog-land, but as I stare them in the eyes, I find they are lying about their weight and validity. My reasons are no more than a smoke screen of excuses hiding my fear of failure.
Perhaps you are now wondering this: what is there to fail at? A blog is just a place to jot down thoughts, experiences, opinions, whatevers. The only way to fail is by not… blogging. Not metallurgy here. But for me there is this constant driving need to become better than I am as a human being, with each day I live, and I can’t seem to escape my own loopy measurement of this “bettering”, when I’m writing in a place outside my journal. The things I write become a sort of proof of whether or not I am growing into more of what I “should” become—a strange and intangible thing that not even I can defend. I’m like a mission statement that has no end because it’s always trying to state a mission that doesn’t exist yet. As long as I keep my thoughts, experiences, opinions, whatevers un-published in any form, my failure or success is kept at a safe (unreadable) distance. Once I finalize anything for the public eye, there is no escaping my own inner tyrant of a perfectionista …
And yet there is hope for me. Even as I confess to this egocentric obsession with trying to be better than I am I find myself compassionate and accepting toward what I really am—a unique and lovely creature who deserves to be freed from all her self-defeating standards.
I hope this inspires you. Not those of you who already have all your shit together (you know who you are, and more importantly, WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE), but for those of you who have your own nifty form of self-annihilating conversations and premonitions… I confess my weakness now in the hopes that you will find some power in validation from my articulation.
”Huh?”
Exactly.
I should confess this too: for at least two weeks I’ve been bitter at and envious of my laptop. She has spent time in a veritable spa of relaxation, while I have been moving from item to item to item in my list of responsibilities necessary to complete in order to earn the right to rest, reflect, write….
But before we go too far into ponderings about the woman who’s husband went back to school to get a degree in marriage and family therapy...
I WANT TO WRITE about the bluish-purplish-pinkish mountain lupines blooming on the steep South sides of Figeroa mountain. They are courting all the orangish-yellow poppies popping up to drink the sunlight of this month between the evening frosts and mid-May mid-day HOT that’s soon to flood us in this canyon.
I WANT TO WRITE about the birds who built their nest against the glass of our top window on the right above the table where we drink our steaming coffee to the music of the finch-song. Five blue eggs will stay above our heads like sky-blue prayers for life that gives us second chances to be kids until we hatch out of our fears into our passions.
I WANT TO GIVE you some of all the Paradise that comes when breezes sway the grass as tall as cats and purr between my legs as sweet as sweet peas ripening with shooting stars that point at things that you might miss:
The firmness of the earth
The mystery of shadows
The wanderlust that calls the feet to kick off shoes and feel the mud that billows up like love around black tadpoles
I CONFESS my need for you who had the sense enough to let me vent and thus become a part of what I absolutely need: a community of folks who want to risk the time it takes to find the love between the toes of frogs who are not frogs just yet
I CONFESS
my absolute failure
my absolute success
at being one
who can write
to make you hungry
Friday, March 20, 2009
Satellite TV and farmlife... (PG 10-13)
After 12 years of not paying for cable, I have found a couple shows I enjoy watching on a regular basis. I’ll say that in another way; after 12 years of going without TV in the home, I have found very few shows that truly entertain me. American Idol is one of them. I know I might be writing my death sentence here with some of you by saying that, but it’s true. I even had a dream about Simon Cowell the other day. It went like this:
I was standing in front of him waiting for his verbal response to the posting of my most recent blog. He looked at me with disdain, and commented, "Frankly, I found it incredibly disappointing. The descriptions were tedious, the humor was appalling, and the attempt to inspire a commitment to some higher form of belief or action was, well, to be honest, absolutely horrifying. The truth is, Christie, I liked what you wrote in your intro, but after this most recent performance, I’m questioning whether or not you can pull this off. We need raw, we need relevant, we do not need some bizarre concoction of Anne Frank meets Seinfeld."
As Simon said all this I just stood there studying him quizzically. I seemed puzzled by some part of his response, which to my audience-dream-brain seemed strange, considering who was talking. I knew all along that Simon would hate every word of what I’d written, and yet something in his statement was confusing me. It became clear what this was in the moment I responded to his complaints with the question,
“You liked my intro?”
I suffer from a disease-like condition called extreme under-confidence. It feeds on my perfectionistic tendencies. Tell me something I have done is good, and I will explain to you how I could have done it better. Let me know that I have hurt you in some way, and I’ll sympathize with you before apologizing. (Unless of course you are my spouse or children… but we won’t go into that whole pile of worms just now…). Right now I have a funny story to tell you about the acronym used around here to refer to the popular TV program American Idol, and the way that it converges with my history of rural living.
In Santa Barbara we are coastal people, which implies that we wear flip-flops to weddings, speak ocean slang, and abbreviate tiresome titles. Thus, it is common to hear folks using A.I. in the place of “American Idol”. This might make perfect sense to your mind. I see my friend, they remind me it’s Wednesday, and invite me to their A.I. party. I can’t help but giggle when I hear that, because of all the vivid images that come to mind, none of them remotely corresponding with microphones, stage lights, or celebrity opinions.
You see, I grew up a farm girl of sorts, in Northern Idaho. My dad has higher education in Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, and spent much of his working hours teaching grad students “in the field” how to raise and manage a beef cattle herd. In the summers, I would often come across these graduate practicum’s, as I was running about in the fields behind our house. A. I. was one of the most important ones, and stood for this: “artificial insemination”.
Maybe you are having trouble with that visualization. Imagine it this way. A strapping young man with cowboy boots and a Stetson hat pulls a two foot long latex glove over his hand. He inserts it, with effort, into the back of a cow—through the path leading up to her uterus, to be more exact. The cow does not like this, but she is trapped on both sides by strong metal fencing. Oh—I forgot one important part. Before the man with the Levis and farmer tan puts his arm into the cow’s backside, he grasps the gift he wants to leave inside: the semen of a bull who has won some prizes for his brawny size and overall good genetic makeup.
Are you city folk utterly confused by this turn of events, or is this making sense to you? I’ll try to explain in a way that keeps us in PG-13... There are advantages to A.I. in the agricultural community. Rather than owning or renting the bull who would then spend his own sweet time getting to home plate with the females he liked, the sperm can be kept on dry ice (indeed, until the age of 18, I thought dry ice was made to store bull semen) until such a time as it’s needed for egg fertilization. It’s a surer bet that calves will come at convenient and closely corresponding times when human hands are in charge of the penetration. Enough said. Back to A.I. then. You said you were having a party at your house at 7 p.m. on Wednesday night?
I was standing in front of him waiting for his verbal response to the posting of my most recent blog. He looked at me with disdain, and commented, "Frankly, I found it incredibly disappointing. The descriptions were tedious, the humor was appalling, and the attempt to inspire a commitment to some higher form of belief or action was, well, to be honest, absolutely horrifying. The truth is, Christie, I liked what you wrote in your intro, but after this most recent performance, I’m questioning whether or not you can pull this off. We need raw, we need relevant, we do not need some bizarre concoction of Anne Frank meets Seinfeld."
As Simon said all this I just stood there studying him quizzically. I seemed puzzled by some part of his response, which to my audience-dream-brain seemed strange, considering who was talking. I knew all along that Simon would hate every word of what I’d written, and yet something in his statement was confusing me. It became clear what this was in the moment I responded to his complaints with the question,
“You liked my intro?”
I suffer from a disease-like condition called extreme under-confidence. It feeds on my perfectionistic tendencies. Tell me something I have done is good, and I will explain to you how I could have done it better. Let me know that I have hurt you in some way, and I’ll sympathize with you before apologizing. (Unless of course you are my spouse or children… but we won’t go into that whole pile of worms just now…). Right now I have a funny story to tell you about the acronym used around here to refer to the popular TV program American Idol, and the way that it converges with my history of rural living.
In Santa Barbara we are coastal people, which implies that we wear flip-flops to weddings, speak ocean slang, and abbreviate tiresome titles. Thus, it is common to hear folks using A.I. in the place of “American Idol”. This might make perfect sense to your mind. I see my friend, they remind me it’s Wednesday, and invite me to their A.I. party. I can’t help but giggle when I hear that, because of all the vivid images that come to mind, none of them remotely corresponding with microphones, stage lights, or celebrity opinions.
You see, I grew up a farm girl of sorts, in Northern Idaho. My dad has higher education in Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, and spent much of his working hours teaching grad students “in the field” how to raise and manage a beef cattle herd. In the summers, I would often come across these graduate practicum’s, as I was running about in the fields behind our house. A. I. was one of the most important ones, and stood for this: “artificial insemination”.
Maybe you are having trouble with that visualization. Imagine it this way. A strapping young man with cowboy boots and a Stetson hat pulls a two foot long latex glove over his hand. He inserts it, with effort, into the back of a cow—through the path leading up to her uterus, to be more exact. The cow does not like this, but she is trapped on both sides by strong metal fencing. Oh—I forgot one important part. Before the man with the Levis and farmer tan puts his arm into the cow’s backside, he grasps the gift he wants to leave inside: the semen of a bull who has won some prizes for his brawny size and overall good genetic makeup.
Are you city folk utterly confused by this turn of events, or is this making sense to you? I’ll try to explain in a way that keeps us in PG-13... There are advantages to A.I. in the agricultural community. Rather than owning or renting the bull who would then spend his own sweet time getting to home plate with the females he liked, the sperm can be kept on dry ice (indeed, until the age of 18, I thought dry ice was made to store bull semen) until such a time as it’s needed for egg fertilization. It’s a surer bet that calves will come at convenient and closely corresponding times when human hands are in charge of the penetration. Enough said. Back to A.I. then. You said you were having a party at your house at 7 p.m. on Wednesday night?
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Notes from Paradise! Fear and Freedom
I went hiking last week alone in the dark, with the intent of finding the moon. I knew where it was and that we would meet if I could make my way up to the ridge top. There were people up there for me to meet too, my cousin and her friends who shared a hiking group on Yahoo. So my plan to greet the moon was as tame a beast as any out that night. And yet, hiking in the dark is like opening a trapdoor to the dungeons of my heart: I can’t help but see the prisoners I keep, and all the fear and questioning that sleep there.
First of all, there was my fear of the future. I had quit my job that day at two o’clock. The decision to quit had weighed on my mind for 12 days—ever since the arrival of my replacement. My co-workers had expected me to get myself fired on that first day of March, and go collect my unemployment. After all, my six month appointment of government service was only two weeks short of its final expiration date. So there was no shame in walking out the door early. Yet I had stayed, for a reason I still can’t completely explain. Call it stupidity, self-abasement, or a higher calling; two things compelled me to walk back and forth through those doors in the days past my official obligation.
Empathy was one, mostly for my replacement. A single mom from Arizona, she had had a hellish move after months of pursuit for a job as secure as this one. She was coming at an inopportune time, right in the midst of hiring for the back-country fire season. I remembered what it felt like to jump in to a crazy river of Forest Service paperwork. It had been terrifying. Yet I had had a lifeline to sanity and good humor in those first few days, in the form of my co-worker/supervisor, who trained me with kindness, patience, and laughter. Here was my chance to return the favor. So I worked extra days with the intent of helping the two of them transition more sanely.
The other reason I stayed? Curiosity. I wanted to be sure that my demons of the winter months (self-pity and bitterness) had indeed been chased away. They had taken up residence in my heart in November, when a list of “qualified applicants” had landed in the hands of our district Ranger, absent of my name. I had fought for two weeks against the unfairness of the news that I wouldn’t be considered for the permanent position I had “earned” with all my competence and good attitude as the temporary. Surprise! Government hiring is nothing like private industry. There was nothing I, nor my co-workers could do to reverse the glitch in my online application that had given no error report, and yet disqualified me from competing. That is another story for another day. Suffice it to say that my pride was at stake, and I satisfied my own inner doubts by staying long enough to witness my genuine goodwill and acceptance of the situation.
So there I was, 4 hours after leaving my job, hiking in the dark. How bold I felt! How daring! How exhilarating to think that I had only a general idea of where I was heading, (both on the trail and in my career) and yet I was embracing every moment of it with bravery and vigor. I felt that way for ten whole minutes, maybe even more, until my first real wildlife encounter of the evening.
I was running up the root and rock infested path when I heard a large rustling in the bushes to the left of me. My breath came in sharp as I froze in mid-air and realized my folly: I’d been jogging at night in Mountain Lion territory. I don’t know what you know about Mountain Lions, but I’ll tell you this much: I was not being smart. My own inner restlessness had made me impatient to get to that ridge top, and I had forgotten basic night-hiking guidelines. I’m not petite, but at 5’3” (barely), and 125 pounds, I’m not exactly an image of physical intimidation. The weapons at my disposal were few: a water bottle, a headlamp, a blackberry (the electronic kind, versus the fruit, for those of you who are slow--like me--to enter the new millennium), and a key to my car. So I pulled back quickly from the rustling and raised my arms above me. Short through they are, they made long shadows in the light of my headlamp, and gave me courage to move forward toward the rustling.
The eyes were the first thing I saw, iridescent red against a pale white backdrop. All white in the light, down to the snakelike tail wrapping around a tree branch. I dropped my arms as I took it all in: the pointy nose and plump middle of a full grown opossum. I laughed with relief and embarrassment as my adrenaline dissipated. Though the opossum was large for his type and hissing menacingly, I had never heard of anyone getting attacked, let alone taken down, by this rodent-like marsupial. I would keep my small distance but enjoy this opportunity to study real wildlife in its own habitat.
Instead I traumatized the poor thing in minutes. I was thinking about my daughter and couldn’t resist the instinct to pull out my blackberry and capture the specter on digital. Usually voraciously independent, my nine year old wonder had had a moment of mommy yearning as she saw me in the driver’s seat, and had climbed up on my lap before I drove off that evening. She had pleaded with me to stay home, than insisted on steering the car to the end of the driveway when I would not agree to this. “Okay then,” she’d said, as if she was closing a business transaction, and sprinted off to the carport to lavish love on our Lab-German Shepherd. She was first and foremost an animal lover, and would waste little time on “being lonely” for my human company.
Her passion for animals of all kinds, especially the creepy ones, was what brought her to mind as I studied this mammal who had scared me. I knew that my daughter would squeal with delight at even my most mediocre photography. You see, she had bargained hard for her own pet opossum last Spring, with her dad in a Louisiana gift store. He’d agreed to the stuffed souvenir on the condition that she part with her largest stuffed prize: a St. Bernard-sized white unicorn. “White Rose” had come from Santa the year my daughter turned five, and lived on her bed most nights since. All fine and good for a five year old. But at age almost-nine, the bedtime routine of squeezing in beside a large mythical beast had left both of her parents quite crazy.
Her decision wasn’t easy, but my daughter has always been in favor of instant gratification over long-term gain, so the opossum came home with us on the airplane. It moved when we moved, from campground, to hotel, to house in the canyon. I do have to say for the record, “O-pa-pa” looked little like the opossum I encountered last Tuesday. For one thing, the live one was ugly. For another, it had teeth that looked jaggedy and dangerous. Lastly, it had no intention of “playing dead”, which O-pa-pa did quite well (every time I so much as looked at her). So after several minutes of clicking and deleting, I pocketed my substandard rendition and continued up the hillside.
There were bullfrogs calling and answering in the creek as I crossed and their voices seemed to quiet my thoughts about me and awaken my longings for everything mysterious and lost. The water was one of these things: found and lost, found and lost down the stream. My life was one of these things: found and lost, lost and found, spinning round in a myriad of sounds and meanings too profound for me to see. The bullfrogs sang their songs as if they were singing to me: just breathe, just believe, just be.
Out of nowhere, the bat attacked me. Flying straight for my head, it was only my lifeguarding instincts that saved me—I ducked just in time and aimed my beam up, into his beady bat eyes. I know what you are thinking…. “Oh, please! California bats do not attack humans!”
Well you’re right. Using finely tuned powers of echolocation, that bat had diverted his flight path to swerve out of my way just in time. At less than one-hundredth my size, I was a frightening creature for that bat to encounter that night. Based on so many factors, it was logical for that bat to be terrified of me, but not for me to be terrified of that bat. And yet. I was still shaking from the encounter.
My fear-based reaction in the face of the unknown was troubling to me. I had been gearing myself up for the challenge of not having a boss or a job or a regular schedule each day by reminding myself of my unshakable traits: spontaneity, adaptability, and good old-fashioned common sense. I had told myself this: the hard day will come when you’re hired again and have to go back to the grindstone.
Something about this line of thought was now less convincing. Reluctantly, I had to admit that the “bravery” in me was not any different than the lack of bravery I saw in the people I could label as “control freaks”. I just liked to change my mind faster and more often concerning the things I had control of….
After all of this dungeon digging self assessment, I was quite relieved to come out of the trees and clamber onto the open, moonlit stretch of sights to see. There were the silhouettes of larger oaks and shapely Manzanita trees. There was the city down the cliff all lit with life not yet asleep and all the lights were stretching out onto the oceans waves and dips. The air was breezy fresh with hints of sage and licorice-like scents. My breath came out and in just like the breakers on the beach. Out and in, in and out. I was at peace.
It didn’t take long to find my cousin and her friends. I had struck out again, this time on the path that I knew they were using to return from their loop atop the hillside. I hardly had time to squat down behind the brush on their left so as to make rustlings to scare them. It seemed appropriate that I was only moderately successful in my attempts. I didn’t really have a need to do anything but smile and laugh and make small talk. I might as well eat every word I’ll ever say after telling you this: that small talk was blessed. Those strangers were great. Like a cold coke on a hot day in Guayaquil, Ecuador. (Shhh--No discussion allowed right now about the politics of foreign trade or multinational corporations in third-world nations…)
Blessed small talk. I usually detest it, and find it quite painful to participate in. But time alone with my thoughts gives me new perspective. It is the necessary--if sometimes scary and painful act—that I take to transform me from the person I am into the person I want next to be. I want to have more humility, more honesty about my weaknesses, and more acceptance of those who seem entirely different from me. When embraced, solitude is transformative precisely because it is painful. Not painfully bad, but painfully good, like a pregnancy or the training for a marathon. It does more than inform me about the ways I need to change, it actually changes me. And it makes me brave enough to be myself with other humans. Knowing oneself fully and yet being at peace with that—sounds like freedom.
Okay, okay, I’ll stop philosophizing already. I don’t want to bring you back to that place where you started last week when you read my ridiculous title…. I do want to bring you back once again to the poetry of William Stafford. The following poem is one he wrote while he was living in my neighborhood (off Paradise of course)…
Night Sound
An acorn falls on our roof in the night
Pattering down to the eaves;
We think our way through the quietness
To the steadfast moon on the leaves.
There in the soul grows a little star,
The heart finds a path to follow;
There in the still is a brimmed-up place,
An arrow of sky, and a swallow.
And over the hill is an always stream
And over the river, trees;
Seeking the hand is another hand,
And the blind have an eye that sees.
~William Stafford~
Los Prietos, California
September 1942
(Another World Instead, The Early Poems of William Stafford, 1937-1947, published by Graywolf Press)
First of all, there was my fear of the future. I had quit my job that day at two o’clock. The decision to quit had weighed on my mind for 12 days—ever since the arrival of my replacement. My co-workers had expected me to get myself fired on that first day of March, and go collect my unemployment. After all, my six month appointment of government service was only two weeks short of its final expiration date. So there was no shame in walking out the door early. Yet I had stayed, for a reason I still can’t completely explain. Call it stupidity, self-abasement, or a higher calling; two things compelled me to walk back and forth through those doors in the days past my official obligation.
Empathy was one, mostly for my replacement. A single mom from Arizona, she had had a hellish move after months of pursuit for a job as secure as this one. She was coming at an inopportune time, right in the midst of hiring for the back-country fire season. I remembered what it felt like to jump in to a crazy river of Forest Service paperwork. It had been terrifying. Yet I had had a lifeline to sanity and good humor in those first few days, in the form of my co-worker/supervisor, who trained me with kindness, patience, and laughter. Here was my chance to return the favor. So I worked extra days with the intent of helping the two of them transition more sanely.
The other reason I stayed? Curiosity. I wanted to be sure that my demons of the winter months (self-pity and bitterness) had indeed been chased away. They had taken up residence in my heart in November, when a list of “qualified applicants” had landed in the hands of our district Ranger, absent of my name. I had fought for two weeks against the unfairness of the news that I wouldn’t be considered for the permanent position I had “earned” with all my competence and good attitude as the temporary. Surprise! Government hiring is nothing like private industry. There was nothing I, nor my co-workers could do to reverse the glitch in my online application that had given no error report, and yet disqualified me from competing. That is another story for another day. Suffice it to say that my pride was at stake, and I satisfied my own inner doubts by staying long enough to witness my genuine goodwill and acceptance of the situation.
So there I was, 4 hours after leaving my job, hiking in the dark. How bold I felt! How daring! How exhilarating to think that I had only a general idea of where I was heading, (both on the trail and in my career) and yet I was embracing every moment of it with bravery and vigor. I felt that way for ten whole minutes, maybe even more, until my first real wildlife encounter of the evening.
I was running up the root and rock infested path when I heard a large rustling in the bushes to the left of me. My breath came in sharp as I froze in mid-air and realized my folly: I’d been jogging at night in Mountain Lion territory. I don’t know what you know about Mountain Lions, but I’ll tell you this much: I was not being smart. My own inner restlessness had made me impatient to get to that ridge top, and I had forgotten basic night-hiking guidelines. I’m not petite, but at 5’3” (barely), and 125 pounds, I’m not exactly an image of physical intimidation. The weapons at my disposal were few: a water bottle, a headlamp, a blackberry (the electronic kind, versus the fruit, for those of you who are slow--like me--to enter the new millennium), and a key to my car. So I pulled back quickly from the rustling and raised my arms above me. Short through they are, they made long shadows in the light of my headlamp, and gave me courage to move forward toward the rustling.
The eyes were the first thing I saw, iridescent red against a pale white backdrop. All white in the light, down to the snakelike tail wrapping around a tree branch. I dropped my arms as I took it all in: the pointy nose and plump middle of a full grown opossum. I laughed with relief and embarrassment as my adrenaline dissipated. Though the opossum was large for his type and hissing menacingly, I had never heard of anyone getting attacked, let alone taken down, by this rodent-like marsupial. I would keep my small distance but enjoy this opportunity to study real wildlife in its own habitat.
Instead I traumatized the poor thing in minutes. I was thinking about my daughter and couldn’t resist the instinct to pull out my blackberry and capture the specter on digital. Usually voraciously independent, my nine year old wonder had had a moment of mommy yearning as she saw me in the driver’s seat, and had climbed up on my lap before I drove off that evening. She had pleaded with me to stay home, than insisted on steering the car to the end of the driveway when I would not agree to this. “Okay then,” she’d said, as if she was closing a business transaction, and sprinted off to the carport to lavish love on our Lab-German Shepherd. She was first and foremost an animal lover, and would waste little time on “being lonely” for my human company.
Her passion for animals of all kinds, especially the creepy ones, was what brought her to mind as I studied this mammal who had scared me. I knew that my daughter would squeal with delight at even my most mediocre photography. You see, she had bargained hard for her own pet opossum last Spring, with her dad in a Louisiana gift store. He’d agreed to the stuffed souvenir on the condition that she part with her largest stuffed prize: a St. Bernard-sized white unicorn. “White Rose” had come from Santa the year my daughter turned five, and lived on her bed most nights since. All fine and good for a five year old. But at age almost-nine, the bedtime routine of squeezing in beside a large mythical beast had left both of her parents quite crazy.
Her decision wasn’t easy, but my daughter has always been in favor of instant gratification over long-term gain, so the opossum came home with us on the airplane. It moved when we moved, from campground, to hotel, to house in the canyon. I do have to say for the record, “O-pa-pa” looked little like the opossum I encountered last Tuesday. For one thing, the live one was ugly. For another, it had teeth that looked jaggedy and dangerous. Lastly, it had no intention of “playing dead”, which O-pa-pa did quite well (every time I so much as looked at her). So after several minutes of clicking and deleting, I pocketed my substandard rendition and continued up the hillside.
There were bullfrogs calling and answering in the creek as I crossed and their voices seemed to quiet my thoughts about me and awaken my longings for everything mysterious and lost. The water was one of these things: found and lost, found and lost down the stream. My life was one of these things: found and lost, lost and found, spinning round in a myriad of sounds and meanings too profound for me to see. The bullfrogs sang their songs as if they were singing to me: just breathe, just believe, just be.
Out of nowhere, the bat attacked me. Flying straight for my head, it was only my lifeguarding instincts that saved me—I ducked just in time and aimed my beam up, into his beady bat eyes. I know what you are thinking…. “Oh, please! California bats do not attack humans!”
Well you’re right. Using finely tuned powers of echolocation, that bat had diverted his flight path to swerve out of my way just in time. At less than one-hundredth my size, I was a frightening creature for that bat to encounter that night. Based on so many factors, it was logical for that bat to be terrified of me, but not for me to be terrified of that bat. And yet. I was still shaking from the encounter.
My fear-based reaction in the face of the unknown was troubling to me. I had been gearing myself up for the challenge of not having a boss or a job or a regular schedule each day by reminding myself of my unshakable traits: spontaneity, adaptability, and good old-fashioned common sense. I had told myself this: the hard day will come when you’re hired again and have to go back to the grindstone.
Something about this line of thought was now less convincing. Reluctantly, I had to admit that the “bravery” in me was not any different than the lack of bravery I saw in the people I could label as “control freaks”. I just liked to change my mind faster and more often concerning the things I had control of….
After all of this dungeon digging self assessment, I was quite relieved to come out of the trees and clamber onto the open, moonlit stretch of sights to see. There were the silhouettes of larger oaks and shapely Manzanita trees. There was the city down the cliff all lit with life not yet asleep and all the lights were stretching out onto the oceans waves and dips. The air was breezy fresh with hints of sage and licorice-like scents. My breath came out and in just like the breakers on the beach. Out and in, in and out. I was at peace.
It didn’t take long to find my cousin and her friends. I had struck out again, this time on the path that I knew they were using to return from their loop atop the hillside. I hardly had time to squat down behind the brush on their left so as to make rustlings to scare them. It seemed appropriate that I was only moderately successful in my attempts. I didn’t really have a need to do anything but smile and laugh and make small talk. I might as well eat every word I’ll ever say after telling you this: that small talk was blessed. Those strangers were great. Like a cold coke on a hot day in Guayaquil, Ecuador. (Shhh--No discussion allowed right now about the politics of foreign trade or multinational corporations in third-world nations…)
Blessed small talk. I usually detest it, and find it quite painful to participate in. But time alone with my thoughts gives me new perspective. It is the necessary--if sometimes scary and painful act—that I take to transform me from the person I am into the person I want next to be. I want to have more humility, more honesty about my weaknesses, and more acceptance of those who seem entirely different from me. When embraced, solitude is transformative precisely because it is painful. Not painfully bad, but painfully good, like a pregnancy or the training for a marathon. It does more than inform me about the ways I need to change, it actually changes me. And it makes me brave enough to be myself with other humans. Knowing oneself fully and yet being at peace with that—sounds like freedom.
Okay, okay, I’ll stop philosophizing already. I don’t want to bring you back to that place where you started last week when you read my ridiculous title…. I do want to bring you back once again to the poetry of William Stafford. The following poem is one he wrote while he was living in my neighborhood (off Paradise of course)…
Night Sound
An acorn falls on our roof in the night
Pattering down to the eaves;
We think our way through the quietness
To the steadfast moon on the leaves.
There in the soul grows a little star,
The heart finds a path to follow;
There in the still is a brimmed-up place,
An arrow of sky, and a swallow.
And over the hill is an always stream
And over the river, trees;
Seeking the hand is another hand,
And the blind have an eye that sees.
~William Stafford~
Los Prietos, California
September 1942
(Another World Instead, The Early Poems of William Stafford, 1937-1947, published by Graywolf Press)
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Notes from Paradise! (an introduction)
I can imagine your facial expression as you digest my title… the eyebrows raised and sarcastic half-smile, the chin swivel from left to right. I can guess that you know the truth about Santa Barbara, so your response to my title sounds a bit like, “What is she thinking?!”, “Cheesy!”, or “paradise??”.
Well you’re right. Santa Barbara isn’t Paradise. But where I write from practically is—I swear you might say so yourself if you got the chance to visit. I type from a home that sits 25 feet off Paradise Road in the Los Padres National Forest.
I write in my head as I hike down the paths that wind through the back-country wilderness. And sometimes, when the light is right or the deer and the Red-tailed hawks are making themselves at home right outside my window, then it feels as if I’m really where I wanted to be all my life: in Paradise. So I’m taking notes for you while you are stuck somewhere else: at the office, or dentist, or Dallas. I want to give you a taste of the sweetness that comes from living in a canyon that hums with crickets and wind, coyotes and star-studded silence. I want to describe what it is to live on the edge of a place called Paradise.
Living on the edge is a good metaphor for the type of living I’ve been up to for the last eight months. Along with my husband and my two great kids, I left the apartment one day and set up house in a tent. We spent last summer re-learning old arts: cooking without electricity, moving from spot to spot frequently (our covered wagon happened to be a Subaru legacy with a top rack), and naming the stars. It was wonderful, but extremely difficult. There were days I felt like I was beating my head against the sycamores, because simplification was so hard.
Eventually we had to give up the lifestyle of Caucasian, middle class gypsies, and move back indoors. School had started for the kids, and both Jason and I had new full-time jobs. It was a great relief to scatter after dinner to our three separate bedrooms. It was also disorienting after sleeping in such close quarters, to be separated by walls. Five full months after moving mattresses into this rental we love, we still tend to sleep with the doors half opened.
I’m telling you this so that when you read this blog you’ll have some sort of reference for where my stories, poems, and descriptions are born. Not just the scenery inspires—the “out of my comfort zone” choices are also the backdrop. I have some large goals for this blog time we’ll share:
1. Make you smile
2. Learn a lot about myself
3. Awaken the longings and hope that you carry around in your heart for edgier, more rewarding relationships with people… nature… God…
All that said, I’ll end this long-winded introduction with a poem I love. It was written by famous poet William Stafford, who “found” his voice as a writer when he was living—no kidding—just a mile up the road from where I live now. A conscientious objector of WWII, he was “sentenced” to work in a camp nearby where he earned $2.50 a month for such duties as fire fighting, soil conservation, and the building and maintaining of roads and trails. Stafford’s writing from that time confirms a truth I have been testing as I live out here in “the boonies”, isolated from friends in town and high speed wireless. That truth is this: I have the power to define where I live. My actions and attitudes will make all the difference in whether or not I find myself living as a prisoner cut off from an entire world, or whether I might, if I can dare to imagine it, be living—you guessed it-- in Paradise….
As Pippa Lilted
Good things will happen
when the green flame of spring
goes up into the hills where
we’d have our ranch if
we had the money.
It will be soon—
we’ll hold our arms ready,
long toward the table
like Cezanne’s people,
and let the light pour.
Just wait a little more—
let new errors cancel
the things we did wrong.
That’s the right way for us:
our errors will dance.
It will be soon;
good things will happen.
~William Stafford~
(The way It Is, new and selected poems of William Stafford, published by Graywolf Press)
Saturday, February 14, 2009
HAPPY VALENTINES DAY
Christie,
I created this blog, with the help of a few more experienced blog gnomes, with the hopes that it can be a space where you can share your incredible gift of crafting words to paint pictures and point hearts and minds toward our creator. I love you.
Jason
I created this blog, with the help of a few more experienced blog gnomes, with the hopes that it can be a space where you can share your incredible gift of crafting words to paint pictures and point hearts and minds toward our creator. I love you.
Jason
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