amma talk - the little way

changing my mojo

2012-01-29T11:37:00.000-08:00

A lot of changes have just crashed down the pipe into my life. More than I could have imagined. So in honor of that I am changing my blog shape - and starting a new one that will be on SeedBed. Let me know if you like this new format.

I heard a bit of a quote this week attributed to Thomas Merton. Something like this; life was not meant to be pleasure, it was meant to be joy.

I quite agree. Pleasure is not a bad thing, but it is fleeting and unstable. Pleasure is tied to our vital selves, our bodies. When our bodies are satisfied we experience pleasure. I've had more than my share of pleasure in life. I live in a house that has hot water whenever I want it. I eat a wide variety of food, much of it just plain scrumptious. I have had massages. (The first one I had I felt so torn - guilty because it was so decadent and overwhelmed with the experience. I just gave up and wept.)

But joy is for us all. Joy is the highest experience of life. Joy is fueled by love,by utter soul sweetness. Joy is not dependent on our bodies, the make of our car or the state of our wallets. Joy is what happens when we touch the truth of who we are, know that we are the beloved, and feel the gift of life surging through our being.

I hope you have joy today. Try some changes. Or when the changes try you, trust, and go with it. And joy will find you again.

'all the single women - oh, oh oh oh OHHH!'

2012-01-18T05:19:00.001-08:00

I have learned a few things about being a single woman this past two weeks. First, the second sink in the bathroom is a PERFECT container for one's dainties. You don't have to fumble through the dresser drawers half asleep in the morning.

Also, you can gauge the necessity for picking up the house by how many pairs of shoes litter the floors of various rooms. I think when there are between 12 and 15 pairs the time may have come to do a run through the house.

My garbage output it low. I decided not to put the big can out today because there isn't much in it. I think that is because I am not cooking.

When the toilet seat is up on the guest bathroom, and it is ONLY Big Steve who does that, I have to wonder, who left it up? WALTER!!!!???

I have also learned that a bowl of my favorite lamb curry with heavy cream sauce is 18 points on Weight Watchers. SIGH. There will be no more of that.

There is a lot of junk mail to open and file, a job I have left to the man in the house because it seemed, well, manly. I have taken to building a fire out in the fire pit every Friday to burn the box of junk mail. Just for fun. And to remove the possibility of identity theft from all those papers with my info on it.

I have learned that after you sleep on one side of the bed you can simply move to the other for a week and it saves energy changing the bed. And I have learned that when you make a pie you better have someone to share it with or you are just going to get fat!

Now it is time for Big Steve to come home. :)

beautiful humans

2012-01-16T05:07:00.001-08:00

I have a friend who just wrote on his facebook page, "Every time I drive down the highway at night I keep my eyes open for Bigfoot." My friend is a 30ish man with a great wife, a little lap dog and a couple degrees under his belt. But he also has room for the miraculous, the mysterious, the unexpected.

When we become too sure of life, too confined in rationality, too sure of what we know, then we have lost one of the most beautiful aspects of human life - our ability to be in awe.

Awe is a way of seeing life, of being amazed, of wondering. Awe is already a disposition deep inside us, not far from us. But when we become serious and closed we lose access to it.

I miss my friend. He is one of the graduates who comes into my life, makes my life beautiful, and then marches off into his next world. I have no doubt he is making that world beautiful. I miss you Chad!

alone at last

2012-01-07T17:53:00.000-08:00

Big Steve my beloved is gone for a bit and I am alone, somehow feeling like I NEED to be alone. I am alone seeking some kind of inner solitude and peace. Not sure at all how the search is going, but I know a couple things:

1. We need some spaces to let our souls catch up with our bodies.
2. The fruit of walking gently comes to you later, like a sweet ambush.
3. I love listening to good funky eclectic music on the radio. Don't know why. I just do. Right now it is awesome.

So today was a day of trying to live well and gently and watching for epiphanies. (Friday was Epiphany, feast day, so this is the season to be surprised by something new!) I built a fire in our fire pit around noon to burn all the junk mail we got this week. Laid myself back on the wooden swing and let the sunshine on my face while the smoke swirled around me. Walter came by and curled up on top of me, so it was a good moment. I stayed there quite a while.

Life, I think, is made up of a collection of good moments, and for me, some of them have to be out in nature.

I picked up some curry from my favorite indian restaurant. They are magicians in there. Curry is the food of the gods, I swear.

While I was waiting for my curry order another woman, Mary, came in, ordered her curry and I invited her to sit with me while we waited. The server brought us some chai tea. We talked a bit and she started telling me about her husband who is dying of cancer. Then told me other things, including the fact that they have been married five years and it has been worth every moment. He is pretty much unwell now, and she is the caregiver. I told her I would pray for her when I thought of her... like now. She asked me my name. We smiled and were silent. I liked her. Odds are I will never see her again but somehow we were women friends sharing tea for that moment. When I left with my bag of food I saw him in the van, leaning a weary head back on the head rest.

Everything in life seems pretty temporary to me at my age. I know the futility of hanging on. But there is still so much LIFE to engage in. Tastes, smells, moments in the sun, and people. These are good things. Very good.

12 Days of Christmas

2012-01-02T09:13:00.000-08:00

We pulled out lights down yesterday. It seemed soon, but then, Christmas was a strange collection of days this year so maybe it was the right time. We are now in the twelve days of Christmas, which traditionally start on Dec 25 and travel out for twelve days until Epiphany.

Epiphany is the season of the magi - the season of getting on one's camel and following the star. Appropriate inner work is done in seeking, openness, awareness, watching and moving. And the end of Epiphany is a burst of awe.

We want AWE at Christmas. Somehow the expectations of the moments leading up to Christmas and the giving of gifts and smells of turkey with fat aunts and hairy uncles circling the kitchen are needed to be the cause of a deep inner bliss. Santa has probably played into that as well - the idea that there will be some ultimate surprise descending on us.

In fact, there are few true surprises in life, especially now that the internet has come to be. Our weather is predicted quite accurately for us, the future parsed and served up like a dissected piece of fruit.

So where is the awe? Awe is possible when we become seekers. When we lumber onto our camels and follow whispers of God, watching and waiting with anticipation and patience to know what the gifts of Christmas mean, what our life means.

So pull down your lights and throw your tree out on the front walk to be picked up and ground into mulch for city paths. But don't ignore the light shining, ever so dimly, in your own heart. Keep your eye on that.

a Christmas Spanxing

2011-12-23T14:18:00.001-08:00

I have crossed a threshold. Today, on 30% discount, I bought some power panties. (Men, just give us this moment, okay?) I managed to get them on and pulled up to my chin :( but only with quite a bit of fighting. I looked like I was trying to capture an angry bear in a brown elastic bag. No matter. The thing is in place and I am now adorning myself to attend a very elegant Christmas party. The question is - will I survive the night without a) pain b) collapse c) gas or d) explosion. The last two may be the same thing.

I have decided that I may need an emergency procedure half way through this festive night. I have been assured that Steve is carrying his trusty pocket knife.

I will report on the evening in a few hours. Felice Navidad (probably spelled wrong)

OKAY. THE VERDICT IS IN. First, the item in question did not make me hot - it is not of the rubber variety of years gone by. And it did help me eat responsibly... since there was no letting out the belt, if you know what I mean. I don't really think it made me more attractive, although I did sit up straighter. In fact, that might be the high point of the thing. My back felt much better than it usually does when I stand around talking. I think I might wear it when I sit and type... as back support.

I must say that on the way home I wanted to rip the thing off. And it was easier to get off than on.

On the whole, wearing a Spanx did not change my life, or my figure, as much as I can tell. There was no extra flirting coming my way, or jealous looks from women.

Right now I am considering sewing the top shut and using it as an onion bag, or maybe a replacement fabric for my slingshot used to fend off hoards of grackles that rob my songbirds of food. There is always a bright side.

I have to add that my grandmother on my father's side ALWAYS wore a corset. When she was in her 70's she had a corset that wore out and she pulled a 43 year old life-time guarantee out of her drawer and asked my mom to return it to Sears. Trouble was, they didn't have a replacement. So we all have our supports. :)

ps... You know, of course, I am doing this as an experiment. I do not need a corset. SIGH

a Christmas story

2011-12-19T08:08:00.000-08:00

In 1981 we had arrived at our first assignment as a pastoral couple. The town was Stony Plain, tucked between the rockies and the city of Edmonton, Alberta. I arrived massively pregnant, carrying Jordan and waiting to be delivered. (It is the mother who is delivered, I like to remind everyone. The baby is born, the mother is delivered. Any mother knows this is true.) Anyway, Jordan who we now call JV was born at the beginning of November, a sturdy lad with few complaints.

A few weeks into winter we were invited to go Christmas tree hunting. Christmas trees in northern Alberta are chosen from forests of lodge-pole pines, not soft bristly evergreens. A lodge-pole pine, as the name suggests, is a very tall tree with a straight almost naked trunk that was used by First Nations people as center poles in their lodges/homes. A lodge-pole pine is a tall stick poking the sky, on the top of which is a triangle of green.

To choose a Christmas tree one has to bend their head far backward into the scruff of a stuffed winter coat and eyeball the various tops of trees. In any case, the top will not be as lovely close up as it is high above your head, but one makes due. :)

This winter we agreed to do the Christmas trudge and I bundled newborn JV like a sausage in blankets, his face barely showing, and propped him on a child's sleigh. Ben and Rachel (4 and 6) skipped ahead and with the other family we began our search. A lot of laughter, arguing, snowball throwing and decision making later, I turned and looked back at JV only to find the sled empty!

Somewhere far behind he had been bumped out of the sled and we had not noticed.

With alarm we retraced our steps through the forest and soon found him face down in the snow. He was quite fine, asleep still, as I remember it, warm as a snow cave can make a person. His little face was rosy but not frost bitten, and he was none the worse for wear.

I think back over all I have lost and found over the years. I lost Mark, and I found him. I lost JV on another occasion and found him. But some things are more amorphous. I've lost hope and found it. I've lost courage and found it. I guess if Christmas is anything it is supposed to remind us that what we see as a dead end or a complete loss can always be given back to us, maybe in a completely different form. We cannot hold onto everything that is. But something new is always being born.

Christmas embodied

2011-12-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

If there is a shape that speaks of Christmas in the fullest sense it is not a pine tree or a snow man or even a star. Christmas is most perfectly pictured by the contours of a belly full of baby, stretching the skin to its limits and supporting heavy breasts laden with milk.

The image is decidedly feminine - raw and graceful. A swollen womb invites so many questions: is this baby planned? is this baby wanted? did the woman invite the invasion of her womb or was she a victim? will the baby survive? will the mother survive?

"Women continue to be associated with their bodies in ways that men are not. And, as a result of this unique association, women’s identities are also uniquely tied to their bodies in a manner that men’s identities are not" (quote from Sharon Hodde Miller - see my facebook for her full article.) When Mary said yes to the angel, yes to a will other than her own, she took on the burden familiar to women in every age. Yes, Mary was unique, but she was also woman.

As Mary's waist began to expand did her sense of self begin to change? What did she know about life? How did she understand her role, now as mother and not just woman.

At lunch today I talked with a woman who helps serve in the cafeteria. She was telling me more of her story, and her mother's story. She said she didn't know what a 'boy' was until she was married. She was horrified at what happened to her. When she found out she was pregnant - she had gone to the doctor for the 'flu' - she was confused and asked the doctor how it had happened. He scoffed at her, but she truly didn't know.

Woman's sexuality is a vulnerable thing. In a world where rape is a weapon of war, where little girls are married off before they know who they are, let alone what the act of sex is about, but where even old ladies still want to be 'sexy,' we have Mary. A girl becoming a woman through hope and pain. A baby stretching her womb. Confusion. Wondering. Pondering. What does this mean? What will happen to my baby? What will happen to me?

So this is Christmas. Uncomfortable when it is truest. Dangerous, even. And always open to something new.

candle candle burning bright

2011-12-06T18:21:00.001-08:00

Around the seminary in various prayer chapels we have placed artificially glowing candles with LED lights in them. A little switch on the bottom starts the fake light and it shines steadily with dim glow and somewhat gentles the space. Even our advent candle wreath has the appropriate light switched on.

This is not altogether bad. A few Christmases ago an advent wreath caught on fire during the Christmas eve program. The platform was loaded with straw around a somewhat disheveled manger scene. Our daughter, Rachel, singing on the worship team saw the flame start and calmly picked up the whole stand by the pole and walked off stage toward the door. Her dad, Steve, jumped up and took it from her and carried it outside, now blazing afire. As the wreath burned it disintegrated into dropping fireballs, plopping onto his hand - but he didn't let go until he could throw it on the pavement. What is a good story could have been a disaster.

Potential tragedy not withstanding, the LED lights leave something to be desired. If you place them alongside a real candle you will immediately see the difference. The candle's light glows in a large halo, lighting the room more brightly than you would expect. The electronic light is just a glow, like a fading flashlight.

The reason we use the electronic candles, of course, is safety. I was thinking that some of us live a lot of our life with an electronic light glowing. We are still alive, and it is good enough, and above all - SAFE. In fact, this way is the easy way to live - disconnected from any real flame. But kind of sad, don't you think?

In talking with a young man who is graduating this week from the seminary and choosing his placement in a church, I urged him not to take the safest placement. Try yourself out - try God out. In fact, I told him (obviously still reflecting on our new safer candles), be sure, always that you have something in your life that could burn the house down.

the speed of Christmas

2011-12-04T18:14:00.001-08:00

I pulled into the turning lane and he roared past, blatting his horn with his white cuffed arm out the window and the third finger extended. "I am so glad I am not his wife," my first immediate thought.

Christmas is the season for rushing around. I had impeded some one's progress on the road. Not much. Not for long. But none the less, it was an offense.

But I didn't get pepper sprayed like the woman in WalMart who impeded a shopper. And no one hit me with a baseball bat. So I came out of it all pretty unscathed.

There was a time when someone else's anger made a deep indent into my soul. But no more. The anger a person flings against the world says much more about who they are than who I am.

Formation is a movement toward gentleness. I once shouted at a spiritual friend that if I travelled the way of gentleness I would accomplishing NOTHING! in my life. I have found this to be untrue.

Gentleness makes life so much better on every front.

What is the speed of Christmas I wonder? Anybody know the speed at which a donkey walks? Or the rate of camel clumping? I am guessing Santa's sleigh goes pretty fast to reach the whole world in one night. But the things I like about Christmas can be pretty slow. Making cookies with kids. Watching a Christmas special - live or on TV. Decorating a tree. Yup. I am going to go slow. And if anyone impedes my progress I am going to give them my middle candy-cane, not my middle finger.

meaning making

2011-12-02T07:10:00.000-08:00

We humans are meaning makers. When things happen to us we create meaning around the event or experience. Even when we don't know we are doing it, the whole process is happening. And what we make of our lives, what the events and experiences mean to us, largely determines how we see the world and our experience in it.

Christmas means different things to each of us. We can say the trite thing, "Jesus is the reason for the season" but our real meaning goes much deeper than our words. Meaning is what we live, what we experience in our inner selves.

Some people around me are talking about the nostalgia of Christmases past. These memories are full of innocence, richness, usually lots of gifts or great family gatherings with people now gone. Christmas meant feeling secure and included, safe and celebrated. The usual comment is that current Christmases are not as wonderful.

When new experiences come into our life we have to revisit old meanings and see if the new ones fit. Sometimes we adjust what we have thought life means. In this way our meaning framework is always being tested and revised. We can't always choose what happens to us but we can always always choose how we will understand what we experienced.

My Christmas meaning development goes something like this. Childhood had moments that were dear, my grandfather making pancakes on Christmas morning and the year I helped my siblings finish their paper routes in the snow so we could open presents. But Christmas was also a time of high anxiety as money was scarce. I remember my dad waiting til Christmas eve hoping to get a free tree from the lot, and coming home empty handed. I hear my mother's voice in my head from that moment, "Oh NO!" That was an anxious Christmas for me, picking up the stress in my parents. Over years Christmas became a fearful time, a time when I was unsafe and worried about what our family would do.

The first Christmas we were married Steve and I overdid Christmas. Wildly. It was like getting to eat all the cookies you wanted without having a mother to dole them out two by two. Then came years of ministry where I tried to make a 'Dicken's Christmas' out of our home and lives. I worked Christmas: baking, decorating, shopping for sales, wrapping beautiful gifts, inviting guests.

But slowly I came to hate all of it. I hated all the stress and work and worry and the way Christmas unfolded. I would try to make Christmas morning glorious for the kids, and then while they snoozed or played I would clean clean clean, cook and fuss over the table and at 3 pm guests would arrive and I would put on the big dinner... complete with little gifts for everyone - and I was exhausted by the end. One year I loathed the guests (my friends!!) as they came in for dinner. I had spent myself trying to make the world different than I had known, and I was empty. I thought if I made it perfect I'd feel that safe, secure, loved feeling. I did not. The old meaning still stayed. I could not do enough to be safe.

Of course the pendulum swings widely. I went through a time hating the season. I would say to Steve, "If I had a Christmas when it was the 26th and I said, 'OH! Was Christmas yesterday? I didn't notice' - that would be a good year for me."

I have had to revisit my meaning platform for Christmas. What does it mean to me? Deep down. Deep in my soul where truth resides. I've come to realize my disposition to try to create safety for myself because I don't have confidence anyone else can or will make life safe for me. Hm. I know now that no one can create a safe world for me, but I can live well and gladly without magical safety. Christmas means to me that God is involved with my life. It means my world has shifted from being only cold and only alone to be cold and alone (sometimes) and also tender and rich with life. Life that will sometimes be difficult, and life that will end.

I might not put up a tree this year, because the year doesn't seem to be beckoning me to do that. But I have put out a poinsettia, and candles. I am going to seek moments of gentleness and joy. But if the joy comes with the usual headaches I will be okay. Because Christmas means a promise. Christmas means I am part of something big. Big and sparkly. We have no idea how big, or how sparkly.

the PERFECT Thanksgiving dinner

2011-11-25T19:44:00.000-08:00

I put the turkey in the over 10:30 in the morning, just like I had planned. The schedule of cooking various dishes was all timed out on a sheet stuck to the fridge. Corn casserole: 2:50. Green bean casserole: 3:00. Buns: 3:00.

The turkey had been soaking in a lovely brine all night. I stuffed the cavity with apples and onions for flavor, covered the breast with a piece of tin foil to slow down the cooking since brown meat cooks faster.

At 1:10 my oven made a bad noise and all the numbers and symbols on the control panel went blank. I knew what had happened. It has happened once before. The oven was finished. Kaput. Dead as a doorknob.

Steve went across the street to ask Cindy, my neighbor if she had a free oven. On Thanksgiving day. I was too dismal to go myself. She later told me how strangely he approached the problem and we both laughed.

Steve: Cindy, I have a cooking question.
Cindy: Sure?
Steve: Are you cooking today?
Cindy, puzzled: Nope, we are having Thanksgiving tomorrow.
Steve: Well, could we put our turkey in your oven? That is my cooking question.

Steve carefully carried our large turkey, complete with scrumptious smell, across the street. I downgraded the corn casserole to creamed corn, and worked through each additional item to adjust the plan.
AHA! I thought - our gas BBQ!
We got it going and I put the sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole onto the BBQ. Later I put the buns (frozen) onto the top of the green bean casserole. They seemed to all be cooking okay.

I walked across and checked on the turkey and it looked done. Steve hauled it home and I set it to rest on the counter. Meanwhile I took the casseroles off the BBQ and their containers were a mess. The bottoms were all black (even with tin foil protection) and the insides were well cooked but burned on the bottom.

I started to carve the turkey and it didn't seem quite usual so I rechecked the temp in the breasts and it was only l40. Sheesh. Fire up the BBQ again. I put the turkey, tin foil covered, into the BBQ with the unfinished bread on top of it. I was losing my victory now, having burned my hands twice, and would just as soon have tossed the turkey into the stream beside the house and all gone to McDonald's.

Rachel cut the turkey when it finally was finished. I could hardly eat it. But everything made it onto the table and the dinner was actually quite delish. The lingering problem was that every cooking pot was black with sooty rub on the outside and burned on the inside.

When we went around the table to share what we were thankful for, I was not lacking in thankfulness, I was just flatlined in my emotions. I had worked so hard for this crazy meal, and been frustrated so many times I just didn't want to give anything more. But my turn came around, and I looked around the table at my beloved people who were all cheering me on, and I simply said, "I am thankful for life. LIFE!"

Sometimes life happens just as we hoped it would. And sometimes it is a big fat mess and we have to work hard just to break even, if that. But this is LIFE. And life is a miracle.

Tomorrow we will see how a lasagna bakes on the BBQ.

let it snow let it snow let it snow

2011-11-22T03:30:00.000-08:00

Weather seems to be part of Christmas. Well, truthfully, weather is part of all of life. In the south here, the word 'weather' is used to mean WEATHER. A tornado is weather. A sunny day is not. So, I wonder if we are going to have 'weather' this Christmas.

I am well known as a snow hater. I routinely tell my husband that all the snow I need I can get on a calendar. But there is still something about snow at Christmas. I would actually, secretly, selfishly love a heavy snowfall on Christmas eve and Christmas day ... and then have it melt on the 2nd of January. Weather to order, at my whim.

Snow was part of my Christmas experience as a kid. One particular Christmas memory is going out to help my brother and sister deliver the newspapers before we could open gifts. I remember the scrunch scrunch of walking through fresh snow in my boots, my nose cold and my heart excited.

Recently I have learned that Christmas can happen in the rain, in the sunshine, in the warmth, and even in heat. But for me it is not quite the same. Not quite festive.

This confirms what I know about life - that it is the repeated small things that make us feel secure, warm our hearts and help us belong to our own life. I remember a lot about weather. Gifts? I hardly remember a one... except for a round cardboard Barbie doll case with a silver clasp and a plastic handle. That was something.

on Charlie Brown's Christmas

2011-11-18T01:12:00.000-08:00

Sometime around l981 I started getting in touch with Christmas specials. Not the elegant specials, with classical music and oboe solos, but cartoon specials. The Edmonton newspaper (Canada) posted the times and dates of all upcoming specials and I marked my calendar with 14 or 15 events to watch with the kids. Even Big Steve joins us when Claymation Christmas starts. Here is a wee taste:
http://youtu.be/pMALk-i3TA8 (I don't know how to make this a link...sorry)

We sit snuggled on the chesterfield (for you Americans, that is a couch) and watch little kid Christmas bliss every time we can. We chortle through the Grinch, snort at Garfield, watch Santa's reindeer conquer the abominable snowman. It is magic.

A favorite is A Charlie Brown Christmas. Midway through the program Linus stands up and tells Charlie what Christmas really means.

"There were shepherds in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. The angel came and said, 'Fear not. For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. For unto you is born this day a Savior, Christ the Lord.' And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men.' THAT's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."

This week while in a large unnamed store, (rhymes with Ball Cart) I spotted a beautifully colored book of the Charlie Brown Christmas. I pick it up, feeling nostalgic, and flip through the pages. I flip through the pages again, and finally go page by page. The story is exact. The words in order and the pictures large and beautiful - the same child-minded images of years ago.

But one page is missing. The page where Linus steps up and tells Charlie what the meaning of Christmas is. I feel great indignation over this clear bastardization of the 'precious text'. Whether you like it or not, Linus speaks the meaning of the Christ mass. Charles M. Schultz would be appalled since the whole point of the story is discovery of meaning. It is like having a book about Hanuka that only talks about pretty candles and interesting food. Where there is meaning, let it be.

The truth is that the world has been and is been stunned by the idea that God came to us as a baby. The incarnation is the seedbed of some of the greatest music, art and literature of the human race. Even those who don't grasp the story know that Christmas is big...something happened. Something happens in our hearts around Christmas, even the Scrooges know this. This Christmas thing is bigger than us, bigger than presents, bigger than decorations and food. It has ended wars, revolutionized lives, reestablished hope and put sparkle in the darkest winter days.

So I for one will be sure that my Christmas includes the page torn out by deconstructionists who fear the story of God. I have my reindeer out on the window ledge and there will be other signs of festivity in my home, but in my heart I know that these tinselly trinkets are only my small way of reflecting back to God the twinkle in His eye.

on Christmas

2011-11-17T05:58:00.000-08:00

I am going to do a series of blogs on Christmas. I have been a notable Christmas hater for over a decade, maybe two decades. But I am quite healed, I think. I am talking about cutting down a tree and writing emails to my effervescent granddaughter using the colors green and red on ever other word. My package to Indonesia to gift my son's darling little family is already somewhere in the postal chaos between continents.

I have already been noting the ways Christmas is going to be celebrated here in Lexington. I will comment on these things. For today I am taking my bright red metal reindeer out of the closet and putting it on my desk to inspire me.

(walk walk walk, creeeeek, clunk, rustle rustle rustle, creeeeek, thud, walk walk walk, plunk.) There.

hmmm. ahhh. ehhhh.

Nope. Not inspiring me. Oh well. I will see what I can do these next few weeks to inspire both you and me. Meanwhile, have some hot chocolate and put on the carols.

'we don't stop dancin' - we just change partners!'

2011-11-13T17:41:00.000-08:00

Sisters Keeping the Covenant Conference was held this weekend and I had the complete joy of being present for much of it. You may be able to intuit that it was planned and designed for my African American sisters, and I felt a distinct honor to be accepted among them. These are strong women, every one, and all of them are survivors - overcomers! A 24 hour immersion into the minds of these sisters has given me pause all day today. Let me share a few of my observations.

First, these women live in a different reality than I do. The levels of abuse, marginalization, humiliation and faithlessness they each have endured and expect to yet endure is shocking. What I understand to be the exception is the rule for them at different periods of their lives. They are fighting to stand strong. They are encouraging each other with exhortations of courage. Their music is about what God has done to rescue them, and give them the victory. They sing and they dance - oh yah - from the bottom of their hearts.

I heard some great lines. Evangelist Dottie Stewart, a beautiful, elegant woman of about 60 began her sermon with a song,
Satan we gonna tear your kingdom down
You been buildin your kingdom all over this land
Satan, we gonna tear your kingdom down.

The fabulous jazz organist filled in the spaces and soon the whole room was alive with the music.
SATAN, WE GONNA TEAR YOUR KINGDOM DOWN.
YOU BEEN BUILDIN YOUR KINGDOM ALL OVER THIS LAND
SATAN, WE GONNA TEAR YOUR KINGDOM DOWN.

With a white lace wrapped hanky in one hand and the mic in the other Sister Dottie brought the word. "I was just about to get my praise on!" she said. "I know what God has done for me. I am a 2 year, 1 month survivor of breast cancer. Everybody here's got something to thank God for. Let's get our DANCE on!" And we did. These woman can move. I moved along with them.... sortof.

Some of Sister Dottie's best lines:
"Tell somebody - I'm saved but I'm not stupid!"
"I have been called to be me! I walk in MY shoes! I have my testimony. I have my giants! MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!"

You would have loved it - the whole sermon was a conversation. Dottie talked but she listened as much as she talked. We talked back. We changed the direction of the sermon. She responded. We responded.

She challenged the women to stand up for themselves but to be godly. "We can't cuss people out! We can't go get our homey! We don't carry switchblades! But we are going to stand up for what is right. We are going to take our giants down!" She stomped her size 5, 3 inch high heels.

The topics of the sermon were real - AIDS, confronting abuse, not competing with other woman leaders. Not letting people silence you.

Dottie addressed the issue of unfaithful male pastors who are predators. "Sisters," she said, "Do not touch the Lord's annointed. If he is annointed, do not touch him! But sisters, some of them are annointed - and others are simply APPOINTED~!" Ouch. Wow. "You tell your pastor, 'I don't play where I pray!'" Oh yah. "When you say NO they gonna call you that L word. We've got to kill the things that are trying to kill us!" She went on and women were calling out their own stories, "Pastor's are taking people OUT. This isn't news," she said. " This is my own testimony. We are going to take this giant down."

When she made a tough statement a sister called out, "It's tight but it's right!"

Dottie walked up to a beautiful 30-something woman with style and sass. "You're a beautiful woman," she said, putting her finger in the young woman's face. "But don't let any man tell you you can't survive without him!" The young woman broke into tears. "The enemy wants to tear down your confidence and your connection with God and he is going to do it by the lies of a man. Don't believe the lie!" The women all stand up and start talking.

It wasn't about man hating, it was about truth and reality. One exhorter talked about her wonderful relationship with a supportive husband who is constantly pushing her to growth. Later, making the point about the things that keep women living in shame she said, "I have been married four times. I have carried shame about that!" She went on to tell her story. Her first husband was murdered. (Can't be held responsible for that.) Her second husband was an abuser. She listed a painful litany of experiences from being kicked in the head and tossed out of her house to having a gun pointed at her head. Her third husband she met at Seminary. They had a beautiful wedding. She was so sure this was going to be a divinely graced marriage. Seven weeks after her wedding she was at work and the Holy Spirit made her feel very uncomfortable about what was happening at home. She drove home and found her husband there with a prostitute. She said, "I always felt I had to be married to be something. I had to be married to be a minister, but it is a lie!" Her current husband is her soul friend, she said. They have been married eleven years. She is a survivor. She is a witness to grace. She said, "I've got a good man now, but he can't take care of me the way God can take care of me. I am not waiting for him to take care of me. My life is between me and God."

I heard other stories. A woman who didn't finish middle school, never passed one test in her public school life, found Jesus when she was 19. She felt there was nothing for her because she was stupid. But she decided to get her GED and started a degree. She had to learn everything, how to study, how to write. But she did it. She is in a Masters of Nursing now. She has a 4.0 grade. She also has four kids she is raising and works two jobs. She is a survivor. She is a witness to grace.

Another woman told how she came to her car after work and a man attacked her with a knife. He fought with her in the car for 45 minutes while she screamed, honked the horn and fought like a demon. She thought she would never see her children again. She knew she would die. Finally the man ran away. She fell out of the car door and two white women came up to her. "You okay?" they asked. "We were inside the building and saw what was happening but we didn't want to get involved." Oh my. Sisters. We need to help each other.

For 24 hours I was a sister among sisters. I told them that when I came home on Friday night I told my husband, "Those women are beautiful, and they have got flare. I felt like a librarian." (No offense to librarians but you know what I mean!) They laughed. I was the pale one in the group. But we found each other. And I understand now why these women preach the way they do. I understand why they sing what they do.

They're getting their praise on, and it moves, it dances. They won't stop dancing. They just changed partners. Life has disappointed them, but God is reliable. Satan, we're gonna tear your kingdom down!

the Cure

2011-11-07T13:10:00.000-08:00

by Ginger Andrews

Lying around all day
with some strange new deep blue
weekend funk, I'm not really asleep
when my sister calls
to say she's just hung up
from talking with Aunt Bertha
who is 89 and ill but managing
to care for Uncle Frank
who is completely bed ridden.
Aunt Bert says
it's snowing there in Arkansas,
on Catfish Lane, and she hasn't been
able to walk out to their mailbox.
She's been suffering
from a bad case of the mulleygrubs.
The cure for mulleygrubs,
she tells my sister,
is to get up and bake a cake.
If that doesn't do it, put on a red dress.

on timeliness

2011-11-06T13:02:00.000-08:00

I got to church very early today. I am a fairly relaxed Sunday mover - and I planned to arrive about the time the second service started to get a good seat and enjoy the service. But when I arrived the sermon was going and that confused me. I talked to a friend who said, "Oh, didn't you put your clock back?" Sadly, sitting on the couch and very much wanting just a bit more snooze to my morning I had instead, leaped up and made for the road. So today I had the benefit of sitting through a class and a service. It was good for me.

I remember hearing of a woman who was lamenting her age. Her husband asked her, "Well honey, were you born at the right time?" She replied, "I guess so." And he asked again, "Did you live at the right speed?" Her answer was, "Yes."

"Then," he said, "You must be at the right age."

I wonder if I live my life at the right speed. The college class I was in was basically about wasting time that could be spent constructively for the sake of the world. (The world, of course, being interests and conditions outside of my own.) They listed all the obligations they have in a week and came up with 19 hours of unused time.

In the first half of my life I lived those 19 hours up fully. I squished more into an hour than reasonably possible, always multi-tasking and racing past gentleness. I wonder now what in my life is lived at the right pace and what is too fast or too slow. Slowing down is one of the graces of aging. Rather than chafe at it I am relishing the fact that my old 'car' can't go faster than the speed limit. I can spend some time thinking about what has happened instead of just racing to the next thing ahead of me.

The idea of Sabbath has been on my mind of late. Sabbath rest is, at its finest, a cosmic idea. On the 7th day God rested, Genesis says. But there is no 8th day. Did you notice that? Rest for God was not a response to the hard work of creation, but actually his final creation on earth. Not the pinnacle, more like the denouement.

God put his rest over the earth with the intention that we would live in that rest. It was not until the 'Fall" that words like curse, rule over, sweat of brow, pain in childbirth, enmity, etc were introduced into creation. Then it became important for us to take a day regularly to rest, but also to remember the holiness of God's rest and what life was intended to be on earth. Hebrews 4 says that 'There yet remains the rest of God for those who are His." This speaks of a now and yet not now kind of experience. One day humans will again live in the "rest of God."

My goal, now, is not to try to keep the Sabbath perfectly. Nor is my goal simplicity of life, which I adopted a decade ago. My goal now is to discover and preserve the 'rest of God' wherever it covers my life and world. Where I find those places I will protect them, in my life or other's lives. And where there is no rest I will endeavor to put some rest there.

This is no small task but it is part of the restoration of the world, as much as any other. The 'rest of God' is fully creative, engaged, open, communal, gentle, and inclusive. Such a rest is the opposite of laying on the couch with the remote and a bag of chips. (Nothing against bodily rest.)

I just put all my clocks back an hour. It felt like I had been given a gift of life - the last hour I used up was given back to me.Time was made a fool. I think when we enter into the 'rest of God' it will feel like that. Time will be made a fool.

He said - She said

2011-11-04T05:13:00.000-07:00

Just for Fun

She says, "You look manly today." She means, "You need a shower."
She says, "I hear a noise." She means, "Will you go down and see?"
She says, "Do you love me?" She means, "I went shopping."
She says, "Do you like this recipe?" She means, "I worked hard and need you to like it."
She says, "You make the decision." She means, "You know what I want."
She says, "You're certainly being attentive." She means, "Is sex all you think about?"

He says, "I'm hungry." He means, "I'm hungry."
He says, "I'm tired." He means, "I'm tired."
He says, "You look nice." He means, "Maybe we can have sex."
He says, "Do you want help putting the kids to bed?" He means, "Let's have sex."
He says, "Would you like a back rub?" He means, "I want to have sex."
He says, "I'm going to put the game on TV." He means, "I guess there's no hope we are going to have sex."

(I am going through old files and found this funny dialogue Steve and I wrote for a retreat opener.)

Our talk to seminary couples around a fireside

2011-10-25T17:39:00.001-07:00

Ten things we’ve learned in our first ten years of ministry. Actually we ended up with fifteen I think – so you can pick the ten you want to hear. ☺ The fun thing was how easy this was to do. We simply sat down and the ideas were right there. We have learned a lot.

1. Don’t defend yourself. God will be your defense if you don’t defend. (This doesn’t mean don’t answer charges at a board level for instance. But it means don’t fight to prove you are right. Or good.) We learned this in the year just before our first stint of seminary – when a woman in the church we were in (we were very new believers but had experienced something of a ‘call’). The woman had a complaint against us and told everyone. We naively continued to be friends to all (as we thought was the Christian way) and did not defend. Eventually when everyone in the church knew about it but us, people started asking why we were not speaking badly of her. We discovered that God preserved our reputation BECAUSE we did not engage her. The lesson we learned: let God defend us. And this has proved to be one of the most important things we’ve done as a rule… we do not defend ourselves to our critics.

2. When you don’t have enough money, and extra comes in, use it to buy an experience instead of a thing. (And – you can live on less than you think.) Never do our kids – ever! – talk about the houses we lived in or the furniture we had. But they do talk about our experiences. When you get an extra $100 from somewhere, instead of buying that new chair you have been coveting, take the family rafting. You will build a host of memories that will be retold as family lore for decades. (We lived pretty shabbily for most of our family life – the kids had second hand clothes etc. We did help our kids buy one of their name brand products - for instance one fashion jean instead of five WalMart jeans. They had very little clothes but always had some things they liked.)

3. Spend time with your critics. On a Sunday when one of the old German farmers was displeased with the service (we used guitars? Or Steve preached about freedom instead of rules) they would come out of the service and harshly critique Steve to his face. But on Monday morning Steve would phone them up and say, “Uncle Dave, do you want to take the boat out?” Steve would go over and help the old man load the boat on his truck and they would go out on the lake. After a couple hours of listening to the old man complain Steve would quietly say, “Uncle Dave, why don’t we just enjoy our fishing?” And they would have a great afternoon. This happened over and over with a number of critics the first years of our first church. Eventually those old men became Steve’s greatest supporters, men who would defend him and who truly loved him. When you avoid critics you miss a great opportunity to make a friend and supporter out of a person.

4. Your kids will pick up your attitude about the ministry, time, people, their state of security - everything. I have to say this is mainly directed to the woman of the house. The children will feel about the ministry life the way you do. If you talk about how people are miserable and how they misuse you, and how you hate it all the children will grow up to resent the church. I worked hard to make the ministry the greatest privilege a family could have. I often pointed out to our children how many ways their dad was available to them in unique ways, celebrated how blessed we were, etc. Our children grew up thinking they were the luckiest kids in the world. They all still respect their dad and his work with deep feeling.

5. Use Caller ID. Always return your calls.

6. If you plan an event it MUST happen – cancelling events creates distrust. Trust is built by doing what you say, over and over. Even if no one is coming, follow through to your best ability. And learn how to be selective. Every idea is not worth doing.

7. When times are very, very hard, remember that you are NOT your work. Steve and I have a little inside covenant that when things at church are ridiculously difficult we will dress us and go to a great restaurant and talk about our life, our dreams, our kids and all the good things of our life. We cannot let the smallest people define us. We must keep some of our identity private.

8. Have friends within the church. The myth of not being able to have friends is just plain wrong. You do need to wisely choose mature friends who will not put your friendship on display. We have hosts of deep relationships with people who have been in our churches, and several very close friends. We did learn to be wise, but because we do not talk about people in front of others we seldom have an occasion where we ‘reveal too much’ of the church.

9. Sometimes the spouse just needs to stay home from church. Sometimes a kid needs to stay home and just take the morning off. The pastor’s family is not the prisoner of the church. The nicest gift Steve gives me now and then is to say, “Hon, your week has been too much. Sit on the porch this morning and I will take you out for lunch when I get home.” No guilt. One time one of our staff members called to say he was going to be a little late for his responsibilities because his wife was in the bathtub sobbing. Steve WISELY said, “Friend, we will cover all your responsibilities. You take care of your wife. Don’t come this morning.” It took some work to fill in his places in short order but it was necessary. Later that day we arranged child-care for them and sent them away to a local resort for a couple nights. The church footed the bill.

10. Always show up on time. Always be prepared. You have no guarantee that everything you do will always be top notch, but go prepared and if things go wrong, just look at it and say, “Well, that didn’t go too well.” Prepare like it is all up to you but then release it all to God.

11. The best thing to do when something goes wrong in a service is to smile – laugh. When things go wrong everyone looks at the pastor and if he smiles and is relaxed they will all relax too. The way the pastor responds in a moment will begin to set the tone for the church..

12. You cannot pastor people if you don’t love them. To love them you must see their lives as they see them. Go walk through a barn, pluck chickens, sit in court and watch them work.

13. About working on your own sermons vs ‘buying’ sermons. The other guy’s sermon from the net will most likely be better than yours. It will sound better, he will have ideas you haven’t thought of. BUT if you use his sermon a) you impede your own spiritual growth because you don’t have to struggle with the scriptures and b) you rob your people of the word that God gives you for your people. If you love them and do real work with the scriptures you will feed them well and they will grow. We encourage READING – not just church growth books, but real literature, thinking, beautiful ideas. And try to learn to read poetry. Anyone who is going to spend their life communicating better saturate their mind in rich writing.

14. Find someone ahead of you and ask for their advice, often. Steve connected with an older pastor whose name was Johnny Bell. Steve would call Johnny and say, “I am thinking of doing this.” Johnny would say, “DON’T DO IT! They will kill you if you do that!” Johnny was nothing like Steve, but he became a treasure in Steve’s life. I know that Johnny prayed for Steve and cared for him and spoke plainly to him. This saved Steve many immature mistakes.

15. Don’t let people use you as a ministry spouse to become a critic of your husband. People who want to get to the pastor but don’t have the courage or ability often use the pastor’s wife … and they dump on her the issues knowing she will take them to the pastor. This makes the wife an unsuspecting critic of her husband, and we all know how healthy that is. This is how I learned to deal with this. When someone would come to me with a long criticism about how things needed to change, I gave them the very best ear I could. I listened, responded, even prayed with them. Then I would say approximately this, “Thank you so much for sharing. I know you will be so relieved to know that I won’t share one word of this with the pastor. I know you would not want me meddling. So if you want him to know this I know you will let him know but BE SURE that I won’t tell him.” Then I smile real big and hug her / him and move on. They stop giving me criticism and I never did take them to my husband. This process created an environment where I was no longer the recipient of criticism and my life in the church became much more peaceful.

What does a fabulous woman look like?

2011-10-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

We are part of a church 'family' and if you don't know a church family you don't understand that it really IS a family. Although, like a family we bicker sometimes or get grouchy with each other, we also love. And if someone has a loss we all rally round. Kind of like kids who can't stand each other until their sibling is being attacked from the outside, and then the loyalty rises.

We had a loss this week of a family boy. He is chronologically a man, really, but still a boy. A boy who grew up in the church family, a boy who lives in the memories of everyone as a whole person - full of life and mischief and love. Now a young father, this boy's life ended a week ago much to the deep sorrow of his mom. (Not just his mom, but I am writing about her.) I can't even imagine that I could go on if I lost one of my kids. It is something I haven't yet faced in my long life. I am blessed.

But... I digress.

This woman, faced with the loss of her boy, deeply and openly grieved. She did not hide her pain or try to spiritualize it or pretend she was not crushed. She was surrounded by those who love her as completely as possible in this world, and yet her pain was particularly personal. Who can love like the one who has carried life in her very own body, sharing her energy and DNA and blood. Who can love like the woman who watches a child every moment of his life for YEARS. Think about that. Many mothers do this. They literally have their eyes on the child every waking moment, guarding the fledgling life.

I watched this woman grieve, and then watched her quiet dignity during the funeral. She was very much the mother of the family, responding to the grandchildren, standing in peaceful sorrow at the graveside by her sons, receiving condolences and consoling others.

Today, two days later, she came into church carrying a Kroger bag with baggies in it. In each baggie were seeds she had plucked from a particularly fabulous plant in her garden. She found her gardening friends - including me - and offered us some seeds to sprinkle over a bed for blooms in the spring. She gently told me how to plant them and what to expect in return for growth.

I watched her and loved her immensely. This is strong and compassionate womanhood. She is not through her grief, not at all. She will not know what she has lost until the years pass on and she has discovered holes in her life, over and over. But she is still planting for the future. She is passing out her little seed bags to her friends who stood with her while her son was planted in the earth to wait for the resurrection.

A woman's heart - who on earth can fathom the beauty and depths of it.

thoughts from a friend

2011-10-06T11:03:00.000-07:00

We had a man speak about having a 'parenting strategy' in church on Sunday. This was my friend's reflection.
_____________________________________________________

It started with listening to the guy in church talking about parenting strategies, and ended with my son quoting Hebrews 13:5-6* from this month's quizzing material.

I don't know what category our parenting strategy would be put into, but I'm sure I cannot take credit for it.

I remember as a young adult with a 2-year-old, in a life group with 3 other couples doing the Crown Ministries study. We learned that if we make the right choices and handle our money well, that God would bless us financially.

I greatly struggled with that philosophy, because I was quite sure we were making the right choices, but still God was not choosing to bless us in that way. He comforted me then in showing clearly that blessings come in different ways, as in that particular life group, all the other couples had plenty of money but struggled with infertility. Opposite of us. So I was content, but still puzzled.

I cannot say that we have completed the task of raising our kids, as we haven't graduated the first yet, but I can say with certainty that I am proud of the way our kids have turned out so far, and am constantly shocked at the things other parents are dealing with their same-aged kids that aren't even on our radar screen.

What did we do "right" in parenting? Why did we raise our kids differently? Because we didn't have the money. We would have raised our kids the same as all the others - giving them the stuff they wanted, putting them in all the classes and stuff they wanted, teaching them that their desires are a most important factor in family choices.

Now I know. When I was a young mother, asking God why He wasn't blessing us financially, God was saying, "Because I want you to raise your children differently. There are some lessons that they will never learn if you have money."

And He was right. And I am so happy that God chose our parenting strategy.

*Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." So we say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?"

on healing

2011-10-05T06:04:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I wrote on my facebook status, "Cried all day. Working to figure it out." I know that when we have a rupture in our emotions or find ourselves reactive to ordinary events (reactive - strong response, triggered emotions etc.) then we must pay attention. Inside that reaction or rupture is our truth forcing its way to the surface.

My erupting emotions are tied to deep family of origin experiences, family dissonance and trauma, and my estrangement with my father. But what can one do? I simply tried to stay awake to the emotions. And I have to admit, I felt embarrassed that my close colleagues had to see some of my less mature edges. It feels very childlike to be honest about these deep places - maybe because it is the child in us that is hurting.

Anyway, already I sense I am healing, and healing in my core self. Healing happens level by level, ever deeper. It is a lifelong process, this healing business. I came across this quote from Anthony de Mello who was always calling people to wake up and become aware of their lives.

If you would only switch on the light of awareness and observe yourself and everything around you throughout the day, if you would see yourself reflected in the mirror of awareness the way you see your face reflected in a looking glass, that is, accurately, clearly, exactly as it is without the slightest distortion or addition, and if you observed this reflection without any judgment or condemnation, you would experience all sorts of marvelous changes coming about in you. Only you will not be in control of those changes, or be able to plan them in advance, or decide how and when they are to take place. It is this nonjudgmental awareness alone that heals and changes and makes one grow. But in its own way and at its own time.

My evangelical background was not fully comfortable with this quote, and so I chose not to use it in my mentoring class. But I couldn't just dismiss it either. I had to think it through. Am I uncomfortable with looking at myself 'without judgment or condemnation' because, well, aren't we sinners? And don't I co-create my brokenness and need to own it instead of just being aware of it? Is it true that awareness brings growth? Doesn't God bring growth? And so, my niggling thoughts pushing this quote around and around like a cat pawing the dirt.

I put the quote on my desk and kept reading it. This morning I came to work with a deep sense of peace and a shift in my feelings and understanding of this eruption. I reread the quote and it rang fully true! My own judgment of myself resists change - it holds me in a place that says I deserve not to be well. And this, frankly, is NOT Christian thinking, although many Christians think this way. And if I don't simply stay present to my pain I will finally need to create my own false blessing to survive, crafting yet another layer of 'cope and cover' that only serves to distance myself further from the place of truth within me.

Over and over I learn that when I take my hands off my own formation and allow God's hands to move into places that are open and vulnerable I am transformed, gently, noticeably and without striving.

I am quite sure this is my experience this past few weeks. I know a fuller health as I enter this day. The change is deeply internal and my joy now is to live into it and discover new freedoms.

Can I recommend if you are troubled that you stay in the trouble as peaceably as you can: look at it, become alive to it, and let the healing light of God's love warm that place. Who knows what you might have happen?

But in its own way and at its own time.

for Stephanie

2011-10-04T09:14:00.001-07:00

I was driving to work this morning thinking about my blog and how random and unfocused it is. I write when I have a minute, not when I am feeling brilliant, and I write about whatever is in my life and view just then. My thought was that I might shut it down.

But then Stephanie talked to me this morning and told me how much she enjoys reading my blog and that it does mean something to her. So you can thank Stephanie for this blog posting.

This little moment makes me ponder the flimsy-ness of all our lives. We are, generally, unaware of our own power, our own beauty. Over and over we offer our gifts, and these gifts feel so small we wonder if they are worth much at all. Or at worst, that we are a walking offense.

On Saturday a friend came for soup and conversation and brought her little girl. Sarah, aged five, didn't want to come empty handed so she quickly drew me a picture of herself and me, with a heart on each side of the page. She folded it up and gave it to me quite bravely.

It occurs to me that as we get older and 'wiser' we forget to give our gifts with the same sort of unselfconscious daring.

A while back I started giving gifts that came from my hoard of possessions. (And it is a hoard.) I sent my friend with cancer a modest diamond bracelet Steve had given me. I told her to consider it a gift from God. Her daughter was wearing it at her funeral, I think. I gave someone else a book I loved that had my notes all through it. Another time I gave a small statue I had enjoyed on my desk. These gifts seemed more meaningful to me than a bought thing. Of course, maybe the receiver didn't think so! :)

I am going to keep this up. Giving away a sweater to a person who would look great in it. Giving away boots because I just don't need three pair. Giving away scarves and books and jewelry.

But will I also be brave enough to keep giving my own self and then not critiquing my gift to death? I had an insight once that to go over and over my actions and what people must think of me was the sin of self consideration. Simply put - it is the SIN of seeing everything through the lens of me. What do you think of me? How did I come across? Who do you think I am?

I have grown in this but I want to grow more and more bold. I want to believe that my true gifts of self - whether they are a small part in a larger drama or a moment of conversation - are really a dazzling burst of spirit that imperfectly brings LIFE.

What is true, what is given with love, what is full of humor - these things are beyond critique. So draw your little picture and fold it up carefully and give it with spirit!

And thanks Stephanie for giving me your gift this morning.

What I learned...

2011-09-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

from the one day Get Motivated Conference in Lexington.

- Everything is changing - fast. (Actually I already knew that.) But here is the second thing - WE can be part of that change if we stay awake and don't fear. (Actually I knew that too.)

- Never allow ourselves to 'be a victim' of life, circumstance, culture or whatever. We have the power to act and God has given us the ability to live our own lives beautifully. (That last bit I added, not from the conference.)

- Disruption - ANY disruption - is a disaster or an opportunity, depending on YOU and your outlook. Those who are victims of it will be paralyzed, those who keep living and listening to God (not from the conference) will be invited to be a leader.

- Every successful person experiences set backs, routinely. Everyone.

- Of course, non successful people also experience setbacks, they just think no one else does. One speaker said, 'every difficulty you are experiencing is being experienced by a million or more people.' Kind of moves us away from self pity, huh?

- In everything you put your hand to do, aim to make a difference, an impact. Never squander an opportunity to act in the cause of LIFE! (That last bit is mine.)

- Be self aware and open to feedback. Very hard to do. "Be easy to manage." I liked this quote - if we would not put up our security walls and say, "Yes, I can grow in this" we would be bigger people. (Also, eating Cinnabons will make us bigger people.)

- Sometimes take on the tough assignment just to stretch. Volunteer. Don't be afraid that you will fail in some way. Accept failing as part of life. Especially when things are changing so fast. We all have to keep trying things out. And that means failure. Regularly.

- Stay humble. (A very proud man said that. I was amused.)

- If you believe in something be willing to take several tries at it to get it right. It might take several attempts to achieve your ends. Don't give up one try too soon.

- It matters HOW you win and lose. Remember when you fail that EVERYONE loves a comeback story.

- Keep perspective. Things are never as bad as they seem. Things are also never as good as they seem.

- Dream individually - but work for each other. Share success and celebrate the people around you.

- Undersell yourself and over deliver.

- Be a magnet to people because you are full of life, even when you are struggling. Successful people love to help other people. One man climbs a ladder and then reaches back and pulls the ladder up. Another man climbs a ladder and then reaches back and helps other people up. This is the basic fundamental difference between people.

- Every team is tired. Every team has problems.

- Learn to protect yourself from the flood of information. (I heard this morning on NPR from a woman who is making a film about connectedness and the web and all... and this woman whose WHOLE LIFE is about social media and connectedness online said .... listen up - that she and her family unplug one day a week as a shabbat sp?. She said it was absolutely essential to their wellness. Imagine that.)

- Evil makes what is important seem unimportant, and what is unimportant seem important.

- Never stop having fun. Life is too too wonderful to get grim. Be happy for no apparent reason.(This one is just a bonus from me.)

music to live by

2011-09-22T17:50:00.000-07:00

I spent some time last night downloading new tunes from iTunes onto my iPod. A few years ago I didn't even have a conception of these kinds of things, but it is pretty cool.

Most of the new music I listen to is indie, acoustic, and bluesy. I have no idea of new groups so when I am listening to NPR and they introduce a new band or album I pay attention and then if I like it I grab my pen (usually in the car) and scrawl the names on my arm, my pants, or if I can find it, the little tiny diary I keep for just such a purpose in my glove box. Where, incidentally, I never put gloves.

Anyway, I was listening to new music last night and I heard a song whose two first lines were,
"I am too sad to cry
I am too tired to die..."

I laughed right out loud. Anyone who can write that is going to be on my listen list.

Just in case you need some new music... I am sitting here enjoying Imelda May, her new album - Mayhem. Kind of bluesy, kind of jazzy, and smart. I like it. Never heard of her before this week. The world is full of so many beautiful things.

words

2011-09-21T09:06:00.001-07:00

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at
Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a
wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be
in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed
it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed
ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and
I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

I have also learned that we read the tops of words, not the bottom. Cover the top of a line of words and try to read it. You can't. But cover the bottom and read the top ... it works.

All this to say that I am way too busy to write anything profound, but these things make me smile - I love thinking about our brains and the capacity God has given us to be alive, well, human and relating to others.

Use your words carefully today. Someone is reading them.

Leviticus 18:19

2011-09-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

A modest woman friend on mine at the Seminary had this experience... these are the two emails she sent to her friends (and me).

First email to my friends:

I decided you might need a good laugh, so here it is (at my expense, no less). So, I get a phone call this morning, asking if I will read the Scripture reading in chapel today (300 people in attendance) at 11:00 a.m. I readily agree, eager to take part in the service! THEN, I learn that I have to read Leviticus 18:1-19 in front of this large group. And NO, I'm not allowed to leave out verse 19 (YES, I asked!) I haven't even done it, and I'm already turning red. Yes, I'm a big girl, but give me a break...I know that all Scripture is God-breathed, but did He really intend for this to be read out loud, in mixed company, by a woman? I don't think so!

Okay...you can stop laughing now! :) God has a sense of humor, but I'm not laughing with Him right this second!

Second email to my friends:

Okay, I hope that you are sitting down and that you have recovered from your previous laugh, because it gets better! After enduring that entire reading, the speaker stands up and publicly apologizes to me because...you guessed it!...it was the WRONG scripture!!! It was supposed to be 19:1-18, NOT 18:1-19. Can you believe it!? The president of the seminary and all the vice presidents came up to me afterward and commended me for having read a scripture that has never before been read out loud at Asbury Seminary! One even said he loved the way I said "nakedness"--I do not think I will ever live this down for the remainder of my time here. Wonder if I should just quit while I'm ahead?
Note to self: never agree to read Scripture in chapel again. Poor Lauren--everyone knows I'm her mother, and she has to attend here...that poor, poor child..

God definitely has a sense of humor, that is for sure! I have been officially "hazed" into the community; glad to have that behind me!

____________________________________

Personally I love that we (read: Karen) said menstruation in chapel on a Tuesday morning. It is the experience of at least half the audience and well, some things just need to be brought out of the closet. It was a funny funny morning!

37 years

2011-09-13T17:42:00.000-07:00

Thirty seven years ago tonight I had a headache. We had been celebrating all day, taking one bottle of wine after another out of the case of 24 and opening it with friends. I was quite inebriated by one or two in the afternoon and completely down with a hangover by supper. I do not recall that there was a church practice or anything like that.

Thirty seven years ago tonight the large washing sink in my mother's unfinished basement had armloads of daisies in it. I still had a bouquet or two to arrange before I turned in. Oh, and I had never arranged flowers before. But what can be hard about daisies? They kind of fall into a beautiful armful. I hated them before the night was over.

Thirty seven years ago tonight I weighed 121 pounds. My wedding dress was in my room, 100% polyester, size 7, bought with my own funds off the rack for $100. It was simple with no lace but with lovely polyester ruffles around the wrist and down the back. I also had a veil which wasn't very exciting to me. I would rather have left it off. It would be the perfect 70's flower child dress when the daisies were done. Damn the daisies, anyway.

Thirty seven years ago tonight I went to bed in my mother's home for the last time. Steve kissed me at the screen door three steps down from the kitchen beside a built-in boot box. We laughed. We were in love. It was going to be legal - finally.

And I did have quite a headache.

I have nothing to add

2011-09-08T12:29:00.001-07:00

Mother Theresa once said, "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."

on being 60, or 24

2011-09-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

Steve turned 60 on Monday. The day was cool and blustery, appropriate for September... in Canada. I paid attention to the day and tried to notice and capture moments with potential joy or depth. I think 60 is a bit of a bridge to cross for Steve. One of those markers in your life that you don't expect to get to. Like being under a tombstone. I always look across graveyards I pass and think to myself, "None of these people actually thought they would be there." And I don't either.

A family I am close to moved back to Lagos last spring. I miss the family and their five beautiful children. We stay in touch. The 13 year old daughter sent me an invitation to connect with her on a social networking site.I clicked the link and there was her profile. Like a flashing yellow light I saw a number under her name. Age: 24.

The internet is a dangerous place and our children are so perpetually naive. The ones who think themselves worldly and risk the most are really the most naive. I watched this dear girl chaff at restrictions and family identity the last year they were here. I knew she didn't want to leave America. To take a teen who has lived 6 formative years in America back to Africa is no small thing.

I read her profile and wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her. Gives all new meaning to the 'shaken babe' problem. There is nothing good that can come into her life from this. Not only that, she is completely missing the point of being 13. Her only chance to be 13 is now. She is part girl, part woman, and everything is stirred up. Life has 13 year old work and play and innocence that is hanging by a thread. God knows 24 will come and with it the burden of life.

So, like Steve at 60 and my friend at 13 we all struggle to discover and be what we are. The struggle can rob us of life - stealing the beauty of today and pitting us against our own biology and biography. We end up fighting ourselves all our days, instead of sinking into the beauty of our unique essence.

I felt like writing my little friend's mom and warning her. Instead, I wrote directly to the girl and told her I had seen what she did and asked her to change her profile. If she doesn't I will write her mom. The world is a dangerous place and evil is waiting to pounce. As an older woman I must stand in defense of the little ones. My effort won't be enough to change her life, I know. There is a whole hurricane of life happening inside this girl, and she will write her own story. But I will own the little piece I have access to.

Steve, though, is on his own figuring out 60. GRIN

fierce with reality

2011-08-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

In order to make our life fully real and truly ours we need only to embrace its truths. When we truly accept all that we are, all that we have done, and all that has been our history and experience, then and only then can we be - to adopt the phrase of Florida Scott Maxwell - "fierce with reality." There is no substitute for this fierce engagement with reality when one seeks to live life fully. (quote from David Benner's book, Soulful Spirituality.)

For 35 years after I gave birth and released a baby to adoption I thought I could put it behind me and move on. In fact, much of the Christian talk I heard (and gave :0) was about God washing away our sins and hurts and moving us forward, clean and new. The old behind us is dead, we are new.

What is wrong with this is it takes the metaphor of soul cleansing too far, into an unhealthy realm, really. Because as we lop off the 'bad' or sad bits of our story, we lop of parts of ourselves. And in the end, we need those parts.

Rarely, a person would engage me in spiritual conversation that created space for my story of a lost child to bubble up, and a comment would be made: 'you need to find that person!' I would think, Why? What difference will it make? Just curiosity? I do not allow myself curiosity. It is not my right." I did not wonder, except rarely, usually on birthdays, and I did not see much benefit to a reunion. It would not change anything.

But a longing I didn't even recognize grew. We are hungry people, all of us - hungry for many things and rarely mindful enough to actually identify them. These hungers of mind and soul haunt us, until we find ourselves standing with the fridge door open, cold air sinking to our feet, saying, "Hmmm. What do I need?" And we pick out a piece of lemon meringue pie, or a beer. But the hunger remains. Unnamed. Wanting.

The experience of meeting Mark has been and is fierce with reality on so many levels. The spiritual healing is simply this - that I am brought back into wholeness. Not wholeness like no limping or wounds. Wholeness like all my parts together in one place. I discovered the experience of my unplanned pregnancy is not any more a 'sin' experience than any other experience of human life. It is marked by greatness and ordinariness, brokenness and blessing. And I came to find that God was with me, deeply accepting and loving me through it all, working to redeem and remove roadblocks for me and Mark. And that I NEED that time of lost-ness to be located consciously and vibrantly in my soul, to be well and whole. Wellness is not perfection. It is a fierce reality.

What has happened to, in, and by us is ours to transcend and integrate. The deep work of spirituality is to discard the many selves we are trying to re-invent, and become the self we are. Our true self is unique, but not a uniqueness we choose. (More on this later.)It is a uniqueness deep within that we disclose, with greater courage and love, as we grow in openness. And this is the easy load Jesus talks about. Being your own true self is the elegant art of simple, integrated living.

2011-08-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

Just had a call from my son in Indonesia. He was telling me about a new game Blaise, the grandson, learned in school. The game is called, loosely translated, "Big Healthy Eels."

There are three buckets with a bunch of eels in each one. The goal of the game is to get as many eels in your team's bucket as you can. (Not sure the actual procedure of the game but it is, apparently, raucous, physical and tons of fun.) At the end of the game they count how many healthy eels are in each bucket, since, apparently, some die or are mortally wounded. The goal is to move the eels without killing them. I wonder if they then cook the eels for cafeteria lunch. Hmmmmm

Just so the kids aren't mortally wounded.

Once again I realize how different various cultures are. And I have to say, I am delighted my grand-kids are having these experiences. In Calgary all we can offer is Snakes and Ladders. Just imagine - "Big Healthy Bears." Or "Big Healthy Mountain Lions." Nope. We will stick with Snakes and Ladders.

tale of two lives

2011-08-17T04:47:00.000-07:00

A world traveler friend met a woman in a nun's habit, in Egypt. Her name is Mother Magda, and she was surrounded by children who call her Mammie Maggie. To his great surprise he encountered her again last week in Calgary, Alberta, and heard her speak. This is from his notes which he just sent me:

Marilyn..her address was riveting , suffused with strength and humility…she spoke of her privileged, well heeled, family upbringing in which she was exposed to and experienced the best of everything including the best education in the country…she loved the ‘elegant life’ (food and music etc.) but has since come to see that the ‘true elegance’ is an ‘inner elegance’. She was told by the Lord to leave the best and brightest students and go to the poorest of the poor and then told to sell all she had and give it to the poor. She confessed how hard it was to endure the smells of the poor given her former genteel life. She was being breathed upon by the Holy Spirit to do this and began to immerse herself in scripture…she made the commitment to read the entire Bible every year which she has done for 25 years. She spoke of the true love which doesn’t give out of one’s extras but gives until there is pain..this kind of love washes the life, turns sinners into saints, heals the unwell, strengthens the weak and effects true forgiveness. I described her in my notes as a person filled with ‘affective Christocentricity’.(I found this picture of her.)She concluded by saying that whenever she goes to another country she bows down, kisses the earth and blesses the country. She asked to bless the church in a similar fashion ..so she bowed down and kissed the floor and blessed the church..her lithely done prostrations were the same as those used by the Muslims in their prayers. Her organization is named after the martyr Stephen and is the largest ministry in Africa serving 27,000 families a day. She is surely living a ‘white martyrdom’.

Isn't the phrase, 'inner elegance' compelling?

And then I drove to work listening to a sermon aired on a local radio station. The pastor is the leader of a large church in Lexington. He spoke from the passage which tells the story of Peter walking on water in response to Jesus invitation, when Jesus came walking toward the disciple's boat in the middle of the night. He makes the point that we need to step out of the boat, using his own life as the example. His story, which is the story of being invited by God to take risks that inevitably led to establishing this church, has put him into the place of leading a large non-traditional church.

It may be that you or I feel drawn to one or the other of these stories. We might make judgments.

I ponder this as I walk into my office this morning, realizing again that each of us must listen to our own life, our own heart, and the whispers of divine calling within our own spirit, and neither envy another person nor demand that anyone else live as we have felt led to. The example may be inspiring but the details are unique. Each of us must own and love our own life.

hump day

2011-08-15T13:33:00.000-07:00

So tomorrow is day 9 of the 17 day diet. No cheating. Just doing the thing.

I should not be surprised, but I am experiencing this to be much like a fast. If you have ever fasted you know the progression - you feel starving and miserable and ravenous and desperate. You get restless and even mad. You obsess about it. But after a while you grow calmer, gentler. And then you start to realize things. You realize the place food has in your life. You become aware of why you eat - usually not because you are hungry, and you learn that you can self-sooth even without your precious food.

Some people are great 'fasters'.They seem to love to take a severe tone with themselves and even thrive on denial. I am clearly not one of those people. I am closer to the epicurean. I love indulging myself in exquisite tastes and experiences. I can be full and still find myself enchanted by a glass display of tasty bits. Yes, I have made a few fasts, and value fasting, but I don't do it often.

Now, eight days into this crazy plan I find myself entering into some wisdom moments. I see how completely disordered my eating had become. I rarely tasted anything fully, was never satisfied, always on the hunt for more. Food had again crept up to be too important to me.

Yesterday I walked through the Fresh Market and sniffed and watched all the food and food preparation. The place is magnificent. Fresh, delectable, savory, wildly opulent - who gets to be in places like this? I have forgotten to be amazed. I was amazed yesterday. I bought a melon for $2.50. Someone worked hard to get that melon to me. Tonight's dinner will be mostly melon.

I have to tell you that I have been such a whiner about this. I have felt childishly deprived, cheated, aggravated, annoyed and just plain pouty. But my hope is that I am being reoriented. I don't want to be my own greedy pig about life.

in love with the sky

2011-08-13T08:15:00.000-07:00

The sky and I have had a long relationship. I am a gazer, and when I gaze, I love. I love this earth. I love being alive. I love getting lost in the vastness of mystery above me, and I love being a worshipper of a Creator God who seems to join me with delight while I gaze.

To be a human tied to this earth and yet able to look to the sky anytime I want is like a cosmic life direction. I am heavy on the earth but there is always the upward look calling me. Every day of my life. Doesn't that seem to be guidance, when you think of it? We are bound and yet unbound. We are limited and yet long for transcendence.

And with all that before us every day, calling us to more, we forget to look, to be amazed. We drive past a sunset with our visors down so we aren't bothered with glare. Amazing things happen every day and night in the sky and we mostly don't notice. Someone said, if there was only one sunset in a lifetime we would all stop our lives to look and be astounded. But this sign is so daily that it is ignored. (Maybe that is why a depressed person looks down.)

So yesterday when Steve told me we were in a place in the earth's orbit where a meteor shower will happen, best seen just before dawn, I set my alarm for 4:30. Steve said he would get up with me but that was not possible for him. He does not "do" 4:30 am. But I got up, surprisingly awake, dragged a large quilt and pillow out the middle of my backyard and gazed skyward.

Sirus clouds blocked the view at times but they were moving quickly. As I lay there I became aware of all that I miss. The dew was pushing glorious thick smells of pollen down to the earth and fragrance like gardenias and orchids and lilies pressed into me. One cricket chirped, but within an hour the whole garden was clicking and popping with sound. At about 5:30 I heard the first birdsong, as if the early bird had indeed gotten the worm. Beneath me the ground felt rock hard ... like cement. I felt wonder rise in me that this hard ground could produce everything we need to be alive and sustained. A vibrancy shivered down my spine and embraced all that is me. Morning had broken again, like it had every day for eons, and I was there, aware, in a corner of it, as much a part of life as everything else. My body was simply in life, not older, not with good hair or sore feet. Just alive.

My mind began to travel back to other nights like this. When my kids were small we lived in the far north - FAR north - and I would sometimes get them up from bed to lay on the picnic table in our backyard (the ground was too frozen and cold) in sleeping bags to watch the northern lights make love to the vast blackness of the cosmos. I thought back on the night after Rachel's wedding when, with another family, we laid on a back deck of a prairie farmhouse and watched a meteor shower that could only be rivaled by special effects. For two hours we had non stop fiery coals criss crossing from horizon to horizon, many with long tails and some seeming to fall into the next field. And yes, I once saw a meteor descend like a rocket into a field beside us. I was so sure of what I saw that I went out the next day to try and find it. Likely it was just dust by the time it hit, but the blaze didn't go out until the trees hid it from view.

Part of me is a little sad that science is discovering what everything is about, out there. But what does wisdom literature say? Something like, It is the glory of God to hide and the glory of man to uncover. Even where science triumphs, mystery remains.

When I have a raw experience of nature something happens in me. I lose the time bound limits of my little striving world and become a barefoot soul, part of everything that has been and will be - a living being in a time bound moment. All the deformities of my nature and character and life shrink before the vastness of the all that is. That was last night, outside, with the dew falling on me and all of nature on the move.

Oh yes. I also saw 7 meteors.

new seasons of life

2011-08-12T07:05:00.001-07:00

Every time I think to write on this blog I run it past my internal editor. My internal editor is a very thin pastor's wife with a slightly burnt perm, glasses on the end of her nose, two dark thick hairs growing out of a mole on her chin and a ruler in her hand that smacks me on the head when I propose a provocative idea. She wafts by, leaving an odor a bit like over sweet fake perfume and is worried about what everyone thinks of her (us). I don't like her but she is useful, so I keep her around. She's a real prude around me but I have the sneaking feeling that when I am not looking she has a secret life.

So... there are lots of things I don't write, and topics I decide against. This is one of them, really. I want to talk about a new time in my life, but I don't want my kids to read it and feel any sense of needing to change or alter what they are doing. You see, my new season of being involves their new seasons of being.

So here I go.

My kids don't need me. STOP. NO. I know they 'need me' emotionally, and they love me and all that. But it is right and good that they are all owning their lives, making decisions without me, planning for a future that will not include me. Because I will be dead. That is the raw truth. In every arena of life this is enacted. Nothing grows on forever. Life is renewed by fresh life, new life - in short, the young. Old die and young are born.

I have finished doing my essential work to secure the continuation of the species. I have had young and raised them. Now they have young and are raising them. (Except in a dream last night - very vivid - I was pregnant at 55. A vivid and disturbing experience~!)

One of my friends told me that at our age we need to sit on the front porch of our kid's lives and yell at them through the screen door. I think it is more like this: we need to sit on the porch of our kid's lives and wait gently, until they yell out the screen door at us. And sometimes they will invite us in and have tea and tell us things but we shouldn't stay too long. A parent can overstay a welcome.

Every time I am with my kids I feel this. I know it is right and good. There are simply times and decisions in which we (Big Steve and I) are only adding bulk. And there are times we are plainly uninvited, not because we are a problem but because we are, well, the previous generation.

I am not hurt about this. I recognize this to be right and good. I know that as I let go of control everyone is happier. Really, what is happening is that I must take care of my own emotional needs and not put them on my kids. My daughter's friend group cannot be my friend group. My kids have to put their main focus on their budding families and the work of daily life they are embroiled in. The main work is not about me. Maybe the day will come when I will be so needy they will be in a place of paying attention to my needs. But not this season.

So... here is what I am feeling lately. And Rachel, do NOT feel guilty or call me or let this add to your life load. I miss my daughter. I miss that we are not calling and chatting or sharing life or laughing and telling stories. But I know that she is in the middle of a very intense time of spiritual struggle, negotiating life with her husband, managing and loving her emerging teen girls, holding down a job, trying to keep her body healthy, hosting her in-laws for a couple weeks at her home, keeping up with friends and participating in a budding church. I know that she loves me but we are not communicating and I miss that.

Now - if you are not my daughter but this is triggering all kinds of reactions in you - pay attention to your responses before you post a comment. I am truthful when I say that this is a good and growing place for me - quieting my heart down from my longings and simply being on the front porch of her life until she can find the time to invite me in, or come out and sit for a minute with me.

The last thing I want is for my kids to be burdened by my satisfaction. I want them to grin when they think of me. I can wait. And I am growing into a new season that is pretty cool when you think of it. I have more space, more quiet, more time to read and garden, and develop a few meaningful friendships. I can afford all the shoes I want.

When she has passed this whirlwind and steps out onto her porch, I will be sitting there. Not with a sarcastic comment about missing her. But with a calm heart and a cup of tea and a maybe a funny line. I want to do this season well. I am going to do it well. I will demonstrate love by being at peace with myself and not grasping at her life. This is love. This is good. Very very good. And I am still figuring it out.

13 days to go

2011-08-11T13:37:00.001-07:00

I am reading this book on the 17 Day Diet - and I have to say, I am starting to like this guy. He has all the usual stuff and good health information, but he also has some reality.

For instance - a whole chapter on the PMS diet in which you just darn well eat what you need to eat.

And the drink restrictions - particularly green tea. The advice is that green tea is best for you but if you hate it, have your cuppa coffee when you want.

And my favorite, and I quote, "6 Reasons Not to Freak Out about Being Fat."

1. Stronger Bones - a little meat on your frame can ward off osteoporosis. Weight bearing bones stay stronger. Those of us who are bigged bones are counting on this.

2. Healthier Hearts and Lower Risk of Diabetes - Women with larger thighs have a lower risk of heart disease and early death, says a study in the British Medical Journal. Love the Brits. I am going to live to be 110~!

3. Glowing Skin - recent twin studies have found that the sister with more weight was judged to have a more youthful look. A gaunt look can add years. I am personally aiming away from gauntness, although it is a challenge.

4. My personal favorite - Bigger Boobs. The more you weigh, the bigger they get. This is patently untrue. The only correlation is that when you lose weight you LOSE what precious boob cells you have. Gaining only gives you bigger thighs. See #2.

5. Increased Fertility - Underweight women were 72% more likely to miscarry, reports a London study. (Clearly the English have thought this all through.) A few extra pounds on overweight women had the effect of lowering miscarriage rates.

6. Faster Metabolism - More energy to operate bigger things. Which is great because the diet goal is to exercise 17 minutes per day. You get that big machine going and then it is time to stop. Works for me.

You gotta give this guy credit. He can encourage you whether you are big or small. I like that, frankly, because to a large extent we are what we are. I am now on day four of the 17 day diet. Big Steve is doing it with me, and that is funny to watch. I plop a plate in front of him - fish, a roasted tomato and half a zucchini, grilled. And he eats it. Must be a Christmas Miracle.

In five short days...

2011-08-05T06:34:00.000-07:00

I ruined them.

My granddaughters came to me on Saturday in sparkling good health. I watched them, truly amazed at their good natures, humor, wit, adaptability, charm and utter joy of life.

This morning, one week later, sending them off to go home it was a complete opposite experience: meltdowns, sobbing, stomping upstairs, yelling, impatience, hurt feelings, ... and then start at meltdowns and read through the list again.

I can only conclude that I have, in a short seven days, wrought utter ruin.

If you have someone to ruin, I would suggest the following: late, or better yet, no bedtimes; feed them only pretend food which would include fast, fried, sweetened, and processed; avoid items such as milk, soy, anything green or red, and all legumes; say yes to every question; offer many times of low supervision; and a good dose of gifts and privileges. The human person can be corrupted in less than a week using this formula.

Sigh. My daughter is going to kill me.

If I Had Eight Hundred Billion Dollars (musical notes)

2011-08-04T17:22:00.000-07:00

... I'd buy a new house...

No. No I wouldn't. If I had EIGHT HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS I would be cutting them from the US defense budget. Well, start at Four Hundred Billion but they expect to cut twice that. Hmmm, Mr. Speaker of the House, where will this leave us vulnerable? Is national security at risk?

I heard all about this on NPR, the left wing commie radio broadcast I wake up to every morning. Boy are those people hot about the economy. Anyway, I laid there with the great lump of Big Steve beside me, snoring into my right ear, and my NPR broadcaster droning on about the military cuts into my left, and I drifted into that half dreaming half thinking state.

What if we cut so much from the military budget that we couldn't fight anymore? What if there was no one to fly the plane to drop the bomb. What if Greece had to cut its military budget and so did North Korea. What would happen if there was NO MILITARY MONEY anywhere?!! Would those EIGHT HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS go to moms who are raising kids alone? Or to get braces for kids with teeth sticking out sideways? Or how about having medical care for everyone over 70? Oh Marilyn, stop being so socialist!!!

Okay, I thought-dreamed on. What if I had to cut EIGHT HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS from my very own defense budget. What would I cut? Oh, you didn't know I had a defense budget? I do and it is quite large. I spend it on protecting myself ... I use it to fortify my borders and protect my ass ets.

I could probably afford to cut some from my self righteousness budget that I draw from when someone criticizes me. I do have extra there. I could manage to cut some from my emotional energy stockpile that I dip into when I am feeling insecure and need to intimidate someone to make us (me) feel equal. Then of course there is the overspending on solid doors that I close on people who I imagine don't like me. Actually I have quite a defense budget.

So the US is going to cut EIGHT HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS from the defense budget. Hmmm. Bombs cost so much more than bread. Maybe we could drop bread instead of bombs just half the time - kind of a lottery where the bomber doesn't know what is loaded. That might equal EIGHT HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS.

I am not against the military. I will take my hat off to anyone who has paid a price for me to live in a country like this. My dream thinking is just wondering. Wondering what it would take to stop everything still for one minute. Kind of like Christmas morning in the song about Snoopy and The Red Baron. Just for one moment everyone stand still. No hurting, no killing, no hate. Deep inside I fear that we have gone past the tipping point and the one moment can never ever happen. Even without the extra EIGHT HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS.

Oscar Wilde said,

2011-08-04T04:51:00.000-07:00

Young men want to remain faithful but can’t…
Old men want to be unfaithful but can’t.

I think it was Martin Luther who said (paraphrased from memory),

In his twenties a man is tempted by sex, in his thirties by money and in his forties by power. At fifty a man is tempted to think, 'my what a righteous man I've become.'

John Wesley said that

much of what we call holiness is simply old age.

(Now THAT is funny!)

Richard Rohr has a new book called, Falling Upward. One premise of the book is that the issues of spirituality in early life are different than those in later life. In early life, he says, we wrestle with the devil and with ourselves: sexuality, greed, lust, selfishness...stuff like that.

Then in later life we don't wrestle with the devil and flesh, we wrestle with God. Was it worth while to live for You? Who are You, anyway? Maybe nothing matters. This is a selfishness of a deeper kind.

When we are finished with the issues of early life we might tend to feel holy. I mean, I don't struggle with lots of the issues my young friends do. There is a deep tranquility in my life style and habits. I have learned healthy life skills and the value of faithfulness etc, but some of what is easy for me is simply the lack of desire to chase the juicy bone, no pun intended.

It is easy to point fingers at the sins of youth. The issues of maturity - wrestling with God - are left largely unspoken (at least in my circle of faith and friendship.) Except if you have coffee with me.

And I just have to add, if an old man is fumbling to get his zipper undone fast enough, he is lost on so many levels. Just saying.

Wild Hare Run

2011-08-04T04:45:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of living on the other side of the world (to us, literally) is opportunities. Our wonderful Kari (Ben's wife) just ran the Wild Hare run in Jakarta. (see google image of race)

The race was run in the dead of night, with everyone wearing a head-band with a coal-miner's kind of light on the front. Very little attraction for me, to be honest. I would find it a challenge to stay up all night and sit on the couch with a tiny reading light on my head-band.

love in a heat wave

2011-07-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

If I let my husband drive the car that has air conditioning and have not love, I am just a honking horn. If I keep the house at 78 and keep all the household appliances off and have not love, I am an environmentally conscious nothing. If I blow my emergency menopause fan onto the woman beside me in line and have not love, I am only a nuisance.

Love is patient in hot weather, love is kind to other people who lose their victory. Love does not envy those at the pool, does not boast of its own time at the beach, is not proud of a tan. Love does not try to get the best place in the shade. It is not rude to plodding service people, it is not easily angered by the traffic slow downs. Love does not give the finger to the driver who cuts in after speeding past in the blocked lane. Love always honors the humanity of others, always trusts that they are just not at their best, always hopes there is ice cream in the freezer at home and always hangs on til the sun goes down.

Love never fails. Even in 100 degree weather. Give that a thought.

the spider and the wasp

2011-07-18T05:12:00.001-07:00

The wasp is shiny black and fearfully big just inches from my face outside the kitchen window. Suddenly it connects with a few strands of spider web and seems confused that it can't just fly off.

The spider is gray and small, a quarter the size of the wasp, but fast. She speeds from her hiding place and leaps onto the head of the wasp, sinking her fangs into its head.
The wasp shivers violently and whips its stinger back and strikes the spider. In the spasms of the life and death struggle the wasp dislodges from its thready trap and leaps into the air, the spider still fiercely biting its head.

The wasp stings the spider over and over and the two of them bang against the window as the wasp uses its wings to try and escape what has now become part of itself.

Then in a burst of wild energy the wasp careens out of my view, spider and all, both striking and fighting with brutal aggressiveness. The web vibrates like a violin string and goes silent.

"If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other." Galatians 5:15

Somewhere there is a dead wasp in my garden, with a dead spider on top of it. All this is outside my periphery of vision, but I am as certain of the outcome as if I witnessed the end. The two have become one venomous interchange.

I stand by my window and think of how many times I have seen this enacted in life. Spouses stinging spouses. Coworkers biting and devouring coworkers. We watch it on TV - hateful destruction whose end is just beyond our vision. And our government is in the very act of this interplay right now.

bride of Frankenstein

2011-07-14T05:32:00.001-07:00

I had ten minutes on the porch this morning, sitting in a rocking chair and enjoying the cool air. I smiled as Steve came out and joined me. He sat down with his coffee, and I noticed the inch long stitched wound on his forehead.

It suddenly occurred to me that I am now the "bride of Frankenstein."

Interesting what places our lives take us. For better or worse might mean we live in a palace, or it might mean we live making visits to a hospital. I have fared very well in the ups and downs of life. I will do all possible to be the best bride of Frankenstein I can be.

what my daughter wants

2011-07-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

5 years ago I asked my daughter what she wants. I found her response today, going through old piles of stuff.

- i want my daughters to grow up to be fabulous women with lives full of people who love them, who love God and have a strong sense of their own worth and beauty.
- i want to be a good mom, who leaves them with memories they can hold onto rather than ones they have to 'deal with'
- i want to be able to sit on the porch with my girls when they are grown and talk about life, to have grown into friendship with them like my mom and i have
- i want to look back over my lifetime and be able to say i said yes to God, and did whatever he asked of me - that i used my gifts well. I want a "well done, good and faithful servant"
- i want a lasting marriage that doesn't just hold out til the end for the sake of blind commitment, but rather one that continues to grow in love and intimacy and respect. i want to learn to love curtis better. i want to feel like the center of someone's universe
- i want big lillies that aren't eaten by rabbits
- i want regular time to hang in my hammock and sleep
- i want to be a better human in the mornings
- i want to always live where it is warm, and there are living things to get lost in (i stood out in the street last night at dusk while 4 or 5 bats swooped and dove not 10 feet above my head)
- i want to write a book that people read and think is fantastic!
- i want to grow old and beautiful - the kind of woman you want to sit beside and talk to because she is so wise and funny - i want to be the kind of person peter and john were "unschooled, ordinary men, and (others) took note that these men had been with Jesus." i want that kind of tone in my life, too.
- i want to find a way to live that gives more life than it consumes
- i want to always have parties that people look forward to coming to, because they know they are going to laugh hard and have a great time
- i want always have cute shoes and style
- i want to live so that the people i love always know i love them
- i think that's it...

What I like about this list is how it moves through all the arenas of a real life - it isn't a pious list of dis-embodied hopes nor is it a greedy list of lusty wants. We are all like this in some way - what we want ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous and that is the beauty of being human.

thoughts on self

2011-07-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

"A strong community helps people develop a sense of true self, for only in community can the self exercise and fulfill its nature: giving and taking, listening and speaking, being and doing. But when community unravels and we lose touch with one another, the self atrophies and we lose touch with ourselves as well." Parker Palmer

We are confused about self. Is self good or bad? Should we take care of self? Should we 'die to self?' Does a strong self mean that a person is self-ish? Why do so many people have trouble being comfortable with their own self?

Palmer suggests, and I agree, that it is not a whole and healthy self that is damaging to others, but it is an empty self. True self is life giving.

And to be healthy, one must take as well as give. One must speak as well as listen. One must be loved as much as one loves. This is the gift of true community. True community does not expect a person to be always best, always wisest, always giving, always beautiful. True community lets each person be undeniable human, sometimes under the weather, sometimes needy, sometimes unable to give. True community is safe and hospitable and full of humor about life.

I had an experience of true community this past week. The Elliott clan went to the beach for a week - 12 of us under one roof. A pretty big roof, but one roof none the less. I spent some time in thought before we went, and allowed my rumble of anxiety to rise in me, paying attention to its source. I realized that I felt anxiety about the massive task of keeping the 'ship afloat,' of making sure the meals were made and order maintained. Then I decided I would not keep the ship afloat. I would be a contributor, choose for my own wellness sometimes, and walk away from chaos rather than fixing it.

In fact, I told my daughter this. "Rachel," I said, "I know sometimes you go into your bedroom with Curtis and you say, MOM is driving me nuts!!!" She smiled. "Don't do that this time, Rachel," I said. "When I am acting controlling or nuts come and tell me, MOM! You are making me nuts." We laughed.

She didn't have to say that to me. But then, I didn't make her nuts. Sometimes when three parties were all jumbled in the kitchen vying for ingredients for three different lunch menus I went and sat on the porch with a good book. When dinner was planned and someone started to cook I went to the pool with the little girls. When the evening was late and things were getting loud and overwhelming to me, I put myself happily to bed and enjoyed hearing the laughter as I fell asleep.

We were a community of friends for those days. Everyone was accepted as they were. Sometimes one person rose to the situation and sometimes another. But I realized that the key to our harmony was freedom. Every self was allowed to be, simply as they are. Every person gave something. And every person took. Every person sometimes chose for themselves, and every person sometimes chose for the other.

There are very few situations like this, and I am glad I didn't apply my many skills of arranging and controlling to make things wonderful - and ultimately ruin them.

summer thinkin' - head surgery

2011-07-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in a clinic while Steve has his head operated on. I have thought he needed this, for years now. smile Actually he has a small cancer on his forehead and once this dermatologist gets it off he will likely have a 1/2 inch pit making his forehead look like someone has been mountain top coal mining. But what is on my mind is the instructions mailed to him a week ago that describe all he must do to cooperate with the surgery.

Of note is the instruction to, and I quote, "be a couch potato" for 24 - 48 hours after the surgery.

Now, I have cause to wonder why none of the invasions of my body have every come with instructions like that. I remember, for instance, the experiences of giving birth. For almost a year my body is invaded by an alien who grows with more force than a tapeworm until it is the size of a regulation football. Then this creature is forced like a "hail-Mary pass" out an opening that I would prefer to keep at, say, 1" at most. After ripping skin and muscle and crushing my whole excretion system that had served me so well, this little football person begins sucking at my boosum drawing energy out of my body like a Borg invasion.

Just as I begin to feel like a human again - six or maybe seven hours after all this ordeal - a fat, tired nurse begins to prod me saying, "You need to get up lady. Let me help you" - and she pushes on my aching back and pulls at my arm to force me to move. Gown open at the rear, and various appendages hanging from my body I lumber down the hall or into the bathroom. And so it goes... wake up to feed the alien, get out of bed, stand up so the bed can be made, and entertain a host of visitors.

Now, why is it that a man with a booboo on his forehead is instructed (as if a man needs these instructions!) to be a couch potato for a couple days and a woman who has just preserved the future of the human race has to get up as soon as possible FOR HER OWN GOOD!!!? I think the instructions after birthing should include, "You MUST be a couch potato for 2 - 3 weeks if you are to survive."

I remember last time I had surgery - again, a miserable female surgery that did require anesthetic - the male nurse came in just before I went in and asked if there was anything in my religion that he needed to know pertaining to my care. My brain synapses lit up and a brilliant idea occurred to me. "My religion" I said, "requires that a woman awakening from surgery must have chocolate waiting for her."

He looked confused. Then laughed. And yes, he had chocolate waiting for me after surgery. Maybe we simply need to ask.

(For all the literalists who read this: I am actually very thankful my dear Steve has this kind of medical care...and I will wait on him hand and foot for at least 2 HOURS following. After that it is everyone for himself!)

summer thinkin' - rest and restoration

2011-07-01T08:22:00.000-07:00

We are almost on our way to the beach. I mean THE BEACH! Not the swimming pool, not the lake - we are talking N.Carolina ocean front. And I have been thinking about how to manage a home with four families in it, for a week. I have decided that I want to radiate grace and gentleness. That will be my contribution.

Wendell Berry wrote this description of holiday'ers:

"On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work.
This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for - or maybe even see - the old man in a rowboat raising his lines.
The fishermen have the fastest boats of all. Their boats scarcely touch the water. They have much equipment, thousands of dollars worth. They can't fish in one place for fear that there are more fish in another place. For rest they have perfect restlessness."

Even in our holiday time we don't feed ourselves what we are craving so deeply. In all of life this seems to be one of the insanities of humanity. We crave love, and feed ourselves on power. We crave acceptance and feed on vanity. And when we crave sabbath rest, when our souls long to eat in Eden - the smells and tastes of nature - we eat a frenzied feast of excited entertainment.

What would life be if we fed our longing for joy with kindness? If we fed our need for rest with a hand in ours and feet on the grass. I don't know. Maybe we will always seek rest in perfect restlessness. It is the human way.

But this week I am choosing to focus on laughter rather than control. I am going to look for whispers of life and sit where I can hear them. We'll see. I may not make it all the way through in peace but I am starting with this grace and we'll see what happens from there.

summer thinkin' - about friends

2011-06-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

The worth of a true friend is beyond counting. Half a dessert is much better than a whole dessert if you can share it with someone who is really and honestly a friend. Sometimes we tell our stories to a friend just so we can hear ourselves think, and sometimes it is so we can remember that we are more than most people imagine. A friend holds the mystery of us in delicate balance with the obnoxious pieces of us. A friend laughs with us when we have a moment of (usually abysmal) self discovery. A friend revels in our successes because they know we would die if we didn't catch the ball sometimes. A friend worries when they haven't heard from us for a while. They get us out of jams we have put ourselves in and come to our picnics with baskets full.

I have some friends like this. Not dozens of them, but some. You know who you are. I am sitting on my porch tonight thinking about you, friend. Thinking about how you don't get angry or disappointed in me even when I am disappointed in myself. Thinking about how you bring all your strength into my situations and make me look good. Thinking about whether or not you will help me fix my curtains.

I have made a pie. If a friend came by I would share some. I would forget my attempts (feeble at best) to become willowy and eat and laugh and we would both feel good. The problem with friends is that you are not here to share my pie. So I will have to eat it all on your behalf. But it won't be near so good.

summer thinkin' - on grammas

2011-06-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

My two oldest granddaughters are with me this week. They are beautiful, funny, and very very messy. Oh, and always hungry.

On Saturday I came across an old leather journal belonging to my gramma Iva (dad's mom) whose name I share. Gramma Iva was not all that accessible to me. I remember a few experiences I had with her. She was a southern woman with nails filed to a point, and a bit of lace in the V of her dresses. Her immaculate home smelled of old wood. I spent one overnight with her and grampa alone. It was very special. I remember her standing me in front of her and tsk tsking my hair, which stood up in all directions. She muttered something about my mother not getting me a decent haircut and decided she would cut my bangs. What she didn't take into account was a wild 'cow lick' ... and the result was not quite an improvement. But I liked it. I liked her cutting my bangs. It is a vivid memory.

When my gramma died my mom gave me two of her possessions. One is a tea cup that I still treasure - very old and fragile, covered in gold. And her 'journal.' I was disappointed to find the journal was really just her recipes... and I put it away. Yesterday I found the journal in a box of family 'stuff'. The leather is stamped 1933. I sat on the floor and carefully moved through every page and note to see if there was something of my gramma in it. I discovered that like me she was pretty random. There are alphabetical divides but she doesn't seem to have used them all the time. Scraps and bits of paper are stuffed here and there with many recipes repeated on several notes. Many of the recipes have names attached, all prefaced by "Mrs." Mrs. Iris Riddle. Mrs. Eugene Platt. And a lot of canning recipes: grape juice, which my mom used to make (I wonder if she learned from my gramma); pickled cucumbers and beets; canned chicken; etc. She has a lot of recipes for desserts and now that I think of it, we always had a good dessert when we ate at her table.

Once a year my gramma and mom would plan a picnic at Niagara Falls, Ontario. We would drive the hour to the falls and on the grass (that is now an amusement park) we would spread blankets and containers of food. The meal was a happy feast - unlimited amounts of fried chicken, jello salad, potato salad, buns and iced tea poured from a huge plastic jug, and squares. The adults would sit on the blankets and talk and laugh the afternoon away and us six kids would throw a ball and chase butterflies and roll down the grassy hills, staining our clothes. At the end of the afternoon all the left overs were pulled out and we ravenously emptied the containers. For one marvelous day my family was happy.

I worked through the recipes on Saturday, thinking about this woman who made sweets for her husband, who wrote details down carefully and didn't organize her recipes alphabetically, but rather named them by the friend who gave them to her. She doodled in long lines that look like lace, much as I do. She watched her spinster daughter marry and divorce, buried her husband and struggled (I think) to accept the farmer's daughter her son married, not to mention the rambunctious half dozen children who followed like a parade of unruly dogs behind him.

I found one sheet on which she had absent mindedly written her whole name out a couple times. Iva May Christie. Iva May Christie. I put the scrap on the window sill, chose a recipe from the journal and laid it beside her scrawled names: coconut, chocolate squares. Then, measuring carefully I made her dessert.

Summer thinkin' - on sexting

2011-06-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

Two magazines arrived at our home this week, both introducing the question of what constitutes infidelity. We know about sexual affairs and affairs of the heart ... do we now have to include e-affairs? What are the limits? What boundaries need to be drawn.

I have friends, lots of friends, in these confusing places. Please note that I am not judging my friends, just reporting what I see. I have friends who have started sexual affairs by reconnecting with old flames online. I have friends who are currently deriving all their emotional satisfaction from online conversations with (also married) persons of the opposite sex. I have friends who are reconnecting with old flames and who are defensive of their actions as being innocent and energizing, and who feel it is a violation of their personal freedom to be expected by a spouse not to continue on with the renewed and renewing friendship. These and other online experiences are not rare, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Because I know the people involved I can tell you they are not bad people but real people in complex situations. What are the lines? What are the ethics of social media? I too, have talked with old friends online. I too, have had conversations online that I felt went too far too fast.

Today I was reading a book on monastic life and I think I have a nugget to offer to the discussion. Interesting that this little paragraph triggered the discussion on sexting.

The discussion is about enduring one's cell... a small personal living space, containing and representing the limited life of a monastic vowed person. The cell is a teacher, forcing a brother to confront himself - his temptations, his fantasies, his longings.

"You have to promise yourself to yourself and to your actual environment, as if you were settling a proposal of marriage. You have to 'espouse' reality rather than unreality, the actual limits of where and who you are rather than the world of magic in which anything can happen if I want it to. The fantasy world is one in which I am not promised/espoused, to my body, and my history - with all that this entails about my family, my work, my literal physical surroundings, the people I must live with, the language I must speak and so on. [Staying in your cell] is, I supposed, a rather startling intensification of the command to love yourself in the right way."

Then, about the temptations of Christ as symbolic of His temptations to escape reality ... "Satan wants Jesus to join him in the world where cause and effect don't matter, the world of magic; Jesus refuses, determined to stay in the desert with its hunger and boredom, to stay in the human world with its conflict and risk. He refuses to compel and manipulate people into faith because it can only be the act of a person, and persons do not live in the magic world."

Could it be that there is real wisdom for us here in the monastic tradition? Could it be that the issue is not about boundaries, how far can we legitimately go? That the issue is about fidelity to ourselves? That when we enter into a fantasy world, one that we can claim does not connect with our real life and is therefore without judgment, we are losing our very selves. Can we imagine espousing ourselves to reality? Yes, it is the way of unmet hungers and maybe boredom, but it is also the way of being a person.

looking for ugly

2011-06-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

This is an email conversation between a few women - after we watched this short video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0

Sigh. I was Ichthus this past week and heard a popular youth speaker (in fact, he has his own ministry, travels and speak to youth groups and parents - an 'expert') and he talked in simplistic terms about what was wrong with our daughters and our sons. He was a brilliant comedian, but his material on human formation was painfully thin and misguided. When he talked about girls he said that girls need to have someone who values them. Yes. I agree. But then he took the "Captivating" theory and talked only about girls needing to be feel pretty. That they need someone to say they are pretty and women can't tell them that because 'all women hate their bodies.' He gave a rather funny and poignant monologue on how women 'look for ugly' on themselves - and it is true as it relates to body image. But he didn't take it any further than that and in fact, said that men are responsible to help girls know they are pretty. SIGH He talked about how a good man must think of all the little girls around him as their nieces and "help them know they are pretty." (apparently all the 'good' men will be going to jail...just saying....)

Anyway, one other thing he said is this (almost a quote), "All the girls are, like, We want equal rights!!! (he said this in a squeaky voice) ... well, where is THAT getting us?"

You know, this makes me so sad. If my connections of thoughtful mature women heard this they would be very upset - and it would further dismiss the Christian voice as unworthy of a place at the table. But everyone LOVED his talk ... they ate it up because it was funny and well, easy.

Just an illustration of how far we are off on this whole woman's thing. I think if we are talking about women we must talk about our bodies - we are bodily in every way - even in our spirituality, but what can we say that is more than that?

_________________________

That was profound, and oh, so true. One of the women in Book Club was telling us about her daughter. A few years ago ---- was tall, slender, an A-plus student, athletic, responsible, kind, lots of friends. But, of course, her first worry was, "Mom, Am I pretty?" Her mother, a scientist and teacher at an elite private school was sickened to discover that her daughter, despite all the mother's best effort, still wondered if she was pretty and still worried about it.

---- is now 23, almost finished her first degree, has a boyfriend and many accomplishments. She is not conventionally pretty, but she is accomplished in many ways and will be one of life's movers and shakers. I hope she doesn't still worry about her face.

I am 49 and a half, and I still want to be pretty.

_________________________________

I don't know anybody who doesn't want to be attractive. Women have vastly different ideas about what attractive means, but every culture has some measure of beauty.Think of National Geographic and the women with rings on their necks, or weird tattoos, or huge butts. Think of the pasty-faced geisha. Every group has a way to measure female attractiveness. So, as warped and sick as our culture is, I think it goes much deeper than that. Either our desire is innate and God-given, or it is the result of the fall. What do you think?

________________________________

Just this morning before I reluctantly rolled out of bed, I prayed for something to move me, to give me food for thought, to inspire change, growth. This is also the daily battle I live with my preteen who is beginning to develop and struggling with the changes in her body. She is amazingly talented, but all of that pales in comparision to the messages of society, to be thin, pretty, desirable. She never feels "enough". Can you imagine the power and beauty of women if we could all "wear joy"!
______________________________

Yes - I wish we could find the crack - a way we could break this thing open. There must be something we are missing. Do we have anything to say about this?

Dr Phil and me

2011-06-15T07:01:00.000-07:00

I have a way to measure my parenting decisions. I imagine myself on Dr.Phil and tell the audience what I am doing. If Dr.Phil leans back in his chair and looks at the audience and they all laugh, I know I am slightly nuts.Then he leans forward and tells me off.

Before you scorn this idea, let me illustrate. (These are fictional events,of course, to protect the innocent.)

Me: My son can't move away from home. It's too hard for kids to make it on their own these days.
Dr. Phil: How old is your son?
Me: 43.
Dr. Phil leans back and looks at audience.
(laughter)

Me: I am so tired. My 5 year old stays up late. He just won't go to bed early enough for me.
Dr. Phil: What time do you need to go to bed?
Me: Well, I want to be in bed by ll:00.
Dr. Phil leans back and looks at audience.
(laughter)

See...it works. It is hard being an adult all by yourself. But if you can imagine yourself on prime time TV in front of a hard nosed psychologist and an audience, well, you get some perspective.

Just saying.

empty nest?

2011-06-14T08:20:00.001-07:00

I am having a big time these days watching adolescent birds. You can spot one by its scruffy feathers - half grown sprouts of bed head. And how they behave. Aggressive, losing their balance and falling off a perch, harassing an adult bird, making screeching landings like a drunken pilot on a first flight.

Leaving home is like that. My youngest son is leaving home tomorrow. Again. For real. Maybe. He has outgrown his bedhead. He lands pretty much on his feet. He can still harass the adults. So tomorrow he is off to a nice one bedroom with balcony and fireplace.

I have, thus, declared Wednesday to be 'naked night' at the Elliott's. This is what one does when the last kid leaves home. You might not know about this if you have young ones, but one day you will also have your naked night. Naked night is the evening mom and dad have dinner together, naked. They lay about on the couch, naked. They watch tv, naked. They putz in the garden, well, naked under their clothes.

The real reason for this is to frighten the departing offspring. They must have a terrifying imagine in their minds or they will certainly return. At any hour of the day or night. But definitely NOT on naked night.

clumsy stewards of our lives

2011-06-13T04:39:00.000-07:00

Richard Rohr uses that term, "clumsy stewards" to describe how many people manage and tend to their inner selves. I know he is right about me. I most certainly am a clumsy steward of my own self. But the other side of that confession is the radiant idea that I AM the steward of myself! Clumsy or not, being a participant in my own formation is a gift and a grace I seldom remember to feel grateful for.

We are active participants in our own formation, but we are not alone in this endeavor. Scientific investigations into brain function have made enormous strides in recent years. To put it simply, it has been proven that human brains need other human brains to develop and mature. A baby's brain cannot develop properly without a nurturer's brain, expressed through eyes and face and mimicked motions regularly in attendance. All through life we continue to be formed by other persons and how we interact with them and our environment. We are formed by interaction and participation.

A person is not a machine, programmed toward a limited scope of life options. Nor is a person simply an animal. Animals function mainly on instinct. Human persons are formed. We are formed by others interactions with us and formed through our own participation with those interactions. And all of us are clumsy in this process. We hurt each other. Disappoint each other. We miss cues of love and invitation. We walk past opportunities for friendship, sleep through meaningful moments and step on beauty because we don't see it. And yet, we are dependent on these interactive moments of formation for our very life force.

Christians make much of affirming that matter was created, in the beginning. Creation implies a creator, which is the crux of the debate, of course. But think about this in terms of formation. A creator means that there is a "Person" involved in the idea of human persons. When designing human persons could it be that this Person intended to be an integral part of the formation of human persons through interaction - acting upon and receiving bubbling, honest, sometimes joyful and sometimes troubling responses?

A formational understanding of the human person says something about what we call prayer. Prayer is interaction and formation. Prayer is meant to be a real and sometimes rollicking act of giving and receiving. And prayer is meant to be honest to what we are. Prayer must be planted in reality, and our own self is the closest reality we know. Prayer is not 'out there' - it is 'in here!'

We are clumsy stewards of our lives, and clumsy makers of prayer. We interact thoughtlessly with others and with God. Maybe the first steps toward being better stewards of ourselves is to welcome God and others into honest interaction with us, interaction that is not self protective or controlling.

Eden on earth

2011-06-08T05:30:00.001-07:00

We plan together to create spaces for the ego to sing and dance. We parade around in our regalia, we cast honors and prance in new clothes. We work together to create spaces for our wills to march forward. We join in a cause, determine to solve a problem and clean the kitchen. We consort and commiserate to allow our emotions to join in a song or a lament. We toast and laugh at a wedding, weep over the dead cat and wink at a victory. But where can the soul come out to whisper it's quiet secrets? What kind of spaces can we carve out to be safe enough, gentle and not manipulative, alive with joy and love where a soul can dare show itself for a couple of minutes. I want to find that place. It would be such a relief. And I don't think it is as hard as it is simply rare. Here is a story from my daughter's day where someone did that ...

It happened while i was hard at work being a banker. a regular customer pulled up to the drive through to cash a check, and as i sent the drawer out to her and said my hello's through the microphone, she smiled at me, twirling a stem of jasmine in her fingers. she gently dropped it in and said, "you have to smell this!" so i drew the drawer in and held the fragrant white blossoms up to my nose while she endorsed her check, and for a moment we traded places. i was outside in the hot carolina air, breathing in jasmine and grass, and she was ensconced in the business of money and signatures. i traded back her jasmine for the check and the spell was broken - but it lingered in my smile and in the lightness i felt at being passed the small gift of summer's fragrance.

Inviting the soul is as simple as this. The risk to share something beautiful and natural across the steel barrier of business and finance gave my daughter a moment of soul that changed her day for a moment. That is how the soul emerges. One tiny poke of the head out of the bushes and then a rustle of leaves and it is gone.

another way to handle the recession

2011-05-31T05:13:00.001-07:00

My daughter is a pretty funky person. She is a fully responsible mother. She is hilarious. I think she has a nine year old soul. She is also a bank teller. She is often unexpected in her responses.

I saw her this weekend and she told me a story from her day at work.

On Friday a regular customer came in to deposit his weekly gains as a tax accountant. He had a small-ish deposit and was withdrawing $5.00. Modest for sure.

Rae: "How are you doing today, Mr. ___?"
Man: "Well, the tax business isn't all it's cracked up to be."
Rae: "I think nothing is what it is cracked up to be."

pause, smile.

Rae: "But then again, life is what we make it."
Man: "I guess you are right."

small pause.

Rae: "For instance. I could give you your change in gold one dollar coins. And then you could feel like you are a pirate."

(at this point in her telling me the story she AND I laughed so hard we almost fell off our chairs.)

Man, smiling: "I guess I would feel like a pirate. But I will take bills."

what can we do?

2011-05-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

People need someone who will stand for them when they feel like giving up, who will sing their song when they forget who they are, who will be present to their wounds without judging them and who will cherish their story and believe that they are image-bearers of God too.

Written by a thoughtful woman leader.

cat love

2011-05-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

Drama at the Elliott's on Monday night. Vincent's recently adopted cat, Frank, had gone missing. In truth, Frank was supposed to be kept upstairs in V's room but I hate to see an animal imprisoned and isolated. So I let him run the house and wander outdoors. He managed three days of this without trauma but on Monday he did not come home.

Now, an important factor in this drama is that Frank has asthma. He has severe wheezing fits and sneezes and coughs. Monday night it poured rain. V was out wandering in the rain calling "Frank!!!" and I drove around for a half hour looking for him. Something in me told me that he would get another compassionate home to open their doors to him if he just went into a wheezing fit but that didn't offer much solace to V who held me fully responsible for Frank's fate.

My friend was here and she had a suggestion. "Let's go out and buy another cat that looks like Frank!" (Ahh... the old goldfish switcheroonie that every parent has at least thought about. You know, the goldfish/hamster dies and you quietly replace it to save yourself the trauma of a broken hearted child.) I pointed out that we would have two challenges, to find a cat with his particular markings and to find a cat with his markings that has asthma. She said we could tell V that Frank is feeling better!

That was worth a laugh.

Anyway, about 11 pm who was meowing/wheezing at the back door but Franky, the wayward cat. I would love to know where he went and what he was up to. Did anyone have a gasping cat at their door on Monday night?

I am glad Frank is back. I will also be glad when Frank and his pet, V, move out and get their own home to make the rules in. I still hate that we have a cat locked in a room. My Walter is out lounging in the shade.

being home

2011-05-16T06:03:00.000-07:00

My friend wrote this about her little girl who is 3 or 4.

Tonight at bed, Ella was asking me, "Why are they called the idiots?" I couldn't imagine what she was talking about until she said, "You know, Steve and Marilyn." ....Ahhhhh! THE ELLIOTTS!... This whole time she thought we were calling you THE IDIOTS. I'm still laughing.
_______________
Well, the idiots are HOME! Vincent kept the house in good shape and Walter has not stopped sitting on top of me in every possible moment, even in the most impossible contortions. I am back at my desk and loving being here. But most of all I have been welcomed back by friends and colleagues.

I realize in a full sense that the transition moments of our lives NEED to be noticed and marked. It is important to be welcomed back. How sad to return to a life that didn't want you. I am grateful for every smile, every warm welcome and all the people that welcome my presence into their world. Thankyou.

Going away is also healthy. Sometimes we need space from our small world to push the 'reset' button and get our perspective back. We need to laugh and problem solve somewhere else... in a place that has new problems. We need to smell new smells and look at new scenery and remember what a big and magical world this is.

And then we need to come home and eat beans. Our first meal home was beans - with weiners chopped into them of course. And toast. Hot buttered toast. A good plain meal with the old scrabble game open between us. And of course, Walter sitting on top of me. Quite a ways from the Champs d'Elyses but fabulous, none the less.

Ah...Paris

2011-05-12T12:33:00.000-07:00

Language is an interesting thing ... Without being a thing. Together Steve and I have been quite fluent. He can read anything and conjugate sentences quite well and I have vocabulary to contribute. In the moment, though, I sometimes get something wrong. I bought some cherries from a vendor and as I took the bag I attempted to say, Good day! But I said Good God!

Then I burst out laughing while he watched me quizzically.

The cherries were scrumptious.

We walked the Champs d'Elyses today, from the Louvres to L'Arche de Triumph through the Elyses shopping district. The sun came out and shone too hot and then the clouds covered the sun and we felt the wind.

Travel is like education. The more you do it the more you realize personal limitations of time, space and understanding.

By the way. Today I bought a scarf on the Champs d'Elyses. Don't be jealous of my scarf.

One place one time

2011-05-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

no matter how far you go you are still in one place. This morning I began the day sitting on a bench in the sun beside the Thames, just outside of Reading. Our entertainment consisted of a few new waterbirds and swans, and we watched some scullers in boats rowing down the river preparing for a race scheduled for later today.

I commented how if I lived here I would want to learn to row, and pointed out some more senior types having a big time.

Steve made the observation that I always love to see new ways of living and in my imagination I "slide myself into that life." true. The upside is that I could make a life everywhere. The downside is that I hate being limited to being one person.

We are staying tonight in a very old stone home near Sheffield. It is glorious here on the edge of Peak County..a field of sheep out my window and a fish pond decorated by the presence of three beautiful chickens pecking around the edge. How does one find such a life? I conclude it depends to some extent where you begin - from where my life began one cannot get to this destination. I am right. I cannot be me and this lovely country woman both.

Learning to be who we are is a bigger task than we know.

These two thoughts have become one thought in my mind. There are more ways to live on this interesting earth than any one life can envision. We can run and run to find what we might not have. But the one treasure is the one we take with us everywhere... But still must choose it. This is the choice to come to deep peace with who we are, uniquely and personally. Then it is not so important where we are.

And this will take a whole life time

These two thoughts move along the same trajectory in my mind. There are more enticing options in this world than can even be known. But the one essential choice is the choice to live ones own interior life every step of the walk.

Family

2011-04-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

Family is big. Family can take over a city. It is inescapable even if we try to be something else. When William was at the altar he leaned over to his father in law and said, "just a small family affair."

I have been watching family things this week. It was pretty much a ton of fun. Did you see me in TV? The sense of celebration was everywhere... I saw most of what I saw I saw on TV like you, but I felt a lot that you couldn't feel on TV.

Kate managed to keep some of the pomp out of it... And her dress and just one attendant and such a simple procession was fabulous. I hope it becomes a model for our western weddings.

But in the end I went back to my hotel with the most agreeable person who is my family. In the end it is our own people that matter most.

So we quit London this morning and are a bit worse for wear after finding our way out of town...

What we experienced:
Nottingham Hill market where we bought a Victorian candle snuff from two fat gay men who made us laugh.. Mitchell and Simon; tower of London; Thames boat tour; Baker Street; Les Mis and the theatre district; Regents Park which is like palace gardens owned by Elizabeth R; saw the changing of the guards; Lord's Cricket grounds and a boring game of cricket; consumed many pieces of fish and hundreds of chips; went passed the Zoo; not to mention Westminster chapel, the Tower of Big Ben and the rosy red cheeks of the little children.

We were yelled at by not one but two bus drivers, called wankers and other lovely English terms by various people, met great fun people who were not so angry and walked for miles. Hardly bought a thing and did not go to Harrods.

So now we are heading to Sheffield with our $100.00 tank of gas ...looking for Elliott bones. Family.

Labyrinth

2011-04-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

We have pretty much figured the London transit system. Last night though our trip took a bit longer than we'd hoped. It was starting to get cold as the sun went down. We had walked more than 16,000 steps in our day and were glad to catch the 24 that seemed to be going in the right direction. Our journey had taken us around Picadilly Circus around the Oxford Circus shopping district and across the Strand. We passed a stet preacher with bright wild eyes and got on the 24 to Camden Town. We got off the bus and couldn't find our connection so we stopped in the Camden Eye for fish n chips. Then we walked north toward Camden Market ...through an increasingly rough looking area. I told Steve to flex his muscles...he told me to put the map away -like we could hide the fact that we were tourists.

Deciding the road was not right we crossed the road and took 31 going back the way we came. It was dark now. The 31 turned the wrong direction and so we got off. We walked 5 or 6 blocks west, then around a corner and 5 or 6 blocks east and then stopped to talk to an ancient bearded Arab looking man across from a backpacking hostel.

He sent us back to the 31 and we started going south. When the 31 turned east again we got off at the next stop and decided to walk to the nearest tube (underground.) I asked Steve what he remembered about the wisdom of taking the tube after dark. He said it couldn't t be advisable.

Bit it wasn't too scary and we took the tube west and got to St John' s Wood. We came back up to street level and walked the wrong way down Wellington. We turned around and walked back the other way. A bus passed and we jumped on... And a few stops later stepped off in front of the hotel.

Purgation. Illumination. Union.

there is no global village

2011-04-22T02:35:00.000-07:00

I am reading Wendell Berry - "the Art of the Commonplace." I have read and re-read one piece this week.

He is speaking of the general and the particular, that they must be held in tension, and that we are impoverished by ignoring either. For instance, marriage is particular, keeping faith with the one chosen, but it is also keeping faith with those who one has not chosen. And care of home and one's environment is a responsible way to live in the larger world.

"One cannot fulfill one's love for womankind or mankind, or even for all the women or men to whom one is attracted. If one is to have the power and delight of one's sexuality, then the generality of instinct must be resolved in a responsible relationship to a particular person. Similarly one cannot live in the world; that is, one cannot become, in the easy, generalizing sense with which the phrase is commonly used, a 'world citizen.' There can be no such thing as a 'global village.' No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one's partiality."

A mantra of the environmental movement is "think globally, act locally." For most of our lives, this is our only real option. The moments when we can act, in a sense, globally, are rare, and are only really a second or third locality. We go, for instance, to an orphanage in Mexico and serve for a few weeks, locally, there. Even Jesus was limited to one place and time. Theology calls this the "scandal of particularity" - that God could be limited to one place, one body, one personality, one time. Impossible. But to be human this is what must be.

"But to encapsulate these partial relationships is to entrap and condemn them in their partiality; it is to endanger them and to make them dangerous. They are enlivened and given the possibility of renewal by the double sense of particularity and generality; one lives in marriage and in sexuality, at home and in the world. It is impossible, for instance, to conceive that a man could despise women and yet love his wife, or love his own place i the world and yet deal destructively with other places."

As a young mother I worked relentlessly to ensure the survival and wellness of my children. I found ways to provide for them, to put meals on the table over and over, to keep them healthy and help them learn to think and choose. Now that so much focus is not on my own children, I have a new generativity that touches a broader field of children and homes, and can contribute to those in various ways. But fundamentally, it is still limited in scope - one hand holding one hand. Some people have the skill to create a paradigm that can reach many, seemingly en mass, but in reality it is a complex system of many reaching many - one or two at a time.

The care of the world, then, is not too big for any of us to participate in. The smallest acts of kindness, care, generosity and help are world changing. My fidelity to my husband is for the sake of the world as much as for our household.

So many of my choices seem futilely small. Cans into recycling. Avoiding poisons on our lawn. Stopping to help someone pick up a dropped bag of groceries. Taking time to smile at an old man who is lonely. A meal to an international student. And hugs. But these are, in fact, the destruction of the 'curse' and participation in a world renewal.

profound blessing... or why I love my woman friends

2011-04-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

I have a woman friend who wrote this to me today. And I will smile ALL day because of it.

"...speaking your name to our Creator this morning, for wisdom, peace and rest. And laughter... I hope for much laughter, like "laugh your ass off laughter" for the coming days."

and I think I know just the person to do it with!

just can't sleep

2011-04-16T02:15:00.000-07:00

I have had a headache tonight, all night. One of those headaches you even dream about and keep expecting to go away - it is the weather, barometric pressure and all that. Walter kept licking my face, with bad breath, which was also annoying. So at about 4:15 I got up and made a hot cup of milk and got my computer up and running. It is often in the early hours that I write to my kids in Indonesia and take time to post something.

Steve launched his sabbatical on Thursday with a dinner for his friends and leadership team at the church. I loved being in a room full of friends, fifty people who are all different but really do love and respect each other. Remarkable, really. In light of us entering the gift of extended sabbath time, I am seeking to live in the transcendent invitation - live with eyes and soul wide open to meaning, grace, good gifts and gentle promptings. This is preview weekend at my school and last night I spoke at the evening service. My topic was the faithfulness of God. In my reflections and reading I realized for the first time how closely the faithfulness of God is connected to his love. The loving faithfulness - the enduring love. God is not faithful because it is his work, he is faithful to us and all creation because he loves. Somehow that means a great deal to me. Everything meaningful is about relationships - even this. It makes sense, then, that scripture says he is not interested in our sacrifices to him or anyone else unless they are truly motivated by love.

Steve and I have been married 37 years this fall. He reminded me that we just passed the 40th anniversary of our first date. Said date was a walk to a local tennis court and a game of tennis wearing winter coats. On the way home he farted and I laughed and our relationship was cemented. But the point is - we are not faithful because we said we would be faithful. We are faithful because we love. I would not choose to do something to hurt our love. Nor would he. I don't worry that he is wishing for someone else to be his main person - not because he is obligated to me, but because I trust his love.

We can trust God's love - his enduring love. He will remain faithful to us because of love. And the action of that love is his engagement in our lives. He makes us strong, makes life rich and thick. I am pondering this beautiful idea as I sit here sipping warm (now tepid - bleh) milk at 5:30 in the morning, while Walter continues to try to lick my face. What is up with her?

"Her only crime is she is female."

2011-04-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege of attending an art exhibition in Chicago presenting woman's art from around the world on the theme of violence. Photos were not allowed, so I wrote some of the artist's comments into my journal. The plaque on the wall says, "Sisterhood is where women are unfettered by expectations of submissiveness, surrounded by true peers, a place where she can say what she needs to say, share what she knows, and asks for credit for what is her due."

"When we encounter violence against women, we often experience a sort of blindness. we choose not to see the devastation of domestic violence calling it a 'family affair.' Honor killings of women in faraway regions of the world become nothing more than 'cultural difference.' The rape and torture of women during armed conflict is the inevitable 'messiness of war.' The range of gender based violence is devastating, occurring quite literally from womb to tomb."

Japanese - Self portrait, Sharp Eyed Crone. "Women change their appearance to please others.... As for once in a lifetime serendipity, there is nothing greater than good books and good friends. As as for happiness in life, there is only the tea in one's cup and the incense in the burner."

Israel - Miri Nishri. "In the past few years Israel has been plagued by a wave of 'romantic' killings of women by their spouses. [She comments that people say, "what a wonderful love that must be!"] We go about our little lives, we get married, we give birth, we enjoy little moments of tranquility while 20 miles away the worst imaginable is constantly happening."

Icelandic name for woman's asylum - Kvenna Athuarfi - safe refuge.

Japan - Yoko Inoue. "In some communities where direct intervention is culturally impossible, women respond to severe domestic violence by assembling outside of the household in question and banging on out an alarm on pots and pans. This informs the man that the spirit he attempts to break belongs to many, not one."

The most visceral to me was a ten minute video by Egyptian, Amal Kenawy. The first half has three scenes playing out on the screen in gentle quietness - an ordinary Egyptian woman putting on socks, putting on a coat and going out the door to come back with a bag of groceries which she puts away, and in the third image sipping tea while placing fruit in her mouth and staring into the distance in thought. All ordinary, peaceable, far from power, violence, anger, control. In the second five minutes the woman is shown as a corpse, with hand drawn images of long hair becoming blood, dismembered limbs, dead babies, rats, heads without bodies, and stairs, walls, prison bars moving across the page. The film is named, "You will be killed." There are no words. No musical score.

I left the cultural center quietly, moved and stirred. Innocently I stopped for lunch in an Irish pub called the Tilted Kilt. The young women who serve there are dressed like sexualized little girls with little bikini tops perched on oversized breasts, tiny kilts sitting as low as possible on naked midrifts and white knee socks with little flat shoes. The largest piece of clothing are their white knee socks. The girl who served me seemed uncomfortable with me, wouldn't look me in the eye. But to the tables of business men she was flirtatious and assertive. I couldn't help thinking, though, that she had not yet bought this system, that she didn't fit. I wanted to say to her, RUN! But I didn't have the chance, she wouldn't give me a chance.

When my bill came for my small fish and chip dinner I decided to rip a page out of my journal and leave a note. I wrote, thoughtfully, "Honey - are you aware of how much you are being exploited here? I hope you will choose to leave and build a strong life." I added a twenty dollar tip and left it on the table.

Good Morning America!!!

2011-04-01T04:11:00.000-07:00

I hit the snooze button four times this morning. It began shortly after six and I was up before seven. Every eleven minutes the radio began broadcasting the news. In that hour between six and seven when i randomly restarted the news, what came on was horrific. Deaths. Wars. Evil. More evil to come.

I muttered out to Steve, "Some day I want to turn on the news and hear a story about a puppy."

So for you who are reading this early in the morning let me give you some news to start your day.

It is spring again. Somehow this hard-crusted, beat up, old world is once more giving birth to life. What looked like death all winter is sprouting impossibly. And by the number of robins in our neighborhood there will be robins to share across America, one for every yard.

Kentucky made it to the final four. I don't know what that means, really, but the people around me seem to be enjoying it. For me it means I get alone time this weekend.

Weight Watchers has a new measuring plan. Again, I am not actually going to WW although you could argue that I should, but those who are going tell me there are more food choices. That has to be good, right?

The shelves on our grocery stores are full. This may seem like a 'duh!' to you but some people are waiting in lines for almost nothing. We may be paying more but we can eat well, if we choose. You can have broccoli in the middle of winter. That must be a miracle.

And finally, for this morning, you and I are beloved. We are created, loved and valuable, and the way forward, while challenging, still has hope. The hope lies within, not on what is around us.

Okay... I am going to get out of my housecoat and go to work looking for gifts of friendship, moments of joy, brilliant ideas and puppies.

two cops and a dead groundhog

2011-03-16T19:02:00.000-07:00

I saw the weirdest thing on Sunday as I drove up highway 68 toward Lexington. Two young cops had their cars pulled over and were directing traffic in and out of Southland, and there in the same space was a HUGE dead groundhog. Do you know how big a groundhog is? Those of you in Alberta - it is much much bigger than an obese gopher. It is the size of a small seal with short legs. They are quiet homey fellows who live in families and don't bother anyone. But they do dig big holes. I love groundhogs, but this one didn't make it across the street apparently.

So there it was, lovely and dead. Not mushed or swollen or decaying, probably not dead long. (It's little legs were not sticking straight out which is a sure signal of yesterday's kill.)

And there were the two cops directing traffic, almost having to step over it. Now wouldn't you think they would move it to the side? Wouldn't it be reasonable to notice and act on this large dead creature in your space?

Something about this made me laugh. Two cops and a dead groundhog, and hundreds of cars of slightly wrinkled church going folks on their way home to frozen pizza and the UK game.

It just didn't seem right.

snow in March

2011-03-10T14:23:00.000-08:00

Today as I trudged across the lawn hauling two bags of bird seed - one black thistle and one safflower - I noticed that the red maple is starting to put out little red seed helicopters. When we were kids in Southern Ontario we would take maple seeds and split them open in a certain way and attach them to our noses. Anyone who grew up with maples did this, I bet. It is an innate human activity - walking around with maple keys on your nose. And I noticed that my daffodils are fully developed - not open, just with a full sized flower pod and the first sunny day will lure them open.

Now I am watching wet snow fall from the gray gray sky. Accumulation is not expected. I am standing by my sink with some rice beginning to simmer and the mushrooms browning thinking that life is a lot like today. Some things are budding and about to bud, and snow is falling.

Granted, there are some days that give up everything - sunshine, growth, joy, pleasures of all kinds and no bad thing in sight. But mostly it is a mix. Daffodils budding and snow falling. Or sunshine and the slugs have eaten all the lily foliage.

A disposition of appreciation is not about finding the sunny happy thing and being thankful. It is not a 'glass half full' perspective. Appreciation is much more robust - it is about finding the grace of life in every moment of living. Ultimately an appreciative spirit is connected to a sense of awe toward God. Deeply salted with gratitude (just salted my mushrooms so my choice of words is somewhat affected) and joy, an appreciative spirit can be cultivated and honed to flourish.

Life happens to us, and then we happen to life. What instinctive response do you bring to the moments opening in your day? Is your response appreciative, or depreciative? Full of grateful awe and joy or sour and despairing?

I am not at all trying to write a little devotional to focus you on something positive. Much more to the point, I am simply saying that the gifts of life are mixed blessings, that we do choose, and that what we choose over and over we become.

a letter today from a beloved woman pastor friend

2011-03-07T11:58:00.000-08:00

Before you read this, I have to say what throbs in my heart - we need each other. Women need women. We need to listen. To know that what is happening in my heart is happening in someone else's heart. I received this precious letter today and asked my friend if I could post it. I want you to read it because this is real stuff of a woman's heart. This woman is a beautiful soul - a pure servant and a genuine beloved of God. I know she will read this. I love you friend.

___________________________________________________

Yesterday after church, I said to a good friend: "I'm so tired of trying to keep this church afloat". I had previously mentioned this to God during and after the service. I went on..."We have sustained on IV's and other meds for so long, I think a Hospice referral is appropriate."

My first point...watch what you say to anybody!! At the moment, I truly "felt" what I said. Today, I still affirm: I'm so tired of pumping air in this local parish. I looked into the faces of 18 faithful souls, who had appeared for church. Numbers usually don't bother me, but sometimes a preacher knows too much....like the people who are off for the weekend to "relax", or those deeply spiritual people who are mad and spread their poison to others.

It was a Holy Communion Day, and I preached on God's glory shining through us in our servant roles.Of course I urged us to remember the "great servant" who is teacher and enabler.I'm not sure "God's glory" was shining through me when I voiced concerns to my friend.

Guess what has bothered me the most?? Not what I said, but that she did not hear me. She's a good sensitive friend....beloved.I just wanted her to hear me...get it out of my system and go on.

Well, after some minutes of sincere endeavor to highlight my shortcomings, I just decided to crawl back in my hole and hush. One of her comments is true - I am tired....but in a way she cannot understand. Does that lifelong tiredness ever go away? I've hoped sleep would address it, but the grief tired just drags on. It makes tears come to my eyes, as I type. Any thoughts,from the one who hears me and
loves me?? I wish I was close by,just to sit with you and see you smile at me.I love you and miss you.

doing theology

2011-03-06T05:56:00.000-08:00

I was spending time with a gospel text this past week, in the way I spend time with stories. I sit on my thinking chair beside a good light and I have open my bible, my journal, some books of spiritual poetry and scattered around me are papers, bits of ideas scratched onto napkins, other journals open - general flotsam of the mind. Steve commented that he has never seen anyone who approached scripture with less connection to biblical resources - commentaries in particular. I want to talk about this.

First, I am convinced of the reality of the Holy Spirit as teacher, guide and one who whispers the words of God. The Holy Spirit is my companion in these mediative times. My confidence is not an excuse away from serious study, it is the beginning of study. I sit with the Word for extended periods of meditation and discipline and live in the story, with the people, in the experience, and I listen.

Second, I travel in a general direction against the flow of some traditional interpretation of the gospel story I am living in. That doesn't mean I am unteachable and seeking the novel, but rather I try to live into the story as a human before I let the story become just a defense of a particular theological position. Most texts seem to have been un-storied, it seems to me. When stories lose their visceral human connection with our lives and become simply a support of a theological position we are distanced from them and the people involved. And thus, we are distanced from the Word itself.

My fear is that my kind of approach (a human storied approach) to scripture renders my work (apparently) theologically insignificant. But in the world of formation - that is, the world of human experience of God - nothing could be further from the truth. We are not so much changed by rhetoric - talking about changing - as by encountering experiences, relationships and episodes of life. While there is a place for a theological rendering of gospel stories, we suffer loss when we lose a rich life orientation to what is written as a witness to life.

Some years ago I moved quite far from any connection with a local church (relatively speaking of course). My reasons are not important for this discussion, but my journey removed me from the experience of being with other believers. I lived this way for some time and listened to the discourse about 'faith' outside the church. I listened to the media, to rhetoric of other faiths, to the average conversation in the marketplace, and came to a settled conclusion: thinking about faith must be done from within the faith community. No outside voice can carry on my faith conversation. I became convinced that I must keep a strong connection with the church - the real and local church with all its flaws - because I cannot understand my faith except from the inside. Theology is the work of the inside - within the biblical tradition and within the house of faith. As ragged as that is, and as seemingly 'sectarian', this inner witness is the fertile soil of faith life for me.

All this said, I do finally visit the voices of thinkers and saints who have gone before me. This is my community, my great cloud of witnesses. But as one who is familiar with the great biblical texts and stories, I take the posture of one invited in freshly, finding life and surprise in the story of how the human race has encountered God.

Rainy day Saturday

2011-03-05T06:17:00.000-08:00

Wind howling. Rain falling. Blue fog around my brain.
Going out to Jazz and drinking coffee.
Doing what I can do to be fully alive and awake while
Wind howling. Rain falling. Blue fog around my brain.

I wish I wrote this.

2011-03-02T10:34:00.001-08:00

A friend sent me this and I am deeply moved by it. I believe it is truth. As I learn about formation and dare to live with openness to God and others I find that we have limited our wisdom because of fear.

"In the Girl There's a Room"- Sara Groves

In the girl there's a room
In the room there's a table
On the table there's a candle
And it won't burn out

In the man there's vision
In the vision is a road
It's the road to his freedom...

In the boy there's a voice
And the voice there's a calling
In the call there's a promise
And it won't quiet down

In the woman is a picture
In the picture is a girl
In the girl there's a room...

Tell me what you know
About God and the world and the human soul
How so much can be wrong
And still there are songs

In the man is a work
And the work is his future
And the future is his children
And he won't slow down

In the woman there's a faith
In the faith there's a prayer
In the prayer there's a promise...

In the boy is a dream
In the dream he is standing
And he stands without shaking/ failing/ wavering/ fear
And he won't sit down

In the girl is a song
In the song there is hope
In the hope there's defiance...

Tell me what you know
About God and the world and the human soul
How so much can be wrong
And still there are songs

In their hearts and souls
An unstoppable refrain
Hope stands/sings in defiance

beware the power of a hot dog

2011-02-26T16:10:00.000-08:00

My granddaughter told me this, "I decided I was going to be a vegetarian and was going to announce it at supper, but we had hotdogs that night."

I can't count how many times some impulse or decision of mine has been forestalled by something as silly as a hotdog.

I was going to start eating healthy food but someone gave me a cupcake.

I felt that I should visit her but it started raining.

I was about to say thank-you but someone else started talking to me and I forgot.

The things that keep us from accomplishing our goals are often very small, very surmountable problems/things.

a Sunday in February

2011-02-20T18:38:00.000-08:00

The morning began around seven with my cat Walter waking me by walking all over me, purring and trying to get some affection. I got up and coffee was made. I started the day on our old couch reading a biography on Gerard Manley Hopkins, a 'small, childish looking, yet like a child-sage, nervous and very sensitive, with a small ivory pale face' kind of man. I hated to put the book down, because it was so beautifully written and interesting to me. He was a Jesuit and a writer, and hard on himself. He struggled to find peace:

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; to live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in a world of wet.

Kind of dismal ... but he had a sense of humor, too. When a young writer who had not suffered much asked him why he became a priest he replied, "You wouldn't give only the dull ones to the Almighty God!" I like that. Give some of the complicated, confusing, conflicted and hilarious ones to the Almighty God. He will find them admirably delightful I think.

And then I drove to church and managed to not be overwhelmed for more than an hour. The sermon was refreshing and given gently. That is something good for me.

The day continued with a pretty good lunch of pancakes and chicken sauce, the death of a large wolf spider in my bathroom - it is that time of year! - and A Prairie Home Companion on the radio. Steve was searching the internet for solutions to some of our needs. I brought him a map from my car, the most helpful contribution I can make. Unlike most of the world (apparently), I do not enjoy the computer as a source of information or entertainment. I read. More of Gerard Hopkins.

Two friends dropped by with a gift of diet coke from McDonald's and I laughed at our companionable bickering. Gifts are not my love language but someone doing something small for me makes me feel loved. And food. I think maybe food is my love language. I consider myself a 'foodie', but recently I read some comments on foodies that made me cringe. According to this article I am not a real foodie (very unlikable folks) - I just happen to love the art and craft and conviviality of food. I think I can own this without shame, having spent much of my first adulthood in the kitchen, creating miracles and messes and sometimes just playing. I am with the Israelites: 40 years of one type of food, even if it drops from heaven, is a trial beyond bearing. If only there had been just the odd container of pesto or an occasional creamy pie the people of God may have been a lot less cranky. And maybe braver. I know I am braver when I have eaten something delicious. My mouth is drooling - but no, I must not go there.

As I do every Sunday I went to an evening Jazzercise class and worked my body. (It is a wonder I don't look like Jane Fonda, for all the exercise classes I fit in. Imagine what I would be like without them! My German peasant genes are always fighting to be free and make me into Greta the cow maiden.)

And then I made tea, put red Duck Tape over the broken light fixture on the back of my kid's car, and picked up the book on Manley, which I continued to read in a tub full of bubbles. I think a Sunday hot bath is one of the luxuries of modern times. That I can turn on a tap and soon have the hottest bubbling water to sink into - this is the stuff of royalty.

The day has ended with a conversation with my son who has decided he wants to go back to church. We talked about the 'communion of saints' and how I take such great strength from the great cloud of witnesses - not the crazies, abusers and bullies, but the true saints who have gone before. How their lives give mine meaning and convince me of a future beyond this life. And we talked about death and I told him my secret - that I overcame deep personal fear (and all fear is at bottom, fear of death) by embracing death and learning to truly love life. It was a good conversation.

And because it is Sunday and tomorrow is the beginning of the next lap, I am off to bed. Steve has tried to seduce me with an episode of Doc Martin, but no, I am about to crawl into my firm, yet soft bed, pull up a quilt made by my friend, after which Walter will jump on top of me and make her nest in some curve of my form.

Who says life is not beautiful?

The Prodigal Mother

2011-02-14T05:48:00.000-08:00

“What woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one…does not… sweep the house, and search carefully until she find it?” Luke 15.8

Like David belting to fight Goliath,
Miriam at market tightens her girdle
to haggle with the rabbi’s wife,

who asks too much for her black beans.
She’s so righteous – you’d think
she sleeps with Moses. At home

Miriam places ten Yehud drachmas
on the counter, each with Caesar’s Roman
nose full in her Jewish face. All at once

only nine Has she dropped one?
With her bramble broom she sweeps until
she finds it near the woodpile.

A lost silver coin’s not nothing
in her house. To raise a cup for finding
what was lost, she calls across

the fence to the tanner’s wife and the shepherd’s
wife. They've shared her wine before.
Like the year her rebel daughter, Sarah,

ran away to a far country with a tavern
stud: chest of black hair, pimp roll,
and a camel driver’s come-on smile.

Sarah’s a fire-cat queen with claws,
no home girl. She likes clanging bracelets,
ankle bells, the danger of strangers.

The brave man gave her trinkets,
beat her black. Swollen jaw,
a cut above her puffy eye, she came

hacking back, a discarded consumptive
from his stable of harlots. Through the window
Miriam sees her three vineyards away.

She'd know that slouch anywhere, the way
Sarah shuffles. Out of the house Miriam
charges, runs down the road like a demented

lion to gather in her wounded cub.

Kilian McDonnell OSB

women's wisdom

2011-02-06T06:39:00.000-08:00

"Women have the capacity to know with their bodies and with their brains at the same time, in part because their brains are set up in such a way that the information in both hemispheres and in the body is highly available to them when they communicate...[When a woman] begins to learn to appreciate how intimately [her] thoughts, emotions and physical body are connected, [she] begins to reclaim her full intelligence. It is staggering to realize how many highly intelligent women think they are stupid because so much of their intelligence has been undervalued. Dr. Linda Metcalf said, "Women think that their intellects are a male construct sitting inside their heads." (Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, Christiane Northrup, MD)

Northrup is not saying that men do not have this ability to integrated knowing. She makes that clear. So this is not a man vs woman issue. Just want to put that into the conversation. However...

...it's true. I don't know how many times I have been in a class or room with a majority of men, listening to the conversation and my thoughts are completely other than what is being expressed. In those instances I didn't put my thoughts into the room because I really did think they were 'too womanly.' That is the phrase I have had in my head. These are woman thoughts. They do not matter. And I have tried to translate my knowing into a male construct to have it be 'real' or intelligent or something. Maybe other women are not like me - but I have consciously had these discussions inside my brain, alongside my thinking.

Where did I get that idea? And it isn't just an idea - it is IN me. Somehow I know it - not like I read it in a book - but I know it in the biblical sense of it penetrating me.

What wisdom I have is staggeringly integrated. It is mind and body, it is words and blood, it is 360 intelligence. I wonder how much wisdom has been lost because women kept silent.

... watercooler

2011-02-02T16:28:00.000-08:00

The idea of writing something 'important' or 'meaningful' is lost to me. I am on a quest to write what is real. Perhaps these two might converge somewhere.

The thinking I am doing on formation is bringing me a few conversations that are worthy. Today I talked with a friend about grace, and the Wesleyan idea of participating with grace toward holiness. That last sentence is a bit much. Sorry. But basically we were talking about this - is the human person basically full of value, or is the human person hopelessly lost. Do we retain the image of God on us or is it a long gone characteristic, sullied entirely by sin. Does the work of God within us restore us to the essence at the core of our being or is there nothing there to restore.

Questions like these are not philosophic fantasies. They make all the difference in how we see others, ourselves, how we view God and holiness and hope, even. I have come to believe each of us stands out to God like my kid Ben stands out in this crowd in Indonesia. We are beautiful. Even when we are broken. Life is a miracle and we are beautiful.

Better Minds - Prayer is not work. To breath is to pray.

2011-02-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

We are 'unfinished' humans until we consent to the power of the Spirit and are drawn into a wholeness of being... Christian spiritual masters through the centuries have ha different ways of describing that process. All... say that it involves a relationship between God and humanity that we call prayer. For us to pray is to intend to hear God and to respond to God. God is absolutely present to ALL people. Prayer does not make him present. Prayer is not a work. It begins with our consent, grounded in the expectation that God speaks and we can hear. That expectation is what is meant by faith. (A History of Christian Spirituality by Urban T. Holmes.)

Prayer as expectation and intent to listen. I like that. I have done prayer as work, and there is a labor in some kinds of prayer. But the prayer that transforms us and keeps us alive is our soul breath.

How about this for a great verse: Malachi 3:16 "Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard."

So much for saying a prayer at the end of a conversation to tell God what we talked about. Our conversation IS our prayer. As is our joy when we see a friend, our impulse to help someone in trouble, our laughter over a meal conversation and our walk through the corridors of malls and offices and schools - when we walk expecting to hear and willing to respond.

"Better Minds" -

2011-01-31T12:22:00.000-08:00

This is the first of a new series of blogs by moi. I have gone on long enough about my life - which is, remarkably, like YOUR life! Isn't that a mystery!

But I am reading some great stuff so for a month or so I will share with you nuggets of my reading and how it affects me.

A friend posted a little quote on her facebook and many jumped onto the "like this" thumbs up button...but I felt like we were all being sucked in. There is a lot that is written (Christian and otherwise) that is complete drivel. The words might sound good but when the ideas are really tested they are nothing. Or foolish.

Okay - I know you are dying to read the quote - and I won't name the author - and I don't think this is the WORST quote I've seen, but it is exemplary of them.
"Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter" I am not sure if you need me to spell out why this is such a lame piece of writing.

Compare that to this:
"Transformation is foundational to spirituality. Unlike religiosity, which can involve nothing more than beliefs and practices, spirituality involves a journey. Much more than a mere identity, it is walking a path."

Both of these are pieces of guidance. I know we all want to write a book. But maybe we should write fewer of them, or maybe we should do what the above quote suggests, and be more afraid of reading things that don't matter than of failing to read what does. Is that what he is saying? I am not sure.

The Last of a Series of Epiphany Posts on Being Human: on rhythm

2011-01-28T07:58:00.000-08:00

One of the first things you learn about children when you have one of your own is that routine IS everything! The child does so much better when things are routine, when there is a regular rhythm and all the small things happen in usual ways. Sometimes the pain of disorienting the child can be enough to keep parents from wanting to do things that would normally be fun. It is just easier to stay home.

I am a long long way from my baby days - but the need for rhythm is still deep inside me. When people have regular repeated ways of sharing routines and rhythms something like meaning is added to life. My experience is that it isn't the occasional huge events that make us calmly sane and richly belonging. It is ordinary planned patterns.

Today a young single father with boys, 2, 4 and 18 told me that on Fridays he has a complete routine. They all go to McDonald's for lunch so the little ones can scramble through the play area, and then at supper he picks a movie (today it is going to be Marmaduke) and brings home pizza and it is the only night of the week that they eat around the tv instead of at the table. I know for fact that his kids will remember these routines with warmth in their heart. Something happens when we do things over and over together.

That is why I go to church. Some people go to church out of obligation, or to be seen, or to please God or to get a fabulous message - I go to church to practice my faith with other believers. I go to say things I don't say anywhere else, to belong. In this sense, the service doesn't have to be particularly good, the worship can be routine, and I am not looking for amusement. I go, over and over, to sit beside other believers, to speak my faith in unique ways and to belong there. Pretty routine stuff. But somehow it piles up over time.

I have other rhythms. Some may seem silly to you. But they make my life meaningful and gentle.

It is part of being human - from birth to old age.

...intermission...

2011-01-26T06:35:00.000-08:00

So. No one is commenting on my blogs. I know they are kind of intense lately, but if you know me AT ALL you know two things - I do not avoid what rises in my life and winter is always hard on my soul. It is hard for some of you too. I know you are out there...my gentle readers!

That said, I have been thinking that I need to put something humorous or controversial here to give you and me a breathing space. Life is ridiculous in much of its unfolding and holds plenty to laugh about, but I warn you that my humor tends toward the absurd.

Anyway, this is the only funny thing that has brought me a chuckle in the last day or so. And I like it because it is SO not female, and I don't get it and yet it somehow tells me about my menfolk. So here is the story:

My grown son is embarking on a new experience - doing his own mechanical work on his car, in our garage. A good friend - mature man, fairly skilled mechanic, lovely human - has joined him as a mentor for this task. What used to look like a car now lies like a dismembered body over every square inch of the cold garage floor.

Our mechanical friend has three absolutes about fixing cars:
1. It will cost more than you think.
2. It will take longer than you think.
3. You will lose some of your progress in sanctification doing it.

So we are prepared for all three.
The first real problem comes in getting the old thing-ma-bob off the hoos-ee-whats-it. (Here is where my mechanical expertise becomes evident.) For a long while both men wrestle together against the rust and corrosion locking the bolt. My son, his arm torqued and stuffed into the mess of metal and belts and oil finally feels the bolt and nut slip.Suddenly - and victoriously - the bolt loosens.

There is a great cry of victory. I hear my son yell, "Ho HO! We did it!" Then, "I'm getting an erection... Is that normal?"

To which the mechanic says, "Absolutely!" And they proceed to work.

And I laugh. Because men are such a different kind of animal and I love my men. This is about being human, too.

A Series of Epiphany Posts on Being Human: on pain

2011-01-25T06:33:00.000-08:00

When did you last have so much deep emotional pain that your whole body sobbed? What has hurt so deeply that you curled up into yourself and released uncontrollable weeping? Have you ever climbed into the back seat of your car because it is the only place you can be 'off the radar' and hidden there (with buckles and lumps hurting your body) let emotions take over your whole self?When have you felt utterly alone in your pain? When has your physical heart ached because of a broken emotional heart? Do you know the experience of a cyclone of agony ripping through your body like a dam break of water down a cliff, wrecking its destruction? Have your eyes been swollen shut from crying? Has your head pounded and your joints ached from the crush of sadness? These are human experiences.

I look back over my life and see them like burning bushes: the ripping birth of a child's body from my own; folded alone in a rocking chair after hearing my gramma has died and I am 2000 miles away from anyone who knows or cares about her; standing beside my mom's death bed after a frantic day of flying from one location to another with Steve finding me flights just as I was able to make them. And well, yesterday.

Where do you go when your heart is breaking? Where do you go to wail and sob and not look like you're coping, for just a little while? It is hard to be a human, sometimes. And the hardness can pile up until something happens that crumbles our strong defenses and the hill comes down. (Could we establish weeping tents where a person could go to weep away their pain? Since we are imagining, these would be stocked with chocolate and pillows.)

In l995 I found myself in Korea on a prayer mountain. The weather is bitter. Drizzling rain, fog, cold that goes into my bones. The mountainside is set up as a prayer walk. [I will not go into the long story of my walk on that mountain - but just jump to this point.] I climbed forty (the number signifying a whole life) uneven steps hewn out of a side of a cliff to arrive at a natural cave about 20 by 20 ft. In front of the cave is a space of grass, maybe the size of an average kitchen. Inside the cave near the back, hidden in dank moodiness is a huge raw rock, over which a life-size statue of Jesus is positioned, his body thrown onto the rough surface and his face and hands distended in pain and tears. I am in Gethsemane. I am utterly alone.

I huddle at the edge of the cave, looking out, watching the rain fall with a sense that my very bad perm is becoming a mighty snarl - feeling biting cold in my bones and growing awareness of the awful pain in the scene behind me. My own soul feels utterly torn with my own pain, my own mountains of wound and sadness crushing any ray of light from my sky. The setting is an exact picture of my own condition.

Suddenly I realized that the weeping Christ deep in the cave is not just weeping for himself, he is weeping for - and WITH - me. Hot rushing presence sweeps over me, and my tears become wrapped in presence. Eventually I am calmed with the joy of being loved and I step out onto the dangerous slippery grassy ledge with no barrier to a rocky fall, and I lift my hands and dance with God. [I think dancing with God must be dangerous - the setting has so many insights to disclose.] I feel like a little kid dancing with my feet on the feet of my big daddy at a wedding.

Yesterday I felt the same identification with God - heard his weeping on the cross, the utter pain of all being torn away. Today I am coping with swollen eyes and aching joints. I feel like I was working yesterday, moving boulders. I ache that way.

Being human means having deep places of pain. There is no way around it.

Copied from my woman's blog -

2011-01-21T08:50:00.001-08:00

Metamorphosis
Krissi Thursday, January 13, 2011

A large lady
in a black bathing suit
bends at the her non-waist,
tucks short hair
into a rubber cap,
straightens,
approaches the surf.
A timid June bug,
an ostrich past her prime.
She frowns.
First one foot, then the other,
she enters the ocean.
The waves take her.
Grown small
she begins to bob.
she pirouettes, sashays,
does the locomotion.
Round and lovely,
she is light as helium,
graceful as God.
Seagulls applaud.

--Nancy Thomas from The Secret Colors of God (Nancy is a missionary in Bolivia from my church back home in Oregon)

A Series of Epiphany Posts on Being Human: when life is too much

2011-01-20T06:25:00.000-08:00

"Today was too much for me, mom. I'll tell you about it on my commute tomorrow."(Rachel at a local homeless food kitchen.)

My daughter has a new full time work position. She is stepping out of running the home and caring for family things and working part time to join the full time work force.

Her email this morning makes me deeply sad. The words, "today was too much for me" describes so many of my days too. Those days come about too often when a woman would love to pull a quilt over herself and hide from the world for a while, too tired and pressed to even see the future, but no! she must soldier on.

This is the life of many women in our culture. That my comments are about women is simply that I know this journey personally. I fully acknowledge that men have heavy lives too, but maybe it is a different heaviness.

My daughter has been a pastor's spouse all her married life. She is now a partner in church planting. If you haven't been in this place you have no idea the weight this is. She does not have the option of 'caving' and ignoring her world. She does not have the option of strings of days alone caring for her own concerns - engagement and care for others presses in relentlessly. I have seen her grace and willingness to live this kind of life. But on days when work is enough to wipe you out, and it is followed by family demands, people concerns and long evenings a person can become profoundly weary.

Every woman has her own particular loads. I watch women around me: friends, co-workers, women I pass casually. I know women who carry burdens that are crushing. Single moms working two jobs and still trying to give their kids enough of themselves. Women nursing aging parents, balancing needs and demands with hardly one space to care for themselves. A life like this has no end in sight - no way out of the storm.

I have no way to help my daughter. If I hover over her and lament and sigh she will feel like she has to make me better too. I don't want that. I can't make even one of her choices. I can't ease her body or her spirit. I can't help her get a nights uninterrupted sleep. What I do is pray for her, love her and when ever I get an idea of how to support her, I do it.

But lots of women don't have this support. Women are often at the top end of the care cycle and no one above or beside them is watching over their lives. No one paying attention. And as women age the dangers increase. Without the love of a family (biological or otherwise) a woman faces serious isolation. The qualities that typically attract people to women - beauty, sass, joy, etc - are not evident. Beauty is hidden inside a sometimes crumbling house. Only love can see it.

So today I want to say to my woman friends that I see you. We are not so far apart, you and I. Women know. We know and we need to radiate that knowing across parking lots, into the car next to us at a stop light, to the woman checking out our groceries - just a human moment of unity and knowing.

And if you can think of something that would gentle the life of a woman you notice (and maybe love,) do it. Even something small.

Because women are fighting for the next generation of the human race.

A Series of Epiphany Posts on Being Human: on reading

2011-01-18T06:47:00.000-08:00

I am going to get this quote wrong. But let me try. Benjamin Franklin (now...it might have been him or someone in his category of person) said "the saddest man on earth is a man who is lonely, in the rain, and can not read."

The thought of being pitiable because I cannot read immediately connects with me. Someone said we read so we know we are not alone. True. I think that is true. But I also read because it is an invitation into a larger universe. Have you stopped to consider the wonder of being able to reap, not just your own thoughts and growth, but the thoughts and growth of other human persons? When I read I am living inside someones formation, their invisible self.

Reading has been essential in my own journey to me move beyond the weights in my soul. These weights take up psychological space (my unprocessed and sometimes even unknown hurts and wounds,) spiritual energy (practices to which I feel obliged that do not bring life,) and create theological lumpiness (images of God that are distorted and actually keep me from loving and being loved by Him.)

Transformation is foundational to spirituality. If we are not being transformed, we are not living a spiritual life. Reading has fueled my transformation on many levels. Think about it - novels show me how other people dance and stumble and choose - what the possibilities are. Written prayers school me on how to meet with God. Books train me, inspire me, discipline me, make me furious, comfort me in sorrow, fill me with beauty. Reading is faux silence, full of every possible sound.

I remember reading "The English Patient" when we were in Hungary leading a retreat. I read through the nights in an unheated cabin, a quilt pulled over my head, my nose peeking out for breath, cold and red. The story took over my reality, (it is quite different than the movie, my inspiration to read the book.) When I finally turned the last page, finished, I began to sob, deeply. I had no other way to let out the emotion and deep radiance of the story. Steve mumbled from his cot across the room, "Are you crying? Are you okay?" I couldn't stop, just sniffled out, "It is so beautiful."

Without shared meaning like this I would hardly be human.

A Series of Epiphany Posts on Being Human: on weather

2011-01-13T09:59:00.000-08:00

"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer." Albert Camus (I know. Albert Camus. Let it go.)

I have a lot of winter in my heart. And if I am not mistaken, you do too, or at least most of the people around me seem to be trudging a little more than usual. Do you think this is the condition of us old folks, or are our kids feeling this too?

To let myself 'be controlled' by weather seems to trivialize my work of character development. But let's be honest. The world around us - our physical environment - is part of our formation field, and we are affected by it because we interact with it in a very immediate way.

Weather also holds meaning for us. When I was ten my family had a hard year and we lived the winter out in a big drafty house with no heat and no furniture to speak of. Six kids slept on a mattress in the second floor bedroom (like finches in a nest) and in the morning I would grab my clothes and run into the kitchen to dress in front of the stove which had been heated up and the door left open.

I thought, that winter, that we would likely all die. I still feel that way when the weather is extremely cold. I don't THINK it - that would be silly. I know we won't (likely) die from cold. But I feel it... that flimsy unsteady stomach flinch that sends a signal of distress to my hippocampus. (Take note of where hippocampus is - you have one too.(I learned that in Psych class... be impressed. But it doesn't help the feeling at all:-)Winter was lodged in my soul as a perilous time.

Maybe you spent your winters racing around on a snow mobile and later in warm cozy kitchens with laughter and hot chocolate. Winter would then contain quite different meanings for you.

Prayer has been a gentling process for my wintered heart over the years. There is, indeed, an invincible summer in my soul. But it shares space with encroaching winter gray. My guess is that this will always be my experience of winter... and I am a woman of very many winters. The best response I think is to own it and keep a quilt handy. A quilt and chocolate.

Because my humanity needs comforting.

A Series of Epiphany Posts on Being Human: what I am seeing

2011-01-12T09:15:00.000-08:00

When I decided to do this series I was asking myself what my human life means. I am always seeking wisdom and trying to poke around what is false in me to gain a glimpse of what is real.

Upon reflection on what I am writing and what I have still to write, I think the most important things are these:

... Our humanity was never meant to be tamed. Oh, unquestionably it needs to be transformed, but transformation is not about stifling the freedom and richness of what is surely a ragged vivid experience. All our lives are ragged and vivid, you see, but we can come to believe they are best when lived out of conventionality - doing the right thing in other people's eyes, getting 'A' on every test - even if it means denying our own values, pretending to be okay when we are not, judging ourselves without tenderness - I could go on.

... Anything that denies our true experience reduces us as persons. When we hurry people to solutions and answers and force them into strange deformed ways of being completely wrong for them, we are acting against God.

God is always inviting us to become what he dreamed us to be. He is not worried when we are not 'victorious.' Instead of judging us, he just joins us in the journey through our vast and ordinary complexities, because, (though we often forget this) he remembers that we are dust.

... When a person cheats their own life by not embracing and living (joyfully or painfully) what is, they become an 'empty suit.' Just a set of clothes. It might be a very nice suit, but not alive. Alive is a big mess.

(I saw a short bit of Oprah yesterday interviewing a couple that had three toddlers killed together in a car accident. The parents described coming home to all their children's things, their beds and clothes, but no mess, no tumble, no noise, no fights. The MESS is precisely that which signifies the beauty and potential. The mess is a sign of our humanity.

As I ponder my own very human experience of life (which is just as complex and confusing as yours is) I feel my fear level going down. What can happen in the real world that can separate me from the love of God? Can fire? The sword? A bad day? A bad moment? Can someones opinion do that? Can bad hair or ill timed flatulence? Can unemployment? Or the loss of a friend? Or even a father?

The love of God is the source of our value as a person. And the love of God comes free and remains in the middle of all that is human about us.

And for me, that is pretty much everything.

A Series of Epiphany Posts on Being Human: on doing what we should

2011-01-11T12:27:00.000-08:00

Sunday,July 26, 1896 from the journal of Lucy Maud Montgomeryauthor of "Anne of Green Gables" and wife of local parish pastor.

"I suppose I must go and get ready for evening service - somewhat against my inclination for I was out this morning and I honestly think once is enough to go to church on any Sunday.

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest but in reality it is as hard worked a day as any in the week. We cook, eat, and wash dishes galore. We dress with weariness to the flesh and tramp to church in the heat, sit a long and mostly dull sermon out in a stuffy pew and come home again not a whit better than we went - not as good indeed for we have got a headache and feel very vicious for our pains.

I have an ideal Sunday in mind. Only, I am such a coward that I cannot translate it into the real, but must drift on with the current of conventionality.

But I would like to go away on Sunday morning to the heart of some great solemn wood and sit down among the ferns with only the companionship of the trees and the wood-winds echoing through the dim, moss-hung aisles like the strains of some vast cathedral anthem. And I would stay there for hours alone with nature and my own soul."
__________________________________________________________

Steve and I began our pastoral work in a small church in Stony Plain, Alberta in l981. Aside from our two weeks of holidays a year we participated in an evening service every Sunday evening for the seven years we served there. I can tell you that this rhythm of evening services, while I attended them with grace, was daunting.

Think three kids. Sunday morning starts early. We leave the house before nine and come home around one. Dinner is ready to go because I set it to cooking before I left. I learned tricks. Did you know that if you put a big pot of potatoes on the stove and bring them to a boil, and then shut off the heat leaving the lid on, the potatoes will cook themselves? When you return four hours later they are ready to mash. And did you know that if you accidentally turn on the 'clean' program instead of the oven you can reduce a roast and bone to just, well, a bone?

We usually had company for dinner. It was the way of the community. Usually also, the company stayed all afternoon through the headache hour, and returned to church with us in the evening. That meant I would clean up a large meal and later root around for adequate snacks for a hungry mob before church - maybe grilled cheese sandwiches or home made pizzas. It was a day of much work.

The evening service was not always (usually) very good. And then we would haul the kids home and put them to bed. Having guests drop by after church was also common, and they would sit and wait while we got the kids to bed.

You can't have too much of God but I have to agree with Lucy that you sure can have too much of church. Creation is also a revelation of the divine, and time in nature heals my soul. I once had the cheek to say, publicly, that if I get to heaven and it is like church I am going to ask to go somewhere else. Maybe a finer tuned soul would think of it differently.

But I am only human.

A Series of Epiphany Posts on Being Human: on moments outside the box

2011-01-09T06:20:00.001-08:00

Eleanor Roosevelt is a hero of mine. I have read her writing and biographies about her life and I admire her quite completely. She was not beautiful but she was smart. She navigated her life with class and wisdom and impacted not just her nation but the world.

At the same time in history another intelligent woman was gaining reputation as an entertainer. Gypsy Rose Lee was a stripper who, they said, left on more than she took off. She was really a comedian, and had brilliant wit and intelligence. Gypsy Rose Lee and Eleanor Roosevelt were considered, simultaneously, the two most influencial women in the world.

It is reported that on one occasion Eleanor sent Gypsy Rose a friendly telegram that read: "May your bare ass always be shining."
There is something about this that charms me immensely. I think it is simply that Eleanor did not lose her humor or her ability to respond in an utterly human way to another person, despite the status and weight of responsibility she carried.

Charm, to me, is the ability to respond appropriately and yet with unexpected depth of human connection. I want a life that is noble and wise and has influence. But I also want to be able to send a few telegrams of my own.

I guess it is just because I am human.

A Series of Epiphany Posts on Being Human: on the middle places

2011-01-09T06:18:00.000-08:00

"Time to get out of bed and resume the suffering."
(Quote from a depressed cowboy on Prairie Home Companion, Jan. 8/11)

I heard this said in a radio skit and laughed out loud. The irony was not lost on me at all. Most of life happens in the middle spaces, as several writers have phrased it, and those middle spaces can drive us nuts.

N.T.Wright, theologian, points out that the Christian creeds omit any mention of Jesus' life between the miraculous beginning and redemptive passionate end. And because we do not know what else to do with his life, we reduce it to 'an example,' and finally a red rubber WWJD bracelet.

Well, my life has some amazing moments: joys, healings, divine interventions etc. I think I have had more than my share of remarkable, if not momentous events. My experience of finding Mark will always be a highlight of my life. My mother's death and the month following it was so focused and human I still taste it in my mouth. I think most of my remarkable times hold sorrowful suffering and outrageous joy in tension - and certainly have been dosed by love. LOVE! Big Love.

But the reality is that more of my life is ordinary, mundane and middle bound than those bigger things. Every day begins around six, includes Special K, the news (often bad), a choice of clothes, a battle with hair, a list of things to do and lunch in a bag. My life moves around the same people, the same corners, the same physical challenges and the same routines day in and day out. Routines cannot really be said to be suffering.It is just that routines are so ordinary and repetitive they can wear out my soul while they wear out my boots. By their very ordinariness they become a weight.

Maybe the problem is that these long periods of time hide their meaning from me. When I was a young mom with three babies at home I used to sometimes lament that 'I had no reason to get up but to get three kids up who had no reason to get up.' Oh the birth was profound: celebrations, transformations, blessings - and then work. Oh the work. My work sometimes seemed so meaningless - a routine of wiping and feeding and cleaning and then doing it all again. Meaning got washed down the toilet with the diaper rinse.

So I am talking about the journey. The journey is often not exciting. But it matters, it very much matters. On the journey I am being shaped into a certain kind of person, depending on how I respond. Someone said that life doesn't happen to us. We happen to life. On the journey the new is still emerging, but in a quieter, gentler way. The journey through the middle matters. It just sometimes pulls me down.

So on this January day I am simply owning the drag of the quotidian (everyday repeated things) and lifting my eyes from the stony path. Because life is an amazing miracle even when things are impossibly ordinary and the treasures of middle spaces are found in the nooks and crannies, not at the tourist attractions and rock concerts. I am going to go slow when the going is slow, and remember to smile.

Because it is all part of being human.

A Series of Epiphany Posts on Being Human: on fathers

2011-01-09T05:34:00.000-08:00

My father has arranged his life in such a way that to sustain it he must reject the family he helped create. One result of his choices is a deep estrangement from me and one of my brothers, an estrangement that has now been reaffirmed by him with a fair level of hate and cruelty, no doubt fueled by shame. Being as I am unable to process this by taking my three days of paid time off to attend his funeral (since he is only mostly dead) I decided to write something about my human experience of loss of father. (I am not seeking sympathy, please. I am just thinking out loud and maybe you will resonate in your own life.)

The need for father-love is primal. Even an absent or wicked father doesn't kill the father longing inside me or those I see around me. I don't know if this is universal (I expect it is tied to our need for God-love) but I am guessing it would take a fairly violent series of experiences to finally crush it. I do not crave my father's attention or his particular form of presence in my life which has never been life giving. In fact, I could say I am finally just walking away from a painful and bad thing. Except that my inner self feels flimsy and the powerful suction of depression is pulling at my soul.

So I will not talk about the experience of all of humanity, I will only talk about the experience of being a particular person in this situation. As a middle child I have always felt responsible for the success of my father and for his rarely achieved happiness. (I found out recently that my kids have called my dad "sad Grampa" for years.) Letting go of this inner compulsion to protect is not easy, even if it was a burden.

I have always had heightened ability to perceive the emotions and underground currents of people/groups. I knew when things were not okay and spent my life trying to right a tipping canoe. Letting go my grip of the sides of the canoe and the weight of all that is in it might be freedom, but it might also be a possible swamping. On the other hand, a swamping means release from the canoe as a vehicle. Maybe that is the gift in this - not just survival but actually moving to a whole new way of travel, via swamping. (Is this what baptism really is?)

I cannot immediately move from "my father is no longer my father" to "God is my father." Both of these are flimsy to me now. I know this is my 'religious obligation' but it is my spiritual obligation? In a time of grief must I jump across the trauma of my life into the arms of God or can I travel on foot with a limp in that direction? In no sense am I removing God from the equation.

I am simply being human.

wisdom

2011-01-04T05:16:00.001-08:00

In April I will be leading a spiritual retreat for women in my home city of Calgary Alberta. I am particularly delighted to be invited to this task because of my many close relationships in Calgary, as well as a long standing respectful relationship with the retreat center there.

My communication with the retreat leader includes, of course, travel plans. The group is inviting me to choose my own flights (a necessity for me) and offering a generous budget. In return, I assured them I would choose the most efficient flight.

The leader responded with this: "We appreciate your wanting to find the lowest airfare, but having as few plane transfers/stops as possible is a priority. We also want you to have an enjoyable time getting here and returning. A friend just reminded me that one of the goals of the weekend is to have fun, so please ensure your travel arrangements do not make the trip onerous."

A response like this is rare and beautiful. It is stunning in it's rarity. This group is not flush with money, but they are choosing for life. I feel the respect and love that motivates this kind of generosity.

The response of the team to my travel needs is formational wisdom. In a moment they take the burden of expediency off me and restore a profoundly free and honoring sense of lively humanity. I love it, particularly in light of the fact that the content of the retreat is human formation.

Thank you Pauline.

for Steve

2011-01-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

"Ash Wednesday"
by T.S.Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice.

______________________________________________________

I love you hon, just as we are, together. We are one. And we are two. And in our difference there is laughter. And in our sameness there is peace. I do not hope to turn again, but rejoice in what we now construct. Happy New Year.

...who comes into a life...

2011-01-01T19:09:00.000-08:00

In my reading of Robert Kegan I read this, "Who comes into a person's life may be the single greatest factor to what that life becomes."

We are not our selves all by ourselves. We are part of a moving river of relationships, moments, interactions and gifts.

I do not do 'New Year's resolutions' anymore, but if I did I might reaffirm that I want to be a person who adds life to every person I encounter. I don't see how this can be possible. Even in one day my way seems crowded with hoards.

A memory comes to me, though. I am at an airport. I am nervous about an upcoming ministry in a strange city. My eyes scan the crowd of faces, every single one a stranger. But in the scan I lock eyes on a man, an ordinary man, who in a second offers a smile that cuts across the room and lodges in my anxiety like a sugar cube dropped in a cup of coffee. The smile seeps out into my nervousness and I relax a bit. I go my way to the meeting.

Later I see that man again, from a distance. He is going through a door at the church which is my destination. He is the speaker for the men's group - we had not met before and had not seen pictures. We were never actually introduced. I don't remember his name. But if a moment like that can produce a radiant spot of peace in me, maybe we can radiate our love further than we imagine.

people all around

2010-12-31T08:12:00.000-08:00

I am ending the year with a collage of faces that are unexpected and which affect me deeply. Laura is a large woman, probably forty five, no coat, trudging down Hwy 27 on her way north. She has mental illness, and religious delusions. A voice has instructed her to 'go north.' Very bad advice, considering the weather. So she lumbers north on the highway, with no destination in mind and no resource. There is no warm home waiting for her, no friend wondering where she is (apparently - I hope I am wrong.) She cries and mumbles prayers as she goes.

Ashley is 25. She has two young children, ages 2 and 4. Two weeks ago her husband beat her so severely that she has been crippled in her back, tense with pain. She too is trudging up Hwy 27 without a coat. She says she is going to Georgetown, stubbornly making her own way - she will walk. She is carrying a small square box that contains a carton of cigarettes and a few personal affects. Her mother is stoned on drugs and has just kicked her out of the house, her last refuge upon release from the hospital. She does not have the health insurance to pay for her needed surgery. Christmas has been hell. The children are with their grandfather. She is also crying. She prays every night in desperation.

And then there is the woman who cuts hair, today with too few customers and too much debt. She wears a brave and positive face, but has spent Christmas at war with her second ex husband who attacked her in November. They have been to court already, without much sympathy from the judge. She has just read The Shack. She wonders if she could know a God like that who would not judge her. God - or maybe a man - this is what she needs. She has signed up on a dating site and is choosing her profile picture.

This is my town, 2011.

a Christmas Miracle

2010-12-23T14:48:00.001-08:00

"Think of it this way," my friend said. "My dumbness has hurt lots of people. If God can use my dumbness to make someone feel happy, I think that would be a great thing."

It happened on Christmas's eve's eve. I had declared the day The Day of Marilyn. I told my men that I needed a quiet day. A day of peace and thought to still my soul before all the Christmas hullabuloo. So when the day started I prayed. I prayed that God would show me how to use my day. That God would unfold what might be good for my soul.

I began by driving to my office to finish up a small project. When I got there I was surprised by an e-message from a friend - and on it was a piece of scripture. I printed it off and stuck it to the front of my car so I could read it now and then during the day.

Second, I mailed a box to my kid in Indonesia and then thought to call a dear friend and have a light lunch together. I had been promising her forever, and I love to be with her. She was delighted and we chose simply - Appleby's soup and salad combo.

Lunch was average. The service was non-descript. When the bill came, a mere $17 something. I said I would pay. I pulled a twenty out of my purse and then added four ones. I thought, this is Christmas. I will be generous. How generous I am!

The waitress came back with the folder and change and I said to her, "Oh no, I don't need change. It is for you. Merry Christmas." Silly me. The waitress said, "Really?" I said, "Of course. It is for you. Enjoy." Enjoy your $6.82.

She picked up the folder and held it to her breast. "Thank you!" she said. "This has never happened to me before. Thankyou!" I felt confused, and started getting that sick kind of feeling in my belly. Hmmmm.

I didn't want to say anything much to my friend so I just kept on conversing. The waitress came back and knelt by our table. She said, "Really, I want to thank you. You don't know what this means to me. It has never happened to me. I can really use it."

[This was clearly not the time to say, "Could I just check that change again?"]

I knew now that I had put something in the cash that I was unaware of. I was desperately trying to figure it out while smiling and looking calm and cheerful. I didn't know what to say, and what I said was kind of dumb. "Apparently God loves you." I smiled. Apparently.

After I took my friend home I looked at my cash and found that I had given a twenty and three ones and a hundred dollar bill. It was my grocery money. I looked out the window at the brown grimy snow. It had been a kind of 'forced generosity." Sitting buckled into my car, engine running, my purse spilled onto my lap, I started laughing. And i phoned a friend to tell her the story.

"If I knew that God had wanted me to do this," I said, "I would feel better. But I think it was just me being dumb." That was when my friend said the brilliant thing I needed to hear. "My dumbness has hurt lots of people. If God used my dumbness to make someone feel happy, I think that would be a great thing." Touche.