Work

·      Marge Piercy's poem, “To Be Of Use” – Considering work

A  woodpecker works to find breakfast in a tree before me.  Beside the river, sandbars and a shallow remnant lie alongside each other.  Sparrows fall like leaves.  The air is silent.  “The thing worth doing well done” – preparing food, loving a child, choosing a word, painting what is felt more than seen, listening – is beautiful and true and necessary.  Her parting line – “the pitcher cries for water to carry and the person for work that is real” – speaks to me in a strong, clear voice of necessity, of exasperation at the premise of a wasted life, at the ways in which our culture advocates medication because disappointment is the assumed human norm.  When we have work to do, however, we can heal.  We find purpose.  The tiny head taps in rapid succession, cheeping staccato words to another close by.  The work is what it is – necessary for life, without lament or evasion.  He is wondrous fair – bright red head, black and white horizontally striped body, bright light through a blind.  He taps, chirps, taps, chirps.  Work.  Not workaholism, but work as legitimate and fulfilling.  Work as nourishing and necessary.  Work as cleansing and instructive.  My longing – our longing – for legitimate work is driven by a desire to create, to ease, to mend, to tend, to care for, to leave a mark.

Thresholds

My neglect of the work here is inexplicable; but as I, at last, consider why I took an unintentional sabbatical from writing, I see that this year was a challenge.  Someone special, who I didn't understand in the past, came forth again, patient and earnest, awaiting the right time.  As I heard my qualms and fears and truths tumble forth, I realized love for this man, someone who could actually return it and make my life better by being in it.  He asked me to marry him.  I accepted.  That commitment has given us the opportunity to explore an intimacy that makes real for the first time the promise of the Holy Spirit.  I am surprised each day that such a person exists, that as my confusion surfaces, it bursts like so many bubbles in a simmering pot.  The experience grows stronger and more elastic each day, that I might extend myself on his behalf to help and grow him, as I am grown through this loving.  Thank You.  I squeeze my eyes shut as I hold my heart open, a little bird caught in the wind.  He cups his hand around me, shielding me, caressing me, reminding me of his constancy.

I stand in awe of my sons, strong and tall and noble as trees.  They love and understand and reach for me even in my prickliness.  They strive and evolve despite the difficulty of the world and its ridiculous demands.  They are fine in a way I don't understand, and their origins are confusing...who switched my babies?  I do not deserve them, but am grateful beyond expression.  They love me so well.  Richard loves them, too.

My work is, as always, a beautiful gift.  I leave it in bus stations, in the backs of friends' cars, out in the rain, and still it gives back so much more than I give it.  Because there is so much of it, and because I now have a husband and son-to-be as well as my own progeny, the work and attention required precludes research or art-making.  I miss them both, realizing they need their time for my mental and spiritual health.

Richard goes to Afghanistan next week for five months.  I have always thought war was a part of the human path to peace through brutality, a poor substitute for real change.  He has helped me see that there's a little more to it than that, and that there are very real threats to our way of life - very real people who hate Americans enough to kill as many as they can, indiscriminately, and see it as a path to Heaven.  I have come full circle in my mourning it, seeing that he wants to go and needs to.  My challenge, in his absence, is to be a mother to his son who knows only that a mother figure would steal from her own children to satisfy her own greed.  I ask for grace to help my ignorance and fear.

My personal challenge is to do something about my own excuses - my own potentially detrimental habits, my own cynicism and sarcasm, my own rough edges, my own personal wars.  Until I do, my rhetoric is hypocritical and I pretend.

Shalom.

Dirt

My younger son and I bought vegetable and flower seeds yesterday.  We are planning a garden.  He has decided this is something he wants to do, along with his decision to participate more often in a homeless ministry through our church.  The metaphor still applies: the seeds he plants with each cup of coffee or hot cocoa he hands out with a smile and well wishes might some day begin to grow in that person.  I am in awe of this eleven-year-old, who helps me be cognizant of the state of my dirt.

Last night I had a long, somewhat painful, very beautiful conversation with my fifteen year old, who frequently flirts with suicidal thoughts.  We talked about control, and about the fact that even when you know someone can benefit from something you have to offer, that person doesn't always want what you've got.  And how determination, perseverance, will very often be the only thing we have to offer and the very thing that is most needed.  How often do we fail when we refuse to quit?  We broke through a layer of striated rock that was cemented when I left my marriage.  It has been difficult over the years to get around to breaking up all the rocks, which are really just compacted soil, so something worthwhile would grow.  Last night, when he hugged me and told me he loves me, I felt a lot of things loosen.

This has been the message in my life of late: is my dirt loamy and granular, or hard and cracked in random places?  In my work with students, another metaphor has emerged: when we can be at peace, without desire to control, our lives work in harmony with nature and we affirm life and its right to assert itself.  When we seek to impose our will on nature, and therefore on others, we are cruel and difficult and loathsome.  I want something I can't have right now, and though it hurts, I'm letting it go.  I feel better about that than if I forced my way into the situation, which I could easily do, and took what I want.  I feel the dirt loosening that had begun to grow hardened.  I feel my brow relaxing, my mind unknot, the tears washing my dirty face.  Rick's message today was to do nothing - to not seek to accomplish or control, but to just be.  To mind the gardens with which we've been entrusted.  The prayer that followed was about becoming close again to the earth - to feel its faint murmuring through my bare feet, to allow my mind to be taken up and away from me so that something worthwhile might fill the cobwebbed void it occupies.

I have no answers.  My heart hurts, so I guess that means I'm alive.  I have my tools and I'm working.  Sometimes I don't know why, but I'm working.

Shalom.

Elegy for DG

Heavy on your brow the crown sits

Wove of brittle shale tears shed by

Wretched sheep you shepherded.

Waist-deep in shards,

We wade.

Great, scarred paws sift deceits for the carbonless diamond,

Save trembling sailors whose ships have sunk,

Stand with the smokers in solidarity,

Singe and soil wings, broken and healed,

broken and healed,

to lift the dead weight of separation.

In a misty hayfield stands a grand, live oak,

a hive of curving, gnarled parentheses.

The swaying arms cradle whispered vespers like Spanish moss,

Billowing tiny words into the air.

They are singing.

As they fall, the words twine wreaths

Round our heavy heads.

The songs, old truths, gather in braids

From heartwood, deep beneath the rings.

Longing to root in a strange, noble trust,

The branches embrace us paternally.

As we gaze up, rain falls from a clear blue sky

And we are sent to walk the long road.

From a distance, it was not a pillar of salt the gift

But the drops, like prisms, lit by a ray

And the words, “All is well”

In our ears.

“Love is such a priceless treasure that you may redeem the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins, but the sins of others.  Go, and be not afraid.” 

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

The best thing is often the hardest to do.

My face is wet with tears because someone posted a loving note - someone who has had my class before, someone I managed not to ruin.  How does that happen?  To the writer, I'm humbled by your words seemingly unfit for me, and grateful you were kind enough to tell me I helped rather than hindered you.  I wish you peace in your long journey, wherever it takes you, warning you that being true to yourself is an often lonely but always worthwhile pursuit.  Please keep in touch and let me know how it goes.  And thank you for the grace you gave me.  It meant a great deal to me.

And the best thing?  That isn't what we want to do; it is the thing we avoid, that we are destined for, perhaps, that we're drawn to inexplicably.  The thing we put relationships and medications in the way of, and yet it seeks us, to our dying day it seeks us and is relentless in its murmurings of what's undone.  That nagging thing we fear because it is for us to do alone, and that's the last place we want to be for long.  And yet there it is, glorious and terrifying and waiting - always waiting, without sound, without tiring.  I am lonely right now, trying to look away from it.  But I know why I'm out here by myself.  It hurts, and I'm tired, but I'm not exhausted.  I've known this would happen for years, and now I finally believe that I won't ever get away from it.  No position, no amount of time, no person can remove it.  My job is to surrender to it, to allow it to take me into the words and the paint and trust in what happens.  It isn't up to me, anyway.  "If you're playing too small a game, you'll sabotage the game you're in just to have something to do."  Peter McWilliams.

Shalom.

In Memoriam

Today we celebrate the abbreviated life of David Gentiles.  I don't understand it, nor do I believe I won't see him again, arms folded across his chest, listening intently, bursting into animated gesticulation without warning. Surely during his memorial, fittingly on a baseball field, he will jump up from the stands and proclaim it all a farce, hugging everyone and laughing because we are all together.

What I do understand is that it is my turn to do those things myself that I depended on David for: the dirty jobs he shouldered without complaint, the attention he paid without tiring, the trials he endured alone.  It is now my challenge to step up and do as needs doing, to love as needs loving, behaviors I'm afraid of.


It is hard to say or see right now, but I somehow trust in shalom: all must be as it should be.

A lament

Someone beloved and critically important in my faith community was injured today, and lies in critical condition in an intensive care unit. It doesn't really matter the how or the why; the what sat in my darkened car with me as I returned home from a vigil for him, and I'm sure I'll find it waiting there in the morning when I go back.

To think of him is to think of sanctuary. He has protected me on more than one occasion. I had the privilege of teaching one of his daughters, the same clear blue light in her eyes that illumines his own (though I use "teaching" loosely here: Calla had everything she'd ever need when she came to me at 17). When he prays, knots loosen and problems resolve. When he speaks, tears spring from his eyes as life flows through him, unimpeded. We all see him as an angel, lover of baseball and flawed humanity.

My words are hollow. If prayer is presence, my heart is open and listening, Lord, and that hurts, but it is good. I lift him up to You. I lift up his family, his countless friends, his sacred, beautiful life.

Shalom.

Hope

A rainy, cool Sunday is drawing to a close. My elder son just woke up from a nap, sweetly asked for cookies and milk, and drowsily told me about some new videos I might like on YouTube. A week ago we were barely on speaking terms. Today, spontaneously, he hugged me and told me he loves me. No, he won't go to church, but he is willing to be a part of the family and try to make a contribution.

I don't understand all the workings of the human mind, but I'm beginning to see a few things more clearly. First, Rainer Maria Rilke was right when he said, "Be kind to all you meet, for we are all fighting a hard battle." We are, each one of us, and defending our ignorance keeps us from the vulnerability of learning a new way of thinking and behaving. Second, all the love we need is constantly surrounding us. We are taught, however, at some point in life that it isn't real by defective humans who themselves don't believe in it. We then shut ourselves off from that love and walk around with darkness clouding the lenses through which we look at the world. The fear caused by that cloudy vision makes us attack each other as a scared animal bites when frightened. We listen to others who are also afraid, who have agendas based on fear, and the situation grows to global proportions. But all that is needed is openness to the love that already exists. When we meet someone who has opened themselves to love, we sometimes allow them to dispel the darkness within us, too, until we become afraid again and close down. This openness transcends belief system and ethnicity and location and political affiliation and economic power.

I want to be open, and if I have to pry myself apart each day to do so, perhaps that is a good thing. I am grateful for this insight.

Shalom.

Faith

There's a groove that I get into, right or wrong, that leads me through the days of work and decisions and money problems and relationship issues so I can manage them, not so I can necessarily feel or understand them. I depend on this groove to keep my feet on the ground, so to speak, even if the ground is too soft to stand my weight for long. Things must keep moving. Perhaps the insupportability of my weight is partly what demands the forward motion.

Recently I realized that my parents are simply people I'm concerned about, not a pair of interested parties. The quilt my mom and I worked on for my bed will never see completion. Their system of addiction works for them; they acknowledge this functionality, and are fine with my objection to it. I am simply a small obstacle to their general groove. At first I was hurt by their choice of lifestyle over relationship. I now understand that to get to acceptance, I had to see how my groove and their groove aren't that different. I had to see them as they truly are: addicts, just trying to keep the balls in the air. I cannot condemn them for doing what best serves the working system, but I can choose to abstain from exposure to the system.

I can become as they are, or choose to maintain my freedom. The more difficult path is definitely the latter, but it is one I commit myself to again. Seeing anything binding as critical to my selfhood, as my parents view their addictions, is toxic. It seems, instead, that looking outward from the self into the doing of life is where the grace to stay free lies.

A pressing question

I spent yesterday afternoon with two different sets of people: some of the most wonderfully free people I know from our beautiful Journey IFC at Barton Springs Pool (along with a host of colorful, hot people splashing about in the emerald murk), and a man who has been both lover and friend (sometimes both) off and on for almost four years. All of these extraordinary individuals confirmed (affirmed?) the importance of freedom. They aren't waving flags, but they aren't anti-American, either. They are all artists, though, who remind me of the divine perfection that is brought forth through our cooperation with God. Through my specific cooperation--something I find ways to avoid sometimes.

Their unified message? Get out into the doing. Don't think too much (something I have trouble with). God works through me when I don't listen to the "form over substance" folks. I know my friends are right; when I close my eyes and let my heart speak, colors and shapes form that I haven't brought into the world yet, stories that need telling present themselves. My shaking hand is guided (albeit jerkily) toward communion with Christ, humble and tangible and holy as cedar wood. When I allow my "self" to dissolve into this truth, my agenda disappears, my divided self is healed, my comparison to others and its accompanying vanity or deprecation dissipates, and I am literally unbound from my humanness. So why don't I opt for that most of the time? I belive it is because I worry that if I do too much of that "artsy" stuff, I'll lose sight of the mortgage payments and the showing up on time, prepared, to teach my classes. But immediately another argument surfaces: would I not be a better instrument of God if I were open to Him in other ways? If I were truly willing, truly serious, about His taking over my life?

I have no defense, and Christ sits on the table, swinging his leg, smiling in wait for my answer.

Father's Day

I hear a lawnmower outside my window. I don't have any female neighbors who cut the grass, and all my neighbors have children (home or grown), so I'm guessing it's a dad out there doing it. It is part of the dad tradition, right? (When there is one in the house; my fifteen year old son and I do the lawn together, and I really like that arrangement).

What else is a dad tradition? Spending time with your children, the people who make you a dad? My ex husband decided it was okay not to see his sons today. It is just another day to him. I asked my fifteen year old about it; he admitted it bothered him a little, but that he'd see him tomorrow, so it wasn't a big deal. But I wonder, when his dad said in front of him that it was just another day and he didn't want to see them, how Isaac felt. I felt weird, and I can't stand being around their dad for very long.

I'm about to call my own father, hoping he is still sober (if I wait until six p.m., he probably won't be). I have forgiven him for the ways in which I have judged him a poor father, felt gratitude for the things he excelled in, and am trying to let go of the rest that I can't reconcile. God asked that we honor our fathers and mothers; absent is the "you're off the hook if they aren't good parents" clause in that request. I admit I have not honored my parents well. My resentment and anger toward them for serious abuse and neglect has lasted my entire life. But I change nothing by carrying that around; there is no moment belonging to my upbringing that is the least bit affected by my energy directed toward it. What can be done, now, is that I can parole them both; I can let them go and release all the stuff I haven't been able to reconcile, as it isn't mine and never was. My father constantly apologizes and justifies his past actions when I see him; he is amazed that I've turned out as well as I have. He can't stand it when I say, "It's all God," because he (a cradle Catholic) decided a few years ago that God is a crutch. He's decided fear is the better thing to believe in and has given his life over to it. I am sorry about that; I love my dad and enjoy our conversations now because he has accepted me as a "liberal." He even accepted my gay cousin and cried in awe when Barack Obama, a black man, was elected president. I hate seeing him afraid, telling me constantly about the worrisome things happening around the world, especially conspiracies. I am grateful I can now distance myself and seek understanding instead of becoming frustrated with his zealous attempts to convert me to his way of thinking.

So I need to grow a little more today, opening my mind and heart to this man who did his best. Isn't that all any of us can do in our shriveled, warped little ways? God bless those who are open, even those who had to be broken open. Like me.

Easter

So.  It is Easter evening, and the patterns of golden light on the wall are growing amber.  I have been with friends off and on all weekend, loving people who fuss over me and ask questions that make me think and who keep me moving in the direction of my dreams.  How did I get here, among them?  

The challenge in the message today at Journey is to live the Resurrection.  To honor the human being in everyone, including myself, get up from my tomb, and live the glory of God.  Put down the bag of rocks on my back that contains a grudge against my mom, judgment, who I think I am, where I like to keep Christ, excuses for not making art, wasted time and money, guilt used to justify self-deprecation and stuck-ness, the woulda-shoulda-whatifs that people my past, and most interestingly, my efforts to give my life and choices away to someone (or something) for safekeeping when they are too demanding.  If I leave the bag, what will I put things in?  Who will find it?  I find this embarrassing, to be without baggage.  It's like wearing a swimsuit indoors; it isn't me to travel with nothing heavy hanging on me.  But look at my posture!  And the smile on my face?

Is this taking control of my life, this living the Resurrection, the gift of seeing life beyond death?  Kierkegaard's explanation of those who drive and those who are driven around seems to apply.  I don't need to drive anyone around (except maybe my boys, and even that is limited to the physical act more often than not), but I must drive myself.  I always allowed others to drive me, suffering fairly constantly from car sickness, longingly looking out the window, until very recently when I decided I wanted to drive my own car.  A small, low-maintenance one. And I'm finally happy.  And now that I look at it, I anxiously realize there's no room for my bag of rocks when there are people in the car.

The rocks will have to go.  

Shalom.

Dating in 2009

So.  Since I only attract guys in their twenties when I'm out and about, I thought I'd see what is happening online.  I have some good friends who have fallen in love with guys they've met electronically.  I understand why--how could you beat the sifters they use to show you only people who've fit most of your desirables? There's no bouncer at the door of your favorite nightclub who would do that for you.

So.  The vulnerability.  The sweet angst, the pleas, the loneliness, the triumph over bad relationships or working too much, the wondering over how you begin again in your thirties or forties or even fifties, how to even get started at that age.  I've only been on two days and I've already received three beautiful love letters.  What do you say to that?  

And the posturing: I don't know what the ladies are doing because I'm not looking at them, but the guys have screen names like "stox" and "nupassion" and are mostly talking about their partnerships at law firms, their chiropractic practice, their body building routines, their love of football and scuba and dogs.  And then there are those, like my little brother, whose photos proudly display their tool belts and names like "Bobby" embroidered on the left shoulder of their shirts.  They are all in earnest, all unable to find who they are looking for because she's not at the bar, she's working, or she's afraid to sit in a bar alone (that's just sad, her mama would say) or walk in the dark alone, or she's tired and is having some dinner while she listens to her children's litanies about injustice on the playground and can I have money for this, please?  And I think the available guys are changing the oil or making Hamburger Helper or sausage wraps, reading the paper.  And, of course, checking their online dating site for interesting females.

I used to have a puritannical view of online dating, but I now think it is a compassionate, sometimes bitter, very often sweet look at how the indomitable human spirit is picking itself up after midlife trauma and seeing what might be possible in the newest phase of life.  And even I am hopeful.

Shalom.

Gratitude

As Spring Break draws to a sunny, windy close, the guys lying around in front of video games, snacking on miscellany, I'm weaving toward and away from the table laden with ideas belonging to so many people I love and am somewhat responsible for.  The part I hate about grading is not the encouragement and guidance part - it is assigning a grade to someone's thoughts (or lack thereof).  I can never get over that.  The great joy is having students write or come by to see me who have gone off to college, out into the world, and want to share something of their insights or changes.

Though nothing much has happened to me of import, I feel better, more alive, than ever in my life.  I gave up alcohol and shopping for Lent, realizing both can easily be stuffed in the space better left open that lies within me.  What has happened is, with this sobriety, I see my and other people's behavior in a new light.  I see how many things we use to distract ourselves from the fact that what is here, who we are, is all there is.  There isn't some place we're eventually arriving, there isn't some celebrity coming some day to knock on our doors and save us from boredom or aging, there is just us and our lives, right here and now.  I am the only one who can make my life worth living.  Much of that making has to do with my attitude toward the everyday - how I spend my everyday.  If my daily life is cluttered with people who are bored and looking for distraction, I find myself bored and looking for distraction.  If my daily life is viewed as a gift and I am surrounding myself with those who are actually living, doing things to help others and creating, who are awake and unmedicated, who cry when they need to and laugh when they feel it and deal with their humanness, I am awake and grateful for the pain and the difficulty and the joy and the confusion all at once.  I no longer need parenting or saving beyond what I am empowered and inspired to do myself.  I do need friends, guides, those who give me a reason to keep going, the surprising and perennial grace of God.  But I no longer feel the need to escape my life, no longer desire to be someone else in some other circumstances.  And I'm not sure there is a greater joy than the relief of putting down the burden that has plagued me all my life.

Shalom.

Feminine Energy

Wow, have I neglected this forum.  I must ask forgiveness.  Two students faithfully posted responses to my questions about writing, for which I have boundless gratitude.  So much love goes unrecognized, unrequited...

So.  A recent realization about something that was causing me pain ended in my making an unpopular decision and (by the grace of God) delivering it gently.  And it occurred to me how important and underrepresented feminine energy is in the world.  I'm not talking about the "drop dead gorgeous" 25-year-old who has no idea what's going on in the world but looks flawless (it isn't her fault - time just hasn't gotten to her yet) who receives all the attention.  I'm talking about the women who are mountains - those you simply must admire, who inspire love in you no matter how they look because they embody true strength, true beauty, true fortitude.  My neighbor is like that - milk chocolate skin, constant white guile-less smile stretched across her face, who hugs me when I'm sweaty and asks me over for pie when she sees I'm stressed.  She always takes the blame for our distance, before I can say anything.  Her figure is ample and her love is even more generous.  She is the center of a group of people who revere her without question because her back is straight and her word, true.  Vanessa is larger than any problem they may have, life or death.  She is holy and beautiful beyond measure.  Our culture cannot sell anything through her, so they don't try.

I am reminded frequently of this power that has nothing to do with our cultural sense of control or the sexual role in which girls are cast from an early age.  I am humbled by the number of girls, who I affectionately call "my girls," who look to me as a role model (though I am unfit in many ways).  I do what I can for them in my small way, encouraging them to choose something besides the playing of the "pretty" card or the "controlling siren" card, both of which lead to emptiness for the player and pain for the victim.  Instead, I remember boys I knew who were slain when I was virtuous, unable to stand in the face of holiness - the kind of holiness only women possess and the whole world is in desperate search of.  I did not wield this power when it became manifest in my life, but I remember stepping aside so it could be perceived by those who needed to see it.   Acknowledging my own need of it helps me understand how I might make more room for it in my life.  How blessed each of us are in our own ways.

Shalom.

Things

I have recently scaled back my role as a consumer.  I think this is a general trend, given that the economy is definitely tightening and people are starting to really feel the pinch of using mainly plastic money.  I look at the stuff I have bought in the past, almost all of which I did not need, and am amazed at how easily I am hoodwinked into consuming.  How it is our job, as the Story of Stuff implies (see the link), it seems, to contribute to the system and how it is un-American not to have new stuff.  I always admired those wise souls who bought well the first time - cars and watches and clothes and homes and shoes that they would keep twenty years (literally), that did not have built in obsolescence, that still looked good (and even dignified) as they aged.  Yes, they paid a lot for those things, but in keeping them, were more conservative than those of us who keep buying every season.  Most of us now simply go for what is trendy, as we are instructed to on the Television - the Deity must not be denied.

I feel really good about dropping out.  I like not knowing what is going on in reality tv, not having the eighties look about me now (what a decade of fashion mistakes that was!), about not buying the large size because it costs less per ounce as I won't ever use that many ounces, about not getting online and shopping because it grants uber-instant gratification.  

I also want to say that many people who have money and don't spend it look down on those who don't have money and spend it - the poorer people who want to look like they can compete with those who have health care plans and savings accounts.  I see the nodding heads, the contempt for the unfortunate many who weren't bright enough to choose a major in college that ensured an income level that would provide a big house and investments.  The only problem with those people is that now they are in industries that are expendable - the computer and software and giant plasma/HD television companies, the countless car and high tech sales people, the real estate folks.  Many now have stock portfolios that are worthless.  If people aren't spending money anymore, plastic or otherwise, on things they don't need, many of those people will lose their jobs.  And then what will they do?  Go to work for the folks they formerly found so far beneath them? 

Humility

It has been a long time: a phrase that works in several areas of my life.  Since I've written here (which, at one point, seemed moot), since I worked on my novel, since I really settled down and talked to God, no holds barred.  Since my dad was sober all day, since I was nice or attempted to make eye contact with strangers regardless of my mood, since I felt happy consistently.  

None of this is because I have trouble in my life; in fact, God has so richly blessed me that I often don't understand it.  I think I'm in the habit of being serious, an affliction I've had since birth.  Nothing was ever funny.  Anyway, I must have accidently been willed or delivered someone else's gifts, someone better's job (and students), friends, relatives, co-workers, boyfriend, children (in no particular order).  I just don't get it; I think I forget to smile, forget that work is just work and that is ordinary for lots of people, that my friends will either understand or they won't, that it is not my job to police the universe, that missing someone is part of loving them, that respect is something that is earned and paid, like money but infinitely more valuable, that it is okay for me to age (a big issue for any woman in this country), that I can laugh and not worry if there is food in my teeth or if I look ugly, that the distance I feel between my sons and me when I first see them after being with their dad is a part of the suffering we all still experience because I broke up my family, that I'm a thousand times better a mom and person since I did, that I can have perfect confidence that things will always be okay because they always are (but that is the hardest thing to remember), that God has a plan for me and Todd and my boys and even their dad, even my brother the meth addict, that any time I'm willing to say "I don't know," I am opening myself to life, that I really don't have to be perfect in any way to be lovable, that attempting to live according to my true beliefs is a worthy and difficult goal, that worrying that I won't always be able to keep all the balls in the air keeps me humble and clear in my understanding that I cannot make it without lots of help from all the people God uses to reach me in my incredible stubbornness. 

All I can say is, in the words of Anne Lamott, "Thank You, thank You, thank You."  All is as it should be - shalom.

Simplicity

I am returning from the Painted Desert that covers the northeastern corner of Arizona, northwards into Utah, and east into southern Colorado and New Mexico.  My mom and I spent time in the Sedona/Flagstaff area, Grand Canyon, and in the Navajo Nation, considering the beauty and simplicity of a way of life that is thousands of years old and was more advanced than anything Americans can currently imagine.

In reading about and experiencing the architecture and habits of these ancient people, I felt something akin to shame about certain mindsets I have: indulgence, ambition, grubbing for things I think I deserve, part-time belief in something greater than myself.  The Navajo and Hopi were (and are) whole people.  I am sure at least some of them want nice homes and nice cars, but they are content with the modest things they do have.  No longer are they innovators in building and design.  There are tires on their roofs to keep the shingles from peeling away in the wind.  Their cars are old and often have body damage.  Their clothes are simple and their hospitals are mobile homes grouped together.  They are proud of who they are, helping each other, speaking respectfully to the tourists who come to see the remains of the architectural marvels built by their ancestors.  They speak Navajo between themselves, pronouncing beautiful, dignified words I get lost in.  They have faces that are both strong and resigned, and if you look into their eyes,  you can almost see the mountains that are their lives.  I feel blessed to have been allowed to witness a thumbnail sketch of the vastness that is the Navajo, a people the American government was determined to wipe out.  Though they eke out a living selling jewelry and playing flute music available on cd and working at gas stations and breaking horses, nothing can defeat them.  Their spirituality transcends anything life can deal them, and they live it all the time, not just for an hour on Sunday.

I don't really know what determines who is in and who is out; the gene pool, the financial markets, the presence or absence of addictions, the presence or absence of confidence and self-knowledge all contribute.  Respect is another matter, however, and is something that can be given, recognized, and returned regardless of any other barrier.  It is universally needed, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral.  The Navajo reminded me of its importance, and the ease with which it can be given, through nothing more than a smile.

"Our hero is home!!" was written on the back of the maroon ellipse of a minivan parked in the bike lane, with all the other shitty cars that take over the bike lane every morning for swim practice.  Like they own the world.  But it was written in yellow (both my fave color and that famous hue of remembrance of absent military personnel) and had smiley faces all around it.  He made it home.  Thank You.  Please help him, and his family, with what happens next.

How would I feel if my boys were taken from me and sent to fight a war I completely oppose in a place that was home to millions of people who want to eradicate America altogether against an enemy that was entrenched and guerrilla?  I would never get over it, never be able to stop thinking about it.  And if they came home physically safe, that would be a miracle.  And what if they weren't okay mentally or emotionally?  My guess is that they wouldn't be.  The randomness of the violence there would be too much to bear, and something inside them would break.  Children are so fragile anyway, such lovers, such givers, such beautiful souls.  I don't know how they would survive without being hollowed out completely.  If they still had any intact self left, they might try to end things for themselves by wading, arms spread, into the line of fire  so the pain would be over and they wouldn't have to bring it all home with them, to relive for the rest of their tenure on this mortal coil.  It is heartbreaking how wrong war is, and how as I type those words, they fall as a tiny drop in an ocean of tears already shed over it.  Thus is the collective mourning of the soul of humanity, a lament the stars can hear. 

The door is still open...

Being in the near occasion of children is a precarious business.  They are notoriously trusting and forgiving, yet they often see through even the cleverest of adult ruses...even if they say nothing about it.  In the past three weeks, I've been privileged (and taxed) with responsibility for the writing improvement of students from a wide range of economic and cultural backgrounds.  I am not a patient person; I sound harsh sometimes when I say "I don't take shit off them," even when referring to my own boys, whom I love with all my heart.  But I think that is a good thing; children don't really want us to "take their shit," but it isn't our job to give it back, either.  Our job is to see through it - in fact, they want us to - and help them make sense of a better way of doing things without embarrassment about their need to learn.  I am just now fully grasping this concept, so please forgive my firm grip on the obvious.  That grip keeps my feet on the ground.

Some kids never find a voice that can be heard and respected.  It is instead lumped into a cacophony of other voices that are labeled a certain way ("athlete," "airhead," "Jesus freak,") and dismissed.  The kids behind the labels stop talking.  They stop writing stories about how they are afraid of the guy on the other side of the door or the weird shadow they see outside their window at night.  They write suicide notes instead, or they beat the hell out of someone who just looked at them wrong, or they tackle someone on the football field and put them in the hospital, or they become "funny" and verbally assassinate any idea (and the attached thinker) that contrasts with their own, or they just fold up and seal themselves away from scrutiny...and each of these misfit voices finds something arbitrary they can hold onto that they trot out when asked for a real, original opinion (something they've been taught isn't worth the risk), a substitute for the thinking they were convinced was irrelevant...and ridiculously money-motivated consumers are the mutations that result.  A user doesn't need to think - she just needs sources and resources.

I see the bright eyes of the girl who wrote "Cold Steel," about a girl getting got by a bad guy when she was simply enjoying cheese crackers.  I see the dumbfounded look on the athlete's face when he knew I'd actually read his argument and wanted to know how he was going to work out its defense and the answer to the "why I wrote this" question.  I see the flaming redhead, hiding behind her glasses, wielder of medieval wars in secret, longing to solve the problem of the War of Lies (which exists presently in reality and in her ancient realm)...and I'm in awe.  I want them to tell me how they hate the fact that whole communities exist by scavenging at landfills, suggesting ways in which to help the situation.  I want them to tell me how they love the turn of a phrase that makes all the difference, forged by their own hands.  I want them to see through their words that there is a reason why we must tell our stories - all of them, the fiction and the truth - because they lead us to understanding ourselves and others.  To know me is to love me?  Isn't that one of Steinbeck's profound, existential explorations in The Grapes of Wrath?   Stories lead us to common ground, words that are nondescript in thought alone, but poetic and life-affirming in the doing.  

It begins, as usual, with respect.