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.