I was out walking early this morning, in an almost-drizzle. The sky was gray with pink, and the pale green on the branches overhead vibrated in the cool air. The maples were elegant and sophisticated in their red buds. Close to the ground rose-colored tulips and deep purple hyacinths sang earthy songs, romantic and fleeting. I walked on the sidewalk, next to fences, peering into backyards at flower beds and decks and children's toys left lying in new soft, spring grass.
A sunny morning tells a different story. Buds are blood-red, flowers regal and arrogant. Trees care for nothing as they burn nitrogen and emit CO2. May sunshine cares nothing for others. It makes its own joy.
But this morning's sky, with so many colors suspended in it, like a rainbow, just waiting to be called to life, could be the setting for any story, every story, whether of lament or contentment, restlessness or hard-won peace.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Pile up
Projects big and small are piling up. Some are started, though with short-lived enthusiasm. Many await the development of brilliant ideas. Most will require all-day, if not multi-day struggles, to move them along towards completion.
I fret, I fuss, I wonder what's wrong with me. I have a list, a long, scrawled list, but it's not helping. I've tried periods of chaining myself to the computer (i.e., sitting at the screen, typing whatever just to get something up there, knowing I can go back and fix it, wanting to get up, not getting up, finally getting up to visit the box of crackers in the kitchen; repeat).
It is a crisis of confidence: can I do all this?
It is a crisis of perfectionism: can I do all this and please myself?
It is a crisis of collaboration: can I depend on others to help me? And oh, gosh, can they depend on me?
Is it all worth doing? What about all the other things there are to do? And what about all this anxiety I feel? What about the waking up at night? And how I can't quiet my brain during yoga.
I write about it. I read what I write. A light bulb: time to cut back on the caffeine again.
Darn. I have rules about coffee. But I cheat.
I fret, I fuss, I wonder what's wrong with me. I have a list, a long, scrawled list, but it's not helping. I've tried periods of chaining myself to the computer (i.e., sitting at the screen, typing whatever just to get something up there, knowing I can go back and fix it, wanting to get up, not getting up, finally getting up to visit the box of crackers in the kitchen; repeat).
It is a crisis of confidence: can I do all this?
It is a crisis of perfectionism: can I do all this and please myself?
It is a crisis of collaboration: can I depend on others to help me? And oh, gosh, can they depend on me?
Is it all worth doing? What about all the other things there are to do? And what about all this anxiety I feel? What about the waking up at night? And how I can't quiet my brain during yoga.
I write about it. I read what I write. A light bulb: time to cut back on the caffeine again.
Darn. I have rules about coffee. But I cheat.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Warm and whining
Took a walk in the bright 5:00 p.m. sunshine, but the weather app on the phone says "33 degrees, feels like 25." My fingers are frozen, my nose is dripping, and the iPod is playing a jazz arrangement of "O Sacred Head" that is intensely sad.
It's an unsettled world, where what things look like, what they are like and what they feel like don't match up. I watch my kids try to define themselves in these uncertainties--one by asserting loudly that she is an adult now, the other by exploring philosophy and consciousness and his place in time and multiple dimensions of being. Somewhere between them you'll find me, trying to have some kind of a positive effect on them, trying to get through each day's necessary work, hoping to create a life where desire and doing come together happily.
So I walk. Because exercise is good for me. Because I've lost weight and walking will help to keep the weight off. Because usually the rhythmic pounding of my heels on the pavement smooths away the bumps in my brain and evens out the tense places in my heart.
The earth's tectonic plates have not shifted under my feet, as they did in Japan. I have not felt the waters of a tsunami rise swiftly around my ankles. There is no shooting in the street in my town, as in Libya, no humanitarian crisis. If I had to deal with stuff like that right in front of me, and not so very different from what it looks like, I might be a person who takes action.
But the things that drag me down, the things I could whine about--meetings to attend tomorrow morning, decisions about painting the house or investing in new windows--are much smaller. They are the problems of someone who is safe and secure in a warm home, with supper on the stove.
And yet, it's hard to know who you are, where you are, what you are, especially when cold winds make you feel trembly or rigid, when growing older leaves you feeling lonely, when you know you are not supposed to accept the wounded world as it is.
Or should you?
It's an unsettled world, where what things look like, what they are like and what they feel like don't match up. I watch my kids try to define themselves in these uncertainties--one by asserting loudly that she is an adult now, the other by exploring philosophy and consciousness and his place in time and multiple dimensions of being. Somewhere between them you'll find me, trying to have some kind of a positive effect on them, trying to get through each day's necessary work, hoping to create a life where desire and doing come together happily.
So I walk. Because exercise is good for me. Because I've lost weight and walking will help to keep the weight off. Because usually the rhythmic pounding of my heels on the pavement smooths away the bumps in my brain and evens out the tense places in my heart.
The earth's tectonic plates have not shifted under my feet, as they did in Japan. I have not felt the waters of a tsunami rise swiftly around my ankles. There is no shooting in the street in my town, as in Libya, no humanitarian crisis. If I had to deal with stuff like that right in front of me, and not so very different from what it looks like, I might be a person who takes action.
But the things that drag me down, the things I could whine about--meetings to attend tomorrow morning, decisions about painting the house or investing in new windows--are much smaller. They are the problems of someone who is safe and secure in a warm home, with supper on the stove.
And yet, it's hard to know who you are, where you are, what you are, especially when cold winds make you feel trembly or rigid, when growing older leaves you feeling lonely, when you know you are not supposed to accept the wounded world as it is.
Or should you?
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Joy to the heart
On Saturday at church we sang, read, remembered and liturgized over the ashes of Mike Meyer, my high school English teacher, friend, and fellow actor/director. And then those ashes were interred in the church's memorial garden, in a biting cold March wind. The gloom has not yet lifted from my heart.
Twenty-seven years ago, on this same date, March 12, we watched as my father's casket was lowered into the ground, while the snow blew around our heads and our feet sank into the frozen muddy grass. Such a long time ago, and I still feel his absence.
Sunday morning's sermon was like ice on a tooth with a cavity. One shock of pain, then another. This was not the preacher's intention. He spoke of couples rehearsing their wedding vows, tears pouring down the face of tough guy grooms. My husband and I said our vows right to each other, from memory, because we felt something that serious should not need prompting. But he is gone now, too, and there is no one to remember that with me. The pastor went on to speak of other tears in church, poignantly. More pain hitting home. I had my phone in my hand, because I was texting the teens to find out if they'd made it to church. I wanted to throw it--or throw something--at the pulpit. My heart, my gut--they were weighed down enough.
This being Lent, the sermon moved on to mortality, to rehearsing for death with Jesus. Yeah, no need to say more about that here. Christ died for us, we die with Christ. We rise again. It's a way of looking at our lifetime on this earth. It's a way of looking at each day. It's a way of walking through the valley of the shadow of death with hope not despair.
I looked out the kitchen window while making coffee this morning. The houses across the alley reflected the rose-yellow glow of the sun, tricked into rising later by clocks sprung ahead for daylight savings time. The living and dining rooms were filled with this same pink and pale gold color, as if the sky itself had crept through the trees and past the apartment buildings just for me, to bring me joy.
I think I will look for it again tomorrow morning.
Twenty-seven years ago, on this same date, March 12, we watched as my father's casket was lowered into the ground, while the snow blew around our heads and our feet sank into the frozen muddy grass. Such a long time ago, and I still feel his absence.
Sunday morning's sermon was like ice on a tooth with a cavity. One shock of pain, then another. This was not the preacher's intention. He spoke of couples rehearsing their wedding vows, tears pouring down the face of tough guy grooms. My husband and I said our vows right to each other, from memory, because we felt something that serious should not need prompting. But he is gone now, too, and there is no one to remember that with me. The pastor went on to speak of other tears in church, poignantly. More pain hitting home. I had my phone in my hand, because I was texting the teens to find out if they'd made it to church. I wanted to throw it--or throw something--at the pulpit. My heart, my gut--they were weighed down enough.
This being Lent, the sermon moved on to mortality, to rehearsing for death with Jesus. Yeah, no need to say more about that here. Christ died for us, we die with Christ. We rise again. It's a way of looking at our lifetime on this earth. It's a way of looking at each day. It's a way of walking through the valley of the shadow of death with hope not despair.
I looked out the kitchen window while making coffee this morning. The houses across the alley reflected the rose-yellow glow of the sun, tricked into rising later by clocks sprung ahead for daylight savings time. The living and dining rooms were filled with this same pink and pale gold color, as if the sky itself had crept through the trees and past the apartment buildings just for me, to bring me joy.
I think I will look for it again tomorrow morning.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
For Lent
For Lent, I will practice compassion. Or try to. Quietly, in my heart.
A while back I read Paul Knitter's "Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian." My previous knowledge of Buddhism came from a high school class in comparative religions. There would be a list of terms (Nirvana, the Buddha), main ideas, history, and a lot of how Buddhism is not like Christianity. The take-away: Buddhism doesn't amount to much specific. Knitter studied Buddhism, not as a scholar but as a practitioner, meditating, working with teachers, and found it opened his mind about Christianity, a mind that had become weary and bored and tone-deaf to decades of church language. He was a Catholic theologian to begin with, and now considers himself both Christian and practicing Buddhist.
One thing I learned from reading his book is that meditation and mindfulness in Buddhism are not for oneself and one's own navel. One practicies these disciplines for the benefit of the world. Compassion is rooted in meditation and quiet. Breath and spirit produce compassion and works of love.
So for Lent, I will work on mindfulness and quietness, and see what grows out of that. A bigger world, I hope. A bigger heart.
"I will arise and go to Jesus
He will embrace me with his arms.
In the arms of my dear Savior,
Oh, there are ten thousand charms."
A while back I read Paul Knitter's "Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian." My previous knowledge of Buddhism came from a high school class in comparative religions. There would be a list of terms (Nirvana, the Buddha), main ideas, history, and a lot of how Buddhism is not like Christianity. The take-away: Buddhism doesn't amount to much specific. Knitter studied Buddhism, not as a scholar but as a practitioner, meditating, working with teachers, and found it opened his mind about Christianity, a mind that had become weary and bored and tone-deaf to decades of church language. He was a Catholic theologian to begin with, and now considers himself both Christian and practicing Buddhist.
One thing I learned from reading his book is that meditation and mindfulness in Buddhism are not for oneself and one's own navel. One practicies these disciplines for the benefit of the world. Compassion is rooted in meditation and quiet. Breath and spirit produce compassion and works of love.
So for Lent, I will work on mindfulness and quietness, and see what grows out of that. A bigger world, I hope. A bigger heart.
"I will arise and go to Jesus
He will embrace me with his arms.
In the arms of my dear Savior,
Oh, there are ten thousand charms."
Thursday, February 03, 2011
February 3, 2011
A blizzard followed by sunshine has left me weary but cheerful. The huge piles of shoveled snow will complicate life for weeks. My shoulders will still ache tomorrow from yesterday's clearing of walks and driveway. The packed-down snow remaining in the driveway will ice over at some point in the next week or two; wheels will spin and it will take a couple rounds of reverse and forward to get going. But gosh, the sun has been out ever since the snow stopped. I had a nice lunch and a nice Harp's with my kids, plus Dan, the birthday boy. We've all been through a lot together. How good to celebrate snow day #2 over brats, burgers, beer and french fries.
Yet there are things I wonder about--things I've had time to wonder about in the last two days. Can those demonstrators in Egypt really change their government? So many thousands of people, assembled mostly peaceably, with reasonable expectations--yet will Mubarak's thugs and the ensconced elite prevail? The world watches, but what can the world do?
I'm reading "Year of Meteors," by Douglas R. Egerton. It's about the year leading up to Lincoln's inauguration. Fire-eaters in the South, fearful of the loss of millions of dollars of property in slaves and of their privileged position, pushed the debate to extremes. What was the North to do? There was no longer any way to agree to disagree.
Where would I have been in that debate? (Assuming it mattered at all where a woman stood!) Moderate and fearful? Wild-eyed and radical? One of those two--I don't seem to be wired for a reactionary. And I was more moderate when I was younger than I am now. But then everyone in America seems to be more one way or the other than they were twenty years ago.
Pray for peaceful change in Egypt. But change, nevertheless. Pray for clear eyes and sunshine after storms.
Yet there are things I wonder about--things I've had time to wonder about in the last two days. Can those demonstrators in Egypt really change their government? So many thousands of people, assembled mostly peaceably, with reasonable expectations--yet will Mubarak's thugs and the ensconced elite prevail? The world watches, but what can the world do?
I'm reading "Year of Meteors," by Douglas R. Egerton. It's about the year leading up to Lincoln's inauguration. Fire-eaters in the South, fearful of the loss of millions of dollars of property in slaves and of their privileged position, pushed the debate to extremes. What was the North to do? There was no longer any way to agree to disagree.
Where would I have been in that debate? (Assuming it mattered at all where a woman stood!) Moderate and fearful? Wild-eyed and radical? One of those two--I don't seem to be wired for a reactionary. And I was more moderate when I was younger than I am now. But then everyone in America seems to be more one way or the other than they were twenty years ago.
Pray for peaceful change in Egypt. But change, nevertheless. Pray for clear eyes and sunshine after storms.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Whoosh
A fat December fly, awakened by today's 50-degree temperatures, made weird shadows around the light fixture as I finished up my yoga routine, getting my back and sacrum lined up for standing around at tonight's new year celebration. I've been making resolutions today. Nothing momentous--quilt the quilt tops, get out more, try something new, keep the weight off--pretty much the things that are right there in front of me anyway, making decisions like that fly buzzing around doing what flies do.
David Brooks in this morning's New York Times writes about a book by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly titled “All Things Shining” that proposes that we moderns find life's meaning in "whooshes" or "whooshing moments," the feelings of insight or exhilaration that accompany peak experiences--sporting events, civil rights speeches, whatever greatness and transcendence we can hitch our ponies to. Many of the commenters found this to be meaningless. There's not rigor of thought involved, no coherence required, just an emotional high. And as Brooks points out, such highs can come from speeches by nationalist dictators as well as tellers of more complicated, nuanced truths. Heck, complicated truths probably don't score high on the whoosh scale.
I wanted to leave a comment myself, but the comments were closed by the time I read the piece. (I did enjoy the comment that closed with "How's that navel, David?") One thing I thought was missing was the acknowledgment that many of life's whooshier moments don't come out of sports or election victories or from encounters with great works of art or great men and women. They come from encounters with sorrow and grief, with violence and despair. I've watched many people meet serious trouble in the past year and those are the places where meaningless and meaning meet, where the boundaries between our world and God's kingdom are just vapors, where insight and peace come from being able to despair and have faith both at once.
I ate a piece of Lebkuchen on my way to the computer--a substantial chunk of cookie, sweeter because of the spices, more substantial in the mouth because of the almonds. Whoosh.
David Brooks in this morning's New York Times writes about a book by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly titled “All Things Shining” that proposes that we moderns find life's meaning in "whooshes" or "whooshing moments," the feelings of insight or exhilaration that accompany peak experiences--sporting events, civil rights speeches, whatever greatness and transcendence we can hitch our ponies to. Many of the commenters found this to be meaningless. There's not rigor of thought involved, no coherence required, just an emotional high. And as Brooks points out, such highs can come from speeches by nationalist dictators as well as tellers of more complicated, nuanced truths. Heck, complicated truths probably don't score high on the whoosh scale.
I wanted to leave a comment myself, but the comments were closed by the time I read the piece. (I did enjoy the comment that closed with "How's that navel, David?") One thing I thought was missing was the acknowledgment that many of life's whooshier moments don't come out of sports or election victories or from encounters with great works of art or great men and women. They come from encounters with sorrow and grief, with violence and despair. I've watched many people meet serious trouble in the past year and those are the places where meaningless and meaning meet, where the boundaries between our world and God's kingdom are just vapors, where insight and peace come from being able to despair and have faith both at once.
I ate a piece of Lebkuchen on my way to the computer--a substantial chunk of cookie, sweeter because of the spices, more substantial in the mouth because of the almonds. Whoosh.
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