reality check

Silence says a lot.  

Let's put it this way:  I wanted to write about the miracle of ordinary, and at first, a thousand and one things came to mind.   I wanted to tell you about all the ways I have come to believe in the holiness of flesh and blood, the glory of the incarnation.   I wanted to tell  you about e.e. cummings (how should tasting touching hearing seeing/breathing any-lifted from the no/of all nothing-human merely being/doubt unimaginably You?) and Gerard Manley Hopkins (The world is charged with the granduer of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil)  I wanted to tell you about how my heart was broken and healed, a hundred times over, by "the touch of the holy once more" (Annie Dillard).

My heart burned.  Words tumbled in my head, wrestling to come out first.  The idea grew grand. I will write a book.  This is a call from God.  It is a message to our nation - a call to simplicity of lifestyle during a time of financial crisis.   

I did not write them down, and as time passed, I felt the burning no longer.  I tried to resurrect them a few weeks ago, but they tumbled into a pile of dry bones.

Silence speaks loudly. In the past few months, ordinary life has been a bane, not a blessing.  The expectations placed on me at work have felt oppressive, and the work that awaits me at home has seemed never-ending.  Disorder breeds in cupboards, paperwork procreates while I sleep, dust bunnies multiply at an alarming rate.  It is a veritable flood of chaos. 

I fling aside my goal of a fit, trim body by summer. I toss my dream of writing into the pile of dirty clothes hanging from my grandmother's rocking chair.  I grab a bucket, and fight the chaos with all my strength. My bucket has a hole. It is a loosing battle.

This morning, my husband asks me to sit on the back porch with him and pray.  Prayer is the last thing I want to do.  I can't stop now. I'm in a battle against chaos. I've got to keep bailing. Got to keep moving.  I slump heavily into the chair next to him.  I cross my arms and scowl like a teenager.  Anne, you've got to find those papers today that we need to reapply for the kid's visas.  I snap at him.  I know. Don't tell me any  more things I have to do.  If you want to pray, let's pray.  He reads a Psalm. I look around and see that the grass is high from all the rain and needs mowing.  He prays.  I think how I have to move the apple tree I planted last summer to a new position. It is too close to the house.  It is my turn. I don't want to pray.  

I break my silence.  God, I'm not in a good place. God, I am tired of giving. Tired of serving. Tired of cooking and cleaning and vacuuming up animal hair.  I am tired of people.  I am tired of working.  Every where I look there is something or something that needs something from me.  I can't relax. I can't stop.  My heart is a dirty rag, reeking of anger and bitterness.  I can't change the things around me, or remove the things that need to be done.  But I can't live this way anymore.  Please change my perspective. Please change my heart.

Craig and I are very much alike.  We are both busy people, prone to do too much and take on too much.  As a result, life often feels chaotic for us.  We aren't very good at stopping.  After hearing me, my dear husband said, Anne.  I am going to tell you what to do today.  Right now, I want you to go for a bikeride for 15 minutes. And then I want you to come back and write.  I began to cry.  I don't want to stop. I don't want to go for a bikeride. I don't want to write.  But then again, I do.  I do.  I looked up, and there, on a nearby rope I had tied to keep the dogs from racing through my flowers, a beautiful yellow bird had landed.  Brillliant yellow, with a bit of black.  

I have gone on my bikeride.  And, in true Anne fashion, I spent my time daydreaming. I daydreamed about how cool it would be to buy the fields behind the college and get grants to turn them into nature trails for children.  I wondered who owned them, and how I could contact them, and if the charter school could be involved in planting trees along the trail.  More ideas. More projects. More things to do.

I enjoyed the daydream, but when I came home, I tossed it into the wind.   I sat down, and turned on the computer. It had been so long I couldn't remember the password to even enter my blog.  Eventually, I found my way home, and I broke my silence.

The storm is passed, the air is clear, and I feel much calmer now.  My delusions of grandeur are spent.  I will probably never write a book.  My body will reflect my 45 years of life on this earth this summer.  Most days, ordinary life seems a far cry from miraculous. I am humbled by my inability to live out my own ideals.

But here's the thing.  Can I extend the same grace to myself that I am seeking to extend to the world?  Can I believe that though I am broken and incomplete,  shabby in body and soul, I am a miracle of grace?  Can I believe that the grandeur of God flames out, like shining from shook foil,  from this imperfect family in this insignificant little  town in the middle of Kansas? If so, then I can believe, once again, in the miracle of ordinary.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Sick in bed

The stomach bug hit our house this week.  I was victim #4, with victim #5 and 6 following in hot pursuit.  Good thing dogs and birds don't get stomach bugs. I won't go into graphic details, but it has been an interesting week.  In the midst of  all the washing of sheets, however, I had a glorious moment.

I was curled up in bed under piles of covers, when Gracie came to check on me.  Gracie is our very large, very furry, very active black mutt.  Thankfully, she is two plus a few months, and beginning to show some signs of calming, the first hints of a maturity that have been noticeably absent from her first two years of life.  She isn't one to linger and dote - she's way too busy for that.  But, noticing that I was not myself, she hopped up next to me and lay unusually still to keep me company.  

Next came Samba. Samba is Gracie's alter-ego.  Samba is small, and taffy colored, with lots of floppy hair and a bit of an underbit.  He likes nothing better than a human being who will sit still for long stretches of time.  When he finds one, he will crawl over books, or newspapers, or pillows to reach the Lap.  Then, he will turn a slow circle, settle himself, and remain still and content until the Lap moves on.  Samba came to the edge of the bed, looked up at me and whined. He wasn't going to miss out on this moment.  I picked him up.

Next came Adam.  Adam is my 8 year old son, a lot like Gracie in temperment, though with Samba's floppy blond hair. "Mommy, are you all right?"  He climbs up on the bed and chats with me about his day, and I hear all these little details that normally don't come out in an after school how-was-your-day conversation.  "Can I bring my dinner up and eat it next to you in bed?"  "I'm not sure that's a good idea, Ad. Why don't you check on me after dinner." "OK", he said, running off.  7 minutes later,  Adam is back. "I'm done, Mom.  Can I bring you some stuffed animals?" "Sure, Ad."  Four large armfuls later we are joined by Snakey, Spottie, Paddington, and a host of other furry friends. I am literally buried in dogs and cuddly toys.  

Next thing I know Adam is dragging in an old mattress from the hallway.  It had been propped up, waiting for some strong person to feel motivated to carry it to the basement.  I had almost got it into the dumpster when we did some renovations months back, but I made the mistake of giving my husband a book of survival stories from the Greensborough Tornado, and now the old mattress is going to the basement for "Tornado Protection".  I tell you the truth - I am NOT getting under than old thing. Particularly not after this week.   

Adam pulls the mattress into our room, and props it against my bed.  "I know, Mommy.  We can slide the animals down it."  "OK, Ad.  We can pretend they're training for the olympic bobsled event."  He runs and gets tupperware containers and box tops to slide them in.  I  lie flat and hold the contestants at the starting line, while he yells "Start!" and declares the winner at the finish line.  Samba watches happily. Gracie eats the contestants.

Next comes Johanna, home from dinner at a friends. "What are you doing?"  "We're having olympic bobsled races."  "Can I play?" "Sure. Come on in..."  

Finally, up comes Grandma.  "What are you all doing up here?" "Bobsled races."  She sits in a chair and joins in the chatter.  Two dogs, two kids, my Mom, and me, all chatting away in my bedroom. How often does that happen?

I'm getting tired now, and give the "five minutes" warning.  Finally they go, and I sink back into the deliciousness of silence, darkness, and the comfort of my pillows.

What am I usually doing at this time of day? Getting home from work. Bustling around.  Cooking dinner.  Returning phone calls. Badgering A and J about homework or chores.  Hurrying everyone along to the next thing that needs doing.

Today, I simply did nothing. I simply lay still, and look what came of it.  All that creativity, all that belonging, all that chatter and fun, simply because I stopped moving long enough for something else to happen.  Like Samba waiting for a lap, my kids and my animals, once I slowed down long enough, came running to me and jumped into my space.  Even though it was tiring, it was lovely.  Really, really lovely.   As I sat there reflecting, I noticed how it WAS the children and the animals and my aging mother who showed up for the party.  Everyone else was too busy.  

"Let the little children come to me, 

and do not hinder them, 

for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." 

-- Jesus

Let us crazy ones have delight....

"Ah! My dear comrades, let us crazy ones take delight in our eyesight in spite of everything, yes, let's!" -Vincent Van Gough

It feels strange to intentionally to put my interior thoughts out there, in cyber space, for someone else to read.  I lived in England for 10 years.  I like privacy.   But here goes,  my first blog.  Joseph and Aly, here's to new beginnings...thanks for the push. You too, Teri. 

I have a core belief.  I believe that life is incredible hard and difficult and unjust and ugly AND incredibly beautiful, all at the same time.  To use the words of Tolkien, life, like a good fairy tale, contains "joy and sorrows, sharp as swords."  Both deserve our attention.   If we do not fully own the hard bits - the bits that wound us and cause us to suffer -  we cannot fully embrace the joy.    In this blogg I do not want to deny hard reality or gloss over painful things.  I simply want to make space for goodness.  I want to make room in my heart, in my soul, for delight. In spite of everything.

Every year we lived in England we made a pilgrimage to an apple farm to pick apples.  We discovered the farm the day we purchased our first of many junk cars.  One Saturday, after having lived car-less in Bristol for a few months, we bought an old, white Vauxhall diesel for 600 pounds, turned the key in the ignition, and proudly set off to see the countryside.  We wound our way down narrow country roads through hedgerows and rolling fields, until we happened upon the apple farm.   Every autumn since, we had repeated that trek, at least three or four times a season.   We were drawn not so much by the apples, although they are truly amazing.  England has many different variety of apples that have been lost to us here, and we would weave through the trees, picking them and sampling them to our hearts content.  We were drawn by our desire to visit with the Apple Man, a small cheerful man named Ted with a weathered face and bright pink cheeks.  We met him on our first outing in our new car.  The next year, we came to see him on our first outing with our new baby, Johanna.  The next year, we told him of our decision to move to a multicultural neighborhood in Bristol.  The next year, we brought our new son, Adam.  Every autumn we'd come by three or four times to get more apples, visit our apple man, and chat about the weather, apples, and life.  

It was our seventh year in Bristol, and life had somehow gotten busy.  Craig had finished his Ph.D. and was working full-time lecturing at Trinity College.  I was a tutor in Spiritual Formation.  Adam and Johanna were getting involved in soccer, dance, birthday parties, and play dates.  We were helping to plant a very unconventional church to the marginalized.  It was already late October, and we hadn't visited the Apple man. 

We went to bed late Saturday night.  We'd been to a party at some neighbors, feasting on homemade Thai food.  I woke up early, at around 4:30, not feeling well in my stomach.  The pain increased, and soon became unbearable. I woke Craig up.  Soon the pain was so intense I could not draw my breathe except for the smallest of sips.  I began to feel as if I was loosing consciousness. I thought I was dying, and all I could think of was regret that I had not made scrapbooks for my children.  Craig ran across the street to our neighbor who was an M.D.  He took one look at me, saw that my lips were turning blue, and called an ambulance.

By the time I was at the hospital, the worst of the attack was over.  They could find nothing wrong with me, and eventually said I could go home.  I turned to Craig and said, "Let's go to the apple farm! "  We rushed home, and without showering, without even changing clothes, we grabbed our kids and made for the apple farm. The leaves were mostly off. The apples were mostly picked.  We laughed and danced and played hide and seek amongst the apple trees. We took goofy pictures, including the one on top of my blogg.  We lay down under the trees.  Johanna looked up at the branches, bare against the sky, and said, "Look, Mom, stained glass windows."  It was Sunday. The world was my sanctuary. Holy ground, my friends, holy ground.  

I know life is hard.  It can be really hard and painful, and sometimes it just sucks the wind right out of you.  I know that injustice is ripe, that power is misused, that the weak are tossed aside like empty corn husks.   I know the weight of shame and guilt. I know the darkness of depression.  I know if you live long enough, your heart will be pierced.

But I know the glory of green leaves, and the weight of a child's sleeping head, and the gift of life when you thought it was all over, and let me tell you, this world is holy.  Shot through and flaming with glory.  Maybe i only see it now and then, in hints and glimmers and fits and starts, but every now and then, the veil parts, and I sense that God really is with us. 

 All of us.