Halloween

I wonder if people in anyplace on the planet go as crazy over Halloween as many people do in the U.S.? Anymore, I think about as many people decorate their homes for Halloween as they do for Christmas! And, I must say it rather disgusts me. I realize that I am certainly in the minority, but I hate Halloween.When I was a young woman I met a couple, in a church, who had once been heavily involved in witchcraft and satanic worship. The man was the leader of the coven I believe. And they were even from my own hometown. (None of us lived in that town at the time we met.) They told some interesting stories to be sure! They said that the Satanist all think it’s really funny that so many Christians help them celebrate their high holy day. They thought that this just gives the day and what it really represents more power.

That was enough for me. I have not had anything to do with Halloween since that time. Some friends and family members think I’m extreme, and I may be, but to me this is one small way to give God all the Glory.

Labyrinth

Saturday was a beautiful October day, sunny and warm. I went with some other women from church for a “spiritual retreat” held at a retreat center run by Dominican nuns. In the afternoon we walked the labyrinth that had been constructed on the property. Having never seen a labyrinth before, I was quite intrigued. The drainage in the area is poor and we were told it would be wet. Sister Jane gave us plastic grocery sacks to tie over our shoes for protection. I’m sure we looked quite funny!After an introduction and history lesson we made our way through the soggy field to the labyrinth. With a sense of expectation I approached the entrance where Sister Jane prayed for each of us before we walked through the grapevine arches to begin. (She prayed with rather accurate discernment too, I might add.) As I navigated the puddle in this entranceway, I hoped that the whole thing would not be this soggy. It was a beautiful day, as I said, and so pleasant to be outside. I skirted the puddles as best I could, but before long it became obvious that the grocery sack boots were helpful only to an extent. As my toes began to get wet, I began to get agitated. Deep breath. Keep going.

I prayerfully made my way through the mucky paths. I sensed that even my discomfort had some purpose in this moment and prayed that I would know what it was. Before we started we were asked to be still for a moment and listen to see what word would come to mind. It made no sense to me, but “effortless” was the word that came to mind, along with the word “intentional” which was a word that first had been placed in my brain by the Author of All Words in Jan. of this year. I was very intentional about where I stepped, and the journey was definitely NOT effortless.

I pondered the words I had been given as I continued, with great effort, on my journey. I began to realize that I really dislike being uncomfortable. Wet feet is not that big of a deal, but I was certainly making it a big deal! I admitted to myself and God that I do not like to be uncomfortable, physically or spiritually, and that I avoid it whenever possible. On that note, the word that was repeating in my brain by the time I made it to the center and back out was “surrender”. Ok, ok; not exactly what I wanted to hear!

At one point I noticed a bee on a delicate purple aster. I stopped to watch. Bending close, I watched as the bee stabbed it’s proboscis into the yellow center of the flower, sipping it’s nectar. It was really fascinating to watch, and to wonder at the intricacies of creation. I thanked God for the bee and the flower and went on my way once again. Skirting the puddles was impossible if I stayed on the path. Remembering that Sr. Jane emphasized that there is no ‘right’ way to walk, I began to weave in and out of the path I was on to get around the water. The thought came to me that there is no ‘right’ way to walk the paths of our lives either, and that sometimes we have to weave in and out a bit to get where we are going, for whatever reason, and that is really ok. Man may condemn us for such erratic wandering, but God only says, “I am with you”.I rested on a low bench at the center and realized that I felt very safe there. I had no desire to maneuver my way back through those mucky paths to get back out, but had no choice. I really wanted to just skip through the paths to exit as quickly and dryly as possible, but I didn’t want to miss anything of this experience, so set out to stay on the path. Note: I saved this as a draft on Sunday, and went back to finish on Wednesday…but blogger was apparently not fully functional at that point because I was unable to either post or save. I believe I finished it well, but the moment and many of the thoughts are gone.

It’s nearly a week later now and I ask myself, “What did you learn from this?”
— to be intentional takes effort, but overall things seem more ‘effortless’ because of the intentional decisions
— it takes no effort on my part to loved and cherished by God. My life for so many years was characterized by ’striving’…to be good enough for God. Over the past year God has set me free from this way of life and I am so grateful!
— I need to be intentional about stopping to watch the bees more often
— Stash a pair of boots in the car the next time I go on a retreat

Words to Burn

I’ve kept journals since I was in high school. I had few friends and confiding in my journals helped keep me sane in those high school years. When I was in my mid 20’s I burned four volumes of my life in the wood stove. I remember it clearly; I felt it was a rite of passage of sorts; I felt an intense need to leave the sadness and confusion of those years behind.

I kept writing. Writing has always served as a method for sorting out my thoughts. I wrote it all; the good, the bad, the terrible. Things I was ashamed to even put on paper. I wrote prayers and joys too, but those good things seemed less than the bad and sad. There came a time in my 30’s that I felt the need to read all those journals. Every page was reviewed and only a few were torn out and kept. This time I built a fire in a fire pit we had in a grove of trees on our land and burned those words I felt I should no longer keep.

I continued to write. Much darkness was expressed on those lined pages. I walked through depression for a number of years. Difficult times with teenage children and a husband who had his own problems. I often felt like the words I wrote were as much me as the skin I wear, and I carried them with me everywhere. Writing was sporadic at times, but remained important even when I didn’t do it. The journals of the last ten or so years remain in a box in my closet, but have become like a rock I wear about my neck. I find myself worrying that some of those words would hurt my husband deeply should he ever look at them. Some of those words would probably cause pain to my children too should they read my life. Not that anyone would, unless I were dead. But I have no control over when my life here will end…..

So now I must decide what to do with these words. What I’ve written is part of who I am, be it good or bad. I’m very, very different in so many ways than I was even two years ago. Yet, my words are my legacy and I find it difficult to part with them. Even the worst parts, the record of my great sin even, are a part of me. But….I love them to much to risk the pain the words may at some point cause. Yes, they have to go. Soon. I’ll have to read through it all and tear out only what is safe.

Words. They can bring life, or they can bring pain and death. Words have such power; we really should be frightened of them. At the same time, as any of us who must write know, we can’t live without them.

Some cool night here soon I’ll be lighting a fire in the fireplace. I have words to burn.

"Can you make one for my baby brother?"

I was having a conversation today with my first graders about practicing. We talked about how much we have to practice to get good at something, like reading for instance. I related that I learned how to knit this summer, and that I had to practice all summer before I got good at it. (I learned to knit from women at church involved in the Prayer Shawl Ministry.) One student asked what I made and I explained that I made a little blanket that will be given to someone who is sick or maybe in the hospital. Then a boy, Oscar, asked if I could make one for his baby brother. I asked if his brother was sick and he replied, “he’s dead”. I hesitated, not quite knowing what to say. Oscar then explained that he would put the little blanket on baby brother’s gravestone.

Whew! I felt the tears welling up at that point. I’ll be shopping for baby blue yarn this weekend. Enough yarn for a little baby sized grave blanket, and for one a bit larger that big brother can snuggle up with and remember the baby brother that never had a chance to grow up.

Thanks and It’s Sunday

My heart is warmed and encouraged by the 4 comments left on the previous post. Thanks Aaron, Allan, Alice, and One Foot….you made my day!

Actually it’s been a good and interesting day. Hubby and I were to meet my parents for an early lunch so I planned to arise early to get to the 8 am. service. Good plan, but over-slept. So when I was up and ready to go I went instead to my “tree house” for a private worship service. (The tree house is a play house atop a shed that was there when we bought this house. I’ve painted the room and dedicated the space to “getting away with God”.) I lit a candle and invited the Spirit’s presence then read the liturgy in my BCP. I couldn’t remember if we are in year A or B in the lectionary so I just picked scripture readings at random. All of a sudden I found myself imagining (or was I?) Jesus standing behind my chair with his hands placed on my throat in a gesture of healing. Interesting. My throat has been less sore today.I missed the Eucharist, and the community, but when I was finished I felt that I had been in “church” nonetheless. Praise be to God.

Hubby and I are having some very interesting discussions. He is still searching for a church and knows he needs to visit St. Peter’s with me, but also knows he’s not quite ready. He has plenty of preconceived notions about liturgical churches and those notions are not good. I had recently watched a couple of tapes of Marcus Borg speaking at a conference. Hubby saw a few minutes of it and decided that he’d like to watch it as well. (I was surprised.) He’s also started reading Borg’s book “Reading the Bible Again for the First Time”, that I have been reading. This has led to some very interesting discussions, and he’s asking me questions for which I have no answers. You have to understand that Borg’s ideas on the Bible are almost completely different from what we had been taught for 20 some years. A lot of it makes sense to me, but some of it I either don’t understand or don’t know what to make of. It’s all a real stretch for hubby, but he has surprised me that he’d even read and listen to any of this. I expected him to get about 20 minutes into the tapes and turn it off, calling Borg a heretic or worse. Very interesting.

Through these discussions I have had the opportunity to “come clean” about some of the changes in my beliefs. It was good for me to do this; solidifies things somehow. I’ve shared many things with hubby along the way, but have been very careful. I figured that upsetting him would be neither loving nor profitable. I made it clear that I can never go back.

Questions, questions, so many questions. And the amazing and glorious thing about all those questions is that I’m really ok with not having the answers. I used to think that faith was having all the answers. Nope; faith is trusting while knowing I may never have the answers.

I’ll close with a quote from the profile of Natalia’s blog at http://ad-majorem-dei-gloriam.blogspot.com/ that sums up the questioning thing very well: she says, “I walk in questions and I am glad not to have any answers… ” Yeah, I can relate to that!

Why Do I Write Here Anyway??

It’s been a week since I’ve posted. The posts have gotten fewer and farther between over the past three weeks, and I suspect that the few who do read this blog on a rather regular basis may be wondering if I’m just another one of those “tried it for a while and now she’s gone” bloggers.

It was easy to write during the summer. Even with the stresses of what happened this past summer, life overall was still less stresssful than it became once school started for the year. I had time to think, read, ponder, and just prayerfully BE in the summertime. Now it’s much more difficult to find time for those precious activities. If I’m not physically too tired to care, I am often mentally tired and don’t want to make the effort. It doesn’t help, of course, that I’ve been fighting some illness for the past three weeks. Laryingitis, bronchitis, and finally sinus infection have attacked this body, and the body and attached mind have had quite enough already! After two courses of different antibiotics, I still do not feel well and am becoming concerned. I should feel great, but I do not.

It seems a good time to take a moment and reflect upon the reasons I write the blog. Why indeed? The more obvious answers that come to mind are that I like to write and that I’ve secretly wanted someone to read what I write. It’s true that writing here has helped me, until recently, to be more disciplined about writing. Much to my amazement a few people have not only read what I’ve written, but have left comments to show their understanding and/or appreciation. So what are the less obvious reasons for writing here? I think one is my intense desire to break out of isolation. I want connections, in whatever form they may take. Reading and commenting on others writing, and writing my own blog, has broadened my horizons. I think often of Rachel, Gail, Aaron, Allan, ‘One Foot’, and others whom I have met via the internet; and when I do I pray that God will bless them and help them in whatever they are facing that day. I will probably never actually meet these precious people, but they have become friends of a sort; a meaningful connection.

Are there more reasons for writing here? I’m drawing a blank. Do I want to keep doing this and will it matter to anyone if I do not? The latter I can’t answer, but I do want to keep at it. I’ve written in journals for most of my life. This writing was ‘for my eyes only’ and mainly served as a way to make sense of my world and experience. In writing here I’ve opened my journal to the eyes of the world. I’m anonymous enough about it not to include my photo or exact location, and for the most part people I know ‘in the flesh’ do not know I do this. Somehow these precautions make me feel less exposed, or something. I feel a need to write that I can’t explain. I feel a need for connection with others. I feel a need to know that it’s at least possible that someone may read what I’ve written. When I read these words it looks like writing this blog is a selfish venture. It is also my hope however, that writing here will also take me out of my self, or beyond myself in some way. I guess I’ll keep writing and see what happens.

Lovely Day

God fed me with sunshine, color, warmth, and fresh air. A lovely fall day with two people I love.

A day to cherish. Thank you.

Twenty-one

My “baby” turned twenty one today. Wow. Where has the time gone? I was 25 when I gave birth to her, yet in some ways less mature, or perhaps just more naive, than she is today. Times are so different now. I have always felt, from that very first day of her life, that God has a special calling on her life. The cord was wrapped around her neck three times upon birth and she was blue; she could have died. She’d had a bowel movement in the womb; she could have never breathed a breath. I had been very ill early in the pregnancy and found out shortly before delivery that the medication could have killed her before the second trimester; yet she lived. As a young child she managed to tumble down a set of stairs twice with no visible injury. Another time she fell off the edge of an incomplete set of basement stairs straight into her grandpa’s arms; death or disaster averted once again. And these are just the things I know about.

I was as devoted a mother as anyone could have been to my daughter and her brother. Not a drop of formula ever touched their lips. I figured God gave me breasts for a reason and that my own milk was the only milk good enough for my babies. I worried over them both constantly, determined not only to be the best mother to them, but to provide them with a life that was better than that of my own childhood…and that was not really all that bad. Alas, I failed as a mother in more ways than I knew it was possible to fail, so I take little credit for the way my babies have turned out, so to speak. It is the grace of God, his merciful and loving grace, that has formed those good and precious things within my dear daughter. I am more than grateful.

So here I am, 21 years my daughter’s mom and realize once again upon this milestone occasion that I must let her go. She’ll always be my baby. So will her brother. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, my blood flowing through their veins. Yet, completely separate; as it must be. On some level I am aware that spiritual/emotional entanglements between mother and child can be crippling, or at the very least restricting. I am all too aware of the reality of my own “issues” and my intense struggle for freedom, and it is in this spirit that I desire to let her go, this dear daughter of mine. I desire for her to know a level of freedom even now that I’ve yet to experience. I find myself beginning to weep even as I write this. It’s hard, this letting go. I’ve had to do it so many times already, and secretly live in fear that I will be forced at some point by unimaginable circumstance to relinquish everything of her. Lord, have mercy!

Happy birthday, my dear Angel Girl. Be who God made you to be. Go where the Great I AM leads you. Be not afraid, but rest always in the Peace that can only come from the Ultimate Light. Live your life fully and feely.

Another Reality

I’m so glad that there is more to life than I can see. There’s more to God than I can see, more to living the life he intends us to live than I can see, and there’s even more to me than I can yet see. It’s a comfort to know that I don’t have to figure it all out either; I just have to be open.

I feel like my mind is clogged up. I am home yet another day, not only because I’m still unwell, but because hubby has a kidney stone and is loopy on painkillers. Had to take him to the ER yesterday morning when he awoke in pain that worsened by the minute. The guy just doesn’t need anything else after all he’s going through with the eye thing! It’s an old wives’s tale that trouble comes in threes. Hum, between the two of us this is three, so enough already!

I am mindful though that my troubles are light compared to so many. Last night’s local news showed an interview with a young woman whose boyfriend, a 27 yr. old medical student, disappeared 6 months ago. She’s not given up, and listens daily to the last message he left on her phone. I can’t even imagine the pain of this young man’s parents, and of the woman’s parents for their daughter too. It would be bad enough if this were a truly unusual situation, but in today’s world it is not. We all hear the news stories of such things daily. And then there are the men and women who go off to Iraq or somewhere and never come back. Other new stories featured included two shootings and fatal, or nearly so, car accidents. Staying at home isn’t safe either. Last’s nights “Extreme Home Makeover” (or whatever it’s called…I really don’t watch TV much) episode was the story of a family who lost the father/husband because he had been working on their old farmhouse to make it a better place to live. The mold in the old wood was toxic.

There is absolutely nothing certain about life as we are able to see it. An event that may take but a moment can change lives forever, dumping pain upon pain. That’s reality. But there is as well a much larger reality that is even more real than what we can see; simply put, GOD IS. We have only the language we know to describe God, yet that language is so inadequate that I doubt we even scratch the surface of the God Reality. He is not ‘out there somewhere’, but right here, right now all around us wherever we may find ourselves in this created cosmos. Of course, ‘He’ is not a he either, nor a she for that matter, but rather encompasses all attributes of all things. The I AM just IS. And within the very is-ness of the I AM is where we find the only certainty there can ever be for us; the only peace, the only security, the only LIGHT. I AM is all the Energy of creation, all the Light there is to shine, all the Love there could ever be….and so much more. The I AM is the Song that sings us into being and the Music that sustains us through our days in this broken world.