August 17, 2011
I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. Enough that my usual absent-mindedness has become amplified to an almost unmanageable degree. I forgot to turn off the crockpot of tomato sauce before leaving for a day of babysitting; forgot to bring my phone to the first place; forgot to bring my planner back from it; forgot to bring my bike key to my next babysitting gig—despite riding my bike there, and locking it in the parking lot—and also forgot to bring my wallet or cash or a CTA card, thus stranding myself in Lincoln Park at 10:00pm.
M graciously came to pick me up in spite of being “on house.” The drive was good and gave us time to share in some of what’s been crowding my mind and hers: the chaos of our community, the shabbiness of our hospitality, the divergent projects, the need for lines of separation (are we a house of hospitality? a farm? an activist commune?). Some of these pontifications surface in the haphazard article I’m attempting for the newsletter that shifts from “connecting the dots” to “not seeing the forest for the trees. I pose the question, “what is the forest?” and take a couple of grasping guesses.
While the kids were sleeping tonight I read some of Robert Ellsberg’s Saint’s Guide to Happiness and came across this bit about St. Therese of Lisieux:
“She confessed to feeling a call to every vocation, to be a warrior, a priest, a doctor of the church and a martyr. But ultimately she believed that her vocation was nothing less than to ‘love itself,’ a virtue embracing every calling without exception. ‘My vocation is love!’ she wrote” (94).
How well I can relate to “Little Flower” in her feeling of being called to everything and nothing! the latter being what “everything” tends to become when you try to do it all, except perhaps when instead on nothing one chooses love, which embraces all but is itself. I too have felt that sense of vocation to love, but have seldom had the courage to proclaim it with such conviction. When asked what I am aspiring towards, I only can say, “to love well.” That sounds so feeble in my ears. I’ve tried to bolster it with better answers, sprinkling in bits about “systemic injustice” and “simple living.” Flimsy words coming out of my mouth.
Love looked humble, weak even, and I plastered her with credentials—things I do care about, but things that belong in her, not over her. I began to bury love and have observed myself becoming increasingly less gentle, less kind, more irritable and more uncertain. I care about and believe in most of what I am doing, more often than not I enjoy it too. What I am beginning to wonder though is am I doing these things out of love, or instead of love? When I was reading St. Therese’s exclamation, “My vocation is Love!” the thought occurred to me, “The forest,” (the one we are blinded from because of attentiveness to the many trees) “is love.” And I’m afraid I’ve lost sight of it.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
The Sea 'n Me
Sun, in her abundance, poured light deep into the apparently endless water, scattered heaping handfuls across the surface, and allowed the leftovers to melt, dripping over the sky and into the sand. This was not Lake Michigan, but the Atlantic Ocean. That’s a lot of light. Heat was heavily present already, at 9 a.m. I mindfully embraced the warmth as affection, barring the perception of oppressive uncomfortability that I normally receive high temperatures with. I stepped through thin slips of water, into soaked yielding sand, around golden clumps of seaweed that my sisters and I had been dodging in the water the day before, tossing it on Rachel so she could have “mermaid hair.” My thoughts were lapping and overlapping, belying a less than disciplined mind, a mind cradled fondly nonetheless.
I thought about the impromptu speech made the night before at the wedding of a dear friend. She is the one that brought me here, that instigated my spending more time in South Florida than I ever have in all my years living in the center of this state. I hadn’t planned to say anything and wasn’t expected to, but how could I not? She has consistently, insistently loved me and allowed me to participate in her struggles and triumphs for nearly two decades. The words I selected weren’t too shabby; they also weren’t enough. I mulled over amendments while moving through dense, salt-infused air, occasionally distracted by refracted light, so sharp, such a contrast to the immensely soft, mammoth clouds that floated by, flat bottomed and erupting from above. Words never can be enough to sum up a life, let alone the melding of two lives and all the interlocking lives influenced by their connection. Words can never be enough, but I am compelled to forever work at crafting them, and risk exposing them.
I thought about the expansive beauty, the majesty really, of the ocean and how in it’s vastness, it envelopes the nuances of the world; sparking wildly during dazzling day, melancholy and absorbing in moonlit night. Tumultuous and roiling, placid and absorbing, expressive and secretive; the sea is everything at all times, yet we receive only a little, one moment at a time. I admire the ocean and appreciate its expansive yet intimate embrace, though I don’t feel a belonging to it as I’ve heard some articulate. Nor do I feel that sense of belonging to a city that winks and sparkles with light generated from more mutable sources. My ego finds her cradle amidst the trees, in earthy depths, mounded into mountains. But there is neither one nor the other that offers completion. All are part of the whole.
My attention was drawn to a shell, bleached white, porous. A shell? No, I think not, but I haven’t the knowledge to identify it confidently. Fossilized coral, perhaps? Honeycomb from the ocean, an abandoned nest of sea-bees. It is astounding, the mirror world that exists below the surface, so alien and yet we belong to one another. I began to watch the sand more than the sea and scooped up a couple more curiosities. Studying the articulate veins of a creamy crimped shell, I arrived back where I had started. Standing on a mound of seaweed, directly in my path was an incongruous couple: a black pigeon and a white seagull. The pigeon’s presence startled me. What are you doing here? I asked. They both just stared. Representatives of my two lives, I surmised. And wouldn’t you know it, just as the thought made itself known, the seagull walked several feet away and then turned to look back at me from the distance. The pigeon remained, unmoving except to blink his blank, orange eyes.
I thought about the impromptu speech made the night before at the wedding of a dear friend. She is the one that brought me here, that instigated my spending more time in South Florida than I ever have in all my years living in the center of this state. I hadn’t planned to say anything and wasn’t expected to, but how could I not? She has consistently, insistently loved me and allowed me to participate in her struggles and triumphs for nearly two decades. The words I selected weren’t too shabby; they also weren’t enough. I mulled over amendments while moving through dense, salt-infused air, occasionally distracted by refracted light, so sharp, such a contrast to the immensely soft, mammoth clouds that floated by, flat bottomed and erupting from above. Words never can be enough to sum up a life, let alone the melding of two lives and all the interlocking lives influenced by their connection. Words can never be enough, but I am compelled to forever work at crafting them, and risk exposing them.
I thought about the expansive beauty, the majesty really, of the ocean and how in it’s vastness, it envelopes the nuances of the world; sparking wildly during dazzling day, melancholy and absorbing in moonlit night. Tumultuous and roiling, placid and absorbing, expressive and secretive; the sea is everything at all times, yet we receive only a little, one moment at a time. I admire the ocean and appreciate its expansive yet intimate embrace, though I don’t feel a belonging to it as I’ve heard some articulate. Nor do I feel that sense of belonging to a city that winks and sparkles with light generated from more mutable sources. My ego finds her cradle amidst the trees, in earthy depths, mounded into mountains. But there is neither one nor the other that offers completion. All are part of the whole.
My attention was drawn to a shell, bleached white, porous. A shell? No, I think not, but I haven’t the knowledge to identify it confidently. Fossilized coral, perhaps? Honeycomb from the ocean, an abandoned nest of sea-bees. It is astounding, the mirror world that exists below the surface, so alien and yet we belong to one another. I began to watch the sand more than the sea and scooped up a couple more curiosities. Studying the articulate veins of a creamy crimped shell, I arrived back where I had started. Standing on a mound of seaweed, directly in my path was an incongruous couple: a black pigeon and a white seagull. The pigeon’s presence startled me. What are you doing here? I asked. They both just stared. Representatives of my two lives, I surmised. And wouldn’t you know it, just as the thought made itself known, the seagull walked several feet away and then turned to look back at me from the distance. The pigeon remained, unmoving except to blink his blank, orange eyes.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Moses the Migrant
Once upon a time, long ago, in a place far from here, a familiar story unfolded. In this place there was a Ruler and this Ruler’s land was inhabited by people of varying ethnicity. There were those who named themselves “the People” and there were those named “the Others.” The Others were a strong-bodied people who worked hard, bore children and established themselves in the land. In fact, they became so abundant, that the People began to fear they would be overrun by the Others. The fear was so great that the Ruler began to look at the Others as invaders, though they had lived amongst the people for generations. They had, in fact, lived amongst the People so long that the Ruler—who was not a diligent student of history—had forgotten, or perhaps never learned that the Others had actually been invited to the land by a ruler from the past. They had helped sustain the land during a time of need. Now, they were not perceived as an asset but a threat.
In one version of this story, the Ruler is called Pharaoh; the People, Egyptians; the Others, Hebrew. Pharaoh responded to the Hebrew threat by summoning their midwives. “When you are preparing to deliver the babies of Hebrew women,” he commanded them, “you must abort them as they are being born.” The women did not argue. They also did not obey. Noticing that Hebrew babies continued to be born, Pharaoh summoned the midwives once again, “how is it that I continue to see my land overrun by newborn Hebrews?” he demanded. The clever women played helpless, “These Hebrew women, they are so hardy and energetic, they give birth before we even arrive in their homes!” Though the midwives civil disobedience delayed deaths, it did not prevent them. In his desperation, Pharaoh ordered that all male children be killed, even after being born.
Perhaps there were many families whose love and ingenuity compelled them to find ways to preserve the lives of their children. Ancient texts direct our attention to one particular family. And isn’t it often the way that our best education about broad truths comes through a narrow focus, from an individual encounter? The family was of the Levite clan. Though she already had two children, the mother of this family was struck by the beauty of her new child, a son, and she could not bear to see him lose his life even if that meant she could not share in that life with him. This child’s mother and father and brother and sister conspired together. They crafted a basket, carefully waterproofed and padded it. They placed within it this child, one of many born in the land but to them a unique marvel and mystery of creation to whom their hearts were bound. Reverently, with prayers and petitions, they placed the baby-filled basket in the river and hoped for salvation. His sister, Miriam, followed the flow of the river from the bank.
Almost of another world, another daughter ventured along the river bank. Pharaoh’s daughter, she shared the same land with Miriam and the other Hebrew daughters and sons, but knew little of their life. She lived life in a bubble of security. Even now, as she ventured to cool herself in the water of the Nile, a band of attendants followed around her; their presence both an irritation and an expectation, for she knew no life but a sheltered one. Immersing herself in the water this daughter heard a cry. She saw the unusual craft and could guess at its cargo—but how could this be? “Go fetch that basket,” she commanded an attendant. And her attendant obeyed. Opening the lid of the basket, Pharaoh’s daughter caught the spell of wonder that had been laid in the basket with this baby. She recognized love in him and wanted to share it. “I’m going to adopt him,” she said. And she named him Moses.
I imagine this encounter affecting the daughter of Pharaoh not only with compassion, but with curiosity. How did it come to be that this child was set afloat? Perhaps she learned more about the policies directed toward the people inhabiting the land she lived within. I noticed that when Moses grew to adulthood, there were still Hebrew people of his generation—they were not destroyed. Can it be that Pharaoh’s commandment was rescinded? I wonder if that had anything to do with his daughter finding her heart captivated by one Hebrew that led her to advocate, if even in only one small way, for the lives of his people. I wonder if the thought of each Hebrew baby’s death tore at her as though it were the murder of her own child?
The timelessness of this story occurred to me in a new way as I revisited it this week. Experience has a way of tinting the lens through which we look at the world. Where I stand in my interior landscape effects the perspective I have of the exterior, even when I am unaware. This time I was aware that I was reading with a mind toward the immigrants that share the land where I live. Aware that whatever people group we come from, we were all sojourners once. “My people” were primarily Dutch and Irish, welcomed when extra hands were needed, rejected when we became too many and were no longer seen as a resource but as burden on resources that were limited. A threat to familiar ways of being and looking and sounding. I thought of the South and Central American migrants who I’d never given much mind to until I encountered their belongings, abandoned during their troubled sojourn in the Sonoran Desert; until I met them, broken on the border.
Now they people my thoughts and influence my reflections. I have been reading Steinbeck’s account of his journey across America with his dog Charley. There I found that his reflection on the Bad Lands stirred in me reflections similar to those that had been awakened by a tale from ancient Egypt. Once upon a time, not long ago, very close to home…Steinbeck’s experience of the Bad Lands brought back my memories of the contradictory nature of the desert in Arizona that divides the United States and Mexico. Such a monster in the day, so majestic in the evenings. Though I tried to describe it, he says it better:
…the late afternoon changed everything. As the sun angled…the cliffs and sculptured hills and ravines lost their burned and dreadful look and glowed with yellow and rich brown and a hundred variations of red and silver gray, all picked out by streaks of coal black…once stopped I was caught, trapped in color and dazzled by the clarity of the light. Against the descending sun the battlements were dark and clean-lined, while to the east, where the uninhibited light poured slantwise, the strange landscape shouted with color. And the night, far from being frightful, was lovely beyond thought, for the stars were close, and although there was no moon the starlight made a silver glow in the sky. The air cut the nostrils with dry frost…this is one of the few place I have ever seen where the night was friendlier than the day (Travels with Charley, pg. 120).
I found it confounding, trying to reconcile the splendor of the evenings with the treacherous conditions of the day. Similarly, I find it confounding trying to reconcile the juxtaposition of beauty and cruelty in people when we choose, sometimes so arbitrarily who will be bequeathed with our favor, and who will be subject to our wrath. Unlike Moses, the rulers of this land don’t directly threaten migrants with death, but with deportation. Though, considering the hundreds of deaths that occur each year in the desert by those restricted, or returning after being sent back—considering how separation of mothers from children and husbands from wives causes life to leak out from rent hearts—the difference between death and deportation becomes blurry at best.
Who will be the fairytale-type princess in this version of the story? Who will be the unlikely one that bridges the gap between the outcast people and the obstinate ruler? “Encounter” seems to me to be the magic word that breaks the spell of blindness. I think of my own life’s experience; I began to care when my senses and feelings were engaged. I cared about the migrants because I walked their trails and heard their stories. I cared about men in Guantanamo who I’d barely given a second thought to because I saw their picture and heard their stories and read their poems. I was touched by our common humanity. Their pain hurt me. If those of us who are sheltered by the rulers of the land could learn the stories of those who are persecuted, if we would take a few steps beyond our comfort zone, perhaps their cries could stir our heart like the cries of a baby in a basket. Perhaps, if we wade in the water, God will trouble us toward compassion and we will learn the abundance of an interwoven life.
In one version of this story, the Ruler is called Pharaoh; the People, Egyptians; the Others, Hebrew. Pharaoh responded to the Hebrew threat by summoning their midwives. “When you are preparing to deliver the babies of Hebrew women,” he commanded them, “you must abort them as they are being born.” The women did not argue. They also did not obey. Noticing that Hebrew babies continued to be born, Pharaoh summoned the midwives once again, “how is it that I continue to see my land overrun by newborn Hebrews?” he demanded. The clever women played helpless, “These Hebrew women, they are so hardy and energetic, they give birth before we even arrive in their homes!” Though the midwives civil disobedience delayed deaths, it did not prevent them. In his desperation, Pharaoh ordered that all male children be killed, even after being born.
Perhaps there were many families whose love and ingenuity compelled them to find ways to preserve the lives of their children. Ancient texts direct our attention to one particular family. And isn’t it often the way that our best education about broad truths comes through a narrow focus, from an individual encounter? The family was of the Levite clan. Though she already had two children, the mother of this family was struck by the beauty of her new child, a son, and she could not bear to see him lose his life even if that meant she could not share in that life with him. This child’s mother and father and brother and sister conspired together. They crafted a basket, carefully waterproofed and padded it. They placed within it this child, one of many born in the land but to them a unique marvel and mystery of creation to whom their hearts were bound. Reverently, with prayers and petitions, they placed the baby-filled basket in the river and hoped for salvation. His sister, Miriam, followed the flow of the river from the bank.
Almost of another world, another daughter ventured along the river bank. Pharaoh’s daughter, she shared the same land with Miriam and the other Hebrew daughters and sons, but knew little of their life. She lived life in a bubble of security. Even now, as she ventured to cool herself in the water of the Nile, a band of attendants followed around her; their presence both an irritation and an expectation, for she knew no life but a sheltered one. Immersing herself in the water this daughter heard a cry. She saw the unusual craft and could guess at its cargo—but how could this be? “Go fetch that basket,” she commanded an attendant. And her attendant obeyed. Opening the lid of the basket, Pharaoh’s daughter caught the spell of wonder that had been laid in the basket with this baby. She recognized love in him and wanted to share it. “I’m going to adopt him,” she said. And she named him Moses.
I imagine this encounter affecting the daughter of Pharaoh not only with compassion, but with curiosity. How did it come to be that this child was set afloat? Perhaps she learned more about the policies directed toward the people inhabiting the land she lived within. I noticed that when Moses grew to adulthood, there were still Hebrew people of his generation—they were not destroyed. Can it be that Pharaoh’s commandment was rescinded? I wonder if that had anything to do with his daughter finding her heart captivated by one Hebrew that led her to advocate, if even in only one small way, for the lives of his people. I wonder if the thought of each Hebrew baby’s death tore at her as though it were the murder of her own child?
The timelessness of this story occurred to me in a new way as I revisited it this week. Experience has a way of tinting the lens through which we look at the world. Where I stand in my interior landscape effects the perspective I have of the exterior, even when I am unaware. This time I was aware that I was reading with a mind toward the immigrants that share the land where I live. Aware that whatever people group we come from, we were all sojourners once. “My people” were primarily Dutch and Irish, welcomed when extra hands were needed, rejected when we became too many and were no longer seen as a resource but as burden on resources that were limited. A threat to familiar ways of being and looking and sounding. I thought of the South and Central American migrants who I’d never given much mind to until I encountered their belongings, abandoned during their troubled sojourn in the Sonoran Desert; until I met them, broken on the border.
Now they people my thoughts and influence my reflections. I have been reading Steinbeck’s account of his journey across America with his dog Charley. There I found that his reflection on the Bad Lands stirred in me reflections similar to those that had been awakened by a tale from ancient Egypt. Once upon a time, not long ago, very close to home…Steinbeck’s experience of the Bad Lands brought back my memories of the contradictory nature of the desert in Arizona that divides the United States and Mexico. Such a monster in the day, so majestic in the evenings. Though I tried to describe it, he says it better:
…the late afternoon changed everything. As the sun angled…the cliffs and sculptured hills and ravines lost their burned and dreadful look and glowed with yellow and rich brown and a hundred variations of red and silver gray, all picked out by streaks of coal black…once stopped I was caught, trapped in color and dazzled by the clarity of the light. Against the descending sun the battlements were dark and clean-lined, while to the east, where the uninhibited light poured slantwise, the strange landscape shouted with color. And the night, far from being frightful, was lovely beyond thought, for the stars were close, and although there was no moon the starlight made a silver glow in the sky. The air cut the nostrils with dry frost…this is one of the few place I have ever seen where the night was friendlier than the day (Travels with Charley, pg. 120).
I found it confounding, trying to reconcile the splendor of the evenings with the treacherous conditions of the day. Similarly, I find it confounding trying to reconcile the juxtaposition of beauty and cruelty in people when we choose, sometimes so arbitrarily who will be bequeathed with our favor, and who will be subject to our wrath. Unlike Moses, the rulers of this land don’t directly threaten migrants with death, but with deportation. Though, considering the hundreds of deaths that occur each year in the desert by those restricted, or returning after being sent back—considering how separation of mothers from children and husbands from wives causes life to leak out from rent hearts—the difference between death and deportation becomes blurry at best.
Who will be the fairytale-type princess in this version of the story? Who will be the unlikely one that bridges the gap between the outcast people and the obstinate ruler? “Encounter” seems to me to be the magic word that breaks the spell of blindness. I think of my own life’s experience; I began to care when my senses and feelings were engaged. I cared about the migrants because I walked their trails and heard their stories. I cared about men in Guantanamo who I’d barely given a second thought to because I saw their picture and heard their stories and read their poems. I was touched by our common humanity. Their pain hurt me. If those of us who are sheltered by the rulers of the land could learn the stories of those who are persecuted, if we would take a few steps beyond our comfort zone, perhaps their cries could stir our heart like the cries of a baby in a basket. Perhaps, if we wade in the water, God will trouble us toward compassion and we will learn the abundance of an interwoven life.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Good Morning
Last night I left the blinds pulled up halfway so that the light of morning would wake me. It worked. I stirred and in my mind it was still dark—where am I? "Sister Julia’s, 'room-sitting' while she’s away." What time is it? "Day break." Do I have anything I need to do today? "Only what you want"—I opened my eyes to find that light had already filled the room. The clock read three minutes to six. The sun was slowly ascending, blazing orange light that melted over the lake and into the city. Immediately I pulled on shorts and a t-shirt and went outside.
I did not examine my good mood, I floated on it. Contradictions surfaced. As I entered the park I saw man sleeping on a bench. He had pulled his white shirt over his head. A sign of surrender, or of defiance? Crossing the bridge over the highway, I saw a crumpled guard-rail, a sure sign of disaster. I inhaled these indications of turmoil soberly, mindfully, but joy remained, unvanquished.
It is common to see the reflection of trees in water. In the park, on a path between a small pond and a row of trees, I discovered an uncommon reversal. Wobbling waves of light, the water's reflection, danced low between the branches. Invisible, except by motion, like wind; only it didn’t rustle or whisper, it laughed.
I made my way to the lakeshore and hopped down a series of giant-sized steps, offering a sun salutation to that great golden orb once I reached the bottom. The lip of the lake curled and I winked back. Sunbeams forged a wide path from the horizon to the waters edge; a few small, bold beams climbing up on my shoulder, warming and glowing. This is how I learned that the sun is a jealous star, protective of her offspring. As I walked, she followed and every time I turned toward the east, there she was, glaring.
Duck! A speckled brown mother and her fuzzy, fresh flock. Choppy water scattered their tiny buoyant bodies, but they always bobbed back together. The water was lively and I wondered at the life within it. The beam on my shoulder began to murmur about the magic of the things we call common and suddenly I remembered the dream I lived before waking. A sweet dream in which affection was shared with someone who does not offer it to me in waking life.
Colors were bold—green against brown against blue intercepted by white—shadows long, wind rallying the leaves, trying to out-sing the sound of on-coming traffic. By the time I had looped back to where I had begun, little more than an hour had passed but already things were different. I lingered by the trees that had held the waters reflection; they were empty. The man on the bench was upright now, scowling. My back was to the lake and the sun and I could feel something shifting, slipping. While waiting at a crosswalk I tried to pour the morning’s images into a bucket to carry with me. All that I had was a sieve. I watched the trickling escape of what was and willed myself to release it, redirecting my gaze to what is. The light changed and I walked forward. It was not until I was unlocking the door to Julia’s room that I realized the blazon little sunbeam had absconded with its warmth, leaving me a cold shoulder, still blushing pink.
I did not examine my good mood, I floated on it. Contradictions surfaced. As I entered the park I saw man sleeping on a bench. He had pulled his white shirt over his head. A sign of surrender, or of defiance? Crossing the bridge over the highway, I saw a crumpled guard-rail, a sure sign of disaster. I inhaled these indications of turmoil soberly, mindfully, but joy remained, unvanquished.
It is common to see the reflection of trees in water. In the park, on a path between a small pond and a row of trees, I discovered an uncommon reversal. Wobbling waves of light, the water's reflection, danced low between the branches. Invisible, except by motion, like wind; only it didn’t rustle or whisper, it laughed.
I made my way to the lakeshore and hopped down a series of giant-sized steps, offering a sun salutation to that great golden orb once I reached the bottom. The lip of the lake curled and I winked back. Sunbeams forged a wide path from the horizon to the waters edge; a few small, bold beams climbing up on my shoulder, warming and glowing. This is how I learned that the sun is a jealous star, protective of her offspring. As I walked, she followed and every time I turned toward the east, there she was, glaring.
Duck! A speckled brown mother and her fuzzy, fresh flock. Choppy water scattered their tiny buoyant bodies, but they always bobbed back together. The water was lively and I wondered at the life within it. The beam on my shoulder began to murmur about the magic of the things we call common and suddenly I remembered the dream I lived before waking. A sweet dream in which affection was shared with someone who does not offer it to me in waking life.
Colors were bold—green against brown against blue intercepted by white—shadows long, wind rallying the leaves, trying to out-sing the sound of on-coming traffic. By the time I had looped back to where I had begun, little more than an hour had passed but already things were different. I lingered by the trees that had held the waters reflection; they were empty. The man on the bench was upright now, scowling. My back was to the lake and the sun and I could feel something shifting, slipping. While waiting at a crosswalk I tried to pour the morning’s images into a bucket to carry with me. All that I had was a sieve. I watched the trickling escape of what was and willed myself to release it, redirecting my gaze to what is. The light changed and I walked forward. It was not until I was unlocking the door to Julia’s room that I realized the blazon little sunbeam had absconded with its warmth, leaving me a cold shoulder, still blushing pink.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
In Transition: Part 2
June 16
A new journal is always a reminder of the newness of each day and the possibilities to come.
I put off writing again and surrendered my time and attention to celebrating Regina's birthday, immersing myself in a day of crafting, prayer, and sharing meals. I am sad that I keep putting off intentional contemplation but am grateful for and greatly enjoyed this time of connection and creativity...
June 18
Marie, Jerica, Josie and I spent the night in Maloy, Iowa. We left Chicago shortly after yesterday's Loyola class on energy...Our drive was filled with lovely chats and an exchange of unsound "scientific facts"--underwire bras cause cancer, every night you unconsciously eat 5 to 10 spiders...
The morning light is being crowded out by dark clouds. The occasional rumble of thunder, though, is not nearly enough to drown out the dissonant medley of songbirds and the occasional crow of the rooster.
There is such spaciousness here. It started before we came, inside. Half the WRCW was out of town and there was room for my being to spread. Breathing and being; cleaning and cooking in empty rooms or talking quietly or laughing loudly or crying just a little with women content in themselves. "May this interior space remain whatever happens outside me," I prayed. And, thanks be to God, what has happened outside me is an ever widening.
I watched the storm roll in, first from the window, then the porch. First alone, then with Brian, hardly talking. I watched Frankie and Betsy milk the goats and walked the garden with B when the rain had reduced from a rush to a trickle, sprinkling my clothes and hair, settling in between my toes. Yesterday, in the car, I started reading Holy the Firm, one of the Dillard books Ted gave me. It is the perfect accompaniment; transcendant and grounding, like the farm. The natural space reminds me that there is more to earth than human activity. Yet, whether or not present, whether or not aware, we touch it all, and we all are touched.
Dillard's many musings on God and days as gods--from reckless to helpless to cruel to doting--remind me of an OnBeing interview about nurturing that brought up the idea of God as parent and of parenthood as "excruciating loss of control and vulnerability," drowning in a sea of love that swims with pain, the horizons beginning and end blurred into the indefinite edges of sky and water.
June 22
This past week has been one of what John calls "real Catholic Worker" days. We've had PeaceBuilder students at the house all week--educating them about consumerism, food, energy use, wast--offering opportunities for hands on work--gardening, crafting and canning, etc. Today they'll be at the farm. I am with Seneca who has been amusing herself by plucking the sunny head off every dandelion she can find and drinking muffin crumbs from a cleaned our baby food jar and crawling on me, speaking her myseterious language, while I try to write.
Yesterday, before the students came, we had an early morning vigil downtown, a prayerful presence for an end to torture and teh closure of Guantanamo. It was the first time I'd worn the hood since D.C. I hadn't given any thought to that being of any consequence. the moment I pulled it over my head the words, "God, have mercy" sprung involuntarily to my consciousness. God have mercy; on me, on us, on them.
Suddenly, I remember the men and their suffering. I was transported back to January in D.C., only now, instead of shivering in the jumpsuit, I was sweating. We processed and prayed together. Chantal led us in, "Courage, brothers..." and I read a transcript of the testimony of Omar Deghayes. After the vigil, the WRCW met with Joe S. and Mary D. to plan for our July 4 action. I started wishing I could meet up with our friends in Washington for the action this week but am glad, at least, that we are finding creative ways to bring education and awareness here.
The afternoon proceeded with students, and much harvesting of food from the garden; cutting, processing, and canning of food we picked up from Morse Market before they disposed of it. There was a break in food management for a lovely open meal with friends, the house meeting, then back to salsas and sauces...
A new journal is always a reminder of the newness of each day and the possibilities to come.
I put off writing again and surrendered my time and attention to celebrating Regina's birthday, immersing myself in a day of crafting, prayer, and sharing meals. I am sad that I keep putting off intentional contemplation but am grateful for and greatly enjoyed this time of connection and creativity...
June 18
Marie, Jerica, Josie and I spent the night in Maloy, Iowa. We left Chicago shortly after yesterday's Loyola class on energy...Our drive was filled with lovely chats and an exchange of unsound "scientific facts"--underwire bras cause cancer, every night you unconsciously eat 5 to 10 spiders...
The morning light is being crowded out by dark clouds. The occasional rumble of thunder, though, is not nearly enough to drown out the dissonant medley of songbirds and the occasional crow of the rooster.
There is such spaciousness here. It started before we came, inside. Half the WRCW was out of town and there was room for my being to spread. Breathing and being; cleaning and cooking in empty rooms or talking quietly or laughing loudly or crying just a little with women content in themselves. "May this interior space remain whatever happens outside me," I prayed. And, thanks be to God, what has happened outside me is an ever widening.
I watched the storm roll in, first from the window, then the porch. First alone, then with Brian, hardly talking. I watched Frankie and Betsy milk the goats and walked the garden with B when the rain had reduced from a rush to a trickle, sprinkling my clothes and hair, settling in between my toes. Yesterday, in the car, I started reading Holy the Firm, one of the Dillard books Ted gave me. It is the perfect accompaniment; transcendant and grounding, like the farm. The natural space reminds me that there is more to earth than human activity. Yet, whether or not present, whether or not aware, we touch it all, and we all are touched.
Dillard's many musings on God and days as gods--from reckless to helpless to cruel to doting--remind me of an OnBeing interview about nurturing that brought up the idea of God as parent and of parenthood as "excruciating loss of control and vulnerability," drowning in a sea of love that swims with pain, the horizons beginning and end blurred into the indefinite edges of sky and water.
June 22
This past week has been one of what John calls "real Catholic Worker" days. We've had PeaceBuilder students at the house all week--educating them about consumerism, food, energy use, wast--offering opportunities for hands on work--gardening, crafting and canning, etc. Today they'll be at the farm. I am with Seneca who has been amusing herself by plucking the sunny head off every dandelion she can find and drinking muffin crumbs from a cleaned our baby food jar and crawling on me, speaking her myseterious language, while I try to write.
Yesterday, before the students came, we had an early morning vigil downtown, a prayerful presence for an end to torture and teh closure of Guantanamo. It was the first time I'd worn the hood since D.C. I hadn't given any thought to that being of any consequence. the moment I pulled it over my head the words, "God, have mercy" sprung involuntarily to my consciousness. God have mercy; on me, on us, on them.
Suddenly, I remember the men and their suffering. I was transported back to January in D.C., only now, instead of shivering in the jumpsuit, I was sweating. We processed and prayed together. Chantal led us in, "Courage, brothers..." and I read a transcript of the testimony of Omar Deghayes. After the vigil, the WRCW met with Joe S. and Mary D. to plan for our July 4 action. I started wishing I could meet up with our friends in Washington for the action this week but am glad, at least, that we are finding creative ways to bring education and awareness here.
The afternoon proceeded with students, and much harvesting of food from the garden; cutting, processing, and canning of food we picked up from Morse Market before they disposed of it. There was a break in food management for a lovely open meal with friends, the house meeting, then back to salsas and sauces...
In Transition: Part 1
I tend to feel a sense of sacred transition when completing the pages of one journal and beginning to mark the pages of a new one. It's similar to the feeling I have in an airport or train station, or when the wind is blowing steady and strong as it is right now; the feeling that there is something epic in the ordinary. Because this has just happened (the transition from on journal to the next), and because I have not posted in a while, I thought I would include a excerpts of the end of one and the beginning of another here:
June 6
Thanks to a combination of garden/chicken responsibilities, poor planning, zero cash and a broken ATM at the Loyola redline, I am now reclining beneath a willow tree by the lakeshore instead of listening to Iron & Wine at Millenium Park. I was feeling very frustrated and sad to miss the opportunity to hear their lovely tunes live and to visit with friends, but I am happy to be here. I have been feeling the need to find a little space in time to reflect and write. Finding that naturally had to mean losing something else.
Walking up to the lake, it was as though I'd come here for the first time again. I was filled with that aching love and wonder that feels almost like mourning. Holding up my long skirt with one hand, I waded in the water, wonderfully icy, and watched--two young boys playing, splash and chase; an attractive triad of sparsely tattooed young adults, waist deep; soft bodied parents quietly keeping an eye out; a dark brown woman in a bright orange shirt rowing a white boat. There was a man leaning against the sand behind me. He wore office clothes and had a computer bag by his side. In contrast with his environment but seeming very much a part of it, he watched only the horizon. It almost appeared as though he were not really watching anything at all, only letting the everything roll over and through him. I admired his just being. After relocating to this tree--where the sand is interrupted by lanky green grass blades, striped by shadows and bent by breeze--I continued to glance over and admire his ability to create a time for holy sabbath in the midst of this ordinary day.
"Everyday, do something that does not compute." Use "spare time" (if such a thing can be said to exist) not to catch up on phone calls or e-mails, or reading, but to be at rest--in mind and body--and immersed in your surroundings.
We read that poem, The Mad Farmers Liberation Front, of Wendell Berry's as part of the liturgy we held on the farm this morning. It felt profound and poignant to hear it read beneath the trees, with the sound of wind and of birds coming from the trees. One line in particular came to sit with me, not heavy, but awkwardly boney; "Love someone who doesn't deserve it." I thought about all the times I unintentionally (or otherwise) am sizing people up to assess whether or not they are worthy of my love. And I thought about aching Earth who continues to provide enough to meet all our needs despite our persistant negligence and abuse. Despite our unworthiness to be so loved.
Things are changing again, in me and around me and I'm not quite sure of where to look for center. Jerica and I were sitting on the bee bench, she was carving wedges into stakes to mark the herb bed and I was taking a break and trying to make plans for leaving. J. shared her desire for commitment from the significant people in her life--to her and each other and place and way of being--for a rooted life and a long view. I want that too and wish that I could offer it. I felt sad that my own mind has more been wandering to new or old places I could go. I spent much of the car ride out there envisioning what a life in California might look like and i've been doing that same thing with Florida lately, as well as imagining long distance adventures over seas. But these daydreams do not satisfy because I am continually reminded of how well connected I am here, how full my dys are of projects I enjoy and of people that I love...
June 9
...Overnight chicago experienced another dramatic climate shift from broiling, clear days in the 90s to torrential rain and cloudy days in the 60s and below...
I feel like there's a lot going on internally that I'm not giving access to. Almost everyday I can feel it kicking and shifting, like a growing baby not yet ready to be born...I feel torn by my tugging loyalties--how does one order her loves when they are many and widespread (Dorothy, I'd love to hear the wisdom of your experience)? I want to be attached, intertwined, but I keep pulling away...
While folding newsletters something came up again that I've been thinking about a lot regarding food 1) how do we connect the people who have it with the people who need it? 2) how do we help the people who need it become comfortable and confident with fresh foods and how to utilize them? I started thinking about having a CSA-type thing where you pay a nominal sum for the food box, then, when you come to pick it up each week, there is a free cooking class and a shared meal with the same types of food you would be getting--alternative food economy + education + building community = can't be bad.
I've also beeng thinking about both nonviolence and environmental care and how really brining them into consciousness will mean talking about them and living them everywhere. I am often afraid of seeming arrogant or ignorant or demoralizing. I am coming to believe in these things more and more and that if everyone doesn't bring them into everyday life, we are lost. Both in body and spirit. But I also want to keep withholding myself from internalizing them completely because I am afraid of the losses in relationship and lifestyle that would undoubtedly follow.
June 6
Thanks to a combination of garden/chicken responsibilities, poor planning, zero cash and a broken ATM at the Loyola redline, I am now reclining beneath a willow tree by the lakeshore instead of listening to Iron & Wine at Millenium Park. I was feeling very frustrated and sad to miss the opportunity to hear their lovely tunes live and to visit with friends, but I am happy to be here. I have been feeling the need to find a little space in time to reflect and write. Finding that naturally had to mean losing something else.
Walking up to the lake, it was as though I'd come here for the first time again. I was filled with that aching love and wonder that feels almost like mourning. Holding up my long skirt with one hand, I waded in the water, wonderfully icy, and watched--two young boys playing, splash and chase; an attractive triad of sparsely tattooed young adults, waist deep; soft bodied parents quietly keeping an eye out; a dark brown woman in a bright orange shirt rowing a white boat. There was a man leaning against the sand behind me. He wore office clothes and had a computer bag by his side. In contrast with his environment but seeming very much a part of it, he watched only the horizon. It almost appeared as though he were not really watching anything at all, only letting the everything roll over and through him. I admired his just being. After relocating to this tree--where the sand is interrupted by lanky green grass blades, striped by shadows and bent by breeze--I continued to glance over and admire his ability to create a time for holy sabbath in the midst of this ordinary day.
"Everyday, do something that does not compute." Use "spare time" (if such a thing can be said to exist) not to catch up on phone calls or e-mails, or reading, but to be at rest--in mind and body--and immersed in your surroundings.
We read that poem, The Mad Farmers Liberation Front, of Wendell Berry's as part of the liturgy we held on the farm this morning. It felt profound and poignant to hear it read beneath the trees, with the sound of wind and of birds coming from the trees. One line in particular came to sit with me, not heavy, but awkwardly boney; "Love someone who doesn't deserve it." I thought about all the times I unintentionally (or otherwise) am sizing people up to assess whether or not they are worthy of my love. And I thought about aching Earth who continues to provide enough to meet all our needs despite our persistant negligence and abuse. Despite our unworthiness to be so loved.
Things are changing again, in me and around me and I'm not quite sure of where to look for center. Jerica and I were sitting on the bee bench, she was carving wedges into stakes to mark the herb bed and I was taking a break and trying to make plans for leaving. J. shared her desire for commitment from the significant people in her life--to her and each other and place and way of being--for a rooted life and a long view. I want that too and wish that I could offer it. I felt sad that my own mind has more been wandering to new or old places I could go. I spent much of the car ride out there envisioning what a life in California might look like and i've been doing that same thing with Florida lately, as well as imagining long distance adventures over seas. But these daydreams do not satisfy because I am continually reminded of how well connected I am here, how full my dys are of projects I enjoy and of people that I love...
June 9
...Overnight chicago experienced another dramatic climate shift from broiling, clear days in the 90s to torrential rain and cloudy days in the 60s and below...
I feel like there's a lot going on internally that I'm not giving access to. Almost everyday I can feel it kicking and shifting, like a growing baby not yet ready to be born...I feel torn by my tugging loyalties--how does one order her loves when they are many and widespread (Dorothy, I'd love to hear the wisdom of your experience)? I want to be attached, intertwined, but I keep pulling away...
While folding newsletters something came up again that I've been thinking about a lot regarding food 1) how do we connect the people who have it with the people who need it? 2) how do we help the people who need it become comfortable and confident with fresh foods and how to utilize them? I started thinking about having a CSA-type thing where you pay a nominal sum for the food box, then, when you come to pick it up each week, there is a free cooking class and a shared meal with the same types of food you would be getting--alternative food economy + education + building community = can't be bad.
I've also beeng thinking about both nonviolence and environmental care and how really brining them into consciousness will mean talking about them and living them everywhere. I am often afraid of seeming arrogant or ignorant or demoralizing. I am coming to believe in these things more and more and that if everyone doesn't bring them into everyday life, we are lost. Both in body and spirit. But I also want to keep withholding myself from internalizing them completely because I am afraid of the losses in relationship and lifestyle that would undoubtedly follow.
Monday, May 9, 2011
A Holy Thursday
Spirits were high around the table that night. Sharing the story about that ass--not Peter, though he could be so maddening, believing everything he said was absolutely right even if it exactly contradicted what he’d said the day before--I mean the donkey’s colt they’d absconded with. Leading up to the moment they felt frightened, but once the words, “because the Lord has need of it,” came tumbling from their mouths it was all they could do to keep from laughing. So insane, and yet, it worked! Now, they didn’t try to stop the laughter, it flashed golden in their faces, waving warmly through the room.
Holy Thursday mass. My mind settles back into my body, resting on a smooth wood pew, luminously candlelit. This is a feast day, I’ve been told. It is also my birthday. I was going to conveniently dismiss the latter. There was enough happening already without having to draw attention to myself. But a friend came to town and insisted on full, extravagant, celebration. The day was spent surrounded by friends, food, a glowing positive energy--no thought of tomorrow. The night before we’d tried to sleep but couldn’t stop laughing, not that we really tried. Our bodies bucked the propriety of bedtime knowing the laughter would be stilled by morning, no matter what we did that night. Let it roll, while the momentum is good.
Somehow the Beloved saw that shadow of what was to come. When Jesus rose his friend said, “Stay awhile. Can’t we just stay here a little longer. Stay with me.” He felt an impulse to grasp at Jesus, to pin him to that place, to that feeling, to that moment, knowing once they moved from the table a spell would be broken. They would walk out the door and into the looking glass where wine becomes blood and bread, a body broken. Can’t we just stay here and hold on?
I remembered a night that had been buried in a decade of days. A young woman, with legs like toothpicks stuck in a potato, wearing a child’s red t-shirt with the number 3, boldly white, and a a delivery man’s brown pants with a black stripe down the side. She had her arms wrapped around her beloved, his wrapped around her, fingers hooked in the belt loops of the brown pants, lest she disappear. She was so small, he tried to put her in his pocket but they found she didn’t fit, her fat heart not yet leaned by living. Internally she battled between going responsibly to bed and never, never leaving this spot, never releasing this man or this moment because she knew in the morning nothing would be the same. Better to stay awake for one more hour, better wakeful weeping in the garden than to sleep and say “I never knew you.”
Stay. The disciple whispered. Candles lighting the sanctuary where extinguished and the darkness laid it’s weight on my spirit. Stay. My heart whispered. I imagined the disciples, what would they do without him? How could the energy that had drawn them together and inspired them to live that new abundant life be sustained without the presence that had brought it in the first place? How can any of us press on with hollow Absence holding the space of Love’s presence? “Can’t we just stay here?” I plead, leaning toward the lighted room and laughter. Then the communion song came, “Stay with me,” the choir sang Christ’s words, “remain with me,” asking the same thing, but differently. The almost identical opposite. “If you want to be with me, stay with me, come along--can you drink from this cup?” He moved on, to the garden, the trial, the cross, the tomb. And I wished he could put me in his pocket so I didn’t have to choose.
Holy Thursday mass. My mind settles back into my body, resting on a smooth wood pew, luminously candlelit. This is a feast day, I’ve been told. It is also my birthday. I was going to conveniently dismiss the latter. There was enough happening already without having to draw attention to myself. But a friend came to town and insisted on full, extravagant, celebration. The day was spent surrounded by friends, food, a glowing positive energy--no thought of tomorrow. The night before we’d tried to sleep but couldn’t stop laughing, not that we really tried. Our bodies bucked the propriety of bedtime knowing the laughter would be stilled by morning, no matter what we did that night. Let it roll, while the momentum is good.
Somehow the Beloved saw that shadow of what was to come. When Jesus rose his friend said, “Stay awhile. Can’t we just stay here a little longer. Stay with me.” He felt an impulse to grasp at Jesus, to pin him to that place, to that feeling, to that moment, knowing once they moved from the table a spell would be broken. They would walk out the door and into the looking glass where wine becomes blood and bread, a body broken. Can’t we just stay here and hold on?
I remembered a night that had been buried in a decade of days. A young woman, with legs like toothpicks stuck in a potato, wearing a child’s red t-shirt with the number 3, boldly white, and a a delivery man’s brown pants with a black stripe down the side. She had her arms wrapped around her beloved, his wrapped around her, fingers hooked in the belt loops of the brown pants, lest she disappear. She was so small, he tried to put her in his pocket but they found she didn’t fit, her fat heart not yet leaned by living. Internally she battled between going responsibly to bed and never, never leaving this spot, never releasing this man or this moment because she knew in the morning nothing would be the same. Better to stay awake for one more hour, better wakeful weeping in the garden than to sleep and say “I never knew you.”
Stay. The disciple whispered. Candles lighting the sanctuary where extinguished and the darkness laid it’s weight on my spirit. Stay. My heart whispered. I imagined the disciples, what would they do without him? How could the energy that had drawn them together and inspired them to live that new abundant life be sustained without the presence that had brought it in the first place? How can any of us press on with hollow Absence holding the space of Love’s presence? “Can’t we just stay here?” I plead, leaning toward the lighted room and laughter. Then the communion song came, “Stay with me,” the choir sang Christ’s words, “remain with me,” asking the same thing, but differently. The almost identical opposite. “If you want to be with me, stay with me, come along--can you drink from this cup?” He moved on, to the garden, the trial, the cross, the tomb. And I wished he could put me in his pocket so I didn’t have to choose.
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