gratitude Sunday: Dharma school

Little N with a few of the outdoor Buddhas.  All decorated with beads, flowers, and bits of nature.

This was our second week a Dharma school and we still love it.  It's a class for children but they welcome parents to remain as well.  So far it's been super basic instruction to Buddhism necessary for guests (newcomers?) like me and Little N.  There were about 12 kids today and about 10 last week, so it's a healthy class size even in summer.  We learned to Take Refuge, which is a series of prayer gestures and prostration.  We practiced some simple meditation.  Listened to several jatakas, which are parables the Buddha told about kindness.  We learned to be calm, respectful, kind, compassionate. During one chant the children join the adults in the Shrine room upstairs.  It's a clumsy lovely thing of children making prostrations down the center aisle to sit in a special section at the front of the room and chant with the adults and monks.  Then as the children leave they are each given a piece of candy.

spinning the prayer wheels, releasing thousands of prayers

Dharma school is held in a multi-purpose room that also leads to the kitchen and the Dharma Shop. The room is dimly lit and cool. You can hear the chanting of the adults in the Shrine room above us. We sit in a circle on a plush rug.   Incense occasionally wafts through on the air.  And it's a busy room!  People passing through from the Shrine room, the clanks and clatter of folks in the kitchen preparing tea and treats for after service, the doorbell chiming, and intermittent conversations in English and other languages.  I have to practice to remain focused and calm in the midst of all the distractions.

showing off his new mala

One of the Dharma school teachers made a point of telling me that this monastery loves children.  She was raised Buddhist and carefully looked for a place to raise her children in the tradition as well.  Her three kids sit in the circle with me and Little N and the others.  Her youngest fidgets and acts up and makes Little N laugh.  We shush them back into quietness and sitting cross-legged.  I hover and manage Little N, as I slowly learn that it's ok for him to be a child here.  He is welcome here.

my new mala

My Christian family members likely won't be excited to learn that I'm bringing Little N to Dharma school.  That I'm essentially rooting his spiritual foundation in Buddhism.  I've tried bringing him to Christian churches and he just cried and fretted and hated it.  And allow me to own that my insides cry and fret and hate a lot of what goes on in a lot of Christianity.  But I needed and wanted to find some place and community and tradition in which to teach and connect Little N with reverence and values and good folks.  Something about our neighborhood Tibetan Buddhist monastery resonates with him.

Something about the newness of me to it makes it work for me too.  I have no baggage about the Buddha and his followers.  I have no preconceived notions about Buddhism nor Tibet.  It's all brand new for me.  That's fresh and bright and amazing.  I'm learning alongside my son.  Parent enough to gauge that what we are learning is what I want for him - kindness, compassion, respect.  Novice enough to share in his delight and awe.

My only worry or caution about this essay into Buddhism, is that we don't turn out to be some kind of religious tourists.  I want to be respectful and sincere.  I want to share in what the monks are offering and find a way to give back, a way to convey our gratitude to them.  I want to be part of the community that they have planted here.

self portrait Saturday: upright

It's enough just to stay upright,

upright in every way,

And pour your love into your children,

til there's nothing left to say.

- Ani Difranco

  

I want to live upright.  These recent weeks of listing and limping along has set me eager for an upright life.  To me that means something about self care and the discipline to hold to that course.  I'm feeling better in the last 48 hours and I'm optimistic that I'm back on track.  My head and my heart have cleared some.  I'm eating nutritiously, have set down the cigarettes, am playing with my son, and pausing for a moment's gratitude and good will.

Of course today, a good day when the doom and gloom has just passed on, upright means more than how I care for me.  It encompasses the big values of environmental stewardship, social justice, advocacy for my son and others on the spectrum, global socio-economic awareness, etc... But let's not call back the clouds of doom and gloom.  Let's start with this good day.  Little N and I composted and recycled.  We ate mostly vegetarian.  We wore second hand clothes.  Yet, we weren't perfect or pure or holy.  I drove the station wagon across town adding to a variety of forms of pollution.  We played in a wading pool that could be considered a waste of water.  And right now our freshly laundered clothes are spinning around in our dryer, rather than being hung out to dry on a line somewhere.

Because that's just how my life is these days.  I yield to some of the conveniences of contemporary life and culture the same way that I yield to passing storms of hard feelings.  I expect that I won't be "upright in every way."  I think, I hope, that's where we lean on grace.  The grace of good friends who email me with encouraging words and acceptance of where I'm at.  The grace of city-wide collection systems that make doing the right thing (compost, recycling) convenient.  The grace of divine (?) forgiveness, of self (?) forgiveness, for all the time when "inconvenient" or "culturally inappropriate" renders doing the right thing "impossible" and left undone.  The grace of clarity and retrospect to try again or simply to call on grace and apologize to whoever is paying attention for where I'm still not quite upright.

commonplace: expansion

"Immature petition tries to convince God to remake the world in our image for our convenience, but mature petition asks God to remake us in God's own image, so that we can expand our capacity to respond to the world as it is."  p.105

"By crying help, we choose expansion rather than contraction, advance rather than retreat."  p. 108

"But you don't criticize, condemn, chide, or reject yourself.  Rather, you join God in God's desire for your own expansion and well-being."  p. 112

My small group at Woodland Park United Methodist Church (WPUMC) is still reading Brian McLaren's Naked Spirituality: a Life With God in 12 Simple Words.  I first wrote about it here.  Our most recent chapters were about the word, or prayer, help.   

I'm not much of a pray-er in terms of bringing petitions to God for intercession or some kind of result.  I grew up with a terminally ill father and a terminally ill aunt, both of whom I was close with.  I learned that the people we love suffer and die.  Prayer does not interrupt or otherwise alleviate that.  So for me, prayer at its best has come to mean more about good company with God while we live, survive, endure, make the best of... the life that is.  

But the idea of expansion brought a new facet of prayer to light.  That prayer might expand my consciousness, for example - expand (and deepen?) my understanding of what Little N needs right now.  So a few nights ago I prayed "help, help me with Little N in all of this," and then I went to bed.  I rested with a calmness about Little N that contrasted with the anxiety and fear that I'd brought to my prayer.  When I woke, I had new clarity about some changes that I could make in my attention and behavior that would better support my son.  I'd say I was expanded.  It didn't take away or in any way reduce the challenges before us, but I was better equipped and aware of how to engage and follow through in healthy ways for our family.  And the responsibility to engage and follow through was on me.  I was granted new insights and the choice to respond to them.

Another place I'm perceiving expansion is with our small group at WPUMC.  During the years of choosing and living in my marriage I also chose to let some of my values (peace, social justice, feminism at its best, spirituality etc.) drop away.  I was mostly aware of it; I deemed them unrealistic and unlivable for ordinary folks.  Though in some ways I assumed these values were still around, paused perhaps, latent, but that we, as a couple, would resume them.  It's become evident, now, that these are my values and not my husband's.  In small group I see and hear these values made central and significant in our conversations.  Ordinary people, not front line activists or otherwise public figures, who make a point to talk about these values and to work together to live them.  They model these values for me and when I go to group open to receiving help I am expanded by their example.

I believe that this expansion is what God wants for me, and for all us ordinary folks.  To live open, deep, expansive lives in our families and communities.  That, I guess, is where social change (peace, social justice, feminism at its best, spirituality, etc.) becomes the common sense of a culture and gradually ousts meaner, stingier world views (not that it worked in my marriage, hmmm).  And I love that McLaren makes the point that we don't cut ourselves down for being small or contracted in some way.  We love ourselves with God, we cultivate richness in our lives, together with God.  And I'd add, we extend that same gentle tending of love to others.  

commonplace Wednesday: Womanspirit Rising

Originally published in 1979, Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, is a new classic on my summer reading list.  It's a collection of early essays by some of the most recognized writers in feminism and spirituality including: Merlin Stone, Starhawk, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Mary Daly, and Zsuzsanna E. Budapest.  I'm about 25 pages into it and feel energized by the ideas, and reconnected with the feminist identity and theological interests of my college years.  But I'm a little puzzled too - how can I be part of this movement, this bigger conversation, these changes, as a mom with a job?  [When I was in college I was convinced that if the values and ideas I was engaging weren't accessible and actionable by "ordinary people" (rather than ivory tower PhD types) then they were useless.  I inadvertently made that my mission and fumbled my way into ordinariness.  Here I am and what to do, how to do it, with these big ideas?]

This quote from the Introduction offers some hints:

If the world has been named by Adam without Eve's consultation, then the world has been named from the male point of view.  As women begin to name the world for themselves, they will upset the order that has been taken for granted throughout history.  They will call themselves and the world into new being.  Naming women's experience thus becomes the model not only for personal liberation and growth, but for a feminist transformation of culture and religion.  "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?" asks poet Muriel Rukeyser. "The world would split open." p.7.

When women describe their experience they have the potential to change culture and to change religion.  I don't have complete understanding of this yet but I think it's something about the man-made constructs falling away, the rules and the givens, the masculine common sense is revealed for its incompleteness, inconsistency, and inaccuracy.  It is not whole and complete for human experience.  It is not a valid placeholder or assumption.  This falling away makes room for more understanding, more dimensions and perspectives can occupy the space held as truth.

One of my favorite ideas from Carry On, Warrior was G's approach to scripture.  She is totally up front about the fact that all Bible readers pick and choose what to obey and how to understand the Bible. When faced with a passage that she didn't understand she interpreted it against the primary rules to love God and love others.  Based on this she decides what to do with the puzzling verses.  All the other rules, and what I call the man-made constructs, get cast aside to make way for the real work of loving.   Some of her readers find this sacrilegious or blasphemous.  I call it a hermeneutic of love and I dig it.

At it's best, at my best, feminism is an angle for speaking back to the dominant culture and taking apart the givens and the rules.  It's not necessarily about male versus female, men vs. women.  Women just happen to have a particular opportunity to initiate these changes since they weren't welcome to participate in the original naming.  (But women aren't the only "other" that was left out.  There are lots of opportunities.)  And the way this happens, in part, is women talking about their lives - like G in Carry On, Warrior, like me on my blog and Facebook and in life.  It's tiny.  It's barely visible, one woman at a time.  It's sometimes exhausting and seemingly pointless.  But as I, and we, persist in lifting up our very personal lives for public view and value, we participate in a political process of making room for more, different, other than the man-made norms.  The world is "split open" and we have the opportunity to reorder and remake with a new measure - a measure of love.

gratitude Sunday: kindness & strangers

Last night was way too exciting for me and Little N. 

It started with a thwarted trip to the beach, complete with a screaming meltdown (Little N, not me).  It ended with us rolling along home on a spare tire.  Throughout the evening we were met with kindness and helpfulness.  When we finally made it home, at 10:30PM,  we enjoyed some chocolate cake before falling deep into sleep.  I'm  hoping future Saturday nights are less eventful.  I'm grateful for the goodness and humor we met last night, and the reassurance it offers about the folks with whom we share this city, this world.

self portrait Saturday: uniform

My husband is a stay-at-home dad and a good one.  But it's impossible for us to pay all the bills on what I make as an admin at a (perpetual) start-up.  So L has picked up a part-time job at night and I have picked up a number of evenings plus the weekends solo parenting so that L can sleep while I take Little N.  It's rough.  It's very rough.  But once school starts again things will ease up, in terms of L being able to sleep during the day, so we really just need to get through two months of this.  We can do that.  

We're gradually developing our new routine of occupying Little N and providing L with a good sleeping environment.  (Also kind of rough with a small apartment.)  So Little N and I go out. A lot.  Every Saturday morning, and more times besides, we're off to the beach!  

This is me in my summer morning beach uniform of cap, turquoise T, black lightweight capris, and flip flops.  The only thing missing is my ubiquitous cup of coffee.  I'm comfy and ready for anything the sand, surf, and son send at me.

 But single-ish mom isn't the role I would have chosen for myself.  Heck, we all know by now that "Mom" wasn't my plan.  For that matter, "Admin" wasn't my plan either but it's turned out to be the most direct way that I can make money for this little family.  Much as I love our family pod, I need, and want, and get to have (really?  I hope so...) other identities and other good work in the world.

I have a new daydream of what my good work in the world may be.  It's been a long time since I've had a dream like this for myself, so I take it to mean a few things.  One, I'm getting well.  I can imagine something positive and imagine being, bringing, contributing something positive.  That's been a long time coming.  Two, I have to be brave and learn things that are new to me.  And isn't that what the Mom gig has been for me from the beginning.  I know that I can be brave.  I can learn new things.  I can fail & learn & try again.  Three, Compassion.  For others.  For myself.

But what's the new daydream?!  I don't want to jinx it.  Please wait and see as it develops and shows up here.  Wish me luck and all good things!

self portrait Saturday

I'm reading two books right now, Spiral Dance and Naked Spirituality.  Both of them address spirituality, from Pagan and Christian perspectives respectively.  One theme that I'm finding across the two books and points of view is the importance of a personal, daily (?), practice.  Neither one specifically defines nor instructs the reader in this and yet it's sort of implied in order to develop the spirituality described and to use the tools the books outline.  

As a working mother and wife I find it incredibly challenging to make time and space for a daily spiritual practice.  Things like meditation or prayer or even simple silence are not easily achieved in my world.  Am I just "on hold" spiritually until my job and my family require different things from me?  Where is the wiggle room in which to start with a mere 5 minutes of quiet time?

5 minutes of quiet time....

commonplacing: TAZ

In my small group at WPUMC we're reading Brian McLaren's Naked Spirituality: A Life WIth God In 12 Simple Words.  It introduced me to the concept of a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ).

"...rigid conformity and emotional inhibition stultify the human spirit, and so occasionally people defy the authorities and dare to dance.  They create what author Kester Brewin describes as Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZs), places where the normal patterns of hegemony and homogeneity are broken."

This is taken from page 65, quoting Barbara Ehrenreich, and citing examples like Woodstock, Burning Man, Mardi Gras.  These events, at their best are about jubilation, freedom, and connection.  He continues on page 67.

"Could it be that the kingdom of God is the ultimate TAZ, the ultimate liberation from the normal oppressive patterns of hegemony and homogeneity."

When I was single and child free it was a lot easier for me to resent and resist hegemony and homogeneity.  Certainly they were always there, but I did feel freer to choose people, interests, and expression that were outside the norm.  I didn't dream of marriage, family, and home ownership.  I dreamt of living purposefully, finding a way to make a difference, to be my own, and to be different.

That desire was part of why I chose the graduate school and program that I did.  Whole Systems Design (WSD) at an alternative university.  My dream took the shape of wanting to write, specifically articles about good news, and then maybe start my own program focused on that kind of story.  Producing the stories.  Training people to seek, articulate, and promote good news.  But WSD didn't work that way for me.  It focused on talking and small groups.  Not my areas of professional interest.  Worse, to me, it didn't help equip me to navigate or talk back to the "real world" of hegemony and homogeneity.  I graduated more adrift and vulnerable than I started.

Reentering the "real world" I married my grad school honey, started an interim job, and suddenly fell pregnant.  Six years later I'm still at the job working as the sole provider for my little family.  I feel trapped in the hegemony and homogeneity of job, home, and child rearing.  Any little gap for autonomy is savored, celebrated, and jealously guarded.

These days I find my Temporary Autonomous Zones in my small groups (ironically enough given the grad school debacle), both the Christian group and the Pagan group.  Granted, we are not dismantling patriarchy or otherwise disrupting the status quo in publicly recognizable ways.  But we are peeling away our conformity and inhibition to unveil to ourselves and these trusted friends our thoughts, feelings, and private realities.  And in Pagan ritual we even "dare to dance."

Today it is easy for me to accept grace as the thing that pierces hegemony and homogeneity and frees us to be authentic souls liberated from the rules that stultify human life.  This definition holds true to the example of Jesus's life - practicing a life of loving others that put him outside the rules and mores of the law and the culture of his time.  He stands as the model of how Christians too ought to live lives of love, lives changed by that grace.  I experience this kind of grace in the Pagan rituals as we minister to each other in ceremony, raise energy together, and "party like Pagans."

But it's challenging me and yet I'm hungry for it, to have this grace in the rest of my life in the "real world."  (I guess that's why they're "temporary" autonomous zones.)  How do I live a daily life of such grace, outside the bounds of hegemony and homogeneity?  Is it just part of being fully human that we develop and abide by these conventions?  To live in this world, a soul and a body, means we entangle ourselves in these invisible, powerful things.  And it's a life of spirituality, of practice and of hunger, that manifests the desire for grace and the means to be grace to ourselves and others.

gratitude Sunday

I give thanks.

Imbolc altar 2012

Today I am grateful for the warm, kind, expressive, thoughtful, growing, diverse women of the Pagan group I practice with.  I have been meeting with this group in various constellations of these women for a few years now and I can gladly call them a spiritual home.  We've just added a new activity to bring us together - a book club reading spiritual books.  I love reading and I love hearing the discussions these women engage.  

I am grateful to be with people that accept my marriage Pagan and Christian.  I am grateful for an encouraging space to practice ritual and to explore the meaning of Earth-based spirituality.  I am grateful for these particular people, their personalities and stories and kindness to each other.  I am grateful to learn how different women practice their spirituality in their lives, outside the shared space of our ritual circle.  

self portrait Saturday: an aspiration

I'm expanding exponentially
I am consciousness without identity

- Ani DiFranco "Alla This"

I'm participating in two very different groups these days, a Christian small group at the local Methodist church and a Pagan group that gathers in various homes.  In each group we're reading a book related to the spirituality of the respective community.  As I read these books I'm seeing more commonality shared between the two faiths than might be immediately expected.  For example, common values include: interdependence, anti-consumerism, community building, ecology, and the immanence of the divine.

I used to say that being a Pagan made me a better Christian.  It's trite but I think these areas of spiritual overlap are part of why that is true. With the support of my Pagan practice and Pagan community, I'm stepping out from under the shadow of Christian religion and the laying down the baggage I've collected living in the place.  Lighter, freer, more in touch with my own soul, I can seek and follow the example and message of Jesus.

As I start to recognize and confess an eclectic spirituality I'm encouraged and strengthened by these spiritual but not strictly religious values.  I want to grow into a person of wisdom, moral character, and a closeness with spirit.  These elements transcend a particular religion.  The religions then function as metaphors and tools for engaging and developing the qualities, relationships, and understanding that I desire.  The religions and their practices serve spirit rather than casting spirit in the mold of a given religion.

Commonplacing: consciousness & culture

I'm rereading Starhawk's Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess for the first time in about 15 years.  The pagan group I do holiday rituals with has added a book club to its activities and I'm excited to have more time with these good folks and to dig into some good books together.

Starting with the Introduction of this book I'm struck by how many of the same words and phrases are standing out to me now as when I first read, and underlined, the book.   The ideas that held my attention then also speak to my life today.  Maybe it's something about phases of transition in my life.  Or maybe it's a testimony to my years long search for meaning.

"The concept of a religion that worshipped a Goddess was amazing and empowering."  p.2

"Now my body, in all its femaleness, its breasts, vulva, womb, and menstrual flow, was sacred." p.2

"Maybe, in fact, deep transformation of society could only come from an underlying transformation of culture." p.6

"To create the changes in consciousness needed to transform society at a deep level, we need insights broader than those the issues of the moment can provide." p.7

Although, thinking about it a little further now, it's almost ironic that the same material has got my attention because I'm approaching it from such a different place.  Fifteen years ago I was struggling with the evangelical tradition.  I was specifically addressing the roles and possibilities for women in that culture.  Today I've found a Christian church led by a woman and where women and men share visible and diverse roles.  I'm less concerned now about changing culture and more concerned about changing my own mind, my heart, my life.

I can hear my psychiatrist telling me to "go inside" and I suspect that she would tell me that meaning won't be found in a book or a book club.  But maybe this book, with its affirmation of the sacredness of life and the immanence of the divine, with its rituals and exercises, may offer a way inside.  And maybe this book club, with its good company of smart, caring, spiritual women, may form a container of kind support as I make the journey inward.

The book isn't just a 'How To Worship the Great Goddess" guidebook.  It's also an invitation to create religion, to change consciousness, and to change culture.  These are big things.  And in small ways I'm already part of them.  Our little group of pagan friends creates ritual together 8 times a year.  Together, through ritual and socializing we create a little pocket of culture where things are a little different from the mainstream.  From that secure space we walk back into our daily lives, and hopefully bring some aspects of it with us.  Nothing too radical.  But still something very real and special in our lives.  And I suppose that's where change, for a person or a group or a society, begins.

balancing

I had this experience last week where I felt like I could see through the walls of the office to something more true, more real, than this daily life.  I was afraid that I was cracking up, having a psychotic break or something.  But when I told my psychiatrist about it, she said it was more like a psychic expanded consciousness kind of thing.  Ok.  Still unnerving.  But kind of convincing me that this life is an illusion and spirit is more true.  

My psychiatrist went on to tell me that meaning and joy come from within.  Going inside through meditation and such.  Don't be afraid to do it, she says.  I'm afraid.  Like I'm going to meet someone scary and mean inside myself.  Like all my fears will come to life.  She thinks those fears come from things I was taught about human nature and sin etc.  She thinks I have a spark inside me that I can hold in my heart and it will light my insides.  

Do you think she's right?  That the light and meaning are inside of each of us.  And the fitness plans and resumes etc are may be pragmatic but not quite where the action is?  They are the illusion.  Spirit inside is what's real?  And yet, what does it solve, to believe that way?  How does one live that? 

For a long time I really believed that spirit is where it's at.  But then I had Little N and now I feel like I am totally ill equipped to support him in the "real world" with a good paying job, not to mention my own satisfaction in a fulfilling job.  And I worry so much about money it's crazy-making.  There's just never enough.  We're dipping into savings.  Ack!  That kind of thing makes this daily pragmatic life feel very much more real, more significant than spirit and healing and even job satisfaction.  

It makes me think a couple of things 

1) I should have figured out a nice linear path to a career when I was younger.  

2) This spirit/world thing is a shifting balance that maybe only rarely feels steady and balanced.  

And that's as much as I've figured out today.

circle

sign of the times

It has been a week since I did any yoga.  My commitment to my practices: yoga, meditation, healthy food, community, writing... have all wavered, languished, and lapsed.  They've been inconsistent for months and now, in the stressful time before a big event at work, I notice their absence.  Because I  know that they restore me? Because I don' have, or at least I don't feel like I have, the energy to act on them even though they do me good in return?  Because I'm uncomfortable these days which sets me to reevaluating my choices and my time?

chipped toe polish, jeans, not on a yoga mat

I flip through my notebooks from the past couple of years and see the same intentions and the same inconsistency month after month.  Not that I don't reach any goals, but that some good habits don't take hold.  Daily practices that enrich my time and restore my energy and tend my relationships.

Am I starting from the wrong place?  I wonder.  Maybe I've been trying to make myself into someone else rather than cultivate the life that I have.  It's a subtle change of perspective that shifts my attention in a significant way.  These practices are not about some future tense imaginary me that I'll turn into  - or won't.  Rather these practices are about embodying today in meaningful ways, living now, with this family, these coworkers, friends, and acquaintances, being attentive, responsive and true.  Having something, myself, to share, and with which to receive and to play.

"The path itself shows you the way," Maezen said in her comment.  I'm learning to look at my life not as starting here, toward someplace else, but living here.

There remains for me the challenge of community.  I just read Jana Riess' Flunking Sainthood and she highlights that these practices she took on weren't meant to be done alone but in community.  I think that extends to so much more than the 12 practices that she endeavored.  Even my tiny life, my simple habits, call for the instruction, encouragement, and accountability of a community.  But I'm a hermit crab, flinching quickly and withdrawing into my shell.  Even with my husband and son, I retreat back to the bedroom, apart and alone.

Who is my community?  How do I connect and engage with them?  How do we interact for each other's benefit.  I quickly list: my husband and son, my coworkers, my pagan friends, this new church (?), a few friends I rarely see (?), e pals from the past (?).

So for the rest of the month I'm taking on two practices.
Solitary: daily yoga.
Community: reaching out to someone at least once a week.

steeple with a church

"Look!  a steeple!"  We have walked past this church countless times in the year since we moved to this neighborhood.  We've talked about it in reference to the blue steeple that rises up from it.  So when, after studying their website (http://www.woodlandparkumc.org/) we decided to visit on Sunday, we told Little N we were finally going in the building with the steeple.  He declared it, the steeple with a church.  

And we liked it.  

I was first impressed by their work in the community.  It's a small congregation with lots of personality but probably not a lot of resources.  Even so, what they have is shared with folks in need and with a view to justice and sustenance.  A lot of this work is conveyed on their website, but what I needed to hear and to see is what they were like on Sunday morning.

The sermon was smart, balanced, contextualized the Scripture passage, conveyed a message relevant to us today.  The people were very welcoming, eager to greet new faces, and chat with us - and seemed to share that same warmth with everyone in the space.  I didn't experience any instant connections or feel like I found my niche socially, but Little N joined right in at the kids table during coffee hour!  He even gnawed on a piece of banana like the other kids, something he never does at home!

My dad always said you need to try a new place 3 times before you make a decision about it.  So far I like what these people are about, I like that they are in my immediate neighborhood and do good work here, my next question is do I and our family fit there.  (Will I make any new friends?  Will we become regulars, seen and heard, seeing and hearing, there?  Can I be part of the good work?)  I am hoping for connection and looking for my role in connecting.

Imbolc ritual

We celebrated Imbolc Friday night with a beautiful ritual among kind friends.  The ritual impressed upon me additional elements of the holiday that hadn't stood out to me before.  Imbolc is Brigid's day, goddess of hearth, home, healing waters, light, inspiration, poetry, and even smithing.  She's a triple goddess and with her sisters shares these skills and gifts.  We honored Brigid with candlelight, poetry, blessed water, and new spring plants.

I'm not usually very attached to or inspired by particular gods and goddesses.  They tend to feel flimsy to me; spent inventions belonging to another people and another time.  But the character of Brigid reached me last night both as an icon imbued with things that are important to me and as a messenger bearing news about something about which I am very vulnerable and unsure.  Brigid told me that I am a writer.  She would know... as a goddess of inspiration, poetry, and intellect.  The message came with clarity and courage in my heart to keep putting words together about what I feel, know, and experience.

Brigid's message carried another insight too.  She convinced me of the significance and power of knowing your gods and goddesses.  I still don't perceive supernatural entities hanging out in the ether guiding, protecting, or judging us.  I don't experience divine presence that way (if at all).  But I do recognize the utility and power of recognizing and committing to strong characters holding and exemplifying our highest values.  They provide models, guides, examples, good company as we navigate change and confusion, celebrate our arrivals into new good places in our lives, and generally strive to live well with each other.

For years now I've played with the metaphor of the madwoman in the attic, where God is the madwoman.  Inherent to that metaphor has been my own struggle to perceive a divine feminine.  An aspect of the madwoman has been the male God in women's clothing.  I couldn't shake the masculine deity of my formative faith.  But through the icon of Brigid, within the ritual's meditation, I recognized and felt the madwoman as her own distinct feminine sacred self.  And with the new beginnings of Imbolc, I committed this year to knowing her character and committed my writing to her.  What does this mean?  I'm still translating the feelings of that night into meaning and action, but it's something about mercy, creativity, release rather than rules, love rather than laws, sharing my struggle, celebrating each tiny success, and knowing the sacred and holy in the good company of other people.

weirdo (me)

My husband explained to me this morning that I'm a weirdo.   I was fair game since I say similar things to him more frequently than would be considered nice.  (He describes himself as, "the hard stuff is easy and the easy stuff is hard."  I describe that as weird - and so frustrating!)

We were chatting about the fabulous job at the fabulous company that I quit after three months this summer because it was not a fabulous fit for me.  The CEO there told me that he thought I was a star.  So why didn't it feel like a good fit?  Why didn't I feel like a star?  Where the heck is my good fit?

L described me as really strong in some areas and really weak in other areas that are not normal.  As in, "weirdly shy and apprehensive about normal things, like driving."  And it all adds up to a… quirky? person who doesn't exactly fit in.  A weirdo.

From L's point of view,  where he's seen me shine has been in particular pieces of writing I've done in the last several years.  That's your strength, he told me.  That's what you should be doing.  

It would seem that the only thing left, is to do it.  

my turn

hi friends, we're still here and my Little N is simply thriving in preschool. he delights in playing around the other children. he's comfortable in the routine and genuinely appreciates the structure of the morning. his teacher and his speech therapist seem to especially enjoy working with him. at home he's joyfully chatty, mostly in his own language but there's a little english thrown in. he also likes to read, such that he opens a book, speaks his language from a page in it, points to some of the pictures, flips ahead, repeats... until we reach "all done!" Pick up a new book and continue.

unfortunately, I'm not half so well as he is. something about these long months of figuring out what's up with kiddo kind of drained me or maybe the effort of bracing myself sort of imploded. so I started therapy and then quit therapy and then went back to therapy. we're working well together now. she practices a different method than I've tried before and I'm surprised that it works. in any case, the therapist says this is a serious depression. she asked me, "have you ever felt this badly before?" I told her, "oh, I've been worse than this." "well, you got better then and you'll get better now." (it sounded kind & reassuring when she said it.)

so I'm moving pretty slowly these days. my brain is mush, my body is heavy, the world is grey as far as the eye can see. except for Little N. he's a bright light. we went to the library this morning and for the rest of the day he would spontaneously blurt out, "bye-bye bribrary!" pretty cute. and we had a date at a coffee shop this afternoon. he was so excited to sit in a big wooden chair and watch the traffic out the shop window. chattering away in his language. a big red fire engine went by with all its lights and sirens going! it was a good date with mommy.

Little N is blooms and long searching tendrils of green. I'm dry and dusty and due for a little pruning and tending before I'll bounce back. but I always do.

jettisoning Gifted & Saved

Today was the last day of my Halloween Staycation week. Tomorrow I'm back in the office. Despite being brutally infected with the nastiest cold this side of the apocalypse we still managed to complete some household tasks and to enjoy some playful family time together.

The top of our to do list was purging the apartment and storage unit of excess. If we don't use it then we don't need it, and I can't deal with the clutter. Maybe having these things used to make me feel cozy or secure but now it just feels heavy. I want to feel light and limber. We packed up clothes, baby toys, kitchen utensils, unopened toiletries, magazines... inane odds & ends that I probably brought home in the first place. L filled the bed of a pick-up truck with donations for our local Goodwill. That was the easy part.

While L and N were napping, I sifted through fifteen years' worth of journals. Declared them all junk. When L woke up he took them straight out to the recycling barrels. All those years. All those musty words. Dumped.

Flipping through my former scribbles I recognized two pieces of me that I'm laying down and I'm relieved (light & limber) to see them gone: Gifted & Saved. I'm neither now. I'm pretty sure that I was never either one. But my childhood was dominated by these ideas and so my identity was cast in them. At best, I had strong verbal skills but the rest of my academics weren't anything special. On the other hand, I was steeped in Evangelical Christian religion and culture as a child and earnestly practiced what I was taught.

With each new level of education and development the dissonance rang louder. I stepped out of sync with my academic track in high school, wrestled with spiritual doubt, and questioned the religion's moral code. I was looking through everything I'd been given trying to find something true, something more, something that fit me. And these old journals carried that same struggle through my college major, friendships, partners, first jobs, volunteer work... My father's death was a powerful breaking point where I consciously cast off a lot of who I'd been raised to be but you can't live in the liberation of grief forever. The family reassembled itself. I reassembled myself and the old familiar ideas were still significant.

The two threads of Gifted & Saved, certainly thinner, remained and I traced those wavering lines through these old journals. They show up in how I compare myself to my peers - careers, families, activism, education, aesthetics - it's a long clunky spreadsheet of what I was supposed to be versus who I am today. They show up in my persistent attempts to participate in some kind of Christian community - I randomly bring my son to the Baptist church around the corner & don't forget that Quaker meeting I say I'm going to visit. They show up in the books and articles I read about new theology and alternative interpretations of atonement and Mary and... it goes on and on.

My son's birth, my growing into motherhood, and these recent months of evaluations and therapy for N are a years-long breaking point where chunks of my identity are cracking and falling away. In some places I chip at it and try to shape the changes. Not that an identity is a tidy static "it." At best, the early years after my father's passing showed me the fluidity and phases that are a self and a family. Even so, you can name some of your states and phases along the way. I am not Gifted, I'm ordinary as dirty dishes and a day job. I am not Saved, I love the people who gather at church, I bask in their faith, but the preaching makes me cranky and I don't believe a word of it.

These two words aren't true for me anymore and they aren't true for my little family. They were so important for so long and so I lay them down with respect and even gratitude. Today I need different words to express and to shape who I am. My little family needs words like that. I'm wary of the words that the school system will enter into my son's records. It's time to choose our own words and make them stick as long as they can be true.

gratitude

Today, I am thankful

~ for the evaluator we met today who saw past N's wall of sensory issues and glimpsed the bright funny kid who wants to come out and play;

~ for a husband who supports & encourages me on both practical things (like this Radiant diet) and intangibles (like letting me be tense/anxious & letting me get over it);

~ for an employer who allows me the flexibility to take a day off with no notice so that I can accept a last minute appointment for N;

~ for cooler days and blue jeans and homemade soup;

~ for kiddo's paintings decorating our apartment, illustrating his story in his own hand;

~ for Goddess Leonie, her Radiant recipes, affirmations, ideas, prolific work, gracious hosting of our online circle, and for the loving folks who support & love her;

~ for my son & for my husband who fill our home with love.