Anger

Anger is

the bastard child,

black sheep,

danger to the flock. 

This I know,

for I've been told. 

But, by night,

when the world is still,

I slip out the back door

to find anger huddled

in darkness

at the yard's edge. 

"What do you want?"
I ask. "Something is wrong,"
she says, her eyes

wide with fear, longing,

and love. 

By instinct, I open

my arms. I take her small, 

dark figure into myself and

she settles there, like a worn 

out child. 

"Something was wrong,"

she murmurs, "I wanted

you to know."

//

I've spent a lot of time thinking, reading, and learning about anger. As an Enneagram type 1, anger is a key emotional dynamic for me - both a sinful temptation and a key indicator of underlying feelings, as well as a source of creative and prophetic energy. This spring, as I again pondered the role of anger in my life, particularly as a clergy person, I remembered a life-changing essay I'd read years ago, written by psychiatrist and spiritual teacher, Gerald May. 

I was on a quiet solo retreat when I first stumbled across an article entitled "Love and Anger," in Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation's journal, Shalem News. Remembering the essay, I tracked it down (you can order a collection of all of May's articles for Shalem News by contacting the institute directly) and I want to share a little of it here with you. 

But first, I want to say that this poem came to me at a time when I felt called to embrace my anger as a messenger and a source of strength. As a person of peace, I have wrestled with anger, wary of its capacity master me and move me to sin. I have learned to listen to anger, as a warning bell, and to channel its energy into steadiness and strength in the face of evil. 

One of the church fathers, Augustine of Hippo said it well, "Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are." Perhaps the key to our hope in the weeks and months ahead lies in our willingness to allow love to move us both in anger and courage. 

//

Some words on anger, from Gerald May's article "Love and Anger," (Summer 1984 edition of Shalem News):

". . . even in the midst of a heated situation, it is occasionally possible to experience love and anger simultaneously. . . Love does not necessarily destroy anger, but it does transform and illuminate it. It is an error, I think, to assume we must get rid of anger in order to feel and be loving. 

The illumination of anger by love cannot be attained by trying to substitute love for anger, and certainly not by stifling anger. Instead, one first needs to accept the anger, letting it be what it is, and pause for a moment to look around for love. . . .

There is a radical difference between experiencing anger (or anything else) on one's own and experiencing it in the context of God's love. . . With even just the slightest breath of God . . . compassionate action can spring forth from the energy of anger. It is especially important to remember the good, energetic side of anger and that looking for love in no way implies getting rid of anger. Instead, love is added to the anger. Then God's alchemy of human emotions can be free to work.

. . . Love is always there. At a deep level, we wouldn't even become angry if it weren't for some kind of love; we wouldn't care. Love is at once the source of anger and the source of hope for its creative transformation."

What messages have you received about anger (particularly from the church)? What might happen if you were to work on developing a deeper awareness of and relationship with the energy of your own anger?

I (Still) Hate Skittles

(Re-posting this story, originally written when the twins had just turned four, because every year I dread the CANDY, CANDY, CANDY of Halloween and, every year, my kids' joy and excitement help lead me through.)

I hate Skittles. 

I do not want to, as the slogan suggests, "Taste the rainbow."

If a Skittle accidentally fell into my mouth, I would spit it out.  This is how I feel about most candy, except for Sour Patch Kids.

My twin boys, though, like every other four-year-old on earth, LOVE Skittles. 

And M&Ms.  

And Blow Pops. 

And all the other crack-in-a-wrapper kids get at Halloween. 

//

The candy-consumption-negotiations began bright and early the morning after a late night of Trick-or-Treating.  Isaiah came out of his room with his bag of candy slung over his shoulder, like a little Santa's sack.  He stumbled down the stairs, focused on navigating the precious bag, as though it was worth its weight in gold.  

Before I knew what had happened, he deftly negotiated the potential consumption of one piece of candy after lunch.  He then proceeded to remind me of our deal before breakfast, after breakfast, before preschool, after preschool, before lunch, etc.  

The candy of choice?  A full size bag of Skittles. 

He and his twin brother waited all morning for their agreed-upon candy.  This, for a four-year-old with candy on his mind, is like waiting a lifetime.     

Finally, a lifetime passed, and the candy was distributed in the few minutes we had to spare before leaving to watch their brother's school parade.  Isaiah tore into his bag in the blink of an eye and before I could get a handle on the situation, it was half-eaten, then spilled and picked-up, twice.  

Foreseeing the potential for a disastrous candy spill at the parade, I turned to get a zip-lock bag for both boys so I could pour their candy into separate preschooler-compatible packaging.  I sat Levi's candy on the counter, hoping to open it for him and avoid a repeat of Isaiah's spill-and-pick-up performance. 

I forgot, though, that a four-year-old tears into a candy-wrapper like a squirrel attacking a plastic feeder full of sunflower seeds.  Place a thin layer of plastic between a toddler and a handful of sugar and stand back – all sorts of destruction is sure to ensue.

During the brief moment my back was turned, I heard Levi’s bag of Skittles explode.  A rainbow of sugar shot all over the kitchen floor.  I spun around and discovered that he'd ripped open one whole side of his bag with one swift, semi-miraculous, yank.  Skittles rained down, and scattered (or would that be “skittled”?) under the island, across the rug, and behind the heavy iron radiator. 

This was a crisis of epic proportions.  Children hunt spilled candy like the women hunting her one lost coin in Luke's gospel; kids hunt lost candy with the kind of determination and passion that God’s hunts lost souls.

Levi immediately started crying while Isaiah quickly began grabbing and eating every one of his brother's Skittles he could find.   

This was less than twenty-four hours after Trick or Treat and I had already had it Up To Here with sweets.  I wanted to explode like that bag of Skittles.  I wanted to hunt down the person who thought it was a good idea to give little people bags of candy bigger than their faces.  I wanted to scream and stomp on the candy in a fit of rage.

But, I didn't.  

I dug deep inside myself and caught a glimpse, for a brief moment, of the rainbow shining right in front of me.  I saw how every moment has a rainbow and - everyone knows -  rainbows lead to hidden treasure.  Rather than breaking the moment further, I somehow saw and embraced the invitation to be the hero  - I reached for the pot of gold.  

I knelt down beside the crying boy and the thieving boy and began gathering candy.  With due diligence, most of the loss was recovered.  We put the rainbow in a new bag and I zipped it tight.  Then, we ran out the door together, two boys clutching baggies of brightness and one Mama carrying a rainbow in her heart.

//

By the way, we did miss one red Skittle.  This, I know, because the dog found it . . . and spat it out. 

Even the dog knows better.          

Back When I Was A Crumudgeon (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

(Photo Source)

The seminary's married housing sprawled in a series of low brick buildings some five miles from campus.  There the newly married, newly empty-nested and a few brave families with young children resided in dilapidated cinder-block two-story apartments. 

My husband and I cohabitated quietly in our first floor apartment with a school of saltwater fish, a frog and a cat.  Although our closest neighbor had two children and a couple upstairs added a baby before graduation, the sight and sound of children in the building was relatively rare.

This wasn’t the case however in the open courtyard and parking lots behind the buildings where children roved about in loud, unruly gangs.  A playground stood somewhere back there, one we never visited and kids seemed, to my uninitiated young ears, to be screaming there all. day. long. 

As a student, I frequently stayed up all hours of the night reading hundreds of pages of theology or writing and studying for exams.  In the afternoon I rode the campus bus home and slipped into our quiet bedroom with its big window and filmy yellow curtains.  

There I lay down for a nap.  The cat tucked in quietly beside me.

Beneath that window, though, was a small alcove in the building’s design.  Children gathered there in the otherwise quiet afternoons like mice in a sewer drain.  Squeaking, shouting, squealing.  I had yet to learn the ability to sleep anytime anywhere.  I didn’t yet know how to make myself sleep on command, how to tune out noise and distraction with the flick of an internal switch.

It made me furious.  The noise.  The indignity.  The gall of all those children, gathering beneath my window, running through my front yard, taking up space, making noise while I devoted my life to the steady, demanding work of thinking. 

//

A great sweeping oak tree grew in the front yard of our building.  Its branches hung down low.  One evening, studying after dinner with my books and papers sprawled on the table around me, I looked out our sliding glass door and saw a boy.  He was about seven or eight, the age of my oldest boy now.  Framed by the glass door, I watched him hang and swing, tugging on the old tree’s branches.  Another boy stood watching the first.

Whatever he was doing, it looked destructive.  In a fit of righteous rage I slid the glass door open and let loose a forceful, 

“Hey!”

The boy froze and looked at me, the branch still in hand. 

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

Still frozen, the boy replied, “I don’t know.”

“Are you trying to break that branch?” I asked, each word an accusation.

“Uh, I guess.” The boy stared at me with eyes like saucers.  His friend stared too at this seminarian standing back lit by her own apartment as evening fell. 

I was Wild and Fierce, Protector of Trees, Interrogator of Little Boys. 

“Then, cut it out!” I shouted, slamming the door shut.

The boys took off running. 

My husband and I exchanged a look.  Yes, he saw and heard it all.  

I’m sure I attempted to justify my outburst.  But later, we laughed.

We laughed at the boy’s look, at his sudden surprise.  Laughed at the way I must have looked, the way I did look and sound.  We repeated the scene over and over again between ourselves, the script of one of the funniest episodes we’d witnessed in a long time. 

Kids will do that to you.  I know that now.  

They get under your skin, pull and yank at your lower branches, until something in you breaks.  They tug you into the rough and tumble world of parking lot clubs that meet beneath open windows and oak tree branches strong enough to swing on.  Then, resting in bed on a sunny afternoon while your four-year-old twins rumble and tumble downstairs, as you try to distinguish between their cries and squeals of delight and the ones coming from the daycare next door, then you will remember the boys and the tree and the things you said.  

And you will smile and laugh all over again.    

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God? 

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.  

  

Living is Believing

‘Tis curious that we only believe as deep as we live.  Emerson, Beauty

She was bent at the waist, plucking at the ground near the swings, hunting and pecking like a chicken and I thought for a minute that maybe she’d lost something.  When we reached the swings, she straightened and turned.

“I’m not crazy,” she said, “I just like weeding.”

Then she turned and bent again and continued pulling the weeds that grew scattered across the wide expanse of mulch, moving from patch to patch like a frog crossing a pond on lily pads. 

She was white-haired and thin and as I watched, did not appear to be overly crazy.

I lifted the boys onto swings and rotated from one to the other, pushing on their soft, solid backs while my older two swung like monkeys, maneuvering the swings in every way possible save for the way they’re intended. 

“When you grow up as one of ten,” she said, “weeding all the time, it’s hard to stop.” 

“Well, it’s satisfying,” I replied.  Then, though she didn’t hear me, “I miss my garden.”

*   *   *

“I’ll be so relieved when we have a contract on a house,” I said one evening as we cleaned the kitchen, “so I can live in the future instead of having to live here and now.”

Since selling our house, we are living in-between in a place that is not lovely.  The walls are bare and white, the windows hung with three dollar blinds and I don’t want to spend a dime or an ounce of energy on improvements here that could be used on a “real home” when we move. 

“I feel like I’m in a cage,” I say, when my husband gets home and I pace from room to room.  Turning to the windows for an escape, I’m disappointed to find the neighbor’s old siding, the deli sign across the street that blinks continually , “O – P – E – N.”

*   *   *

I watched her hands, wrinkled and tan, as she drew closer.  She held a small metal tool that loosened each weed, then pulled them out root and all. 

She didn’t seem to mind that it wasn’t her garden, her mulch or, even, her weeds.

She kept right on clearing the area, one by one, like the man in that story of the star fish dying on the shore, tossing the weeds aside, handful after small handful.

It seemed futile, it was futile – the Crabgrass, the Plantain and Mallow, all sure to re-grow, to spread again.

Watching her bending, gathering, I thought of Elijah’s widow gathering sticks outside the city wall.  The old woman clutching the dry branches, gathering what she needed to return home and build a fire and bake one last meal from a few bits of oil and flour.  To the observer, her actions would appear futile, but she was a gatherer, a baker, a mother, so she lived while she still could and her living became belief.  The oil continued to flow, the flour was enough.    

I thought of the boy with two loaves and the fish, his hands small and shaking as he offered the meager meal, extending on skinny arms the too small, not enough.  To the observer, his actions were futile, but he was a giver, provider, so he lived who he was and his living became belief.  The bread and the fish split into a million pieces like light refracted through the prism of Christ's touch and it was enough.

*   *   *

I am going to have to start living here, I tell myself. 

If I stop living and keep pacing, I may well stop seeing.  And if I stop seeing, for example, the branches of the gentle oak tree that wave softly to me when I lift the blinds and glance in their direction, then it will be because I’ve stopped believing.

I’m going to have to deal with the boxes in the back room and hang hooks on the wall for the backpacks and coats that will come and go this whole winter long.  I’m going to have to find a place for things, to tend my plants, to nurture bits of beauty and light and to write it out when I can, because it’s who I am and then, maybe, my living will also, please oh please, become belief. 

Taking out the Trash (an invitation to Love)

"If what you see from the eye doesn't please you, then close your eyes and see from the heart." - Anonymous

I watch as the tall white plastic container slowly fills throughout the day.  By evening it’s reached maximum capacity and I do a high-step, stomping it down with my foot before scraping in the leftovers from six dinner plates.

The following morning, as I throw in the twins’ diapers from the night before, the situation is nearing a crisis – the trash can is full, overflowing, and my husband has already left for work. 

I feel a flash of anger as my fingers delicately search for the red plastic drawstrings and pull up on the hefty bag.  I tie the strings in a tight double-knot, drag the bag to the back door, and toss it outside where it sits smoldering in the sun all day long, blocking the entrance to our house.  I leave it there, stinking, like a quickly scrawled note of reproach that greets my husband the minute he returns from work.

My husband and I take a tag-team approach to nearly everything it takes to run a household of six, but last I checked taking out the trash is still his job.  He mostly neglects this responsibility, though, except for Sundays, when the weekly trash collection is imminent. 

I try everything from arguments and accusations to passive-aggressive humor in my attempts to wrestle him into compliance.  I explain how it hinders my day, how the whole house gets backed-up when we don’t keep up with the trash.  But I don’t explain how it feels like a personal affront to me, which is where, I suspect, the anger really comes from.  I also neglect to mention how I’ve allowed this little failure to come to symbolize a lack in his love for me. 

I can see I’m being irrational, but I can’t seem to let it go.

Then, one day, as I bend again to lift that heavy, reeking load, I feel the invitation to view that neglected bag as a symbol of all that my husband does do for me and for our family. 

The truth is that he neglects the trash, in part, because he’s busy showing his love in a hundred other ways, both big and small.  Arriving home from work, he looks past the trash and toddlers, his wide smile seeking me out as he pulls me into his arms to ask about my day.  He helps with baths and bedtime and encourages me to take the evening off and head out with friends when the going gets tough and I need a break.      

The truth is I am loved.  So for now on, as I bend and stomp and lift and tote, I’ll use it all, every motion, as a reminder of his love for me.  Because love is patient and love is kind, but nowhere does it say, “Love is taking out the trash.”

(photo credit here)

This post is linked with Playdates With God and Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday.

Risk

Early in our marriage it became clear that too many one-on-one game nights would ruin us, since I'm terribly competitive and an incredibly poor sport.  Being poor newlyweds, we didn’t own a TV and couldn’t afford to go to the movies, so we decided to keep playing our games with one crucial change – we would play on a team together against any number of other friends who were also played by, well, us. 

Though we still skewed the score from time to time to make sure we came out winners, we enjoyed ourselves and my poor sportsmanship was kept under wraps until the fatal day that we stumbled across Risk: The Game of Global Domination. 

Risk is a game of dice, slim on strategy and high on chance. With every roll of the dice fortunes turn from certain triumph to definite defeat and few are the relationships that survive it.  During one particularly intense game I shoved the playing board hard enough to make it slide across the dining room table.  Strategically arranged soldiers, tanks and cavalry men scattered wildly over various continents and oceans.  I was losing badly and my husband was gloating and it was more than I could bear. 

After the “incident” we banned Risk from our household, selling it to an unsuspecting customer at a yard sale.  We stuck to Trivial Pursuit, preferring the absurdity of teaming up together against ourselves over potential relational disaster.

*   *   *   * 

Fast forward a good ten years and here we are in the midst of selling our house and the process feels surprisingly similar to the game of Risk - on any given day we vacillate between dreamy elation and devastated despair as we circle frenetically around to-do lists and strategies, Internet searches and realtor listings.

“This is crazy,” we say, looking past each other with wild, dilated eyes before turning back to scroll with obsession through the same listings we’ve seen for the past month or more. 

“Are we crazy?” we ask, standing cornered in the kitchen planning, weighing our next move, rolling imaginary dice as we add up the possible weeks it will take to list, sell and buy a new home. 

When it comes right down to it, there’s risk involved in selling one house to buy another and I, the poor competitive sport that I am, find myself torn between ratcheting up my efforts to control the uncontrollable (and making my family crazy in the process) or resigning to devastation (and making my family crazy in the process).  Too often, I find myself picking fights with my husband in subtle ways, as though our house is the playing board and my fingers run lightly along the edge, poised to shove it all into disarray if only to relieve the tension of enduring the unknown.

*   *   *   *

Occasionally, in a rare moment of grace, we see each other in the middle of it all and our arms open as if by instinct.  “We're crazy,” we say, leaning in and shifting our weight just the slightest but changing our posture radically, from against to together.   


If you like this post, you may also like We Have No Maps.

We Have No Maps

"We have no maps, nothing but the inner directions
that seem to emerge as we engage the questions and
risk moving toward the dream.  Together we will
learn where we're going."    - Judy Cannato

The man I now love
invited me on a walk
that first spring.
"Why don't you go
in front?" he offered,
as we wandered
without a trail
down a wooded slope.

Inwardly I bristled,
"How should I know
where we're going?"
But his joy
was simply to be
in the woods with me
and I, alone,
could not feel it.

We're walking again
this spring, moving
without a map
toward shared dreams,
down a hill no less
wooded or sloped.

But now I see,
together is the key
not where or how.
And when fear
causes me to stumble,
I find myself turning,
not to anger,
but to love. 

This poem is shared with dVerse Poets Pub for their open links night.

When Winter is Gray and the Fog Rolls In

"Anger is the cloak sadness wears." - anonymous

It was one of those gray, soggy January days.  Ice and fog wrapped the world in a cold mist and I had been trapped at home nursing sick children for over two weeks.  So I piled the kids into the van - as though crowding together into an even smaller space might somehow help – and pulled away from the curb with no clear destination.

A plan started to emerge as I drove and we headed out of town and onto back roads toward a large greenhouse that also boasts a store and kid-friendly restaurant.  There would be a large, warm room full of plants, a fish pond, bunnies and a train and the promise of hot dogs for lunch.  I figured what we all needed was a glimpse of green and flowers and a taste of spring, a glimmer of hope to get us through yet another winter day. 

We drove on wet roads over rolling hills beside the wide and resting fields of winter.  I told the kids we were going on a surprise, a secret trip and things started to feel a little more hopeful.

I came down a hill to a large, familiar intersection with a traffic light that turned red just as we approached.  I braked, stopping and looking in both directions, before putting on my blinker and swiftly turning to the right.  We were almost there, close enough that I could already feel the hope of spring and warmth and relief that I hoped the green-house held.   

I noticed the “no turn on red” sign just as I was turning and heard the honk of the car behind me.  No one was coming, though, and the kids were shouting and pointing to farm equipment in the fields, so I thought, “ooops,” and kept driving. 

Looking in my rear-view mirror I noticed that the car that honked had turned right too and was following close behind me, aggressively close and as I slowed to round another corner I worried I would be rear-ended.  The car stopped just short of my bumper, then turned, following me, and I started to grow concerned. 

Fifty feet or so more and I turned again into the greenhouse’s parking lot and my suspicions were confirmed as the car followed and parked too, somewhere behind me.  I sat waiting for a minute, fearing a confrontation.  I had all four kids in the van and the last thing I wanted was to expose them to a shouting match, or worse. 

Just when I thought I was safe, a woman appeared in my window and I automatically opened it.  She stood there, leaning forward, aggressively – an older woman with short, messy gray hair.  Her face was in mine as I looked up from the automatic window button and she threw her words at me like one might throw a drink at a party, “Don’t you follow traffic signs?” 

The question was all accusation and meant to catch me up short, but I was already caught up short, which is why we’d left the house in such a hurry and I simply didn’t have anything to hurl back at her. 

My face was filled with sadness and exhaustion as I replied, “It was a mistake.” 

“That’s why I honked my horn,” she spat back at me.  

I looked at her and said again in a pleading tone, “It was a mistake.”

“We lost two children in that intersection,” she said.  Then, quickly, she spun around and sped back to her car, her long black sweater sweeping behind her. 

Winter filled my heart and fog rolled in. 

I recognized immediately that her raging anger was a stiff mask that hid great pain, something I doubt I would’ve noticed if I hadn’t also been in pain. I also guessed that she was probably lonely and afraid, as I was, and frightened too, perhaps, by the depth of her rage. 

The kids asked what was going on and I brushed the interaction aside, but something had been stolen in the moment.  I thought, as I unloaded the double stroller and snapped it into place, that I would’ve liked to invite her to have lunch with us, but she was long gone and not, I suspected, in the mood for company.

Later, I wondered what she saw as that window rolled down, I wondered how she felt as she walked away, and I wondered whether my words, repeated twice in my own exhaustion and humility, were what she needed to hear, “It was a mistake.” 

This post will be shared with Playdates With God and Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday.

Where the Wild Things Are (and where Good News begins)

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . . John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Mark 1:1-4 adapted

I met my friend in the wilderness the other night. Well, it wasn't exactly the wilderness, but it was a bar of sorts, which for me still qualifies as a real and somewhat alarming wilderness, being the good Christian girl I was raised to be. She was late and I sat there in the dim light trying to appear busy on my phone and constructing to-do lists on the white placemat in front of me.

She arrived full of unnecessary apologizes which I quickly brushed aside and we dove in head first. Between us there's little need for small talk and right there in the middle of that noisy wilderness we each pulled open the layers of our lives and sat back, listening through tears as our hearts talked for awhile.

This is the friend who tells me how her marriage really is, tenuous and struggling, and shares how she slapped her son in a moment of exasperated rage that has melted now into a messy pile of regret. She is the one I can tell how I yelled at my own son, threw a royal tantrum of rage that scared him and me and how we all ended up on the couch in tears trying to figure out how that day could be redeemed.

*   *   *
 

I have to admit that I never really liked Maurice Sendak's book, Where the Wild Things Are.  I tend to like books that are warm and pretty, books that affirm my need for a world that's safe, orderly, and predictable. But, it’s possible that the fact that I don’t particularly like the book is an indication that I do get it, a little bit at least. What I do understand is that Max is struggling with the wilderness, with all that is wild and untamed both inside and outside of himself.

Something about the unrelenting, all-humbling job of parenting leaves me all too familiar with this wilderness. If my life were a children's book, then one might notice a forest of sorts growing in my house most days right around four pm or any other time that happens to be about an hour before my husband is due home and a half-hour before I lose it.

Too often by that point the day is been played out - patience is gone. I'm wresting dinner onto the table while kids are whining, fighting, hanging and swinging off of my legs like the little wild things they are. By then we're all wearing our wolf suits and if the windows are open the whole neighborhood can hear the roaring, gnashing of teeth and rumpus that ensues. As a parent, as a human, I'm well acquainted with wilderness and wild things, within and without, but it doesn't mean I like it.

*   *   *

It's significant that the gospel of Mark places the advent of the good news of Jesus Christ right smack in the middle of the wilderness. This gospel has no time for angels, places no stock in genealogies or other such small-talk as a means of introducing the striking, challenging figure of Christ who emerges in the pages that follows. Mark begins like my friend and I do, by peeling back the layers and starting not in the skies full of stars and angel choirs, but on the bare, dusty, rocky ground of the wilderness.

Something about this gives me heart, gives me hope, as this first week of advent is designed to do. Something about it resonates with the prophecies of Christ and the prophets who spoke them, those craggy ill-kempt men and women who lived on the edges and thereby lived and spoke that much closer to the heart of things.

The good news begins in the wilderness. What a challenge, what a hope.

*   *   *
 

The friend I met with told me how she'd shared with her counselor that she has few real, close relationships, few relationships where anything beyond the bright cheery small-talk of this season might be appropriate. Her counselor said, "Yes, but what about this Kelly? It seems like you have a real relationship with her, why do you think that is?"

My friend, God bless her, said, "Kelly's real. I mean, she told me she threw an apple peel at her children, for goodness sake, so I feel like I can be my real self with her."

After telling this story she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, "Why is it so hard to believe that our humanity is what's most attractive about us?"

*   *   *
 

Oh, my friends. How deep and wild is the wilderness within you? Who do you have who's willing to meet you there?

*   *   *
 

This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ - the One who came and dwelt among us, who meets us in the fullness of humanity. Christ, who "sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year" to meet us here, "where the wild things are."

 
I'm so grateful for my friend who gave me permission to share from our conversation - she's one of the flowers in this beautiful field.

Playing the Love Card (a cure for grumpy bears and grumpier mothers)

One day Bartholomew was grumpy . . . His ears were cold.
"Wrap your scarf around your ears to keep them warm, " said George.

But Bartholomew was still grumpy. His legs felt too stumpy.
"I'll carry you," said George.

At home, Bartholomew's porridge was too lumpy,
his tummy too plumpy, and he was too small.
"I'll feed you," said George.

At bath time, Bartholomew hid. He did not like anything at all.
"What a day," said George. "You've been so grumpy, your legs have
felt stumpy, your porridge was too lumpy, your tummy too plumpy but,
Ba . . . I love you just the way you are."

Bartholomew felt better.
He kissed George and he brushed his teeth all by himself.

"Time for bed, Ba," said George. "We both need a little rest."
"Nah," said Bartholomew.

*   *   *   *   *



My husband and I worked at a personal care home for about two years when we first got married.  When the time came for us to leave one elderly woman told me how much she would miss us.  She said how much she liked and admired my gentle, soft-spoken husband and then she said, "But you, you could be a little grumpy at times."

I let the sting of her well-meaning comment settle a little, then looked her straight in the eye and said, "You're right, I can be a little grumpy sometimes." 

I guess maybe something like that could go on my tombstone, "Here lies a beloved wife and mother who could be a little grumpy sometimes."  It's true after all, there are days when I simply feel far from myself, out of sorts with the world and everything in it.  Days when there's an itch in my soul that I can't scratch, the feeling of something chaffing away at me so that the day itself leaves me fit to be tied no matter how good or bad or in-between it is.  Just ask my kids or my husband, they could tell you about it for sure.

I'm aware enough now at the ripe old age of thirty-five, to know when it's happening, to feel it coming or be able to step back in the middle of everything and see myself with an objective eye.  I know enough to recognize that it usually comes over me because of some rigid unspoken rule I've placed on the day or the moment.  There's nothing wrong with hopes and standards, but when the whole day is conspiring against you (as today happens to be, if you hadn't already guessed) it's best to somehow let yourself and those you love off the hook in some way or another. 

The only way I know to escape this is to surrender to the small grains of love and grace that surround me, to take my eyes off of my goals or dissatisfactions long enough to see something more and to open myself to the love that is True no matter what, whether I'm able to get out of the mood or mess I'm in or not.

You'll forgive me, won't you, if there are days, weeks, months when I play the "love card" with my grumpy old self, when I play it over and over like a favorite worn out record for my kids and my spouse?  Don't we all have days when we and the world we live in are just too "lumpy, plumpy and stumpy" to bear?     

I'll admit that there's something about playing the love card that seems a little weak, like maybe I'm getting too soft on myself, letting my standards slide a bit too far.  Love, really?  Like gratitude, it seems so ineffective, so unproductive, to people who're sold on the likes of power and control and self-improvement. 

Maybe, though, love is the best card we have to play, the only card that can bring us out, set us free from our wretched state of sin and sorrow and, perhaps even grumpiness.  I'm convinced it was one of Jesus' favorite tricks, which of course made plenty of those around him madder than all heck and drew others to him like all grace draws a sin-heavy soul. 

I have to wonder, too, if this isn't what Christmas and the cross that follows are all about, God playing a big 'ol grand love card on our behalf, freeing us to be better than we know ourselves to be.  "I love you, just the way you are," says the manger and the star, the sky full of angels and light.  "I love you," says God, "I love you."

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine,
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.

- Christina Rosetti         

     

The Grouchy Ladybug (How I Died a Hundred Deaths this Halloween)

(this should be a cute picture of my son and I in our costumes,

but that's another longer story for another day)

It’s rainy and cold and we’re all keyed up and worn out from being trapped indoors for two days by Hurricane Sandy.  I wake up, too late, and squeeze in a shower while the twins, still in dirty diapers from the night before, wander around the living room.  Their whining amplifies to full pitch as my shower cues them in to the possibility that I’ll be (gasp!) leaving for the morning.  The preemptive separation anxiety continues through breakfast and packing everyone into the van to take my oldest to school. 

After drop off I cart the remaining three kids back into the house.  We mull around, waiting anxiously for the babysitter who'll be staying with the twins while the four year old and I head to his Halloween party at a local nursing home, an event I’ve been dreading since the October calendar came home.  The twins settle for a few minutes, their anxiety lulled by the fact that I haven’t left at my usual time and almost simultaneously my son's anxiety about the party begins to rise.  He peppers me with questions, 

“Will there be people from the nursing home in the party?”

“Um, I’m not sure, honey.”

“Will they see me in my costume?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to dress up?”

“No”

“I don’t want to wear a costume.”

I've been “against” this party from day one and I know that my son, so robust and cheerful at home, will be shy and clingy in a new place.  So I've consented to hire a babysitter for the twins and am committed to accompanying him, despite my own teeth-clenching, foot-dragging antagonism toward it all. 

“Solomon,” I say, “what if I wear a costume too?”  I emerge from the back room wearing the fuzzy black antennae from my daughter’s ladybug costume.

“Ok,” he says, brightening, “you can be a black beetle.”

Then, I can feel myself giving in, letting go a little more as the idea strikes and I say, “What if I’m a ladybug?  I can steal Sophia’s costume.”

He approves and I have just enough time to gather the red and black-dotted wings and my camera as the babysitter arrives and the oldest twin dissolves into a raging stream of tears, protesting my impending departure.  I run in circles grabbing things, carrying the littlest one and nearly run out the door with him, before the sitter stops me and grabs him saying, “This one’s staying.”

Then we’re off to a party I don’t want to go to, but also don’t want my son to miss.  We drive through the rain and find his friends in a large room coloring at a table while elderly people in wheelchairs are set in a wide circle around them.  The residents watch, their eyes hungrily absorbing the beauty and innocence, the luxury of so much youth in one small space. 

My son is clingy, shy and tired, overwhelmed, it seems by the noise, the crafts, the games and I do my best to get into the spirit of things.  I help with glue and tear bits of tissue paper, I assure another child that it doesn’t matter where he puts the eyes on his pumpkin.  I laugh with the other Moms over the resident who rides in on a wheelchair, pretending to scare the kids with a mask, all the while giving a growing peep show as his robe slides further and further open.  I take a smiling picture with my son, a little Iron Man snuggled up on a ladybug's lap. 

By the time we get home, though, I’m over-stimulated and frustrated at my inability to love Halloween, to love loud parties and candy.  The twins are exhausted and hungry when we walk in and they’re drawn to me like magnets, pressing their tiny bodies onto me in desperation.  It’s all I can do to untangle myself, causing more tears and desperation, as I head to the kitchen to make lunch.  Solomon is sorting and dumping candy, dancing and singing and blowing the whistle from his party bag and the twins are screaming in their highchairs, desperate to make it clear how deeply my absence has wronged them. 

Then I’m yelling, “Stop it” and throwing an apple-peel all the way across the kitchen til it bounces off of one twin and they both sit staring, shocked into silence and my son, that sweet four year old boy, offers to play his whistle to settle them down. 

*   *   *   *   *

There are days when being a mother feels like dying a hundred tiny deaths.   A hundred letting-gos, a thousand surrenders to more noise, more movement, more demands than I feel capable of handling. I’m not complaining, I simply want to be honest about the stretch of motherhood and how quickly, how fiercely, I shrink back from it.  

I died a hundred little deaths this morning and will surely die a hundred more before nightfall on this, the day of the dead.  But I know, thank God, that this dying, this surrender makes me new again.  I may die a hundred times a day, but I'm just as often made new, reborn in the face of a chubby, gap-toothed grin, a gentle hand seeking mine for reassurance.  Just today I was resurrected by the voice of my son calling cheerfully from the back of the van as we made our way home, “I can’t wait to be old so I can go to the nursing home to live.”

*   *   *   *   *

Later in the day as I'm making chili for friends who're coming to trick-or-treat with us, as the twins again stand whining at the gate that divides them from me, my Dad calls with the news that my maternal grandmother has died in the nursing home where she's lived for years now in North Carolina.  As I stand over the stove, stirring the chili, I find myself surprisingly grateful.  Grateful that, though I couldn't be there with her, I was here, at a nursing home with my son, the very same morning.  I think of my Grandmother's life and the many little and big deaths she endured.  I think of the ways I get so focused on what I'm giving up, that I nearly miss what I have right here, right now in front of me.  It occurs to me that I live such a grace-filled life, full of opportunities for surrender, continually pressing me toward the edge. 

Dinner is finished, the kids and husband are home and the poor older twin, who just can't pull himself together, sits crying on the floor.  So I scoop him up and settle in the rocker and watch as he drifts into a heavy sleep.  I love the moment, the rocking, the sleeping child, so rare, then he lifts his head and looks around disorientedly before throwing up all over both of us.  Then he leans forward, laying his head back on my chest with that pile of warm, smelly goo laying like a layer of glue between us.  I died again in that moment and rose again to hug him tight until my husband came to help us both get cleaned up. 

Every day of the dead, every Halloween, gives way to all saints day and I wonder if we too, dying in our little and big ways, aren't also being moved, continually, from death to new life.  This dying is a surrender, a stripping bare by letting-go until all that remains is love. 

Pilgrim

After waiting anxiously for it to arrive in the mail, I quickly finished the first book of assigned reading for Journey into Silence.  Short Trip to the Edge, by Scott Cairns is a spiritual memoir that tells of the author’s midlife crisis in which he’s struck by the realization that he doesn’t know how to pray.  The book traces the author’s steps as he travels to a Greek island heavily populated with ancient Greek Orthodox monasteries.  It's on Mt. Athos that Cairns endeavors to, over the course of a month or so, seek out a life of prayer and locate a spiritual father with whom he can continue correspondence. 

By the time of his adventure Cairns is in his mid-fifties, his children are all but grown and flown and he lives a life of academia, teaching writing and poetry at the university level.  I was a hopeful reader, expecting to like it, hoping to relate.  The cover picture was beautiful, the author’s description of his moment of awakening on a beach in the Chesapeake Bay compelling, but he lost me somewhere.  Probably right around the time that his journey into prayer led him to take off for Mount Athos, a small island of monasteries where women (including, even, female pets) are forbidden and children are scarce. 

At first blush, Cairns’ pilgrimage struck me as one born of too much privilege, which left me lacking in compassion for his journey.  It was, overall, discouraging – I simply don’t live the kind of life Cairns and his fellow-travelers live, on numerous levels.  This left me ranting to my husband, of course, then, later, led to this poem. 

Pilgrim

Hardly ever – these days – a musket-packing

Puritan with buckles on his boots, a pilgrim is a person

who, confronted by a spiritual distance to be crossed,

determines to undertake that journey.

            - Scott Cairns, Short Trip to the Edge

If this is what a pilgrim is . . .

Thank you for sharing,

but I couldn’t help

but be discouraged

by the story of your trip

to an ancient Island in Greece,

where you waited for hours

to speak with holy men.

If this is what a pilgrim is,

then there’s little hope for one like me.

Here I sit, reading of your journey,

stranded on my own island of sorts,

my small house just as heavily populated, perhaps, as Mount Athos – 

per square foot that is.

Few men dare to travel here,

though they’re not forbidden.

(Tell a man you’re breastfeeding twins

and they’ll keep their distance of their own accord.)

As for hours of prayer uninterrupted,

these I do not have,

but I do have hours of cleaning and laundry,

which Brother Lawrence tells me may well be the same.

As for waking in the midnight hour for prayers and sacrament,

my nights are more often disturbed by children’s cries,

than the striking of a Semantron.* 

As for the Mysterian,** the Eucharist you receive,

I know no mystery in the midnight hour,

other than the power of presence to calm

a quaking child in a room heavy with darkness and fear. 

And dare I mention that nursing two bodies,

two souls, round the clock, is a sacrament in itself?

These are the rhythms of my days, the holy vigil I keep.

If I cannot find God here,

if the distance is truly as far as you think it is,

then what hope is there for me?

Then I remember

that I do find God here

in the midst,

in my lack of freedom and privilege,

in my tiny, cloister of a house.

And that, perhaps, you are more impoverished than I,

having to travel so far to find God. 

Also, it occurs to me,

that it’s possible a time will come,

when children are grown and gone

and the night hours are long and quiet

when God himself may not be so easily at hand.

Then, finding myself there, wouldn’t I also travel

wherever was needed to find him near again?

So then, maybe we two pilgrims

are not so far apart as first I feared we were.

After all, isn’t it only by grace that any of us find God at all? 

Travel safe my friend,

whether the road be long or short,

and may you know and be known by

the One who became a pilgrim

and traveled no short distance

to come to you.  

* a wooden board that is rhythmically struck to indicate an approaching time of common worship in Greek Orthodox monasteries like those found on Mt. Athos. 

** the preferred term for sacrament, particularly the Eucharist, in the Eastern church.

My desire to relate with Cairns as a reader and fellow pilgrim quickly turned into anger when, on the surface, I felt I couldn’t relate.  But later this poem, which started out as a rant listing the many divisions between us, became an invitation to look beyond the surface upon which our differences lay.  There I saw the deeper unity of a pilgrim’s heart.  Beneath the concrete details of Cairn journey, which the book is steeped in, I was able to see the deep loneliness, longing and desire shared by all those who forsake all else for the joy of knowing and being known. 

God moved me beyond the differences that divided to a more familiar place where Cairns and I could sit side-by-side discussing the distance we would both be willing to travel to find God near again.  In this way compassion moved me from anger and division to companionship of the soul, and isn’t this something of which we could all use a bit more?

So, dear pilgrim, travel safe my friend, whether the road be long or short, and may you know and be known by the One who became a pilgrim and traveled no short distance to come to you.  

Doing the Foolish Thing (Choosing Oasis)

He is no fool

if he should choose

to give the thing he cannot keep

to buy what he can never loose

to see a treasure in one’s soul

that far outweighs the brightest gold

he is no fool. 

- He Is No Fool, Twila Paris

I don’t remember when I first laid eyes on it, maybe mid June or July?  All I know is that it glimmered light and refreshment, like a distant mirage in the middle of a barren dessert.  “Journey into Silence,”  a nine month pilgrimage in community and contemplation, offered through Oasis Ministries.  My soul lept within me, like John the Baptist in his mother’s womb when she came face to face with the one who’s womb carried the One. 

I quickly scanned the details, seeing how they matched up or not with the details of my life.  My hopes grew a little with each discovery, it’s local and held on Saturdays.  Travel costs – both time and money – would be low and my husband could stay with the kids, saving us from needing to pay for childcare.  I continued reading the pamphlet, taking it in in long cool gulps until, near the end, I came to the cost: $ 1000.  Gulp.

I went to the website, shared it on my facebook page, suggested it to friends, sent emails back and forth and had phone conversations trying to convince others it was a worth-while addition to their schedules.  Meanwhile that soul that had lept was impatiently waiting, banging on the bars of my heart, calling, “hello, hello, what about me?” 

Ah, that soul.  I started to notice the old warning signs of anger and resentment seeping out, welling up, like contaminated well-water.  First in tiny drips you'd hardly notice, the picking up to a steady stream.  “What’s this," I thought, "anger again?  And why am I so mad and fearful?”  These were followed by the usual temptations, the temptation to hide in work in particular; work as an escape, a salve, a drug, to numb the need for real beauty, real life, real refreshment. 

I listened to my soul, then ventured to share, first with a friend, then finally with my husband, “I keep telling everyone else about this program, but I think I’m the one who needs it.  (pause) Do you think we can afford it?” 

Thus begins the same long circuitous conversation about what I need that I’m not getting, the space I don’t have, the community my heart flourishes in and my concerns about the anger and resentments I see sprouting, spreading all around like the crabgrass in our flower beds.  “I want to make it work,” he says, “but I’m just not sure.”  I beg, I bargain, volunteering to give up my once a week childcare that's costly, but necessary.  We bring it to the dinning room table, sit down with the calculator, the bills, the budget sheet, the checkbook and savings.  It doesn’t look good. 

*   *   *   *   *   *

In high school I owned about five well-worn cassette tapes and a sweet see-through walkman with wires in neon and day-glow colors.  During my forty-five minute bus ride to school I sat hunched down between the hulking green slabs of pleather seating listening to Michael W. Smith and Twila Paris over and over again while others around me listened to Phish and Grateful Dead. 

I slid down into the seat, my long legs folded, knees pressing into the back of the seat in front of me, staring out the window at the passing world.  In the mornings I watched the sun rising over distant fields, the clouds low and heavy reflecting a reddish glow.  I couldn’t help but repeat to myself the rhyme, “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”  I learned to read the signs. 

I feared the tapes would break as they sped, forward and back, coming to an abrupt halt when I pressed stop.  I nearly wore them out, fast forwarding, rewinding, listening, trying to convince myself beyond a doubt that I wasn’t a fool.  Trying to believe that what I wasn’t getting then was what I couldn’t keep anyways, trying to believe there was treasure in my soul, to convince myself I was not the fool I feared myself to be. 

*   *   *   *   *   *

I wrote my spiritual director and asked whether she thought the program would be a good fit and explained my financial concerns.  She replied, “Maybe you should think about whether it’s something you can afford NOT to do.” 

It was a question I was already asking myself, a question who's answer I already knew.

*   *   *   *   *   *

I've done a foolish thing.  I signed up for a program I can’t afford.  I don't know how it'll turn out, but I know what I need and I’m sticking to it and waiting to see how God will show up.  Within a day of deciding to apply a friend approached with a childcare opportunity, it fell through, but her asking was enough to remind me God always knows more ways to forge a stream in the desert than I can possibly imagine. Since then I've had at least four opportunities for extra income come my way and this reminds me to make my plans based on abundance, not scarcity, and then lean my back into the labor and waiting. 

I've made my choice to give the things I cannot keep to buy what I can never lose.  Don't tell anyone, but I've found a treasure in this old field and I'm running off, high-tailing it to go and sell everything I have so I can buy it.  And when I do, I'll dig a well there that reaches down into the depths of the cool, dark earth where the streams of life flow, hidden.  And there I'll drink in long steady gulps and be filled. 

When your soul starts banging on the bars of your heart, when it's parched and dry and withered, please do stop by, there's water enough to share.  Drink deep, gulp if you need to, let it run down your chin and neck and chest.  This water will never run out.     

Post Script: Since applying and writing this, the cost of this program has been more than covered.  I'm so thankful.  I hope to continue to write about my journey at Oasis, please do stop back to read more and consider visiting their website to see if their programming might interest you!