Yearning for More

We are all designed to yearn.  It is evidence of our spiritual being.  All animals hunger for physical nourishment, show curiosity, and make great efforts to procreate, but none of these features include a yearning for More Than Now.  That is the human experience.  We are wired for heaven, for another realm.

When I first read The Lord of the Rings, I was fixated on the trees in Lothlorien.  Legolas describes them with reverence:

[Lothlorien] is the fairest of all the dwellings of my people. There are no trees like the trees of that land. For in the autumn their leaves fall not, but turn to gold. Not till the spring and the new green opens do they fall, and then the boughs are laden with yellow flowers; and the floor of the wood is golden, and golden is the roof, and its pillars are of silver, for the bark of the trees is smooth and grey.  

The trees show seasons of beauty but never death.  This is heaven for me.  Heaven is not stagnant.  It is not one moment perpetuated for eternity.  Heaven is the life and beauty of earth but without decay.  

And this is what we yearn for--the beauty without the pain, the abundance without the loss, the new without the end of an old new.  It is always birth and life.  So we do not fear change, we fear the end of what delights our soul.

And today I am a mother that fears the end of babies in my home.  I am yearning for new life.  But choosing to bring another soul into our family is the heaviest of decisions for we working poor.  I can go on Zillow and find another home in another state where we can get better work and better pay, but then we would miss our family, our incredible neighbors, and our backyard with infinite adventures.  I would not miss our ceilings, or the damn road an arms-length from the kitchen.  But I would miss my new friends--the ones I looked for and worked for over these past six years.  Yes, you.  I would miss YOU.

So here were are at the idea of heaven.  I will never stop yearning.  It is who I am, and I believe who we all are.  We are here to look for there, grasp it with a light hand of hope, and pull it toward us and the ones we love and meet and pass on the highway.

Now to take this mother-heart and create new delights with Lion and Bear.

Beauty, Pain, and Laughter

June, the month of Not-Quite-Yet.  Spring can linger or be long gone by June, but the busy lives of school, ceremonies, and gardening haven't yet given way to lazy summer nights.  It's a month of almost, maybe, not yet, and goodbye.  When Mike and I were planning our wedding, I was determined to pick any month other than June.  The June Bride mocked me.  She was pristine and predictable.  She was that woman who had chosen and planned everything the right way, was now married for over forty years, and was frigid.  Well, that's a whole other story.

This June was a visit to Maryland.  I walked the property of my former community.  There were other details to the weekend, very important ones, but that was my mission.  I didn't know it was my mission until I was home and realized I'd neglected my friends and family in the Mason-Dixon heartland.  It was painful to know they had taken second, third, and even no place.

But I stood on the land.  I felt the breeze that used to whip my veil around and cause my heart to expand.  The birds were in the sycamore trees, singing a call that once surrounded my thoughts on countless evening walks.  Mulberry trees were thick with berries not quite ripe for picking.  I knew each tilt in the gravel road that leads to the burial ground.  The grass had never been cut.  It was the same throng of sweet green blades I knew so well.  They were the exact ones, I am sure.

Each moment, each inhale of honeysuckle led to the next place where my soul had already been.  It takes years to know land.  The visit reminded me of how I have owned only two pieces of land in my life: the community property and my grandmother's cottage on Mason's Island.  I am rich.  I am blessed to have entered so fully into the corners of these two places. 

The following weekend was set aside to visit the cottage (now owned by my aunt) with my whole family.  Bear was not himself.  Only recently have I seen his happy self return.  My being away with Mike for our anniversary and then my visit to Maryland took its toll on him.  We needed weeks to heal, time to show him that I was not leaving again.

By the time we entered the only home of my childhood, I was thoroughly done with reflection.  We had friends sharing the time with us---good food, wine, and weather.  It was a perfect release to the intensity of hanging out with memories the weekend before.

And what only made June better was a week long visit with Lala.  We have known each other for over 25 years, and this was the best time we've ever shared.  I went from reflection and pain, to reflection and joy, to joy, to laughter and attempts at fearlessness.  Above all, laughter is what makes you whole.  It is the only way to live June and any part of life cramped with memories.  

Honey From the Old Country

It was a ghost in the form of a mason jar.
She sent me a text with the image of our honey,
the liquid gold we collected from benedictine bees.
Several jars were discovered in her mom's basement,
and like Mary watching Lazarus wake from the dead,
I gasped at the image glowing on my phone.

Just a spoonful of that crystallized nectar of the gods
could send me into deep recollection--
sweet threads swirled into pots of herbal tea,
a generous serving spread over warm wheat bread,
sheets of phyllo dough united with layers upon
layers of butter and bee spit to make
Baklava in celebration of my vows.

She promises to bring me a jar when she
visits this summer, and I fear the power
of its beauty will draw my children's hearts
away from mine into the hills of Maryland.
They will wear long robes and tend the
bee hives with great skill and sadness.

The Good Friday

We would never learn to be brave and patient if we only had joy in our lives.  ~friend of a friend

Our hearts are like stone, and only suffering carves them into bowls big enough to catch the joy.  ~Strangers and Sojourners, Michael D. O'Brien.

There is something about Good Friday that pulls me into the quiet.  It is a day unlike any other in the year.  Even while caring for David while he throws a tantrum in his room, or wiping Evan's nose, or running to the bank and picking up cheese at the store, I am caught up in the quiet of death.

He hung on the cross for three hours.  His body was put through brutal torture.  His soul carried the grief of millions.  The psychological and emotional pain were deserts upon deserts of suffering.  There has never been a human born who has known that kind of pain.

Yet every drop of blood was a gift of mercy for me and you.  We are sitting at the foot of the cross being baptized in his never-ending stream of love.  With each labored breath, Jesus filled his lungs with our sorrow and exhaled forgiveness, dispelling the stench of our sin.

Good Friday is about his death--his Holy Death.  There is no crucifix that can adequately depict the death of Jesus.  But I need to sit before the image and respond to the reality of what he did and still does for me.

From the Other Side

I lived in community.  I was part of the sanctuary.  We prayed.  We prayed a lot.  There were families who entered into the sanctuary as their lives could permit.  They home schooled their children.  They attended Mass.  They shared their lives together over meals and gardening.  It was a challenge for them to enter into the Divine Office---to attend Lauds or Vespers, to experience the sacred hours of prayer.  There were times I shared in the exhortation of these mothers and fathers.  Pray more!  Become centered!  Bring your children with you and worship together!  I felt holy.  I knew of my own pride.  I was not ignorant of the sneaky spiritual arrogance that overtakes those in full-time ministry.  I knew my life of prayer was only as effective as the times I chose to be centered apart from the ritual.  Or where I took the ritual and formed it into a vehicle of imagination fueled by hope.  Ascending the Mountain.  That was my goal.

Oh, God.  Forgive me.  I am a mother.  I am on the other side and desperate to accept the valley.  It is Nazareth, not Jerusalem.  It is the clay pitcher of water, not the river Jordan.  It's is Mary's role.  She is my model.  She accepted.  I yell at my children.  I get frustrated when they don't act like little monks.  There are moments where I am IN the moment.  But why can't my children be in the moment with me?  They are in control of which moment I am to enter.  And that is a level of yieldedness I have yet to accept.

I had a single friend spend time with me recently.  She meditated every day.  She moved with calm. She was centered, virtually free of anxiety.  I was jealous.  I felt inferior.  I felt as though she was the nun, and I was the mother watching from the outside, desperate to attend Vespers with her.  I want to chant again.  I am now on the other side and have yet to figure out my rhythm.

It is such a gift to be able to see from the other side.  It doesn't feel good, but it is so good.  I am being given the opportunity to finish a work that was started in community.  I am being given the chance to see things anew.  The mother.  Her work is never done.  And when does she pray?  When does she lift her voice and enter the sanctuary?  Maybe thirty years after she's started the race.  Maybe someday I will look back.  Will I worry about when I prayed?  NO.  I will hope that I spent enough time with Lion and Bear.

It is enough.  God forgive me for judging the mother when I had no eyes to see.  Forgive me now for judging myself while I have eyes that see, although dimly.  You know Nazareth so well.  You know the beauty and the mess.  Help me to embrace it all.

The Playground

Lion and Bear have been busy lately.  Motherhood has challenged me beyond any other vocation to embrace the moment and let go...of everything.  I let them play at the sink together for the first time.  Our wood stove was burning hot, so I knew that anything that got drenched could simply dry by the fire.  I actually enjoyed this activity.  Lion found pleasure in spraying water in Bear's his own face, and Bear washed the same few bottle lids endlessly, all the while drinking so much water that I no longer knew what was running down his front and what was leaking out his diaper.

Simple games, like filling muffin tins with colored pegs, occupy my Bear while I can get the last of dinner fixed before hubbie comes in the door and provides the best distraction ever for the little animals.  We don't resist PBS programs.  I thank God for them every day.  But they only work for Lion.  My sixteen month-old is insistent on pushing chairs to the counter and climbing, climbing, climbing every day.  At times I can only move them to another room, close the door, and hug him while he wails as though deeply wounded.

My job is to nurture, teach, and provide a playground of exploring all life has to offer.  It's only difficult when I want to have some notion of control in my life.  Is it asking a lot to want a semi-clean home?  A few moments on Facebook?  A phone call with a friend?  An extra minute to put product in my hair?

I'm reminded of a former theology professor who spoke of the interior playground--that place where we can go to pray, meditate, contemplate, and delight in God's plenty.  Sometimes I have only a minuted to go there while filling up our enormous humidifier with water from the tap.  I breathe, close my eyes, and descend into quiet darkness with a mantra filling each breath:  Peace.  Joy.  Hope.  Trust.  Jesus.  Jesus.

Although I am grateful for the experience of living a life of prayer in my 20's, I find this gift of motherhood to be The Great Test.  Can I be centered without the Silence and Solitude?  Can I enter my sons' playground and that be enough?  Is it enough to splash in bowls of water, throw colored pegs around the room, and climb on chairs.  I want it to be.

For a Friend Who Grieves

What is it about grief that strips you down
and comforts you at the same time,
leaves you naked in the dark
yet fed with divine morsels.

You want to gather and depart--
convene a love tribunal then run
to the nearest table and climb underneath,
wrapping the edges of your sweater
tight against itself.

Grief is digging down, further than you can feel
while gasping for breath, reaching for daylight,
hoping for a sign of life--a butterfly,
a window, a cormorant on the waves.

I once felt grief so terrible that my body
fell face forward, knees curled under me on the
hard industrial carpet of the church.  My heart
wished it could descend through the nasty synthetic
flooring--slip through the foundation,
descend into dirt, be covered and protected by dirt.

But that is the grief of abandonment.

What of loss.  The loss of a love that has never hurt you.
How do we heal that ache, that pure pain.
We can never feign joy.  We wade into the lake where
grief is shimmering on the surface and
sorrow is the bitterly-cold at our feet.  We hesitate.
We swim.  We endure.  We hope.
We return to the earth drenched.
We are dried by the sun's heat.
We walk forward,
ahead,
without despair,
and look back to see the cormorant
plunging the waters for fish.

Six Ways to Wonderful

I'm not sure where I'll be going with this post.  The title is all I have at the moment.  I did have to Google the phrase; I'm not sure where I'd heard it before.  Well, the term "Six Ways to Sunday" surfaced, and other than the title of a mob movie in the 1990s, the phrase has carried the definition of thoroughness, complete in every way.  It also implies that there is more than one way to accomplish your goal.  Somehow I knew this.  I felt the words were vast, containing many paths to one destination.  But there was joy.  It wasn't a matter of relative joy, but joy that permeated all reality.

So, I'm gonna get theological!  Once again.  Here I am at the locust tree pulpit.  (I must be motivated to preach.)  So, I believe that there is only one way to God the Father and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.  John the Revelator says so in the fourteenth chapter of his Gospel.  I really like John.  However (and this "however" does not dilute but describe the verse), Jesus is in each of the "six ways to wonderful."  He is the joy that permeates all realities.  Relativism is not entirely wrong if you approach it from the context of Christ being all and in all.  There is a man in Eastern Europe that has never met Jesus.  I've never met him, but I'm sure he's there.  He prays to Allah and believes Islam is a way of peace.  He loves.  He prays.  He cares for his family with devotion and faithfulness.  He has never been shown the Gospel of Jesus, but he is living it.  His joy is the joy of Jesus.  He will meet him one day, and it will all come together.  He will make it to Wonderful, although his journey will look entirely different than mine.

I have a friend who is like a sister.  She is my beloved.  I tell her so.  We have the most amazing discussions on faith and mysticism.  We understand each other.  We have experienced the Divine touch.  And yet her journey is not labeled Christian.  She has no label.  She is on a journey, a most incredible journey that I have watched and appreciated and from which I've learned so much.  I believe the Holy Spirit is at work in both of our lives.  I do not feel the need to correct her or show her the way.  Why should I??!!  She demonstrates the virtues of Jesus!

So maybe I'm bordering on some ancient heresy of the Church.  I don't know.  C.S. Lewis describes a very similar reality in the last book in his series, The Chronicles of Narnia.  He was the first author that opened my eyes to the many ways to Wonderful.  And I have met the Way---the Jesus that is the Way in all ways.  He is the current, the pulse, the beginning and the end of every journey.  Unless, of course, you have asked Him to leave.

Re-Entry

Damn you, holiday madness!  Now I get to clean up the mess, and I'm brutally reminded that I longer have the vow of poverty protecting me from well-meaning givers of tchotchke.  As a matter of fact, it didn't protect me then!  I just didn't feel as badly re-gifting Christmas paraphernalia when I owned nothing.  Now I quite literally face the dilemma of whether or not to allow my children to open a box of toys that I deem EXCESS.  I just want to avoid the whole thing.  Like last year!  It took me almost all of 2013 to face the remains of December 2012.  The greeting I want to hear this first week of January is not "Happy New Year," but "A Brave Re-Entry to You!"

I've spent the past six weeks getting by with minimal house-cleaning, washing/drying laundry but never folding it, making cookies when the sink's already full of dishes, and creating gifts out of toilet paper rolls.  Now the piles of paperwork and the guest room full of ornament tubs are SCREAMING at me, insisting I take care of them yesterday.  And I want to exercise my Catholic right to cuss.

Would it make any difference to forfeit Christmas in 2014?  Can I announce the reinstatement of my vow of poverty?  How was it so easy THEN to say, "please no gifts....only monetary donations to the Sisterhood."  Ha!  Could you see me now?  The Ball Community would like all holiday observances to take the form of CASH in plain white envelopes.  Wouldn't that be a fantastic way to start 2015!?

It's like I've entered some kind of Scrooge-reversal.  I'm Scrooge, but the Tiny Tim version of Scrooge.  "God bless us, everyone....with MONEY."  But it's not like that, because I would rather have nothing at all then gifts.  I would rather have a meal together, an open bottle of wine, a round of carols where everyone sings regardless of ability.  Is that too much to ask....to avoid the commercial Christmas?  I feel the depression pulling at my edges already.  January has never been my friend.  Can I attempt re-entry without the anger and despair?  What is the key?  I don't have the answer right now.  But while I shift the packages around and throw away tinsel, I hope some Spirit will visit me with the answer.

Community, Solitude, and the Aurora Borealis

I'm not finished with the aurora borealis.  This idea of glory, of transcendent beauty, is a muse of mine. I used to see beauty and want to swallow it . . . literally.  How can you shove handfuls of swaying trees down your throat?  I don't know.  But I've done it.

It is a gift to desire beauty.  There are very few moments for me anymore where I am distinctly aware of its presence.

Which brings me to my New Year's....um....pledge?  I am afraid to say resolution.  But I want to pledge to myself a balance of community and solitude.  These two realities are full of beauty for me, but they do not simply appear like a genie when I rub the beauty bottle.  I need to pursue them and accept them.  Maybe I desire community, but I have been given solitude.  Acceptance.  Maybe I desire solitude and have been thrown into community.  Instead of running the other way, I accept.  

Now in this acceptance of my circumstances I am not giving up the pursuit of strong, nurturing friendships.  I am not avoiding the quiet, centering times of prayer.  I am not passively moving through life saying, "everything happens for a reason."  I am accepting what I cannot change.  But if I can change things?  If I can move a mountain for one moment of rest?  Look out world!  I pledge to myself to pursue the beauties of community and solitude.  And maybe in those moments I will catch a glimpse of aurora borealis.