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.

Glory

The Aurora Borealis.  The Cree's Dance of the Spirits.  A collision of energy.  Aurora--goddess of the dawn.  Boreas--Greek for North Wind.

This strange, magnetic beauty has pulled me to its center since I first saw it illustrated in my 6th grade science textbook.  It is the cause of my desire to live in Alaska for one year.  I want to rent our house in CT, take a job in an Eskimo pub, and look for the lights, the glory.  Unlikely, but it's a beautiful thing to exercise the freedom to dream.

One of my former students would draw on a blank white page, slashing colors everywhere with no apparent goal.  When she deemed the masterpiece was finished, she would look up with a wild eye of joy and say, "Glory!!"  Her father, a theologian who transformed my understanding of God, often spoke of the glory of God---the ultimate vision we will attain in heaven.

Oh glory, glory, glory.  I can find You in the locust tree.  I can find you in my child's face.  But a world lit up with green and purple!?  Let me live underneath your glow.