Quakers often speak of experiencing the electrifying presence of the Holy Spirit. Without having experienced this directly, I might have thought this idea was imaginary. I would have wondered why Quakers feel it, but Catholics don't. If God loves everyone, why do the Quakers get to experience this physical connection to the Divine, while in my Catholic childhood I prayed the prayers I was taught to pray, asked for forgiveness of my sins, and led an obedient life, only to vaguely imagine a distant father God in Heaven looking down from a great throne. Most of my life, I was intimidated by religion and even more intimidated by the bible. I was so confused and afraid of God that I clung to secular pursuits of knowledge. God and religion were two topics that were discussed so often and at such great lengths in my upbringing that as an adult I avoided discussion to preserve my sense of self and well being. While I remained a believer, I also had been building a wall of protection.
I understand why people are uncomfortable in discussing matters of faith. It is such a private matter. I have a few friends who cringe if I happen mention something about God. I have compassion in these situations, and try not to carry on to make both of us feel awkward. I'm not trying to convert anyone, but I'm no longer in the closet. I'm trying to learn to balance my excitement about spiritual happenings without turning people away with my exuberance.
But this week, this incredibly emotional week, something spiritual happened.
When I was full of worry and anxiety, I remembered to be not afraid. In the final moments, I yielded. I put down my super-sized ego and waited for God to work through me. And my heart thundered. As I sat in a courtroom ready to let God say what He wanted to say through me, I was quaking with the electrifying presence. Some people might say that this was just nerves.
It wasn't just nerves, although I was nervous at first. When the nervousness fell away I knew what that pounding heart was all about. That thundering heart was happening because something powerful was filling me, carrying me.
And suddenly, it was gone. I was released. I was not required to provide testimony because of a sudden and unexpected turn of events. I left the courtroom in a disoriented state of confusion, topped by an elated sense of utter relief. I'm not certain if I will be commanded to appear at a later time, but now I am no longer afraid.
Today I am so grateful for being released, but also filled with a new understanding. While we work so hard to be strong in this world, to stand up for ourselves, to build our muscles through resistance training, it is easy to forget the transforming power of yielding.
While I work to build my physical muscles, I have a new challenge. Every day there will be a new opportunity to train the ego to yield, to step down, to let go. To let all the intellectual debating fall away. To let the hardened clay of my personality be softened and remolded to new purposes.
In yielding we are empowered by the Spirit.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Sunday, February 9, 2014
To Rant, Or Not to Rant, That is the Question
How do you feel about online ranting?
Have you ever?
If so, did it help? Or were you embarassed later to read the emotionally tinged words?
I'm cautious of ranting, even when something is burning inside me. I'm so reluctant to speak my frustration that if a friend happens to call me and the anger falls out of my mouth, I later regret having shown that side of me.
Thursday was a difficult day. The energy that came with it carried into the weekend. I'm still trying to release, release, release.
But the noise still keeps going in my head. All kinds of scenarios are playing out, scenarious that are never going to happen. Some part of my sick and tired brain must be entertained by this anxiety driven ranting.
I wonder why I was ever kind to certain people. Isn't that a horrible thought?
Have you ever?
If so, did it help? Or were you embarassed later to read the emotionally tinged words?
I'm cautious of ranting, even when something is burning inside me. I'm so reluctant to speak my frustration that if a friend happens to call me and the anger falls out of my mouth, I later regret having shown that side of me.
Thursday was a difficult day. The energy that came with it carried into the weekend. I'm still trying to release, release, release.
But the noise still keeps going in my head. All kinds of scenarios are playing out, scenarious that are never going to happen. Some part of my sick and tired brain must be entertained by this anxiety driven ranting.
I wonder why I was ever kind to certain people. Isn't that a horrible thought?
Monday, February 3, 2014
Refusing the Call
If I were a Hobbit in the Shire, I would have stayed in my hole in the ground, captured by the beauty of rolling green hills, the bursting fresh flavor of home grown veggies, the companionship of family, dear friends and neighbors. I once lived in a pastoral pocket of the world, in a Shire-like land with cultivated hills and valleys, where sunlight streamed in golden angles, scored by birdsong and paced by the slow movement of morning into day. My mother still lives there, on a little hill where three children once ran barefoot on the soft green lawn.
A memory of me skipping to the garden, salt shaker in hand, plucking a small red tomato from the vine.
Of course, there were also long months of winter, deep snows, icy wind and messy slush. There was mud and flooding in the garden. There were days and days of low hanging gray stratus clouds that blotted out the will to smile. There were lonely times, heartbreaking times, and times of boredom. I used to think that Sunday afternoons were practice for enduring purgatory. They dragged out so long in silence that I longed to go to school.
There was conflict, and unhappiness, and I knew about it without needing too much explanation, although that was also given, in great detail, over hours of tears in the night.
Then, sooner than anyone was ready for it, I also became part of the conflict, with my moody need to be right and to be left alone. The programming inside my internal life-cycle clock was ticking. The clock urged me to conflict and to go out and have an adventure. To leave the Shire and drive into the unknown, with little more than a vague childhood dream to guide my purpose. I thought I was answering the call to proceed onward toward my one, true vocation. Then I got called back. And proceeded to refuse the call of my vocation for most of my life.
I'm probably refusing it still.
I am afraid of the unknown.
My idealism, that incomplete mental model of the way things should be, have repeatedly caused me to impulsively abandon paying jobs. I am often a tiny bit nervous that I have not embarked on a steady career.
But now the world is changing, Elliot is maturing, and I find myself searching. I realize that I have unexpectedly arrived at a check-point. Am I completely lost, or on the right path? The self doubt that arrives with an independent lifestyle is more intimidating than anything I've ever experienced. There are no report cards, no benchmarks, no tests or critical evaluations by an authority figure. There are only feelings.
And feelings change like tides and waves and shifting sand. I am a sailor who has to learn to manage all the rigging and the sails and the rudder without proper training and schooling on even the basic terminology. It's not that there isn't enough information out there for me to use, it's that I seem to arrive at these thresholds and check-points without being fully prepared for a journey.
I have to learn all the time, as I go, every single day. If there's anything in my pack, it's the stale bread of doing things the way I've always done them, one ordinary step at a time, trying to avoid the sharp rocks and the black bears.
And this makes it difficult to proceed in a writing and teaching vocation, because I suspect that I have no authority on any subject except my own feelings and observations. I could be incredibly wrong about everything.
But I hope that I'm not wrong about the things that I value and hold sacred, certainly for Elliot's sake. I worry that the learning we do is incomplete. But then, how complete is a traditional education anyway?
I worry that because Elliot is an extrovert, home education is limiting, although we do get out and see children at least four days a week, except for January, when we were sick and isolated by winter. Yesterday, warm spring air arrived and we headed to the park.
Afterwards, we landed in an uncomfortable discussion about returning to traditional school. Even though Elliot is fearful of that possibility, I went on talking about it. I don't want him to be afraid if the path leads back to school. At the park yesterday, I realized that he's grown out of the playground. I remember when he was eighteen months old and so fearless that he climbed the tall steps to the big slide. Yesterday he looked at that same playground and didn't see any children even close to his age. It's middle childhood, that liminal space between slides and swings and the hills of a BMX course.
I am never prepared for callings and checkpoints.
But here I am. No compass in hand.
A memory of me skipping to the garden, salt shaker in hand, plucking a small red tomato from the vine.
Of course, there were also long months of winter, deep snows, icy wind and messy slush. There was mud and flooding in the garden. There were days and days of low hanging gray stratus clouds that blotted out the will to smile. There were lonely times, heartbreaking times, and times of boredom. I used to think that Sunday afternoons were practice for enduring purgatory. They dragged out so long in silence that I longed to go to school.
There was conflict, and unhappiness, and I knew about it without needing too much explanation, although that was also given, in great detail, over hours of tears in the night.
Then, sooner than anyone was ready for it, I also became part of the conflict, with my moody need to be right and to be left alone. The programming inside my internal life-cycle clock was ticking. The clock urged me to conflict and to go out and have an adventure. To leave the Shire and drive into the unknown, with little more than a vague childhood dream to guide my purpose. I thought I was answering the call to proceed onward toward my one, true vocation. Then I got called back. And proceeded to refuse the call of my vocation for most of my life.
I'm probably refusing it still.
I am afraid of the unknown.
My idealism, that incomplete mental model of the way things should be, have repeatedly caused me to impulsively abandon paying jobs. I am often a tiny bit nervous that I have not embarked on a steady career.
But now the world is changing, Elliot is maturing, and I find myself searching. I realize that I have unexpectedly arrived at a check-point. Am I completely lost, or on the right path? The self doubt that arrives with an independent lifestyle is more intimidating than anything I've ever experienced. There are no report cards, no benchmarks, no tests or critical evaluations by an authority figure. There are only feelings.
And feelings change like tides and waves and shifting sand. I am a sailor who has to learn to manage all the rigging and the sails and the rudder without proper training and schooling on even the basic terminology. It's not that there isn't enough information out there for me to use, it's that I seem to arrive at these thresholds and check-points without being fully prepared for a journey.
I have to learn all the time, as I go, every single day. If there's anything in my pack, it's the stale bread of doing things the way I've always done them, one ordinary step at a time, trying to avoid the sharp rocks and the black bears.
And this makes it difficult to proceed in a writing and teaching vocation, because I suspect that I have no authority on any subject except my own feelings and observations. I could be incredibly wrong about everything.
But I hope that I'm not wrong about the things that I value and hold sacred, certainly for Elliot's sake. I worry that the learning we do is incomplete. But then, how complete is a traditional education anyway?
I worry that because Elliot is an extrovert, home education is limiting, although we do get out and see children at least four days a week, except for January, when we were sick and isolated by winter. Yesterday, warm spring air arrived and we headed to the park.
Afterwards, we landed in an uncomfortable discussion about returning to traditional school. Even though Elliot is fearful of that possibility, I went on talking about it. I don't want him to be afraid if the path leads back to school. At the park yesterday, I realized that he's grown out of the playground. I remember when he was eighteen months old and so fearless that he climbed the tall steps to the big slide. Yesterday he looked at that same playground and didn't see any children even close to his age. It's middle childhood, that liminal space between slides and swings and the hills of a BMX course.
I am never prepared for callings and checkpoints.
But here I am. No compass in hand.
Friday, January 24, 2014
One
Many of you have recently read my grumbling about January. There's another thing about January that I don't love. It's the resolutions, the determination and the focus on self improvement that irritates my sensitive mood. It's a month of packing away the Christmas tree, which always feels like a painful stab in my heart. I must have stored childhood memories in the old ornaments. I remember being small and having my parents and my brothers all in the same room together and it hurts to put those memories back in the box.
But January is also the month when we get to write the number one. In the simple writing of one, I began to notice the symbolism of this number.
One is the individual, but one is also more than what it seems. In the month of January, after focusing so intently on others in December, we begin to focus on ourselves, and what we can do to improve. It is tough to look at ourselves as one person needing improvement.
Self improvement to me often feels like the punishment of Sissyphus, that mythical King forced to roll a boulder up a hill that Zeus repeatedly sends back down.
But self discovery.....that, I can do. So instead of a resoultion to improve my one self in the context of many, I decided to investigate who I am instead of what I can or should do about the one me.
This personal knowledge about the one me cannot be found online, no matter how many hours I devote to reading and socializing and listening in the land of free advice.
So the middle of cold freezing January, I've thought about the one me. I discovered that I'm an introvert who is learning to be more outgoing. I'm also reward sensitive and like to give myself things for doing the most ordinary tasks, like stuffing my face with handfuls of Lucky Charms after two hours of trying to figure out how to help my son can join a Minecraft server and play remotely with his best buddy (technology stresses me OUT!). I'm so reward sensitive that when I'm in the middle of cleaning out rooms and closets, I like to reward myself by buying little things to redecorate with. When I go out, I like to bring something back home. When I eat dinner, I like to reward myself with second helpings. When I was a smoker, the slightest little task would be rewarded with a cigarette. Wash the dishes? Go have a smoke. This reward sensitivity is something that thankfully hasn't led me to be a compulsive gambler, but it has affected my life. I recenlty had NO cavities at the dentist and felt like I deserved a reward. Then I realized that having no cavities IS the reward.
I learned that stress is an enemy when you are trying to lose weight. But trying not to be stressed is stressful too.
I also learned that when I am totally resistant to writing my book, which happens almost every day, that making a craft can free the writer's mind and help me to approach the blank page.
I rediscovered that one full hour on the eliptical strider makes me feel like flying, and that I need that one hour in my daily life.
But the most important thing I learned, the ONE message that I needed, is that simply looking at my husband's face brings all kinds of loving feelings to the surface. If I have been annoyed by something and I'm struggling with anger, I need to remember to look at his face. I can't exactly describe what happens to me when I am mindful of the shapes and contours, the curling hair around his earlobes, his eyes and the texture of his skin. When I look at his face, I feel love, and there's no room for anything else. The same thing happens when I look at Elliot and Emily's faces. Even a picture will have the same effect. So next time I'm gearing up to be really mad, I need to remember to focus on the face of my loved one. I followed this discovery with with action; now our stairwell has an abundance of family photographs.
I also learned the positive effect of one thing leading to another. Writing one chapter of a book leads to another. One stanza of a poem leads to another. One action, in whatever direction, leads to the next action. One uplifting idea can produce the feelings possibility and potential, two birds which I am personally inviting into my heart to make a nest.
January feels different to me now. It's the first month, and it will lead into the next. By the middle of the year, I'll probably be longing for the simplicity and the symbolism of One that came with it. I very nearly missed the importance of it. By some random chance or intentional purpose from above, I heard one song on the radio which filled my spirit. Maybe it wasn't a coincidence at all.
We are one, but we're not the same, we get to carry each other, carry each other.....
But January is also the month when we get to write the number one. In the simple writing of one, I began to notice the symbolism of this number.
One is the individual, but one is also more than what it seems. In the month of January, after focusing so intently on others in December, we begin to focus on ourselves, and what we can do to improve. It is tough to look at ourselves as one person needing improvement.
Self improvement to me often feels like the punishment of Sissyphus, that mythical King forced to roll a boulder up a hill that Zeus repeatedly sends back down.
But self discovery.....that, I can do. So instead of a resoultion to improve my one self in the context of many, I decided to investigate who I am instead of what I can or should do about the one me.
This personal knowledge about the one me cannot be found online, no matter how many hours I devote to reading and socializing and listening in the land of free advice.
So the middle of cold freezing January, I've thought about the one me. I discovered that I'm an introvert who is learning to be more outgoing. I'm also reward sensitive and like to give myself things for doing the most ordinary tasks, like stuffing my face with handfuls of Lucky Charms after two hours of trying to figure out how to help my son can join a Minecraft server and play remotely with his best buddy (technology stresses me OUT!). I'm so reward sensitive that when I'm in the middle of cleaning out rooms and closets, I like to reward myself by buying little things to redecorate with. When I go out, I like to bring something back home. When I eat dinner, I like to reward myself with second helpings. When I was a smoker, the slightest little task would be rewarded with a cigarette. Wash the dishes? Go have a smoke. This reward sensitivity is something that thankfully hasn't led me to be a compulsive gambler, but it has affected my life. I recenlty had NO cavities at the dentist and felt like I deserved a reward. Then I realized that having no cavities IS the reward.
I learned that stress is an enemy when you are trying to lose weight. But trying not to be stressed is stressful too.
I also learned that when I am totally resistant to writing my book, which happens almost every day, that making a craft can free the writer's mind and help me to approach the blank page.
I rediscovered that one full hour on the eliptical strider makes me feel like flying, and that I need that one hour in my daily life.
But the most important thing I learned, the ONE message that I needed, is that simply looking at my husband's face brings all kinds of loving feelings to the surface. If I have been annoyed by something and I'm struggling with anger, I need to remember to look at his face. I can't exactly describe what happens to me when I am mindful of the shapes and contours, the curling hair around his earlobes, his eyes and the texture of his skin. When I look at his face, I feel love, and there's no room for anything else. The same thing happens when I look at Elliot and Emily's faces. Even a picture will have the same effect. So next time I'm gearing up to be really mad, I need to remember to focus on the face of my loved one. I followed this discovery with with action; now our stairwell has an abundance of family photographs.
I also learned the positive effect of one thing leading to another. Writing one chapter of a book leads to another. One stanza of a poem leads to another. One action, in whatever direction, leads to the next action. One uplifting idea can produce the feelings possibility and potential, two birds which I am personally inviting into my heart to make a nest.
January feels different to me now. It's the first month, and it will lead into the next. By the middle of the year, I'll probably be longing for the simplicity and the symbolism of One that came with it. I very nearly missed the importance of it. By some random chance or intentional purpose from above, I heard one song on the radio which filled my spirit. Maybe it wasn't a coincidence at all.
We are one, but we're not the same, we get to carry each other, carry each other.....
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Five days of cleaning and a very bad cold
You wouldn't know this by looking at my home on an average day, but I actually do enjoy organizing and cleaning. I despised it as a young person. I thought it was slavery to dust. Cruel torture to clean a closet. Death to scrub a bathtub.
The pleasantness of middle age is that one can actually be lifted up by the chores once resisted in youth. Having a home to clean is actually a privilege. A gift. A blessing. But normally I don't see it that way. It's only when I have a large block of time to actually make a dent in it when it feels good. The up side of having a temporarily sick child is that we don't have to go anywhere or do anything important. We can just be.
And when things get cleaned out, there's suddenly room for imagination. Perhaps I had another reason for going on a sorting spree. The book I'm writing can be avoided if I have to do another pressing task, like sorting socks, which suddenly feels super important with so many ideas and nothing to write!
Today we're going to enjoy the results of having the laundry caught up and the closet space under the stairs cleaned out. On a whim, I thought it would be fun to make a hideaway out of the new space. Letting go of the need to be a packrat, I let some things go in order to do this:
Feel better soon, Elliot!
The pleasantness of middle age is that one can actually be lifted up by the chores once resisted in youth. Having a home to clean is actually a privilege. A gift. A blessing. But normally I don't see it that way. It's only when I have a large block of time to actually make a dent in it when it feels good. The up side of having a temporarily sick child is that we don't have to go anywhere or do anything important. We can just be.
And when things get cleaned out, there's suddenly room for imagination. Perhaps I had another reason for going on a sorting spree. The book I'm writing can be avoided if I have to do another pressing task, like sorting socks, which suddenly feels super important with so many ideas and nothing to write!
Today we're going to enjoy the results of having the laundry caught up and the closet space under the stairs cleaned out. On a whim, I thought it would be fun to make a hideaway out of the new space. Letting go of the need to be a packrat, I let some things go in order to do this:
Feel better soon, Elliot!
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Looking back and going forward
Recently we spent a rainy...in fact... saturated and flooded... weekend indoors, compounded with a weary virus. I did small projects when I felt a little burst of energy return. I reorganized the kitchen cabinet shelves and decorated the tiny bathroom off the kitchen. I also wrote a few more pages in the story I'm writing, but that is an inch by inch, frustrating activity. I wrote one great line, but the rest feels like junk.
For one whole day, we did nothing but rest in our house. It was bliss. Richard ventured out and brought home Chinese take-out, and we dined by candle light in the kitchen while Elliot slept through a fever.
He slept so much that I really missed him! Here are some pictures of my sweet boy who keeps growing taller but also more loving. I appreciate the gift of his sweetness, his silliness. What would I do without his spontaneous energy for life? When he woke up today, he seemed taller, and older, and I just had to go back and remember his little boy face in order to handle the reality that we must all go forward.
He just won't stop growing up!
And I'm thankful for that, because look what happens: friends keep coming into his life.
For one whole day, we did nothing but rest in our house. It was bliss. Richard ventured out and brought home Chinese take-out, and we dined by candle light in the kitchen while Elliot slept through a fever.
He slept so much that I really missed him! Here are some pictures of my sweet boy who keeps growing taller but also more loving. I appreciate the gift of his sweetness, his silliness. What would I do without his spontaneous energy for life? When he woke up today, he seemed taller, and older, and I just had to go back and remember his little boy face in order to handle the reality that we must all go forward.
He just won't stop growing up!
And I'm thankful for that, because look what happens: friends keep coming into his life.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
New Year, New Light
Today is so
quiet.
The lights are still up, and for New Year's Day, my candle is lit, but the silence that comes when loved ones return to the lives they must live is resting here in the corners. We had a beautiful, happy Christmas together and I am thankful for so much love.
quiet.
I am writing what may become a book, and this is something to carry me into 2014. I'm a little superstitious about it, afraid to kill it by discussion. Maybe a new blog address and header will be a part of this process. Like a fitness goal, I'd like to reward myself with a fresh look and a new purpose when I've done the work that must be done.
Blessings and peace to you as we journey into longer days and new seasons, with hope and anticipation for the ordinary goodness that comes with each day.
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