Bluestone Farm

Bluestone Farm and Learning Center... that's what we call ourselves up here at the Melrose Convent. We have six ducks, (currently) two dogs, a cat and a parakeet, and six sisters and one summer intern who share the load of farming, preserving, cooking, praying, and cleaning house (not necessarily in that order.)

Our convent (St. Cuthbert's House) used to be the retreat facility. It's a pre-revolutionary war house that's been added-on-to several times over the years. It's a once grand and beautiful building that's falling apart. The stairs all creak and there are four levels, if you count the cellar. But for the moment, it's home. There's another house across the road, once guest accommodations; it's in bad shape too, and has an unhealthy tendency to mildew when the weather is humid, no matter how many dehumidifiers we install.

Yesterday we all trooped over there armed with face masks, rubber gloves, and determination. Time to clean out all the junk that has been collecting forever. (We're going to have a tag sale.) All kinds of items were sorted into keep, toss, and sell. I love this kind of thing. Clearing out glory holes is not a job for sentimental hearts. You have to have a keen eye and still be ruthless. You also can't do it for too long and stay sharp, so we called it a day at noon.

We had a fourth of July barbecue with sangria, cole slaw, rice, and seitan steaks on the grill. Seitan is fake meat. We make it from scratch from vital wheat gluten, and one of my goals in life is to prepare it in every imaginable way to fool the discriminating meat eater. My sisters aren't as fussy about this as I am, but they don't mind eating my concoctions. The steaks were a hit. Today the leftovers were transformed into gyros, except they tasted more like fajitas... have to keep working on finding the right spice combinations to fake lamb.

But back to Bluestone Farm. We're farming organically, and eating (as well as preserving) the harvest. Kale is in these days. One of our sisters figured out a delicious recipe that takes out all the bitterness, using molasses in the boiling water. We are always experimenting, and it's a labor of love and ingenuity. But it's so much more than just feeding ourselves healthy food. We're committed to leaving light footprints on the earth. One thing that means is respecting the habitat of the critters who share our land, and at the same time protecting the garden from marauders. A giant paving stone on the dry duck food container has finally thwarted the raccoons. They retaliate by throwing rocks around the yard on their nightly forays. The deer ate all of our strawberry plants last year. This year row covers and stronger fencing kept them out. We have at least a dozen quarts frozen, waiting to become shortcake or muffins or jam.

I'm going to miss it here. But I can't wait to fool my sisters in the city with my new invention of seitan sausage!

Tick, tick, tick...

I like the image of the hourglass... each glittering crystal of sand flowing through the neck, sifting down to the bottom. You can watch time pass this way, and it seems a gentle thing, one grain at a time. The reality of time is much different than my sentimental constructions. It busts through the illusion and hits me with a two by four. Gravity's pull will not be stopped, and time is always running out. Out to where? I wonder. Just out.

The good news is: my list of things to do before I move is dwindling. That's progress. The gravel from the side of the house has been transferred to the steps that lead down to the duck pens. It will (hopefully) stay the mud slides from too much rain and winter snowmelts. The new Bluestone Farm and Learning Center logo is done and everyone seems to like it. That was a big one. But I have just begun the clearing out and sorting of file folders from all the graphics projects I'm responsible for. Those move with me now, every time I move.

The first year I moved from Melrose, I left behind a lot of things that were important to me. It was part and parcel of my vow of poverty. Some of them got tossed out by people who didn't know what they were, or didn't hold my same idea of "valuable". Now I know better. I take what's valuable to me... resources for art projects, craft tools that I brought with me into the community. It's a tough call sometimes. I weigh my vows against my need for necessary supplies to get the job done. Some people hoard precious books. I hoard exacto knives.

I leave soon for a week of rest time with my older son and his family. My grandson, who I've not seen in over six years, will be there too. I'm so looking forward to the trip, to reconnecting with each one of them... but it comes smack dab in the middle of all this packing and throwing out. Keep breathing, I tell myself. It will all get done.

Becoming an Episcopalian

It was from years of Christmases spent with my aunt and uncle that I came to be an Episcopalian. My aunt was my mother's older sister by three years. They were close in a way I never understood, being an only child. They had survived the depression as teenagers, had worked to put each other through trade schools, had double dated during the war. My aunt had sent the money for us to come by train to Portland, to help my mother rebuild her life there. She cosigned on the loan when my mom bought the little beauty shop in New Hampshire. She paid my way to camp in the summer. She and my uncle lived twenty miles away, and after the move, we went to their house for Christmas every year.

In addition to the love and loyalty, there existed a subterranean rivalry between the two sisters that was rarely spoken out loud. My aunt "married well". She hooked a doctor. My aunt was determined to rise above her station. She played bridge with the ladies, collected antiques, had a decorator furnish her house. I liked her style, which irritated my mother. My mom was much more down to earth, less fussy about things. The sisters shared a love of alcohol, though, and when they were in their cups the old animosities would surface. My mom took a perverse pleasure in reminding my aunt that she hadn't always been the doctor's wife.

Auntie Hon, as she was called, had immediately converted to my uncle's church... he was the cradle Episcopalian in the family, and every Christmas eve we all trooped out to midnight mass. My uncle loved the liturgy. He took great delight in my ability to memorize all the prayers. I took great delight in being able to recite everything at the right time and place, to kneel, stand and sit when I was supposed to. My mother suffered these midnight excursions with a wry humor. It wasn't that she didn't believe, she just wasn't into all the pomp and circumstance. "More hossin up and down than a three ring circus!" was one of her favorite descriptions of the Episcopal mass. There's a lot less of the kneeling/sitting/standing now. She might have liked it better.

My aunt was on the altar guild and took me along a few times to help her. I liked all that careful preparation and soaked up her instructions like a sponge. She'd be amused that I'm now the sacristan here at Melrose.

Emerging Church

One of the better takes on "Emerging Church" (yet another buzzword in our ongoing church evolution) can be found here. And while this post was written back in April of last year, (always a late bloomer... that's me), The buzzword is just now getting spread around at St. Bart's in Manhattan. They have a new 7:00 pm service on Sunday nights called Emerge.

They've had a 7:00 pm Eucharist for a few years, now. It was originally called "Come as You Are", which I personally liked. I loved the dress code and the metaphor. What better way to come to God's altar than as you are... stripping away all the pretenses... ALL of them. I haven't had an opportunity to check out Emerge yet. Maybe when I move back to the city I'll see if I can get a Sunday night off. But I digress...

In his post, Kyle Potter says:
Being together as a people, who are blessed to be a blessing, is the great work for God that we are called to do.

If that truly is what emerging church is all about, then we can certainly all use a little more of it these days.

Vessels

In our community brochure we say that we are called to be "vessels of the Holy Spirit." Pretty Poetic language for a bunch of women who dig in the dirt all day. (Not that we all dig in the dirt. Usually I do not.) But at Melrose, our lifestyle does revolve around the farm and its needs. We take turns getting up to let the ducks out on our rest day, not everybody sleeps in.

We've had long discussions and planning sessions for what our work, our ministry here, will look like. Do we want to focus on programs? Do we want to get off the grid entirely? What would it take? We spend Sunday afternoons in a discussion course called Earth Cycles; the latest round is from the Northwest Earth Institute out of Portland, OR.

We sometimes fail in our efforts toward sustainability, but we are committed. It's not a fad for us. Yesterday we spent an inordinate amount of time discussing whether (or not) it was right to continue to support Blockbuster. They are not a local enterprise, but they are closer than the movie theaters, so require less gas consumption. Their rentals are cheaper than Netflix. (We tried them for a while, but kept the movies for three weeks at a time, so it didn't pay.)

Each choice has consequences. Examining all the variations on the theme used to drive me bonkers when I first came to community. Just make a decision! But each member's voice is heard and respected. It takes a while. We ended up deciding to try the library as an alternative. We'll see how that works and evaluate it in a few months.

In a few months I won't be here.

Carrying the commitment to a new location is tricky. It won't look the same because the community there is different: different needs, different voices. Yet if I am truly dedicated, my voice will be heard.

Vessels of the spirit... carrying the dedication with me like a water jar.

My Nana

I like to write about my Nana.

For one thing, she's been dead a long time now. (The dead never advise you that your blog has hurt their feelings.) For another, she was an integral part of my life from age seven to twelve. She was an odd mixture of folklore and bigotry, graciousness and secret-keeping. She loved to sing and to cook... She taught me how to pull taffy. She had odd words for things: she called a fry pan a spider, and my outlandish combinations of clothing rigs. "Just where do you think you're going in that rig?" she'd ask before sending me back up to my apartment to change. She was also a large woman, and very huggable. She wore a corset. I saw her once (by accident) in her corset and she screamed to high heaven, then chased me out of the room.

I had a cousin a year older than I, and she was always worried we were doing "dirty" things (translate: sexual things) in the bathroom. We'd lock the door, hide behind it and giggle. She'd come racing down the long hallway and pound on the door. "You come out of there, right now! I'm going to tell your mothers when they get home!) She never outright told on us, but she would make statements that implied we'd been up to no good.

We had been up to no good, but not in the way she imagined. We had found a treasure trove in the medicine cabinet: my grandfather's false teeth, a shaving brush and gold razor, a cobalt blue eye wash cup, Nana's douche bag. We took turns putting in the teeth and tried to smile in the mirror. That endeavor was good for ten minutes of fits of laughter. We washed out our eyes with the little cup. We filled up the douche bag and squirted each other with it. I wanted to see if we could water the potted plants, but we were afraid to take any of those things out of the bathroom, which is why we kept getting caught behind the locked door.

Apparently Nana had reason to worry about "dirty" things being done behind her back. From the bits of overheard conversations, my grandfather may have been arrested in his youth for his penchant for pedophilia. I have personal knowledge of at least four people he molested: my aunt, my mother, my cousin and me. These could not have been isolated cases. Although no one ever admitted it, I think our move to New Hampshire (when I was twelve) may have had something to do with an underlying fear that he might not have changed his ways. And although people were willing to say outright that Nana liked to gamble, nobody ever said that Grampa liked to undress small children. Nothing was ever mentioned by anyone until I was married with two children of my own, and I brought it up once when my aunt and mother were visiting. I don't remember how the topic came up. I may have mentioned it in passing, or I may have wanted to finally spill the beans about something that had haunted me for years. I do remember that there was a period of complete silence where both sisters looked at each other uncomfortably, and then my mother said very quietly, "I always wondered." My aunt replied, "Well, you know what he did to us..."

Great. Thanks so much. A whole helluva lot of good that did me at age seven. But that's me speaking now. At the time I was too dumbfounded that they knew about him, that they had experienced the same treatment. Wow. Really?

My mother went on the defensive. "This shouldn't have happened. Where was Nana? I paid her good babysitting money. She was supposed to be home!" Ahhh... but don't you remember? Nana liked to gamble. She was out spending her babysitting money on Bingo.

No addicts

Nana likes to gamble. That was the way we talked in my family. Not Nana has a gambling problem, or Nana is a gambling addict. There were no addicts of any kind in my family. We didn't go off the deep end, no therapy or support groups needed, thank you very much.

Which explains why my mom was so embarrassed when I (in my forties) saw a therapist after my divorce, and then enrolled in a six week writing workshop for Adult Children of Alcoholics. It was a twofold threat: first, people might think her daughter had gone off the deep end, and worse, they might think her mother had been an alcoholic. The idea that she still might be an alcoholic wasn't even a consideration.

My mom liked to drink, (as they say in my family) and sometimes she liked it a lot. She was a binge drinker. She could go all week with a few cocktails after work, but come Saturday morning, she'd finish her morning coffee and within half an hour would mix her first drink. A fifth of Old Mr. Boston Pinch Bottle would be consumed most weekends. Her reasoning was: if she was on her feet, ready for work on Monday morning, there was no problem. And, marvel of marvels... she always was.

She rarely missed a day of work due to illness. She had a couple of bouts with colitis and was hospitalized for those, but otherwise she was one healthy woman. And strong. She was five feet three and a half inches, and she could lift furniture like a man. I inherited those heavy lifting genes. My stamina isn't what it used to be; I have to set things down more often than I once did, but I can still lift.

The other day I was perched at the top of the wire shelving units in the pantry at St. Bart's. (Did I mention I also like to climb?) I was trying to stack cases with #5 lb. cans of tuna fish twelve high. Six cans to a case = heavy. I was teetering the final box up over my head when I got tired. It started to slip and, overcompensating, I lost balance. I grabbed the steel mesh and caught both the box and myself, and thought, "I could break my neck falling from up here."

I climbed down and wondered (briefly) if I'm a riskaholic. Hmmm. Good thing we have no addicts in my family.

God loves:

Metaphor, Mystery. Beauty, Variation... He/She loves to laugh, with a wry sense of humor and a compassionate heart. How did I come to this conclusion? The clues are everywhere, reflected in ourselves and the nature of our world.

Putting clues together is part of the adventure of the mystery. Creating us "in His/Her image" is yet another mysterious metaphor. Do we look like God? We hardly even look like each other.

So just what is an image? A reflection...? God looking back at God? Too radical?

Finding sacred patterns (that exist everywhere) is one clue. The fish swim their dance, humans build (and walk) elaborate labyrinths. Spirals, circles turning in on themselves. Time, as we measure it, has been trial (and error). Always.

Practice. It's also about practice. Getting it, learning it, having it be second nature. Like a repeating pattern in a great tapestry. If our first nature is to be like God—to reflect who and/what God is... then why do we keep falling so short of who we think God is? Maybe the mirror is distorted, like the fun house mirrors at the circus. Maybe our idea of who God is is distorted. Oops... too radical?

Our church has elected its first woman presiding bishop. Wahoo! This decision appears to have been a huge surprise for some. Our community saw it coming, I think. But then we know her; she's one of our bishop visitors.

She, like God, has risen from the ranks of turmoil and dissension: a vital, creating, reconciling force that finds power, rejuvenation— in the stillpoint of the void. She pauses, considers her answer to some thorny question before she speaks, and then blows us away with her wisdom. God speed, Katherine.

Moving on

It's just been decided... I move back to the city the first of August. There are mixed emotions all around. I know some sisters will be glad, others will be disappointed. I'm a mixed bag over the whole thing, even though it was my choice.

"There are no preferences in the religious life." I was told my first year of postulancy. But the truth is more like "We'll be glad to consider your preferences, but the needs of the community take precedence." That's as it should be, but in this case the needs of the community weren't affected. It was a one-for-one personnel swap. The other sister couldn't decide, so my vote won the toss. (I just hate when that happens.)

Riding into the city this morning was strange. I looked out the window of the train and thought... "Only a few more opportunities to watch the seasons change from here." As the knowledge sinks in, I realize I am already in move mode, with still a month and a half to go. I looked at my to-do list this morning and mentally changed priorities. Certain projects moved up in urgency, others plummeted to the bottom of the list.

I don't feel excited yet, but that will come. I'll begin by taking inventory, and then start packing, a box at a time. Right now I'm just a little sad. Both convents are home to me... choosing one over the other was tough, and my choice was based on a desire to live with elderly sisters who have unpredictable life expectancies. Time is running out to be with them. I don't want to miss it. But every choice has sacrifices. I'm already being confronted with them.

The city convent is a bastion for conservatism. There, God is always a boy's name. I'm so spoiled by the creative liturgies we've been developing here. Last night was our monthly full moon fireside... we celebrated the summer solstice this month instead of the full moon. It was the first one of these events I've totally enjoyed, and now I'm leaving. It takes me a while to adapt to new ways. I feel like I'm just getting there and everything will change.

My mentor says she understands my choice. Why can't I believe that? Maybe because I'm not sure I understand it.

groan...

Truth and Consequences

I f*cked up. (Sorry, but no other word suffices.) Looking back on my life... at things I've done and said... this isn't new. Maybe the truth is it's part of human nature. (Look at Adam and Eve.) And looking at them, it's obvious the first response to being called on the carpet for your sins is to justify your actions. "She made me do it... it was the snake's fault."

Only no one made me do it and it was my fault. Is my fault. The pen is mightier than the sword is a cliché for a reason. It happens to be true... (In my case, the keyboard. Same difference.)

I wrote a post debunking a myth that women in religious communities spend their days in compassionate harmony with each other, unlike the outside world, where it can be dog eat dog. I specifically wrote about annoying habits—those of my own, and those of some of my sisters. That the post was mostly about me and my own uncharitable response to irritating events—went unnoticed by the one sister who honed in on the two sentences that described the dark side of her personality.

She was shattered.

I should have known better. I'm older, supposedly wiser. Ha! She confronted me with her hurt, told me I was not her friend. Of course I denied that. I like her (love her) more than many of my sisters. I explained and justified, apologized that she was hurt, feigned ignorance of why she was so hot and bothered by what I'd said. We talked for a long time... quietly, tearfully, compassionately. Well, she did.

I was still stinging from the rebuke, downplaying the two sentences that had hurt her in the midst of several paragraphs that had nothing to do with her. I emphasized my final conclusion that "we are not our annoying habits" but the damage was already done. I could see that, and nothing was going to change her perception. Because it was her truth.

When people hurt each other, whether on purpose or by accident, they have to face the consequences.

As I typed along, did I know what I wrote would hurt her? Maybe. Did I care? Not enough. Ouch. All my adult life I've journaled, but blogging is my first attempt at writing for an audience. I'm just beginning to flex muscles I never knew I had, and the truth is I don't know my own strength.

The thrill of exploring a new creative avenue feels good, like when I first learned to cook from scratch. But a fallen cake can be dumped in the trash and all I've lost is the expense of the ingredients. Nobody got poisoned. Not so with my writing. What I wrote and how it was received poisoned our relationship. It may die. I may have killed it.

To say I didn't know it would end up like this is folly. I should have known. Ouch. To say I'm sorry and expect that will make it all go away is folly too. Because the truth is my need to write overpowered my need to be compasssionate. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

Merging stories

I've detected a trend lately.

Some days I'll write an autobiographical chapter (from the vast and terribly interesting annals of my life,) and then I'll write about something I'm grappling with today. Whether it's the unique challenge of living in community or some new thought about God, there's a see-saw effect going on that I can't seem to control.

That's not new. I've been a "flitter" from the day of my birth... short attention span. I can come back to an idea and pick it up and run with it for a while, but then I drop it and go on to something else. I read three to five books at a time, a chapter here from one, a paragraph there from another. I will eventually get them all read, but it takes awhile.

So here's an attempt to merge two streams of thought... something from my past that has cause and effect on my present.

I mentioned a few posts back that I have money issues. More accurately: lack of money issues. In the day to day living of my life, it's no big deal. I don't have a huge wish list of things I want. It's when I go out into the world and interact with friends and relatives that I fall back into the old tape recordings of my childhood.

My mother came of age during the Great Depression. She and Nana stilled called it that when I was little, and they'd tell me stories about how awful it was. There were the "food" stories: supper might be a single boiled potato, or a bowl of saltine crackers and milk. (Crackers and milk later became one of my mom's favorite comfort foods, especially during the summer when it was too hot to cook.) There were the "make do or do without" stories. When my mom graduated from high school, the girls were required to wear white dresses. She couldn't afford to buy one, so she embroidered a tablecloth and napkins. For weeks she sold raffle tickets door to door for a quarter. She earned enough money to buy the material to make her dress.

My mom was an excellent seamstress. She made all my clothes, until I reached the age of wanting something with a label in the collar, just like the other kids. When I was pregnant with my first son, tent dresses were in fashion, and she altered a basic pattern to make me maternity dresses. Our tastes were very different though. My mom loved big splashy prints in loud colors; I liked little Laura Ashley flowers. We both liked plaid, so that was the compromise. She admitted only once that she had wanted to be a dress designer when she grew up, but Nana had told her "Just get that idea out of your head right now!" There was no money for design school. Instead, my mom worked as a maid to put her older sister through nursing school, and then her sister worked to pay her way through hairdressing school. She didn't want to be a hairdresser, it was my aunt's idea. (It was one of the cheapest trade schools.)

Later when my dad left, she would say it was a good thing she had that profession to fall back on, because we'd be starving if she hadn't. Having a profession to fall back on became a regular theme of any discussion of what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I learned our family's complicated money dance. It went like this: something handmade was nice but something bought and paid for was special. A handmade gift or card produced a wan smile and "oh isn't this nice? She made it." While something purchased with allowance or later, babysitting money received a standing ovation. "I love it! You shouldn't have! You spent your hard earned money to buy me this? This must have cost a fortune." (Translate: You must really love me.) Of course it makes sense in retrospect, but it was a piss-poor way to encourage the creativity of an artistic child.

The way to solve problems, the way to express love, the way to feel worthwhile revolved around money. You pursue a career that makes good money means you're ambitious... a success. You manage your money well... you're a success. You spend lavishly... you really love me. And our culture definitely supports that view. Buy, buy, buy... to keep the economy strong.

Now I am an adult, and new friends have helped me rethink and reshape. I'm much better than I was, but some days I just can't get that old song out of my head.

It's All Small Stuff

Living in community is not for wimps. it's the day-in-day-out annoyances that rub so raw... not the big stuff. The big stuff is easier, it compels our compassion, forgiveness. The small stuff just wears me down.

I've been told that men in community are not catty like women. (Their issues revolve around testosterone.) But women are catty. I am catty. One sister talks to the air. She chatters incessantly to herself and anyone else in close proximity. "Are you talking to me, sister?" I ask (translate: won't you just shut up! I have no interest in what you're rambling on about! I can't think when you're running your own to-do list out loud...) Why does that bother me so? I also talk to myself; it's not an isolated disease. One reason: I can't selectively focus anymore. Ambient noise distracts me. That includes music with lyrics or a strong beat, two or more people chatting while I'm trying to think. I need quiet when I'm cooking, driving, writing. I need it... and when I can't have it I'm irritated.

Another sister is often in high drama mode, even when she isn't. Insecure about her own self worth, she needs to be the center of attention. Her presence can be draining. Another wants to pontificate about how the religious life should be lived, giving all kinds of illustrations and examples from her own experience, as if only she has the key to understanding. She has no clue how condescending she can come off. I don't believe she means it that way.

God only knows how many obnoxious things I do to annoy them... but I can probably think of some: rattling on about someone's comment on my blog, talking in the voice of a three year old, insisting that the cutting boards be stacked a certain way. I'm quick to criticize and can be sharp and sarcastic. (Besides falling into the catty trap... again and again.)

I have a theory. If you're the least bit neurotic when you enter, you'll be more so the longer you stay. We live too close together: 24/7 in each other's faces. It's a double edged sword. The bad news is we're often irritated with each other. The good news is we get to face our issues over and over, until we decide to work them out. It's not for wimps.

The other good news (that we maybe don't articulate to each other often enough,) is that we also know we are not our annoying habits. We are so much more than that, such a complex blend of delightful and exasperating. Each sister has gifts, strengths, a unique personality. We give generously of our love and compassion when the chips are down. When the chips are up we can too easily focus on the small stuff.

Gravity and Dangerous Friendships

Apparently it's not liturgically correct to transfer a feast day backwards, and certainly not unless it's a double feast. Only special saints get the high holy days... the Virgin Mary, apostles and evangelists, people who founded religious orders, even Mary Magdalene gets a double.

Bernard Mizeki was a Christian martyr in Rhodesia in 1896, and his feast day is tomorrow, Sunday, so the Sabbath takes precedence and he just gets bumped this year. But one of our sisters spent a good deal of time in South Africa. It's still in her blood (probably always will be) and she asked if we could transfer him to today, which is a feria (which means nothing particular is happening.)

The first response was: "No." No, as in it's just not done, not liturgically correct. Then it was explained that he was an African martyr and we got why it was important to our sister. I (a bit sarcastically) asked, "When have we been worried about liturgical correctness?" That's true. We're experimenting a lot these days... finding things to pray and sing that reflect our new understanding of God, the Universe, our place on Earth, our Mother. We're reading from other religious traditions and focusing on a paragraph a day from The Universe Story for our wisdom sharing. (Translate Bible Study without the Bible.) So we sang the collect for Bernard at Morning Prayer and read from Sam Portaro's Brightest and Best, an updated companion to Lesser Feasts & Fasts. Transferral accomplished.

Today's paragraph in The Universe Story was on gravity. All of these intersecting ideas were whirling in my brain as we shared our thoughts. I was thinking gravity, not as in Newton's "force" which causes us to stick to the ground instead of flying off into space, but as in the gravity of the situation... the seriousness of it. Martyrdom is a grave issue, (pun intended) and Portaro's portrayal of Bernard Mizeki was one of "dangerous friendships". He fled oppression in Portuguese East Africa and was befriended by missionaries and became a Christian. He went on to convert other Central Africans and was trapped (and killed) by the conflict between Europeans whom he loved as friends, and the natives, whom he loved as friends.

Jesus never said it would be easy. Simple, yes, not easy. And so, as I think more about what friendship means, what gravity means, what Jesus means... I'm beginning to put it all together. It's all of a piece. Nothing separate, all in relationship... my sisters are my sisters, but they are also my friends. Portaro says: Even when they are not fatal, friendships can be life-changing, introducing death in another guise. That's serious.

It occurred to me...

A Christmas Memory

Grand Central Station, New York City... it was undergoing a major renovation when I moved here in 1995. They were repairing the ceiling, which has outlines of the major constellations in our hemisphere. I looked up at the beautiful blue on the part they had already cleaned and didn't remember it. The marble floor I remembered.

I had just turned seven, and it was the middle of the night. (At seven, you're much closer to the floor than the ceiling, especially in Grand Central.) We had been traveling for three days from Fort Lauderdale, FL, and were changing trains to go on to Portland, ME. It was the day before Christmas, 1952.

I don't know why we weren't at Penn Station, now that I think of it; maybe that was a different railroad then. We were definitely at Grand Central. My mom and I had three suitcases and two shopping bags full of presents and a long pole thing wrapped up in brown paper. It wasn't heavy, but I kept dropping it and my mom kept fussing at me to hold on to it tighter. I was sitting on the biggest suitcase, studying the marble floor. She had gone off in search of coffee for herself and something to eat for me.

It was a layover, and our next train would not leave for another several hours. I was tired and cranky and wanted to see if I could play hopscotch using the marble squares as my guidelines. She had said not to move from the suitcase. It was heavy and we had pretty much kicked it all the way across the floor. Nobody was around to ask if we needed any help carrying things... those days people actually did that. But at two-something A.M., the place was pretty much deserted.

I was just about to risk a hop or two away from the suitcase when she arrived with chocolate milk and a ham sandwich, so I passed the time munching my snack. She drank coffee and smoked. I don't remember much else about the trip: we kicked our suitcases the rest of the way to the next train, (someone may have helped us) and we arrived the next night at my grandparents' apartment just in time for bed so Santa Claus could come. I was pretty worried about Santa Claus not getting the message, considering we had up and moved at the last minute. But everyone seemed so sure it would be okay. He was magic, omniscient, he would know we had moved.

That was the year I wanted to be a cowboy when I grew up. I did not want to be a cowgirl, and so I had been pretty specific about the gift requests: cowboy hat, cap pistols, cowboy suit (meaning fringed pants not skirt) and a pogo stick horse. The horse I had seen in a department store window. It had a white striped pole above the pegs you stood on, and a stuffed white wool horse head with a black yarn mane. It was an advanced hobby horse of sorts, and I knew it would be the most perfect substitute for a real horse I could expect, since we were soon to live in a fourth floor apartment.

Christmas morning arrived and we gathered in the dining room at Nana's little table-top tree to see what Santa had left. Lots of wrapped presents? That was odd. Santa's presents were always just out in the open with no wrapping, everyone knew that. But, sure enough, all the tags said to me from Santa... so I started unwrapping.

Okay! a cowboy suit! Next came the cap guns. No, I could not shoot them off in the house. Or anywhere near the apartment, not even on the back piazza. We would go to "the Oaks" later, a large park down the street. The neighbors would not tolerate noisy cap guns. In fact, my grandparents revealed that the landlord had not wanted to rent the upstairs apartment to a woman with a small child, but everyone had assured him I was a quiet child and would not run up and down the four flights of stairs. I would walk quietly and be very ladylike. Awwww. Okay.

The next gift was a completely smashed red felt cowboy hat. We tried to smooth it out, and Nana said she would wet it down and reshape it for me, but I distinctly remembered having sat on one of the shopping bags when we were traveling. Hmmm. The adults began opening their gifts. My mother got a new pocketbook. That's funny, it looked exactly like one I had seen in Florida. Hmmm.

I was wondering what had happened to the horse. What good was a cowboy with no horse? I was afraid to ask. My mom had been crying earlier and I had heard Grampa swearing... "That bastard better not show his face around here!" and I knew bastard was one of the words I was not allowed to say and Nana had "shushed" him, and smiled at me kind of funny. So I didn't mention the horse.

By now, all of the gifts were open and the paper and ribbons were cleared away. Nana said "Isn't something missing?" Grampa chimed in, "Are you sure that's ALL the presents Helen?" talking to my mom. "oh. gee, maybe there's something else that we forgot..." as she got up and disappeared into the living room. She came back smiling, holding up another wrapped present... a long pole thing with lumps near the bottom. I opened it... a very modern shiny gray steel pogo stick. Where was my horse?!?

Everyone looked at me expectantly as I tried not to cry. This was not what I had asked Santa for and nobody seemed to get it. My mother looked hurt, "You said you wanted a pogo stick. This is a pogo stick." But I had wanted a horse pogo stick, not a Buck Rogers pogo stick. They still didn't get it.

I was an ungrateful brat. I hurt my mother's feelings, at a time when she was most vulnerable. I never learned to hop on it, never really tried. And I did shoot my cap gun off the back piazza when Nana wasn't home to tell on me. Until the caps were all gone.

Oh, and I figured out a couple of days later that the pogo stick was exactly the same size as that pole thing I'd been dropping, if you unbolted the pegs at the bottom... Santa Claus was a hoax.

Straddling the Abyss

I've been away for a long weekend in Newport, Rhode Island. My friend bought a little summer house there in 2003, and I've been going there for rest time ever since I entered the community. I actually lived in Newport once, a million lifetimes ago. It's always just a little weird to go back.

Most everything has changed (for the better) but the sight of old buildings, wrought iron fences, sailboats in the harbor... all jog memories of my first attempts at homemaking and child raising. My older son was three weeks old when we moved into one of three converted chicken coops in Middletown, RI. Later we moved to an upstairs apartment in the Portuguese section of Newport, just off Thames Street. We found that apartment, but never could locate the chicken coops. They must have torn them down.

This trip there were four of us, (all team members from the last Cursillo weekend) and they all knew me "before". They all work: one is a lawyer, another a school principal, another a creative consultant, coordinating communication packages for corporate benefit plans. I was once a member of their hectic and hassled lifestyle. Now I'm different. My body clock is hardwired to my monastic schedule early to bed and early to rise... and that made me a party pooper most nights. It also meant I was generally the first one up.

The ritual of quietly padding down the wooden stairs in my bare feet to turn the coffee on... that was lovely. The stairs are quiet, (unlike our convent stairs that creak and groan) so the only perceptible noise was my ankles crunching. If I step carefully the sound is deceptive, but when I move quickly the rhythm matches that of those little rice-filled eggs we shake at our drumming circles. My rice-filled ankles made me smile.

I did things, ate things, enjoyed everything that is no longer part of my life as a sister. I read novels, stayed in my jammies all morning, didn't make my bed. I ate fried clams, lobster, hot pastrami sandwiches. I went shopping. At the same time, my internal censors were on keen alert this year... everything from not composting garbage to soft toilet paper to sleeping in a way too comfortable bed: all a blended tapestry of delightful and guilt-ridden. Where was I in all of this luxury? I lost the edges of myself trying to reconcile it all.

I am the odd girl out... and what I love so much about these women is they cut me slack. They knew me when, but they support me now. And that means a whole lot more than just letting me duck out to bed early while they stay up to play. It means putting their money on the line. A vow of poverty is a tricky piece of work when you're trying to maintain girlfriend relationships with women who still have to earn their own living. They have bills to pay and budgets to maintain. As pathetic as my income is (we receive a $25 stipend each month), it's all discretionary. The community puts the roof over my head, pays for my food and dental bills, buys me new shoes when the old ones wear out. I am a kept woman. (Claire Joy—Kept of God.)

But any vacation, even the most modest, takes money. Two of us were out shopping and found the most wonderful tee shirts with a cartoon of four women and the caption "Girls' Weekend—Newport, RI" They were so perfect. They were also expensive. My friend bought four: one for each of us. FOUR. Now that's something I probably would have done three years ago, but I can't do it now. I couldn't even buy one. Then there was the dinner party we hosted Saturday night... everyone was chipping in and I felt like the widow in Jesus' parable... with my mites. I did what I could. I cooked. But Jesus never mentioned how embarrassing it is to be the cheapskate of the group. It's my issue. And I'm having a furball of a time dealing with it.

Blog-cation

Blogger has been a royal pain in the you know what lately...
I'm taking a que (or is it cue?) from KPJara here and going on
blog-cation too.
It's pouring down rain (has been for four days here) but I'm off to the beach anyway. (Just don't expect any visible tan lines.) I'm taking a good book: Plan B, Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott. See you next week.

Well it is 06/06/06...

New life in the country (saga continues)

In a small town everyone knows and minds your business. We lived on the main street (called Main Street) of town, because my mother had purchased a small beauty shop and was trying to build a client base. Since church was a way to be seen and to meet people, we now went to church. Our new church was my mother’s standby: Congregational. I loved the new hymns and the sermons were interesting, topical and short. There was an active youth group. A new minister had arrived with two teenaged sons, and the older son was in my class. We became friends.

But my mother was not enjoying the rural environment. She was drinking heavily, and as I entered my teens our clashes became more hostile. We argued over everything. I was not the daughter of her dreams, and she was definitely not the mother of mine.

I made matters worse by pouring her whiskey down the sink when she went on her weekend binges. I ran away from home once after she had gotten drunk one night and I could hear her on the sidewalk all the way from the bowling ally. She also had "dropped in" on our youth group leader, (whom I adored) who was working late in his office on Main Street. When she told me that, I was mortified and outraged. I disappeared the next morning and was gone well into the night. In my mind I was going to hitchhike to California and find my father, but whenever someone slowed down to offer me a ride, I panicked and ran off into the woods. I wandered lost most of the day. Each time I approached a house or roadway I turned aside and moved farther into the underbrush. If I hadn’t been so tired and cold, I might never have surfaced. My newly found guardian angel must have been guiding me, because I eventually emerged from the woods onto a highway, sat down and waited to be rescued. Some hours later a car stopped and the people inside were part of a search party. I had been hoping all day to be found by the youth group leader, the actual reason I had run away, and the only adult I thought would understand. I had prayed for this and was damn disappointed when he didn’t show up.

But God had heard, and was even willing to answer my prayers. His timing was just different than mine. This too would become a theme for my life… learning to accept God’s timing instead of my own. Because not long after that, this sweet man took a more personal and active interest in my spiritual growth. He became my human guardian angel, my absent father, guiding me through those turbulent years. He took me skiing, hiking, to afternoon concerts. I first heard Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols with him and was in tears by its beauty. We were good friends at first and then the relationship grew... into love. He was eleven years older than I, but I thought we were a good match. My hormones were raging and had he not had the resolve of a saint, I’d have seduced him. I tried for sure. But this was a small town, and he was more concerned with doing the right thing and keeping up appearances than I was. After my graduation, we finally went on our first “date”. I was ready to get married. And I was impatient with his reticence. He had protected me through high school, but he also wanted me to experience the world, go to college, create a life. He wouldn’t budge.

God: the Movie Producer

I was thinking of it this way: what if God is a movie producer... and all our stories, our lives are somewhere on a shelf in some Video Library of the Universe?

For some that image would imply predestination... that we have no choice in the plot of our stories. But suppose the lens of the camera is through our eyes. We're not only the main characters in our plots, we are the viewpoint as well. We're also making up our lines as we go along—the quintessential ad lib routine...because we don't know the plot. We've not been allowed to read the whole script through. Things may look pretty grim in Act III, but there's always hope for a twist of fate... a happy ending.

I've noticed that in most movies, a happy ending means just the opposite. It means that there's a promising beginning, pointing to some pleasant and productive future. It's why I cry at happy endings. (Well actually I used to cry because I never believed in my own promising or productive future.)

We seem to want to avoid endings in our own lives. Freeze the action right here, right now. Status quo. It doesn't work that way. Time drags us along, sometimes with dignity, sometimes kicking and screaming, but dragged along nonetheless. Sometimes time appears as the enemy, when in fact it is one of those survivaling laws of our material, natural world. "Survivaling"? is that a word? Okay so I made it up. Time warps, it slows, it speeds up, but it never stops. When it stops the world (as we know it) will end too.

In Spite of the Evidence

It occurred to me that I could have saved us all a whole lot of time... all this storytelling—each little anecdote of my life one tiny brush stroke, laboriously painting the portrait...

I could have just listed my appropriate labels: adult child of an alcoholic, sexual incest survivor, divorcee... all of those labels gleaming like badges of suffering. Then I could have offered up my trophies to show how well I succeeded in spite of all that suffering: awards for animation, my CV, portfolio, blue ribbons for basketry, a list of corporate clients who have my art work in their collections. I could tell you these things and show you these things and maybe even weave it all together with a sprinkle of philosophical wonder and you would know who I am.

Nah... I don't even know who I am and I've lived all that stuff. One element seems to recur: survival. I took a lot of risks, (still do) trusted a lot of strangers. For more than half of my life I did those things pretty blindly, without much awareness. Awareness brought a little caution, but not much. Somewhere in my mid forties I realized I wanted something more "worthwhile" to add to my trophies, that in and of themselves, they meant very little. I craved something basic... feed the homeless, comfort the dying. Something was whispering "incomplete."

I've been "on the brink" of who I was to become so many times it makes me laugh. It especially makes me laugh to realize that life is so precarious and short that we are always on the brink without knowing it. (But sometimes I knew it.)

First Awareness

Have I mentioned yet that I totally believe in guardian angels? After we moved to New Hampshire, a year later, I went back to Portland for a visit, and looked up my old friend. (She had been pretty much my only friend from fourth grade through sixth.) Seventh grade and puberty had changed her dramatically. She wore a bra and was beginning to smoke and take an interest in boys. She insisted on helping me buy my first bra, which I wouldn't really need for another four years, but we stuffed it with toilet paper in the ladies room of the department store. I was excited and embarrassed. I wasn't ready to grow up. I had buried all memories of inappropriate afternoons with my grandfather, and had embraced the simple country life. My new friends were socially retarded and I liked it that way. Our idea of fun was reciting all fifty six verses of the Highwayman and squirting catsup at the final gunshot, ending that beautiful maudlin poem in hysterics and tears.

The meeting with my old changed friend made me sad, (she had grown up way too fast for me to comprehend) and yet grateful to be alive in a way I hadn't ever experienced. I was now convinced that guardian angels were at work and I had been blessed with one. Mine had obviously moved me out of a dangerous world—junior high in a big city—to a small town country setting.

Ongoing saga

Recapping my childhood—early years of moving from place to place—Navy base to Navy base... all pretty much a blur except for photos that jog my memory of the stories my mother told. Jesus was a friendly adult who was fond of children, indulgent and interested, much as many of the adults I knew. I was already learning that relationships with adults were far more satisfying than with my peers.

Communion was a perfect cube of white bread and little party drinks in tiny cups. Baptism was a ritual both scary and exotic—a huge see-through pool, where people descended in white robes, and were dipped backwards like tango dancers. This was my Grammie's church—Southern Baptist. I was six. One of the stories from that time was that the church elders informed my mother that I was taking communion illegally since I had not been baptized (in the dip and dunk sense). My mother was outraged. I had been christened in a Congregational church and baptism was baptism. I was indeed eligible to receive, and if they said anything more, we'd take our business elsewhere.

But it didn't matter for long, because my Dad had called that night from Guam to say he was divorcing us. Since we'd been living with his mother, (a tricky spot she was in) we moved. First, to a crummy apartment down the street for three months, and then to Portland, Maine: to my mother's parents. Nana was a Unitarian and her church didn't have a cross or communion. I missed the little party drinks.

My relationship with Jesus was sustained by the Roman Catholic Church. When we moved, it was the dead of winter and a parochial school was right across the street from my grandparents' apartment. I attended The Sacred Heart of Jesus for half a year. The nuns were incredibly kind to me. I was a skinny, sorry little protestant, whose daddy had left her, with an incredible memory and a voracious appetite for the catechism—what wasn't to love? The sisters would scold the boys who hadn't studied with "she knows her catechism, and she's not even Catholic."

I was learning to love music. Although Nana was a Unitarian, she knew lots of songs: ballads and gospels and hymns. She taught me many of them, and we'd sing together. The Hit Parade was a favorite TV show, and I'd memorize the songs and sing them in school at Show and Tell. Once I sang "A Secret Love" and the sisters were convinced I was singing about Jesus. With their nurturing, I was trying to bloom.

I was also being molested on a regular basis by my grandfather. Nana, who was supposed to be babysitting, was a gambler. She'd be off at Bingo. I became withdrawn, and played alone in my closet. I made a pretend apartment for myself and my dollbaby, safe and hidden from the dangerous world outside. (To this day I'm still a cave dweller, at home in dark cramped spaces.)

Those years are also blurred. By sixth grade I wa "acting out" although neither I nor anyone else knew exactly why. Just as life was becoming unbearable, we moved, my mother and I. To New Hampshire—to a new life in a small rural town. I left all the bad stuff behind and started over. Starting over was definitely becoming a habit.

Observations

We observe our material world with each of our senses: sight... light, dark, gray, colors; hearing... high, low, loud, soft; touch... smooth, rough, hot, cold; smell... sweet, acrid, taste... salty, sweet, bitter. What we call our sixth sense logs on to give us more information... intuition, deja vu, premonitions. But that sense also tells us there is even more... much more. Theories abound: string theory, chaos theory. Mystery is everywhere.

And somewhere, in between all the matter is the mysterious void. Science has determined that the empty space between subatomic particles is much larger than the particles themselves. That's reflected when we look out toward other galaxies: more space than planets, suns, twinkling stars.

What does God do with all that space? Maybe if it's movement that holds the material world together, then the space is the stillpoint of God. The ability to go inside out would get us there. We could have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge to Go Inside Out in the garden. But no... we had to pick the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Pieces of the Puzzle

Sometimes during meditation I am quiet, peaceful, not much going on except breathing. Those are the rare times. Usually my mind picks up a piece of the puzzle of who God is, who we are, why we are, where we are in the great stream of creation.

I examine the shape, tumble it around in my brain, trying to fit it into something I've read, something I think I already understand. I look for patterns, recurring tendencies. One of those tendencies is irony. (It's probably my favorite, since I keep coming back to it again and again.) Another is movement. Our universe seems to be all about motion. Earth moves in orbit around our Sun, photons and protons move in a subatomic dance we can't see. We refer to our lives as journeys; metaphors permeate our language.

If I tried to paint a picture of this concept, the canvas would not be flat and the paint would be like quicksilver... rolling liquid moving over and through the surface.

If I wrote a symphony there would be fast movements and slow, the dynamics would change, dissonance balanced with harmony. There would be a recurring melody that you could sometimes hear clearly, and sometimes not at all. But it would be there. Maybe in the pedals... so deep and slow you'd miss the cadence... playing on and on without us ever recognizing it.

And the movement seems to follow a pattern. God seems to like circles and ellipses, spirals especially. Our own lives often come full circle. I find myself facing the same problem I faced years ago. But I've moved to somewhere else on the spiral path. It's the same problem but I am not the same. That recurring melody sounds different played through another instrument. We cannot stop. If we stop moving, we die.

Why indeed?

A few posts ago, Anonymous said... Why do you expose yourself so to strangers?

Excuse me? My immediate reaction was: Who are you? (As in: who are you to challenge me about my writing when you can't even identify yourself? Short answer: Why not? Next short answer: None of your business. And what makes you think I'm doing it for strangers, anyway? And besides that, blah, blah, blah etc...)

Okay. Obviously Anonymous had hit some kind of nerve for me to spin off like that. (Good information, even if it wasn't information I especially wanted to look at.) I realized I had automatically placed a certain judgmental inflection in his words. Or her words, but I had also automatically made Anonymous a he. He thinks I shouldn't be exposing myself to strangers.

Okay... try looking at it another way. Maybe he (or she) is asking a simple question... no judgment involved. Why? Except for the so. Expose yourself so. How much is so? Okay, get over it. Do you want to answer the question or not? Well, if Anonymous does have a judgment about my revelations, then it's actually pretty ironic for me to answer the question carefully or thoughtfully because that would require me to reveal even more of myself to this stranger. Ah... Paradox. Annoying, frustrating, intriguing. Why do I expose myself to the possibility/probability that strangers will read the very personal story of my life? Why indeed?

This is the most coherent and honest answer I can come up with:
First, because it's who I am, what I do. I have never played close to the vest with the details of my life. When I was involved with a married man (for many years) my friends knew about it. When I was struggling in my marriage I didn't try to hide it. I don't like secrets and I'm a blabbermouth. I find it easier to be open and honest about who I am and let the chips fall. That way if people like me for who I am, they aren't surprised and disappointed to find out later I was really somebody else. If they don't like me for who I am (or what I do) then we don't have to make nice and pretend. It cuts out all the dissembling and that's a good thing because I'm no good at it.

But there's more to it than that. I have a story and I'm willing to tell it. Everyone has a story, and everyone's is unique and important. Mine is worse than some and not nearly as bad as others. But there are universal elements in each person's story, and sharing those elements brings us closer as a human community. I believe that. When I talk about feeling guilty because my mothering skills were slim to none, that may strike a chord with some other mother who feels inadequate. In that single moment of harmonic vibration she knows she's not alone. I may never meet her in person... she's a stranger. But we share a common bond. That's not a bad thing. When I speak of envy, loss, grief, resentment, passion, pride... all these are part of the human condition. We are more alike than we give ourselves credit for. I'd like to promote that thought.

A True Story: Why My Brain Works Like It Does

I was born left handed. My dad was a lefty, and I got that particular strand of DNA.

I did just fine until first grade, when the desks (and scissors) were all built for right-handed children. My teacher had bought into the "right handed is right" syndrome, so I was taught to write my letters and numbers with my right hand. In the second grade, a new teacher noticed that, while I wrote with my right hand, I did everything else with my left. She asked my mom..."Was she born left handed?" My mother confirmed this fact. "Oh, well, then... she really should be writing with her left hand too." I was switched back... learned to write with my left hand. Enter third grade: Uh oh. My first grade teacher had been promoted. She was now my third grade teacher. Switch back again. By fourth grade my handwriting was the most illegible henscratch you'd ever want to see. I was embarrassed. Essay questions were the worst. I got points off just because my teachers had to decipher the penmanship. I practiced, a lot. It was a lost cause.

By junior high I had figured out a solution... I printed everything. That seemed to work. When I was in college I even printed my term papers because typing was beyond me. I carefully lined up onion skin paper over a ruled sheet and my lines were perfectly straight, my letters like 14 point courier type. Life was good.

But what about all the psychological aftermath of all that switching? Was I scarred forever? Actually I don't think so. I think it's why my brain works the way it does... both sides now. I have a strong creative side, but I can balance a checkbook, ride a motorcycle, work an algebra problem. (Well I used to be able to work an algebra problem.) I am as comfortable with arts and crafts as bookkeeping and filing. Who knew?

Cocoon to Free Radicals

Am just emerging from a mini (two day) silent retreat... spent in our little "hermitage", which, in a past life, was a storage shed. The building sits just at the edge of our woods. Inside there's a bed, rocking chair, a little table, even electricity—although I didn't use it much. No facilities. The best part is a giant picture window that looks out on the forest. I watched a bee collecting pollen for the better part of an hour, I think. I didn't have a clock, so time was relative.

Being silent and alone (on purpose) is like entering an altered state, like being in a cocoon. Perspective shifts... I wasn't very hungry, but loved eating the things I never eat: a pear, banana, apple, orange... that's more fresh fruit than I've consumed in the past six months! I slept, read, knit, journaled, slept some more... watched out the window, prayed, slept some more... tried to figure out how to use an ancient wood burning tool. I'm trying to make a sign for our pea field, using a medium I'm not very good at. That was part of the plan too, I think.

There wasn't a plan, really. The plan was to let it all just flow, one activity into the next, however it happened.

This is part of what I came up with: Cosmic Fairness... an option larger than my puny little brain can totally grasp, Dip in. It's there to be enjoyed, used, given away. There is enough for all. There is especially enough for you. Get it, little girl? You can drink all you like. No rationing. None. Nada. There is enough. You are enough (next big concept). It flows in you as well as around you. The cosmic river of abundance flows through your veins. You know that on a chemical level. It's the less sophisticated parts of you that shut that knowledge down. Too free radical. That's what you need: free radical thinking. And breathing. Breathe in those free radicals. They'll help you unstick. Life is a river, and it flows through you, in you, around you. You are within it as it is within you. That is the secret. That is the lesson. Listen to the lesson.

I am addicted to the unnerving, unswerving love of God.

Legend Continues—Unhappy Childhood

Sometime (I was probably twelve or thirteen), I remember writing on a scrap of paper: "When I grow up and someone asks, I shall tell them I had a most unhappy childhood." I remember writing it down and somewhat smugly burying it beneath the panties in my underwear drawer.

Of course my mother found it. Maybe I wanted her to... but it made her angry. She was a struggling single parent, when the term single parent hadn't been coined. She felt betrayed that the one person she worked so hard for—me—was so ungrateful. I was ungrateful, and intensely lonely.

I rarely went "out to play"”. Besides there being nothing to do "out", it was dangerous. Even before I started kindergarten I learned that bullies could be lurking in the shadows, behind every corner. I packed toys underneath my doll blankets when I went out with the stroller so I could bribe the kids who threatened to beat me up. My mom was exasperated. "You have to learn to stick up for yourself!" But I was terrified of pain. and bribery worked. I was awkward and gawky, uncoordinated at team sports. I tripped over my own feet. Any activity involving a ball was hopelessly beyond me.

My world was one of escape into books.

I was also too geeky to be popular. Popular was the term that summed up self-worth like success does today. I wasn't popular, but neither was I destitute of friends. I had friends. But many of my friendships were bought and paid for. My allowance was spent in treating others to candy bars.

I missed my father. At least I missed the image of what I thought he would have meant to me—the imaginary potential of him. And I let it be known that I missed him and that too was a betrayal for my mother. She was the one who stayed, for God sakes, the one who didn't desert me. I was the child she chose to raise, stayed on to raise, (after my dad's ignoble departure) sacrificed her life (the best years of, I might add) to raise. What thanks did she get for all that sacrifice? But that was her schtick—mine was something else. I was not my mother's daughter. I was unappreciated, just as she was. I was some alien child, with a quick and sarcastic wit, a talent for just about everything except sports, with nobody to relate to. No brothers or sisters to harass or protect me, no extended family to pound some perspective of humility into me— just me and she, and the constant clash of wills. "Willfull" was the term she used to describe me to her friends. Willful and stubborn and hard-headed. And boy-crazy. I, on the other hand, remember myself as intelligent, but shy and easily intimidated. Maybe not intimidated by her, but by everyone else.

We neither understood nor appreciated each other then. And so my mother drank to ease her pain, and I eased mine by writing messages to myself and hiding them in the underwear drawer.

Legend: Chapter II

So... the last chapter left me grieving and feeling infinitely sorry for myself. Enough of that. I'll come back to the rest of my childhood at some point, but for now the chronology seems to be moving forward.

We (my husband, baby and I) settled in Jacksonville, Florida, and started feeling the parental guilt of raising a child with no church. My husband was what they call "unchurched" and I was pretty much dechurched. I had been christened as a Congregationalist, but my mother wasn't much of a churchgoer. Nana was a Unitarian and my dad's mother was a Southern Baptist. We tried all the usual protestant suspects but nothing clicked. It was from dozens of Christmases spent with my aunt and uncle that I remembered the Episcopal church. For them Christmas wasn't Christmas without midnight mass. My mother had hated it. She called it "more hossing up and down than a three ring circus!" But I remembered with great fondness the liturgy, music, smells. We tried one in our neighborhood and were warmly welcomed. My husband and son were baptized on the same day and after adult confirmation classes, he and I were confirmed together. We were now active members of the Episcopal church.

The Legend of Moi: Chapter I

Some folks have expressed an interest in how I got to where I am. It was definitely not in a straight line. The same issues keep cropping up no matter how many times I think I've put them to rest... but I'm happy to say a few I figured out early on and have not had to deal with them more than once (or twice.)

I was born in the winter of 1945, a full month ahead of my mother's due date of January 12th. I arrived at four pounds, three and a half ounces and had to be left in the hospital for a month... just the first of many disappointments my mother would suffer at my hands. All this is the legend, of course, the story that was told to me about me from my birth.

it took over fifty years for me to outgrow the legend, to rethink it, reshape it and remold myself into the person God actually called me to be. An art therapist articulated it with a somewhat glib expression: "all that was had to be, so all that is could be." That may be one of those universal truths, but it didn't make the trip any easier.

I've made a lot of stops on the journey, traversing external landscapes and the dark places within. Trails were sometimes rocky, steep— but the few glimpses of glory always worth the climb.

I was born into a Navy family. We moved a lot and my dad was gone a lot. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, as many women were at that time. When I was six my dad left my mother to marry someone else... someone else who just happened to have a daughter my age. The call came in the middle of the night and I awoke to my mother sobbing into the phone. I stayed quiet until she crawled into the little bed we shared in my grandmother's middle bedroom. "Mommy, doesn't Daddy love us anymore?" She was at a loss, but she assured me that no—I was certainly loved—and always would be. Of course that was the first of many lies she would tell over the years, so that he became a mythical figure, along with that woman who had the power to destroy our lives.

I think she believed it. Maybe she had to. I remember her telling me (years later) that they had argued a lot, but that both believed they would somehow stay together because of their love for me. Neither could imagine ever giving me up. Obviously he was able to overcome that hurdle. It left lasting scars.

It was fourteen years later that I located him by joining the Navy myself, three years more before I saw him in person. All those years of searching, wondering, believing in a fantasy figure left me with no way to cope with the man I met. What a jerk. He showed me wedding pictures from his wife's daughter's ceremony. He had walked her down the aisle, not me. He could barely look me in the eye, while his wife, the supposed wicked witch of the west, was gracious and welcoming. I thought I had learned a valuable lesson that day about the flimsiness of preconceived assumptions. I cried all the way from San Mateo to San Francisco, an hour and a half of bitter tears for seventeen years of false hopes. I found out many times later that I hadn't exactly learned the lesson.

Talking to Trees

Ireland is where I have felt at home... more than anywhere else on Earth. I've been on two different Celtic pilgrimages there, both wonderful, both overwhelming at the time, both with far-reaching ramifications on my thinking and living.

Now I am involved with a community that recognizes how disassociated our human society is from the natural world... how we have become disconnected from the Earth and the understanding that we must live in harmony, not domination. One of the exercises on the last Ireland trip was an effort to get the participants to reconnect with nature on a purely intuitive level. The instructions were actually pretty lame: Go out into the countryside in search of a tree. Ask it a question. Wait for the answer. Come back and journal about the experience. Oh please! But, not wanting to be disruptive, (everyone else seemed on board with this) I kept my mouth shut and went in search of "my" tree.

At first a few seemed to be calling "Pick me! Pick me!" and I passed them by. They were too beautiful, with rich canopies of leaves, strong trunks and shapely branches. Although it hadn't been diagnosed at the time, a stress fracture had crippled my right foot, and I was in pain. Stiff, strong hiking boots were keeping me somewhat mobile, but it still hurt to walk on unlevel ground. I thought I had found one in the far corner of a field, but a stream blocked my path and I took that as a sign not to cross over. I headed west for a stand of scrawny saplings, but they weren't for me either. Then I saw her.

She was bent almost in half... had been struck by lightning, and other trees next to her laid across her trunk, weighing her down. She was pinned in this position, never to grow straight again. A broken branch hung down to the ground and made an archway to walk through, to stand under. As curled and worn and damaged as that branch was, with moss and lichen growing up her arm, she still sprouted leaves that were green and full of life.

I acknowledged her strength, her fortitude, her willingness to cling to life... and asked my question. The answer was one I'd heard before. I was ready to discard it as an old answer I had made up, not hers. "All you need to do is be." But the tree went on to say more: "even in your dying you will provide nurturing for some living thing—all the way to the grave you can still give the gift of living."

Now at sixty, that message means even more to me. Pray she was right.

The price of failure

Oh dear. Sometimes when I ponder (and acknowledge) my failures in life (as in the Mother's Day post) people who know me only recently are quick to protest. The person they know does not compute with the person I'm describing. "You did the best you could." And that is certainly the truth. But the best I could, as reassuring as it sounds, was not so great. I know that about myself. That doesn't mean I didn't do a lot of things right. I did okay some of the time, and really well some of the time. But the perfect mother I am not, and pretending that I am/was is something I'd rather avoid. (The perfect wife I was not either, but that's another story.)

Here's an example: one thing I tried to teach my sons was the value of saying "thank you." Did they learn it? You couldn't prove it by me. Christmas, birthdays, special occasions... come and go. Packages get mailed (on time) and money exchanges hands. Do I get a thank you? Hell, no. Often I have to ask two or three times if the package ever arrived before there's any acknowledgement. Go figure.

Does my faith in God affect them? My younger son converted to Roman Catholicism because he married a Catholic and believed in one religion per family. Their stepfather and I couldn't agree on a church, and ended up with the Unitarians for a while in an attempt to compromise... it didn't work. Once divorced, I returned to the Episcopal church my first husband and I had joined together. My older son is an agnostic... both children seem to be the polar opposites of a bungled faith life.

My second husband accused me of escaping into workaholism to avoid being home. There were financial reasons, good ones, that I worked so hard, but he was probably right. Work provided an atmosphere of appreciation and respect I didn't get at home... I wasn't going to lose that. My younger son is a workaholic too. But he works hard at everything: being a dad, providing a good life for his family. Did he get that from me? I don't know. My older son is tremendously supportive of his wife and her difficult job. Did he get that because he saw I didn't? I don't know.

Who can say why we really do things the way we do? Why we go on for what seems like forever making the same mistakes and then one day wake up and change? There are plenty of things I'm still changing. Plenty more where they came from.

Mother's Day

Motherhood did not come easily to me. I was a rotten mother, actually, and totally inept. (I became pregnant with my first son so I could be released from my military obligation, pure and simple.) Someone talked me into breast feeding and I almost starved him to death. When, in desperation, I finally stuffed a bottle of enfamil into his little mouth, he took one sip and smiled the most beatific smile I'd ever seen. He drank the entire bottle. When he was old enough to eat oatmeal I thought it might be nice to give him a raisin (afterall my oatmeal tasted better with raisins) and he choked on it. Totally inept.

Through the grace of God he survived that first year and I got a little better at mothering. My husband was gone for several months on a Med cruise and I had friends who would pass him around at the local coffee house, feeding him cold juice and cookies. We were all protesting the war then. "Have stroller will travel" was the code of the evolving hippie mom.

My second son was born three years later on Mother's Day. He was not planned... and as with most things in life, the second time is easier. Plus he was an easier baby. He was so placid and easy to care for, I neglected to pick him up and cuddle him as often as I could have. My motto... if it's not broken, don't fix it. He seemed to thrive in spite of my neglect.

When they were old enough to play together, GI Joe was popular. Finally I could play dolls with my kids. But I wanted to dress Joe up in his outfits and they wanted to blow him up in his jeep. Ours was not the house on the street where all the children congregated to play. I liked my own kids, but other people's children drove me crazy. Mine were sent next door or across the street. "Take your brother! Be sure to hold his hand!"

I could never achieve that parental devotion so clearly evident in my daughters-in-law. I'm not interested in sports... so T-Ball, basketball, anything to do with a ball were events not supported. I managed to get to a few band concerts, plays, orchestra recitals... but I can't say I enjoyed them. Lump those events with visits to the dentist, and you could probably detect my lack of enthusiasm.

My older son and I did share a love of reading. He came to me once after Christmas and handed over a book he'd received. "You'll love this one, Mommy." It was Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. I read it, loved it, and then bugged him for the next in the series. "Aren't you finished with that one yet?" After that he was my main supplier of all things fantasy and science fiction.

My younger son and I shared a love of drawing. he would hole up in his room drawing intricate medieval battle scenes... wide angle, mid scale, and close ups of warriors slugging it out with swords and battle axes. He was always the quiet child, melting into the woodwork. He escaped (like I did) through work. He bought himself a lawn mower and cut grass for the neighbors.

Our homelife at that time was difficult, violent and abusive. He coped by disappearing. The older son coped by fighting back, acting out. I coped by trying to make peace, distract the source of violence. After way too many therapists and counseling sessions, nothing was resolved and the family survived as separate disinterested housemates with nothing in common but the roof over their heads. I was not capable of protecting them or myself. It was in this respect that I failed most as a mother.

Now my sons are grown. They are both husbands and fathers. They are both interesting and vital human beings. I wish I could take the credit for their unique personalities, for their wit, their intelligence. My half of their DNA is all I can claim and that was God's doing. The fact that they both seem to love me in spite of everything is also by the grace of God. And you should know that for that I am truly thankful.

it occurred to me...

Okay... here's another from: The Generator Blog

No comparisons

I remember when I first started coming to the convent for Madeleine L'Engle's writing workshops. I'd ring the doorbell and wait... and wait... and from somewhere deep inside the bowels of the cloister a disembodied voice would answer "Yes?"
"I'm here for Madeleine's workshop."
"I'll be right there."

Eventually a sister dressed in black would come to the door and usher me up the two flights of stairs to the chapel. Her skirts would swish as we ascended the staircase, no talking, all very hush hush. The place was so quiet but the stairs creaked. I felt myself trying to climb and tiptoe at the same time.

If I were early, there was time to meditate or pray briefly. The pews creaked too. Shhhh! I thought to myself as I tried to maneuver from seat to kneeler and back again. Then Vespers would begin and I was awash in the medieval chant of the psalms. We would try to sing along, but the tones and the endings kept changing, and the guests didn't have pointed music, only the prayer book to refer to... Some of the women (who thought they knew the music) bellowed it out and their mistakes were obvious. There was a welcome card at each seat that said to sing softly. Guess they didn't read that part. I sang softly. I felt very right about that, very superior.

Later, when I was a nun myself, and had the music to refer to, I would alternate between annoyance and amusement at more guests who tried to sing along. I came to appreciate how much courage it took to risk getting it wrong, how I had not had that courage.

Somewhere in the past three years of my candidacy, I've had a conversion, much like St. Paul's... in that the scales have fallen from my eyes. It's been gradual and sometimes painful, but I've reached a point where I do realize that comparison is an illusion created by something other than God. God does not compare us in judging us, if He even judges us at all. As every snowflake is unique, so is every single piece of creation. We are unique.

Perhaps the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was not forbidden because God wanted to test our capacity for obedience. Perhaps it was forbidden because it was useless information that would only create a stumbling block to our growth with and in our Creator. There's no comparisons, no right way to do it, no perfect path to Wisdom.

Eulogy II

Before the doors would open at 7:00 am the volunteers would gather in a circle. People would shout "Prayer Time!" to collect any strays from the back rooms. Dan always asked the blessing. It was always the same. He had decided at some point (before my time) exactly what he wanted to say and had written it out and memorized it. It was a long prayer and I don't now remember the entirety, but he would end it by saying: "We thank you for the volunteers who have come out to work this day. May they always remember that as they serve the people from the street, they are also serving you." It was a good reminder. The "people from the street" are homeless. Some of them have addictions, others are a little crazy. On any given Sunday there could be loud complaining, maybe a scuffle. We were there to serve them, but, not used to being served, they took advantage of the situation. "I didn't get an egg" someone would tell me and I could see it bulging from his pocket. "More cereal!" another would shout, after having eaten three bowls. And God help us if we ran out of hot food. The whole line stopped and we waited... some more patiently than others. Dan was amazing at timing when we would run out, and he'd be there with a fresh pan. I'd be on my last ladle of stew and I'd hear his voice "Hot stuff coming through!" as he maneuvered his cart through the throng. Once in a while he was late and it was a point of honor to him... a point he had lost. He had a hard time with forgiveness, especially for himself.

He told me once about his black pit... a place where he kept all of his grievances... past sins, past slights, past wounds. It all went into the pit. It had a heavy lid, which moved just enough to stuff something new inside, then it snapped shut again. There was so much there he didn't want to look at, was afraid if he let any of it out it would explode like a volcano... or that if he ever started crying he might not stop. I know the feeling. When we keep things bottled up they become larger than they need to be, the pressure is tremendous. But as I've said before, he was a private man. I suggested a therapist. He laughed. No way that was going to happen.

When he had cancer I heard he was seeing a therapist. (Finally!) Then I met her in the hospital and realized she was a physical therapist. Duh...

His funeral is tomorrow. I'll attempt to read the lesson from Romans: I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love. Of course it won't be that translation, but it will speak that same truth. The pit he feared and tended so carefully is gone. Nothing can separate him from the love of the God he loved.

Eulogy for Dan

This may take a while. Several posts, actually. Or not.

The Head Spiritual Director for our weekend retreat (my own spiritual director and good friend) had taken me outside into the hall and told me: "Dan has finally ended his battle." I looked at her blankly, hearing exactly what she said and not comprehending a word. She repeated her words and I nodded, still not getting it. "They tell me he died peacefully." Died... Dan... Oh. I finally understood.

I don't mention my friends by name on this blog. (Often they know who they are anyway, just by what I write.) But this friend is dead. My words will not hurt him now. And I need to pay tribute to his memory. He was a good man, a long time friend, he loved God with all his heart, and his heart was pure gold. That is not to say he wasn't the biggest pain in the ass you'd ever want to meet... he definitely was that too.

His name was Daniel, which means "God has judged." The Old Testament Daniel, an exile in Babylon, had risen to a place of honor among the ruling muckety-mucks for his skill in dream interpretation, among other things. He got into trouble (like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednago) for refusing to worship the pagan God of the Month... and was tossed into the Lion's Den. He survived that ordeal, but he died eventually too. We know that we all die eventually. Knowing doesn't necessarily prepare us.

I've said we were long standing friends, but several years ago it was more than that. He's had more than one girlfriend since me, and I've been increasingly fine with that. I could say he drove me to the convent, but I actually took the subway. He did drive me there once to pick up all my artwork after my exhibit... but I ramble.

He was a private man. Not me, I'm out there. I don't hide my feelings (or my relationships). At first the only way anyone knew we were dating was because I told them. He worried about that. He liked keeping his private life private. It never occurred to him that holding my hand in church every Sunday was not exactly private. One New Year's Eve he took me to a black tie party at our parish... I was Cinderella, he was prince charming. Those were the days.

He was a sacramental man, and worship was sustenance to him. He read Morning Prayer every day at his office. Some Saturdays we'd meet for the 10:00 am Eucharist at St. Bart's and then he'd want to walk over to St. Mary the Virgin for the noonday Eucharist there. He looked forward to retirement so he'd be free to go to church every day. (At the time I thought this was peculiar...) look at me now.

He was a man of habit and routine. It was comforting to him to do things the same way every time. He drove to work by the same route, always made a tuna sandwich for lunch. Not me, I like adventure and change.

He taught me the value of duty. I would argue for joy over duty any day. His dedication was awesome. Volunteers were expected to arrive for the breakfast feeding program by 6:00 am; he came in at 4:30. When the kitchen was a mess he'd complain loudly, but he'd also clean it up. He taught me the correct way to make peanut butter sandwiches, Al's way. He'd talk in his stern drill sergeant voice saying "You gotta do it right! Al's watching you!" I told him "Al has better things to do," and switched to tuna because there were no rules for those. Precision was important. "Cut those hot dogs into one half inch pieces, the meatballs exactly in half. Al's watching you!" He was merciless in his "quality control" and I was merciless in making fun of him.

We were like oil and water. Someone said this weekend "and you kept trying to make salad dressing..." That's true, I guess. The things we held in common were important things—love of God, dedication to service. But we disagreed about so much it was comical. We drove each other crazy. It was easier to be friends, and as a result, our relationship deepened on a spiritual level. It appealed to him that I became a nun. Since I was no longer a threat, he was more affectionate and open to intimacy. I liked that part too. I miss him.

Home from the war

I have not been on vacation. Cursillo is not a nice getaway, a quiet retreat where you can rest, collect your thoughts and come back rejuvenated. (Especially for those on team.) Too much sugar, not enough sleep, too much caffeine, intense emotional stimulation, too many details to remember, late nights, early mornings... I think of medical residents on call in ER... or a M*A*S*H detail.

The description: war zone— is not a bad one, each new day bringing another acre of mine fields, unexploded bombs laying buried just below the surface of consciousness, waiting to detonate— waiting for the trigger...

I don't believe Cursillo was designed to be this way, but maybe it was. The earliest movement catered to young men returning from the horrors of WWI. Post traumatic stress syndrome had not been labeled as such then, but it was real. To bring a man back to faith in a loving and forgiving God, after so much violence and disillusion had to have been major.

That's not the current focus. Today, Cursillo is a weekend designed to build leaders, especially lay leaders in the church. It's for people who are already committed Christians, to give them a jump start in areas where they might need a gentle nudge (or a two-by-four across the back of their heads). The Holy Spirit works both ways, depending on what you need. I've been on team four times, plus my own weekend as a candidate, so I've "been there, done that." You'd think.

But every weekend is different. Always the participants change, so the mixture and diversity differs each time. The topics for the canned talks are constant, but we bring our own spin to each one, so that changes too. More importantly, life has changed since the last time. Life goes on.

And life goes on outside the retreat center. While we were walking the stations of the cross, singing and praying, eating and listening to meditations, rushing around attending to all the organizational details, life (and death) were going on outside. The news came on Friday that my dear friend with cancer had died the night before. Many of us on team knew and loved him deeply. He had been a strong supporter of the Cursillo movement, and we were shattered by the shock. The news came on Saturday that another close associate, a brother at Holy Cross, had died that day walking down the hall for the noon day office. So much death, so much grief. So much pain.

"In the midst of life, we are in death..." when those words are not just words but become real and personal life takes on its deepest meaning. We had friends willing to hold us, cry with us, help with our duties... to love us, to heal us. Every step I took triggered another mine. I was blown to bits and patched up, only to be blown to bits again. I realized that survival of the fittest means very little in the mysterious body of Christ. If one arm is injured the other compensates... the weakest link is made stronger by the alchemy of love.

To whom it may concern:

In the next few days it may appear that I've lost interest, have nothing left to say, have quit blogging... nothing could be farther from the truth. I'm very much alive and well and irreverent... but off (in less than an hour) to a Cursillo weekend until Sunday evening. No internet access... :(

For those of you who've never heard of Cursillo, it's basically a short course in Christianity. Originally it was a movement in the Roman Catholic Church, instituted after WWI to help returning soldiers "get back their faith".

Yeah, war can do that to a person. Anyway, since then the movement has spread to the Episcopal, Methodist and other Christian churches and goes by other names like Road to Emmaeus, Tres Dias, Kyros, etc...

nobody... no body

I had so many selfish reasons for entering the convent. I wasn't aware (at the time) they were selfish, but am discovering it now. For one, I was sure I needed structure in my prayer life. I could not pray the daily office by myself once, let alone four times a day; my internal discipline was nonexistent. I had plenty of quiet already. I had friends and faith and beauty. Why did I think those were not enough? Or at least not what I needed? They just weren't. I needed a new way to express what God intended me to be, or so I told myself. I needed a better venue and the community looked like a fit.

I have since learned that people often visit several communities before deciding to submit an application. It never occurred to me. I never even checked out other orders. I had been welcomed here, why would I shop around? And there was that belief that God had pointed me toward this community anyway. I had taken writing classes with Madeleine L'Engle here. I had been offered (and accepted) a one-woman art exhibition. I was drawn to the wild and whacky earthiness some of the younger sisters exhibited. The older sisters scared me a little... so stern. In living among them, that's been turned upside down. The older sisters are living examples of compassionate humility. They have their priorities in vertical alignment with God. All else is secondary. And as they have aged right before my eyes, I've been given glimpses of their wry humor and gracious acceptance of this difficult transition. The younger sisters (like me) are still getting their acts together, and that's been a necessary disillusionment. I would not have traded this experience for the world.

Another thing that's been turned upside down is my reliance on the daily office (or in monastic parlance the Divine Office.) The only thing divine about it is the community of other sisters. Jesus said: "when two or three are gathered together in my name, I will be present." Sometimes it is only two or three of us, as we struggle with the language of war, of exclusively masculine divinity. The liturgy does not always feed us spiritually, and so we struggle. The ancient music, the chanting, is haunting and beautiful... but is it enough? Cross that with psalms that insist upon heaping high the corpses and it gets confusing, annoying, distracting.

So it's beginning to come down to the simplest formula of all: that the Christian life to be lived, understood, worked... has to be in some community. It's where the rubber meets the road. The body of Christ is nobody when it's only a body of one.

More... You gotta love it.

Having made several car trips to the city in the past week, I couldn't resist posting this.

It's from my new favorite creative place: The Generator Blog
In addition to the church sign (posted a while back) are a number of other "You're own words here" photos to play with.

I am from...

This challenge from Can You Hear Me Now?

I am from sturdy English stock with a splash of Irish and Scot.
I am from summers on my Uncle's farm with no indoor plumbing, a stinky outhouse, a hayloft to jump into, and fresh picked blueberries on my cereal.
I am from long car trips where I had my own "erp" bucket so nobody had to keep stopping for me to be sick.
I am from a great grandfather who was a stonemason by trade, but who painted landscapes in his spare time. They lined the walls of my grandmother's apartment, and I would stop and stare in fascination at each one.
I am from a Navy father, two Navy husbands, two Navy sons.
I am from the ocean, fearless of the waves, the undertow, the drop offs. I have almost drowned twice.
I am from the mountains, bleak craggy peaks, crystal blue skies, smells of hemlock and pine.
I am from never tell a lie, never snitch on a friend, never go on a trip unless you've cleaned the house.
I am from God is Love, Jesus is Lord, and live today like it might be your last.
I am from waste not, want not and make do with what you have.
I am from laughter and sarcasm and making fun of everything, especially the holy.
I am from start over, start over, start over.

More thoughts on vocation

When I entered the convent it offended my pride that my agenda had money attached to it... or more precisely the lack of money. When I moved to New York City in 1995, I was going "to a job." People could understand the financial necessity, and I was simply doing what needed to be done. When I entered the convent, the situation was somewhat the same. I was going to a job. But not a job... a vocation. I had always made my various careers into vocations before, but they were still jobs. I could quit. And I often stayed at jobs that had become vocationally unbearable, but I always knew I could quit. Except in the military... and frankly I was miserable in the military. But I was very young then, and full of my own idealistic indignations. My indignations have mellowed.

The major difference here that I keep sidestepping is that I really believe God has a plan. Somehow I'm in it. And somehow this life is an integral part of how I'm supposed to do it.

Open to the Irony

I am open to the irony that the "prison" of the cloister will be my doorway to freedom.

I wrote those words a month before I moved into the convent on 113th Street. I was open, but with so many preconceived ideas of what life in community would be all about. I thought it would stretch me in ways I'd not been stretched, that it would take more courage to live in community than anything I'd ever done, that maybe everything I'd done before was only a dress rehearsal for this... the final choice. I was worried (a little) that others would see the decision as a cop out, an escape of weakness. That irony appealed to me as well.

Now I'm in my third year of this discernment process. it has been nothing like I thought it would be and has done everything I said it would do. How ironic is that?