Delight

Some winsome, autumnal quality about today gave me the itchy-finger compulsion to write and remember what I saw, smelled, felt, and heard. There were so many real live things in which to delight; I don't want to do a disservice to my humanity or yours by promptly forgetting it all. It was a good day to be in a body, on this earth, and in this corner of the world.

There were adults roller-skating around the lake in my neighborhood. Adults on roller-skates are whimsical anyway, especially when they are wearing ear buds and wiggling their butts to music that is a mystery to those of us who watch their individual dance party. There were plenty of those folks today, but I saw a notable pair of adult men who looked pretty new to the art of skating, rolling about, stiff-kneed and with arms askew, wearing tails. Tails. Is this a thing? Is this a thing I have missed while wearing clothing like jeans and cotton t-shirts instead of animal parts? Regardless, these men each wore a particular animal tail: one was a fox tail roughly two feet long, the other was a much more subtle, gray raccoon tail. And what really made me gasp with gratitude for being present to witness such an event, was the moment in which the raccoon-tailed-fellow grabbed hold of the lustrous, red fox tail and let himself be pulled forward by the other skater. Behold! The glory of man fully alive.

The creaturely world caught my eye today, too. For example, as I write, there is a raccoon (not a man with a raccoon tail, a real Procycon Lotor, the genuine article) climbing a tree in the middle of the day, and scaring away the squirrels that usually practice jumping off of the porch eaves. I was startled by an unusual amount of movement in the pine branches to my right, and lo, I saw a black and white striped raccoon instead of a red squirrel. To make the surprise even better, the aforementioned critter just came to the stoop of my porch stairs and noticed my bundled figure typing away in my adirondack chair. I started at the sight of his bandit face, and he in turn jumped, turned 180 degrees , and did it all so quickly that I believe he knocked his head on the house. At least, that's what I attribute the "thump" to. What is a raccoon doing playing in the yard in the broad daylight? By what right did I get to see him? I am not sure to what I owe the honor, but I accept the gift with a smile.

And for my own creaturely delight today, I was able to run, walk and bike in the crisp air in the presence of a fellow human who fills me with pleasure by her simple and also miraculous existence-- why should I be able to love such a friend as her? Why do I find such joy in sharing myself and receiving from her own self, too? And as if the companionship were not extravagant enough, a small coffee shop was selling two scoops of gelato for the price of one, and giving away seasonal espresso drinks. Free coffee. Really, there was free coffee.

Sometimes the world is a kind place. Sometimes there is marscapone gelato and a free macchiato with honey and cardamom. Sometimes there are adults wearing tails, and curious raccoons.

You see why I might want to remember such a day, hm?

For Now, There is a Mountain

Prologue: I have been writing this blog post since July (no pressure, reader.) I even posted it a month ago and then deleted it in a fit of self-doubt, because it felt unfinished. The piece feels unfinished because it is unfinished; I shall keep musing on mountains and journeys and struggle and valleys until I die. However, there may still be something to say in the meantime, and since a friend graciously preserved two wee lines from the hastily-deleted post on his facebook wall, I have the opportunity to rebuild around what may have been the only two lines worth remembering anyway.

Here goes.

- - - - - - - - - -

An unexpected thing happened during the Presbyterian church service I attended last Sunday. As we concluded the congregational prayer, rounded the corner of the final hymn and looked down the home stretch into what would surely be the benediction (given the fact that we were Presbyterians), the pastor paused in a moment of genuine, extemporaneous, Spirit-led reflection and said, "If anyone has a word or song to give the congregation from the Spirit, please feel free to share now."

And lo, a woman in the balcony uttered in a resonant voice that carried from narthex to nave:

"The Lord says: you were on a mountain and now you are in a valley, and I have put you there. You will be on the top once again, but for now, there is a mountain to climb."

The words transported me to the top of Twisp Pass in the North Cascades, where I sat this summer and watched the day light empty from the pale, overturned bowl of the sky. In the twilight the mountain peaks were turned to black knife edges, and the starkness of their jagged form was at once desolate and lovely. I thought of the trek my friend and I had completed that day, of a long slog through the forest, of mosquitoes clinging to the backs of our legs, of a heavy pack and an empty stomach and swtichback after switchback after switchback, and it seemed to me that it was all worth it. To be in the high country, to be washed clean by alpine air, to contemplate the agelessness of granite-- this was true delight.

It made me wonder if the best things in this life are the hardest to get to. Perhaps the greatest exaltation results from the most struggle. What if the richest relationships, the deepest joys, and the most contentment arises amidst perseverance through weariness, heartbreak, uncertainty, pain and disillusion? I am not certain that the converse is true, and that something by virtue of being difficult will be good. Some valleys are just valleys. Or are they? If God is going about His business of redeeming the whole sorry lot of us, maybe every drop of blood and every tear is fashioning a new earth so indescribably glorious that we would crumble to dust if we saw it now. Maybe.

What I am trying to elucidate is the different between seeing oneself on a hamster wheel, and seeing oneself on a journey to a summit. For the person in the latter circumstance, there is the hope that sometimes we may find ourselves on a way that is steep and winding, yet leading to something beautiful. One day we shall be on the top again, but for now, there is a mountain to climb.

Casting Practice

We stood on the ten-yard line of the middle school football field as the sun was receding to the tree tops, and evening shadows began to lie across the green turf. A few high schoolers threw a frisbee to one another and watched curiously as Dad assembled his five-weight Redington fly rod, likely wondering what a middle aged man and his daughter hoped to catch on dry land with no water in sight.

Unconcerned and unhurried, Dad threaded the line through the rod, finally tying a small piece of pink yarn on the end of the tippet in place of a hook. With smooth, expert movements he tugged down on the line while flicking the rod backward, and then tugged once more with a forward flick of the rod sending the line whizzing through the rod and out toward the fifty-yard line. A double-haul cast, he explained, and watched the progress of the yarn across the field, hopeful as a quarterback throwing a football for a winning touchdown.

I ran to see where the "hook" had landed, and found it lying a yard shy of the thirty-five yard mark.

"Seventy-two feet!" I shouted back to the expectant figure, who grimaced his disapproval and reeled the line in. The goal had been seventy-five. He then held the rod out to me.

"Want to try?"

I hadn't held fly rod since I was twelve year-old on the North Fork of the American River in the Sierra Nevadas, standing at dusk as my father hooked a tiny Rainbow Trout and handed it to me to throw back into the eddying pool. I held the wee fish in my hand, looked into its clear black eye and, spooked into action, hurriedly threw it back toward the water. It flopped instead on the granite, thrashed its body back and forth and--I swear it-- had a look of terror on its fish-face. I screamed loud enough to scare every trout within three miles away: "Daddy Daddy! He is going to die!" And that was the last fish my father caught that evening. It was also the end of my fishing career to that point. From then on I would happily slither and hop miles up and downriver with Dad, but only as a spectator.

No fish were involved in casting with pink yarn, though. I held the Redington in my hands. I flicked the rod forward, and the line tentatively whooshed through the reel. I noted the barely suppressed glee on Dad's face, his prodigal daughter returned to the religion of her forefathers.

And now the instruction:

"Ten and two, Sarah B, just imagine a clock: pull the line and go backward to 2, then forward to 10. Let the rod work, and keep your elbow still."

Tug. Backward. Forward. The rod tip bent and the line sailed in a satisfying whir. I laughed, feeling a rush of affection for the Redington. What was it Gus calls his rod in The River Why? Rodney. Yes. I could now imagine naming one's fly rod, watching as the one I held so gracefully responded to the motion of my hand.

The tippet floated down at the twenty-yard line, landing thirty feet from here I stood.

"Thirty feet, budgie!" Dad crowed while crouching over the bit of yarn, "When we try this on the water I guess fish within thirty feet of you ought to be worried!"

He looked proud and paternal standing there with a little bow of pink yarn pinched between his fingers that I grinned and tried again.

This wasn't bad at all.

Sitting on Babies

I agreed to babysit Caden and Colin last night, the children of my good friends the Norwoods, and two of my favorite little'uns. Since Caden is five years old and Colin 8 months, I imagined that the night would be simple: make some food, walk around the neighborhood and put Colin to bed shortly after, since babies need so much sleep and all. And heck, Caden would probably pass out too if I let him ride his bike long and hard enough and then I could have an hour of unobstructed babysitter time to browse through the coffee table magazines and the back of the refrigerator. I looked forward to a quiet evening.

When I arrived, Colin was fussing in mom's arms. "He seems to want to be held today, " she apologized. "How bad can that be?" I thought to myself, "He weighs about 15 pounds and is darling." Mom and Dad left, and our quartet-- Colin, Caden, myself and Luna-the-dog-- began fixing dinner.

I set Colin in the high chair with the hopes that I could heat the black beans on the stove and preheat the broiler for our nachos. Wrong. After 15 seconds and approximately three stirs of the black beans Colin began wailing in a high-pitched and uncomfortable way. Meanwhile Caden wanted to show me his paints, his light sabers, his sunglasses, his bike, his sock monkey, his Robin Hood hat. Luna, perhaps out of nervousness, wrapped her forepaws around my upper leg and began gyrating on my shin.

With baby on my hip, dog on my ankle and a wooden spoon in hand I gingerly stirred the black beans and enlisted Caden to sprinkle cheese and cilantro on top of the tortilla chips. By a minor miracle I slid the nacho plate into the oven to broil and melt the cheese, saying to Caden, "The key to good nachos, my friend, is to check the oven often. Otherwise they burn real fast."

"Oh," said Caden with his forehead wrinkled intently, "Well, are they burning now?"

Perceptive boy.

There was smoke pouring out of the vent in the left burner. The smoke alarm started screeching. The dog ran out the back door to take cover in the bushes. Caden hid behind the bar stools. Colin mewled piteously from his perch on my hip and grew furious when I put him down to extract the nachos and fan the smoke.

"Wow, those are kind of black," observed Caden.

Like I said, he is a perceptive boy.

Somehow our party made it to the back porch for a burnt-nacho picnic. Still no luck with the high chair for Colin, even though I tried to shovel hummus into his mouth -- supposedly his favorite food--at at alarmingly fast rate. He didn't seem to find it fast enough. There was hummus in his ear, on his eyebrow and dribbling down his chest. Soon there was hummus on my shoulder when picked him up to calm him. Meanwhile Caden wanted a dollop of sour cream and a splash of chipotle hot sauce on each chip.

With one hand I cleared the mess from the table and entreated Caden to help grab a cup or two. "Can we play the, 'Don't Pick That Up' game?" he asked.

He explained the rules: I would insist that he NOT take the bowl of grapes into the house, or that he NOT clear the hot sauce from the table, and then while my back was turned he would do the opposite. I believe at this point that I blankly started at his eager face and shrugged my consent.

Twelve trips and much reverse psychology later the table was cleared and we made a successful lap around the neighborhood with Caden on bike and Colin in a tiny stroller. I forgot to put pants on the baby so his legs and feet got pretty cold long before Caden was ready to abandon his bike, but I thought that if we could get back to the house and feed Colin a little warm milk he might just fall asleep.

Colin still refused to be left in a high chair, so with him wrapped around my neck and Luna trailing behind and Caden now attempting to squirt acrylic paints onto a palette for paint-by-numbers, I warmed up some milk and then sat in the rocking chair to emulate that motherly action of rocking and feeding baby.

Baby didn't like it. He voraciously sucked on the bottle and then alternately pushed it away with frustrated hands. I tried tilting him back in my arms and tried standing and nothing seemed to satisfy. The standing was eventually successful in getting the milk to come back up. My shirt and somehow my jeans had spit-up on them. Colin didn't look better. It seemed an opportune time to clean the little guy up, seeing as he was encrusted with milk and hummus and vomit.

As he sat on the changing table Colin swiped with surprising dexterity at diapers and wipes and finally at the baby powder, giving it a good whack, and sending fine, white powder into the air. I tried to tug the dirty clothing over his head while he wailed at my inexpert attempts. When the shirt was finally off, I looked at his face covered in a dusting of what looked like cake-flour and wanted to cry. Colin cried for both of us. Caden peeked his head in the door and wondered when I would come paint with him? Luna mounted my leg again.

So this was it, I thought. Mom and Dad would come home at 10 pm and neither child would be asleep. The dog would be frantically humping my shin, the baby would be neither clothed nor clean, I would be covered in vomit and Caden would be strung-out on peanut butter ice cream. Did I mention that I pacified the five-year-old with a bowl of peanut butter ice cream an hour past bed-time?

At 9 30 pm, I lifted Colin into my arms and patted his tiny back while pacing the living room. He gummed my shoulder and grunted.

"I think Colin is making his sleepy noises," whispered Caden hopefully.

Without ceasing my movement across the floor I nodded wearily at Caden, certain that Colin would start crying soon enough.

Then, without warning, Colin's downy head fell onto my chest, his fine hair tickling my neck. I glanced wide-eyed at Caden, who mouthed soundlessly to me, "His eyes are closed!"

One minute passed. Five minutes passed. I sat in the rocking chair and still Colin's head lay heavy on my collarbone. Caden stretched out on the couch and said, "I am feeling sleepy like my brother."

At ten minutes I tentatively stood up and walked with Colin to the bassinet where he slept. He only sighed and snored when I placed him in his bed.

Caden's eyes were closed and his chest was rising and falling gently on the couch.

"Let's get some spider-man pj's on, Caden."

He nodded and let me lead him to his room.

The dog was curled up under the window and merely lifted an eyebrow at us as we passed.

Within ten minutes the house had gone from chaos to peace. The two little ones were asleep and I looked the picture of domesticity. The parents would never know about the burning and the alarm and the crying and the peanut butter ice cream and the humping dog! I imagined how they would ask about the evening I would say airily, "Oh, just fine. The kids are great."

They walked in the door as I flipped through a magazine and stood to greet them with a nonchalant toss of my limp ponytail over my shoulder...

"Sarah," asked Tom quizzically, "Do you have flour all over your face?"

Raison d' etre

I haven't forgotten my blog exists, but I have felt devoid of writing inspiration. Other blogs post recipes or neat pictures of interesting adventures or landscapes or describe current events or discuss books. I have a dear friend who just posted watercolors she painted herself; it caused an identity crisis of blog proportions. I have no paintings or photos or revolutions to post. So why write? In short, what is the raison d'etre of this blog?

I began writing this after graduating from college. This seems to be the case for a lot of my blogging friends actually, and that may reveal one key fact about "Now and Not Yet": it is one way I am grappling with the experience of being in this particular place, at this particular time, as this particular twenty-something year old woman. I don't write in order to update friends about daily goings on, but I do write to describe where I happen to be. It is an existential practice.

Doesn't mean anyone needs to care much Where I Happen To Be, but the act of synthesizing and analyzing and actualizing thoughts into a piece of writing is enormously helpful for me. I like the work of posting for an audience, even of one or two. I mean, you should read my journal. It is inane and borderline megalomaniac. Pages and pages about myself. A blog forces me to ask whether or not the world at large would care whether or not I feel cranky and like eating twelve quesadillas. I have to edit.

Apparently I have this blog because a) I like it and b) it helps me. I say, "apparently" because I have just made the aforementioned observations for the first time in the process of creating this post. Utility proven. Raison d'etre discovered (for now.)

[postscript: There is the auxiliary benefit in sharing oneself that it mqy occasionally encourage other people. I really like when that happens. So. I will keep writing to find out where I am, and hope that it might help others every once and a while, too.]

Fin.

Ninety

A smart, older person, trying to help me discern future vocation, asked me the following question: 

When you are ninety years old, what do you want to see when you look back upon your life?

  

A few pictures--some clear, others blurry--arose unbidden in my mind's eye.  To start with the clear, I (for reasons yet unclear) remembered a particular day in South Africa in which half of our student group trooped down to Itipini, "place of the dump," a village built on top of a trash heap.  With sunglasses pulled over my eyes I stared out the window of our moving van trundling happily along to Trash Dump Town, certain that whatever I was about to see would incite sorrow, anger, discomfort.  We arrived at Itipini and tiptoed over a path made of dirt, pig shit, and broken glass to the door of a clinic and community center begun by Jenny McConnachie, a British surgeon and ex-patriot.  I pulled off my sunglasses, stepped inside, and promptly returned the glasses to the bridge of my nose because I had begun to cry.  The clinic was nondescript, white, bare.  Jenny was plain, simply dressed, quiet; it was all so unexpectedly peaceful.  We floated through the center, touching pictures, neatly stacked papers and sharpened pencils, breathing in the hard won stillness carved out of a discordant place.  

Outside the clinic black, barefoot children swarmed to our white sides.  Their mothers (sixteen, fifteen years old?)  watched in the wings.  This isn't hard, I thought, and touched a face here, smoothed a brow there, marveled at hardened feet that ran so carelessly over trash.  

As I contemplated the scene before me in the shade of the clinic roof, now free of children and feeling dazed, a professor stood beside me and tapped my shoulder:   

"Could you see yourself doing something like this?" he asked. 

"Yes," I answered.  

Though I don't know why.  

As for the more blurry pictures, wisps of images float to the surface like bubbles rising from a deep, underground spring.  A solid, gracious house.  A front porch.  A long, wooden dining table with people around it.  Lamps lit late into the evening for conversation.  A writing table. A window.  And my own face, looking startlingly like Jenny McConnachie's, with a gray braid coming apart around my shoulders and eyes that are like falling into a well.  

To Whomever Was Playing the Steel Guitar This Evening on the Roof

thank you

for reminding me that i 

(sometimes as stiff and unbending as a  strip of cracked leather)

may still be moved to tremble with sound

loveliness

the deepening evening

or quiet gratitude

as surely as a steel string thrums under the fingers of a master 

Valley of the Shadow

A friend of mine has been walking through a great darkness, for longer than expected and with no sign of reprieve; some days the darkness actually seems to expand and deepen, yawning ahead in terrible monotony.  

So I have been reading the Psalms with a cynic sitting on my shoulder that digs its sharp little claws into my skin when the psalmists exclaim over God's comfort, nearness, mercy: 

"I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry"

(maybe You haven't heard me yet?)

"For I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God"

(but how do we praise what we can't find?)

"He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes who were too strong for me"

(Maybe You just haven't gotten to my friend yet, is she next on the list?)

Why, when we need the solace of the Almighty most, do we seem to walk alone through the valley of the shadow of death?

Rabbi Harold Kushner came up with the conclusion that God in fact is impotent, in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.  That solution doesn't sit well with me.  Scratch that off the list. 

Another option is that God perhaps removes himself purposely, that we might learn to have faith.  To a degree, it is certainly evident that we are purified and refined by suffering.  However, I detest the idea that God might withhold Himself in our time of need just so we might toughen up.  (Is that crass?  There is probably some value to this line of thinking, but I still don't like it.) 

Or perhaps it is our fault.  Perhaps like the hardened Israelites, we fail to have eyes that see and ears that ear; we do not recognize the manna, the pillar of fire, the water from the rock.  This has some merit.  Humans have a history of blindness. 

But still.  When this friend tells me that faith seems inadequate to answer the deep questions of life and that God seems far away when she needs Him most, do I tell her it is her fault?  Do I tell her God is teaching her a lesson? Do I tell her He actually cannot do anything to help?

I doubt Brother Lawrence intended his book title to help me answer my questions, but nonetheless, Practicing the Presence of God seems an apt description of how we might approach our suffering.  If I take God's Word, written and Incarnate, seriously, then I must believe God is with us in the valley.  If I believe that He was born as a man, crucified and resurrected, defeating sin, death and the devil... well, then.  He is certainly there amidst the shadows.  I am borrowing from Karl Barth when I say I think there is an objective Truth that God is near, even while we somehow subjectively experience His absence.  So we practice.  We practice His presence.  We practice trusting.  We resolutely cling to God-With-Us even though our circumstances indicate otherwise.  

Rainer Maria Rilke writes in summary better than I can.  

"So you must not be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do [...]  You must be patient as a sick man and confident as one who is becoming well, for perhaps you are both."

-Letters to a Young Poet

Glory

"Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!

Christ our King is risen, Alleluia."

It is hard to believe "Glory fills you!" when you have coffee breath, a dirty ponytail, and are wearing green cutoff sweats and linty wool socks, as I was the morning I read this from my dog-eared copy of Celtic daily prayers.  But no matter what you are wearing, it is hard hard hard to believe the weighty beauty of Christ's resurrected glory dwells within us.  Harder, I would contest, than accepting the apparent truth that we are as dirty and linty as our clothes indicate, and sorrowful and mean and weary to boot.  

How difficult is it to recount stories of our failure?  For that matter, how difficult is it to tell the story of humanity's failure?  I think it is even trendy nowadays to talk about how shitty we all are. Excuse the language, but I did use the word purposely, because it reflects a blase, comfortable colloquialism toward our depravity.  We are used to depravity, because it presents itself to our senses every minute and every day, such that many agree with the famous summation of human existence written by Thomas Hobbes: it is, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."  (Ever the optimist, that Thomas Hobbes.)

What I am saying is this: it is more complex to understand oneself as an object of grace, a child of resurrection, a creature of glory.  It contradicts our experience.  It requires powerful imagination because it concerns an often-unseen reality.  Accounts of people committing acts of great mercy or justice or loveliness seem rare.  And if it is hard to see beauty in humanity collectively, I think it might be most difficult of all to see it in myself.  I know better than anyone how selfish and small and blind and hardened I can be.  Back to the linty wool socks. "Christ's glory fills me?  You must be joking.  Can you see my socks?"  I am faced with the crucial choice of living in the one-dimensional truth of my dirtiness, or living in multi-faceted tension as one who is filled with squalor and splendor, shame and glory, death and life.  

But mostly life.  After all, it is the Life of God Himself that fills you and I, and if that isn't a trump card I don't know what is.  

Tree Hugger

Is there any thing more patient than a tree?

I have been taking coffee, book, journal and myself to the park across the street as often as possible, sitting at the roots of an old maple hoping that I might absorb its steadfast elegance by some miraculous osmosis.  (The osmosis hasn't worked.  I have, however, gotten a crick in my neck from craning upward to watch the wind play in the leaves, and grass stuck to my sandals and shorts.) 

The glory of a tree is its long memory.  By that I mean the way it bends and deepens over the years, persevering in its slow growth through all kinds of weather, drought, and trauma.  Joy, too, I suppose.  I imagine the tree holding within itself memories of the last storm or the last branch lopped off, so that it doesn't lose heart when the wind starts howling but instead keeps pushing inch by inch into the earth.  

In my current transience and impatience, I resemble something more like a dandelion than a tree: sprouting up when the sun shines and keeling over when the temperature drops, hasty, green and trigger-happy.  Dandelions rarely survive a good frost, much less an entire winter.  Compare this with the old maple who has the wisdom of two hundred weathered storms!  What can shake her?  She is drinking from deep, ancient veins of water far below the frenzied surface.  Do not blame me, then, for asking to borrow from this weathered soul.  In her is the long-suffering Hope of her Maker.  

Blessed is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked [...]

but whose delight is in the law of the Lord

He is like a tree planted by streams of water, 

which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither

Psalm 1 

Receiving, or An Argument for Commuting by Bike

 I agree with the maxim, "Tis more blessed to give than to receive," but for what are assuredly selfish reasons, namely that I would rather be in the empowered position of giving.  Receiving is humble.  

So when I found myself with a dead car and dead battery this morning on the side of the road, I first shuffled through my wallet in order to find my AAA member card, because I figured if I was going to need help I may as well get it from professional helpers, people from whom I would not mind receiving aid.   But I was parked on the side of a residential road, surrounded by doors on which I might knock...around the corner from shops to which I could go... therefore I sat like a bump on a log in my car.  I met the eyes of people driving by, my hood popped open, and dared them to decide to stop.  They didn't.  Small wonder. 

A red Taurus idled past (lost? looking for parking?) and I decided to follow another maxim, "the Lord helps those who help themselves."  I flagged down The Red Taurus.   Krista --aka Good Samaritan-- had the kindness to step out of her car and lend her time and jumper cables, and I was soon able to be on my way.  

Krista seemed honestly pleased to stop and help. Really, I mean, she smiled the whole time and it wasn't because I was smiling at her: I was too busy swearing silently at my car.  It made me think that the neat thing about being in a position of receiving is its reflexive quality; that is, the Giver may also be the Receiver.  In this scenario, though she was technically extending me the gift of time, cables, and a willing attitude, Krista was given the gift of being invaluable to another human being at a particular moment in time.  The outcome of my day depended on her presence in my life.  Krista was made very important. 

A reluctance to receive, then, may in fact be an insult to those around me, sending the message that I am not willing to let them play an important role in my life.  It becomes a matter of control, a question whether or not I have the humility to surrender the reins when it becomes clear I am not enough in and of myself?  Mostly no, I do not.  

C'est la vie.  Back to where I started.  Still, I am grateful to the small kindness of another human and the also small opportunity to practice the posture of receiving.  

Fair Game?

There is a forty-something year old man who comes into my store and acts like junior high boy. That is, he makes dirty jokes, comments on my appearance, tells co-workers he "has a thing for me", tells ME he comes to the store to see me, and then stands by the espresso bar during mid-morning rush and either watches me or tries to make conversation. 

That's sexual harassment, homes.  

I simultaneously feel angry, belittled, and nervous.  Angry because I am a captive audience; he's in my work place where I am stuck behind register or coffee bar.  Belittled because his attention is so unwanted and insensitive that I feel shrunken-- I want to take up less space for him to notice.  And nervous because I am not sure what he will say or do next. 

I am a free, adult woman, and this creep has rendered me fair game for whatever fantasies about nice, blond baristas keep him company at night.  I didn't sign up for the job, but I am nonetheless a participant, even if unwilling.  

On the flip side, I have yet to tell him off.  He has caught me off guard with his innuendo and his pointed interest.  And I am perpetually nice.  It's a bad habit: I am used to seeing sheep and have trouble recognizing a wolf in disguise.  Maybe in someway I have let myself be victimized by not taking a firm stand?  I can either let my co-workers and manager take care of my business while I cower in the corner, or I can muster up my best F-off speech and angry eyes and stand up for myself, refusing to be a part of his perversion.  

I don't want to play into a role that has been played many times before: helpless, harassed female.  That still leaves him in the position of power.  I want to turn the tables and decide whether or not I am an object of a middle-aged man's sexual desire.  I choose NOT.  And when I tell him to start behaving or get lost, I will top it off with a customer-appropriate smile and a damn good cup of coffee thankyouverymuch.  

  

The Bachelorette Pad

Its true-- Janelle and I have a new Bachelorette Pad.  

Here's the low down on the apartment in numbers: 

Ikea couches: 1

Completed bottles of wine: 4

New scratches in the hardwood floor: 1

Bags of tortilla chips consumed: 2

Loud house parties next door that keep us awake: 2

Times Janelle has glued her fingers together with wood stain: 1

That is not a comprehensive list. 

Though The Move for me has been within the same city, I nonetheless find myself in the throes of transitional angst (big surprise, right??)  It takes 30 minutes longer to get to work than before, and the number of new expenses are staggering.   It is hot hot hot when bed time comes because our third and top floor apartment soaks up sun all day for a cumulative effect similar to an oven.  The smells and sounds and patterns are unfamiliar. I yearn for the day when I stagger into the kitchen for morning coffee and grind/brew/pour like on automatic, without fumbling for beans, outlets or counter space. 

Still, this place has hints of Home forming in it.  Already I like the way evening light filters in the northwest windows.  Our gerbera daisies seem comfortable on the windowsill.  The floors creak gently to welcome me back from work.  We are fortunate for this little apartment, and for the chance to begin a new life chapter. (And will keep the Trader Joe's wine flowing until we feel sane again.) 

Old Stuff

I cracked open my journal from January 2008, the month I traveled to South Africa.  I have not thought about the trip in over a year; I think I was anxious to move on from it.  Today, though, I felt a desire to remember what I was thinking during those bewildering few weeks. The eclectic nature of the following 'snapshots' is a very truthful reflection of my experience of contrast throughout the entire country.  Here goes. 

Babes

 Today I sat with a woman dying of AIDS. Her name was Babes, and her smile was like a crescent moon in an otherwise diminished face. Babes asked me questions even though the process of forming words seemed laborious.  She talked more than I did, because finding language in my brain was like dipping a bucket in a dry well.  

 I perched like a nervous bird on her bed, awkward because of my backpack and because of the dirty sheets, and I am embarrassed to say that the first thing I thought as she reached for my hand was, "What if I have an open cut where the virus could creep in?"  (the answer was yes and no: yes, a small cut on my pointer finger, and no, her hands were eerily clean and elegant.)  

It felt like acting on television.  Was everyone in the room watching the white woman crouch over the dying coloured one?  My colleagues receded into the background. Visitors and nurses watched silent as gravestones.

Her fragility was luminous. Maybe people close to death get a little extra beauty, or maybe beauty ordinarily hidden by the trappings of daily life shines more clearly because it is all that is left?  Either way, Babes is (though now she is probably a "was") beautiful in the truest sense. 

How does beauty accompany death?

Cranky

I don't want to go back to the home stay where I feel awkward and cramped. I don't want to make conversation with our hosts. I want my bed and my blanket and to make my own food and not be around any people. I don't want to eat whatever the hell it is Touma is making.  I am tired of meat I don't recognize.   

I want an apple. 

Today I am sick of South Africa. 

African Hope

 The world is a cold gray ember (I read yesterday in Gilead) that God blows into a flame which flares and burns for a moment, or a day, or a lifetime, and then dies leaving no sign that it was ever related to fire.  But the flame does come, and it takes courage both to witness the transfiguration and to hope for another. 

Perhaps in Africa I need more hope, not less.  

I have been reading in Isaiah and the passages of restoration and redemption are almost painful for all that they seem so unfulfilled.  How does the person selling ostrich feathers and beads for a living interpret the rich promises of safety and blessing?  Was Isaiah a false prophet?  Or, for the more sophisticated, a prophet writing from specific context and history?  Or, did he dream of a future reality still undisclosed?  

Or maybe their lives have a richness that I in my relative wealth and busyness cannot fathom.  

Maybe hope has nothing to do with apparent reality.  

Naughty Monkeys

Andi left her window open and the monkeys got in.  They got the marshmallows and the instant coffee and left sticky, caffeinated fingerprints on her wall.  "Naughty monkeys," said Zama. "Damn rodents," said Andi.  

Two Poems

In comparison to the exploits of many literary giants, Emily Dickinson's life seems small. In her entire lifetime, historians say, she did not stray far from her bedroom window in Amherst, Massachusetts.  I am glad Ms. Dickinson stayed put.  We are indebted to the "soul upon a windowpane" that observed its world --however tiny-- with such microscopic precision. 

I really like these two poems.  

Success Is Counted Sweetest 

Success is counted sweetest 

by those who ne'er succeed. 

To comprehend a nectar

requires sorest need. 

Not one of all the purple Host 

Who took the Flag today

Can tell the definition 

so clear of Victory

As he defeated- dying- 

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph 

Burst agonized and clear!

I Had Been Hungry,

 All the Years

I had been hungry, all the Years- 

My Noon had Come - to dine- 

I trembling drew the Table near-

and touched the Curious Wine-

'Twas this on Tables I had seen- 

When turning, hungry, Home

I looked in Windows, for the Wealth

I could not hope - for Mine- 

I did not know the ample Bread- 

'Twas so unlike the Crumb

The Birds and I, had often shared

In Nature's - Dining Room- 

The Plenty hurt me- 'twas so new- 

Myself felt ill - and odd- 

As Berry- of a Mountain Bush- 

Transplanted - to the Road- 

Nor was I hungry- so I found

That Hunger- was a way

Of Persons outside Windows- 

The Entering - takes away- 

 

Top 5 Reasons Why a Self-Respecting Woman Might Opt to Work At Starbucks Rather than Attend Princeton

1.  People who come to Starbucks do not want anything from the barista except coffee.  They are satisfied with espresso mixed with milk, sometimes topped with caramel.  Some people even go so far as to want extra hot milk, and there are the very few who even want to make small talk.  Those people are rewarded with a smile and a chat about weather.  That is all. 

2.  Besides needing a pretty good memory and common sense, being a barista requires little intellectual stimulation.  This is nice for someone, say, who is tired from 16 straight years of school. 

3.  When one removes The Green Apron, the job is done.  No Green Apron, no more work.  Redundant?  Yes, but it is nice to emphasize the truth of the statement.  Even if the employee happens to be in the store but doesn't have the Green Apron, he or she is totally off limits.  Do customers ask her for advice?  No.  Does the barista need to make follow up calls and coffee dates to make sure the customer is alright? No.  Is there outside required reading? No!  Additional meetings or prep?  No no no.  You get the point.  

4.  Starbucks--in all its corporate glory-- runs like a machine.  No lulls, no lack of things to do.  Hours at work are efficient, busy, and productive (and the productivity is quantifiable: number of drinks poured, pots of coffee brewed, condiments stocked, floors mopped...).   

5.  Finally, it is pretty cushy to get a free pound of beans a week, 'specially if one happens to burn through about that much anyway.  It is a cost-efficient way to be addicted to coffee.  Thank you, Starbucks, for supporting the habit.  

Here's My Heart, O Take and Seal It!

This morning Richard Dahlstrom spoke about the prophet Joel, and the Lord's exhortation in chapter two that His wayward Israel, "Return to Me with all your heart", not with sackcloth and ashes and outer trappings of repentance but with an open heart given in trust to its Lord and King.  At this, Dahlstrom clasped his hands together, fingers intertwined, a picture of intimacy between God and His open-hearted people.  The gesture made my stomach twist with yearning. 

Don't I long to be intimately woven with Christ, living fully in the depth of His love?  Why choose otherwise?  Yet how often I nonetheless seem to withhold my heart from its only safe Keeper.  

What hubris keeps the heart's floodgates closed? What foolish, besetting pride whispers that God is not interested in the honest offering of a broken heart?  

I have railed at God for failing to be present in darkness, for seeming absent in pain and far away in the late watches of the night.  Is it possible, though, that I myself have kept Him at bay by clinging to control of the welfare of my soul?  

Do I/we have that much power anyway?  

Some days I think Ivan Karamazov is correct: free will is nice, Lord, "only I most respectfully return the ticket".  I wish God would bash through our frail volition and just give us what we really need.  What terrifying freedom we instead have to isolate ourselves from the reality of Christ's love, to suffer apart from the comfort of the Spirit, to lead autonomous, fearful lives flaunting the lordship of the Father!  

It is a superhuman work then, to bring the heart to the Lord in truth.  I rely on the prayer of whomever wrote the hymn Come Thou Fount:

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, 

prone to leave the God I love. 

Here's my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above

An Observation About Spring That Has Been Made Before

There is a tree outside my window that started to blossom the very beginning of February.  I thought the blooms were doomed to early death, but they have persevered through more snow, rain and wind than paper-thin petals ought to be able.  What a brave, tenacious tree.  I am glad for its bulldog determination to announce the new season, even in contrary weather. 

Everyone waxes poetic about spring and resurrection and baby chicks hatching and new life, especially pastors, who seem to be irrationally proud that the natural world coincides so nicely with the Church calendar and their sermons, as if Christ's resurrection actually caused chickens to burst forth from eggshells and plants to shoot out of the ground. (I sort of wish that IS what happened on that Third Day.  What a sight!  Baby animals, plants, trees, green things, popping into existence like fireworks!)  I am not claiming, therefore, to say anything very new about how springtime provides tangible reminders of that great New Life that is the crux of our human history.  It does do those things, but I am neither the first nor the last to notice.  

Nonetheless, it is nice to sit on one's front porch in the evening with some chamomile tea in order to watch the sun sweetly stain the Western sky.  It is also nice to see blooming cherry branches curled delicately in the day's last light.  No matter how many people have thought the same, spring is still hopeful.  

Hope : hope

Just have that secret hope 

sometimes all we do is cope.

Somewhere on the steepest slope 

there'll be an endless rope 

and nobody crying -- Patty Griffin

I have been hoping for a job.  That seems like a nice thing to hope for, not terribly far-fetched.  I have a proven ability to work.  I can make coffee, I can also help people.  I can think. Does anyone want to pay me to think?  I interview well, know how to dress, speak articulately under pressure.  

Juxtapose the aforementioned facts with the rat race that is the economy.  For example, I saw at least 60 people waiting to get a job at the restaurant to which I applied yesterday.  In the space of two hours.  Multiply that by the 4 open days of hiring, not to mention the people I did not see.  This makes my chances of getting said job 1/240, or maybe higher (or lower) given advantages (or disadvantages) I may have. 

If hope is an equation, then, I deduce that I ought to hope about 1% for this job.  Use 1% of my brain cells thinking about it,  1% of my time preparing for it, 1% of my disappointment, etc. 

What a weenie notion of hope. It deserves a lower-case "h".  

What is the undeterred hope that Paul writes about in his letters?   The patient hope of Israel through long centuries of exile?  What about Hope?  

And--

what does Hope have to do with hope?  

What does the resurrected Christ have to do with unemployment or aimlessness or singleness or weariness or disappointment?  When faced with lower-case "h" hopelessness, do we take refuge in a transcendent Hope that somehow glosses over earthly shadow?  Do we have to live divided between spirit and matter, hopeful on the one hand, hopeless on the other, or is there a harmony of the two?

I may not get a job.  Sure I am pretty capable and qualified, but so are 7,000,000 other Seattleites who check Craigslist and Starbucks.com voraciously.  I have been so used to getting what I need when I need it, whether that be job, education, grades, money, appreciation or friendship, but I am no longer a sure ground for my hope.  My small hope must be encompassed in the larger One, that the fullness of it may break into the mundane, musty corners of self-sufficiency and contend with disappointment and fear.     

Patty G has a nice thing going for her in Nobody Cryin', its a great song, but it speaks of coping now so that at the very end "there'll be and endless rope and nobody cryin'".   I want hope now, pressed down, shaken together and running over. Not meager crumbs but water turned to wine, and fish busting out of nets  that should be empty.   I want a single, great, resurrection hope as I approach the job market that is crumbling and bank account that is shrinking and future that is wandering.  The same hope now that is also to come.  

There is one body and one Spirit-- just as you were called to One Hope-- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father over all... Ephesians 4:4-6

The Venerable Thomas Merton

Thank the Lord for smart people who think well about matters of life and faith.  Merton is a treasure trove of good thoughts.  

"To Know the Cross"

Thomas Merton 

The Christian must not only accept suffering: he must make it holy.  Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering.  

Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration.  True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude.  We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial. 

Suffering is consecrated to God by faith -- not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God.  Some of us believe in the power and the value of suffering.  But such a belief is an illusion.  Suffering has no power and no value of its own [...]

Only the sufferings of Christ are valuable in the sight of God, who hates evil, and to him they are valuable chiefly as a sign.  The death of Jesus on the cross has an infinite meaning and value not because it is a death, but because it is the death of the Son of God.  The cross of Christ says nothing of the power of suffering or of death. It speaks only of the power of him who overcame both suffering and death by rising from the grave [...]

Suffering therefore, can only be consecrated to God by one who believes that Jesus is not dead. And it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of meaning.