A Mother’s Day Post

Isn’t she just adorable?

Not everyone is blessed with an awesome mom, or a living one, and with you I grieve, but my mom kicks awesome to the curb and does a little dance around it, and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the woman, nay, the exploding star, in whose orbit I have abundant light.

My mom is morning pancakes and bedtime prayers, permission to wade in the autumn leaves, hot cocoa after the snow. Sewer of Halloween mermaids and gluer of Valentine’s Day “mailboxes,” kisser of bloody knees and respecter of an open book (“How many more pages in that chapter? Ok, finish the chapter, then please set the table.”) My mom is a square dance diva who has never lacked for a partner and a card shark who has never missed an opportunity to let me lose a hand.

My mom is the one who turned to my dad the night they announced their divorce, turned to the father who was shushing me, and bit off the words “She’s allowed to cry. It’s. Sad.”

My mother is the one who kept four kids in extracurricular programs and musical instruments on one full-time job and late child-support payments.

It was my mother who mysteriously, and single-handedly, arranged Christmas shopping trips so that all four of us could buy each other presents while somehow keeping all the gifts a secret.

It’s my mother who will fearlessly and relentlessly, and effectively, play Bad Cop if you really need something done (like two days before my wedding, when she and B went to pick up the rental van we had reserved, and which the rental company had utterly failed to hold for us. Ask B about this sometime. It’s a good story. )

It was my mom who walked me down the aisle.

My mom and me.

It was my mother who taught me how to pray.

My mom is games of backgammon, memory, and mastermind packed for every ballet and gymnastics lesson, Black Fridays spent cozy at home baking cookies, Saturday trips to Lake Erie. My mom is the whirlwind party-thrower who can cater a party of 700 with staff, and whip up Thanksgiving dinner, solo, in about 2 hours. My mom is the Tetris Master, able to pack whole lives into a single four-door compact sedan.

My mother knows things about strength that I might never learn. To my anchor, my root, my protector and cheerleader, I love you so much. Happy Mother’s Day!

Beautiful, beautiful.

Loneliness, Facebook, and Other First World Problems

I stumbled on this article yesterday that discussed women in Afghanistan who are literally risking their lives to write poetry. It’s a really incredible movement – poetry as political rebellion. (If you click through to the original New York Times article, that’s also worth a read).

Anyway, in the course of the article, the author said something that caught my attention:

“Voice. This is what poetry offers that makes it worth dying—and living—for. Perhaps only those without a voice can truly understand this power. How could we whose voices are amplified to deafening decibels—by the Facebooks, the Twitters, the blogs, the Internets, the cell phones, the texts, the reality shows, the Good Reads, the “like” buttons, the “dislike” buttons, the comments—understand the death-defying power poetry has to offer a life-giving voice?”

I think she makes a good point – we are glutted with information and words, words, words. Words are cheap in the West. But I wonder how many of those shouting on Facebook and Twitter and the interwebs actually feel heard. I don’t mean in any way to diminish the plight of Afghan women, whose lives have been shattered by war, and who live in conditions of poverty unimaginable in the US, but I wonder if we have this one thing in common: none of us feel heard, they because they are not permitted to speak, and we because we are drowned out by the din of modern life.

I know when I lived in the FunHouse, surrounded by friends and community, I had little use for facebook and other forms of social media. It wasn’t until a couple of my housemates started pouring themselves into coursework (and thus had less time for socializing) that I finally joined facebook. And it wasn’t until we were unceremoniously booted out of the house that I started blogging. I specifically remember that I started blogging because I felt lonely. I wasn’t being heard anymore.

Part of it was geographical – I was physically farther away from all my friends than I had been in ten years. And this is common in our world, isn’t it? Long gone are the days when mostly everyone you knew died within a few counties of where they were born. Friends shift in and out of our life, chasing after love or adventure or the shifting economy. I wonder if Facebook feels like an anchor for those friendships; a way of keeping them close even though we can’t hang onto them in the flesh.

Part of it was scheduling – I was working like crazy, or comatose in the summer vacation crash, and traveling even half an hour to visit friends down the road (my closest friends, geographically) was just too much to wrangle more than once a week, if that. This is common too – more and more people have to take extra jobs, extra shifts, longer hours just to make ends’ meet. Facebook and Twitter are a way to at least digitally wave hello to the people I don’t have time to actually see and cultivate in person.

I know Facebook, Twitter, and other social media get a lot of flack for making our communications more superficial, but I wonder if this is a chicken and egg thing? Maybe Facebook and Twitter aren’t what’s creating the superficiality. Maybe it’s that our whole social system has come to revolve around forces that don’t encourage the personal time or geographical stability necessary for intimacy, and Facebook and Twitter are just the bandaids we use to feel like we still have friends in our sights during those times when we can’t keep them literally in our sights.

Anyway. Just thinking out loud.

Wishes

I am fortunate to have a majority of level-headed, reasonable friends. I saw nothing but sadness, sympathy and encouragement for the victims of the Boston marathon bombing on my facebook feed. Many of my friends, including B, were not so lucky. I gleaned from watching conversations on other people’s walls that there was a volcanic outpouring of vitriol, fear, fear-mongering, speculating, finger-pointing and other displays of people losing their shit. It’s understandable, really. Everybody has their ways of processing, and some are closer to the tragedy than others.

As I’ve slowed down over  the past few weeks, one of the interesting things that has happened is that I’ve become  aware of a pervasive sadness. I cry nearly every day, and if I don’t, I suffer some kind of psychosomatic weirdness – migraines, panic attacks, digestion issues, random pains.

Honestly, it doesn’t feel like depression to me. I’ve suffered serious depression, and there’s a heaviness and futility to that kind of sadness that isn’t present in the kind of sadness I’m feeling now. This sadness feels like grief. I haven’t figured out what I’m grieving yet, but the body doesn’t lie.

There are plenty of options to choose from. In the past two years, I had the house community that had shaped me for a third of my life taken from me in a sudden and uncompassionate manner, suffered an extreme romantic disappointment, spent 9 months wondering if I should call off my relationship with B, watched two good friends suffer persecution from the church I thought I loved, burned out badly on teaching, lost hope of staying in the neighborhood that had become my home and refuge in the city that I hate, moved three times, traveled to Taiwan to win over the future in-laws, got engaged, planned a full-weekend wedding, and helped plant a church. Through all of this, until the sabbatical, I was working two jobs. So I didn’t really have the luxury of so much time to process all of it. And that’s kind of a lot of life in 2 years.  And that’s not even all of it, that’s just all the stuff that’s easily list-able here. There’s a lot of stuff I might need to grieve now that I finally have time to do it. So while I was surprised to discover the sadness beneath my sabbatical fun, I wasn’t really surprised.

Part of me wishes that I didn’t have to grieve it all. It would be so nice if there were a spell I could chant, or a magic token I could buy, or a wish-granter who could just take it all away. The grieving process is ugly and messy and sometimes excruciating. But the alternative is worse, and I know this from experience. I survived three kinds of abuse in my childhood, and I didn’t grieve it for a long, long time – just harbored a deep and abiding bitterness/hatred, which I aimed at myself and those around me. Unmourned grief doesn’t go away, it just settles into my bones and turns sour.

The worst part is that it’s easy to forget that it’s there. I forget that I have grief, but I see that I am not happy, and so grief paints other people as enemies, the thieves of my happiness. I point fingers and blame and scapegoat. Grief pouts like a child and insists that I must have things a certain way, and people must be a certain way around me, or else it (the grief) will make awkward, snarky, rude, mean, violent, or otherwise inappropriate appearances. Grief wants to punish people – the people who hurt me, and anyone who reminds me of the hurt I endured. It makes me kind of miserable to be around.

And so I am committed to grieving. It’s miserable. It involves finding a quiet, safe space (the shower often works), where I can surrender to the painful feeling of utter helplessness and anger and vulnerability, and cry and sniffle and get gross about it, and scream and beat my chest if I want to, and do whatever other weird, childish things seem necessary in order to let the grief feel honored enough to leave. I do this as often and as long as it takes. And I know, from experience, that if I keep it up long enough, eventually, when I’m ready, and it might take years, I will just run to the end of the grief, and it will be gone, and I’ll be left with gratitude and forgiveness.

It’s true that not all wounds heal completely; some shape us irrevocably. But even if the grief shapes me, it won’t own me once I’m done with it. It will lose its sharpness; it will lose its ability to harm me and those around me. By grieving, I acknowledge that though my suffering is not unique, it is important, because I am a person, granted dignity. By grieving, I am able to release my need to punish and embrace the choice of peace. By grieving, I grow strong enough emotionally to seek justice rather than vengeance. By grieving, I turn my pain from a sword into a plough.

This is my wish for me, for as long as it takes. And this is my wish for all those suffering from the Boston marathon bombing and other recent atrocities, and everyone suffering from the “full catastrophe of life” – that we would scream and cry and rend our clothes and beat our chests and wear sackcloth and ashes and pound the floor and cling to one another in the darkness for as long as it takes.

And then, maybe, we can choose peace.

Sabbatical Update

Ahh, my poor neglected blog, I miss you sometimes. I miss wrestling my thoughts into words and responding to comments and feeling like I have a place to dump all my miscellaneous musings.

I HAVE been wrestling thoughts into words, but I’ve been focusing almost entirely on fiction for the past few months, and so I haven’t made time for you. The novel is coming along – I’ve got the first book mostly mapped out, and I finally (FINALLY) figured out how it ends in a way that is reasonable, necessary, and still surprising within the context of the world. And I’ve been spending an incredible amount of time on short stories. In the few months since I’ve posted, I’ve finished seven short stories, and started nine more, five of which I am hoping to actually finish. And because fiction is an entirely new creative venture for me, despite my intimidatingly prolific history as a reader, my new babies are surely awkward little things, under-foreshadowed, or over-explained, or what have you, but they’re so beautiful to me, I love mooning over them in the mornings and lingering over them at night.

And I’m still writing a play. I lose confidence over this one more than any of the other projects, probably BECAUSE it’s going to be produced, and I’m just sure that it will be a gross display of ineptitude, cliche, unrelenting darkness, or some other absurd deformity. So I put it away and tell myself that I’ll get to it “when inspiration hits,” and then rigorously avoid the things that would prompt inspiration. And this creates a familiar shame cycle for me, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, I’ve got a month and a half left before we try to workshop it, and more than half of it written, so I’m not in terrible shape. I’m just scared of this one.

On the other hand, it turns out I LOVE filming. I got to be on my very very first film set this past week, and many things went wrong, and we were there until 2am, and it was the most fun I’ve had artistically in months. Hoping to do more of that.

And I got certified in Dancing Mindfulness, and it was magical, magical, magical. I was going to devote a whole blog post back in February to how magical it was, but I hesitated, and then life happened, and I never got back to it, but one of these days…..

And, just in the last two weeks, I’ve slowed down. It took six months of sabbatical before my engine started to idle, but I suddenly realized I was tired. Deep tired. Bone tired. Which I guess is why I needed to take a sabbatical anyway, but I was so excited about being married and having a sabbatical and having space in my life to finally do all those projects I’ve been dreaming of for years and years, I honestly didn’t let myself feel it. Part of that was healthy, I think – it was like I’d been holding my breath for ten years, and I finally got to exhale, and so naturally, that’s what I did. That’s what one and a half novels and 16 short stories and a play and a film and Dancing Mindfulness are – one giant exhale.

But then I got to the end of the exhale, and thought, “Hm. I’m tired. Maybe in addition to breathing, I could rest, also. Cuz, you know, I’m on freakin’ sabbatical – if ever there was a time when I could lay on the couch and watch “How I Met Your Mother” seasons all day if I wanted to, this is it.”

So that’s what I’ve been doing. I just finished Season 4, Episode 2 last night. I feel like the sabbatical is in transition right now. Some interesting things have been coming up in the relative quiet of the past couple of weeks, which I hope to get around to documenting here, but, you know, I’m on sabbatical….. so if I feel like not posting……I won’t. 

Learning to Encounter Art

I took an impromptu trip to the New Museum for Contemporary Art this evening because I was looking for something free to do on a Thursday night. My first venture into this futuristic building on Bowery was in 2007. I was supposed to meet a tutoring student down on Bowery, but nobody was home when I arrived.  Company policy said I had to wait 45 minutes to make sure the family wasn’t just running late, and in the course of that 45 minutes, I saw an awful lot of people file into the really futuristic building that was almost next door. When my time was up, I had a free evening, so I moseyed on over to see what the big deal was. It was the grand opening of the New Museum (their new location, anyway), and they were having extended free hours. And I thought, why not?

It’s a good thing I didn’t know going into that inaugural exhibit what it was about, or I never would have gone. I was taught, like many, unfortunately, that abstract art, installations, and other forms of non-traditional, non-literal art are nothing more than trashy attempts by artists to get attention by slapping trash on a canvas and pretending it means something. “Real” art, according to sources who shall remain nameless, consisted only of the classics – Leonardo, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Rodin, anybody who painted or sculpted recognizable things.

This might qualify as “real art,” although it’s highly suspect that she’s blue. Indivisible Woman. Acrylic on corkboard and wood, 2009ish, by Fairy Bear.

This, definitely not. Untitled. Oil pastel on cardboard, 2008ish, by Fairy Bear.

The inaugural exhibit at the New Museum definitely would not have qualified as “real art” by my old standards. I’m not even sure why I gave it a chance – surely the word “Contemporary” in the museum’s name was a clue to what I was getting into. Maybe I was feeling rebellious that day. Or just really curious. I don’t know. I just remember walking in and almost laughing when I realized that the whole exhibition – all 5 floors of the museum – was dedicated to sculptures that appeared to be made, literally, of trash.

And I LOVED them. I looked at everything. I wanted to touch most of it. (I didn’t). Because of copyright issues, I can’t post photos for you right on the website, but the exhibit is digitally archived here. I spent the most time on two particular pieces. One was called “Elephant,” and it’s in the digital archive. The other one was a naked wax woman. She was as tall as me, and made to look pretty cartoony. Not comic book cartoony, but maybe mannequin cartoony. And when you walked around behind her, it turns out she was a giant candle melting into the floor. Her whole back was corroded, and her insides were just melting away. The wick of the candle was positioned in such a way that the back was melting much faster than the front, so from the front she still looked like a naked, cartoony woman, but from the back, she looked like a bombed crayon. As a young woman recently in touch with the violence done to me in the past and its consequences (feeling dead and mangled on the inside, needing to present something fake and normal-looking on the outside), I felt a deep kinship with the wax woman. I was deeply moved by several of the other pieces as well, although it is harder to articulate the reasons because they were more abstract, but they each touched me in some important way.

I stayed in that exhibit until the museum closed, and I walked out liberated. I felt like a whole new world had opened up to me. I had discovered something that the art critics in my past had never known, even though they’d been staring at it for decades (or perhaps they weren’t staring nearly hard enough, as I’ll get to in another paragraph or two). Most important, though, I felt that deep, unseen parts of me had been seen and understood by these strangers, maybe even more deeply seen and understood than I understood myself. I had been challenged as well; I left thinking new thoughts. I felt that I had shared some deep communion with friends. I didn’t need to see their faces because I had encountered pieces of their souls, articulated into visible space through the medium of ….. trash. Anything was possible after this.

I tell this story because I have a lot of artist friends (in many disciplines), and we can get very chummy in our arty world. It’s easy and exciting for us to engage with art and talk about it and let it impact us, because that’s how we’re built. Like some people show a very early proficiency with mathematics, my mother likes to tell the tale of that time when I was 4 years old, and she took me to a modern dance concert, and I nonstop the entire (long) car-ride home, re-counting in intricate, chronological detail the various movements, stories, and relationships between the dancers, and what it all meant. She says I noticed more about the show than she did. To this day, given a choice, I’d rather be in a theater than almost anywhere else; it’s my natural habitat.

But it’s not a natural habitat for everyone, the way that mathematics and art museums have not always been a natural habitat for me. I had to be taught multiplication because I never would have gotten there on my own, and many people need to be educated about how to encounter art. If you spend your whole life not knowing how to interact with art, you’re missing out. Different types of art require different types of viewing; I’m a natural with anything remotely narrative, but I had to learn how to be in an art museum just like the majority of humanity. The best advice I ever got on how to be in an art museum came from my wonderful Art in Education professor, and I’m going to pass on to you here.

First, banish the idea that you are supposed to see everything in the museum, cruising through rooms like a tourist, spending a few moments on each piece, passing judgment or not, and then passing by. A quality encounter with a piece of art takes some time, so decide before you go in that you are NOT going to see everything in the museum; instead, you are going to have a lengthier encounter with a few pieces. Maybe just one. I usually figure I’ve had a good museum trip if I found 1-3 things that I really wanted to spend time with. One quality encounter is a win, more than three and I usually start feeling art-fatigued. If, after 3, you still feel hungry, or if you paid good money to get in and feel cheated if you only encounter 3 pieces, by all means stay longer, but I would schedule in breaks to help refresh your brain so that you don’t lose quality with the quantity. If one of the pictures on this page speaks to you, try this exercise with it. If it doesn’t, you’re just going to have to get yourself to an art museum.

Untitled. Watercolor on paper, 2007ish, by Fairy Bear.

Untitled. Acrylic on particle board, 2011ish, by Fairy Bear.

Acrylic on paper, 2008ish, by Fairy Bear.

Moon. Acrylic on paper. 2007ish, by Fairy Bear.

Second, you don’t have to spend time with the first item you see. Or anything on the first floor. If something draws you immediately, great, but feel free to wander, tourist-like, for a while until you find The One. Choose a piece that appeals to you, or intrigues you in some way. There is absolutely no right or wrong. There doesn’t have to be anything profound about it, either, maybe you just think the texture or color or subject is interesting. Whatever it is, it’s something that invites a closer look.

Now that you’ve chosen, find a good place to plant yourself and observe. If the museum is not crowded, this is easy, but if it’s mobbed, be patient and hold out for a quality spot. (Some sculptural pieces may invite you to observe them from several different perspectives, which is totally okay).

When you’re in position, start observing the piece. I mean just look at it. Without checking your phone for text messages or facebook updates. Look at it for a full three minutes. You might even want to time yourself in the beginning until you know what three minutes feels like, because it can feel like a year to all of us who are acclimated to instant gratification. While you’re looking at it, you’ll start noticing things that you didn’t notice when you first looked at it. You’ll notice different things in the third minute than in the first. Notice what you’re noticing, and notice the questions that start to surface. “Is that wood?” “I wonder if the woman posing for this felt vulnerable?” “Is that meant to look like a face, or is it a trick of the shadows?” “I wonder why the artist used blue in the skin tone?” “Is that discoloration original, or a sign of the age of the painting?” “Is that a lump of paint or is something hidden in there?” “I wonder why this painting makes me feel sad?”  Etc. Again, there is no right or wrong for questions. This is your sacred moment, they are your questions, and this is a judgment-free moment for your soul. If you have a journal, write down everything that you’re noticing and the questions that are surfacing. If journaling’s not your thing, just be present and aware.

When you’ve looked at the piece for three minutes, look at it for another two. Maybe take a 30-second break to read the little card beside it if you haven’t read it already (although, personally, I find that half the time the cards are just confusing rather than illuminating). See if you’re noticing anything new, or if any new thoughts or questions are arising that are related to the painting. Have some of your earlier questions been answered by your persistent looking? What new questions have come up since then?

You look for as long as you need to look to be finished. I would give it at least five minutes until you have some practice and can tell more instinctively when you’re “finished.” “Finished” doesn’t mean that all your questions are answered. “Finished” also does not mean that you will necessarily understand the piece, or understand why you were attracted to it. Although you might. For me, I know that I’m finished with a piece when I feel full. I don’t know how to explain that; I just know that I can’t receive any more from this communion, that I’m full. As you practice, you’ll get to recognize when you’re finished, versus when you’re not done with an image yet, when it still has something to tell you or pry out of you. Not every piece will be a life-changer; some will just be an interesting pause in your day. In fact, you might have to practice for a while, on a lot of different kinds of artwork, before you actually find a life-changer. That’s okay too, there’s no rush, just enjoyment of the process. When you are finished with your piece, you may decide to seek out another to repeat the process, or you may feel that you are done for the day because you need to chew on that one for a while. You might even feel that you need to come back to a piece later because you don’t have time to finish today. I know a guy who has had a print of Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son hanging above his desk for years because it is still speaking to him. It’s your choice, your encounter, your judgment-free zone for your soul.

I went through this process today with several pieces that were all made of found objects wrapped in yarn. Here are some of my noticings/questions: “Wow, that’s a really interesting shape. I wonder why it’s that shape.” “It looks so soft, I want to touch it.” (I didn’t). “I can’t see anything past the yarn, there are so many layers.” “I’m really attracted to the messy parts of the yarn wrapping, the parts where the strings are knotty or tangled, or dangling crazily.” “Seriously, what is inside there? That’s the weirdest shape.” “I wonder if it’s something fragile or something really strong.” “It seems so well-protected, like somebody wanted to hug this thing with yarn.” “It’s like somebody’s secret that they wanted to wrap up and protect in this soft, colorful cocoon.”

Etc.

Somebody else might look at the same piece and think, “Yarn ball, really?” Because different pieces will speak to different people. If you are a Classics/Masters kind of person, go for it. If you like abstract or sculpture or ceramic or tapestry or whatever, go for it. Just learn to take your time and SEE what you’re looking at. It will change your whole museum experience, I promise.

A New Year Indeed

So, I haven’t widely advertised this (well, until now), but I’m “on sabbatical” this year. I’ve been wanting one since around the first day I started teaching ten years ago, and after watching me go completely bonkers over wedding planning, B agreed it would be healthy for me to take a break. So for the first time since I was like 4 years old, I have this unbelievably big, beautiful, open meadow of time to roll around in and explore. My only rule for myself is that I’m being ruthless about only doing things that bring me life. And of course there are SO many things that I’ve wanted to do that I’ve been putting off for a rainy day, it seems I am just as busy on sabbatical as I am otherwise, but I’m ENJOYING myself so much more.

It’s an interesting journey, sifting through priorities and figuring out which things really give me life, and which ones feel draining. One of the big surprises for me is that I haven’t wanted to go to church much for the past two months or so. I never realized before how draining church can be for me. Not even because of the issues I have with organized religion in general (and I have plenty of those, more later), but just on the most basic personality level – I’m really high on the introvert scale, and an event as large and boisterous as an evangelical Sunday gathering can be really overwhelming for me.

One of the big changes for me in 2012, besides getting married, was that B and I changed churches. We’re still very connected to our old church, it was an amicable parting, but we (me, especially) had some very specific reasons for wanting to change. One of those reasons for me was that the new church is much smaller. “Smaller” sounded very appealing to me because I was beginning to be conscious of my need to pull back, but now that I’ve had time to deeply reflect, I think when I told myself I wanted “smaller,” what I meant was something like my writer’s group – about 4-12 people. Which is not to say that I think big Sunday worship gatherings don’t have a place – I relied on them desperately for a few years when I was particularly lonely and feeling the squeeze of some really tough life moments. Sunday gatherings were crucial then for getting me through in one piece. And I think God likes Sunday gatherings as much as anything else. And I do want to keep and cultivate the many friendships I’ve made in the community.

Recently, though, I’m finding that if I go to church on Sunday, I have a lot less energy available for things that are more important to maintaining those friendships. Like visiting friends in the hospital. Hosting art groups. Supporting friends’ gigs. Maintaining friendships with quality time. Being with family. Cultivating my marriage. Every time I go to church, I have to sacrifice 2-3 other, smaller moments of communion in order to maintain my sanity/equilibrium. And I just don’t feel like what I get and/or give at a Sunday gathering warrants that kind of trade-off every single week. In most weeks, I only have energy for 2-3 social-type gatherings to begin with. So going TO church is sometimes an obstacle to BEING the church. At least for me. At least in this season.

So when I’m not teaching and not going to church, here are some of my other sabbatical activities:

1. Relishing marriage.

2. Wrote a novel in November.

3.Writing another novel. This one, much better.

4. Organizing our apartment.

5. Learning to cook.

6. Acting in two short films.

7. Reading. A lot.

8. Writing a short play for Spark and Echo.

9. Dancing.

10. Singing.

11. Starting to submit writing for publication.

12. Going to my writer’s group.

13. Helping to organize the talent show portion of the family reunion this year.

14. Listening for God.

15. Getting trained in Dancing Mindfulness.

16. Hosting Days of Art at my apartment (first one this Saturday!)

17. Growing basil.

18. Yoga!

19. Performing poetry.

20. Relishing marriage.

Happy New Year everybody! 2013 is going to be a game changer, I can feel it!

One Lovely Blog Part 2

You know, it never hurts to read the directions. It turns out I was supposed to share seven things about myself. Here goes:

1. I’m on my third religion, and I”ve finally found the One. True. Religion. Just kidding. Not about the third religion thing, but the part after that.

2. I can quote pretty much the entirety of Les Miserables, Assassins (Sondheim), Into the Woods (Sondheim), The Little Mermaid (Disney), and What About Bob? (Bill Murray). And I do. Frequently.

3. I am a hyper-competitive board game player.

4. The most adventurous thing I’ve ever eaten was braised sea urchin. It wasn’t bad; kinda rubbery, with a couple crunchy parts, tasted like the broth it was cooked in.

5. I’m the kinda sports fan who grows up deep in Cleveland Browns territory and becomes a Steelers fan just to piss everyone off.

6. I am addicted to police procedurals like Law and Order and CSI. I find them much less traumatizing than watching the news.

7. Baking makes me happy. This week I will be trying a new recipe – peanut butter brownie bread pudding!

One Lovely Blog!

So this is what I was going to post last week, when I posted Christmas Lament instead. I am not over and past the Newtown tragedy, but I find that I said everything I wanted to say about it in that last post. So while I am not laying it to rest in my life (I plan to participate in the 26 Acts of Kindness campaign, for one thing), I will leave it behind on the blog for now, and bring you something more cheerful – more blogs!

This post, by the way, is six months overdue. Way back in the middle of wedding planning purgatory, I had the enormous privilege of being nominated for the One Lovely Blog award, not once but TWICE! Heee The only rule is that I’m supposed to feed some blog love back to the blog(s) that first nominated me, and then nominate fifteen more blogs for the award. EASY!

Just a note before you begin – upon reviewing my list of blogs, and thinking about some of the people who might end up clicking to some of those blogs, the contradictions of my life have become apparent. I am a progressive Christian mystic in an evangelical church community, for one, and also a skeptic, an armchair scientist, and a poet. If you know me mostly in one context, don’t be surprised if some of these blog choices surprise you. I’m a big believer in interfaith and other kinds of dialogue, so inclusion on this list does not mean that I agree with everything that every blogger on this list says, or that they think the same things I do, or that they even approve of the other blogs I’ve nominated. And if you click on one and find that you’re at odds with it, please just be respectful, because these are my friends. Thanks.

The first blogger who tagged me for One Lovely Blog was the incredible Clare Flourish. I like Clare because she’s both feisty and whimsical, brave and vulnerable, intellectual and personal. A casual reading of her blog can take you through her impressions of gross art exhibitions, morning commute train rides, moments of horrifying self-doubt, and then defenses of both the Bible and homosexuality. Her blog chronicles a life lived with dignity, courage, and compassion. I was really honored and touched that she thought my blog worthy of a recommendation.

The next blogger who nominated me was my dear friend Mindy over at small-letters. Another life lived with dignity, courage, and compassion, chronicled in poetry, musings, wishes, and the occasional stirring rant. I have the enormous privilege of  knowing this beautiful, complex person in real life, and she is magnificent. As fully alive as they come.

And without further ado, here are the 15 blogs I nominate for the One Lovely Blog award:

First, three professional blogs that I really genuinely enjoy:

John Shore – JUST FOR THE RECORD, John Shore was already on my list of favorite blogs before he ran “Christmas Lament” on his blog too. It was just a double-dose of awesome for me that my favorite blogger happened to appreciate my writing in return. Anyway. He was described by one of his commenters as “The Dear Abbey of the New Millenium,” and I tend to agree. Mr. Shore is a progressive Christian and writes on topics like hell (“Is Hell Real? What Are We, Six?” – the post that led me to his site and made me a believer), salvation, homosexuality, and now gun control, but to me the most beautiful parts of his blog, and the reason I go back frequently, are the parts where he responds to reader’s questions about their personal lives. He gets a lot of letters from a) gay Christians, b) people escaping fundamentalism in any of its forms, and c) people struggling with abusive relationships. He answers all of these people with grace, verve, humor, and encouragement. The life-giving effects of his insights are evidenced in the faithful community that has extended discussions in the comments section after each post. Seriously, you want to read the comments on this blog. You always want to read the comments; often they’re even better than the blog itself.

100 Days of Real Food started out as a personal challenge for the author to cut out processed food entirely for 100 days. Today, just a couple of years later, it has numerous sponsors, and the blog has oodles of really great information for anyone concerned with eating healthy. They have recipes, challenges, mini-challenges, menu plans, tips for persuading picky eaters, info on various restaurant chains and food manufacturers, and lots and lots of LISTS! It’s a dream for someone organizationally challenged like me, who needs lots of help and support to stay on track with my perpetual food-improvement resolutions.

Health Kismet – Full disclosure: this is my little brother’s blog, but I love it anyway. Health consciousness runs in my family, but Jonathan was always the most interested out of my siblings, and he was enough of a science nerd to actually study nutrition and design his own green food supplement. The blog is great, very informative about trends and research in nutrition and health, if you’re into that kind of thing. And Jonathan is a good soul. 

And here I employ shameless nepotism to brag on the blogs of my friends, either virtual or flesh-and-blood, in no particular order:

Lucy’s Dreadful Thought – Written by my friend Maureen, this little gem contains reflections about all things in the space where spirituality, imagery, stereotypes, and human dignity overlap. The blog is named for a moment in C.S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian, and you will find numerous Lewis references peppered throughout the blog, in both macro- and micro- fashion. She also frequently tackles issues around the way the culture and subcultures we live in shape us, women especially.

kvenna rad – Being the blog of one Marie Marshall, who is a regular commenter on this blog (thank you!), I go here when I want a short poetry break. And I do mean short – most of the little gems she posts are haiku worthy, but much more interesting than most haikus I read. I’ve been especially enjoying the Devil’s Diary series of late…

exiles – This is the personal journal of some very good friends of ours (all three of their children were in our wedding), and it’s a fun jaunt for anyone who likes looking at pictures of kids and upstate new york, and pictures of kids in upstate new york, and reading about parenting, etc. It’s full of daily adventures and little moments.

aabsofsteel – a friend of mine from my writing group, Aabs does a lot of personal reflection and memoir, and has a way of painting moments and memories that really sings. I always want to spend more time with my family after reading her pieces.

thelenaraproject - this new blog is written by another friend of mine, and it chronicles the consequences of her and her husband’s decision to leave their nice plush jobs in New York and try out classroom teaching for the first time ever. In Honduras. I highly recommend that you at least read “The Circumcision Discussion.”

Daya Kripalu – Speaking of Honduras, this blog is written by Kristie, a lovely woman whom I only recently met at my wedding because she was the date of Ray, a very good friend. Just before B and I tied the knot, Kristie and Ray unloaded their property, valuables, and jobs, and then left our wedding to fly straight to Central America. They have been on a three-month-and-counting odyssey since then, traveling with open-ended plans through Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras, and will be heading to Hawaii apparently on Christmas Day. Kristie’s blog is really a treasure, chronicling a true journey, inside and out. I can also vouch that she’s a beautiful person and a really, really good yoga instructor.

Lyrics of a Caged Songbird – And speaking of journeys, Cate chronicles some of her inner journey here. I always trust her to bring me into a safe reflective space. She writes a lot on themes of healing, friendship, and trying to follow your dreams. She also happens to be a killer musician, and you can link to some of her music from the blog.

ajummama – This hot Korean mama blogs about family life, Korean-American life, and life as the mother of now TWO small children with humor, warmth, insight, and love.

while waiting – This is the blog of my pastor. I realized that I was actually very reluctant to add this blog to the list, not because I don’t like the blog, and not because I don’t like the author, but because I go so far out of my way to avoid anything that might resemble evangelism, I didn’t want this to be mistaken for the “Come check out my church!” vibe that is so common in evangelical circles. But if Drew were any other friend, I’d be including it anyway, so I decided that reverse discrimination against him for being a pastor would be unfair. I really do like the blog and the person behind it, and I especially recommend his reflections on race and multi-cultural issues in America and in the church.

notsoblindfaith – Blatant push for the hubby . B started this blog in July and then had to temporarily abandon it because wedding planning craziness got the better of him, but it shows much promise and I’m hoping this plug will inspire him to finish some of those drafts and get back in the game. He’s got a lot of thoughtful things to say!

Books Are Wonderful – Shanella, one of my bookier booky friends, reviews books here. She reads a LOT. I read a lot, but I mean Shanella reads a LOT. And she reads a lot of children’s, young adult, and science fiction/fantasy, as well as every other kind of book, so I look here for things I might be missing on my reading list.

tinkering – Last in list but not in love, another newish blog by someone I really admire. Raw truth, so far mostly chronicling the journey out of and beyond Christianity, and the occasional product review This one will be challenging for anyone living the evangelical dream, and I imagine liberating for those who have left, or who are leaving. I discovered this blog because this person is my friend, but I would read it anyway because spiritual abuse runs hard in my family, and tinkering’s insights into the ways we twist people into dogmas, and the shape of the fallout that occurs from that, are really helpful in understanding some of my own struggles with faith and the church. While I have no plans to leave Christianity myself, I find this blog quite inspiring.

That’s 15 – wow! I know a lot of really amazing people who also happen to be good writers. If you are a regular reader here, thank you for your continued support. If you are a blogger nominated on this list, thank you for sharing yourself with the world, and please feel NO pressure whatsoever to respond to this nomination. This was a tremendously difficult post to put together for me, and I don’t want anyone else to feel pressured to put themselves through the same (although it is my great pleasure to feed you whatever small bit of blog love I may).

Happy reading, happy blogging, and happy holidays!

Christmas Lament

  I have another post that I was going to publish this week,
but Friday's massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school 
kind of shattered me, and I couldn't in good conscience move
forward on the blog without offering some kind of salute 
to the fallen. As a friend said on Friday, "Nothing to say,
but no way to say nothing." So here is my completely 
imperfect and inadequate offering. Note: although the poem 
is mostly a reflection on the slaughter of innocents, I 
included the shooter in the number of names, because the loss
of what his life might have been if he had gone a different
way is also a tragedy. I do not claim by including him that
I have forgiven him or in any way understand his actions, 
only that the loss of human potential is always tragic.

Christmas Lament


To the baby Jesus:
You, who gave yourself in
soft flesh,
helpless and grateful
to live in that singularly
limited and tender and
fragile and
infinite prism we call
a human life,
to suffer our pains and
rejoice in our rejoicings,
to eat and drink and sleep
and grow weary,
to give of yourself freely
to the very end,
surrendering your living nerves and
brittle limbs to the caustic lash,
the breaking hammer,
the slow choke,
to finally expire
blessing your torturers
and then
to rise again,
banishing death and
offering hope -

To you, Blessed One,
I bring tribute,
my hands full of my
shattered wealth, nothing left but
tears and words and
questions my tongue can't pronounce, and
a list
of twenty-eight names,
twenty of them the bubbling,
musical names of children,
babies like yourself,
tender and soft and broken and
infinite,
leaking through my fingers
like sand, lost.

I bring you
the absence of laughter
on the playground,
and the pencil stubs
and fractured crayons
abandoned on the floor.

I bring you the
phantom hugs and
slippery kisses
missing now from the days.

I bring you the
little bodies, who touched
and tasted and
squabbled and reached and
stumbled and now
lie still.

I bring you hopes
and dreams, severed from
their timeline, tied and
floating freely like a
bouquet of bright helium balloons.

I bring you the parents,
spirits riven,
itching to peel their skin off,
to be someone else,
something else,
anything else.

I bring you the inarticulate
keening of a people
heartbroken and confused,
which cannot rise even
from the dust
so weighted is it with grief
choking on its own sorrow.
There are no words to explain this.
There is no prayer to pray.
I have nothing of value to give and so
I bring this
worthless poem
barbed with anger, mangled,
parched, unyielding and
unlovely,
whispered for all who suffer and die
and are silenced too soon.
I come, a ragged and 
impoverished mourner, and
lay these shards at your feet.

The Princess and the Warden

Whew. So, in case you were anxiously wondering what happened to my blog in the month of November, (all two of you!   ), I was participating in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel-Writing Month. The challenge is 50,000 words in 30 days, or about a 100-page novella. Mine was uploaded for the official word-count on Nov. 30, at about 3pm, and came in at 52, 705 words. And it’s atrocious, so no, you can’t read it. But I FINISHED, which was the whole point. So now I can (maybe) get back to blogging. My back-log of blog drafts has grown its own ecosystem, so I’m not really short on material, only motivation. I thought we could start December with a little bit of whimsy.

I went to a meeting of my writer’s group yesterday, and one of the possible prompts offered was to respond to the image of being held hostage by your own emotions. I used the prompt to explore some re-curring themes for me, namely, my constant war on my own creativity. Here it is in all its fresh, stream-of-consciousness, barely-edited glory:

My inner child, let’s call her Princess Moxie Dandelion Unicorn, has lived nearly her entire life in prison. She enjoyed a brief toddler-hood of sunshine and exuberance before she offended the king, who punished her brutally. In response, her alter-ego, Warden Harping Control-Freak Matron, placed her safely out of the way in a damp stone cell with a little straw and a bucket and a daily ration of Saltine crackers.

Princess Moxie in her carefree days.

This is the Warden. A little less green. Otherwise, there’s an incredible resemblance.

For years, Princess Moxie sang songs to herself in the dark, counted her fingers and toes, remembered sunlight, and cried for attention, to no avail. Every once in a while she would grow thin enough to slip between the bars, and then if she were lucky, Harping Matron would fall asleep on duty, and she could sneak out for a little while and enjoy a romp in the grass. It never lasted very long, of course, because the Matron got a lot more exercise than the Princess, which made her sort of pathetically easy to re-capture.

Some time back, the king was overthrown and everyone was granted a pardon, but no one remembered to tell Harping Matron. When she finally heard about it, she was sure it was a malicious hoax, some cruel trick of the king’s to test her loyalty by luring her and Moxie into a sense of freedom and security before visiting crushing punishment on them both. And so Warden Harping Control Freak Matron faithfully supervises her charge, like a Japanese soldier lost in the jungle, still fighting a war that expired years ago.

Recently, Princess Moxie Dandelion Unicorn negotiated for parole, and now she is permitted regular walks outside, closely supervised by the Harping Matron, who keeps up a steady harangue about the dangers of the world and Moxie’s general unsuitability for navigating its terrors. Moxie is regularly assured that she would certainly die if she wandered off by herself.

Every now and then the Princess gets to see something cool without the Warden interfering.

There is hope. Every now and then, the Warden catches herself enjoying the flowers, and Moxie gets a few moments entirely to herself. As these moments accumulate, she is gradually learning to breathe and think on her own again, absent the tense hand-wringing that has been her constant companion for all these years. The really beautiful thing is that Moxie is truly uninterested in revenge or retribution. In fact, as improbable as it seems, she is genuinely fond of the Matron, and she is still hoping to win the Warden over into best-friendship, the better to share the joys of caterpillars and puddles. It may be too much to hope for to see the Warden someday cavorting with butterflies and tadpoles, but hope springs eternally sunny yellow in Moxie’s now-only-slightly-malnourished breast, and it might at least be achievable for them to take turns leading the walks – the Warden when things look suspicious, and Moxie when they don’t. Stay tuned.