I'm Just Sayin'

When he glanced up again, he noticed at her side a much older lady, as warty and wrinkled as the ugliest toad that ever lived. A strange pair, Gawain thought: one a wretched old hag with an evil eye, a hairy chin and a warty nose, the other a paragon of beauty with a face like an angel. But I must not let my mind think on her any further. You’re in a chapel, Gawain, and she’s another man’s wife.*

It’s been fifteen years since I read anything about King Arthur and his knights of the round table. Still, I love tales of adventure, of conquest and victory, and so do Oldest and Middle. This week, I found myself reading aloud the above adaptation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and was stunned to note that the only female characters in the entire story were either lovely young seductresses or ugly, evil old ladies. In every other scene was the most repetitious description of these women: “the ancient crone,” “the hideous old hag.” As for the “lovely lady.…Her kiss was so inviting, so tantalizingly tender. ‘Oh, Gawain,’ she breathed, ‘forget you are a knight just this once. Forget your chivalry and your honor.'"

“It was lucky for Gawain that she had reminded him at that moment of his knightly virtues. ‘Dear Lady,’ he said, desperately trying to reign himself in. ‘You have a gentle lord as a husband, who has shown me nothing but the greatest hospitality and friendship. I would not and I will not ever cheat him or dishonor him. We can talk of love all you want, lady, but that is all.’”

First, I was trying not to choke while I read this aloud and second, trying to edit the dialogue on the fly, not wanting to risk the girls catching on to the meaning of Gawain "forgetting himself" while in the embraces of this temptress.

Third, I shouldn't be surprised.  The whole evil/ugly/old v. lovely/pretty/young/irresistible female dynamic has been Disney-fied since the middle of the twentieth century.  King Arthur after all is just closer to the origin.  And speaking of origins, in church on Sunday, our pastor was talking, metaphorically, about taking a good path in life. He mentioned this illustration from Proverbs, in which the writer warns his offspring not to be led astray into a path of destruction, toward which the woman in chapter 7 lures him:

"Come, let's drink deep of love till morning; let's enjoy ourselves with love! My husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey. He took his purse filled with money and will not be home till full moon. With persuasive words she led him astray; she seduced him with her smooth talk."

There it is, a scene written right into Sir Gawain's story. 

In case the reasons for my distress are not apparent, let me speak clearly:  It's a shame that such timeless ethics (follow a righteous path/don't sleep with other people's wives and husbands) are presented in ways that underscore the stereotype of woman=seductress/tempter/evil/path to destruction, yet I understand that the biblical writer is presenting an ultimate ethic (make good, moral choices; bad things probably will happen when you sleep with someone else's spouse) via example that is nuanced with a cultural-bound world view and aimed at a particular audience of young men. 

I get it.  I'm just thinking of my girls, who are already trying to insert themselves into the biblical narrative, who already ask, "will women be rewarded too?" in response to the Sunday School memory verse that says God will reward each "man" for his righteousness.  These girls will read Proverbs someday, and do a lot of hermeneutical wrangling in order to get at the ultimate ethic, not to mention dismantling the portraiture of their gender so often portrayed in scripture as conniving, immoral, dangerous, and promiscuous.

They're also trying to insert themselves into King Arthur. Into Roman history and battles.  We have two Mycenaean shields in the basement, two Roman signums for battle, two double-headed war axes drying and ready to assemble tomorrow. I'm just sayin', I know that somewhere in their copious minds they are reconciling their love of action and adventure and goodness and ethics with the portrait always before them of the dainty/lovely/tempting/dangerous lady, trying to figure out who they are and who they're going to be.


*Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as told by Michael Morpurgo

Adjusting to Now

Almost six years ago I had my second baby. I loved her and my first child immensely, as most parents do, and about as soon as she was six months old I was counting down the days till I could spend a large chunk of the week doing anything other than parenting and cooking/cleaning/laundering, etc, etc.  I felt incredibly jealous of the spouse who went to work every day while I stayed home in sweatpants and had no interesting adult conversations.  I chose to do that because we held to an ideology that it would be better for our kids if one of their parents were with them most of the time when they are very young. I held to that ideology just a hairsbreadth more than than I did to the belief that in order to stay sane I needed to be doing something with grown-ups or by myself and my computer for a big chunk of time during the week. (And playdates didn't count. Neither did Tot Time. Mercer Park parents, you know what I'm talking about.)

At about the hour I was going to lose my mind with our current set-up, I got accepted into a graduate program and I went back to school (on the side). I spent about 15 hours every week alone with my computer in an office that was all mine. And I joined the staff of a local church as a very part time assistant pastor. What followed was three years of being incredibly productive in and outside my home. And then I got pregnant--all good. Planned. And then I had my third child. And then I went on leave from my staff position. And then I graduated from my program with an MFA.

So right now, at this very moment, I have come full circle, returned to that static place I was in five years ago. I've carved space out of my life to have a third child, carved space out for the weeks and months of nightly wakings and feeding-on-demand and we-don't-know-why-but-she's-just-crying cries.  And on top of that, I have carved space out of my life to homeschool Oldest and Middle, as I've been doing the last couple years when I wasn't doing school work.

I have no deadlines hanging over my head. No papers to write. No books I have to read. No thesis to proofread. I have no meetings to attend. No mass emails to write and send to church members. No events to plan and organize. No announcements to give on Sunday mornings.

For about a week this was all astoundingly beautiful.

Then I felt bored and anxious.

The problem being that I have no meetings to attend. No administrative kinks to work out. No looked-forward-to emails from my professors (nor the time or energy to respond if I got them).  I should have known that I could not be happy resuming this sort of life indefinitely when my heart started beating harder over a book on biblical hermeneutics yesterday.  Just the name (Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis) probably flooded my brain with enough dopamine for a half-day high.

I don't know exactly what the future holds. I think the now that I'm in might last a bit longer--weeks, maybe months. So, I'm trying to live in this limbo with grace. It really doesn't last that long. Meanwhile, I'm walking my children to art classes, baking bread for their lunches, nursing five hours a day, handling tantrums, teaching math, and day dreaming about all the things I want to say and write and read and the people I will be having those conversations with someday soon.

"The Open Road Wasn't Quite Open to All"

This just in the New York times this morning feels particularly relevant after my last post.

Re-reading History (a readerly response to The Help)

I know, I am so late to Kathryn Stockett’s party. The Help, Stockett’s first novel, has been on the New York Times Bestseller’s list for 72 weeks now and I’m just getting to it, after having had it on my reading list for over a year. On top of being late, I’ve also been known to declare that I don’t have a “fiction bone in my body.” Kind of ironic seeing as how I just got an MFA in creative writing (my creative thesis was a non-fiction memoir). But there is fiction that moves me occasionally—and it’s Stockett’s kind.

The Help begins in 1962, Jackson, Mississippi, where “coloreds” and “whites” live on separate sides of towns, shop at separate grocery stores and use separate bathrooms. It’s the era of Jim Crow laws and JFK and the assassination of Medgar Evers and prominent activity of the KKK. In the novel, we encounter race relations on the domestic level, between colored women who work as maids and childcare providers and their white, middle-to-upper class female employers. Through first-person accounts of three different narrators, Stockett enters into what we can imagine is some of the best and worst of racial interactions; she highlights for the reader the paradox of a colored woman so intimately connected to the home of the white woman (an intimacy that can include an almost-maternal bond with the children of the white woman) while, in a million different ways, denigrated by the white racist sensibilities of the time and place.

Over the years, a friend of mine has made reference to an African American domestic worker who would come into her home in the sixties. She lived in the Chicago suburbs, so the racial inequity of the area was not quite the same flavor as Jackson, Mississippi’s (although present nonetheless). Still, as my friend aged, she began to wonder about this woman who left her own family and took a bus or two across town a few days a week to bathe my friend and her siblings, comb their hair, and clean my friend’s house. Stockett, too, had a relationship with an African American domestic worker, and she writes about Demetrie in an epilogue. Here, she draws on a quote from Howell Raines describing the difficulty of describing relationships like these:

There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.

Yet I think Stockett gets the complexity and nuance of this matter across to the reader marvelously, through the accounts of the maids, Aibileen and Minny, as well as Skeeter, a young white college grad who teams up with Aibileen and Minny to push back, at great risk, against the system. Perhaps it is because of Stockett’s success on just this point that her book has been on the best seller list for over a year now.

On a personal note, The Help has caused me to reflect upon the time and place of my birth in our country’s history. I was born in May of 1978, a mere ten years and one month from the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. But I was not born in the Deep South, and neither of my parents were, either. I was raised first in California’s bay area and then in Iowa. I didn’t hear of lynching or cross burnings or Jim Crow laws until junior high, at least. Still, I was not oblivious to the attitudes and terminology my elders used for people of color (mild, but racist if you looked close enough), terminology that was so different from what I was learning in a post-civil-rights-movement and politically correct educational system in Iowa. To their credit, my parents’ childhoods occurred against the backdrop of the civil rights movement. Their worlds were just coming into focus as the movement found its voice in a mainstream conversation. My grandparents were in the prime of their adulthood; their language, attitudes, and stances toward people of color were entrenched and influenced by the generation that went before them.

So even though I don’t come from a line of white supremacists, maybe what I've got is a healthy portion of white guilt. I am so painfully aware, after reading Stockett, of my privilege, of the relative ease of my conduct through the world. I know this is nothing to take to the presses; I am not the first to express this sentiment, nor is it the first or last time I ever will. I know the history of racism in our country is an old story. But don't we need to listen to old stories over and over again, let their truths and lessons wash over us, shape who we are and help us re-determine who we want to be?  

Speaking of Paying Attention

I am gearing up for another year of home schooling.

For those of you who don’t know, I have three daughters. Oldest and Middle are in 3rd grade and kindergarten, respectively. The Tiny is only 2.5 months old and this fall will probably be learning about rolling over, without any assistance from me. But all the school planning for the big girls is exhilarating and overwhelming at the same time. I’m not sure how I’ll juggle teaching with the presence of the Tiny. (The Tiny does not take regular naps yet and the Tiny has difficulty falling asleep at times.) This summer, with three kiddos in the house all clamoring for my attention at the same time some days, it was tempting to send Oldest and Middle off to entertain themselves. Since the Tiny was born, they’ve been entertaining themselves with lots of video games. Define lots? Often two hours a day. Once, when I was so desperate and sleep-deprived and couldn’t move off my bed, they played for three and a half hours.

Because Spouse was recently diagnosed with ADHD, it’s got me thinking a lot about brain health and the girls’ ability to pay attention to the non-media parts of the world they live in. In July, Iowa State University came out with this study, suggesting that attention problems in the classroom are related to the amount of “screen time” (video games/movies/tv) children have and that in fact, video game playing is a likely factor in the development of ADHD. I was telling Spouse the other day that I think I like our kids better when they aren’t playing video games so often. Ever since they started, Middle seems particularly agitated and has more difficulty sitting still and paying attention at dinner time and other moments during the day. She’s only 5, so this is sort of developmentally normal. Yet, it seems worse than it was before we started letting them play so much. According to this article the brain is “trained” by the sort of stimuli it becomes accustomed to. When stimulated for long periods of time by quick edits, flashy lights and fast, jarring sounds it becomes difficult to pay attention to the quiet, austere print of a book. Dear lord!—maybe this explains why Oldest has claimed disinterest in all the new library books I tossed her way this summer. I don’t believe she’s read a chapter book for three months and this kid used to devour books written at advanced reading levels.

We’ve taken a hard line in the last week, making her read at least the first ten pages of every new book she starts (after that, she’s given them back). But today I took a harder line as I prepped for the coming year’s schooling and wrote her the following letter, which I gave a special place in her home school binder:

Dear [Oldest],

Below is a list of books that I would approve as part of your reading for 3rd grade. Some of these stories you are familiar with, such as Mary Poppins and Peter Pan, but you have not read the books themselves—only seen the movies. Also, most of these books you have already or will come into contact with because they are used for the Writing with Ease books we’ve done together. You expressed interest in many of the excerpts I read aloud to you last year, so I bet you’ll enjoy the books in their entirety. If you are curious to know what a book is about, you can go onto the computer and go to www.amazon.com. This is a book web site. You can type in the particular name of the book in the “search” field and hit “enter.” Then you will see a list of books that might match the book you are searching for. Click on the correct one and you will see a picture of the cover; a paragraph or two will let you know what the book is about. Once you decide you are interested in something, we can either check it out from the library or buy it on Amazon.

I will ask you to read at least one of these books each month and write a very short book report when you are finished.

Happy reading!

Love,
Mom

So that’s my strategy and I’m sticking to it. But I’m curious—did your kids have extra screen time this summer? And do you think the correlation between screen time/attention deficit exists? or not?

Paying God Attention (thoughts on Soul Revolution)

Dear Reader,

This is a book review.  This book changed my life.  But first, an aside:

(I confess a predjudice when it comes to mainstream Christian books these days, especially those that appear particularly contemporary.  Along with that adjective sometimes comes what feels like an overabundance of branding and marketing that seem to undermine the rather diverse and organic nature of spirituality and relationships within the church. This branding/marketing phenomenon is often identified by such things as pictures of people with tattoos, ripped jeans, piercings, black-rimmed glasses, and (sadly) the absence of women and people of color as well as all people over the age of fifty-five.  Now, I like tattoos, piercings and ripped jeans, but they have become cliche as a marketing tool, to the extent that North Point Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia, produced this video--a parody of themselves and other churches engaged in this type of sub-culture marketing--in which they coin the term "contemporvent," a marriage of relevant and contemporary.)

Now for the important part:  You can't judge a book by its cover.

While the cover of John Burke's Soul Revolution: How Imperfect People Become All God Intended has the markings of a "contemporvent" book (including a close-up of distressed jeans and inner-arm tattoos), its content is rooted in the centuries-old tradition of practicing the awareness of God's presence in our daily lives in the manner of Brother Lawrence and Leanne Payne.  I became enthralled with Burke's description of the "60-60 experiment," a 60-day challenge to check in with God every 60 minutes of the waking day. The experiment presupposes a belief in a God who is all-knowing and everywhere-present and is designed to assist the reader in fostering an ongoing recognition of that abiding force in our lives. By so doing, the theory goes, how we live in the world begins to change and that change is evidenced by our actions, decisions, service and love of God, others, and ourselves.

Burke recommends the reader go so far as to purchase a watch that will beep all day on the hour. If not that, notes up around the house or on the computer would remind one to pause and check in.  While I neither bought a watch nor posted notes, I did do my best to emulate Burke's experiment in my own organicky sort of way.  I began with moments of reflection in the empty spaces throughout my day, taking stock of what was happening around me in my relationships and duties and consciously reminding myself of God's presence in my life.  In particularly good or bad parts of the day, I would wonder what God's "take" on the situation was, and sometimes I would just go ahead and ask him, for the heck of it. I did not hear any audible voices or see any burning bushes in response to my prayers, but often I had the strong impression that God was answering, if not with something concrete, then with something a lot like compassion. I could almost feel him feeling my pain or frustration or longing or joy or delight.

There seemed to be cumulative effects of practicing this sort of awareness. By the end of each day I felt as if I'd had a real, back-and-forth dialogue with God: a prayer uttered in the morning met its consequence in the afternoon.  A question at lunch time found its answer by dinner. And by the end of the week, I felt a new comraderie with God--as if we'd been two pals at summer camp trading whispers back and forth from our bunk beds all week. Probably the most profound moment of this experiment came one day as I was on my way to a rather difficult appointment.  For weeks, we'd been watching lilies in our front yard climb feet in the air, reaching from the bulbs planted in the ground the summer before.  The stems shot up, the buds of the lilies formed yellow and pink, but they were slow to open. Each morning for two weeks I expected to see one of those lilies open and unveiled in full glory, but instead they just shimmered, closed up, ready to explode. 

That's how they looked on my way to this appointment, and as I backed out the driveway I felt as if God drew my attention to those flowers.  See those? I think he said.  See all that potential--how the lilies are on the cusp of bloom? Instantly I knew he wasn't really talking about the lilies but about the difficult situation I was facing, that it was something that had the potential to morph from something desperate to something redemptive and life-affirming. Well, I thought that's what God was saying, anyway, and the impression pierced me so deeply that tears gathered in the corner of my eyes as I backed out my driveway. Yet, I wondered if I was imagining things. Was that really God?   Imagine my shock when, on that same steamy July morning, I returned to the house an hour later, after the appointment, to find the largest lily of the bunch had petaled open into glowing pink radiance.

You can call me crazy and maybe you will. But sometimes it's the little things that make us sure the Divine is right within our reach.  I think Burke is saying, and I whole-heartedly agree, we'll see God when we pay attention.

This Is Just to Say

I haven't been around for a while. It's been a busy year. Or two. On Sunday I'll graduate from an MFA program in creative writing and it occurs to me, that after writing my thesis, I now have nothing big to work on, no obsessions to turn into a 200-page project. Also, I had a baby two months ago. It may be fair to say that she's my big obsession at the moment. My other thoughts are short and small these days, but they are there nonetheless, scratching at the door of my mind and asking me to open language to them. So, this blog post is just to say that I'm planning to do just that.

To Evvy, on her 5th Birthday

I love you more than I can stand sometimes! At five, you bring a smile to my face almost every hour. You are silly, spunky, and fierce in all your beliefs about the world. You're a petitioner, eloquent, persistent. "I need to say something!" you cry, impatient that your point has not been heard: "Wait! Listen!" You love to cuddle, still, and in the mornings ask to climb in bed with me or sit on the couch with me while you drink a cup of milk. At five, you are whizzing through your "letter books"--learning all the sounds--and your math books. You have a growing tolerance for books with little or no pictures. Against your own judgment you are glued to the couch, sucked into the story in spite of your frustration that there is no picture of Alice in the little hallway of doors. You love computer games of any kind and "shows" (oh how you beg for those even when I hold out on you most of the time). You love friends, guests, visitors--anyone who comes to our house. You want to talk with them, befriend, entertain. You love your big sister, too. "We're best friends," you say proudly and sometimes refer to her as "Sissy," giving her a little pat on the back. Sometimes the two of you argue. Sometimes you heave her off a chair onto the floor, but later you are contrite and you come apologizing with tears in your eyes. When wronged, you're quick to forgive and you never hold a grudge. At five, you try to avoid going to sleep at night, sneaking books or other toys onto your bed hoping you won't be found out (you almost always are). When that happens, you smile mischeviously. "The book was already on my bed!" you insist, knowing I know you know this is not the truth, that fact so apparent in your face it doesn't actually seem like you are lying, but rather trying on words for the occasion, examining their effects like a new outfit in the mirror. Speaking of the mirror, you take care with your appearance, meticulous in observing your everchanging aesthetic--six barrettes one day, a ponytail and long silk sash haphazardly tied twice around your head the next. You hate socks, jackets, coats, shoes, gloves and half of the underwear you own. You are just starting to wear pants without complaining. You love to wear adult-sized t-shirts for pajamas. In some moments you believe you are capable of everything. In others, you insist you are cabaple of nothing, hoping for my intervention, which I more often than not am happy to give.

Here's to growing up, little Ev!

Happy Birthday!
Love,
Mama

Thankful Again

I'm the last one up in our quiet house this Christmas Eve, reflecting again on all the things I'm thankful for.

This Christmas, I am overwhelmingly thankful for the family I have; that we get a few glorious days to spend together.

I am thankful for the growing stages of my eldest girl, that she lost her first top tooth today, Christmas Eve, and was left with the most endearing gummy gap. I'd always feared the inevitable toothlessness of my children, but she is exquisite in every way. And really, a tooth pushed out of its place by another tooth? It's miraculous. Or biology. Or both.

A.A. Milne is a genius. Hilarious. Will the REAL Winnie the Pooh please step up? Who knew these stories were so brilliant and ironic and funny? All I ever knew until this week was the Disney-fied, plasticized, watered-down versions of Pooh characters. I am thankful for the 8-dollar set of full color books I bought at a second-hand store, and for the giggles of my girls as we read.

I'm thankful for the blessing of giving. I am more excited to give gifts to my children than I think they will ultimately be about receiving them, but I don't care. I put lots of time and effort into it, lots of heart and soul in what I made, and I'm excited, darn it! and can't wait to see their faces.

I'm thankful for blankets and slippers in the winter time.

I'm thankful for our snowblower, even if it is electric and I have to drag around a power cord after me like someone from the 1960s mowing their lawn. It's okay--that saved us 200 dollars.

I love gravy.

I'm thankful that somehow I know all these culinary things about making turkeys and such--things I learned by osmosis watching my mother cook when I was a kid. Those lessons had more impact on me than all the hours and hours of holiday Food Network programming I've done as an adult.

I'm thankful for creativity and how every year I get this creative bug ripping through me at Christmas time--I want to make something pretty for the whole world. Who knows if I succeed, but I sure love trying.

Thankful

I've been reading lots of blogs entries devoted to gratitude lately. I thought I would chime in ...

Today, I'm thankful for the beautiful photograph of my six-year old in her red "I wish I was snowboarding" t-shirt and striped pink pom pom hat. She peers out from the hat with a delighted and wise smile, knowing her Uncle Josh (snowboarding lover) will grin when he gets the photo on his phone.

I'm thankful for that grin, her Uncle Josh, and the phone in question.

I'm thankful God provided so abundantly for us this month so that we could pass on the extra to someone else.

I'm thankful for C.S. Lewis. O SO THANKFUL for him, the man whose stories make me weep and laugh and draw near to the true King of Kings. I am thankful for the silver chair, symbol of all that binds us, and the powerful sword that destroyed the chair. I"m grateful for a fictional character like Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, who in a fit of bravery stamped out an enchanting fire with his bare, webbed feet. I'm grateful for inspiring acts of boldness, bravery, and fortitude.

I am thankful the husband and the girls enjoy these stories, that I can live in them for an hour a day.

I am thankful for snow and Christmas lights and black-bottom banana bread (made by my dad--Mr. Martha Stewart).

I'm in Love

with the three year old these days. Sometimes I say she was the best thing that could have happened to me, my husband and the six-year old. The husband and six-year-old are introverted, and I hedge on that side of the line, too. The three-year-old, however, serves as a vision caster of what we all might be at our friendliest, out-going-est, other-focused-est. She's the one who shouts at acquaintances in Hy-Vee, or turns to me, palms against her cheeks and mouth wide open, "MOM!! It's our friends!!!" (The "friends" she met for the first time five minutes ago on aisle 4). When we see them again in the check-out line, this is confirmation of the prominence they should take in our lives. She squeals. Points them out again. Asks to "go say hi!"

While the six-year-old is fully acquainted with the language of feeling like the odd-one out, the three year old has no concept of exclusion. She takes it upon herself to include everyone, to chase after every little four year old in her dance class lobby, ask them their names, ask them to dance while waiting for class to start. She squeals over and over as each child enters the building. "Mom!! It's another friend!!!" She doesn't know their names or where they live or who their siblings are. THe mothers direct their attention to her and laugh at the three-year-old's hearty welcome. The other preschoolers are sometimes ambivalent, withdrawn, curious. None of them welcome her in kind, but check her out from the safety of their mother's knees.

But the three year old just keeps on inviting. Us introverts would get tired after the first greeting, the first invitation or two--but not her. She pushes herself out into the middle of the room, dances and flings her body in all directions, eager and earnest in her vigil for others to join her.

The cool thing is that her vigilance is climate-changing. Take a room of tired out parents and tired-out kids. Put them with this three year old for five minutes, and people smile and giggle, if only at her enthusiasm and boldness. I am energized watching her. She's my hero.

On Finding Out Her Sister Was Getting a Princess Barbie for Her Birthday

the six-year old began sobbing. Why didn't she get a Barbie for her birthday? It was so unfair. All she got was bead sets!



That's an accurate description. Because the kid likes art projects, she got about 8 bead sets and a makeup kit that put her in the emergency room.



"I don't know if you've noticed," the six year old went on to say, through tears, "but I mostly play with my puppies and Barbies. I'm not really an artistic person anymore."



True as this may have felt in the moment, the six year old is one of the most artistic people I know. But I could see the desire for a Barbie drowned out her ability to accurately reflect on the big picture. It's like how when our girls open up a gift they've never even imagined receiving, and exclaim with passionate conviction: "It's just what I always wanted!!!"



Really? Dora Candyland is just what you always wanted?



Really. Your not an artistic person?

Comfort in Constellations

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.

1 Corinthians 1:3-5

Two brothers have died this week. Not mine. But still.

One man was the brother of a friend. The other a brother of the father of a friend’s child.

I hate hearing the stories: Cancer. Car accidents. I hate knowing that somebody I know or love is at all feeling anything like what I’ve been feeling. That they have possibly just entered one of the most f$%@#-up twilight zones of existence one could enter. But death is nothing new, I tell myself, aghast at my former state of naiveté. Death is everywhere! People are dying all the time—as often as people are being born. If you don’t want a baby, you may not notice the rate at which they happen. And if nobody you love dies, you may not notice how many people disappear.

Since my brother died, I learned that many people I know have lost a brother. In my church there are a handful I know of. When we gather, I map them out like a constellation in the room. In the presence of one of these stars, I might cry without warning.

I went to one brother’s visitation today and talked to my friend. I did not know his brother, but while I was there I learned the brother was an Obama fan. He worked at the Co-op that I frequent. I might have joked with him while he bagged my groceries. There are pictures of him on his bicycle, loaded down with backpacks and road tripping gear. He’s got big shaggy chops and chin length hair. He looks like a righteous hippie. I like my friend’s brother instantly, even though he’s dead.

The weight of a life lost slams against me. I try to keep the tears just in my eyes and not rolling down my face while I’m actually talking to my friend. I leave the funeral home, shoulders shaking in the parking lot, knowing full well I’m projecting. In a year, you won’t respond like this, I self-talk. (People tell me, wait a year, like July 15, 2009 is magical. On that day, my last few droplets of grief will trickle away.) And then I talk at my brother, or the memory of him. Darn it. This feels like losing you all over again.

Sometimes when I cry, I indict Jesus. I put him on trial. Did you not say that those who mourn would be comforted? It’s really the best indictment I can give these days. I’m past the Mary and Martha lines (Well, Jesus, if you’d been here, my brother'd still be alive). My brother’s dead. He’s not coming back. So, Jesus, what can you do for the living? I arch my eyebrows at him. I beckon and gesture for him to get with the program. One order of comfort, please. Oh, dear, I’m mixing theater and restaurant metaphors. But you get the idea.

The thing is that once in a while, even when I arch my eyebrows at him in a not-so-friendly way, I feel this transcendent warm feeling creep all over me. And then, all my snarkiness turns into plain old miserable, can’t-escape-from-it sorrow. But it feels like somebody’s there to keep me company and say there, there.

It’s sort of like that with the constellation of brotherless people I was talking about. Sometimes their very presence is a there, there of sorts, although mostly I like to talk to them and hear their stories. I like to think it was a brilliant moment for Paul when he identified this link between human grief, God's comfort, and community. I want to believe he’s right on, that it's one of the few redemptive things about the process: Sometimes we're the receipient of a small, sweet cup of lemonade. Other times, we're serving it up.

A Great Week for Books

I am so darned happy. People these days are writing about my favorite subjects in smart, quirky ways. I remember a year or more ago when Nadia Bolz-Weber announced on her blog that she'd gotten a book deal to watch and write about 24 straight hours of Christian television. I have to admit it was a project I wish I'd dreamed up just because it seems like so much fun.* Anyway, Bolz-Weber does a fabulous job of it. She even mentions the advertisements for the Holy Family Faberge-Style Egg!

Bolz-Weber is a self proclaimed "heavily tattooed Christian progressive from a liturgical denomination" (she's Lutheran--a "mission developer" at her church). So she proves to be a fascinating lens through which to view 24 straight hours of evangelical TV. To spice up the experiment she invites friends and strangers of all faiths, professions, and persuasions to join her. Bolz-Weber is not purely interested in TBN bashing; her TV hours do cause her occasion to turn the lens on her own tradition's weak spots. Yet, she does take a powerful anthopological approach to each show by giving us the "Round Up" at the end of the hour. In the round up, she lists # of OT passages cited; # of NT passages cited; Costs of products offered; Running total of products offered since she began her experiment (after 4 hours: $943.94); impression of God given during the show ("Sets up lots of tests and trials for you so that you can see who he is and earn a spiritual promotion"); and impressions of Jesus ("No mention (except in the ad to get people to sow a $70 seed)").

My husband and I have valued reading books aloud to one another since we got married 11 years go. This is the first book in YEARS that both of us wanted to read more than a few chapters in one sitting. We made it from Paula White Today (5:30 a.m.) all the way to Best of Praise the Lord (9:30 a.m.) in three hours of our date-night evening. It was hard to stop.

One other mention: This book is plugged by the author of another of my recent favorites: On the cover, AJ Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically, writes, "Turn off your TV and read this book. It's enlightening and entertaining and it doesn't emit any radiation whatsoever."

*in a gleefully ironic sort of way

Princesses to the Rescue?

As my daughters were sitting on the couch this morning, one girl picked up my copy of Gifted to Lead: The Art of Leading as a Woman in the Church, and proceeded to become engrossed in the cover and pages. It was endearing until I overheard the conversation being had between both girls as said book was being perused. Said Girl no. 2: "Only princes can rescue princesses. Princesses can't rescue anyone."

I gave them the requisite admonishment, and wondered when my broken-record self would have to stop talking about princesses and beauty, strength and courage to these two little girls who cry over not having fancy enough clothes and warn me that when they "are fifteen, I'm going to take all my money and go to Target and by TONS of makeup."

Then I took Girl no. 2's picture (I'm sure that was confusing.)

If anyone is interested in the book, Nancy Beach does not really say there is a "womanly art" to leading. Rather, she addresses the sorts of issues women in all levels of leadership may encounter in church culture that is more male dominated. Beach would totally disagree with Girl no. 2: Princesses make great rescuers.

Grief

Many people ask how I'm doing these days in the wake of my brother's untimely and traumatic passing. I appreciate the inquiries and the prayers thrown my way. I need them. The answer to the question of how grief is going is: not so great. I had this idea that I'd go away to school for two weeks in August and when I got back I'd have made peace.

Not so much.

I hear the surreal quality of life after a loved one dies can last up to a month if the death is anticipated, expected. After that "you just feel sad," my friend A told me. But that's with a "straightforward" loss. When it's complicated, when there's "unfinished business" in the relationship, says the grief web sites, that process can take much much longer and you can feel so many things. Here's the difference with me these days: I cry about a thousand times more often than I did before. You just mention a dead cat and I'll cry. You mention words like "grief," "sadness," "car accidents," my heart races and I'll cry. My muscles ache. I can't sleep, or I'm tired at the wrong time. I've been having daily stomach aches. And a panicky, fight-or-flight feeling when my daughters spill nail polish or raise their voices or make a mess.

Today I made one daughter cry after the spilled nail polish. It was not one of my finest moments. I said words in front of her that I never say in front of her. "I'm sorry, Mom!" she said about twelve times and then I told her emphatically that none of it was her fault. I wasn't mad at her. "So you're mad at the nail polish?" she asked, curiously. "I"m mad at the nail polish," I said. "And mad at myself for not doing a good enough job supervising." Inside my anxiety was swirling through my veins, my heart was pounding. I told myself to get a grip.

And that's what grief's been like. Not having a grip most of the time. And trying to get one in the moments when it really matters whether I'm successful at it--like when my daughter spills nail polish, or when someone wants a bedtime song, or dinner needs to be made, or a conversation needs to be had.

I've been reading Exodus 16 a lot this week, where God decides to send some bread from heaven to those fearful, gripey, hungry Israelites. Aaron has just gotten done giving them instructions for collecting their bread and then they "turned to face the wilderness. And there it was: the Glory of God visible in the cloud."

I resonate with the wilderness metaphor in relation to grief. It feels godforsaken. But I was moved at the idea of turning to face the wilderness-- in all its barrenness, desolation, desperation, and hoplessness--and seeing the glory of God above it all. That weighty splendor of his presence. And now, I've been asking to see it. I'm open for the first time since I got here--to the desert--to seeing his glory, to open myself to his presence. And not only am I open to it. I don't know how, like the Israelites, I could survive without it.

"GOP Loyalty Not a Given for Young Evangelicals"

A classmate of mine brought this Washington Post article to my attention. It was nice to see the "gray" areas covered when it comes to religion and politics. My only quibble with the journalist is that she called the Emerging Church "youth-driven."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081403446.html

my brother skateboarding...

I watched him do this for hours when I was about half his size....

Why Sydney Bristow is my Friend

The night after wedges open--and tears.
I think of Salinger: His Franny, and her prayer:
Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
I never asked for mercy before.
Me.
Mercy.

(2001)

An earlier draft of this poem, written 7 years ago, began with these lines: "Until I can sliver them out, until / I can face them / wholly, these shards must work their way out / on their own."

I remember how grief seemed fractured and fragmented, dispersed through my body and soul like a thousand splinters from a rough-cut plank. Each fragment, sharp. Each location of entry--a memory or a killed hope--was swollen, infected. The extraction of grief (if grief could be extracted?) was time consuming; extraction was painful. The successful removal of one sliver indicated no promise for all the others, nor did it instantly cure the infection.

It was the last time I felt the way I do now, in grief. I wrote, "these shards must work their way out / on their own" because I remember then not being able to look at grief head-on, the way I don't look at it head-on very often right now--except when it overtakes me and forces me down on my bed. In the grappling, it pushes tears out my eyes, and sounds from my larynx. It swells my sinuses until my head pounds.

But most of the time right now, the way I let the shards work their way out on their own is by watching Alias reruns, sometimes until 1 in the morning, until my mind is so full of Sydney Bristow and her crazy FBI, double-agent life, that I can go to bed and not see my brother's gravel-skidded face, his blood that stained the ground on that country road, the stitches like treadmarks across his ear and skull, his body bloated by formaldehyde the day before the visitation. My mind will be so full of secret missions and bonfire-red wigs that I won't be able to miss seeing his living, ink-slung body cradling his seven-month-old baby girl. And I won't get lost--or caught--wondering what would have happened if I'd been at the hospital as he lay dying, if only a phone line had rung into my bedroom in the middle of the night, how I would have said goodbye or prayed for a miracle, how this might all feel different if I had.

If I wrap my mind around Agent Sydney Bristow, who lost her best friend to murder, and her other best friend to witness protection, and if I cry along with her when she tells Vaughn:" You wanna know how I am? I'm horrible. I am ripped apart,"--well, when I cry with her there, it feels like maybe one of those splinters dislodges just little bit, without my having to poke at it.

I have three seasons left to buy me more time.

Death and Skateboards

I told my friends last night that the grief I feel over my brother's death has exploded much of my theology about the afterlife*. Maybe "exploded" is the wrong word. Maybe what I mean is that what I've thought about the afterlife is in many ways horribly incomplete, but I never knew it until I desperately wanted to see a bigger picture. Oh how my head butts up against that invisible barrier between heaven and earth, between the sphere of earthly bodies and those of heavenly ones. I want to be a fly on the wall in that other realm, want to know the mind and wisdom of the creator of the universe, the creator of this whole system. And I want to reach across the boundary and grab my brother's hand (except he doesn't have one), pull him back here, speak to him one more time.

I simply don't have a way to answer the questions that currently run through my head:

1) What was his experience as he lay dying, while still on life support, when his brain was showing no signs of life? Where was his spirit?

2) Was he in some earth/heaven limbo for those 7.5 hours?

3) Did he see a bright light/Jesus/God? I feel so Oprah for phrasing it this way.

4) In heaven, will Jesus let Henry know how much I love(/d) him? Will he be reminded how much we all loved him (because the death of one we love compels us to wonder such things)?

5) Or would this knowledge stay hidden in the shadows of whatever marvelous things happen in heaven? In other words, is it only the living who ask such questions?

5) Will my brother see us grieving here on earth? Will Jesus let him hear and watch his funeral service, the letter I read for him (because if he never hears it, what good does it do--after all, it was addressed to him)?

6) Why are these my questions?

6) Where are the wedding pictures of his I took two years ago on my digital camera? My husband and I cannot find them, despite tearful searching. (ok-so theology can't tackle that one.)

7) The last question is from my three-year old: Did his skateboard die, too?


*Thank you Ali for saying this is an appropriate response to grief.