grasshopper prayer

echo

2008-08-25T07:11:00.004-05:00

after
the tidal wave breaks
after the tsunami
everything hums
waiting

two car seats
expect passengers
grass
awaits feet

table nearly floats
unladen

animals wander
adrift
pinballs with no bumpers
players gone home.

and yet the fruit ripens on the trees
and tomatoes in the garden;
last week's scraps
crumble in the moist and secret places;

something bends the splint of ash full circle
and the hoop becomes basket
for the harvest yet to come.

waiting

2008-02-16T08:29:00.000-05:00

waiting for the sun
is an exercise in shivery patience these days,
facing east like long-dead ancestors
praying to the source of life
each glimmer is hope
each cloud, beautiful menace.
The fire, yes, the fire is there,
but how much more beautiful to be warmed
blinded
by a wave that hurried 93 million miles
just
for me?

momentum

2008-01-22T08:36:00.000-05:00

how is it
that the woodstove picks up steam
only as the sun comes out
as the world gets thawed
as everything is
anyway
moving toward heat?
it seems
unfair
or at least
inconvenient.

Still,
it is the way of things.
The more things move
the bigger things get
the more they move
and the bigger they get.

We must only heed
that haste can make waste
and proceed
with due deliberation.

taproot

2007-10-23T08:21:00.000-05:00

the beauty of growing slowly
--tendrils which snake around the stones
the seeking sensing slow possibility
of water, here
of nutrient, there
of cells packed hard and tight
--knowing
knowing
there is enough in just breathing
to stuff every inch
and no more

obstructions

2007-09-17T08:57:00.000-05:00

it is good to remember.
to breath in.
and breathe out.

this morning
that is challenging.

But the compost is composting
outside my office window,
the sun is shining,
and today is working well despite me.

Sometimes I just have to get out of the way.

blessings

2007-09-07T15:47:00.001-05:00

so I arrive at my place of work
with Big Things impending
to find that I have been sent flowers
from far away to
right.here
because a dear friend thought I could use the encouragement.

I sit in gratitude.
I sit in joy.

and I miss those who are not here.
as always, I sit in tension.
as always, both are true.

slippery slope

2007-06-08T10:58:00.001-05:00

I am in a bit of trouble. I have been falling into the trap of comparing my creative work to the creative work of others, more experienced and more skilled. Of course, I come up lacking.

This will not help me get better.
That is all.

furled

2007-05-30T02:03:00.000-05:00

spiral in, spiral out.

crowded

2007-05-02T16:29:00.001-05:00

exuberant weight of small child
falls heavy against my still solitude.
In this chaos-world some days
my only pauses
are with the toilet.
So soft,
so raw,
so finally alone.
How fragile even this peace,
that it can be disturbed
by a child.

seder

2007-05-01T12:43:00.000-05:00

review of last year
three months
a lifetime
tastes of bittersweet hope
darker than chocolate
sweeter than maror
wrapped around my heart a cool balm of charoset
--mortar to hold us all together--
and a glass for Elijah
open the door...

comment problems

2007-05-01T12:37:00.000-05:00

friends,

for some reason, your comments are not appearing. I am looking through my settings to figure out why not. I've also just discovered a number of comments awaiting moderation for which I didn't get notification. I apologize. Fixing is happening. Thank you for your patience.

stigmata

2007-04-09T17:25:00.000-05:00

my stigmata are healing,
the tail of a year bound
in gauze and hobbling around
waiting for the true ending.

It is good to move again,
good to flex muscles held tight for my own good,
good to twist and bend,
to find where the stretch is.

A lift a tug a pull
and are these feathers?
Ripped from my back are wings
and new scars.

not quite

2007-02-01T20:53:00.000-05:00

I called a friend tonight, at her friend's house. The message said, "You have not quite reached..." and I thought, how simple, and how true. When reaching a nonresponsive machine is the same as reaching a person, we are definitely losing track of our humanity. Perhaps if we called it like we see it more often, we would be more likely to be alarmed that our interconnection is slipping through our fingers.

busy

2007-01-02T16:49:00.000-05:00

From this blog it's not clear that "busy" has been part of my life. I've always posted sparsely, but for a few months it looked like the cupboard was completely bare. My head has been busy, but my fingers have been uncharacteristically still.

I was so busy that I forgot to mark two years of concerted effort to write a little, at least every two weeks or so. Just write. Out loud, out of the journal, because I have something that wants to be said. Happy belated birthday, blog. May the words continue to find the page--at least every two weeks or so.

holidays

2006-12-31T01:01:00.000-05:00

Holidays are here. For many, it's been a long several weeks. Lots of students are gleefully anticipating their return to school. Many adults can't wait for the holiday cheer to slip off into the distance. Temporary housemate knows this story; sweetie knows this story; I know this story. Reclaiming the holidays is a combination of resistance and engagement--finding ways to make the seemingly unreasonable and illogical rules make sense or begone, one or the other. For some people, holiday resistance is an extension of religion resistance. For some people, religion tells them to resist the holiday. The struggle to fit religion to the most common celebrative traditions is a major issue in religious circles.

I believe this: if we can celebrate the return of the sun; if we can celebrate sharing and generosity and kindness; if we can celebrate love beyond measure and the miracle of each person's life; if we can lift up stories of people who could be any of us becoming prophets; if we can lift up the wise and the sacred in each person...then we have remembered the spirit of the season.

twelve Novembers long*

2006-12-04T17:43:00.000-05:00

We are stuck in November.

I have figured it out. There is November every month, somewhere, and the Pacific Northwest got all the extras that no one else wanted. Not cold enough to snow, not warm enough to grow, we are held between fall and spring, in stasis. It’s kind of like having someone refuse to cry when they’re grieving.

So what could possibly be helpful about being here? There must be something.

We get a rest from all that pesky greenery. The grass is green and everything else is brown. Come July they will switch.

Okay, that’s not so helpful.

Our eyes don’t have to contend with all that sun. No sunglasses necessary.

Um.

Yeah.

I know. We get very good at waiting. That’s it. Advent here begins in December but continues until February, when the crocuses start to push their way through the ~~snow~~ mud. All this time we wait for life to begin again. We have no weather-specific activities for November. We can’t sun on the beach or go sledding at the local park. I haven’t seen any roasted chestnut vendors, even though I walk through downtown to get to work every day. We don’t get to make wardrobe concessions to forty below weather and come to work in boots and wool sweaters, ruddy from shoveling three feet of snow. There is not only nothing that must be done, once the last leaves are raked, there is nothing that can be done, nothing but wait. And so after the impatience comes the frustration, and after the frustration comes the lethargy, and after the lethargy comes the calm, and then the serenity, and at least we get rest in these months of grey.

We get to take a good long look at our indoor spaces, the ones we neglect when our gardens are outgrowing their beds and the trees are beckoning from the sidewalks. We can consider, and contemplate, and ruminate, and change. We can get settled in. We can nest.

And then things start growing again.

I may just be too impatient for this.

We shall see.

*quoted from Gordon Bok's "The Schooner Ellenmore"

if only

2006-11-15T14:19:00.000-05:00

walking to work I spied
a perfect image, a picture ripe
for the taking and I thought
if only I had the other camera
the one with this and that
the camera that is not this one
that is too heavy to carry
that is cumbersome to use
if only I had the something-I-left-behind
then
then I could take this picture
the moment would be complete;
regret evaded.
days later I found (while digging
for a midmorning snack)
that same camera
the one I didn’t know I had
the one whose weight went unnoticed for three days.
it was there all along
snug behind me
waiting.

perversity

2006-11-13T19:15:00.000-05:00

I worked from home all morning. I really did.
Then I went into work.
I could get nothing done.

oops

2006-09-28T18:31:00.000-05:00

"My writing practice." I said,
and promptly lost the pebble
in the depths.

Perhaps an altar would help?

respite

2006-09-24T17:07:00.000-05:00

We are having a respite
tops down, breeze blowing,
bees and birds frantic in the last
of the season's possibilities.
Roses are budding one
last
gasp
delicate pink and brilliant red
shocking against turning trees.
We are having a respite the
smiles and children screaming leave
echoes along the sidewalks
looping back and back in an endless,
sweet cacaphony
of summer's end.

give

2006-09-12T12:19:00.000-05:00

There is a practice of generosity at my new place of work. People will come in with food and leave it on the table, or add a little treasure from the back of a closet to the perpetual pile in the break room. People share fruit and pets and even, often, time.

It is a good practice. Ever since Jesus with the loaves and the fishes, and stretching back before him into antiquity, sharing has been a holy act, a communal act, an act of creation. With joy we assume an abundance that generates abundance; we bring the sacred into our every day. I am learning, I am practicing, and I am lucky.

abundance

2006-08-19T00:04:00.000-05:00

I have been gifted with abundance in my life these last few weeks.

Is it from the daily mutterings, the discipline like yoga to mold my mind into the unfamiliar space? I realized this evening that perhaps every wall need not be covered in furniture; I will realize tomorrow something else, equally obvious, equally profound. It is the way of time when compressed, and vacation is almost over.

I am therefore unbending my creaky fingers, letting the water built up behind the dam of my arms (curled tight around me) spill over, trickle and finally gush into another life...or two.

It is like breathing again, after swimming underwater for a long, long time.

inhale, exhale, blessed be

and amen.

deleting

2006-08-12T11:04:00.000-05:00

I have spent a month deleting,
clearing space in the calendar once jam-packed with notations
of the last job,
the last crew,
the last team with whom I sweated and toiled,
the last dear people with whom I cried--
it seems that the hard times are the ones that bring us together
(don't ever miss a funeral)
--it seems I needed the time,
time to create space where there was none
closure where cupboards were left empty
but swinging open...
ghosts of echoing footsteps left hanging.
I have spent a month deleting
sweeping dust out of corners
seeking leftover raisins and cheerios and
sometimes
the odd,
unopened box,
and now I am stripped
naked
exposed for what I am
standing still
breeze ruffling what little hair I've got
and in the breath of silence the new beginning roars
and comes to greet me.

deadheading

2006-08-07T11:34:00.000-05:00

...has nothing to do with tiedye t-shirts and long hair and smoking of alternatives to tobacco. It does, however, relate to weed(s), via gardening. Apparently, it is the removal of "spent" blooms on flowering things, especially roses. So "deadheading" the roses means snipping off wilted roses in a specially prescribed manner, the better to encourage the plant to make more roses, which look and smell pretty. I've been asking for advice from neighbors. I've been using said advice. It works. It works well and I get to feel useful, wandering around the yard at early hours with clippers in my hand. I have to make sure I don't get overenthusiastic, because it's so satisfying.

I wonder what else would be better off if I trimmed the dead weight?

growing

2006-07-29T21:49:00.000-05:00

someone did beautiful things in my yard. I am so lucky.

first impressions

2006-07-23T16:13:00.000-05:00

pacific northwest
first impressions:
it is hotter than expected
everyone drives my car here
except those who drive a prius
or who bike despite the
100+ (F) heat
people are friendly
and they mean it
at the dog park you will not learn the names of the humans
just the names of the dogs.
there is very good architecture
and terrible architecture.
free wifi is readily available
grass is brown
it really honestly does not rain in july
there are enough asians here
and enough queers here
that we do not have to be nice to each other
just because we are alike.
you can't tell if people are dressed for work
or weekend
the ocean is west.
no really, this is worse than you think.
(I began with ocean east,
proceeded to river east,
and then to lake east.
I know water and west begin with W
but really.)
produce is good.
art is original.
1800's is old.
This is going to take
some adjusting.

interconnected

2006-06-28T12:00:00.000-05:00

I just took a survey. It asked me a bunch of questions. Most of them did not have to do with money. It said this:

Money Orientation

Making it: I'd never do work I didn't believe in.

Spending it: When I must consume at all, I consume with conscience.

Saving it: I'm not saving much now, but when I do I'll call the shots.

Stealing it: No, thanks.

Giving it away: Environmental and social causes.

It's pretty true. Amazing how who we are is that connected to what we think. I bet people in groups work that way, too.

Here's the survey home page: from environics, in Canada. Enjoy!

rest

2006-05-29T07:09:00.000-05:00

Woke up this morning
with nothing pressing
that could be done today.
banks closed
schools closed
flags waving in the breeze
--so fierce
I can hear them echo
an hour across the border.

Woke up this morning
forgetting
really forgetting
about the ritual
I carefully ignored
twenty-seven years
and wondering.

And I woke up this morning
dizzying freedom
spinning
running endless loops--
Sisyphus
empty-handed...

torn between laughter and tears
--and laundry.

Is this what is meant
by
day of rest?

oh canada

2006-05-15T20:52:00.000-05:00

Tall guy, long hair, black fleece, loping down the street toward a family of five:

"Hey, someone forgot their stuffed animal!"

He hands over something black and fuzzy and vanishes back into the diner.

I'm gonna miss this place.

real

2006-05-15T16:17:00.000-05:00

I saw a professional production of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing over the weekend.

If you liked Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Albee's wrenching, draining, epic: "I am the Earth Mother, and you're all flops."), then please, go see The Real Thing. It has a similar pace, similar feel...but less desperation in the end.

Here's the irony: professional theatre never feels as real to me as community theatre, just as professional baseball doesn't hold a candle to Little League. Here's the key question: are you there for love, or for money, oh performer/actor types?

I did not like Virginia Woolf, not even with a university company.

I did not like Real Thing either--but I might have liked it better if it had been more...real.

tired

2006-05-14T21:02:00.000-05:00

I am tired of crying. Tired of crying about two things: parents and money. That is all.

accidentally on purpose*

2006-04-29T07:04:00.000-05:00

here's the thing about photography: it's less about the person than about the willingness to drop everything and pay attention right now, before breakfast, with messy morning hair, before the light goes on about its day.

(use these photographs noncommercially and with attribution only, please)

* reference to the first album by the Carleton College group The Accidentals

references

2006-04-26T17:35:00.000-05:00

I'm prone to references. I'm also prone to curiosity, so every so often I'll wander over to sitemeter to see what kinds of things bring people to this site. If they're not people I think I know (based on operating system and location, yes I'm a geek) they are often googling things. Literary things. Referenc-y things. And every time I see that I feel guilty, because I could be more helpful. Today I saw the second search for Mewho and Exactlywhats. So here, for at least the two most recent:

"The Mewho with an Exactlywhat" is a Shel Silverstein poem, from either A Light in the Attic or Where the Sidewalk Ends. It begins, "Knock Knock./ Who's there?/ Me. /Me Who?/ Yes, exactly./ Exactly what?/ Yes. / Yes what? / Yes, I've got an Exactlywhat on a chain." ...at least, that's how I recall it. It's been years since I've seen it in print.

[Update: It's from A Light In The Attic. I checked. And I think the text above is not quite right. I think it goes: Yes. / Yes what?/ No, exactlywhat...]

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers..." is from Tennessee Williams, in his play A Streetcar Named Desire. For those who saw the Marlon Brando version, you will recognise the play by picturing him in undershirt and jeans, shouting from the street up at the window: "Stella!" The quote is by Blanche, older sister of Stella, who is and has been for quite a while quite mentally unstable. The play is disturbing but well worth watching.

okay, I feel better now.

colour

2006-04-22T22:07:00.000-05:00

I live in eastern Canada. Aside from the occasional intrepid pine needle peeking out from under snow, this city has been colourless fully seven months. Finally, we are seeing green. And the thing with green here is that it's not the slow, mist-on-the-bushes green that happens in other, warmer places. Here you wake up one morning and the leaves are a centimetre long. Yesterday they were barely bumps. Tomorrow they will be three times longer. There's no time to dally, we're careening toward the solstice at breakneck speed and every spring we're behind schedule.

The flower shop I walk past has exploded in orange fireworks of birds-of-paradise, Easter lilies a distant memory. Red and orange coats are showing up, and I've even seen a couple in lime green...and tonight I saw the most heartening rainbow umbrella, each wedge a different colour. Its owner was complaining that it was too big and too bright; I wish I had said what I was thinking: I loved her umbrella.

When you live without colour for too long, you can either embrace it or fear it--I think most people here do a little of both. They like the idea of colour, but when confronted with the chance to wear it, they become skittish. I see a lot of black in the centre of this government town.

Time to take a cue from the flowers, I say. We're short on time, we're rushing through life--let's enjoy it. Wear something bright, take a chance. Maybe people will like it. Maybe you'll like it. You never know.

birth order blogthing

2006-04-11T21:45:00.000-05:00

After my frog friend found a blogthing about weight that was eerily accurate, I got distracted. This one intrigues me. Birth order intrigues me. I think it shapes us. I do.

You Are Likely an Only Child

At your darkest moments, you feel frustrated.
At work and school, you do best when you're organizing.
When you love someone, you tend to worry about them.

In friendship, you are emotional and sympathetic.
Your ideal careers are: radio announcer, finance, teaching, ministry, and management.
You will leave your mark on the world with organizational leadership, maybe as the author of self-help books.

The Birth Order Predictor

Thing is, hey're right about who I am, but I'm not an only. Weird.

outside in

2006-04-07T22:50:00.000-05:00

kindness

2006-04-04T13:32:00.000-05:00

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. That's not my line, of course, but I love it. It's a scary thing, to relate to the key statement of survival made by a half-crazed and lonely older sister of a woman in an abusive marriage, character in a play written early in the last century and still around.

It's still around because it's true. Many of us depend on people we don't know and haven't met. My proof that the world is essentially a good place? It always works out, somehow. Strangers have given me food and shelter, good conversation and a comforting shoulder. Strangers have given me good advice and bad, good company and bad, rides to the airport and shirts off their backs (really!) but most often with a warm and loving and open heart, or at minimum a kind of frank curiosity that can be entertaining if you don't take offense. The world can be a scary place to take chances. Believing in the kindness of strangers makes it easier.

I took a trip this weekend and depended a lot on the kindness of of strangers. Once again, I was lucky; as ever, all of those people came through for whatever reasons they carry. But I also got to depend on the kindness of friends. I also got to revel in their company and laugh and hug and talk and tell stories and know, without even that slight glimmer of doubt that comes from being with strangers, know that the kindness we share is true and real and good...and there. Always there.

And that means I can do something that most of them disagree with, and know they've still got my back, know that they will honour my decision, know that they will still welcome me in their lives.

I am so lucky, and so blessed, and so grateful.

I needed this

2006-03-30T09:37:00.000-05:00

Wandered over to Visual Voice. She wrote a lovely post called RSVP. Just what I needed. Thanks, Susan.

cross-walking

2006-03-06T23:44:00.000-05:00

You can tell a lot about a city from its crosswalks. Try it. Go down to the nearest corner in your town. Pick a corner with traffic control if you have one--stop signs, traffic lights...the ones with real crosswalks are the best. Spend some time there watching people cross. How do they do it?

I've had the privilege to visit a few other towns lately. In some of them, people cross regardless of the light. Sometimes people only do that when they're hurrying; sometimes it's a fact of living in that city. Others have people who will wait all day if the light doesn't change. Most of them are somewhere in between. Here where I live there are streets where you can stop traffic by stepping off the sidewalk, and crosswalks that flood the instant the white walking person lights up. There are a lot of places where people cross against the light, but mostly very late at night (or early, like Sunday morning) and only after checking to make sure there' s no traffic.

And that's in the centre of town.

How much of a hurry is it?

Why are you hurrying?

What would happen if you waited,
looked around,
took the time to see the places where you live every day?
What would be so terrible
if you enjoyed the richness before you?

What if?

mewho with an exactlywhat

2006-02-14T12:27:00.000-05:00

Before tonight I had never heard of a Johari window, although it's similar to some other tools I've seen. It's a way of finding out how others see you. If you know me, contribute to mine here:

http://kevan.org/johari?name=raj

or skip mine and start your own here:

http://kevan.org/johari

thanks.

slow

2006-02-13T08:15:00.000-05:00

You can't hurry tofu.

I’m a vegetarian. Except for one experiment earlier this year, I’ve been vegetarian for 15 years. I like it—it makes me pay attention to what I eat, and I think I eat better because of that. I think it makes me a more mindful eater. Now if you’re not a vegetarian I know what you’re thinking: who can possibly survive on brown rice and tofu?

I’ll tell you a secret: nobody.

That’s why we eat vegetables and often eggs and dairy and ketchup and sometimes wheat gluten and who knows what-all else. That’s why we buy cookbooks and ask restaurants to publish recipe collections and have websites and internet chat rooms devoted to vegetarianness. All this mindfulness takes work.

But back to the tofu. I realise that it is possibly the most maligned food substance in the western world, but let’s face it, it has its uses. It’s high in protein (and sometimes fat) and it comes in varieties from super-mushy to super-firm, for use in milkshakes and stir-fries, respectively. In its natural state, it is much like okra—only appreciated by true connoseurs. But prepared, as tofu-dogs or tofu-sausages or tofu-burgers or marinated and baked or stir-fried, it’s pretty good stuff. Until I got used to the firm kind, I occasionally wondered if the restaurant had slipped chicken in there when I wasn’t looking…but no, it really was tofu.

Here’s the deal with tofu: it has to cook slowly, especially if you want it to be chewy. If you want to throw it in a blender with your favourite soup or smoothie, go right ahead. But if you want it to feel like food in your mouth, go easy. Put the heat on medium or low. Give yourself time—twenty minutes or more. Give yourself room to breathe. Don’t make it for the boss and her husband when they come to dinner, just don’t. Make it for friends, the same ones you’d eat peanut butter and jelly with. And give it time. One of my favourite tofu sausages requires low-medium heat and about 20 minutes (and lots of rotating) to cook properly. When I fry tofu it’s about the same. You can’t just sear it and call it good like you can with steak. No matter what you might like to pretend, it’s not just a pallid, floppy version of a filet mignon. And it can’t be rushed. If you hurry you will end up with something that’s mushy and vaguely flavoured like something you tasted once on a bad day with a cold. You don’t want that. I don’t want that. The tofu people don’t want that either. Marinate it. Let it absorb the flavour. Then coax it gently into a robust texture, one you can sink your teeth into. Give it time. Be careful and graceful and treat it like the delicate stuff it is. Well-treated, it can do anything.

It’s a lot like love that way.

inspiration

2006-01-30T13:37:00.000-05:00

Got some time? Save an hour or more, sit in a dark room with headphones or speakers and a mouse, and go here: www.ashesandsnow.org. It's amazing, absorbing, time-consuming, and gorgeous: multimedia the way it should be, brought to you by the miracle of the internet. No really, go. Go to be inspired and at peace and moved; go to have your reality shifted just a little to one side. Just go.

candle

2006-01-23T15:36:00.000-05:00

I have these two candles. I inherited them from the last tenant here--candleholders, really, cubes of ceramic something filled with wax and a wick. They glow a little when you light them. I don't believe in angels, much, not the kind they painted on the sides anyway, but they seem to go with the protective medal with a saint I found hanging in the kitchen. The angels are gold-coloured with wings and big robes--not much on the aerodynamics scale, and strangely isolated. I think of angels as indistinguishable from us and deeply engaged with the world, up to their elbows in grime and dust and heat...

That aside, I do like the connection the angel-candles provide--a kind of interlacing of sacred worlds caused by sharing ritual objects between religions. So I have two, and one of them...well, it's been a struggle. I lit it this morning. It went out an hour or so later. I wasn't done with it, so I lit it again. And again. Eventually I started messing with it, pouring wax onto a scrap of paper, poking the wick to make it stand up. Wick kept falling over. In fact, it got worse the longer I played with it. Stand up-fall down-go out. It seemed determined to extinguish itself. I was just as determined to save it--to give it a long, full life. Kept trying. Finally, the wick came loose. I scraped around, looking for the stub, trying to find the thing it came loose from.

Turns out it didn't. It came loose because it got to the bottom. My broken and burnt-off matchstick scraped cream-coloured ceramic.

I was trying to save it, but it was done. It was time. If I'd've listened, I'd have known that.

Funny, that.

not gods

2006-01-23T14:55:00.000-05:00

After 24 years, a man in a Florida prison is found not guilty after all. How could we need more evidence against the death penalty than that?

This man was 20, maybe 21 when he was imprisoned. For all intents and purposes he has lost the first 24 years of his adult life to someone's bad judgement. That's bad enough. Fortunately, he was not killed, not given the death sentence, just living out a 130 year life behind bars.

We are not gods. We are merely-humans. We know this. We may have the right to try and save people, heal people, make lives better. We can try to improve lives; we cannot, as far as I can see, call ourselves perfect enough to tell when someone is so bad that they should die. That has to be between the person and whatever they hold holy in the world.

that's all.

making superheroes

2006-01-22T13:30:00.000-05:00

Superheroes are the order of the day, thanks to C over at Bringing the Fun. I must've spent hours playing with the options, costuming and characterizing as I went. The superhero me is still under development, in desperate need of a few key details: superpowers, backstory, motive...that kind of stuff--and a name. I'm not the only one to get absorbed, either. C did one and then did them for half a dozen friends.

Why? What's the appeal of superheroing?

It's not about saving the world, although most of us could be reasonably accused of wanting to do that. I think we're desperately, playfully seeking our better selves. They say who we think we are and who we wish we were and who we aspire to be. Our alter egos look good in spandex and always sing in key; they run fast, play fair and only make wisecracks when it won't get them in too much trouble. Somehow they're okay with their dayjobs and if they have families the partners and children don't mind all the hours and dedication we give to our jobs. We don't usually get recognition but our better selves don't mind--in fact they're okay not being associated with their more human sides.

Somehow I'm not surprised we're so taken with the chance to make ourselves over into who we know we could be.

C issued an invitation to create superheroes. Here's my invitation--think of it as a first step. Figure out what your superpower is. What rare thing about you, if cherished and supported and nurtured, is your gift to the world?

snow day

2006-01-21T09:08:00.000-05:00

It's the kind of morning you hope for when you're ten--snow so thick it puts a soft haze on everything punctuated by black city birds swooping from trees to rooftops to telephone wires. Snow softens everything, cleans up the city, takes us back a hundred years or more. These are flakes the way they should be, fluffy, random, persistent. It's been snowing long enough that the trucks have been by once already: plow, salt, sand...but not so long that we feel overwhelmed. This is sledding weather, or skiing weather if you live close enough to the park to walk or ski over. This is cup of tea by the fire and all-day project in the house weather; this is the time to make crock-pot soup and bake things all day for dinner and make pancakes for breakfast and time to move your car so the plows can get under and around it. This is the time to remember why soft and slow and easy is important...to indulge in mindfulness-and in life-with gentle gusto.

spare change

2006-01-19T08:15:00.000-05:00

Friends of mine are writing about what people say to get money. Around here I've noticed a different tack from what they're seeing:

Why lie? Need booze and smokes. Anything helps. God bless. It's not just hand-lettered cardboard, either:

"Hey..."

"Yes?"

"Listen I need a little change, I'm not gonna lie to you I need a drink but..."

Then there are the kids. Youth, really, 14-25 or so and clustered in doorways and on corners, usually with a dog on a scrap of rope; usually the dog is the best off of the lot. They don't have excuses or explanations, just tattered fingerless gloves and bandanas and army pants with the pockets ripped free. I don't know why they're there, but I can think of half a dozen possibilities--more than once I missed the streets by a cosmic hiccup and the compassion of relative strangers.

Last summer I saw a young woman on the main drag three or so blocks from the hub of downtown, huddled in an unused delivery entrance for the big, posh department store. Her sign said the usual: spare change, anything helps... and she must've seen something 'cause she asked me for money. I stopped and looked at her, then said,

"I'm going to get a sandwich. Can I get you something?"

She looked like she could use it.

"Yeah, that'd be great." She still had the edges of her childhood hanging around her face--someone somewhere once taught her that the world will sometimes be a good place to be.

So I asked her what she wanted, guessed about dressings, and brought her a sandwich bigger than she was. My first thought was to follow Cornell West's reputed example and invite her to join me for my meal, but finally I decided to deliver it and move on--I don't like to presume that a 17-ish year old necessarily wants to have lunch with someone she's never met...especially when she probably has friends and a very empty stomach. (I don't know many youth who voluntarily spend time with random adults they don't know). So I left her with orange juice and water and a meatball sub; I don't know if she saved it or shared it, but I do know that for every one you see there are ten you don't so there were plenty of places that food could go.

And what if I bought her some food she could have gotten herself? Then she's still gonna have one more chance to see the world as a compassionate place.

In general, that's what I figure: random generosity increases hope.*

And we could all use more hope.

---

* It does occur to me that someone somewhere did some experiments with rats and other animals and random negative stimuli which couldn't be controlled by the animals. Eventually those animals became hopeless. I think the nature of the stimulus matters: random negativity generates hopelessness, random positvity generates hope.

late

2006-01-15T01:15:00.000-05:00

find your element
at mutedfaith.com.

so I'm up late. These sorts of things happen when I'm up late. We can all hope there's less up-lateness in my immediate future. However, if you happen to be up late, check out the art at muted faith. It moves me in ways I don't expect to be moved by graphic art.

bananas

2006-01-12T09:47:00.000-05:00

Bananas are a small lesson in abundance. They are a lesson in how to be here and now and eat what you want when you want it, because it will be brown tomorrow. They are a lesson in spontaneity and in self-sufficiency: they are easy-open, single-serving, biodegradable packaging and food all in one. If you let them sit long enough, the package becomes the food until there's only a paper-thin wisp of peel to remove. They are high in starch (for energy) and potassium (for hydration), and cheerful on a cloudy day. They look like a smile or a slice of sunshine, and they come in three sizes and sweetnesses. Also, they adjust; they get sweeter as they get older.

What would our lives be like if we were all more like bananas? We could be open and honest and generous (we're already biogdegradable); we could become less crusty with age, and sweeter; we could offer time and energy and smiles on a cloudy day. And we could give generously of ourselves, because we don't know what we will be like tomorrow.

and now say to thyself, 'If there is any good thing that I can do or any kindness I can show to any person, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I may not pass this way again.'
--from the weekly preaching of Rev. Frank Hall, who does not know where it comes from

amen.

working together

2006-01-10T10:05:00.000-05:00

The folks who administer Andy Warhol's legacy have done a good thing; according to Wired News they have a very liberal policy about Warhol's work. For commercial use they are like Disney; for nonprofit and for artistic use (even for profit) they allow unrestricted use. It's good news in this world of intellectual property wars. The Creative Commons licencing system is a similar idea which "builds on...all rights reserved" and offers the "some rights reserved" option. Their system works in a number of countries and for all kinds of work.

Musicians have known about this for years: the folk process is what happens when music gets picked up and passed around a community or ten. It's a grassroots re-visioning of art. It acknowledges that each person who receives the art will complete it, change it, continue to make it relevant in zir own context, time and place and people.

I celebrate the new resurgence of sharing. At some point making art is necessarily a gift to the world, given freely. I celebrate the collaborative creativity and the otherwise-impossible richness which comes from sharing. I celebrate the beautiful sense of abundance and freedom which this brings into the world. This is a gift economy of art and intellectual property. It re-births trust in an untrusting world; it lives deeply when so many of us are afraid to cross the street. It finds middle ground between all and nothing. It sets an example in a world desperate for heroes.

In this time of fear we must each set examples of courage; may we all do what we can.

two gratitudes

2006-01-04T15:48:00.000-05:00

A note about writing: I like authors who use lots of words, lush and rich...but only if they're telling me about things I'm interested in. Character development: good. Plot development: useful. Tolkien's six pages of descriptions of forest: not interesting. At all. Still, I try not to waste words. Some days I succeed. Some days I don't. I admire Jill for her ability to say so much in so few words. I admire Real Live Preacher for using his more verbose style to make sense of the world.

I am grateful to good writers who give their gifts freely that we may share in them.
___

I am learning that humour is the best way to diffuse most conflicts.

Even flame wars.

Really.

How cool is that, and how simple?

I wonder how that could transform salary negotiations and board meetings.

I am grateful for humour, and for people who stay at the table for hard conversations, and for learning from others.

That's all.

Isaiah

2005-12-28T08:15:00.000-05:00

Lately I have been receiving chunks of the Bible in my email box, a little bit every day. I signed up for it months ago, thinking that it would be a good way to develop a greater intimacy with the text that seems to drive so much of the world around me. They offered me choices: I could have had just the New Testament, but I went for the whole thing, Genesis right on through. I figured I could do it. I figured I could be disciplined. A friend said, "Sounds like a good way to fall behind to me." I figured he was being unnecessarily negative.

I read it regularly--for the first month or so. Then life, as predicted, got in the way (the aforementioned friend has known me for a long time and is familiar with my dishes and my laundry--I guess he figured that the Bible was subject to the same rise and fall of my days) anyway, life got in the way and I stopped reading.

I let them stay marked "unread", piling up like an enormous to-do list. Eventually that got to me and I started marking them read, even though they weren't.

Then one day I realised I could read part--just part--of each entry, if I wanted. I could read just the first few lines. I could read the first chapter. I could read the first word. This occured to me around the same time that Isaiah started rolling in, and probably because it was Isaiah.

See, I started reading this stuff partly because of a book: Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. She's a nonpracticing Protestant who finds herself inextricably drawn to a lifelong lay relationship with the Catholic Benedictines. The book is about her experience of Benedictine monastic life, including lectio divina, which as far as I can tell means reading holy texts aloud. Since I've always believed that Shakespeare cannot be understood in print, this made sense to me. Anyhow, she gets to Isaiah in their year's reading-through, and she talks about this book full mostly of raging at the world, at calling down the wrath of god, of the space in this timeless writing for the darkness and the holes in our souls to shine through.

Isaiah starts showing up in December, in Canada. I figured I could use some raging at the world. Turns out there's a lot more to it, although the raging is there. It's not just Isaiah, either. Day of a big interview I checked it out like I check out a horoscope, wondering what the randomness of life has brought me. I see this:

"Surely I am more stupid than any man, and do not have the understanding of a man." (Proverbs 30:2)

No kidding, first three lines in the email. At least I'm not alone, I think, and go to my interview.

Two weeks later (interview successful) I see this:

"Oh Lord, you are my God, I will exalt you, I will praise Your name, for You have done wonderful things...you have made a city a ruin, a fortified city a ruin...never to be rebuilt...for You have been strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress..."
(Isaiah 25:1-4)

Being a strength to the needy is not always pretty, I guess. But there's hope, 32:1 says,
"Behold, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule with justice."

We won't always have to rely on major disasters to mete out justice. We can relax...a little...

"the wilderness and the wasteland shall blossom abundantly and rejoice, even with joy and singing...a highway shall be there...whoever walks the road, although a fool, shall not go astray."

So it looks like even if I am more stupid than any man, I might have a chance. But then it changes again and the writer is voicing God, taking vengeance by uncovering the nakedness of the virgin daughter of Babylon. To quote the inestimable Pooh, "oh, bother."

It's a rough month, Norris is right. It is rife with destruction and revenge, anger and the glory of fear. Darkness rests heavy on my screen. I stop reading again, some. I go from reading a few verses to reading a few words. Some days I let them pile up.

Email lists are having the same predicament. Not one but two lists of loving wonderful people explode in firestorms over perceived violations of largely-unspoken protocol. I stop reading those, too. I can't take it. Too depressing. Even here in relatively-safe Canada there are reports of shootings, the most I've seen since I came here. Boxing Day brings a shootout in Toronto, at least one bystander killed. I comb my usual sources for rays of hope...but everyone is on vacation.

December is a grey month anyway, snowy but still too warm for any real outdoor sport. Snow is mushy, rain is possible, slush is likely, ice is too soft for skating. I want to curl up on my couch and wait for spring, or at least for the crisp, bright days of winter as I remember them from university. December is mostly a time of waiting, I find. I wait for the lists to come to their collective senses, remember the ideals that brought them into community. I wait for the weather to pick a side of the freezing mark. And I, like others from centuries and centuries past, wait for the sun to begin its return.

At least I'm not alone.

Yule is come.

Today one of the email lists began its turnaround, several someones posting all at once about coming back to the things that brought us there, community and love and kindness and all the rest. As usual, someone said what I was thinking, but much more eloquently. It is someone else's voice, but I am heard. As usual, someone has the strength to break the cycle and there is a flurry of jumping-on-the-better-bandwagon, and a collective sigh of relief.

Yule is come.

As I muddle toward a new career, Jeremiah 1-3 turns up in my inbox:

"Then said I: "Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth." But the Lord said to me: "Do not say, 'I am a youth,' for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you...""

We all have wisdom.

Yule is come.

Hope is in the air.

And the year turns toward spring, as ever it has.

Blessed be, and amen.

borrowed Christmas

2005-12-25T23:48:00.000-05:00

I never celebrated Christmas as a child. We had other things we did, other days we celebrated, other reasons to give presents. We were not deprived or overly sombre, even...but we did not, in the end, celebrate Christmas.

At first it was just kind of normal. When I realised it was not normal, I was uneasy for a while; then I developed that kind of perverse pride that any seven-year-old holding minority playground status needs to survive. There were simply two kinds of people: Christians and Jews. Some of them celebrated Christmas, and some celebrated Chanukah. I started looking for the "other" tick box immediately.

After the perverse pride stage comes the silver lining stage. I tried to find all the ways in which my way was actually superior to other ways. The most obvious was that I was free to borrow as many other Christmasses and Chanukahs and so forth as I could find...and that developed, slowly, into a tradition of borrowing Christmas.

The way it went was simple: I was not doing anything on Christmas Eve (or Christmas day, or the first night of Advent, or all three) and my friends wanted to invite me to join them. So with much careful phone-calling between parents it was determined that I could in fact actually be away from home that night, and Christmas would find me sitting on someone else's living room floor, admiring someone else's ancestral ornaments, singing carols I was learning on the fly, and eating foods I didn't recognise off of someone else's fancy dishes. It was a mixed blessing: an adventure, an education, an intercultural whirlwind, and the best fly-on-the-wall opportunity the year had to offer. For once I was not expected to be anyone specific, as long as I didn't undermine tradition or routine. For once I was entirely unimportant...and I was profoundly invisible, while simultaneously being that welcome stranger who appears every few stories in the Bible.

At least twenty years now after my first borrowed Christmas, I have a library of experiences to my name. I have borrowed from friends and lovers and acquaintances and classmates and even strangers; I have had big fancy dinners with eight different utensils and balanced my plate in my lap while fending off pets in the living room. I have sung carols in three languages and explained my own complex religious traditions to strangers. I have danced new dances and written limericks for gift cards and played with wind-up toys on Christmas morning and eaten cold cuts off of fine china on Christmas Eve...and I have become an expert at borrowing Christmas.

For those of you who may find yourself the stranger at someone else's table, I offer this:

- love the experience
- release fear
- accept with grace
- expect nothing
- ask for the rules beforehand
- know that every Christmas tradition has rules
- practise forgiveness
- including for yourself
- show no surprise, except at a gift
- play with children and animals
- wear clothes that clean easily
- try everything you can
- laugh easily
- smile often
- respect your hosts
- maintain your integrity
- have your own transportation
- say please and thank you
- bring a gift if you can
- if nothing else bring flowers or cookies
- follow local custom
- offer ideas gently
- honour the ancient sanctity of the kitchen
- remember the spirit of Christmas

Christmas is this celebration of life and new beginnings, of returning light after gathering darkness, of the beginning of preparing for planting. Christmas for me is all mixed up with Chanukah and Diwali and Solstice, times to light the world from inside our hearts out. It is a time of goodwill and good wishes, or it can be.

Whatever you celebrate, and whoever's table you sit at this holiday season, may it be filled with warmth and light and joy, and may we all have a stranger welcomed in this day.

Welcome Yule!

hold on

2005-12-15T19:45:00.000-05:00

"Hold on as the very ground beneath us starts to shiver and shake. When you love as hard as this there's bound to be some trembling, some risk, some stakes...something lost and something gained and little earthquakes..."
--Carrie Newcomer, "Little Earthquakes"

Ministry offers more metaphor, more opening, more possibilities for expression than almost every other walk of life...it's a marriage it's a tree, it's parenting, it's art, it's craft, it's love, it's a calling, it's a call, it's cliff diving, it's herding cats, it's an unending dance it's holding hope it's pushing justice it's fear and reckless abandon and careful consideration and always, always always it is hope.

simple

2005-12-12T23:01:00.000-05:00

Lately I have been looking for ways to pare down my life. I have eaten out less, I have slept more...and recently I have stepped away from the cell phone.

I am trying to limit myself to doing one thing at a time.

The resulting quiet, even when I still use electronics, still have internet access, still have friends, is astonishing.

There is quiet in my house.
There is quiet in my brain.

as a result, I know what I think more often, and I say it better.
I know what I feel more often, and I attend to it better.
I know who I am more often, and I live it better.

The key, I think, will be doing this as my life accelerates.

I believe it is worth the effort.

numbers

2005-12-03T20:56:00.000-05:00

One is sometimes a good number. Like today. Today, one is a good number. :-)

elemental, my dear

2005-11-28T17:03:00.000-05:00

You are water. You're not really organic; you're
neither acidic nor basic, yet you're an acid
and a base at the same time. You're strong
willed and opinionated, but relaxed and ready
to flow. So while you often seem worthless,
without you, everything would just not work.
People should definitely drink more of you
every day.

Which Biological Molecule Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I've gotten a little sucked into the blogthings habit...but only a little. Really.

anniversary

2005-11-25T20:32:00.000-05:00

In a couple of days, this blog will be a year old. Happy birthday, blog. I think one of the things it reflects most strongly is the ministry-formation struggle of learning where the personal properly intersects the public. It's not where you think it is, and it's not where people tell you it is, it's in that fuzzy, moveable in-between place...because in ministry, if you do it well, you're part of people's everyday lives, the grocery-shopping, life-loving, death-grieving part, not mostly the organized bits, but the pieces that people don't notice--the in-between bits. Sure Sunday morning (or whenever) is important, but it's the fact that you lift up the ordinary parts of lives that makes you a minister, really. We are here to honour the holy and urge people to greater awareness of their moment-to-moment living...even as we often neglect or even gently hide our own lives to do this work more effectively. Paradox? Yes. Important? I say vital, because Annie Dillard is right--the way we spend our days is, after all, the way we spend our lives.

So the question comes, how do we model the preciousness of daily living without making public our every move? And the answer is, we can't...

thus the question of occluded, implied authenticity. And so it is here, too, every time, just like life and church and lunch-out and grocery stores, just like doctor's offices and walking down the street. I am both/and, public and private. It is good learning; may we move ever closer to balance.

it's complicated

2005-11-23T22:08:00.000-05:00

You Are The Stuffing

You're complicated and complex, yet all your pieces fit together.
People miss you if you're gone - but they're not sure why.

Thanks to jill for the nudge. What Part of Thanksgiving Are You?

lovers, partners, friends

2005-11-18T09:12:00.000-05:00

connection in motion

friends

2005-11-17T09:12:00.000-05:00

There are those people in our lives who, despite their or our best intentions, refuse to leave. They are not the stalkers of our spare moments or of our comings and goings...

they are the ones who turn up when they are least expected...and most needed. They are the ones who shimmer in our peripheral vision, seemingly forever. They are the ones who are glad to hear from us, even when we have been gone from their lives six months or a year or more. They are not counting days as debts, they are only happy that we still have voice and story to share. They are the ones who send the unexpected card, or who are there every day for a week and every month for a year, or just love you though you are broken and bent and inescapably human.

Sometimes, in the beginning, it is hard to sift these from the others, the necessary, sweet and valuable acquaintances, the ones who slip quietly out the same way they came in. There is no shame in being or having acquaintances. They, too, are part of community. They, too, are part of living in a place...

but oh, the rich flavour of friends' voices, the ease and joy of their smiles, their laughter, their care, their love. Oh, the relief of being truly known...and oh, the relief in being able to love.

democracy comes to the dictionary

2005-10-27T13:11:00.000-05:00

Have you seen this?

If there's an archive, someday some future etymologist/sociologist is going to have a field day. Someone is probably drafting a thesis proposal as I type.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can enjoy. My current favorite? This one, submitted by Jonathan Keith Sheriff:

genderflex (verb) : "genderflex \jen'-der-fleks\ vi 1: to temporarily use communication behaviors typical of the other gender in order to increase potential for influence."
Research has shown that those who adhere too rigidly to stereotypical gender roles are at increased risk for social pathologies: women become dependent and self-deprecating; men become arrogant and domineering—the solution is to genderflex! (my sentence) —judith c tingley, genderflex: men & women speaking..., 1994
Submitted by: jonathan keith sheriff from California on Oct. 26, 2005 18:33

zeros and ones

2005-10-12T14:04:00.000-05:00

Sometimes existing structures change themselves to work better. This is good.

MSN, for example, seems to have self-improved quite by accident. (It will surprise no one to hear that I'm not sure they could have done it on purpose). For an assortment of reasons I have been using the actual MSN client of late, and not always Trillian, a multi-service client by Cerulean Studios. I like Trillian, but some things work better in the original.

When someone is Away or Idle, MSN says, "[user's name] may not respond because he or she appears to be offline (or away from the computer or whatever)". In use, this comes out thus: "Mary may not respond because he or she appears to be offline."

I like this.

Who says Mary is female, or uses "she"? The computer doesn't know, care, or discriminate. Yay for that.

Sometimes binary code is the fairest of them all. I knew I liked computers for a reason.

repentance

2005-10-07T11:34:00.000-05:00

I grew up knowing that Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah were high holy days before I knew anything about what that meant. In my half-Jewish town, we got those days off from school, two for Rosh Hashanah and one for Yom Kippur. It made a mess of the beginning of the school year, what with Labour Day and then these other two interruptions following right on the heels of the summer, but really it was a long-life lesson in honouring things that are bigger than work, stronger than routine, important enough to be ritual, to be sacred.

It wasn't until I was much older that I understood what was happening, understood the question of the book of life and God's writing one's fate...and it wasn't until years after that that I understood the value of a time for asking forgiveness.

See, you have better odds of being forgiven during these ten days, but I don't believe those odds have to do with God or the threat of a bad write-up. For me, those improved odds are because everyone is contemplating their own failures, their own atonements, their own humanity, their own need to be forgiven.

May I know the difference between asking for forgiveness and relinquishing self-respect. May I know for what I need to ask forgiveness. May I find forgiveness when I am asked.

blessed be.

hang gliding

2005-09-25T14:36:00.000-05:00

that speck in the sky? that's me.
you can use this noncommercially only and with attribution, please

pink

2005-08-24T22:55:00.000-05:00

My new (to me) bicycle is pink. Bright pink. It looks like a potential prop for Legally Blonde III. *grin*

Sometimes it is important to do the unexpected just to see how you will react.
Sometimes you can discover whole new parts of yourself that way.
Sometimes it's fun.
Sometimes it's frightening.
Sometimes it's both.

Here's to summer adventuring, and keeping the lessons close to our hearts.
Here's to the arrival of fall.
Here's to the turning and turning of the year.
Here's to the patience and consistency of time.
Here's to love and hope and knowing they sustain us.
Here's to the unknown,
the unexpected,
and those things we know to be true.

Here's to community
here's to connection
and again,
here's to love.

...

2005-08-12T21:32:00.000-05:00

all my friends are beautiful
please don't use this photo

heat

2005-08-04T17:21:00.000-05:00

even these hot days
are thick with opportunity
how well do you know your
body
its stresses
tension points
sensations?
how well do you know your skin?
did you know what it is
to drip with sweat,
long cords of relief
tracing
snaking lines
on seamless
dunes,
the only motion in the
end
less
day?

rest

2005-07-30T21:12:00.000-05:00

I have been resting: resting by sleeping, resting by walking...resting by roadtripping and riding rollercoasters and staying up until 2AM, singing; resting by finding the spaces where I need to do things and doing them, resting by laughing until my belly hurts--and crying until my belly hurts. I begin work again on Monday. I am deep in gratitude for the pause.

I have also been resting by making photographs...and eating dinner.

Dinner candle:

The guitar:

One of the roller coasters:

no, really--rest.

oops

2005-07-28T10:55:00.000-05:00

A while back I posted about creativity.
In the whirl of beginnings and endings and more beginnings I forgot again.

No, that sounds like an excuse. I just forgot.

It's so easy to forget. Easier than remembering, even.
Like journaling, it's the sort of forgetting that has to be forgiven. I cannot recapture all the days when I could have done better; I can only do more in the days to come. After a month of travel-packed "vacation" I am looking forward to the relative peace of sitting still, of working some, of routine. I don't like to admit it, but sometimes routines are helpful...and maybe this time I will include creation.

One can hope.

early morning

2005-07-16T06:50:00.000-05:00

There is nothing quite so precious
as cool sun before seven,
bending and bouncing its
yellow-orange way
into today, cool
breeze called
on waves of light, washing
spirit
leavening soul
grounding and lifting
roots and wings
beginning.

desire

2005-07-02T10:36:00.000-05:00

i am wanting
straw
berries
ripe, red lush
jucy
sweet
i am wanting dipped
in cream
in sour cream
in honey
sticky-fingered
licking
all night.

odds

2005-06-25T01:01:00.000-05:00

Odds mean nothing if you're in the exceptional few.
This can be a blessing, or it can not.

touch

2005-06-24T08:52:00.000-05:00

Monkeys need touch. People are monkeys (well, okay, apes. Well, okay, it's more complicated. Just go with me here). Ergo, people need touch. We seem to forget this. In fact, we seem to put effort into ignoring it, detaching from it, burying this most primal of needs.

Are we nuts?

Over the years there have been studies. Lots of them. They all seem to show the same thing: yes, we really do need touch; no, ignoring it doesn't work; yes, we actually need the brain and body chemistry caused by touch, and no, it's not all about sex.

consider this: cuddle parties.

I had this idea yesterday. An image. Riding the subway, standing on the bus, the person behind you reaches forward, says, May I?, gently puts a hand on your shoulder. You turn around, say, Thanks, that feels nice.

Can you even imagine?

intention

2005-06-20T08:12:00.000-05:00

Several years ago I got intentional about intention. Prompted by friends and my life, I started paying attention: to what I wanted, to what I really wanted, to the extra doubts and thoughts that could get in my way, to the expectations of failure which do, in fact, function just like expectations of success and beauty.

I have gotten lost along the way several times, but I have kept practising.

And now, it seems, the intentions have caught up with me. I have learned that when I am very clear about what I want or need, it is good to articulate it, write it down, refine it, and reread it. If it is supremely clear I make sure to keep a copy or two. I do it without really thinking about its efficacy, partly I think because thinking too hard makes room for doubts which undermine the whole thing. I double-check it in the way of people carefully making wishes, to make sure that there are few or no misinterpretations. I also check for unnecessary restrictions which are likely to make the whole thing unlikely. Then I go on about my life.

I did this recently out of habit.

I just got what I asked for. Very nearly to the letter. Now I don't believe in an intercedent god. What I do believe in is a universe which tends toward the good.

And thank goodness for that. *smile*

turning up

2005-06-17T11:47:00.000-05:00

Sometimes thing turn up, and sometimes they turn upward. Sometimes the task, then, is to accept the upturn and not question its presence too much. Certainly it is bad form to try and figure out why an upturn is really a downturn, especially if it isn't. Really, I must remember that more often. Sometimes things turn up, and sometimes they turn upward. Sometimes, they do both. *smile*

building it in

2005-06-10T08:21:00.000-05:00

Many years ago, I discovered creativity. I figured out that making stuff felt good. I made stuff without thinking too much about it--it was just what I did. Then I started to grow up, and my to-do list got longer, and "make stuff" wasn't on there. No drawing, no painting, no hammering and nailing, no writing stories or poems...
It never occured to me to write it down, so when my life got busy and the to-do list took over, it disappeared. By accident. Yes, really.

...but as an adolescent I was still doing stuff: playing flute, writing stories for English class, singing in choirs, being a theatre techie. It wasn't quite as good, but there was enough. By university it was starting to fade. Flute was gone, English classes were pure analysis, theatre tech was a job instead of an avocation, and when I graduated, it all came to a grinding halt.

I didn't even realise what I'd done to myself for years. I couldn't figure out why I was more depressed, more tired, and less inspired than ever. I went to India for eight months, in relative cultural and linguistic isolation. I took a copy of Julia Cameron's The Artists Way. And I figured it out.

Hallelujah! I had the answer! I returned home, determined to make writing my life, get an MFA, teach and write and teach and write.

Then I got back. Needed a job. Needed an apartment. Had a job. Had an apartment. Wrote my to-do list. "Create body of work for MFA application" was somewhere below "dust refrigerator". Besides, it was now work in itself. It never got done, and meanwhile I ran into a tangle of experiences that led me down this other path to seminary. "Knowing how way leads on to way/ I doubted if I should ever come back." (Robert Frost)

Somehow, though, I keep picking up arts anyway. I use my needs as an excuse to take up knitting, sewing, woodworking, ("Oh, I'll just build that table instead of buying it...")

...and that has been my saving grace. Creation is built in. It doesn't show up as a separate, insignificant item which can be shuffled to the bottom. Thank you notes are a fifteen minute drawing exercise (thank you, Strathmore!) and a five minute gratitude meditation. Wool socks are a quick two-week project, preceded by a tactile play session choosing yarn. Do I sound like Martha Stewart? The trick is balance. Always balance. When it slips from joy to stress, simplify. When the stress is lack of joy, slow down. This works for food, transportation, life.

May I remember this more often.

missing tree

2005-06-04T12:05:00.000-05:00

My landlady hired a company to cut down the only tree at this apartment building. It stood in the corner of the parking area, shading the yard and being green and pretty in the view from my east-facing window. Now it's a barren expanse of concrete.

The tree cutting guys said it's probably a liability issue, mandated by the insurance company, even though the tree was healthy.

Dammit.

suddenly

2005-06-01T10:50:00.000-05:00

good enough to eat
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beauty everywhere

2005-05-22T07:08:00.000-05:00

By a series of nosings-around I came to flickr.com, which was boasting this quotation this morning:

I hate flowers. I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move. - Georgia O'Keefe

I want to say for the record that I don't want to be that kind of photographer. Sadly, at the moment I think I am. I'm shy of asking people to share themselves with me in such an intimate act. Sometimes I photograph animals, but it is people which fascinate me; people personally, people emotionally, people aesthetically.

The curve of a hip, the curve of a smile, the places where we are all the same, the spaces where some of us are so different...people are beautiful. All people are beautiful somehow, even the cruel ones whose beauty is in the skill or talent or grace of their cruelty, even those whose beauty is less commonly accepted or understood...the joy of art is that you can find anything in anything, and what you find, you can share. Some artists choose to find ugliness everywhere. I choose to find beauty.

conference truth

2005-05-20T07:16:00.000-05:00

I have been attending conferences since I was 14 years old. My first conference was in New York City; we were housed at the 92nd St. Y and we spent our days in meetings with Very Important People (UN-type-people. International Leader Type People.) ...and with each other. Our nights were spent staying up way too late perched on beds and curled in corners of those impossibly tiny rooms, talking and laughing and working a million knots out of shoulder blades and backs and feet and hands. In the intervening years (over half of my life, now) I have learned a lot about conferences, but none more profound than what I learned in New York, years ago:
the true conference content is not the material, not the handouts, not the workshops, not the experts. The true conference is what happens between workshops, at lunch, after dinner, at 2AM. The true conference is the connections between people. Everything else is commentary.

I am at a conference. It is morning. I am very tired, and the conference programming (which I will not skip) begins in half an hour.

...and the sun is shining; all is right with the world.

tractors on parade

2005-05-16T10:01:00.000-05:00

There were tractors outside my window this morning. Lots of tractors. Blue ones and red ones and green ones (lots and lots of green ones). They apparently are dairy farmers. They apparently want equity with US grain farmers...but I'm not sure how. And apparently they realised that a long line of tractors stretching down the 417, down the exit ramp, and streaming into downtown toward Parliament was a good way to get attention. It must have been quite a sight this morning, with everyone finishing their morning chores and putt-putt-putting down the small agricultural roads to the large agricultural roads to the highway. There's an incredible feeling of power in knowing you're not alone.

---

Update:
Here's the CBC news story.

curbside bouquet

2005-05-12T22:34:00.000-05:00

Odd how context means so much.
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flying buds

2005-05-12T22:30:00.000-05:00

Every year it comes, and I am grateful.
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empty spaces

2005-05-07T23:29:00.000-05:00

There is a space in my house on top of a shelf that I have been trying to keep clear. I wasn't trying to defy nature--it's not intended to remain clear forever. It was supposed to remain clear until I finish my work year and bring things home. The four objects on my altar at work were eventually supposed to fill that space: a small tree, an empty bowl made from a dried out cantaloupe husk scraped thin that I rescued from the church rummage sale, a chalice made with stones and glass and metal and tea lights, and a small ceramic bowl for a water ritual shared by a group from seminary. I added objects until it felt right, and one day realised: earth, air, fire, water. Not by design, but by working for balance. I like it so much that I want to bring it home.

Then came this party. I invited people, about a third of them came, and my place was stuffed with people having conversation and good food and some of them brought gifts too. The first one was a few stems of lucky bamboo which I put on the altar-to-be and next thing I know it's crowded with tulips and candle and a guide to local restaurants and two funny and sweet cards.

And maybe that's the way of the world, then, a good way to start this fourth decade: you keep spaces open and the unexpected falls into them...but you can do some inviting along the way.

I am grateful for the friends, and the community, and for the tangerine and yellow tulips that just exactly match the socks I've been knitting. I am grateful for people who show up, share themselves, choose connection over isolation. I am grateful that I have learned to let the process work for itself. And I am grateful that I do not have to get up at six in the morning tomorrow. Make empty spaces, invite goodness. Be lucky. Amen.

yellow

2005-04-24T18:09:00.000-05:00

bloom anyway.
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water

2005-04-24T17:14:00.000-05:00

we needed the rain
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deep peace

2005-04-19T21:08:00.000-05:00

Tonight I went for a walk. I left at dusk in sandals and a light jacket, just as the sky was going grey.

I went south, moving easy; I smelled dirt, and new-grown bulbs, and trees going into bud, and exhaust and water and things becoming all over the place. I went further and smelled woodsmoke from the bagel shop oven, (open 24 hours and 365 days) then turned to walk along the water in the gathering darkness.

I took the other path tonight, the one I've never taken before. It winds along the far side of the street, between trees and past patches of almost-tulips, waiting to become carpets of colour in the season's change. I found a tucked-away monument cradled in an arc of benches, and quiet patches of grass perfect for reading someday this summer. All the while the lights glinting off the wide, wet ribbon to my right, curling and bending, matching every move of the asphalt under my feet. I resisted the temptation to go barefoot, but I will not resist all summer--I will slip off my sandals and let my roots go down and my leaves go up, like in the Robert Fulghum essay--and no one will know how or why...that's just how it always is. When I got home the sun was down and I was breathing deep, measured breaths all the way into my soul. I could not find spring, but it has found me.

Hallelujah, amen, and blessed be.

PS: I notice Jill has opened up comments. Good job, Jill! That's awesome. And brave. I will continue to resist, for now.

quiet passion

2005-04-06T09:12:00.000-05:00

Music changes my life. After several years of contemplation, I finally ordered five CDs by a singer/songwriter named Cindy Kallet, a musician with whose music I have been in love since I was fifteen. Her music is slowly cracking me open, a seedpod in the dry richness of new spring earth. It is hope and grief and joy and regret in one beatiful bouquet. I miss my flute now, I miss singing when I neglect it, I miss hours at the piano, fingers wandering across the keyboard in search of something too deep to say. The guitar over in the corner beckons, a quiet crooking of the finger that says, come. come here and dance with me, let me open you, let me sing with you, cradle me.

deep safety

2005-04-04T13:43:00.000-05:00

I find since I came to Canada I'm getting soft.

Certainly not soft on weather--I can honestly find twenty below zero (F) perfectly good weather for going out in.

Certainly not soft professionally--I have worked with more passion and heart and dedication here than ever before, and have agonised more over my work here than anywhere.

Certainly not soft of heart...and yet yes, soft of heart.

While I have become more sure than ever that the fate of my heart rests entirely in my hands, I have also learned to make choices about it, and here it is safe to choose to leave my heart open, door unlocked.

When four Mounties were killed in the line of duty in Alberta, the whole country went into mourning.

When I heard about a school shooting I felt tears rise to the surface, tears for people I did not know in a place I had never visited. Unthinkable tears in New York, Chicago, even Boston stream down my face here; strangers who refuse eye contact hold each other in their hearts and thoughts and prayers and dreams, and those intangibles move people and change the planet, this little corner first. The choice is to act out of love, not out of fear. The choice is to act for the good of the whole, not the good of the scared. The choice is to look for the longer term, the bigger picture, the people not at the table.

People are not always nice here. I still lock my door; I still lock my car. People make mistakes, people are intentionally difficult...but when there is tragedy here, it is tragedy. Loss is loss, and death is death. Here there is a plainness about the things that really seem to matter--life, death, love, loss. I appreciate that in a people. I appreciate the strength underneath, too. There's a deeper safety in this than is ever found in locking gates and battening down hatches. It's a safety that invites growth, and I am unfurling into it.

I find since I came to Canada I'm getting soft, and I am grateful.

closet wisdom

2005-03-30T08:54:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of this blog I said it was inspired by Jill. Here is yet another example of her beautiful vision. Her closet gets organised; she finds abundance. Like me, she doesn't allow comments, so I will comment here. Thank you, Jill. You gave me good tears this morning. I will try to see more clearly today. Thank you, Jill.

faded beauty

2005-03-23T10:46:00.000-05:00

still beautiful
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a man and his dog

2005-03-20T15:10:00.000-05:00

Ben is dead and I want the world to stop. Ben walked his dog Friday night. He was crossing the street. A driver who may have been drunk honked but didn't stop, didn't slow down enough, hit Ben, hit the dog. Theo was killed instantly. Ben survived long enough to go to the hospital, where he died from his injuries.

Ben had a beautiful bass voice and a wide-reaching circle of family and friends. He worked for the Canadian AIDS society, sang with two groups, and loved dogs, especially Theo.

When someone dies, you want the world to stop, can't believe that it's still the first day of spring and the sun still rises. You can't believe that people are still laughing and yet at this time, more than any other, you, too need to laugh, need to feel spring, need to see the sun on the horizon. At this time above all others, you need hope...and it's always there.

may I find it soon; may it ever be so.

love take me now

2005-03-14T09:56:00.000-05:00

I'm teary again. There this song.....

Love take me now, come hold me now,
and carry me over this restless field;
love take me now, move through me now,
and raise me up over this restless field.
-- LJ Booth

The nature of human love is a strange thing. Theists often hold it up against the love of God, musicians often talk about romantic love like it's the only one, mothers have nothing to compare to their love for their children, and yet so many people don't believe in it at all--like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the tooth fairy, gone with the innocence of childhood into the deep reaches of some bottomless vat of lost emotion.

I believe in love, although I don't believe in a sentient, intercedent god. The church I grew up in had a pulpit with "God is Love" inscribed on the front in bas-relief--at age 7 I managed to get it inside out and wonder if not believing in God meant that I couldn't believe in love, either, and for a while I didn't. I have claimed my innocence as I've aged.

Love is real. Love appears in my life all the time--when I'm fighting it, when I'm tired of it, when it isn't convenient, when it makes no sense, when it hurts more than anything except hatred or indifference. Love brings tears to my eyes when I can't cry, and brings laughter through the tears. Love moves, love transforms, love changes, love drives life. Oh yes, love is real. It is spiritual discipline to have faith, even faith in love, and it is spiritual discipline to allow it to guide my life. Does it sound like I'm talking about a god? Language is inadequate to heartspeech; we do the best we can.

prayer:
May my heart remain soft and open.
May I never close myself to love.
May I give and receive love freely.
May love to transform me.
May love remain present and vital in me all the days of my life.

not okay

2005-02-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

Every time I see a story like this one, another kid or grownup or in-between human headed to seminary, I stop and get all teary and think, “god, I hope he’s gonna be okay.” Then I really want to cry because I know he won’t be. There is no way you can go through seminary and be okay. You may be fabulous, reborn, ripped apart, completely disillusioned, buried by doubts or your own fear about your self-worth, and ultimately amazing and shiny and shaking all at once, but you will not, I promise, you will not be okay. As I’m writing this I’m trying to prove myself wrong, find the exception to the rule, discover in my story banks the one about the Okay Seminarian, but it isn’t there because it doesn’t exist because it can’t happen. Even if you believe enough to show up and then decide it isn’t for you, you will have been changed, doors opened that cannot be closed again. Seminary is like technical theatre, like seeing backstage where the magical people are not magical but just like you, pulling strings and levers to let everyone into themselves a little more. We don’t lie in church any more than we lie in theatre—what we do is give you a vision of a reality that has never been, but could be, for better or for worse. Then we give you some tools, a little window of possibility. The rest is up to you.

real

2005-02-23T11:37:00.000-05:00

You know that oft-quoted Velveteen Rabbit book, and how it talks about being real, when your fur is all worn off and so on? I think I've been thinking about it, because I wrote this. Not knowing where else to put it, I'm putting it here. Enjoy.

My desk has a smudge on it. It’s blood—from one of the times I was chewing on my fingers and made them bleed, then forgot about it. Unfinished wood absorbs stuff really well, blood and oil and dust and grit, everything all at once. That’s why well-used furniture has that special sheen to it, a glow that can’t be imparted by any other process. Using things really does make them real—things and places and people and feelings.

Some days I just feel like I have to cry—you know those days? The days when the lump in your chest is trying to come up to your throat but too much swallowing hard is keeping it from making any progress. I have a picture of a painting of Madame Renoir, just called that, Madame Renoir. Looking at it sometimes helps that lump get somewhere. You know the famous painter Renoir, with all those paintings of things and places mostly, and a few girls? This is one of his: a painting of a woman, robust and pink-cheeked, with a yellow hat and pink roses on it. She is not slim or necessarily very young, but she looks like a gardener, and she looks like she knows what she’s about. Her eyes look straight out at you, not shy or defiant, just there, like she’s seeing a friend. I found this print in a drawer in Montague, Massachusetts, at a bookstore which advertises “books you don’t need in a place you can’t find.” For all that, they have an awful lot of dedicated patrons.

Montague is an interesting place in itself. Population probably well under two thousand, they are known locally for their traditional Hallowe’en, done just like it used to be when we were kids—they draw hundreds of out-of-towners to see this living history work of love, put on by the people who see no reason to lock and shutter themselves out of existence. They are a mere two hours from Boston by car, and yet if you have never been to New England, you might not know it. New England is a rapidly changeable place—give yourself thirty minutes driving time and you can move from farms to city, or metropolis to quiet countryside. You can hike and ski and dance all within a 90 minute radius if you know where to look…and you can have a proper Hallowe’en and still be home in time for a Samhain circle at midnight. It’s all in there, everything shrunk down and fitted together like so many pieces of a puzzle.

I was in Boston last weekend, right downtown in a hotel I almost never left for four days. That’s sad—it makes two trips to Boston where I haven’t even gone as far as the ocean, which is right there, and I miss the ocean. It’s also sad because I get homesick going back. I know where I belong—somewhere between Boston and Maine, tucked into a small liberal town with a sense of humour and a sense of tradition. I can fit in other places, but knowing where you belong means you are never quite at home anywhere else.

Having a home is part of being real, and being real sometimes hurts. I don’t know what the balance point is, between being real and not taking care of yourself. I think most of us spend most of our lives trying to figure that out. I do know that I have a richer life because I keep my heart open and I let myself love people and places and ways of being. I could change, maybe if I wanted to, but I like myself better when I’m soft and gentle and unguarded. Leading a defended life doesn’t help me or anyone else, and I don’t like myself for doing it. I think living gently makes us stronger in the end, all of us.

You know that painting of Madame Renoir? I looked it up online. The original is in a museum of art in Philadelphia. I sure hope they know what they’ve got. Clear eyes that can see right through you aren’t a dime a dozen in paintings, or in art of any kind. She has a strength I wish I could claim as mine, too. He painted another picture of her over ten years later, this time with Bob, a tiny dog, cradled on her arm. The strength is still there.

company

2005-02-11T11:26:00.000-05:00

Some days, it's good not to be alone. My parents visited recently, but that's a strange kind of alone-together. This is different; yesterday was one of those days. In the midst of the grey and the almost-sometimes snow, I had friends to call, some life maintenance to do, and sleep to get. I didn't get to the sleep, but I did read a blog by someone who is good at being honest. I then did an odd thing--I wrote an email to the blogger. We'll see what happens; sometimes these things work, sometimes they don't. But sometimes it's important to know that someone Out There is having experiences so much like yours that you could have written them. I'm going to be writing about faith soon for work, and it's good to have days like yesterday to restore my faith in the world. Each day a little gets chipped away, but if you let it, each day a little gets put back. Slowly, slowly, the faith is growing. So may it be.

Update: The blogger very kindly granted his permission to use his work. :-) See? Sometimes it all works out. Many thanks to the many people who give me reason to have faith in the little daily ways. I am so lucky.

some things feel sacred

2005-01-24T17:56:00.000-05:00

like making rice the way my grandmother taught me. Rice, just barely more water, pressure cooker, bring to the point of pressure release, simmer on impossibly low heat five minutes, turn off the heat, two minutes, release the steam, the lid, the rice. Today I mix old and new: pressure-cooker rice and prepackaged cream sauce originally intended for chicken. It's going to be egg curry, now. Dadi would flinch but she knows cooking as all-day practice. Discipline. I mostly learned it as hunger-avoidance, as party trick, as survival skill. I do not eat chickpea flour and water and spices, mixed and balled up in my hand; that would be true survival cooking. Rickshaw-wallahs eat that day in, day out. Their calves are ropy muscle tied to bone; their faces are gaunt--it is cheap, cheaper than the eggs you can buy from the next wallah over, with his charcoal fire-in-a-pot for roasting them. It doesn't taste bad, if you don't mind chalky, and it's high in protein. They eat a lot. Then they barter: extra for a fat American, they say. It's a lot of weight.

every layer has a pocket

2005-01-21T15:20:00.000-05:00

Ever notice that it gets harder to find your keys the colder it gets? It's not because you're frozen to your chair (although this might be the case) or because you lose your motivation to go out (also possibly the case). No, it's because of the pocket multiplication factor. Take today for instance. I was wearing jeans (four pockets plus a watch pocket--which, by the way, Levi's has seen fit to make big enough for credit cards in their men's models, which I think is brilliant)...anyway, four pockets plus a watch pocket, a t-shirt (no pockets) a 100-weight fleece (no pockets), a 300-weight fleece (two pockets), and a winter parka (three outside pockets, two inside pockets). Total pocket count: 11 and a watch pocket. This up from summer's usual four on the jeans, no fleeces or jackets.

Okay, not every layer has a pocket. But close.

ice skates

2005-01-08T11:13:00.000-05:00

I have a shiny pair of ice skates. They are not new--I have had them since my first or second year of university. I got them in a little sports store on the main street of the little town in Minnesota where I went to school. I was not willing to buy the cheapest skates, but I was, after all, on a budget. Last night I put them on my feet for the first time in two years, possibly more. Pleased to see they still appear to fit. Sorry to see the leather has gotten stiff from neglect. Need to find out what one does to loosen old but untrammeled leather...if anything.

Motivation: the canal is frozen. Yesterday I was walking over the canal on a bridge and saw people skating along the canal, which has been ploughed and will be maintained as long as the weather sees fit to keep it solid. People were right, there's a sense of, "what century is this, anyway?" People skating on the canal. Skating to work, even. Skating with baby carriages. Toto, we're not in Kansas. Not even close. I think it's great. :-)