Thinkin' 'bout stuff

A boisterous late-night HELLO to my dear real and imagined readers!  What a treat it is to read blogs and participate in them.  Facebook is fun 'n all (I really am in an apostrophic mood), but I like the reined-in intimacy that this mode of communication provides.

I am so inspired by the people around me and on the Web who seek to live awake, on purpose, and with joy.

The particular flavor of joy I've been feeling of late is the type that belongs more in the subdued joy category than the crazy, colorful joy category.

I joyfully accept that.  I like neutral colors, too.  And we're in that neutral, Thanksgiving-y joy season.  Reflective joy.

Here are some of my neutral, subdued, reflective joys:  my family, the four of us and our extended family; birthday parties in churches; my-sister's-just-become-an-art-therapist parties (love those!); a gazania plant that continues to open and close in the sun; yellow maple leaves on the windshield of the car across the street and the neighbor boy wearing Anna's hat; Anthony Bourdain; John Taylor Gatto; the Renaissance Soul idea; the fact that I am bearing witness to the people my kids are becoming; sermons delivered by a two-year-old, a four-year-old, and an almost-nine-year-old in an empty church sanctuary this morning; the powerful knowledge that I can ask.for.help.; vegan cookbooks and all manner of cookbooks; a row of knitting here and there; preparations for an Advent spiral; a working dishwasher; love, love, love; health; delicious food; fondue, sausage, chicken burritos, green smoothies, roasted nuts, mangoes, sweet potatoes, chocolate chip cookies...help me!

Amen.  And goodnight!

daughters, cows and goddesses

Assumption of Mary yesterday.  Sunday night I had the privilege of reading this gorgeous poem while a friend danced at a vesper service in Mary's honor.  What an all-round gorgeous opportunity.

I've celebrated August 15 in an inward sort of way for quite a few years now.  But I don't know why.  I learned about the day from one of my all-time favorite books, Gertrud Mueller Nelson's To Dance with God.

I don't understand and just-plain-can't articulate my relationship with Mary, but I enjoy it.  And I suspect it points me to an even broader goddess/Sophia love.  I need to read this book next.

Yesterday I spoke with my dad on the phone.  He told me about a 24/7 dairy farm he visited in Vermont.  Robots milk the cows.  I find that depressing and disrespectful to the process of lactation.  I have been moving away from cow's milk over the last five months, and see myself continuing in that direction.  Never say never, and everything in moderation and all.  No need for extremism on this end.  Yet it's that subjugation thing at work, even (or especially) at the dairy.  The suppression of female energy, the distortion of male energy, the absence of balance.

None of it is new, and it's not getting me down, really.  But I am captivated by the exploration, by the old women I meet in my dreams, by the intersections of past and future that are as near as a baby girl's soft skin next to a mother's withered hand.

Knowing I'm never alone on this exciting leg of the journey of life is a great consolation.  I'm wondering and noticing things women have wondered and noticed forever.  And change still happens, even as the questions persist.

on mystery, revolution and the goddess who mothers

Today I had the privilege of hearing Bess Klassen Landis share about her experience being the daughter of a woman who was brutally murdered before the age of 42.  Bess was thirteen at the time.

Stories like that aren't soon forgotten, especially when they are told by individuals who speak from a deep place of peace and surrender, as Bess did.  As I reflect on Bess's story, the songs with which she accompanied it, and the blessing that led into the silence that followed her sharing, my heart is summoned yet again to heed its job and calling:  to be true to the life I've been given, to let my life speak, to take the business of my humanity seriously and lightly at the same time.

I also had the privilege of sitting face-to-face with my mother this morning after Bess's sermon.  We don't go to church together, so I seldom see her on Sundays.  These days, I'm more mindful than ever of the ways I resemble her:  the gifts I bear that are like hers, the gifts I bear that are different from her own, and the genes within me that came from her.  My way of being in the world is both like hers and different from hers.

Ach!  I'm not remembering the truth of what I wanted to say as accurately now, after the fact, as I was when I was thinking these thoughts of profundity three or more hours ago.  Suffice it to say, as a forty-year-old woman, I take the call to live my life more seriously than I did ten and twenty and twenty-five years ago.  Time is fleeting.  It's true.  Now is the time to live intentionally and do the things I want to do.

And playing magnets with a certain adorable girl (after changing her diaper) is first on the to-do list.

Oh!  And the goddess and revolution thoughts:  I was conscious of a mothering presence--the goddess--sitting near me today as I reflected on Bess's words and my own experience of them.  She is ever-near, and I struggle to find the words to describe her salty, grassy, dry and wet greatness.  So that's the mystery, too.  And the revolution?  Well, it's just trying to claim the days as sacred, recognizing that they certainly, certainly are.

vows to self and life

This 30 Day Vegan experience has been a good one for me.  How I have marveled at the plant realm's ability to nourish me, many days exclusively.  I have not kept a vegan diet 100% of the time, and I have not felt compelled to.

What I have done is discover that, at 40 and at this stage in my life, I am much opener to dietary changes than I was ten or fifteen years ago.  I am now more curious:  how does dairy affect my health?  What does my body feel like while eating wheat?  Meat? 

Sugar...that's a different topic, maybe one I'll explore later on this year.  Who knows?

For now, I joyfully keep a vow to remain plant-centered in my eating.  I crave beef and fish, and enjoy eating those meats.  I listen to my body and what it asks for.  What an amazing experience!

What I've been surprised by is that avocados, raw cashews, maple syrup, kale, sweet potatoes, coconut milk and oil, dark or semi-sweet chocolate, bananas, artichokes, blueberries, almonds, and many other things are more than luxurious enough to get me through the day. 

I give thanks for the grass-fed hamburger I've been privileged to enjoy, the free-range eggs that are on their way to me, and the plants that are the center of my sustenance.

In the midst of all the toddler-care, homeschooling and family responsibilities, I took the opportunity to make and share a delicious vegan soup on Saturday.  As Heather shared with the other retreatants on Saturday, soup-making and, of course, all cooking, can be a spiritual discipline.

Not only that, our very lives depend on our cooking and food preparation.  I sense this in a deeper way now than I used to.  The necessity of chopping so many fruits and vegetables has attuned me to that.

I was asked Saturday evening if I was sad to return from the conference I attended last week.  "Was it hard to come home [to reality]?"

I guess the vow I am and have been making is one (many) to use ritual, daily habits, how I eat, to try and keep life "all of a piece."

I have to chuckle, though, as I read that last sentence, because I'm a newbie, a baby, an ever-needing-to-begin-again beginner with regard to habits.

Yet I am conscious.  I am conscious that I want both the ecstasy and the laundry, to borrow the title of the Jack Kornfield book I have been wanting to read.

Livin' with polarities.  That's life.  That's me.  Here I am. 

Thanks be to God.  Blessed be.

30 Day Vegan, Week 2

I have eaten several animal foods this week:  some salmon with real egg mayonnaise for breakfast on Thursday, a taste of sausage and sauerkraut on Tuesday evening, and a host of things today, including coffee cake and poached eggs.

I have decided to continue eating mostly vegan through the Lenten season.  I feel this is a life-affirming decision because I want to have more time to let my body discover what this way of eating is like; because I have interrupted the pattern in a major way today, I look forward to more weeks of sustained plant-based food. 

But I will continue eating whatever on Sundays.  That's just how it goes.  Also, I'm traveling this week.  I have no idea what that's going to look like, but I plan to go with the flow and enjoy my food, whatever it is.

I am noticing:

mood and emotions:  I have felt a little sad to be "off" my plan today.  I could have gone vegan at lunch.  The menu was groundnut stew with a lot of accompaniments.  The stew, though, looked so good, and the beef was grown by the farmers who served it to me at their table....I did start the day with a delicious green smoothie, using Heather's recipe, including kale.

On Saturday I attended a gathering where ice cream cake was served.  It was no problem for me to decline a piece.  That amazes me.  I felt great saying no.  I was enjoying myself and had zero emotional need to eat the cake, as well as zero physical desire.  Coming from me, that's pretty curious.

chewing and digestion:  haven't had as many raw vegetables this week as the previous week, and I miss that.  I am noticing that I'm enjoying straight-up plain vegetables (sans dressing or tahini or whatever) more than I thought I would, on the occasions when I eat things plain.  Strange as it seems to me, I need to eat more fiber this week ;).

cravings:  I seem to crave what Heather suggests.  Last week she mentioned salmon, and I couldn't get it out of my mind.  I baked some for Joel and decided I had to eat just a little.  It was sooooooo good.

This way of eating does not exclude chocolate.  That is the only thing I crave regularly.  I have been eating chocolate chips every day and basically feeling good about that.  Perhaps I will try going without sometime this week.

biggest challenge:  This one is no surprise.  It's getting my food ready while also cooking for the family.  We are all eating some of the same things:  quinoa this week, some of the vegetables and fruits, but I'm also making food just for them--not complicated stuff, but things that still take time to make.

greatest accomplishment:  I would say that one was going to a brunch and turning down the ice cream cake.  That is just so unlike me.  And I felt so good doing it.  Very curious indeed.  I am enjoying my current weight, too.  Without so much as trying I suppose I've lost a couple pounds.  That's a pleasure, because my favorite vintage skirt fits just right, and it's been too tight around the waist since I bought it a year ago.

next week I plan to:  get through the week.  My toddler and I are going on a trip to Indiana to attend an exciting conference.  I'm planning on letting go and enjoying the ride.

the vegan scene

I, dairy farmer's daughter and hog farmer's niece, still can't believe I am even experimenting with veganism. 

That said, I will share that I am noticing...

a great deal of energy coming from the food I eat
that I have many, many options for what to eat
joy in cooking that I haven't felt before, even though I enjoy cooking
a sense of amazement that I can feel well-nourished eating only plant foods.

I have enjoyed green smoothies, roasted vegetables with tahini sauce, almond milk smoothies, mushroom bierrocks, hummus, and so much more.

I'll be pondering this experience for a while to come.

figuring out some things

It's been great to blog again.  I've gotten to know some fabulous new (to me) bloggers and gained necessary inspiration for my daily life.

And now it's time for me to take a bit of a break.  I've got many irons in the fire right now:  taxes, upkeep on our home business records, a new dishwasher on the way (truly, glory hallelujah; I thought I could get into washing by hand, but I haven't been able to swing it), a potential new 1/4 time job for me at our church, the usual round of homeschooling things, preparations for a spring equinox celebration, a conference on Mary in Anabaptist Dress, which will provide me with the opportunity to read a lovely Gerard Manley Hopkins poem (bliss) and...an exciting 30-day at-home retreat for me (with Heather from Beauty that Moves).

Blessings!

brother and sister

She is almost two and, spiritually and psychologically, it has taken me this long to believe and understand that they really are sister and brother.  They're both "mine," and they belong to each other.  And they really like being together.  Both sick this morning, they're sleeping side-by-side.

the squared circle that got me to a new place

from Coloring Mandalas by Susanne F. Fincher

"During stage 7, Squaring the Circle, the resolution of inner conflicts creates a stronger, more complex personality.  You may find yourself motivated by a sense of mission that engages your whole self in the accomplishment of worthy goals.  This mandala, like a crusader's shield, boldly announces, 'I am here.'"

That was me at age 36.  I remember settling myself down on a soccer field sideline, getting cozy in the warm, electric green grass.  I guess it was autumn, 2005, so I was just 35, about to turn 36.  I took out colored pencils, opened the book, and this image arrested my eyes.  I did not stop, as I recall.  I read the description, thought, "Oh yeah.  That's me," and set to work.  The four squares helped unify my soul.  The fragments of my spiritual self needed a common purpose to work for--me!

I discovered that I was not just chaplain, not just get-the-job-done-er.  I was struggling to integrate motherhood into my being and feeling like I did not have time to be a mother--that it was a part of myself that had to get shoved all the way to the margins to make room for the part that had to earn the money to keep the family afloat.

I still have much to learn from that experience.  Who we are is always changing, of course, thanks to new insights gained along the way.

Describing myself to myself as mother, wife, chaplain, woman, though, was a helpful exercise.  Though weak boundaries were causing me to see myself primarily as someone available to others but not herself, I experienced an amazing awakening through the simple act of coloring an image.

Isn't that something?  Thank you my sister Libby.  Thank you Joan Kellogg, C.G. Jung, Susanne F. Fincher, art therapists everywhere.

I am still thankful for that day, for that piece of paper, for images that bring fragments into wholeness.

baby shoes

Let me be clear that I adore baby shoes, especially leather baby shoes.  Especially soft-soled leather baby shoes.  Oh, I just like them so much.  And I love the little feet that fill them. 

luxurious breakfast

This morning we were out of milk and yogurt, my breakfast staples.  Instead of enjoying the charms of those particular dairy products, I made myself one of my favorite sweet sandwiches, remembering that we had cream cheese in the fridge.  Here it is:
whole-grain bread slices, or some hearty bread that won't fall apart easily
a liberal layer of cream cheese or neufchatel on one of the slices
a liberal layer of nutella or a high-quality impersonator on the other slice
a nice sprinkling on both slices of cashew halves and diced, dried apricots

Unite the sandwich slices, cut sandwich in half if you desire, and garnish with fruit or whatever else strikes your fancy.  Enjoy!

on dolls

I loved dolls as a girl, and I'm surprised now at the emotional response I have to them. A month or two ago I bought one of the dolls in the hearth at the local thrift shop, just because her vintage plastic molded face and hair spoke sweetness and love to me.

As a five-year-old, my main doll squeeze was named, "I Love You." She was a rubber doll with formerly golden hair. When I Love You's original gold tresses became unsightly, my grandma Mildred made her a (lovely) brown wig to match my own hair. My mother wrote our address on I Love You's belly in indelible ink. I lost her at the Kansas City Airport, but they mailed her back to me. One time a playmate turned I Love You head down and swished her in a mud puddle. I was beside myself. I remember crying and crying one morning on the school bus because I just wanted to go back home to get I Love You; I felt a sudden need to take her to school (I didn't get to go).

I suppose that last memory is one reason I treasure homeschooling. When you learn at home (at least ideally), you don't have to let go of I Love You until you choose to. Your schedule allows you to go and retrieve that love, because it's worth holding on to and you're worth slowing down the world for. This, I can tell, is a whole other post in the making, but not the reason I'm writing about dolls, so I'll come back to the thought another time.

Today Henry and I listened to an episode of the Diane Rehm show that focused on the danger of encouraging little girls to engage in princess play. More specifically, Peggy Orenstein made the point that certain kinds of "princess play" can make it difficult for girls to disentangle their sexuality from our culture's tendency to sexualize them.

Objectification. Consumerism. Addiction. Selfishness. These are some of what I believe to be the real problems behind playing princess. Joel has been reading Andrew Lang and George MacDonald stories to Henry at bedtime off-and-on for a couple years now, and they're ripe with princesses and heroines in the traditional princess sense. But, in my opinion, these female characters are archetypes, just as the warrior, the king, the prince, the beggar, and others are archetypes.

So, so, so often we want to throw the baby out with the bath water instead of just getting rid of the dirty water. I think the society that sexualizes little girls instead of treasuring them, that rewards them for buying off-the-rack princess costumes and attending consumer events in them rather than wearing them for outdoor tea parties that just might lead to hole digging or tree climbing, is one that suffers from multiple addictions and chronic, collective low self-worth. I could go on and on here, but to what end?

Suffice it to say, aside from my homeschooling peeps and close acquaintances and friends, I don't see a whole of mothers and fathers out there encouraging doll play. Baby doll play. I think I don't see as much of that because parents feel ambivalent about teaching girls and boys to pretend with dolls, to mother and father dolls. Better to play at being professionals: fire fighters, iron chefs, police officers, spies, princesses.

From the surface, there seem to be more "jobs" out there for preening, narcissistic types than solid mamas and papas. Oh, pardon my cynicism. I'm really a rather hopeful person.

BUT...don't we glorify the sparkle-clad movie stars and their ilk an awful lot?

My solution is to nurture my little girl by doing a whole lot of things and celebrating her whole being. But I want dolls to be companions and teachers for her if she wants them to be. And, so far, she does.

Ahh. More to say, but it is time for bed.

I really would love to have some dolls with skin of brown, yellow and olive hues. Quite a lot of pink plastic there, wouldn't you agree?

a little audio

It's about passion, and some other things

Just a while ago we returned from a Kansas Day celebration with others in our home school co-op. Kansas isn't my home state, but I'm learning more about it than I ever knew about Missouri, because Kansans are proud people. I like that about them. They know their state insect and state tree, and they really, truly celebrate their identity. Real Kansas Day is January 29, but we've had snow and severely cold weather these last few weeks, along with a couple almost-70-degree days, so we met today instead of two weeks ago.

The thing I loved most about this morning was meeting a local member of an organization called "The Brotherhood of Mountain Men," or something like that. He said there are only 400 members of this nationwide organization. Just back from a camping get-together in Oklahoma, where he awoke to snow and three degrees above zero (F) air, this guy smelled like another place in time. He brought his beaver musk for us to smell (can't remember what it was called, but, in sight and scent it was like delicately fermented ground-up organ meat). He brought buffalo-bladder-and-buckskin storage bags, knives, rifles, pistols, buffalo hides, buffalo hair socks, deerskin and wool cold-weather slippers, a porcupine-quill-embellished pipe holder, parfleches, and a host of other things, all so very appealing to the kinesthetic learner in me--especially the smell parts. It's really something to be in a room with someone who, along with his things, has an odor. Yes, an odor. Not a bad odor, but an outdoors odor.

This kind of thing just excites me no end. Whether the discipline be computer circuit-bending or historical re-enacting or knitting (and the accompanying carding and spinning) or something in the fields of science or math or literature...I don't care. Show me your passion (and your reverence for life), and I will love what you do and who you are, even if I didn't first think I would like you or agree with you.

I really feel grateful for this type of learning, because it's not just for Henry the homeschooler, it's for me too. Learning is a lifetime process and I love to learn. I love to learn!

Candlemas

Today is Candlemas, and it's fair and bright here, so I guess winter will have another flight. About this time of year three years ago, I began this blog.

I like what Waverly Fitzgerald has to say about the day here and here.

I do so desire to live out the seasons of the year. For one, it seems to me that we were just born to do it, so why not?

On Candlemas, Waverly pledges to undertake some activity that will nurture her spiritual and/or creative self. She sees it as the true beginning of the new year. I like that, too. January, then, is kind of a warm-up for the new year that is to come. We get forty days after solstice and Christmas to let the Incarnation and the returning of the light settle in, take down the decorations, show the baby at the temple, so to speak (The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord), and then begin a new year.

This year I am working on flexibility. I notice in myself less physical flexibility than I used to have. To the end of increasing my flexibility, I intend to practice (almost daily) just one yoga position, one I learned in a Kripalu class years ago: the seated spinal twist, also known as the posture of perpetual youth :).

I also want to keep spiritually flexible, but that is a topic for another time.

A blessed Candlemas or Imbolc to all!

soul food

I'm enjoying equipping our play kitchen now that Anna's using it more. Today I found a little shelf for holding kitchen items. I'm not sure it will stay where it is, but she likes it doing its shelf thing there on top of the range.

Here's something else that's giving me pleasure: good and varied reading material in the co-sleeper. I don't hesitate to read withdrawn PEOPLE magazines from the library. But I might reconsider once Henry gets curious about my reading material. I think Adam Carolla's book In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks is pretty hilarious, but it may not be everyone's cup of tea. The Boston Review is engaging and fascinating. I don't identify with Nancy Hirschmann, but I sure do love Shannon Hayes' response. Superbaby? Well, I decided to just check it out and take a look. It's interesting. She has some helpful, reasonable things to say to me, a mother who leans heavily to the no-scheduling end of the spectrum, about the value of routine in daily life.
This quotation from Adam Carolla, though, really gets me laughing:

"Giving birth is tough, but let's not treat it like it's anything more than it is. I can't stand the mommy bloggers, the women who have kids and then decide to go online and write about the dos and don'ts. You know, hard-hitting topics like 'Sack Lunch. Friend or Foe?' It's all the same forty-year-old white chicks. ...[A]ll of a sudden after you have a kid you must write a children's book and a blog to explain to other people how to do it. You're telling us stuff we've all known for a billion years."

on the mantel

A certain Goldilocks-resembling almost-two-year-old has discovered a favorite hangout. Our mantel has held many things over the ten years we've been here, but she and Henry are my favorite decorations yet. Today she lay down on it like a bed.

Thankful Thursday

Inspired by Paige's Thankful Thursday practice, I'm posting these thoughts at the eleventh hour (well, 23rd) of Thursday. Today I am thankful for:

Delicious coffee, made by Joel every morning, presented with just the right amount of cream. Heck! Most of the time it's mostly decaf, but it's still delicious. And, when I get the real thing, it's really good.

The coffee maker himself

Koala bears: they're soooo cute. I remember that from my childhood, but I've fallen in love with them again since reading a new book on 100 animals (to Anna).

Marley and Me, the audio book. I haven't heard Henry laugh so loud in a while.

Heidi, a beautiful story that delights my senses and gets me thinking about the Swiss heritage we have going on here on both sides of the family.

My red clogs (and the sister who gave them to me!)

Snow

Full moonlight

Conditions that Maximize Healing

I find Spirituality and Health magazine to be chock full of good stuff, and I recommend it to everyone I think might be interested. Here's their website http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/spirit/.

Janene Heldman, MA, MFT has a great article on addiction and healing in the current issue. Here, she says that, to maximize our innate healing powers we must
1. Feel hopeful that healing is possible;
2. Believe that the power exists internally and externally to activate and promote healing, and that we can access this power;
3. Believe that we deserve to be healed;
4. Be receptive to and ask for treatment;
5. Be willing to let go of the illness or disorder;
6 Be willing to accept health and all of its known and unknown responsibilities.

This kind of thing really gets me thinking.

moving on

new energy for this blog

And now let me tell you something else. I am happy! Yes, I truly and surely am. I could say so many things about why, but what I wish to talk about in this one-more-post for the day is that I am finding energy to want to return to this blog--not that there is any mandate other than my own for doing so, but that it brings me joy to do so. I am ready to reconnect with the identity that began unfolding here a couple years ago and use the blog to reconnect with bloggers I enjoy knowing online.

My body, mind and soul can't afford to let this pastime fill too much of my life, but keeping my blog has been a life-giving outlet. Hooray for me!

To celebrate this inner shift, I bought myself tulips this evening. My favorite kind--red with yellow tinges. Our home is messy, and I have a deep longing to get it into a cleaner state by Candlemas/Imbolc. That said, I am enjoying a reconfiguration of some of its spaces. Here are two of them that I'm enjoying right now.

in memoriam

I used to be a chaplain. I am currently staying home full-time with our two children. It is good. It is what I have longed for. It is hard. It has taken me almost a whole year to really say good-bye to what was. The change was a welcome one. I could not figure out how to be in that position anymore. It was a lovely 9.5 years. A lovely place.

It was also becoming impossible for me to be myself there. I felt bitterness. I didn't feel enough creative energy to get along with people whom I didn't feel understood by. I need to process that here at Circle Squared, because I'm still hanging on. I still think about my former career when I awake and go to sleep. I think about what I want to say to my supervisor, who is not my supervisor anymore. I am having real difficulty letting go of that relationship. Or, rather, not the relationship itself, but what it symbolized for me.

In that relationship I felt deeply misunderstood. The person I had been at my workplace no longer fit in, because she evolved as I moved from full-time to part-time work, beginning in 2007. She was evolving before that. Don't we all?

My workplace changed, too. The culture changed in a way I can't put into words. I felt I had lost my voice.

That is okay. I speak on. I am okay. They're okay, too. And that's good to hear.

I was done a divine and human favor by being told "it's apply for full-time work here or leave."

I was let go. I chose to let go. The day I learned the change would be happening, this poem by Rilke came into my home email as part of the Gratefulness.org November 2009 newsletter. I owe that site a lot, because they've shaped me as a person over the last decade. Here is the poem.

Sonnets to Orpheus
Part Two, XII

Want change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything is alight as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body turning away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.


Rainer Maria Rilke

I don't think I quite dare to become the wind yet, but I am pouring myself out like a fountain, flowing into the knowledge that what I am seeking finishes at the start and begins at the ending.