The Yearly Round

Since 2010, I've been minister of Christian Education and Worship at our church, Lorraine Avenue Mennonite Church.  I am still humbled and very thankful for the way this position came to be, and I feel tremendously blessed to be able to fulfill most of the obligations for this 1/4 time position from my home with my husband and children.

I also feel thankful for the times this work allows me to be off on my own for a few hours!

Since my previous paid employment involved ministry with elders, the learning curve in this "new" position has been steep.  I love children, but I have so, so, so very much to learn about ministry with kids and families.  Goodness, I have so very much to learn just about being present with my own to children.

I had a wonderful time creating this squared circle today.  Yesterday was Candlemas or Imbolc, and we will observe it as a church group this coming Wednesday when our Wednesday evening programming starts up again.  Ah...This quiet month of January has been a real gift.

I feel vulnerable putting my drawings out for all to see.  I don't draw often, but I loved decorating and illuminating papers, t-shirts, books, etc. as a young person.  When I find the time it is something I still enjoy.

I guess another thing about me is that I a.d.o.r.e. opportunities to create mandalas of meaning for myself and, with this one, hopefully some in my church family.  The feasts and observances in this wheel are not all observed at church.  Many of them are my own personal feasts, or feasts my family and I have shared with friends.

Since childhood I've had a strong desire to sacramentalize (?) my time.  To dedicate it in intentional ways.  I love the support for doing so that I find in the various communities I'm part of.

Blessings to all as we circle through the year.  If you're a Rudolf Steiner fan, you'll notice that I'm (probably) heavily, but indirectly, influenced by him.  Much of this stuff is just so instinctive, don't you think?

self-compassion, anyone?

This topic has come to me from many directions, so that must mean it is one of my main life assignments this semester ;). 

Do you do self-compassion?

I read about Kristin Neff's book by the same title in Spirituality and Health, my favorite magazine.  This week, I found it at the local library in the 7-day checkout section, so I brought it home.  It is a must-read, I can tell.

I have friends who practice self-compassion, family members who do, a husband who coaches me in it.  I learn from all these people...

I understand what Kristin Neff is saying.  I know my inner need to chuck the absurd notion that life's a competition. 

I never did get "self-esteem," as it was, in my opinion, marketed like a tangible good, a consumer item I could go out and buy, if I followed the right steps to get to the store, or had parents who followed the right parenting style, or something.

What I do get is that I want to give my children the gift of me in a healthy state of mind.  And, believe me, I'm there sometimes.  I am not there, though, when I'm on a self-judging jag.  Oh no, I'm not.

And I'm timid about stepping away from the terra cognita of "you're only as good as the life you lead, the quality of work you put out, the cleanliness of your home or car or fingernails..."

That is enough for now.  The compassionate thing for me to do for myself is to sleep. 

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.

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.

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!

moving on

a post before folding laundry

I keep forgetting I'm living the life of my dreams because there are so many things that don't feel dreamy: I'm losing my job (sometime in the future), there is a mountain of laundry to fold (and yesterday the phone disappeared in the mix), and Anna's diapers are getting threadbare (again),

BUT

she is asleep for the time being. Henry is out with Joel for the evening, which means I've had some lovely re-grouping time alone. I ate canned salmon with Annie's white cheddar shells, avocado, cucumber & cilantro. Then I made myself some hot cocoa with half and half which, I've discovered, is divine, and I defrosted some raspberries to eat alongside.

AND

I'm not losing a full-time job, but a fulfilling 12-hour-a-week job, and life's not over yet. I'm committed to enjoying the laundry, enjoying the (at least for now) opportunity to spend a lot of time at home with our dear children, and to connect with the local homeschooling community and continue enjoying the process of learning with Henry and Anna (and Joel) at home.

I AM THANKFUL FOR

Good King Wenceslas duets with Henry; good food; the sound of things humming along, like the diapers washing right now in the washing machine and the clack of my keyboard; the sight of a sleeping baby; my little family and my extended family; the generosity of my church.

I PRAY FOR

a wise heart; the self-discipline to persevere in a life-giving path and do the right thing/s at the right time/s; the ability to be truthful but not snarky when I feel I've been wronged; self-understanding; the wisdom to know the difference between justified indignation and self-righteous pomposity (in myself) in the workplace.

That picture up there is an example of what I love and enjoy: time at home in happy, colorful chaos that allows me and those around me to keep becoming who I believe we need to be--not just for our own good, but for the greater good as well.

with great trust

About a year after I began blogging, a year after a second miscarriage, we wait for a second child, due around February 20. I met Rainer Maria Rilke when I was sixteen through his book Letters to a Young Poet. I'm not sixteen anymore, but a 38-year-old mother. Rilke's words, though, ring truer than ever.

Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms...

Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now.

...[B]ut take whatever comes with great trust.

Wow! I have no idea how this is all going to shake out...how we will become a family of four. But I'm taking it with great trust...as much of the time as I can, and trying to knit my way through uncertainty. I hope to show photos of that endeavor soon.

Christmastide 2008

This Christmas I contemplated saving graces and well-loved images from long ago

and icons of new hope for our time--thanks to you, Aunt Lib.
Barack, don't mean to put too much pressure on you!
You don't have to be super-human;
just please be decent and we'll be so very proud of you.

Epiphanies were experienced along the way

in the form of beautiful morning light,

table fellowship,

and birthdays of two dear family members--Elizabeth and Henry.

this is thirty-eight

I'm thirty-eight tomorrow evening. There's a baby growing in me, doing a lot of kicking, but you can't see the belly very clearly. (We always have trouble with this camera at night. Daytime shots are simply the best. So maybe Joel will take another picture that I can post tomorrow). I enjoy my birthdays and try to make sure each one includes a solitary walk, if possible. Two years ago I walked twelve miles for my thirty-sixth birthday. What a walk and day that was. I was quitting the chaplaincy position (that I later resumed at 40% time) that I had held for 6+ years, and wanted to commemorate this transition by walking the route I had driven so many times before. I felt liberated on my journey. And dehydrated. I didn't take any water with me, and that was a mistake. But it was a joyful journey and that's what I feel on my birthday. I can say with Gerard Manley Hopkins, "...for all this, there lives the dearest freshness deep down things." Birthdays, delights and struggles all come and go. But, above all, there is still life. I am so thankful to have this life to live. And I feel blessed to be carrying another child. An amazing gift on my thirty-eighth birthday eve.

notes from the middle of November

Hello blogland friends,

I'm excited to share my new header. Henry designed this cinderella pumpkin to have fangs on top, but they've curled under now, leaving a friendly, gaping maw to greet me when I walk up the front steps. The quotation from Hafiz is from my bathroom calendar, and I just find it appropriate in so many ways.

I'm not all that fond of November, but it does hold things to recommend it to us: the maturation of autumn, the constant awareness in this month of remembrance that we are not alone. Other souls have walked this ground before us. I'm very mindful of that at the beginning of November with All Saints/All Souls days. We don't observe these days in any big way as a family. Personally, though, I can't help but feel the ache of those I know who are filled with questions about where they are going and where they have been--the ache of those who have more friends on the other side of this life than on the side we're on.

I had the most comforting conversation about disillusionment yesterday. It was one of my work days, and I was sitting at a round table with some elders I love and admire. What honest observations they made about their lives. Why is it, we wondered together, that you get to the next "chapter" and you still don't have it all figured out? Seems to have little to do with being a "person of faith." Somehow life's losses tend to lead us deeper and deeper into mystery and the wildness of our being.

It was good for me to be reminded that I have probably said a lot of things intended to be comforting that have been received as nothing more than well-meaning platitudes. What was so heartening about the conversation is that I can stow these thoughts away. If I'm granted the long life I hope to have, I want to remember with gratitude the friends who said, "It's not easy getting old. I'm just as confused now as I ever was." I want to remember them and how beautiful it was to see them wondering and loving, learning and struggling. Let me be like that. That's the kind of faith I want.

On a different note, I have felt buoyed along by the election of Barack Hussein Obama to the office of President of the United States. Joel and I stayed up late watching the returns and I went to sleep filled with the hope that we're entering into a new era that might hold transformation for our nation. I pray for this new president-elect in a way that I've never prayed for leaders before. That he may be wise and grounded and visionary and conciliatory. Already I've been shocked as I've heard him talking about killing Osama bin Laden. I am aware that I can't expect all things of a finite human being and that the heart of transformation is really my own response to life. Yet I feel hopeful and thankful and I'm not taking either of these things for granted.

I'm a big Michael Pollan fan and hope you'll have time to listen to this interview on his Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief. I hope our president-elect has made time to listen.

Days and nights have been pretty sweet in our home of late. Henry is bonding with my pregnant belly, which I hope to share photos of sometime. We're reading Riki Tiki Tavi thanks to a visit to the cousins' house, Little House in the Big Woods, and The Two Towers. The Tolkien books continue to be our family bedtime reading routine and I delight in hearing Henry sigh as he falls into bed, snuggles up and settles down to hear more of this fabulous tale. It pleases Joel to be the reader.

Oh, each day holds its own frustrations and nagging questions, but I'm so very thankful for my little family and our little home and all the family and friends who love us. November, I am thankful for you and want to savor your remaining days.

for Spinning Lizzie / Red Dirt Mother

"Catch a random thought...
between thumb and finger...
and then in faith and hope,
tie
one end down
firmly...
follow its lead
trusting
splicing in
following with fingertips
through all its vicissitudes
consequences down the hallways of its joys
and its terrors
snap
return
to the interruption
the snarl
know it and name it
feel its feelings
follow them
to where fear throws up a wall
builds blockage
distraction
from the flow
to lead you away
and yet,
stay with it
remain
with the point of interruption
weep it out
until you experience
a breakthrough.
There, pick up the thread again
and be led
from flax to thread
to the holy face
to Mystery."

Gertrud Mueller Nelson
Here All Dwell Free, p. 240

the love of beautiful things made by hands

Our rope old hammock, purchased eight years ago for $20 at a silent auction, fell apart last month after having been romped on six too many times. We left it outside more than we should have, but it was well-loved and much-used. No major regrets. Only thing is, Henry missed it. I missed it. How nice it was to swing him and a friend high, high in the air while humming circus music.

I've been trolling around for a new one since then, but almost any amount was too much considering our other obligations. I did notice this green and blue beauty in the window of the local Ten Thousand Villages though and, thanks to a delightful and unexpected gift, we now have a new hammock. I tried it out this evening and it is just perfect.

Joel has been reading Henry The Hobbit at bedtime, and I was reminded of how much I identify with Bilbo as I heard Joel read this:

As they [the dwarves] sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish [Bilbo's grandfather was an adventurous hobbit with the last name of Took] woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns.

A hammock is a wonderful place to dream when one is feeling Tookish!

new mandala

Here is a mandala / prayer I made last fall that I colored today while I listened to David the Gnome (thanks Leeala) with Henry. I can't explain why, but mandalas are just so important to me. Meaning, attempts at meaning, chaos...all safely enclosed in a circle. I usually end up creating/coloring mandalas when change is underway. I wonder what kind of change is coming? I've mentioned it before, but Susanne F. Fincher's books are especially meaningful to me.

walk in the world for me

When I am gone, walk in the world for me. This sentence arrested my attention as I listened to Cheryl preach a sermon at the memorial service Henry and I attended this evening. We have been doing a lot of walking and biking and, now that spring is really, really here, our feet have been getting dirty. This afternoon there were three foot baths in our driveway, as those who were wading in the filthy creek needed cleaner feet to enter the house.

Walk in the world for me. We watched Star Wars (episode IV) with Henry tonight, because his dear friend just saw it and there's a sibling effect in play: the younger gets to see it before the older (chronologically) because, otherwise, Joel and I will never hear the end of it (and we were excited to watch it with him). It was wonderful to see the movie again. So violent (not wonderful), so laden with memories... how many times have I seen it and not caught many of the details that Henry so readily picked up on? The talk about "the force" always moves me, as do Obi Wan's words of wisdom to Luke. Obi Wan goes away, but he commissions Luke (in effect) to walk in the world for him. Dear Ida is gone from this world but, in her funeral, she told her friends to walk in it for her.

I am glad to be walking in the world for so many people, including walking for Jesus in my better moments.

In beauty

(Navajo prayer with Kingman landscape)

You, packed for the journey, do not have to hold each thought.
Try scattering some on top of cirrus clouds.
Rest others on green prairie grass.
Let one fly out the window as you release your hand to air.

This freedom travels with you.
You can wear it as you walk
between refrigerator and dirt pile,
touching rounded belly that holds no baby,
fretting about keeping the table empty but the cupboard full.

Let it wrap you up tonight.
Let it be the sunlight that wakes you,
the teacher who says, "Yes, you are finding your way,"
the heart's lantern, leading you on in beauty.

moon fruits

Sunday afternoon, in addition to exploring an abandoned garden to look for asparagus, Henry and I watched the precursor to the Hot Wheels AcceleRacers movie. While we watched I cleaned out a drawer that holds art supplies and got inspired to make a collage...really because of you, Libby!
On the bottom there is a googly eye. Just couldn't resist sticking it on. The lines of typewritten words are a quotation from Mother Teresa that I see when I visit a favorite local prayer room. "The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace." It is a squared circle of sorts, with the pear being the center and the four corners representing...well, four different things :).

I enjoy the way small bits of paper become spots of brilliance in collages.

unexpected wisdom from a book on permaculture

An excerpt from The Secret of the Golden Flower (Jung) excerpted in Forest Gardening (pp. 18-19, by Robert Hart).

I always worked with the temperamental conviction that in the last analysis there are no insoluble problems, and experience has so far justified me in that I have often seen individuals who simply outgrew a problem which had destroyed others. This "outgrowing" revealed itself on further experience to be the raising of the level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person's horizon, and through this widening of his view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically on its own terms, but faded out in contrast to a new and stronger life-tendency. It was not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so became different itself. What, on a lower level, had led to the wildest conflicts and to emotions full of panic, viewed from the higher level of the personality, now seemed like a storm in the valley seen from a high mountain top. This does not mean that the thunderstorm is robbed of its reality; it means that, instead of being in it, one is now above it.