The Meaning of a Song

I am quite sure that I drive myself a little crazy with a constant search for the meaning of things. I am convinced both that we often miss the meaning of some things but also that some of us might give too much meaning to other things. There is both a lack of appreciation of the mystical in our culture and a misapplication of meaningfulness.

This struggle developed partly out of my intuition, a wonderful gift and a scary gift. I often know what people are going to say before they say it, know that something will happen before it does, know that there will be an opportunity for me to act, know what someone is feeling without a word about it. But such understanding is hard to trust - where does it come from? Is it real? How much of this am I making up? Why didn't I trust my instinct? And my logical part quips, you're crazy! Life is more logical than that. And it is scared when I trust my intuition and watch what I knew to be true unfold.

Some of this comes to me because of my relationship to books. I remember a wonderful revelation about ten years ago, a relief that there is no time limit on how much time I have to read all the books in the world (why this would be anyone's goal, is beyond me, but I felt the need to explore them all as I looked around at the shelves of books at Kepler's Bookstore in Palo Alto when I was in ninth grade) because I will always be able to read books. When I am feeling down and defreated, lost and unfriended, my heart takes me to my bookshelf, where I read the titles, brush the books, take one out and read a few pages. It's like having a summer evening conversation with wine and a close friend. I imagine being able to swim in books, surrounded by words and words and all these friends. Books are trusted friends, and in fictional literature, so much of what is written, so much of what these friends say, is symbolic. There is foreshadowing, meaning beyond what is written, meaning in how an inanimate object appears. And so I try to draw these things in life, seeing may things as dripping with meaning. But is it?

I found two more dead birds in my yard. They looked to have been dead for quite some time - dried out, grey, barely recognizable. I wrote in my last post that if I found more dead animals on my homestead, that I'd be worried. I was worried. When Poe wrote, black birds were a foreshadow of death. What about dead animals? I wondered if I really should be worried. When is a dead animal, just a dead animal? When is a dead bird, just the victory of a quick cat?

The second week of July, I got to spend a week in Panama City Beach, Florida, staying across the street from the Gulf of Mexico with my kids, with a youth friend, Hannah, to help with the kids, and with a slew of old friends we met in seminary. Many of them met Asher when he was first born and were seeing him for the first time in almost three years. It was a reunion and a time to relax and enjoy the sacredness of water and gathering of friends.

I experienced a great healing during the week. It feels a little crude to say, but in some ways, I developed a patronus to cast before dementors. The Fray has a song called, "How to Save a Life." The rumor is that this song was written about a young man who was a resident at Shelterwood, a residential treatment center where Michael used to work. When it first came out, this was a fun connection. At the beginning of this year, the song brought up painful memories of Shelterwood, a home to some of the trials I faced. It was absolutely perverse how many times I heard the song in preceding months - in the radio on the car, in my house on satellite radio, on the radio in my therapists office on my first visit (what are the odds?!), in a store. The song constantly pestered me. And I would cry, either from the reminder of deep pain or from frustration that the horrible song was playing again!

What, I wondered, was the meaning of this? Why did I have to hear this song all the time? What was God telling me? Or was it the devil tempting me?

I was in Panama City Beach to help with a youth conference. At the last worship service, the second of nine that I was able to attend because of my kids' sleep schedules, the conference band played a hilarious spoof on the song called, "How to Say Goodbye," razzing the high schoolers about saying goodbye to a sweet summer love they met at the conference. One of lines was, "I could have prayed with you all night." I was rolling. I was laughing at a song that had caused me pain.

I am sitting in my office today, radio on for company. "How to Save a Life" came on the radio (yet again - gritting teeth), and I laugh remembering the beach, my friends, a room full of 600 high schoolers laughing at a "How to Say Goodbye," giving a standing ovation to the band. I have a patronus to cast, a protection. It is only a song, and it is a mysterious part of this chapter. Life is life, and life is dripping with meaning.

Dead Animals and Magical Things

In last few months, I have not been able to tell whether God is really giving me extra special blessings or whether they seem extra special because life feels intensified by recent events. I have, for instance, in the last three weeks:
found a dead squirrel in my yard (it was the one with only one eye, and it looked quite certain that he had died because he fell out of a tree);
slammed my right thumb in my car door (don't ask me how, I couldn't recreate the action if I tried) hard enough that it's still not working properly;
dealt with a poopy diaper that would not end beginning with poop on Harper, on my leg, on the floor, more on the floor discovered a half hour later and more on Harper's foot discovered several hours later;
explained to two cops who showed up at 11 p.m. at a girlfriend's house that we four thirty-somethings were not being abused nor having a raucous party (don't we wish!);
procured a grant for the organization that I work for that enabled us to hire a twelve-year-old girl for the summer who cuts herself;
soothed Asher to sleep while he itched and said, "Don't want it," to his heat rash;
helped Michael move my friend Megan's furniture out of Megan's storage unit, so placed because she broke up with her fiance and moved the furniture out of his house, and, which, said former fiance later helped Michael move into his apartment;
met a lovely goat farmer who mistook Megan and me for a lesbian couple with "our" two lovely children;
been trying unsuccessfully for over three weeks to cure myself of neck pain (a sure sign, if the thumb slamming incident wasn't enough, that I'm carrying too much);
picked up some of my dad's belongings from the house of my youngest sister's deceased boyfriend's (Tim) mother's home, where I saw the guest house my sister lived in with Tim (the wierdness of stuff and space will not end);
been surprised by how heavy a box of someone's ashes are when I picked up my dad's ashes off the funeral home's coffee table; and
found a dead bird in my bedroom with his heart lying next to him.

With the heaviness of life, the seeming difficulty of doing something basic like reading Asher a book (tonight said activity was accompanied by two spillings of milk all over the floor), the cottonwoods have been a reminder of lighter things. For weeks, the white fluff from the cottonwood trees swirled around town, up and down on slight breezes, making small summer snow drifts and reminding me that there really are magical things. There are lighter things. Cottonwood fluff, bubbles, rain, wild flowers, water.

I do have to say, thought, that if I find a third dead animal in my homestead, I'm going to be greatly concerned.

Space: The Frontier

I have been thinking a lot about space recently. On June 9, Michael officially moved out of the house. I was afraid of the day as it approached and protective of Asher and Harper. Neither is at the age where they will remember details as they get older, but I didn't want them to have the painful memory of their dad driving away from their home with all his stuff.

The move, rather than being terrible and tormenting, was liberating. A weight was lifted with his stuff out of the house, clearing out the clutter of all his little things, of the heavy presence of his empty shirts hanging in the closet, of the dishes I disliked but kept because he liked them. Throughout the house, there was new space, unclogged space, space like under the window in the dining room that stood oddly empty because a piece of furniture was gone.

Not four days later, a shipment of furniture that had been passed down to my aunt from various family members, including my grandparents, arrived in the new space. Because of my crazy work schedule (someone equated this time of year for me to tax season for accountants, which is so right on), my house has been cluttered and chaotic ever since. There are partially finished projects, empty bookcases, rooms crowded will randomly placed furniture. It will be several more weeks before I finally find the time to sort things out. Sometimes - like today when things just feel hard and heavy - the chaos is overwhelming. I crave a space that is simple, arranged, not transitional. But most of the time I am excited by the chaotic space because I made the chaos, I choose to keep the chaos, and, out of it, I will create the space I crave.

In this space, it is surpising to me how much impact space - its aesthetics, meaning of things init, the need to have our own - has on us. Sometimes the impact of our space is so subtle. In this disorganization, I can't locate my copy of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (oh! there will be a day when my books are organized), but the lecture to book topic stresses the importance of women having their own space in which to write . . . even just a desk. Yes! It is so important to have our own space, to create that space, to cover it with the things and style and books and pens that we love. I have imagined my ideal office (when I am fanciful about becoming a college professor and invisioning my college office where I meet with students and study between classes) as covered with pictures of and work by powerful, strong women - Amy Lowe's grandmother flyfishing in a river, my grandmother in the WAC on the cover of Time magazine, Frieda Kahlo, Georgia O'Keefe, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and others.

With the change in physical space, there is also a change in psychological space. There is space between Michael and I. Where our relationship was, there is room for new things, new discoveries, new places for me to step in to. In the emptiness and chaos, I am stirred to tears of pain and moments of exhiliration. With what will I cover this new space that God has blessed me with?

In the last few days, with Michael being around the house more than he has been, I have found myself using the phrase, "I need some space." My mind is in an infirmary - wounds, healing, treatment and healers are all present. There is pain even as there is progress, setbacks, emergencies and giant leaps forward. As when I gave birth, there are times that my space is crowded with people and times when I limit access, times when I only allow healers in and times when visitors are welcome. I am covering my space.