BTS 13

I found suspicious letters and numbers spray painted on a neighbor's fence directly behind my house today - BTS 13. Today, I was struck by the elements of words - letters - and the power of those elements, not only to compose words but, on occasion, to bring up strong emotion. BTS 13 is a tag sign for Big Time Surenos, one of Longmont's 14 gangs.

What is a gang member doing behind my house? What is a gang member doing tagging a fence behind my house? It will sound pretentious no matter how I ask it, but what are gangs doing tagging in my neighborhood? Anger, fear - only last week I was in the alley after dark taking out trash. I did my civic duty and reported it to the police, and I closed the curtains across the kitchen windows that can be seen from the alley.

Logophile

A few weeks ago, I took a young friend, Hannah, to see "Golden Compass." I had read the books years ago, but really wanted to see it because of the perverse adolescent in me. Around when the movie first came out, I received an e-mail from a friend that said something along the lines of "Don't go see the Golden Compass. The author is an atheist and trying to turn children away from God." Let's go! How, I wondered, can we be so naive to think a movie can have such an impression.

And then two of the bazillion fun trailers before "Golden Compass" played were based on two other books, "Spiderwick Papers" and "Inkheart," both of which, at their core, explore the power of words and books and the scary and eye-opening places they can take us. I remembered the different physical and emotional reactions I had reading Aristotle and Kant in college - brain fatigue but also a dizziness. Readng Neitszche, I learned that the Nazi party was influenced by his ideas. Last weekend, while in Nashville, I saw "The Great Debators," a movie about a debate team at a small black college in Texas during the Jim Crow Laws. Two of the debate team speeches brought me to tears. Thinking back over the last year and a half, there are many hurtful words that bubble to the surface unexpectantly. The wounds are closing but still have a haunting ache. I have often marveled that after the fall God gave Adam the ability to name all the animals, to set words to everything he saw and that God changed the single langauge of those who built the tower of Babble so that the builders could not communicate.

My love of books and words is partly because of the power of words to relay emotion, to portray a world we've never been in (have you ever been reading a book that takes places in a snow storm, looked up and found sunny skies and wondered why it wasn't snowing?), to let us enter another's life. My difficulty in expressing things verbally comes from the power of words, the inability to edit my speech and the impact a misspoken word, an emotional but untrue statement can have on the listener. "Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison." (James 3:5-8) I have a fear of what words might reveal to another about my heart and what will be done with my heart once it's laid bear for another to see.

I had a mental argument as to whether "The Golden Compass" was really so dangerous that an e-mail campaign should be launched against it (a similar campaign was launched against "Harry Poter" at many churches in the south while I lived there) or whether I could pooh, pooh it. We are bombarded by so many words throughout our day, throw them off like worn out socks throughout the day, are they really so powerful? After the movie, Hannah and I got in the car and talked about the movie. Rumor was that in the last book the series God is killed. We talked about what could be God in the movie and whether it was the God we know.

Words are powerful. There is no doubt. But the ability to think about words we hear and read and speak (do old words haunt us? are we controlled by others' words? do we speak words of love and truth or fire and dishonesty? do we blindly hear and see words? do we appreciate words in our life?) is another gift given to us and one more powerful than the use of words.

Hurrah for 2008

The holidays this year were more torturous than normal, taking lots of effort to do normal holiday things in the midst of a major life crisis (think trying to hold a birthday party on a cruise ship going over Niagara falls). By December 31, I was ready to forget about holidays for awhile. I spent New Year's Eve at home, the kids in bed and falling asleep without a thought of celebrating. No champagne, no bubbly cider, no Scrabble games, no watching the ball descend, no fun kisses. It wasn't intentional - there was just nothing left in me to have another celebration.

Returning to work on January 2, I charged in like it was still 2007. Just another flip of the calendar. Another month ahead. I stopped for a few minutes in my bosses office and listened to her ideas for our organization for the coming year. There was a revived energy in her voice, a revived energy about her position and leadership. "It's so nice to have a fresh start," she said. And for the first time in 2008, I felt that fresh start. By marking the end of a year, there is a sense that we have ended something, that the race or the walk or even the crawl at the end of the year has ended. I wonder how our bodies must recognize this as the days get shorter and shorter until the solstice, and then start to lengthen again. The earth has completed a revolution and begins a new one - count down to zero, and then start counting up. So do we complete a year and start another one, a fresh start.

Even with a fresh start, I have some trepidation about 2008. The last two years have had such special (that's sarcastic) blow ups, and I have a whole new opportunity for more specialness. Someone recently warned me that I can expect more testing in the months ahead, testing of my decisions and my values as I figure out what my marriage future will be. Hurrah for 2008.

So it is that I am waffling between feeling like I have a fresh start and feeling like this race is never going to end, between a sarcastic laugh at our artificial calendar and celebration of a new year and appreciation for beginning a new revolution around the sun.

Ceci N'Est Pas Une Ski Pass

I am trying to make friends with the snow this year. The last two years, I have loved the snow from the magical snow falls when the world gets snow quiet and the sky so light at night to the feeling of being snug in my house with a fire or outside playing in the cold medium. But this year, we are not so friendly. It takes a lot of work to get three humans ready to go out on a cold snowy day. My Volvo is audibly protesting to the cold, deciding to make horrible grinding noises when the heater fan is on (thank goodness a mechanic was able to patch up the Volvo’s hole that let so unfriendly cold air run over my feet). My house feels continually cold. Asher can only run so many circles around the house and over all the furniture.

Yesterday, I bundled up the kids and braved the cold to take them sledding. I found a manageable hill at the nearby golf course and, amazingly, our adventure went incredibly smoothly (if you don’t count Harper’s immediate and pitiful full face plant into the snow). I showed Asher how to use the sled and trudge back up the hill. He loved it – ignored all the cold and snow and building wind to go down the hill “my turn one more time” ten times before we left, discovered that he could lie back on the sled and soon found that he could be a Ninja sled rider (that is one who rolls out of the sled half way down the hill). We made snow angels, and Asher soon discovered he could do one of his favorite activities in the snow, roll down hills. Okay, this is worth the snow, watching my active three-year-old exhibit his unabashed and all out zest for life and learning.

For the past week, I have been planning to go skiing – get this – for the first time in Colorado after living here for three years. It was the perfect plan . . . except for the snow. As Amy and I started out this morning for the ski resort, we found to our great dismay that highway I-70 to the ski resort was closed. Unheard of! Refusing to believe the news and road closure signs and with great hopes that just by chance the road would open, we drove up to the closure. C-DOT employees informed us the road might open between noon and two. Unheard of!

So we turned around with much hope in our hearts that we could still have a fun day, sans skiing. Three and a half hours after starting out, wind whipping our faces, snowshoes strapped on, great hopes that it might be a bit warmer in the trees, we hiked away from Eldora’s Nordic center and up the Lakes Loop snowshoe path. How good it felt to be hiking, moving my legs, breathing heavily, among the trees, climbing to a view of the mountains, climbing down to a view of lake, chatting with Amy up and down the hills, feeling like I was “off duty” for a short while and accomplishing the completion of Lakes Loop.

We wrapped up the day with dinner and a pint of Jackman’s at Left Hand brewery, watching the sun set over the cloud veiled mountains and wondering if I-70 would ever opened. I am slightly reconciled to the snow, knowing the joy it brings Asher and the fun sports I have the opportunity to do in it (who can really complain about living somewhere that you can snowshoe if you can’t ski?). I am quite amazed at the power of a friend to make a good sized disappointment into a day of unabashed and all out zest for life.

Feel It to Heal It

Whether it was the message welcoming me at 6:15 a.m. on Sunday that I was the only parent in the house again, or the idea of sitting in church in the same row as Michael, or the struggle of putting two overly heavy carseats back in my Volvo again before church with a three year old who wanted to tromp through the snow even in his church clothes and an eighteen-month-old who wants to be reattached to her mama regardless of the weather, or the impending holidays of the week ahead, or all of these things, or just the right time, the Sunday before Christmas set off four days of wildfire of anger. The kind of anger that is pretty much all consuming, energy sapping, difficult to control and hard to predict – a wildfire. My patience was about two seconds long, and too many times I had to apologize to my kids for losing it, too many times put myself in time out and too many times almost decapitated a cat or two. Interestingly, I can’t remember specifics from this anger craze, except that I bought two new carseats as soon as humanly possible. Lots and lots of red hot anger.

This, I have been reassured, is good for me – this feeling of anger, letting it out. “You have to feel it to heal it,” reassured Megan. My therapist, Rhonda, praised me for feeling the anger. But in the midst of the flames, fleeing cats and stampeding children, it felt quite overwhelming, and I felt out of control. How can I ever end this anger? I wanted to know. The normal mantras of “It won’t always be like this” and “Breath, breath,” attempts at getting sleep, taking breaks from reality in books and movies, and writing tell all letters that I would never send, small pulls on my boot strings, were pretty useless. A small tear in my normal composure had opened into a wild windstorm. And it was exhausting and felt – at the time – quite useless. Feel it my butt, said the anger.

Wednesday night – it had really only been four days, I think, looking back – the kids were in bed, and I stepped into the shower. I was trying to avoid the normal morning screaming accompanying a morning shower after the kids get up (the three year old who wants to tromp the pirates around the pirate ship with me and the baby who wants to reattach to mama regardless of the need for a shower), but I found more than a scream saver. I’m at the end of myself with this, I told God, water sounding lovely on my head. I’m at the end. I can’t carry the anger and the heavy question pinching me, what does healing look like and how will I ever get there? It’s yours. Water from tears and the shower gently put the fire out.

Rhonda said something about the postivie effects of negative ions being washed away by water and reminded me of Anne Lamott’s wisdom that the bathroom is the best place to pray. There is indeed something sacred about water. And something so relieving about God taking things from me.

Thursday, my poltergeist-spinning head and fire-spitting mouth reset to normal. I relaxed inside, water having gently put the fire out. I looked around and found while I had been crazy inside (normal crazy, I’ve been reassured), my kids and cats survived. And so did I . . . perhaps more healed, at least better watered.

Postscript: Thinking about healing on Tuesday night again and that the healing may not be fully realized until years down the road. The deep healing is like physical therapy after major surgery - it helps some in the short term, but long term can be the difference between full use of a limb and limited use. I think about the anger that I dealt with my dad, how it took so many years to heal from the wounds of a distant and alcoholic father, and how I finally let myself feel anger until my senior year of college. My senior prediction from high school was that I would get angry - I was never angry. But as a result of never being angry, of never experiencing appropriate emotions, I was distant from myself, friends and family - distance was necessary so I could maintain not feeling. So it is that by feeling now, down the road I will be in better shape, in all my limbs.

How I love water – let me count the ways (from Quotes of the Day, www.qotd.org):
“The cure for anything is salt water; sweat, tears, or the sea.” Isak Dinesen
“The highest goodness is like water. Water benefits all things and does not compete. It stays in the lowly places which others despise. Therefore it is near The Eternal.” Lao-Tzu
“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.” Leonardo da Vinci
“If there is Magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” Loren Eiseley

Welcome the Future, Respect the Past

In September of this year, I attended my ten year college reunion in Santa Fe, NM (um . . . where exactly did those ten years go?). About a quarter of my class was there (which percentagewise is a great turnout and in a class of under 100, there were about 25 of us). I was struck by how much everyone was the same, how recognizable everyone was with some new layers and some old layers taken off from the passing ten years. I felt like I was looking at collegemates through rose colored glasses.

I had this same impression at the beginning of December during visits with two dear and old friends. Gillian was in the states from Australia for a conference and to see friends. Gillian and I lived in the same dorm freshman years and shared many good and hard times during college. For five days, we got to hang out together, make small trips around Colorado and enjoy catching up on the six years since we had seen each other in New York. Jen, who had been my best friend fifth grade through about sophomore year of high school and my gymnastics buddy, came over for lunch and some playtime with her daughter, Sydney. I had not seen Jen in over seven years, reconnected through Facebook (can I say again, what a thing Facebook is!), and found out she had moved to Denver this last summer. We were both overcome by surprise and excitement by this discover. We also enjoyed a time of reconnecting and catching up.

In most of my former classmates and close friends, I found a deeper sense of self and a better awareness of who they were and meant to be (not that we all have that big question figured out - heck, we're only in our thirties - just closer to it). I realized in being with Gillian and Jen and discussing our pasts what a poor friend I had been and what I had missed about myself but also that I may have been incapable of being anything other. As George Santayana wrote, "We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible." As with any close relationships, our histories, our family pasts, our deep wounds - only slightly discovered under the pretty facade - separated us and even while other important parts held us together. With Jen in particular, what an interesting clash our histories had. It feels important to make so many trips down memory lane, to look back with two who were such close friends and think about who I was so many years ago, what decisions I made, without judgement and with caring and listening hearts.

It was restorative to spend time with Gillian and Jen and to know them better now than I could before. It is restorative to see in myself how far I've come, that even (or especially) in darkness, God gives me strength to grow and light to grow in.

Herons and Aspens

On the forty-five minute drive back to Longmont from Westminster on Friday, I realized that I had not written a blog entry in two weeks. In the strange vortex of grief, part of me feels like more time should have passed – time so ballooned with a spectrum of emotions – and part of me wonders how two weeks already passed, three weeks that were in practical ways unproductive, a daily commitment to just one foot in front of the other, following the small increments of the line. What exactly did I do for two weeks?

Nothing came to the surface for a blog entry, and I thought about writing about nothing until near the end of the day. There is a liquor store on the east side of Longmont called Fox Hill Liquors, recently taken over by new owners who are unexpectantly welcoming. On my first visit, the lovely East Indian woman called me by my first name when I made a purchase. I felt like her friend immediately, as if we already knew something intimate about each other. On Friday, I stopped by on my way to pick up the kids, always a funny sequence of events because I feel like I’m picking up contraband, Alissa, our daycare provider, being Mormon.

One of the wine displays was a French winery, Heron, and I thought about this majestic bird, catching glimpses of one on the Chesapeake Bay in the wee hours of the morning as I sat in the seven seat of crew boat, seeing one fly over Golden Ponds in Longmont. If I was a bird, I would be a heron.

In high school, a friend, Chris, was filling out a multiple choice personality/ideal career test. The only question I remember is, “If you were a flower, what would you be?” My mom, Chris and I laughed after he read the question – especially because the friend was male and, though sensitive, still quite male and an adolescent. But I think these days, if I was a flower, I’d be a red poppy.

A few months ago, my pastor, EC, who is also the soon-to-no-longer-be Board President where I work, and I drove to Boulder for a non-profit awards luncheon. On the way back, we were talking about politics (or, he was talking, good preacher that he is) and mentioned in the conversation stream Barbara Walters’ first interview, which she rather flubbed when she asked Nixon, “If you were a tree, what would you be?” EC thought this a ridiculous question to ask. “Oh,” I laughed. “I don’t know. If I was a tree, I’d be an aspen.” It’s a perfectly fine question to ask.

I am reading Richard Rohr’s, “Everything Belongs.” A Franciscan monk, Rohr talks about small mind and big mind, small mind being what we tend to have in the West, analytical, detail oriented, at its worst, clinging mind. Big mind is more Eastern, able to float in mystery, connect with that which is bigger. This helps me realize one thing I miss now in my “religion” and connect to in my faith, something I feared in church, where the mystery, mystical, something bigger, inexplicable and only feelable, fantasy “fits.” I love children’s books, like “Goodnight Moon” and “You Are My I Love You” that take us out of the concrete, sensical on language and words. They are feelable.

So I put it out there – if you were a bird, a flower or a tree, what would you be? Ridiculous questions that I wonder about. Perhaps part of big mind, nonsensical. At the very least, a little humor to round the sharp corners of recent events.