Failure to thrive

And now I sit here frozen.

 

Another cup of tea. This is the sequel to two cups of coffee. I’m looking for inspiration on a cold, gray day when the calendar year is waning.

 

No, I haven’t written this year. I haven’t played music either. I have cleaned out my closet a couple of times and alphabetized my spice rack. Somehow the alphabetization slipped out of order and I had to do it again. The presumption is that some fiend is sneaking into my house at night, mysteriously bypassing the security system, and creating havoc in the spice rack. Wicked, wicked fiend, spawn of Satan. 

 

The confusion over the spice rack and my unrelenting fear that the spices’ expiration dates are past due has prevented me from cooking. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

 

Is something wrong? I suppose the answer is yes, but it’s nothing novel. Depression, isolation, loneliness, failure to thrive. Remember when the term “failure to thrive” was used to describe infants who didn’t grow or interact with their surroundings? So, I am diagnosing myself with a senior version of failure to thrive. Luckily, it’s not really dementia. Yet. 

For me, it’s a first-world problem. I live in a beautiful house that I designed and I have a 180-degree view of the Chesapeake Bay. I have everything I need, including grocery delivery service. In my carefully designed and organized closet I have approximately 50 pairs of shoes. I don’t wear most of them because they are (a) uncomfortable, or (b) there’s no occasion to wear them. I don’t have a hair stylist, a manicurist, an esthetician, a psychic, or a house cleaner. Quit your belly aching, grandma!

 

For now, I’m going back to my attempt at a practice of contemplation—sitting in the presence of God. I’ve lost traction when it comes to writing, but in this case it’s better to write something rather than nothing at all. One day at a time.

 

Here’s a photo I took from my front deck a few days ago. It is so stunningly beautiful here and winter has its own icy appeal.

 

One thing

There’s a low-rumbling storm passing through. Flashes of light. Groans filling the sky. I’ve been sitting on my bedroom floor in the dark, trying to pray. But all I can manage to say is, “Lord . . .” Lord, like He knows what I’m trying to say even though I don’t. So, I sing Angel from Montgomery over and over again, the only words I have that come close to prayer, tears seeping, my voice cracking.

 

Just give me one thing, Lord, that I can hold on to.

 

I don’t know what to grab in this freefall, in this year from hell.

 

To believe in this living . . . Lord, this time it’s too hard, there’s too much piling on too fast. 

 

I am an old woman, alone in desperate times. I don’t know if this faith of mine is enough. One thing to hold on to.

The light. The darkness.

That bright ray of light became smaller and smaller.

A number of years ago I was attending a music workshop at a college in the mountains of West Virginia. I needed some quiet time, so I went to my room and sat on my lumpy dorm bed trying to meditate, gazing at the mountains in the distance. My attention kept wandering but I persisted. I began to sense a ray of light that encompassed my entire body and the light became smaller and more concentrated until it focused in the middle of my chest. I was able to keep my focus on that light to the point that it felt that the small beam of light was my entire existence. My body ceased to exist, the room around me ceased to exist, and nothing remained but the light. Even then I wondered if that was what it felt like to die, and indeed I wondered if I had died. I wasn’t afraid.

I have recalled that moment occasionally, but only remember how it felt. It never happened again.

Today I recalled the beam of light experience, comparing it in a strange way to my experience in the isolation of the pandemic. My world is getting smaller and smaller, compressing into a feeling that has settled in the center of my chest. But it is far from the bright light I felt that day in the West Virginia mountains. Instead it is a crushing darkness—sadness, anger, and dread. The reasons for this darkness need not be discussed. There is no useful reason to explore the darkness.

I don’t want to be crushed by the darkness. I don’t want my existence to be overshadowed by anger and disappointment. I don’t want to feel this insignificant.

The only thing I can think to do—I will sit in silent prayer and look for the light.

Beloved

This morning I sat alone, for a long time, on the north pier. Surrounded on all sides by a living photograph. The water glistened. The green grasses of the marsh off to one side and waves lapping on the rocks. A small fishing boat perfectly placed in the distance. Sea birds darting over the water in their dance of joy. Sunlight breaking through the cotton-candy clouds. No photograph could have done it justice.

And on the osprey nest just yards away, young birds flapping their wings, building up the muscle to spend their lives in the sky. The privilege of my existence, in that place, at that moment did not escape me.

The wonder of God’s creation in one small slice and I had it all to myself. I said aloud, “Lord, I still find it hard to accept that I am your beloved. But allowing me to be here now is pretty convincing. Thank you.”

Lately the persistent evil side of life, our human brokenness, has been especially crushing. But I was able to understand that the glory of God and our brokenness can coexist and that God’s love—being the beloved—cannot be diminished.

Hatred

“We cannot pray in love and live in hate and still think we are worshipping God.”

A.W. Tozer

Admittedly, I don’t know much about A.W. Tozer. I know he was a Christian pastor, a humble man of great depth, and he is often quoted with reverence as a great teacher.

Reading these words of A.W. Tozer, in this time of great national turmoil, caused me to sit up straight and think—yes, those people, those awful hateful racist people are betraying their alleged Christian values, those Pharisees aren’t worshipping God.

Brakes squealing. I cringe to think of some of the racist attitudes I have had in my long life. As much as I try not to be like those awful racists, those ugly other people, my own knee-jerk racist attitudes are like an indelible stain on my own conscience. I am humbled, embarrassed, and I pray forgiveness. I’ve been blind and there’s no excuse. I wish I had done better.

And then . . . do you see what I just did? I’m throwing stones at other racists, especially those who call themselves Christian. Do I hate them? I want to follow the adage—"love the sinner, hate the sin,” but even that involves pointing a finger at others. Should I point the finger at myself?

And honestly, I admit to big, big hate for the elected leader of this country. I have such a visceral revulsion for the man and for everything he does. If it’s wrong to hate, then no hate is excusable. Is there another word for this feeling I have?

I have no answers to any of these questions. 

Ants can't swim

Excuse me for my current craziness. You don’t have to excuse all of my other craziness, but today’s craziness should be forgiven. I am angry beyond words because of the horrible mess going on in my beloved country. I am sick of racism, hate, incompetence, blasphemy, rancor, political nonsense, Amazon furniture that falsely claims to be easily assembled, and ants. 

Suffice it to say, the furniture came in a thousand pieces, not one piece attached to another, no parts labeled, illustrations that were done be a two-year-old, and instructions written in ancient Hittite. I sweated blood in the assembly of this monstrosity. Two drawers are broken, things don’t line up properly, and it looks like it was put together by an orangutan. Sorry, didn’t intend to demean orangutans—they would have done it better. Enough of that.

Which brings me to the ants. There are tiny ants on my black countertops. I can’t see them because they are in camouflage. They are in my mailbox and inside the dishwasher. They attach themselves to any remnant of a food item or any kind of food serving item anywhere in the house. They are the smallest ants I have ever seen and I wonder if they are indigenous to South County. I know they have been swimming in my well, the bastards.

Because I’m in such a nasty mood I have not been kind to the ants. No more Mr. Nice Guy, picking them up gently and releasing them outside. I’d make a lousy Buddhist. I know I am harming living things and I don’t care anymore. 

Here’s what I have discovered: Ants can’t swim. I fill my kitchen sink with water and I sweep the ants into the sink to watch them drown. They move their miniscule legs as if they are trying to walk on water. Did Jesus invite them to come out of the boat? I don’t think so. If I’m feeling especially wicked, I douse them in boiling water. I leave the water in the sink all day and keep a body count. And I don’t feel guilty. So there. Don’t mess with me. I’m not in the mood to be messed with. 

The pier

The pier is my sacred place. Let there be no doubt that it is there on the pier that I often find God. 

This morning I sat on the rocks near the water and waited while a family spent time on the pier. Before they left, some children went out there and further delayed my time. Then a woman riding an adorable fat-tire, mint green bike rode to the end of the pier. She was at one end, alone, and I figured it was safe to make my move. So I staked out my space on the opposite end of the pier and tried to connect with the Lord.

And from the other end of the pier, I hear the mint green bicycle woman say, “God, what do you want me to learn in this situation?”

What?!!! 

I couldn’t hear much else of what she was saying, but apparently she was recording something. When she finished and got up to leave, I told her I wanted to hug her because what she said was straight from the Holy Spirit. So we sat and talked. She lives around the corner from me. My sacred place is her sacred place too and we share the same search for God. 

God is good all of the time. Thank you, Lord, for sometimes being so obvious that even I can figure out what you are saying. My heart is full.

Not Simply Orange

A walking lie. This morning I walked toward the pier carrying a plastic bottle that claimed it was Simply Orange. It wasn’t Simply Orange at all—it was about 1/3 orange juice and 7/8 San Pellegrino. I saw two young men approaching the pier and knew that they were walking much faster than I could walk. I had no energy or even any desire to get there first. So I took my fake Simply Orange and waited on a nearby bench. The young men left and I began to walk toward the end of the pier. It was then that I started to cry.

The Bay is wrapped in thick fog today, angel hair spread thin. Nothing is visible beyond the end of the pier—not the islands near the Eastern Shore, not the boats heading toward the ocean, or the small plane overhead that I could hear but not see.

Once again, I pleaded with the Lord to take away this thorn, this depression that descends on me unannounced. Don’t ask me to explain it, though I’ve lived with it and through it for a thousand years. I don’t try hard to hide it—that’s my newest approach. I freely admit it. People say, “What’s happening? Why are you depressed?” As if it needs a reason. Sometimes I try to tie it to something situational, but often there’s nothing new to blame. It’s just what is.

“Lord,” I pleaded, “Give me some hope. What do I have to live for?” Out of the fog, a large dead fish passed in front of me, its eyes empty and its entrails floating behind it. “Really, Lord? That’s it? A dead fish?”

My beautiful renovated house with a stunning view of the Chesapeake Bay is nearly finished and I have moved in. My drawers are organized, most of the boxes have been unpacked, and I’m sleeping in my own bed. Finally. I did it with a plan to live out the rest of my life here. It was a great idea, wise to plan ahead, to take charge of my own aging. But that creates a problem. My next step has been finalized. What’s next? Do I sit here in pandemic isolation waiting for the plan to continue to unfold until its inevitable end?

I stared out at the Bay, looking for God, seeing only dense fog. Yes, a brilliant metaphor, placed there by God to remind me that I was not meant to know the future. Maybe there’s something exciting beyond the fog that I can’t imagine. Maybe it’s all fog. Only the Lord knows. Yet the plans to escape spin in my head. I have to get out of here, move away from this beautiful place where I planned to live out my life. And there’s the problem—I want to run away from this plan for the final chapter of my life. It may make sense rationally to take charge of my future, but I’m not a planner, not a rational person. And I don’t what to say this is all I could ever want.

Thelma and Louise race toward the cliff. They have a plan to take charge of their own fate. They realize too late that maybe it’s not the best plan after all.

Mama and her knives

I became nostalgic today as I was sharpening a pencil with a paring knife, a skill I learned from my mama. All of the pencils in my childhood home became short stumps with hand-honed points. My mama liked knives.

Apparently she liked knives from an early age because she told stories about playing mumbly-peg as a child. Mumbly-peg was a game that involved scoring points by throwing pocket knives into patches of dirt. I don’t recall her describing the rules of the game because I was distracted by the idea that my mother played with pocket knives as a child. I’m certain she didn’t wear a helmet when she rode a bike.

For a period of time in my high school years I carried a switchblade knife in the pocket of my coat, along with a string of rosary beads. The acorn/tree. But that’s a story for another time.

Mama had a way of slicing and peeling food items that looked really dangerous. She held the knife in her right hand using her right thumb as the stopper for the knife blade. To this day, I do it the same way and people shudder when they watch me. She never cut herself. I haven’t either. 

But she cut herself many times doing things that should have been less dangerous. Her trips to the Adventist Hospital ER were legend. I take that back—many of the ER trips were for one of us kids, injured when one of us “accidentally” got a head busted open by coming in contact with the heel of her shoe. On the way to the hospital, she coached my brother to tell the ER personnel that he fell and hit his head of the coffee table. Once when she cut her own hand using a knife to pry open a can of tuna she told the Adventist ER doctor that she fell and cut it on a whiskey bottle. I said, “Mom! That’s a lie—why did you tell him it was a whiskey bottle?” She smirked and said, “Those Adventists don’t drink. I thought it was more interesting than saying it was a tuna fish can.”

And she had a thing about sharpening her knives. Her favorite carving knife had a wooden handle and a blade about 10 inches long. Over time it became curved like an ancient Turkish scythe used in battle against the infidels. 

Her things are all gone now, disbursed to various people or taken to the thrift store—her pink hand-crank ice crusher, her big aluminum pot that she used to cook spaghetti sauce (including the incident when my brother threw a wad of chewed up grape bubble gum in the sauce, giving it an uncharacteristic and unexplained grape flavor), and her olive trays. All gone. 

I wonder what happened to the ancient Turkish weapon she called a knife. I could use that knife to sharpen my pencils.

Rilke reconsidered

Funny how things you might have read in your youth might slip through your head--

"Oh, yes, that's interesting, well said. I must remember that."

And as age advances to the point that you have many more years behind you than you have ahead of you, you read it again--

"Wow--that's so profound. Didn't I read this once before? Funny how I forgot it."

As Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet:

I want to ask you, as clearly as I can, to bear with patience all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves. . . . For everything must be lived. Live the questions now, perhaps then, someday, you will gradually, without noticing, live into the answer. [1]

  

[1] Rainer Maria Rilke, A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows (HarperOne: 2009), 49.

Yearning

Credit: Gabor Murray

A few days ago I had a discussion with a friend about yearning--like, among other things and despite our advanced age, we don't give up wanting to have a close, romantic relationship with a member of the opposite sex. I still yearn for a perfect garden, warm sourdough bread, and linen sheets. I have linen sheets, will always have linen sheets. Lord, please grant me that one concession and let me die on linen sheets. (In a perfect garden with the love of my life holding my hand . . . ) And I yearn for a closer union with God and avocados that are always at the perfect stage of ripeness. Avocado on warm sourdough bread.


This brought to mind a John O'Donohue poem--For Longing--that I posted here some time in the past. John O'Donohue expresses it so much better than I ever could. It bears repeating.

For longing

blessed be the longing that brought you here
and quickens your soul with wonder.

may you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

may you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
to discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

may the forms of your belonging – in love, creativity, and friendship –
be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

may the one you long for long for you.
may your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

may a secret providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

may your mind inhabit your life with the sureness
with which your body inhabits the world.

may your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.

may you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.
may you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

by John O'Donohue

Shards of glass

Last night or, to be more precise,  just before dawn this morning, I awoke from a dream that I remember in startling detail. I was at some sort of tribal, artsy party on a beach. I had applied all kinds of beach debris--shells, small stones, bits of seagrass, and crab claws--to my body with glue. I was covered in bits of the sea and quite proud of my creativity. There was a man there (James) whom I had known as a boy when both of us were in high school. I wasn't that interested in talking to him, but after I had fully adorned myself in sea bits, I sat beside him as he leaned against a sand bank alone, in silence, staring at the water.

When I sat down he put his arm on my shoulder and, still looking at the water, said, "You know, I really used to love you back then."

My hands were covered with glue and my mouth was full of shards of glass. I said, "I want to tell you a story. But wait until I get this glass out of my mouth." I removed glass and more appeared. I continued removing it, waiting to tell James my story.

At that point, my former bastard bully of a husband stood at the shore and shouted at me, "What are you doing with him? You get away from him!"

I saw the ex-husband without feeling any emotion other than mild amusement. He didn't frighten me or make me anxious. I just chuckled and said, through the shards of glass in my mouth, "I don't care what you think. I'm free now." And I awoke.

My first drowsy thought was to thank God for the dream. "Thank you, Lord! Thank you--you know I needed to feel that. Thank you!" And I recall thanking him for my interaction with James and my confidence that I could remove the shards of glass--not for my lack of fear or emotion toward my husband.

But now, hours later, the images of the dream still vivid, I wonder why I was so grateful to God for the dream. I know that dreams are often God's way of sending us messages. But what was the message?

Having sharp things--pins, needles, glass, or fish hooks--in my mouth, throat, sometimes my arms, is a recurring image in my dreams. Always I remove some and more appear--I can never get them out. I used to interpret that as meaning I was frustrated that I wasn't able to express myself without retribution.

My sense is that my gratitude was more because I knew that James loved me when we were young. I was fully aware that it was in the past. And this time I felt that I could get past the shards of glass and tell my story and that my husband was just a silly, angry guy on the beach. But the intense feeling of gratitude, that the Lord had sent me a message, I still can't decipher. I need to sleep on that.

Demo

For months I've been silent. Last week my mother died after years of struggle. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.

A few days ago I was in a fancy downtown office building for a meeting. During a break I sat in an empty conference room, staring out the window, asking the Lord to bring me some peace. I was staring vacantly at a the shell of a building directly across from where I was sitting. The building looked like a bomb site, either being torn down or completely renovated. Something caught me eye that I had not noticed at first. Above a dumpster, spray-painted, was the word DEMO. I realize the word meant that this was the designated receptacle for discarded materials. But it meant something different to me. My childhood nickname, the name my mother called me even until her dying day, was Demo. Pronounced deemo, it is the name my family has called me all my life, derived from Donna Demo because they said I was a demon.

Was the Holy Spirit playing a little trick on me, when out of nowhere in a most unexpected setting, just days after her death, there appeared the name my mother called me? I had been thinking about her, that I wasn't what she wanted me to be. I was her ugly duckling, the one born with a deformed head (a story told so often, I could recite it with her). I was the one who never had the right hair--always the hair--until, when she died I had no hair at all. But when she was dying, I laid my head on her shoulder, and she rubbed her gnarled fingers across the stubble on my scalp and said, "Your head actually turned out fine. You have a nice-shaped head after all. My baby girl. My Demo."

Now she is gone.

Just like before she died, when I said my strength was failing, I relied on the Lord's strength. I asked Him to give me compassion and caring and He filled me--not through my efforts but from His deep well. Now I am depleted. She has died--I watched her dying, yet it still seems so unreal.

And what do I need now? I feel frozen, exhausted. Again I will go to Him--to the Lord, my Lord who provides. I need rest to refresh my energy. Lord, please fill me with joy, with a new appreciation for life. I need comfort. Please show the way to a new purpose. I have tried to do your work, fulfilled my obligation to my mother--admitting that I often did it with a begrudging attitude. Please forgive me for that.

It's my mama, Lord. It seems incomprehensible that she is gone, after all these years of courting death, she finally surrendered. Lord, fill me with a new spirit. I know you have been equipping me for this, but I can't find the "on" switch. Fill my heart with what I know in my head. I need your spirit to fill my emptiness. I know it's there, that there is joy, a new purpose in me that hasn't reached my heart yet.

More prayer. More time with you. More trust. And total surrender to your will.

Walking home

Imagine this: An elderly woman, her life now counted in months, weeks, perhaps only days. She is distressed and questioning what will happen at the end of her days--will there be nothing, will she see God, will she ever be with her beloved husband who departed before her?

Despite spending a lifetime following her faith, she now doubts. That seems to me to be a cruel conclusion to a life spent observing her religion as closely as she could.

So a priest comes to see her to discuss her concerns. She is old school, she hangs on his every word. He is a priest she has known for years and she trusts him to interpret God's plan for her. She tells him she wonders if God exists, she fears death because it could simply be the end of everything. What if there's no life after death? What if she never sees her husband again, never sees her parents, or all those she loved who went before her? The promises of Scripture ring hollow and, in her advanced age, she can't remember what it was that once gave her hope.

And the priest tells her that he feels the same way, that he has the same questions. I imagine some words of comfort, reassurance came after he told her that he shares her fears. He probably said, " . . . but the Lord has told us not to fear . . ."

She only heard what he said before the "but" statement. All she absorbed is that the priest, the one with the direct line to God, the one whose faith surely must never waiver, that the priest has fears too.

So she, who can be outrageously funny and talkative and the life of the party, is now despondent and fearful. This is not the way it should be. I want to see her at peace, assured of her salvation, resting in the anticipation of an eternity spent in perfect bliss. She deserves to walk home in peace, basking in love.

Bury me deep

Thanksgiving was the best I can recall. I am so  . . . thankful. I had the glorious opportunity to spend a few days in Austin with all my kids and grandchildren. My heart is full.

During the visit, in the middle of an ordinary conversation with my daughter and son-in-law, I felt compelled to throw in something about death.

“ . . . Barton Creek might be a nice thing to do tomorrow,” said my daughter.

“Not to change the subject, but I’ve changed my mind about cremation,” I blurted out. “I read that it’s really not good for the environment because it uses too much energy and can create noxious fumes.” The fumes from my cremation could be more noxious than most. I don’t want to be blamed for polluting the air.

I explained the natural burial concept. At Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Virginia, where I’ve gone on retreat, the Trappist monks maintain a natural cemetery on the property. Burial there involves no embalming. The unembalmed body is either put into the ground in a plain wooden coffin that will disintegrate with the corpse, or the body is wrapped in a simple linen shroud and dropped into the earth. I like the linen idea. (I once read that after her husband Alfred Stieglitz died, Georgia O’Keeffe stayed up all night to rip out the tacky satin lining from his coffin and replace it with white linen. That alone says so much about her.)

At the natural cemetery, the body, wrapped in a linen shroud, is buried in sacred ground, either in the meadow or in the woods, within view of the Shenandoah River. The grave is marked with river rocks engraved with the name of the person in the ground below. I have seen this cemetery and walked in the woods among the stone-marked graves. It’s quite serene and lovely.

My thoughtful son-in-law suggested an even simpler option. Apparently, somewhere near San Marcos, Texas, there is a place called the Body Ranch where bodies are left out in the open, naked and resting on their backs, to decay naturally. The natural decomposition process is studied for forensic research. There might even be a body left in a car to study the particular details of decomposition in those conditions. I wonder if they try different makes and models of cars. Does a body decompose differently in a 1967 black Ford Mustang than in a 2012 Olds Cutlass? This Body Ranch alternative does not appeal to me. I’ve seen the pictures.

My beloved daughter and son-in-law then carried the discussion to another level. They maintain a compost pile in the back corner of their property. It was suggested that I might saunter on out to the compost heap until I die. No fuss, no bother, just walk down there and wait. I expressed concern about vultures. No problem, they’re bird watchers. Just consider me a feeding station.

Fierce

Okay, this is just between the two of us. You have to promise not to let anyone else see this monstrosity. I'm letting you see the photo of me with a bald head.

There is a bit of a story behind this. If you've been reading this blog, you know that I have hair issues. I have alopecia, an autoimmune condition that causes hair loss. It sucks. Through visits to multiple doctors I've had blood work and skin biopsies, only to find there is no cure. My hair has disappeared in ugly chunks. And just to make things a bit more lively, a recent skin biopsy on the top of my head showed that I have squamous cell cancer on my scalp that requires surgery. Because my hair was falling out, and because I need to have my scalp surgically messed up, I initiated a pre-emptive strike and got a buzz cut. Chris, a guy I'd marry if he wasn't already married, cut my hair (#2 clipper guard) and pronounced that I looked "fierce". Fierce is better than pitiful, better than helpless or sad or whiny. The photo is my attempt to put on a fierce face just after my head was shorn. To me it seems more the look of a woman who is leaning toward angry resignation when she would rather be fierce. What expression do you imagine Joan of Arc had as her captors lit the fire about to consume her?

The fierce phase has not been fiercely executed. I wander from fierceness to shame, days spent in hiding. For several weeks I have done what I call Mass for Shut-Ins--watching the Sunday church service on the Internet. But today I went to the morning service with a hat on. The hat got hot. I went to see my mother after church, refusing to remove the hat. I forewarned her, but she didn't really understand until she saw it. My mother saw my head a couple of weeks ago, screamed, and said, "I can't stand looking at you!" Nice. Now the hat stays on, no matter how much she begs me to see my head. This condition doesn't work well with my mother's obsession with appearance. Her obsession with hair is pathological. How ironic that she would get me as a daughter.

Tonight I went back to church for the 5 p.m. service. I took my hat off in the car because I was just too doggone hot. Still feeling the shame, I sat in a dark spot in the last pew in the church, rows away from anyone else. Alex, one of our pastors, came up to me in my hiding place in the back and asked me to do the wine at communion. I sucked air, said I was trying to hide my bald head in the back. He was going to let me off the hook. But, in an uncommon burst of courage, I said, "No! I'll do it. There's no better time or place to be bold."

Yes, I did it. I held my bald head high and walked to the front, under the bright lights for all the world to see. And I did feel emboldened, like God could see me and He still loves me. Giving up the deceit, the hiding, the fear and literally letting myself be seen with a flaw that humiliates me, has set me free. Only through the grace of God could this have happened, in His house, in His time. I may still lose confidence on occasion, I may waver between fierceness and shame, but fierce feels better.

Water, water

Nearly every day lately, clouds darken, thunder growls, and torrents of summer rain gush from the sky. It’s too much for my downspouts. Water overflows the roof and soaks the back of my house. I called the gutter guy. Again. I have an ugly history with water so I take no chances.

I’m wondering if there are some minor water gods whom I have offended. I’m deep into a love/hate relationship with water and I fear they’ve got the upper hand.

In a nominal effort to appear to be an optimist, let me first discuss the love. The universe is divided into two camps—bath people and shower people. (There also may be a third outlier camp of people who don’t bathe at all, but I presume they live in hand-built cabins in Montana where they build bombs with paper clips and elk droppings and have not communicated with other living beings since the dawn of the millennium.) I am firmly in the bath camp. I can’t sleep if I don’t take a bath. I spend my entire day counting down the hours until I can take a bath. I sometimes take more than one bath in a day and it’s a sacred ritualistic thing for me, well beyond being clean. Candles, lavender bath oil, Spanish monks singing Gregorian chant, the whole works.

I love water. But my hate of water is also fierce and unrelenting. I hate the free-range water in my house.

The first serious incident happened about ten years ago. I noticed the carpet in the corner of my basement, at the foot of the stairs, was discolored. After pulling out large pieces of drywall on two floors, the plumber found that there was a leak in a waste water pipe. It was expensive and messy. I thought I had paid my dues to the water gods.

A few years later, I called the refrigerator repair person because my icemaker wasn’t working. Sorry, ma’am, it’s not the refrigerator—it was the water line to the refrigerator. Next step—the plumber. Okay, fixed. Or so I thought. The water gods were snickering. Later that evening I went into the basement to get a light bulb. Water was running down the basement walls like a waterfall in a fancy hotel lobby. I had to turn off the water main to get it to stop. Something in the icemaker water line had failed. Plumbers, drywall repair, paint, carpets pulled up, more mess. The water gods were having a fiesta.

Next? A puddle of water under the kitchen sink. A friend fixed it for me. Didn’t work. I put a metal pan under the drip. I emptied it daily, offering my little daily homage to the water gods. They aren’t easily satisfied.

Spring came. It rained. I smelled something rank in the basement. My family room carpet was soaked and part of the drywall was discolored. My neighbor’s downspout was cracked, causing water to soak the foundation of my house. The man who repaired the carpet from the icemaker leak came back. He’s now on a first-name basis with me since I’m sending one of his kids to college. I paid to fix my neighbor’s drainage and reinforced my own drainage system for another layer of protection. Ha, it is to laugh, said the water gods mockingly, with a decidedly French accent.

Next—more rain, more water in the basement. Not as much water, but still leaking. It appeared that the crown of my chimney (three floors up from the basement) was cracked and water was seeping all the way into the basement fireplace. The carpet repair guy is on speed-dial. Two days of masonry work and a couple of thousand dollars and that leak went away. The water gods were doing high fives. 

Then the hurricane season came and brought a day of torrential rain. A stream of water was flowing out of an electrical outlet in my basement. There was a leak in the window well. I had the window well removed, the wall bricked up and sealed, and had all the drywall repaired. It cost me again. The carpet fixer guy? Not this time. I replaced the carpet with a floating wood-look floor that could be removed in case of flooding. It wasn't cheap. The gods were laughing so hard they had tears streaming down their crummy little faces.

The latest and most horrific episode involved freezing rain and a flat roof—you know what’s coming—it’s an ominous combination. Water was dripping out of one of the ceiling lights in my dining room. The usual first step, I called the plumber who tore big holes in the ceiling. Sorry, ma’am, it’s not the plumbing because there is no plumbing in this ceiling; it has to be coming from somewhere else. It escalated—water out of all the ceiling fixtures on the first floor, water running between the walls and seeping up out of the wood floors in the upper level. Water in the basement. I could hear it trickling inside the walls and it was seeping into the house much faster than I could remove it. Long sad story—the roof had cracked under the weight of freezing rain and the ice began to thaw. I screamed out for mercy. Tarp over the roof, clean-up crew, a new roof, removal of ceilings and walls, painting, insurance appraisals, repairs ad nauseum. I know it’s hot in the desert, but I’m willing to give it a try. The water gods wouldn't dare follow me to the desert. Would they?

I suppose I should look at this amount of water in perspective. My first bad water experience involved much, much more water—the Atlantic Ocean. It was the summer I turned 12. My family went to Bethany Beach on the Delaware shore for a day trip. It was hot and the beach was packed blanket-to-blanket with people searching for some respite from the heat. My father stayed on the shore, watching my younger brothers while my mother and I waded into the ocean. We floated in relatively placid surf on a rented rubber raft. There was a growing distance between me and my mother, who was alone on the raft. As I tried to swim back to her, I lost ground, swimming forward but moving backward into the ocean. My feet no longer touched the ocean floor. I was quickly becoming tired as I moved farther from my mother and she began to realize that I was in trouble. After the fact, I knew that she began screaming, but all I knew at the time was sheer terror. I had never heard of a riptide and had no strategy to save myself. A riptide is sort of passive-aggressive water, looks innocent enough but has a really nasty streak. I was gasping, swallowing the ocean, when two lifeguards reached me and put me on a raft. I don’t know how much time elapsed, but as we neared the shore, they asked me if I wanted to ride in on a wave. Bad idea, but I must have agreed. The wave threw me and I washed up on shore like a half-dead mackerel. Obviously much more water than I could handle.

Maybe these water gods who are out to get me have been trying for many years. The lifeguards who saved my life in 1960 thwarted the water gods’ plan to snuff me at an early age so now I’m paying the price one drop at a time.

For longing

blessed be the longing that brought you here
and quickens your soul with wonder.

may you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

may you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
to discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

may the forms of your belonging – in love, creativity, and friendship –
be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

may the one you long for long for you.
may your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

may a secret providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

may your mind inhabit your life with the sureness
with which your body inhabits the world.

may your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.

may you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.
may you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

by John O'Donohue

Down from the mountain

Photo of sunset, Telluride, Colorado, taken on my 70th birthday. God's gift to me.

The plan was to leave the old hag on the mountain, to let the old woman rot out there in the elements. But she got packed in my suitcase; she’s not leaving me.


Had I written this entry 10 days ago, it would have been different. Ten days ago, I would have said the trip to Colorado was a failure. I couldn’t breathe at the altitude, even though the altitude had not been a major problem in my previous trips to Telluride. In previous trips I was younger. I cut the trip short, lost 10 days at the condo that I had paid in advance, and flew home from 10,000 feet to an altitude of one foot above sea level. That’s a lot more oxygen and a relief to be able to breathe deeply.

The bold adventure in which I planned to spend a month alone, high in the Rocky Mountains, failed. My body bailed on me. My scheme was to spit in the face of my 70^th birthday. People were telling me that I was brave, had such independence and spirit. And I gloated about how I was going to sit on the mountain with God, in the “thin space” between heaven and earth, where the voice of the Lord is deafeningly near. I wanted a mystical experience for my 70^th birthday and I boldly was going to climb a mountain to get it. But like a scatterbug, I couldn't even focus on communicating with God in Telluride. I blamed Him for not showing up.

The old hag and I flew home to a giant pity party. Disappointment, shame, and embarrassment were at my doorstep. Poor me—I would have to report to all those who thought I was so brave that I failed in the great adventure. But after a few days at sea level the lights came on and I realized that the trip had been motivated, shaped by my desire to do something big, something remarkable. I wanted praise and adulation. My motivation was not so much to be at peace with God for a month but to show people that I could do it. I could see that my thinking was warped and then began to see that the trip wasn’t wasted, even though what it had to teach me was not what I expected. I realized that the entire plan to go to the mountains to scoff at my age and to get some great revelation from God was driven by ego, not by a desire for communion with God. It was totally about me, how I wanted to be seen as independent, adventurous, and deep.

The Lord wanted me to come down from the mountain, both literally and figuratively. He brought me down off my high horse. He didn’t cooperate with my silly ego exercise. He had other plans. He turned my mourning into dancing; He removed my clothes of sadness and clothed me in joy. (Paraphrase of Psalm 30:11.)

Honestly, it’s so good; not what I hoped for, but much, much better. It makes me smile to realize that I thought I had engineered the experience, but God stepped into my self-centered plan and made it infinitely better. It just looked like failure because it wasn’t what I wanted. He said, “Silly girl, why do you have to go high in the Rockies to be with me or to find meaning in your life? You can find those answers in the streets, in the shoe aisle of the thrift store, at the bedside of a dying friend, or in the quiet of your kitchen.”

It’s all good. I didn’t need to be on the mountain with my ego but to come down from the mountain to be with Him. What I thought was failure turned out to be a victory. I wanted to learn something and I did.

 

Failed minimalist

How long must I stand in the bright light of my closet before I purge the mess in there? How many times will I take out that olive green skirt that’s too tight, only to return it to the rack in case I lose weight? I liked that skirt and it still might work if I lose 10 20 30 pounds. Also, the skirt under discussion comes above my knees and I hate to show my knees. Otherwise, it’s perfect. Perfect for a younger, skinnier, much hipper version of myself.

Like a moth and a lightbulb, I’m drawn to those magazine articles that hype minimalist living. Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg has a collection of jeans and black t-shirts, not much else. He has been quite successful and no one criticizes his fashion sense. Image how easy it would be to grab the next clean black t-shirt and head out to make a million dollars for a day’s work.

More times than I can count, when it comes to purging one’s wardrobe, the expert minimalist du jour suggests that you ask yourself, “Would I buy this again?”

My usual answer is, “No! Of course not! I already have an olive green skirt—see it shoved in the back of my closet? Why would I buy another one exactly like it?”

Sometimes the minimalist suggests that the maximalist take everything out of the closet and create three piles: a KEEP pile of things in perfect condition that fit and work for one’s lifestyle, a MAYBE pile for the things that aren’t perfect but are hard to discard, and a DONATE pile of definite give-away items. For the weak, they might suggest putting the MAYBE things in a box to reconsider at a later date. I hate the idea of a MAYBE pile because it would be an indication that I might be indecisive. In theory, I deplore weakness in a closet purger, yet in the end I go through the closet and keep almost everything. What if I do lose a lot of weight and need a black lace mini dress? It’s already there—no need to go shopping.

Years ago my daughter made me discard my two pairs of “parachute pants”—navy and khaki. I loved those pants but she called them “MC Hammer pants” and I caved because she kept saying, “It’s Hammer time.” I miss the pants. They may even be back in style now. What if my granddaughter is going to a 60s party and needs a hippie outfit? Surely, somewhere in the back of the closet, there’s a leather fringe jacket and a long denim skirt that I lovingly sewed out of a pair of deconstructed jeans and a couple of old flannel shirts. Where is that skirt? I might want to wear it again.