Life as a House

We cannot summon the future, we cannot remake the past.

The present moment is the unfinished house in which we dwell.

-Philip Simmons

I live in an imperfect house with an ever-growing,

weedy yard, an occasionally-leaky basement,

cracked ceilings and creaky floors and low water

pressues, an outdated kitchen.

BUT

An unfinished, imperfect house is a reminder

of the relentlessness of time, a reminder

that life will never be all bliss, without problems

or pain.

An imperfect house reminds us of the ways

life has turned out to be not quite what we

had in mind.

AND

my imperfect house also has a living room

of truest blue, a dining room of yellow, and

art upon the walls. Photos of those I love

fill shelves everywhere, and in my daffodil

bedroom, more art feeds my heart and soul.

And everyone who passes through my yellow

front door feels welcomed by the enfolding

warmth of this old place- or so they tell me-

for it has been a happy, holy house, its

bricks and mortar sated with the sounds of

laughter- and more than a few tears.

And if the wooden floors are just a little bit

askew, if windows occasionally stick and

the back steps need a coat of paint, all of

these are just reminders that it isn't over

till it's over...that life is made of good and

bad, of sadnesses and joys...perfect imperfection...

my house, my life.

Words to Live By

Life is a mystery that takes a lifetime to solve. -Joan Chittister

Don't take to me about flowers and sunshine and waterfalls: this is the ground, here, now, in all that is ordinary and imperfect, this is the ground in which life sows the seeds of our fulfillment. The imperfect is our paradise. -Philip Simmons

...people wish to be settled' only so far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is my commitment to my own faith journey which has led so squarely to Christ, so precarious that it requires me to reject or suspect other people's commitment to theirs? -Barbara C. Crafton

Life confronts us always with our weakest selves. It is those parts we must come to understand. -Joan Chittister

how, then, shall we pray?

how, then, shall we pray?
If all of life is linked,
the atoms of each living thing
entangled with the other and
the other and the other in one
holy enmeshing of existence,
then instead of asking God to
intervene, to alter things to our
desires, to change the ways in which
the very nature of the world unfolds,
perhaps we need to be aware that
in the linking lies the medium through
which our prayers may move-
my hope and love and caring
moving through the essence of
creation to reach your mind and heart and life.
The connections are already there,
forming the very fabric of our lives,
the gift of the wisdom of the Infinite Mind,
the Ground of Being, the Creator of Life and Love-
my prayer is
my way of being linked
of giving love
of wishing peace and blessing
even as I myself am being changed...

Give Peace a Chance

First and foremost, I am not a bumper sticker person. Though I appreciate and enjoy many I have seen over the years on the bumpers of other peoples' cars, I have never displayed anything on my own vehicle except a breast cancer ribbon- which I have since lost.

But several months ago, I found myself ordering some bumper stickers from the Syracuse Cultural Workers catalog (if you haven't discovered this organization, I highly recommend checking out their website, esp. if you are a bumper sticker-T-shirt-poster lover. Their stuff is awesome! But I digress...) Anyway, I ordered several of their bumper stickers, shared a couple with friends, and finally, made the decision to put two of them on my dear car's rear bumper. They've been there for several weeks now, but it was only yesterday, as I was returning to the car after grocery shopping, that I realized that their combined message actually conveys much of my philosophy of life.

In case you can't read them, the one on the left says, PEACE ALSO TAKES COURAGE, while the one on the right avers, GOD IS TOO BIG TO FIT INSIDE ONE RELIGION. And there you have it...my commitment to and belief in peace, while at the same time realizing it is not for the faint-of-heart as well as my deep understanding that God/the Divine/the Ground of Being/the Great I Am/ Allah/Yahweh...you pick a name...is far too big to be the "property" of any one faith tradition...indeed, that if God IS God, then every person in every place is God's own- beloved, cherished, created co-creator, which should unite rather than divide us, it seems to me.

With so much misinformation and disinformation and fear-mongering out there, the Divine Presence, which is LOVE, and the commitment to peace provide the path to reshaping our world, the road to unity and oneness, and- if I may use a very "religious" word- the way to the salvation of our planet and our species.

RAMPANT FEAR!!!

I heard it on NPR this morning- Senator Joe Lieberman calling the shootings at Fort Hood the worst "terrorist attack" in our country since 9/11, calling for a Homeland Security investigation, and once again ramping up the hysteria about Terrorist Cells at work in this country.

Then, in the morning paper, a news story stated that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had attended, while living in Virginia, the same mosque as two of the 9/11 hijackers, a mosque headed at that time by an extremist Moslem imam. And several of Hasan's classmates in a 2007-08 master's program with Hasan had apparently complained to superiors about what they considered to be his anti-American views.

Now, I wonder how many of the members of the congregation which Timothy McVeigh attended were painted with the same radical brush as that Oklahoma City bomber. Or how many people who have expressed views which seem at odds with others around them have been labeled "terrorist".

I don't know the facts- but neither, it seems to me, do the news media, as each and all seem to rush to judgment, reporting only the most lurid, most fearful, most spectacular stories about a man who may well have been suffering from the extreme pain of having spent the past five years listening to the fears and suffering of military men and women who had been injured in Iraq or Afghanistan, working with those suffering from PTSD, and then finding himself faced with the prospect of being deployed to the Afghan theatre of war.

Any number of the military who have served in these wars have returned stateside, only to oppose what they see as hopeless wars, resulting in an increasing loss of life, both American and others, while gaining little or nothing for the people of these two countries. And apparently Hasan himself had come to the place of questioning the extremely high human cost of these conflicts.

I suspect that prayers were offered yesterday in many churches across our nation for the victims of the Fort Hood shooting, their families, and for the other military people stationed there. I know that was true in my own congregation, and that's as it should be. But how many prayers were offered for Major Nidal Malik Hasan? For no matter what happens, no matter what investigations and probes reveal about his motives, his beliefs, his own personal issues, he is a human being, a child of God. And we must not let our fears drive us into hatred, into exclusion, into prejudice. For there lies our destruction, as surely as in the hands of any terrorist. As Walt Kelly's Pogo put it so succinctly many years ago: We have met the enemy and it is us.

A Tale of Woe

This ad appeared in the January 1935 issue of Good Housekeeping, at the time the most popular women's magazine in the country and the moderator of all things female. Today's modern, liberated woman might well smile at the ad's content with its emphasis on controlling feminine attributes.

Well, put away those smiles, sisters of mine, for yesterday I saw on TV an ad for Victoria's latest "secret", a bra which is being marketed with this tag-line: "Adds two cup sizes", followed by some comments about how sexy and appealing you will look if you wear this undergarment.

How in the world have we come to this? this emphasis on being "sexy" by increasing and enhancing our chest size (albeit dishonestly by projecting a totally false image- and the pun is fully intended)? Since when has cup size become a measure of anything except what size bra to buy? since when a measure of how sexy or desirable or worthy a woman is? People, THIS IS 2009!!! I can only imagine Susan B. Anthony, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan turning over in their respective graves.

I was part of the Women's Liberation Movement in the late 60s and early 70s, and while I didn't burn my bra, I certainly eschewed it, being one of those "lucky" females who really didn't need to wear one. And I haven't worn one since, deciding after breast surgery that, for me, a prosthesis which required wearing a bra was just too uncomfortable. But I applaud other sisters who have gone the prosthetic route, who put up with the discomfort of bands around the ribs and straps over the shoulders in order to feel more comfortable and look- I guess- more fashionable in your clothing. But to focus so much on the size of one's chest (the purpose of which is really the nurture and feeding of the young, something which far too few women actually do) is, in my opinion, to focus on woman as sex object, shining a spotlight on Victoria's not-so-secret instead of the worth of a woman's mind and heart and emotional makeup.

Oh, I know, my own biases are showing. And I certainly went through some years- back in the early 60s- when I felt my own chest woefully inadequate by the standards of pulchritude of the day. But thanks to my sisters in the Movement and to my own increasing sense of who I am, I came to understand that a woman's value lies not in the measurement of her chest but in the size of her heart and spirit, the depth of her compassion, the boundlessness of her daring. When did- and why are we slipping back into that image of woman strictly as sex object, especially when pornography and sex slavery and other such perversions of what is meant to be lovely and wholesome and nurturing abound? And is there no one out there to shed a tear with me?

A Time of Remembrance

Today is Celtic New Year, as well as All Saints' Day, the beginning of the month of November when the darkness lengthens and the light seems to move further & further away. In the words of writer, Esther De Waal, "It is the thinnest time of the year, the season at which the veil between time and eternity can easily become transparent, the time when darkness overtakes the light."


“and it came to pass…”
The phone broke into
the after-midnight silence…
the message which
came shattering my life into
a million pieces, never to be
gathered together in the same
way again.

How does the mind
grasp the immensity
of the death of a
child? your child?
A sense of unreality
hovered over the next hours,
the next days…in the
midst of people trying to
help, of others sharing
my grief, I was dreadfully alone,
and the only words
I could offer to the
One who had always been
my strength, my firm rock,
were, “Oh, God…oh, God…oh, God,”
unsure of what I
meant, if blessing or curse;
uncertain of what I wanted-
except to have
my child back!

Time passed in a blur…days uniformly
gray, shapeless, without meaning. I
sleep-walked through life, deceiving
those around me into believing
I was fine…
while deep inside I
was bleeding out from
the wound only I
could feel…

Weeping drained my life-force,
leaving me a shapeless husk,
a gaunt, gray form in the
mirror, unrecognizable
even to me.
Calendar days ceased to
have meaning, as Grief
extracted a toll which
Age had not, imprinting
herself in countless ways
upon my countenance…
tear-traced furrows
lining my face…the heavy
burden of loss bending
my back…

And it came to pass,
one day- a lifetime later in
the non-linear scheme of
things eternal-
one day I awoke
and put on a red
dress- and laughed!
It’s called survival-
and grace.

Heartbroken

broken open

A broken heart is

an open heart,

each heartbreak

an opportunity

for love to flow

through you.

And though the pain

is sharp and real,

the broken-open heart

remains a vessel

to receive and share

the hurts of other

aching hearts and souls,

and in the process,

begin the task of healing

once again.

Autumn's Glory

What began as a dreary, rainy day metamorphosed into a perfect afternoon: Carolina blue skies, a gentle 70-degree breeze, and low humidity. Taking the dog for a walk, I could barely take in the autumn glory all around me, trees of amazing hues: here, one of gold-tipped lemon; there, an orange one brushed with scarlet; and ahead, a beautiful, totally bronze giant. The walk became a feast for the senses, as squirrels scolded, songbirds serenaded, traffic whispered on a nearby street, distant dogs barked. And I added to the symphony as I shuffled through the leaves on the curbsides, scattering them around and feeling like a kid again.

Years ago, when we lived in a house with a heavily-wooded yard, Daddy built a wonderful swing. Constructed of a wood plank seat and heavy ropes held on a wooden crossbar high between two tall trees, it was a true delight for my sisters and me. In the fall, we would rake the countless leaves into a huge pile at just the right distance from the swing and then, swinging higher and ever higher, we would at last jump off into the waiting and welcoming pile. It was surely a little bit of heaven.

The autumn has long been my favorite season, though it also holds within its grasp memories of some of my life's most difficult times: the death of my young husband from leukemia in his thirty-seventh year, and, long years later, my surgery for breast cancer. But these times of sadness have done nothing to diminish my love for this glowing season, this time of preparation for the long, quiet, fallow season of winter. The brilliant leaves gradually fading and falling remain a reminder for me of the cycles of life, a reminder that all that is lovely, all that we love, will someday come to an end...but that nature's apparent "death" in the winter gives way always to the new life, the resurrection of the spring.

Perhaps this year's daring colors are more precious to me as they are reminding me that I am surely in the autumn of my years- that season of my life when I am seeking to be beautifully daring, to show my truest, fullest colors, to be- every day- the courageous, audacious, authentic person I am meant to be. And to celebrate with gratitude every day of this lovely season of autumn.

Who Decides?

Lately, watching the state of the world on the evening news, listening to the voices on NPR, reading the local newspaper, I have found myself ruminating- no other word for it- on how things have to come to be the way they are, chewing on the cud of my questions as I turn them over and over and over in my mind. Now I realize I am often too much given to thought, but that's the way I am, and to borrow yet another metaphor from the animal world, I frequently worry over questions like a dog over a bone. And then, most often, I take pen in hand to work out my thoughts on paper. It's how I think best, how I reflect, how I really know what I'm thinking and how and why.

decision-making power

Who decides how things are

"supposed" to be? Who had made the

Determination that having white

skin is better than having black?

That being male and having balls

is preferable to being female and

having a uterus which can bear life?

That bringing a child into the world

to be neglected and abused is morally

superior to choosing to not have it at all?

That by denying something you do not

want to believe is true over & over & over

again, you can make your opinion reality?

Who decides what is truly "true"? For

once some believed (some still do) that

slavery was right- denied that people with

a darker skin were even really "human",

seeing them as unthinking, unfeeling

creatures. Once some believed (some still do)

that women were the property of men,

fit only to do the bidding, bend to the will

of father or husband, denying their intellects,

denigrating their minds. Once some believed

(some still do) that homosexuality was a

sinful choice- seeing those whose sexuality

was different from their own as threats to

home and hearth and family.

Who makes the rules and sets the limits,

doles out punishments or reward? Who

determines which religious path leads

untimately to unity with God? And who

decides that my path, my thoughts, my

beliefs, my ideas have less validity than yours?

or his? or hers? or theirs?

Who decides???