Why I'm glad I don't live in Florida...

...this little condo you got us is so homey that the kids are really settling into life here. As we ate lunch at our little bamboo and glass kitchen table today, Elijah made the comment, "I think I'm getting used to Florida."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He looked out the sliding glass doors and said, "...the palm trees and sand and stuff. I'm getting used to seeing it." Meaning he was not really seeing them at all anymore.

So I'm glad I don't live in Florida. Because tonight when you took us to the beach, and took me out into the waves, it felt like the ocean was giving me a mini-rollercoaster ride. And when I looked at you and saw you watching me, I asked, "What?"

"Just watching out for you," you said. I thought then how much I like being with you in a place where you have to watch out for me. And how much I like knowing that you'd easily measure up to any danger that presented itself. I don't want the sense of your strength to become ho-hum to me.

I'm glad in this sense for the kid, too, for this is where when my son watches his father dive 25 feet down to the ocean's coastal floor, and he is duly impressed. This is as it should be between a pre-pubescent son and his father. He should know of manly things for which to brag about his father, and he should glow with the camaraderie of their adventure out with the schools of tuna swimming all around them. These things should also, not become commonplace, but remain special.

Finally, I'm glad I don't live here for when I walk along the beach at sunset, the view is so unfamiliar that I don't lapse into random thoughts or--even worse--worries about life and how it moves along. The view completely captures my eye and my tongue, making me look for words beautiful enough to describe what I see. I feel like I owe it to God to make a word-song of what I see.

Folds of gold satin, trimmed with periwinkle froth, this to commemorate the waves under the setting sun...I stand and stare at the view, and my heart feels somehow larger than it was before I saw this scene. So I look for something to lock the moment into my heart, but I know I will not succeed, for I've seen such beauty before--last autumn even in the world of my spirit so large that I thought if it went on for too long a march of days it could literally kill me body. So I know the feeling is a gift that passes. Words vaguely bring back the feeling, the camera tries but still falls short. Sometimes a work of art, if the artist is really gifted, can do it; but such art is not created so often it seems now. And music. If I'd been hearing Barber's Adagio for Strings as I walked the beach tonight, I'm afraid I might have melted into the tide myself. Part of me can't imagine how I'll be able to survive such all-encompassing, multi-faceted beauty when I meet it in the next life. I'm glad my heart knows enough about beauty to wonder such a thing.

So I embrace it deeply when it is with me for the moment, which is more than I'd expect is in the hearts of the couple passing me, for they walk with glaze-eyes, trudging along in the flat, damp sand. Nor do I follow the lead of the old man going along fully dressed, chest-deep in the water, staring down and sweeping his metal detector back and forth under the water. I'm not like these natives. I walk in the wonder of one seeing the water as beauty renewing itself, and a part of me hopes I always will.

Life in Your World

We travel with you this week, and what a trip it is. My first thought is to remember how a year ago we took a trip to Alaska. This day reminded of yet one more reason why I loved the place: SPACE! Maybe the bathroom of our rustic cabin sloped sharply downhill as you walked toward the shower. But look at the unexpected perks, like being able to learn everything you could ever want know about the care and maintenance of a water heater or the furnace, as long as you made the labels on these nearby sentinels your bathroom reading material. And yes, when you stepped out of the stall and went back into the cabin proper, you washed up at a sink that was on a plain wood shelf with a moose-print curtain, a curtain that you had to open and a shelf you had to crawl under if you wanted to use the air conditioner, which was a window unit (where's the window supposed to be here?) embedded there (and who needs the air conditioner much in Alaska anyway?) Even with all this to complain about, I hardly complained, for in Alaska there is space to move. Space to breathe.

Now in your world of travel, we travel places very different from Alaska in these respects. Here, when we stopped at a typical fast food joint and I visited the bathroom, I had a far less acceptable experience. True, everything was there to accommodate the travelers needs, but this hardly met my minimum requirements for such personal needs. I don't think I'm that finicky, really; for instance, I've grown accustomed to having to perform basic yoga posturing, just to reach the toilet paper holder in these places, but in this "rest"room, things only went from bad to worse. I made the mistake of trying to exit the bathroom stall with the commode between me and the door, trapping myself behind the door. Assessing the likelihood of being able to wedge myself on the other side of the stool and still open the door, and realizing that this plan was not more likely to work, I chose to vault over the bowl and scoot out. Thankfully, this worked. Relieved to have escaped, I went to wash my hands. But the sink was so shallow that the water ricocheted up from it, drenching my shirt. Startled, I jerked back, slamming my elbow into the empty paper towel holder. (Empty because now we use a hot air dryer which means there is no need to make room for something so space-consuming as a trash can to house the used paper towels.) I couldn't see how bad the damage really was to my blouse because the mirror was so narrow it only give me a view of myself from forehead to chin. I finally stamped my foot--the only physical display of frustration space allowed in this tiny room--and went back out into the parking lot, wedging my way between cars parked, by necessity, so close that their rear view mirrors completely blocked a pedestrian's passage. Yes, my love, I have a hearty respect for some of the less noticeable hardships in your world. (smile)

What to believe...

As we go off for vacation, we go knowing that God has now given you a definite direction in which to lead me, at least one small step...He gave you a dream of the place before you saw it, and so when the seeing became real, it made your heart race. (You'd think we'd be getting used to this divine leading by now...grin.)

Yet it is a strange thing. We truly go in faith, believing but not seeing how God plans to use this step to prepare me for His larger work that will lie beyond it. That is the message you got. Some switch will be tripped that does not seem to affect us, but somehow affects things outside ourselves. That is the message I got. So we go, in clouds and trepidation.

Here is my devotional today. It seems to be a salve to the parts that feel disturbed by all this mystery.

The scripture text examined is Matthew 16:24, "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself."

"Individuality separates and isolates." I realize that I still suffer such individuality. There are places I am isolated in this way, standing on a foundation of remembered pain and fear, and these are like pockets of puss.

"The shell of individuality is God's created natural covering for the protection of the personal life, but individuality must go in order that the personal life may come out and be brought into fellowship with God." For now, I'm spiritually functional, with these pools of death well-contained, but still the threat remains that their infection would spread if they are not lanced and cleansed. What would happen if one day my full-body/spirit system were stressed? I can see this potential threat.

You think I see you coming at me with a scalpel to do this job, and you think that I may be so afraid of this loss of self-protection, that my heart won't take the strain, and I'll die on the table. Then you wonder if, while you are standing there with the knife still in your hand, you'll be tempted to turn it on yourself. We both have gone through a natural and appropriate 'count the cost' reaction to this divine leading.

But because it is divine leading, it must be by faith alone that I believe I will make it through the cutting away of this feeble foundation of remembered pain and fear when you take it from me. I've seen you lop off such parts in your life. I've seen you walk in that kind of courage. But you haven't seen me drop my individuality--have it cut through--this close to the bone. When I first encountered the idea, it came with the temptation of a possible touirniquet alone serving the need. "God wouldn't do this to me," I cried to you. But He knows better than I that staunching the blood loss I see wouldn't be enough. Death would still spread. Amputation is indeed the prescribed treatment. Before I accepted this fact, you had to suffer and stand by me through my lack of belief. I hate that I did this to you.

So He will amputate something, but He will replace the loss with something better. And I will do more than survive. This much, I've come far enough to believe. Now, we must believe that I have the courage to see this all through to the end, or God wouldn't be leading us toward it. In this way, I am your Isaac. I understand that God is leading you along a path for our good...and not just ours. I trust His plans are for our good and not for harm.

"Individuality counterfeits personality as lust counterfeits love." I understand and have experienced the benefits of turning away from lust to embrace love, so I am able to see the analogy and believe for the goodness of this other turning; even though such a turning, before it is made, always makes the thing abandoned, even a bad thing, proclaim and lament its own death. It is almost finished making noises.

"The characteristics of individuality are independence and self assertiveness. It is the continual assertion of individuality that hinders our spiritual life more than anything else." Soon our spiritual eyes will be able to see what is behind and what is ahead, a thing we can not see for now. What will we see when this last hindrance falls away? In this I find my joy and my anticipation.

"If you say--'I cannot believe,' it is because individuality is in the road; individuality never can believe. Personality cannot help believing." Yes, a last hindrance in the road; but more than that. It is also a testing of the limits of our self-focus; a reckoning of evidence in favor of our motive as being one of self-denial.

"Watch yourself when the Spirit of God is at work. He pushes you to the margins of your individuality, and you have either to say--'I shan't,' or to surrender, to break the husk of individuality and let the personal life emerge. The Holy Spirit narrows it down every time to one thing. The thing in you that will not be reconciled to your brother is your individuality. God wants to bring you into union with Himself, but unless you are willing to give up your right to yourself He cannot. 'Let him deny himself'--deny his independent right to himself, then the real life has a chance to grow." May it be unto us according to His amazing purposes.

"Look Mom, I have a meat beard."

Another billboard. We think we have discovered the "point" of these. It is to prompt bloggers everywhere to unite to discuss this weirdness and thereby advertise it beyond the scope of the billboard's own wildest dreams. Brilliant. And I was an absolute sucker. I admit it. The leading theory seems to be that Cartoon Network is advertising their show, "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends."

"Clowns Hate Tangelos" and thanks for the link Bill Emory

So said a billboard along the road as you were driving today. No explanatory picture. No company name giving a clue as to the purpose of the ad...still I told you I'd throw it into the blog.) So I looked up tangelo.

Etymology: tangerine + pomelo: the fruit of a hybrid (Citrus tangelo) between a tangerine or mandarin orange and a grapefruit; also : the tree

I'm still clueless. What's there for a clown to hate so much about this fruit that it begs advertising along the roadways in the Carolinas?

My best guess is that modern-art artists are moving into advertising. Why should we need to advertise a product, for God's sake? Why can't we just advertise for the sake of the ad itself? And who needs an advertisement to be clever and beg your respect for the ad man who created it? Oh, I know this is silly, but you see it smacks too much of the excerpt I read from this book today...the one about the "purpose" of modern art. I got it on a link on Bill Emory's web page.

"...but everybody shared the same premise: henceforth, one doesn't paint about anything, my dear aunt, to borrow a line from a famous Punch cartoon. One just paints. Art should no longer be a mirror held up to man or nature. A painting should compel the viewer to see it for what it is: a certain arrangement of colors and forms on a canvas. The painter thinks in forms and colors. The aim is not to reconstitute an anecdotal fact but to constitute a pictorial fact.'...As the Minimal Art movement came into its own in 1966, Frank Stella was saying it again:
'My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object... What you see is what you see.' "

(Which explains why this mindset evolved to the point that works done by elephants and gorillas get attention equivalent to human endeavors in today's art world. Well, maybe I exaggeraterate a little.)

And should we daaare to allow art to return to its metaphoric roots, its days of being a tool through which the artist expressed something in his soul that could not be silent...the response from the world of critics is: "Return to philistinism . . .triumph of mediocrity . . . a visual soap opera . . . The kind of academic realism Estes practices might well have won him a plaque from the National Academy of Design in 1890 . . .incredibly dead paintings [I find this word choice ironic] . . .rat-trap compositional formulas . . . its subject matter has been taken out of its social context and neutered . . . it subjects art itself to ignominy . . . all quotes taken from reviews of Estes show in New York last year. . . and a still more fascinating note is struck: This is the moment of the triumph of mediocrity; the views of the silent majority prevail in the galleries as at the polls."

Art for art's sake, indeed. As I consider it, I must admit I am like you, honey. I agree that I need something more than a reproduction of what I might see floating inside my eyelids during a migraine. I turn the radio on and actually get intentional about finding a station. 'Oh, listen to the lovely white noise. Isn't it wonderful to listen to something just because it is there?' Not interested. So shoot me!

What makes me want to view art is in part to to admire this: that it is the creation of a mind/heart/eye/hand that has poured blood/ sweat/tears/painstakingly developed skills into making something that I couldn't even begin to duplicate. Maybe not even imagine. THAT is what I want to see. And in this I guess we're not alone. The almighty dollar is now serving in the role of the child who points out that the emperor is naked in this particular "emperor's new clothes" tale. (Oops, I'm being representational. Faux pas alert.) Apparently, the return to realism that has received such a Spanish-Inquisition reception from the "modern school orthodoxy" is nevertheless, selling. "Somehow a style to which they have given no support at all lacks "a persuasive theory" is selling. The New York galleries fairly groan at the moment under the weight of one sort of realism or another. . . the incredible prices . . . Estes is reported to be selling at $80,000 a crack . . . Bechtle for 20,000 pounds at auction in London. . . Can this sort of madness really continue in 'an intellectual void'?"

My personal opinion is that Wolf speculates rightly that the day will come when "...Every art student will marvel over the fact that a whole generation of artists devoted their careers to getting the Word (and to internalizing it) and to the extraordinary task of divesting themselves of whatever there was in their imagination and technical ability that did not fit the Word. They will listen to art historians say, with the sort of smile now reserved for the study of Phrygian astrology: Thats how it was then! as they describe how, on the one hand, the scientists of the mid-twentieth century proceeded by building upon the discoveries of their predecessors and thereby lit up the sky . . . while the artists proceeded by averting their eyes from whatever their predecessors, from da Vinci on, had discovered, shrinking from it, terrified, or disintegrating it with the universal solvent of the Word."
(The Word being, basically one artist's previous quote: What you see is what you see. There is no deeper meaning.) I think I might enjoy reading this book.

So I have this idea. We need to embrace this era before it becomes completely passe, my love. Let's go out for a day of fine art. First, we'll sweep into an elegant hall for a concert of the music of John Cage. We'll sit through 433 , a piece that is simply 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. (Unless we get lucky and there are "random environmental sounds." And if I know you, you'll make some.) Then after intermission, we'll return for Imaginary Landscape No. 4 which, of course, calls for 12 randomly tuned radios to play "sound" for us. (Maybe we'll hit it lucky and one of the radios will play something we want to hear...that is if we can hear it through the other 11 radios. ) After the concert, we can stroll across the street to a beautiful gallery to look at a big red dot. Or maybe a few stripes. Art for art's sake, you know. One of us will point at something on the wall. We can then say one of the two things, because we absolutely want to maintain the integrity of the era. We can say:
1) that's a nice color, or
2) that's an interesting shape.
And then the other one of us will nod knowingly, and we will move on because this is fun. It gives untalented bumpkins like us great pride knowing we could have done any of these things. Heck, we did better in the domain of creative work simply by dressing in a coordinating outfit. (OK, I know, you don't like to wear coordinating outfits; but that's political, not artistic, sweety.)

Then again, I don't really need the ego-stroking. Do you? Let's just settle for an evening at a movie, one with a John Williams score.

Preach the Gospel, and when Necessary Use Words

This St. Francis quote has been with me today along with corresponding images.

I wear a necklace. It has a simple cross and my great-grandmother's plain gold wedding band hanging on it. The cross nuzzling against the circle of gold against my chest reminds me of the intimacy and the gold-treasure of being the bride of Christ. I wear this for me, not as a contrivance for preaching the Gospel. But one day, at choir practice, I had a lady in my section ask me about it. I told her the story of it. She looked thoughtful. A few weeks later, I noticed her wearing a necklace with a cross and some little musical notes, also all in gold, hanging from it. Nowadays, I've seen loops for "charms" on necklaces, but my necklace and her copy-cat for the "treasure" that is between her and God (her music) came before the charm necklaces were popular. This is Gospel without words. This is deep-heart between someone and God, publicly announcing something private of the heart.

You preach the Gospel without words, too, my dear. I am going to try to announce this something private here in public if I can find a way to preserve what needs to be private, while still shouting from the rooftop what an honor and a mystery you are. It really hit me as I was driving along listening to the Nickel Creek song about the lighthouse. The chorus that says, "And the winds blowing around me, the sands slip out to the sea, and the waves that crash remind me of what has been and what can never be."

The "what has been and what can never be" part stirred new things today when I thought of you. Looking back now, we see how great a gift you may be missing by our having closed the doors we did...the honor you set aside unknowingly. You see our situation in terms of the costs I must pay; but if I pay them, I still get "the prize." So, what to me is more beautiful is the fact that you are not bitter at your personal (most likely permanent) loss of glory. What's more, you do not hesitate at the thought of stepping aside and receiving something as charity from another. You've never even mentioned this aspect of it as causing you pain or loss. You say this attitude springs from the beauty of the imagery God has planted in your heart and mind, but I tell you this: God won't plant such an image in any but the heart of a truly humble man.

You are some of the greatest "Gospel without words" that I have ever seen.

You suffer and I read quotes from Dante's Inferno...

Are we like-minded or what? The book reminds that in this classic, "the writer is taking a walk and suddenly finds himself disoriented, and so begins his journey into the various levels of hell. He says, 'In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood.' " So reflects Ken Gire, in my reading material for today, but it looks like you should be the one reading this instead of me, as this strikes me as being the complexion of your pain when it is inspected under the surface, no? You're afraid we may wander aimlessly into hell if we're not hearing the voice we think we're hearing.

I know this crucible you're experiencing. I went through it last fall, before I even told you that I felt God leading me toward strange things, too. I went through it when I read the story of Mary breaking the flask of perfume, a year's wages gone, her fortune...she poured it out on Christ. I felt I was supposed to make a similar offering in the arena of my will. I visualized myself pouring out everything that mattered on the outside of me: you, the kids, the job, my health...accepting that He was capable of choosing well what would stay with me and what would leave, what I needed to accomplish His purposes and what I didn't.
(...Funny, I laid most everything there I could think of except the thing that now may be required of me. It was the part of me I shoved back into that dead zone, a thing I had still not yet learned to value enough to consider it potential for sacrifice. So I swirled that in the perfume, too. Only that was recent. You just watched me do it. It only made your dread of following God's call at the cost of hurting me all the worse. I'm sorry you had to go through that. )

Today, as I read, I happened to hit this chapter on pain and depression. Ironically, I sat reading it while I am watching the children laugh and squeal on the water slide at the pool. As for my me, yesterday's pain of the heart flees quickly today as my gratitude resurfaces. The pain of the flesh that was raking the strength right out of me has stopped screaming now that I'm getting more rest, and that makes a big difference for me.

But I see you hurting and I say a prayer for you. You are alone again. A week at home was not enough, and next week...although we'll be together at the beach and that will be better...nevertheless, that is next week. And whenever I feel like you sound now, the "today" you're in feels neverending. And then there's the pain in your foot and ankle. I've watched you over the years. You are so tolerant of physical pain, as if it were an annoying neighbor that you graciously tolerate because moving's not an option. Then there were the movies, show after show where the wife dies, leaving an anguished husband with his wits and faith shattered...until you rolled over in bed and said into your pillow, "No more movies where the wife dies."

In fact, that's not so far from the truth. Another quote from my book says this about pain, that it is "...a burying of the soul in the ground, where it waits in the cold lonely darkness, silent, solitary, waiting for the coming of spring, the warmth of the sun, and the companionship of all living things. 'Except a grain of wheat fall to the ground and die, it cannot bear fruit.' Depression (pain) is not only the dark soil into which the grain falls, but also the soil out of which grows the fruit...But what fruit had grown out of that soil?" This is what you're wondering when you consider whether your pain might be acute or chronic. I understood you perfectly, my love. I know I represent the apex of relinquishing for you, and it makes me quietly awestruck to see you bury me like this verse says, and in doing it, you wonder if you bury yourself as well.

Roland (my Aussie prophet buddy) sent me that verse about the falling grain as being somehow pertinent to me. He sent it some 6 months ago. Now here we are. It is spring. The planting season, but we're only at the stage of burying the seed. It is the stage when faith is most needed...to put the seed in the ground. It is the thought of my pearl poem. It is the theme of my Sarah poem. The good news is that I think we will be through this crucible soon, and we'll stop sounding so pathetic. It's just not our style. Like you said, you remember being young and strong. So do I. Soon we'll be old and strong, too. Remember all moods are mortal. (smile)

Here are some of the things that struck me to share with you from my reading today. Some are related and some are just lovely, and I wanted to share them with you.

The Bible was written in tears, and to tears it yields its best treasures. A.W. Tozer

Preach the Gospel, and when necessary use words. St Francis

The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. van Gogh

And for us as we approach our mission, words by Rilke: "If we arrange our lives according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become that we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us."

Then there is this prayer by Gire, about coming into the dawn out of the dark woods of Dante's Inferno...

Dear God,
Someone once said:
'Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn.
Perhaps this is what it means to be human.'
Thank You for whoever said it,
and teach me, I pray, how to live it.
Teach me how to weep
without drowning in self-pity.
Teach me how to keep vigil
even when I'm shivering in the dark.
And teach me how to wait for the dawn
without the belting optimism of someone
who hasn't been through the night...

Pain...

…is one of those things that you really don’t like to put a lot of thought to, or at least have occasion to ponder because, well, you are in it. Interestingly, the concept of pain and its place in my life has allllmost surfaced from time to time, but it has never exposed itself to the air in a way for me to fully focus on anything other than avoiding it or reducing it, always bubbling like trapped air in a thick goo…

…it just popped…

I have a recurring injury to my foot; a cut, fissure, gash, whatever you want to call it. I have had it for many years…so many that I don’t remember its origin. I do know that it is exacerbated when I wear sandals for an extended period of time. When it does rear its ugly head, it causes me to walk in a way that puts pressure on other parts of my foot in an unnatural way. As a result, I have tendonitis in my ankle. One small injury has resulted in a far greater, invasive one. It hurts to walk…it hurts to sit…it hurts to move. Forget walking from gate B 38 to gate A 7. For now, this pain is omnipresent. I am sure I will heal, and I am sure that life will go normally, after a brief intermission.

I share this not to illicit sympathy, but simply to provide the framework of my ponderings. I know, for instance, that there is pain that my body craves. When I get the chance to work out, to push my body, the aftermath is a craving. My body craves the extension of itself, to remember the places it went when I was young and foolish. My youth claimed a toll on my body. Sports certainly took its pound of flesh. The activity of being a boy, falling off logs, bikes, and if you ask my kids, the turnip truck too many times, placed their own scars, real and psychic. My adult years however, have seen the waxing and waning of activity, and my body has responded in the appropriate way…I’ve put on too much weight, gotten out of shape, and seen my activity level decline. But my body remembers…it remembers the feelings of impact, the sense of falling, the exquisite pain from physical exhaustion. And it desires a return to those comfortable, yet painful places.

I have noticed that there are different types of pain, and have been given my own insight into how these physical pains relate to life in general, and our situation in particular, my love. Pain that is the result of an injection, for instance, flares with white hot intensity, but for just a blink of the eye. The resultant pain reminds us of the injustice done to our skin, but fades quickly, promising to disappear sooner or later. We have that promise that the pain will subside….it always has, and we know that the worst pain is passed. The pain that I fear, my love, is the pain that I have in my ankle now…starting as a small, distant irritant, growing, swelling, expanding not unlike the never-ending waves buffeting the coast, immobilizing me. My fear is not of the present pain, but the uncertainty of where the pain will end. As it grows, my fear grows. Where will the apex be? You have been the salve for this pain, dear, but where will it end? This, more than any, is the reason I feel my faith tested about this. I keep reminding myself that God can do anything, through me, and that he will provide my body with the strength necessary to see this through. I know there will be pain involved, but my prayer is that the pain we allow, we embrace, will result in a greater future than we could ever imagine. Stay with me, my love….stay with me and see this pain resolved…and never forget…I love you…even through the greatest pain.

Teamwork

We were faltering...with this quandary of trying to figure out how You are working. You send us out blind, and this taxes our faith; nevertheless You are kind and reassure us in that same faith. Our dreams and our lives and Your word blend like colors chosen to give a depth to the dark places and a glow to the light places. Layer on layer You paint: first one through Scott, then one through me, one where we are mixed...

Three nights ago, I dreamed a circular channel of water flowed, but an obstacle blocked the channel, so the water miraculously made a leap, arcing over the stony log and continuing on its course.
Two nights ago you dreamed you were on a small boat floating on a lake under a night sky. The dream was a dream of profound peace and security. And as the waves lapped against the boat, you heard a strange noise...in time you realized it was the waves speaking to you. And the waves were the voice of God. He said many things, but the one audibly recognizable thing You heard was "I know you." And in His knowing us, all obstacles were rendered inconsequential in their power to harm us.

And yet, yesterday, we anguished over these things. Despite the reassuring dreams, we struggled. We sighed. We searched the ends--the back wall in the corridor of our faith. And that is as it should be.

By nightfall, we were drained and exhausted. We retired to our room upstairs, you to the shower and me to the window, for a storm was brewing. I knelt by the low window beside our bed, opened the window and pressed my face against the screen. The wind was strong...so strong that I closed my eyes and remembered. It was strong enough to remind me of a dream of my own.

In that dream, I was part of a drama that played in a large old gymnasium, one of those old gyms that had bleachers surrounding the floor, bleachers elevated about 8 feet, making the floor inaccessible from them. The gym was dark--pitch black--but on the floor were strange fluorescent objects, mounds of fuzzy light, it seemed. These were in fact the only light, but it was like foxfire...a light reserved for the objects alone and not to share with their environment. They were of many colors, but strange, unworldly and unsettling. I had a part in the "performance" playing in that gym. My cue came. When it did, I knew my part: I was to grab a rope, a very long rope anchored so far above that I could not see its source, but I did not mistrust its security. As I held the rope, I began to swing back and forth across the gym, bouncing in and out of every corner, all this being done before a cloud of invisible witnesses in the dark. And as I was swinging, I heard the wind. An electrifying wind. A powerful wind. A wind that makes the wind of this world have a purpose: that of bearing Its image.
The wind in the trees outside was portraying that wind fairly well. It moved through the trees, and I realized it was the trees that gave this storm-wind the opportunity to imitate the sound of the great dream-wind. Each leaf spoke as it moved and scraped against its brothers. Each branch creaked as it bowed to the power of the wind. And with a wind strong enough to set the whole tree alive and bending, the sound of its submission gave the power of the wind a voice like that of the dream. I assume these same things are true of the voice in the water for Scott. You hear things in these voices that are very different from what words can give you.

Anyway, as I knelt there pressing my face against the screen to enjoy the memory of that dream...I felt something hit my forehead. I pulled back, and there stuck in the screen was a dragonfly. I studied its lifeless form a moment. Finally, I flicked the screen and set it free. It fell away. I don't know whether the wind's force driving it to me killed it or merely stunned it. I don't really want to know whether I required the kiss of death from it or not.

But when I woke this morning, something about the fact that You seal Your people on the forehead was rattling around in my first-waking brain. I looked it up in a concordance. I found two things that tie us together in all these things, my love...me for being sealed; you for what He said to you. Us for both.

• 2 Timothy 2:19: "Nevertheless, the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: 'The Lord knows those who are His.' " (And He told you through the water-words, 'I know you.')
• Ezekiel 9:4: In a vision, the prophet observes the day when God determines that it is time to judge idolatry (the act of placing the things created above the creator.) So He calls a man in linen (the garment of a priest) who has an inkhorn, "...and the Lord said to him, 'Go throughout the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over the abominations that are done within it.' " Following the sealing, 6 other men who are armed for warfare are sent to slay the ones not marked. "...but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary. So they began with the elders who were before the temple."

And so, here we are: consecrated, baptized, sealed. I saw the other two ahead of time. I didn't even know to look for the seal, but I am thankful to have been told it happened after the fact. Maybe that is as it should be. To be sealed unwittingly means receiving it without purposely working for it, and that is the nature of this particular seal, isn't it? (Like the girl with the secret admirer I joked about in the blog Lost in Translation.) But now, we are free. We can move forward with this reassurance. We are sealed and called Known by Him. Now, whatever He may ask of us, we are protected as we do His work.

Finally, we should remember that this word came to us through our united perceptions. Neither of us alone would have got the complete picture. We are united in flesh through the children we have, but we are united in other ways, too. (smile)

Happy Father's Day, my dear.

Last night I dreamed.
The waters of the covenant...they flowed
Until they came to an obstacle.
Today, I sit here eating this tough bread, this meat stew...I eat alone tonight, and the last as well.
For many years, agonizing, I ate as one of two.

And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, [and] with his seed after him.

For so long. I laughed as I dished up the stew when it was two servings. My faith...oh, my faith.
Then as simple as a flower blooms at its appointed time,
whether you hover over it or not...the child came.
And how we loved him.

And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old, as God had commanded him.

He was a gift from God. We honored every command regarding him. He was the child of promise. Nothing was too small to do...to insure what God said was to be.

And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.

For so long. We were so old.
So many reasons to doubt our ability even yet.
Would we live to raise him well?
Could he find his place without us?


And the child grew, and was weaned: and Abraham made a great feast the [same] day that Isaac was weaned.

But we did not die for the joy of the Lord was our strength.

Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, [even] with Isaac.

There was that time when God spoke to me.
There was the time God told me how to protect the little one.

And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called.

It was the time God validated me.
It was the time he named me Prophetess.
It was the time He called me Wisdom.

And he said, Take now thy son, thine only [son] Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

But this is the time of darkness.
He speaks to you, and not a word to me.
I remember His voice, I just don't hear it right now.
And the things His voice told me...
they completely contradict what He tells you now.
I hear you cry out to Him,
reminding Him how you and I have been of one flesh in all these things.
Crying out that He might show me this, too, even as He shows you.
But all remains dark, and He is silent.
So we wait, and calculate, and try to see how things can be
But still He presses you. You must act upon His word.
And you have fear as a barb in your faith.
You do not fear from lack of confidence in Him.
You fear from lack of confidence in us.
This will destroy our hearts.
They may never love again.

And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.

So you went. And what exquisite anguish it was.
As a kindness to me, you kept the word of God secret from the child.
He did not know he told me goodbye for the last time.
He did not know why my eyes had tears.
"I am big enough to do this, Mother," he said in exasperation.
"I hope so, Son," I said in truth.

And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here [am] I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where [is] the lamb for a burnt offering?

So now I sit and can not eat. I picture the telling of the child.
I should have been stronger.
I should have gone along with them.
Was the son of Hagar the one to inherit the promise?
Was my child meant for naught but sacrifice?
Did I hear Your voice at all?
Or was it only my own desire for significance...
...after so many barren years.
No! I heard You. If I didn't hear You, then there is no God!
But where are they now? What is happening?

And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

Surely it is past now. Enough time gone for the deed to be done.
The dread was heavy,
and while the grief is heavy too, at least
it has a numbness to it...for a while.
I am so tired of this faith business, God.
Let it be finished.
Make no more words to me that stretch me to the death of my heart.
And then I see them coming toward me from a great distance.
And God gave me the rest I desired about the child.
For the next words He had recorded that mention the name...
...the God given name of my son...move the waters of the covenant on:

But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac.

In the Valley of Decision

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD [is] near in the valley of decision. Joel 3:14

What a difficult place to be...
The city is being built and its twelve gates,
Each one a single beautiful pearl.

But what is a pearl? What sort of gate?
And who can see its forming?
It is a boundary
Between the foreign matter
And the place of life.

And how great the faith required of the one
Who sees the foreign matter,
Sees what could infect and spread death.
The one who must place it in the soft fleshy cavity and close the shell.
And wait.

...yet still believes for the (super)natural formation of the pearl.

Subject: (none)

How do you talk about things that seem beyond words? This is how I felt about trying to blog the other day about my sad fighting friends and their rightful condemnation of the church as it had presented itself to them. A few writers'/speakers' musings on this topic have come before my eyes today. The first is by Stephen King in the short story, The Body.

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them--words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, the landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."

Peter Marshall puts a spiritual spin on this idea when he sermonized:

"There are some things that can never be proven by argument, by logic, or by reason; things that are matters of perception--not of proof. There are things that can never be poured into the cold moulds of human speech."

So much of what we've experienced this last year is exactly like that...a thing of perception, a thing you can't share if you are trying to offer it with a side-order of proof. A thing you'd love to tell, if you thought you'd ever begin to find an understanding ear.

Dr. Marshall's wife described a representative incident, one of those things that is all about perception...it was at Dr. Marshall's funeral service. Several pastors were involved in the ceremony and were gathered in the pastor's study. As the time for the service approached, "...Mr. Bridge, the associate minister, asked the seven men to line up preparatory to their filing on to the rostrum...'Dr. Pruden, will you go to the head of the line, please?' As Dr. Pruden moved to the front of the line, he smiled broadly. As if at a signal, several of the other ministers began to laugh." This levity seemed disrespectful to the associate pastor, until Dr. Pruden explained it to him. "Once a week five or six of us ministers used to have lunch together at the cafeteria just down the street. The group would be so engrossed in conversation that the cafeteria line would move off and leave us. " Somehow, Pruden was always the one to notice and close the gap, but Peter would see this and say " 'There goes Ed to the head of the line, gang. Always afraid the food's going to run out.' " When these ministers heard the associate pastor call Pruden to first place, they said it was like Peter himself stood there, saying, "I see you made it again, Ed. Don't you dare go in there to my people and lead them in any service mourning over me. I'm still very much alive, still with you--still one of the gang--and don't forget it."

That kind of perception-reality that is hard to put into words...all the more palpable when it touches multiple people simultaneously: this is what we've been experiencing. Many people hear such stories and respond to the teller's wide-eyed childlike wonder with a half-irritated impatience. I don't blame them. I was like that, too, for many years. No-nonsense faith was the only acceptable faith for me. Where argument, logic and reason failed, time-honored tradition would step in to keep faith acceptable in its public, corporate domain. Such a dry faith is easy to maintain as long as you turn your nose up at the perceptive risky-faith types. It is easy, that is until you get drawn in to this kind of perceiving. At that point, you either redefine everything you knew about "relationship" with God and other people, or you start weaving baskets...

About Your Farthest Day...

...for some reason, God is not allowing me the rest that I have for so long hoped for. I am faltering, my love...I know now that the largest part of me wants to cling to you, to revel in your special and unique spirit, to keep you for my own to honor you and my love for you. Part of me wants to turn a blind eye to what is being asked of us, for as you know, it will forever change our lives and once again throw my (our) lives into tumult. I'm faltering, my love, and I am at a crossroads...I guess that my faith is not yet strong enough to overcome the selfishness I am feeling...(to be continued...)

There are two kinds of women in the world, my love. This is about God calling you to put me on a cosmic witness stand where I can demonstrate which kind I've been designed to be.

There is the Madonna who said to her God: let it be unto me according to your word; and then there is Jezebel...a name that translates to mean "without cohabitation," a woman who rules her own roost, who is fiercely independent and unsubmissive. Another example of self-rule versus submission appears in the story of Esther. She risked her life to offer multiple feasts to both her husband (king) and his assistant--a man who was trying to kill her people and was therefore her most bitter enemy. She fed them both, told the truth to the king in the presence of her enemy and then submitted to the wisdom of the king as to what to do about the survival of her people. She is the example of courageous, intelligent, humble submission. Her antithesis is her predecessor, Vashti. Before Esther's day, when Vashti was the queen, her king/husband asked her to show herself-- which many interpret to mean appear naked--in front of his friends. She refused to acknowledge what she considered to be a ridiculous and distasteful command. But he was not only her husband, he was her king. Underneath her propriety was disobedience. Underneath her modesty, pride. And driving her good judgment was actually selfish license.

I pulled these thoughts from journal entries I made last November. At that time, I prayed this: "Help me to be an Esther--obedient, grateful, selfless and courageous. She was taken by divine providence from her home and from the familiarity of life "for such a time as this." Help me to be like Esther."

Even then, God was leading my prayers to get me ready to be tested in submissiveness. It has to do with what I told you when I talked about having a chance to be Eve again, only this time to be an Eve who actually follows her Adam. Sarah--Abraham's wife--went through such an Eve-again test when Abraham gave her to a king to protect himself and to maybe even get her pregnant. When the whole plan came out in the open, she was vindicated because she went into the strange relationship as an act of obedience to Abraham. Scripture says this point-blank. People don't think this way anymore...it is an ancient wisdom not too politically correct right now. But it seems to be a spiritual principle that must be "proved" in us this way, even as Christ Himself went through things that demonstrated He came to serve rather than to be served. Now I pray more for you than myself. You will be the one misunderstood in this act of sacrifice, while I get to hide behind your broad shoulders.

You must be strong enough to lead me into this. For this to be a sacrifice and a test, it must be something we wouldn't choose for ourselves, something that disrupts the things that would seem good for the moment. Nor can it be a test of my submissiveness if it is something that I'm led to alongside you...only if I go there following you. Most often, God has given us things in conjunction. This has been strangely all yours. I believe all this proving submission/servanthood stuff is why.

..So I don't think I'll be given a picture of what you see even though you've asked God for this...if He were to show me, too, it would kill the whole purpose it is to serve. But if I go willingly into this type of suffering because it demonstrates my will to follow you as you follow God, then I can see how it would lead to me shining in that glory-of-God glow you described from your dream.

I wrote a week or so ago about intimacy and submissiveness being connected. I wrote about it before I really understood what I meant. It is getting clearer now. Be strong and of good courage! Tell Him we are ready for Him to lead you along His chosen path. Ask Him to fulfill His words to you.

Doesn't it seems so strange to write these things, to try to figure them out together? My sister showed me her Myspace while I was visiting last week. It hit me hard how very unusual our lives have become. Once our lives seemed like simply that: our lives. Now they seem to stand for things bigger than we can even understand...even to the point of our "seeing" why mildew would grow under our last house as a sign to us...who has that kind of thing happen?!? In fact, if it weren't happening to both of us, the dreams and the strange leadings and explanations...and to our children's and my students' dreams even...I'd wonder if my sense of reality were getting fuzzy. Nobody called the prophets crazy, but then again, who is a prophet anymore? Thank goodness for that verse in Isaiah where God says He will "hasten it" in its time!

How close is the shape itself to the shadow's definition?

I spent one evening quite sad while in Southern Illinois. Some things I can easily put into words, but reflecting on other people's pain and the gross negligence of "Christianity" to deal with these pains--this is hard for me to talk about. I contemplate this as a result of time spent at a small town bar on their trivia contest night. I was asked to go by someone I am close to who plays there regularly.

The place sits in a treeless sea of gravel next to a gas station. A large wood fence surrounds it. Just inside the fence is the "beer garden" which means a concrete slab with a carport over it where a few picnic tables are gathered. A large smoker sits out there, and most nights the beer garden smells heavenly, but not in a floral way...more like a barbecued one. Inside, the bar is old-wood dark. Metal signs and handwritten advertisement hang on the walls. Staples--such as a pool table and a dart board--are present, as well as several tables for groups of 4 or so to sit. Nothing was memorable about the look of the place. If you mentioned Feng shui to the owner here, he might or might not know whether you were talking about sushi. And most of the people matched the decor in that respect for many people were there, but only a few--mostly the young--had tried to "look good." Who dresses up for family anyway, and these people are all "family." In this place, a metal pail of beers in ice passes across the bar one direction, a plastic bag of used baby clothes that should fit the bartender's littlest one soon passes in return. No one bats an eye at the interchange. Everyone knows the bartender's kid's name, anyway.

On this particular trivia night, the regular "barker" just had emergency by-pass surgery, (collective sigh of concern) so everybody say a prayer for him. He's doing fine, but is still in the hospital, so a "sub" calls the questions. Some are easy. (What has more vitamin C? A strawberry or a blueberry? Answer: strawberry.) Others, you must be a local to answer. (The hometown team that won the bass tourney last weekend won with a fish that was which length: 18.03 or 18.30 inches. Not even an educated guess on that one. )

But the trivia game was just so much distraction for what really went on at the table. The couple I was with were suffering. His suffering started earlier in the week when his "f#*#ing Christian" relatives were cheating him again. In fact, I've never heard that particular expletive attached to the word Christian so many times in one setting...not ever before. But this church-busy aunt and uncle of his sounded like they earned the adjective. For one thing, they robbed him of his inheritance. If they'd taken the money part, he wouldn't have minded so much; but they took his father's tool collection, and having that part gone ripped open his soul. His father's tool collection...it was hard enough for him to find connection/approval with that distant man, but if this son could have picked up the tools, he could have imagine he made his father proud when he used them...that is the part his uncle took without offering to share. And why should he share with his nephew when he "screwed" his own daughter?

I heard this story, too. The daughter, a young single mother, rented a house from her Christian parents for 12 years. She invested $10,000 of inheritance from a grandparent in the house. When she asked if she could change the rent to a purchase agreement, especially with the investment she'd made and all, she was told if she could get a bank to loan her the $70,000 for the purchase, she could have the house. Otherwise, she was still a renter in their opinion. They had many rental properties. This house meant nothing to them. Seems like the daughter didn't mean much either.

As for the son in that family, he never married. He makes good money--certainly good enough to satisfy a lady-friend--but every time he tried to bring a girl home, she would invariably fail to satisfy his mother. In the end, he decided it was easier to buy an occasional private lap dance in a nearby college town than to keep serving up committed relationships on his mother's altar of judgment. His roots went too deep in a place where old blood runs thicker than futures. But these people--my are they ever tenacious about sharing their "busy at church" status with their neighbors. These are the stories I heard while the man was throwing around the "f-bomb" in association with their faith. Little wonder.

I didn't stop him. I sat there listening, nodding, sipping my drink while "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw" played over the sound system. He knew that I, too, was a Christian--worked at a Christian school even--but something in him knew that I was completely different. I didn't even have to explain the difference, he knew instinctively, for he followed this tirade about these Machiavellian relatives with a sudden, unexpected revelation of his own aching heart. He shared his fears and dreams, his bashful hopes for acceptance by the people that mattered to him, even as he did things to destroy their good feelings toward him. A tragic chord struck in my soul, because I knew a lot of the gold under the surface would be missed, or at least difficult to mine. He lay his pain at my feet, not looking for "answers" but somehow knowing I'd take his pain to You and that it would be genuine and that You would listen to me. His soul longs to connect with a true God, a noble God, a caring God. Later, his wife called me, sobbing because they'd fought after I left, maybe even the fight that would end everything for them. I understood only about half of what she said as she cried so hard, but I listened long enough to show I was willing to go the distance with her. Her soul longs to connect with a God, too. A trustworthy God. A creative, powerful God.

Neither one of them needed advice, rather they each just needed someone to listen while they gave themselves advice; someone who wouldn't pull their open gaping hearts into a Jerry Springer moment.

It was the climax of what I saw at the pool the day before. But there is more. I read something about taking care of others ahead of yourself, how in doing this, many of these problems can be solved more easily, with less strife. But it has one catch to it: pride. The section of Blue Like Jazz that I read the next day capped it all perfectly. When the author described his offering prayers for friends at the neglect of himself, he said, "It wasn't that I cared about my friends more than myself, it was that I believed I was above the grace of God...It isn't that I want to earn my own way to give something to God, it's that I want to earn my own way so I won't be a charity case."

As a child, I learned what it meant to be a charity case. I wasn't begging food, but I was begging affection. I was begging a type of shelter. I know how shameful that can feel, especially if the one graciously sharing their time, association and therefore reputation with you makes sure others realize that you are their emotional tax write-off. Yet, I must realize that I will never be above certain charities, and accepting this makes me a better resource for others needing to embrace humility and the grace that can follow, the peace and freedom from self that follow.

I need to re-write this. Then again, I may never re-read it. My thoughts are not concise. I'm flailing in the cobweb, for certain, but this I'm certain about: I'm not the person I was when I grew up here. Mostly, I'm not embarrassed to fit my life to what God wants, no matter whether it looks normal and/or attractive to other people or not.

So...I drove home that evening in the twilight, a part of the day old-timers called the gloaming, only that's too restful a word to be useful now. But me, I drove home in the gloaming. I listened to southern gospel, with a banjo and bari-sax lilting along, but I cried anyway. The tears poured down my face. As I drove through the countryside a poem wanted to be, but maybe never would be. Like this:

The evening breeze blew through the window. It seemed to say, "Yes, today was a scorcher. But feel the promise of cool in me now." The sunset was losing its last light, but the stars were still sleeping, so a neighboring field, full of fireflies, reminded, "Hey, do your job up there. It's your time." And as darkness deepened, a small pond reflected a brightness that made the sky say, "Did I once own even that?"

Yes, definitely a poem wants to be.

Impressions of My Hometown

It was easier to organize concisely my impressions of my husband's hometown than it is to do the same for mine, much like it is easier to describe the moment when you watch someone else walk through a spider's web and flail around than it is to recall the details when it is you walking through said cobweb. The best I can do with my own rear-view mirror is to make a collage...a place with no neat borders where one picture lurches into another with no correspondence until you move back and look at the whole. Actually, it is neither a triptych nor a collage; it is more like something by Monet, one of those pieces that hangs at one end of a long hall and you stand at the other end so that your eyes are at the proper distance to perceive and maybe even appreciate the image. Am I finally at such a distance?

One impression in this study hit me strongly at my hometown swimming pool. I took my own offspring, their cousins, a neighborhood street urchin, and when we arrived at the pool I picked up the governance of a few more kids. Standing in line, a high school babysitter with a nice figure but horrible buck teeth told me how spoiled her charge was. She looked down at the little girl and set up the senario for her own vicarious bragging. "Tell her what you got for your birthday. Go on, tell her." I was thinking, did I ask about this? I was then told by the little blonde girl with the wild curls that she got an "amp-3 player" and 200 dollars. She delivered all this with the rolling eyes of a bragger who walks around in skin five times her age and a thousand times her wealth. I wondred at these minimum-requirements for boasting status. It was a thought that clung to me like the humidity in the air. But for the moment, I mostly just felt like the default Pied Piper of the Pool.

Once inside, I drug a chair to the shallow end, near the place where my youngest played. I tried to relax in the sun. Once upon a time, I couldn't relax in the sun because I worried how my tan was coming. I don't tan well. My skin color doesn't make bright clothes "glow" against me. So I worried about my tan. Now, I wasn't worried about a tan, but I still couldn't relax.

"Aunt Debbie, can you give me some of my money for the snack bar?" Grunting, sitting back up, digging for the money. Reclining again. Eyes closed. "Debbie, can I borrow your son's ball?" One eye open. "Nolan, would you loan these boys your ball?" Nolan, amazed to have even been consulted in this, readily agrees. Both eyes closed again. "Debbie, will you keep the rest of this candy for me until the next break?" Finally, the one that got me out of my chair. "Mommy, will you take me to get something to eat?"

We made our way over to the snack bar, and on the way I passed a drain that has a distinctive odor, one that has been there forever...which means it was there when I myself swam as a young teen. It is not a good smell...something like the smell of the elephant cages at the zoo just after a good hosing...honestly, that's the only other place I've found that smell. Because of its uniqueness, that smell connected with my olfactory memory (which I hear makes a stronger memory trigger than other senses do.) My prior relationship with this pool came rushing back at me, back in the days when I didn't tan and cared about it, back in the early days of my blooming femininity.

In those days, I and my friends would roam the pool deck, furtively studying to see if the young boys were noticing this newly bloomed femininity. (Of course, we girls hit this a little earlier than the boys were ready to notice. They weren't yet coming to the pool to ogle the life guard; they were still more interested in seeing if they could splash her up in her chair when they ran off the end of the diving board. This sort of challenge had nothing to do with the cut of her bikini yet.) I remembered the things that were important to me then. How comparative and fluid were relationship between girls. We each had to have something we felt was a "best" feature, something that did not encroach on someone else's best feature, and these didn't even have to all be physical features, especially for those of us who had little to offer in that arena... like me. If such encroachments were made, the friendship would turn into a cat fight fueled by a subconscious fear that someone would manage to take away that one advantage we each had in getting the world (aka that boy over there) to accept us. And when your body is still changing, navigating through this stage of self-actualization can be quite treacherous. It is a wonder females are friends at all until the bloom is off the rose.

I looked around now seeing others in various stages of this progression. The girl with the turquois bikini that someone has been wearing around here since 1970. The child who has the sexiest walk at the pool, all the sexier because she is too young to mean it and therefore needed nothing as a response to it. The one who stood at the water's edge pointing her toe to her leg's best advantage as she poked at the water with it, pretending not to notice the boys playing ball right in front of her. The other girl splashing in the water, completely unnoticed by either the "pretty" girl or the boys. She'd given up on being recognized as a beauty, yet she carried the bone structure and the eyes and the smile to foretell that one day she'd leave them all in a cloud of the dust of her mature beauty. I saw the lifeguard, the one that when we were young we felt was automatically full of appeal simply because of her position. And lifeguards always have to be beautiful. That is confirmed before they are ever even offered the job. I looked at her, popping her gum and swinging her leg. Where did I get such fanciful images as a youngster? The girl in the water, the future-beauty. How did we not see what her future held compared to the life-guard, who had already hit the apex of her beauty, and so young as to leave many years of decline behind it. But we were young, with a Logan's Run mentality. You mean things will still matter to us after we're 30? Impossible!

We sat at the concession stand--me and my two wet, squirmy saddle bags--and I watched the girl who worked the stand. She had the tan of a pool worker and the body of a linebacker. She came out when no one was at the window and picked up candy wrappers and loose cheetos off the ground. She didn't complain, she didn't gripe at the kids.

How funny, the broadness and diversity in your environment when you take your eyes off yourself and stop spending all your energies and observations to assess the benefits you will glean/disasters that may strike you, you, you! I still have tendencies to look too long at myself, trying to find the carrot that I assume should be at the end of my nose, but I think I am a little less self-absorbed in this respect.

One evidence of this is that I have moved into the realm of the invisible and don't really mind it too much. I'm not old, and not young. I'm not ravishing, and not horrifying. I'm not obese, but I'm not svelte. I'm not fashionable, but I'm not bizarre. I'm not connected, but I'm not a hermit (no matter how hard I try to be one.) My days of seeking the better side of these noticeable contrasts have been abandoned, but not because of some bitter resignation to the prospect of never achieving greatness. No, it has dropped off gradually, like losing eyesight a little at a time. One day your vision is changed enough that you get glasses, and then you go out and look at a tree. You are amazed at the detail you'd been missing. This is what I saw at the pool. Vanity and fear of acknowledging change keep some from getting glasses, hearing aids, etc. But a lot of clarity can be found, a lot of what was missed can be seen and heard (and smelled) when an external influence (in this larger analysis, I'd be speaking of the influence of God) is allowed to work its magic on your own flawed part.

Lost in Translation...

I spent this week doing my own rear-view-mirror landscape study. As I said in the blogs about my husband's home town, I am also from ultra-rural America. I love it, because the people there are so original. Often they can't afford to run out and buy what they need at the local superstore, so they learn to be creative with whatever they have at hand. And this spirit of ingenuity bleeds over into other areas of their lives, ones that are visible to the public. When I see these things, I feel surprised. I feel surprised, then tender. I feel honored to see their display of vulnerability alongside their creative problem-solving. Some time or another, they decided to use duct tape for something other than ducts. But these things simply don't translate to Trendy World without losing their dignity, not when the original imagery comes from Rural World.

It's the sort of thing that happened when my sister and I went to eat at a Chinese restaurant there in our hometown. Next door to the restaurant was a shop, advertising as its specialty: jewelry, candles and pet fashions. Their front window backed up this claim. We stood there a moment, debating what we might choose from their displayed selection in case we wanted to enhance the beauty of our ears, throats, wrists, fireplace mantles or dogs. (See, the moment loses all its dignity, doesn't it?) Anyway, after my Oriental Vegetable Delight, I did as everyone does: I opened my fortune cookie. It had both my sister and me hysterical for two days; but by the third day, I fell in love with what it said.

First, it helps to know that a proper translation of the fortune's sentiment would convey the idea that my eyes have a magnetic effect on a secret admirer, which is just the thing to make the day of any woman who bases all her security on drawing the attention of a secret admirer (secret, for God's sake, means she wasn't even trying!) Thank goodness I am not such a woman, because here is what the fortune actually read: "Your eyes magnetize a secret admirer." We laughed that I was apparently one of those Xman-styled mutants. (And I must say, I could get with the idea of being the red-headed gal who saved the world, but gave her life in doing it and so became simply a voice-over heard during scenes of rushing nature footage.) Then we went on to visualizing scenarios where you, my love, would never need to be threatened by said admirers. Should one go so far as to attempt to kidnap me, I would be so stressed that my fibromyalgia spasms would kick in, making my eye twitch and my neck seize up. Meanwhile, seeing that he would be magnetized, he would have the hindrance of navigating the magnetic objects flying at him through space. You would surely overtake us quickly, as we would stand out in a crowd: he'd be the panhandler-looking dude with a woman slung over his shoulder, a woman who seemed to be doing an imitation of Igor, from Young Frankenstein. He wouldn't be moving very fast, nor would he be able to fight much, with the watches and refrigerator magnets and what not hanging from him, so you could easily rescue me. A half-day at a spa would counteract the Igor thing, and we'd be back to normal. (You know how conversations go when I get together with my sister. We laugh until we cry and/or wet our pants.)

The transformation of my opinion about this fortune came a couple of days later. I was reading a section in Blue Like Jazz where the author described a lecture he heard. The communications professor giving this talk asked his audience to throw out some metaphors for "love". They came up with things like valuing people, investing in people, about relationships being priceless or bankrupt. The author was stunned to learn that almost all the metaphors thrown out were economic. The professor, however, was not surprised. He went on to discuss how this "love as a commodity" perception can prove to be quite destructive, and demonstrates how the underlying purpose of such love in our society is personal gratification, or more tragically personal validation. If the "loved one's" needs get met in the course of his/her meeting our needs, then it's a win-win situation. This is one kind of love, but it has trouble navigating change or producing and raising offspring effectively. Miller assessed that, "...with love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did." He realized rightly that to genuinely represent love according to its principles in Christian spirituality, one must love all people, taking delight in their existence, even setting them ahead of our own delight in our own existence. He knew he fell miles short of that aim of God's for his life. (Who among us doesn't?) So he repented, and asked God to replace the economic metaphor with something like "a free gift metaphor or a magnet metaphor." "...I hoped that love would work like a magnet, pulling people from the mire and toward healing. I knew this was the way God had loved me. God had never withheld love to teach me a lesson," he said.

I thought again about my fortune cookie: eyes (which are called the window to the soul) pouring out something that touches the hearts of others, ones who are bashful to admit how God has somehow touched them because of what He pours through me. But they don't have to tell me. Their own eyes (souls) become magnets for others.

I think, my love, the fortune was a little joke between us and God. I think He is full of joy about what He has already accomplished in us, that we are to be magnet-love people. Maybe He has done this already; maybe it is in the works. The fact that you hold me loosely for reasons larger than your own needs show that it is in the works. Tomorrow, when I am not so tired, I'll tell you more about my rear-view mirror experience. This leads into it, but I need to think and pray a little about how it does.

Wednesday is the farthest day from home...

...and for me, the longest day. Wednesday comes for me not unlike a visit to the vet to put your puppy down. My travel schedule has me away from Monday till Friday most weeks, at least for now. Wednesday is far enough away from the prior weekend that those feelings I cling to the hardest fade away...I can no longer feel my kids jump in my arms, feel my wife's warm, steady breath on my neck as she lay behind me, feel the comfort of familiarity. Wednesday is also too far from the next weekend to allow myself the electric tingle of anticipation of being home.

My weeks are a blur of change...a new hotel every night, peering at maps with one hand while navagating unfamiliar streets with the other, in a car I am not used to. Everchanging. There is a lot to be said about sameness. In much the same way those shackled to an unchanging reality long for new, uncharted vistas, I long for the day when I will awake each day to the beautiful morning sounds of my family...forced to protect my more sensitive regions when Nolan bounds onto the bed...You, my love, bending to kiss me on your way to the closet, or the bathroom, or the dresser...Elijah's dry, yet loving responses to his prior day's exploits...

I've spent many days trying to glean why I am so desireous of this blissful sameness. I am sure it has to do with much of my life that has not seemed to be permanant. I lost virtually all of my history prior to college when our house burned to the ground. I am also sure that it has to do with my perception of my own place and importance (or lack therof) in my first marriage, and my inability to rise above what I considered to be my second-class citizenship in the eyes of her and her family. There were days, many spent alone, where I questioned my place in the world, and if I would ever come close to having the chance to be the person I knew I could be, or even if I knew what that person was...

And then there was you, my love...you know the rest. You gave me reason...you gave me hope...you gave me unconditional love, even when that stupid, stupid part of me didn't respect it. You gave me pause to ask myself questions that even I didn't know were straining to be asked, and helped me find at least the start of an answer.

And yet here we are...for some reason, God is not allowing me the rest that I have for so long hoped for. I am faltering, my love...I know now that the largest part of me wants to cling to you, to revel in your special and unique spirit, to keep you for my own to honor you and my love for you. Part of me wants to turn a blind eye to what is being asked of us, for as you know, it will forever change our lives and once again throw my (our) lives into tumult. I'm faltering, my love, and I am at a crossroads...I guess that my faith is not yet strong enough to overcome the selfishness I am feeling...(to be continued...)

But on a more serious note...

...what I really intended to blog, until I found the duck thing and just had to throw it in...

a prayer I came across that I pray today for us. First, this quote:
"Prayer is simple, prayer is supernatural, and to anyone not related to our Lord Jesus Christ, is apt to look stupid." Oswald Chamber in Daily Thoughts for Disciples.

I've watched the evolution of prayer in you, my love. What an amazing thing it has been. When you blogged sometime ago a prayer for me, and noted there that it was not something you did very often, I knew how deep was your sense of the inefficacy of it, the unknowable logic of how it could work. Things like: If both sports teams pray to win, which group does He justifiably give the win to? Or, if a tornado passes over one praying town and its people say God saved them, does that mean He condemned the praying town a few miles over, the one that it hit? These were the things that were a wall that--while it may still be there--is no longer a barrier to you. You've found some sort of gate that your rational mind did not previously see, haven't you? So here is a prayer I came across today...it raises two things that have figured into my blogs and our talk lately...both intimacy and "spilling" things. More importantly, it raises a request that Scripture become the powerful connection between God and us that it is intended to be, a request that the connection between the leading of the Spirit and the "interpretation" as found in the "living word" be apparent. This is a thing that we need right now, as you continue to dream things that need definition.

A Prayer of Intimacy

Help me, O God,
To treasure all the words in the Scriptures,
but to treasure them only as they lead to You.
May the words be stepping-stones in finding You,
and if I am lost at all in the search,
may it not be down a theological rabbit trail,
or in some briar patch of religious controversy.
If I am to get lost at all,
let it be in Your arms.
Help me to love You the way Mary did.
And may something of the spilling passion of her devotion, spill onto me.

Here's Our Answer, Scott...in a duck

...well not really, but doesn't God have a sense of humor, to bring this before my eyes this morning? You know how lately I've been associating with domestic fowl, water fowl in particular. Get this...

CORDELIA, Calif. - The International Bird Rescue Research Center in Cordelia plans to raise funds with an unusual duck X-ray. The bird came in with a broken wing, but when Marie Travers, assistant manager of the center, radiographed the duck, she was stunned to see a very clear image of what appeared to be the face, or head, of an extraterrestrial alien in the bird's stomach.
"Marie looked at it and all she could say was 'unbelievable,'" said Karen Benzel, public affairs director for the rescue center, which has been rescuing sick and injured birds for more than three decades.
Unfortunately, the duck died quickly and quietly of its injuries.
Initial reports from the center claimed the cause of the alien face was never determined, but Benzel said she was still awaiting results of a necropsy.
Either way, the center has come up with a way to turn its alien encounter into a fundraiser for the center. It will auction off the X-ray on eBay.
The one-of-a-kind image, which measures 17-by-14 inches, will be sold along with a certificate of authenticity. All proceeds will go toward funding the center's rehabilitation programs.

What do you think? Am I supposed to give birth to a tiny alien? Or just house him, like the human shell around the little alien in Men in Black? (smile)

Words of Thanks...Often Forgotten

Thank You, on this day of worship, for reminding me that whenever I say "I can't" I am actually (under the surface) saying, "I am too strong in myself to really depend on You in my weakness."

Thank You that before You do a thing, You speak it into being. Such is Your method since light began. Make us like You in this: people for whom talk is not a way of avoiding action, but rather a way of initiating it.

Thank You that when You leave a gap between word and action, You accompany it with the faith required to wait rather than leaving Your people to fret before You. Rather than leaving them fearing or fostering nameless regret without even knowing how they have offended You, You make Yourself clear if a chastening is given. But if the mystery of Your word is left without connection to any obvious failure (either accomplished or dreaded) You give reassurance. After the days passed between Your death and Your resurrected appearance to Mary, Your words to her were: "Woman, why are you weeping?" The obvious answer: I weep because of my lack of comprehension of the larger revelation You were giving back when things made natural sense in life. Then, it was only Your words that seemed strange and out of order. But now that You have accomplished Your foretold purpose, only those words You spoke make sense; and the rest of regular life seems out of order. Thank You for the promise that You will sustain us through that sort of transition, for it will surely come, considering how strange the words are that You've given us. Remind us that some prayers are met with silence because there is something wrong in them. Others are met with silence--or continued mystery--because our place in the thing You are doing is larger than our comprehension can receive. What a humbling place to sit. How can anyone help but rely on You in such a place? You speak of many blessings given to "the patient ones." May we walk in those words until You bring to pass everything You have spoken.

For these three, thanks be to God.

The Spice Cabinet

...like entering the deepest darkest jungles...I returned to the cabinet from whence comes all my culinary flavorings. I haven't visited it since last year...but wonder of wonders: I can still cook!
Tonight I offered my family dinner as I frequently do, but this time nothing came from a can that pops, nothing came "straight from freezer to microwave to table," nothing came with a please-specify-boy-or-girl toy included. No! Tonight I cooked...really cooked. Homemade vegetable soup. Homemade biscuits. OK, the applesauce came out of a jar, but I probably would have made it if I'd had the apples. My confidence looms. I even made snickerdoodles for dessert. Whacking back the brush: is there any cornstarch left in here? Wiping the rainforest sweat from my brow: could it be I still have any cream of tartar?

Proudly, I served, boasting to the boys that the dinner was made completely from scratch. My ten-year-old's response to my safari trophy--a steaming pot of soup--was to say, "What. You did this, and we got dinner?" as he scratched a finger against his ear. I told him this was not funny. He said, "No, but it is literal." I sighed, praying that I live to see the light at the end of the tunnel of his ten-ness.

God, I love summer break! If teaching ever becomes a year-round career in my state as it is in others, I may need to look for a new job, something that keeps my breaks intact while offering a comparable degree of stress: something like Alaskan king crab fishing...

Intimacy

This one is for you, love, because I don't know when I'll have a chance to share it aloud. I'm thinking of how we've discussed the inherent paradox of this idea of intimacy with regards to the thing God may require of us. And I'm thinking of your latest dream...the one that actually demonstrated what the One on horseback told you: that His essence would be in the intimacy of our grouping.

I came across this today in an old journal..I don't know exactly what I was studying when I wrote this concept down...something on submission, no doubt as that was what I was studying then. Here's the quote: "To achieve intimacy, submission says to cultivate Christ's pattern of rendering a blessing when experiencing hurt or unjust treatment...it means putting all of yourself at the disposal of a person in authority over you, a yielding of humble and intelligent obedience - without suggestion of inferiority or worthlessness...this was the model given us by Christ."

You see God's unusual act as beautiful and powerful, energizing and life-changing for all involved. I hear how you describe me in this setting, filled with a glow that reminds me of what the Bible describes as shekinah (sp?) glory--the visible glory of God upon a person. I am in awe and somewhat fearful of what you see. As for me, I see nothing of this now but what is shown me through your dreams. I submit to you, you submit to God...by humble and intelligent choice. I pray that if it comes to us that we are called to render blessing where the intent toward us is hurtful or unjust, may we stand firm for the sake of this intimacy that will invite His essence. May your vision of the good be a stronghold to us both. I love you.

Here is a quote from a devotional that is so much "for us" that it feels like we invited the author over for tea. It is the devo given to be used on September 11...a fateful date nowdays.
"God can never make me wine if I object to the fingers He uses to crush me. If He would only crush me with His own fingers and say, 'Now, my son, I'm going to make you broken bread and poured out wine in a particular way and everyone will know what I am doing.' I must never choose the scene of my own martyrdom, nor must I choose the things God will use in order to make me broken bread and poured out wine. We say, 'I want angels, people better than myself. I want everything to be significantly from God, otherwise I can not live the life, or do the thing properly; (you were way ahead of me on that one, Scott) I want always to be gilt-edged.' But let God do as He likes. If you are ever to be wine to drink, let God do as He likes."

I've known myself to be bread for others; but it is little wonder God has never used imagery for me in which wine pours. Still, I must continue to grow, for as the author says, if I am to be wine, I must tarnish a little. I must let go of the thing that has terrified me the most to release...ever since my own childhood: the thing that makes me feel like I would rather be dead than alive with this tarnish, this shame.
I know you would like to protect me from being misunderstood and falsely judged. You are gifted with a callous that comes straight from the hand of God that protects you from pain in this area. But you also know that I have a limit. I always stop at the wall of my own comprehension of goodness. And this seems right. And this seems wrong, for in it I can never become wine...I always remain a grape. Carefully, I avoid situations that might crush me, but if He leads you to lead me to a winepress...well, "whither you go, I will go; and whither you lodge I will lodge" as the saying goes.