Francis of Iditerod

On Sunday Matteo brought Ducky to be blessed by Father Scott in honor of Saint Francis, who loved all the animals. Matteo was very quiet, "I brought Ducky, he's my friend." Annika was sleeping with Marin back in the back, but her "Boppy and Lolly" (puppy and lambie) were about to become more holy than before. Matteo quietly explained, "they belong to my friend (other friend -- Annika) who sleeps with them."

There were two big dogs as well as a little dog participating. Our musher friend William brought his dog Bottlerocket to the early service. Good there aren't so many musher Anglicans, it could be a whole new denominational split, but the question would be: will the people people line up with the cat people or with the the dog people?

Facebook

Okay, most of the people I talk to don't like Facebook. I can see that.

It can maybe seem a little insipid, having an on-line life instead of a real one.

It's complicated to say to people who want to be your "friend" that you don't have time for them.
But it's a little like a small town. If someone says "hi" to you as you walk to work in the morning, you say hi back, maybe comment on the weather, and maybe feel good about living in a small town.

I liked living at Holden Village in the North Cascades for just that, living with 70 people all winter long and staying current on their joys sorrows hopes dreams stories opinions families. It can be a very rich life.

And if someone slightly annoys you, you can have short encounters, or walk a route in which your paths don't cross.

And if you're having a bad day, month, or year, people figure it out and make allowances for what you need then.

Facebook does take a while to figure out, like any small town. Where do people get haircuts, where are the good playgrounds, what do you do about mold in the basement, do the moose always eat the garden the day before you're planning to harvest?

I think part of what I like is that when someone is writing to you alone, you get a little email alert, "wake up, Jeff."

Also, when you go on your wall, and there are comments on life in general, you see the person's face. Seeing a friend's face with a message sure beats getting just an idea, like this post. Wait, I'll put a photo right here. Doesn't that make a difference? (yikes, too many megapixels!)

I recently learned that you can "hide" people who are super loquatious on your "wall," so they don't come up and obscure the more humble, less expressive friends you want not to get lost in the shuffle.

What do you think? Have you tried Facebook. Does it give you more of a sense of community, does it overwhelm you, do you have tricks you use, or parts of it you discovered that seemed particularly fun or real?

Boxcar Children

A New York Times article today about books to make sure you read your kids. Boxcar Children (Gertrude Warner) is at the top of her list. I LOVE this series, written in the forties and fifties. The first volume is the best, of course. A suddenly orphaned foursome, living on their own to avoid a tyrannical grandfather they never knew. Living well on a rural railroad siding. A little suspense, with happy endings. Now that's a good life.

Makes me want to build a fort in the woods behind our house and move in.

Matteo watched the Tigger movie (Disney) last night, and the drama and suspense almost did him in. He's super-sensitized to loss and threat. He couldn't look when Pooh Piglet Rabbit faced the end-game avalanche. Tigger lost an important letter when saving his friends. Matteo couldn't let go of that, even though the Disney plot resolved it: Tigger wanted to find his family of origin, and the Disney plot carefully inserted Pooh Piglet Eeyore to satisfy that longing, but Matteo didn't buy it. He cried himself to sleep over Tigger's existential loneliness. He didn't buy Disney. He wept for Tigger, and I held him, tear welling up for his weeping. We were a sweet mess.



This is Teo's last week before Montessori begins, he's having a great time "directing" his starlet Annika in the movie of their lives. She doesn't mind doing whatever he wants. But he can't take things she has. And when she grabs something of his, it's over. The producer, Papa, gets involved: "Cut!"

Annika is loving swinging on swings, and Matteo is enjoying hitting (t-ball) and fielding balls that I throw to him on the deck. From there he can launch some pretty long throws from deep right to make the tag.

Missing Family

I'm missing Marin and the kids. They took a trip to see family in California.

I stayed behind to save money, watch chickens, feed the kitty, and hike.

Spent time in the Delta Range, 3 hours southeast of here: hiked easy access routes up the Canwell Glacier, into Rainbow Basin, up the Gulkana Glacier, and then checked out some tundra hikes along the Eastern Denali Highway beyond Tangle Lakes. For future outings with family.

Teo and Annika are hanging out on the beach in Carpenteria this morning, just south of Santa Barbara. She's delaying coming home...it's WAY SMOKY in town here. New fires since I left. Though a fine rain this morning has cleaned the air a little.

Speaking of missing family, hoping to get back east this fall for a visit to my original family. Hope we can all go, Matteo hasn't seen his sweet cousins (my brother Ron's grandkids -- maybe not exactly cousins) Mia and Cole for like 3 years. Pennsylvania's kind of not an easy access destination from Alaska. Where is?

Epitaph

Wow. Came across a history of Incarnation Lutheran Church in Philadelphia, with this paragraph.

"Pastor Jeffrey A. Merkel served 1983-1995 and worked to blur distinction between students and non-students. He attracted members who demographically filled in the gap between "old Incarnation members" and students in their 20s. Pastor Merkel raised the intellectual bar in homiletics and spiritual growth areas, focused on creative and innovative worship, began the Feast Incarnate ministry, led "Into Our Second Century" capital campaign that resulted in installation of the baptismal font and repairs to the building, laid the theological foundation for the immersion font in the Narthex, and promoted the congregation becoming a Reconciling In Christ congregation." http://www.uniluphila.org/Congregation/History.dsp

Notes:
Incarnation was a church in West Philadelphia which sold its building to become a campus/parish church in the late 60's.
Feast Incarnate is a meal and ministry to people with AIDS -- I had no idea it was still happening!
The baptismal font we built was a true joy, I loved getting totally wet baptizing babies by standing in 30 inches of water, holding the baby, and lowering us both in the warm transforming water, surrounded by a family and community committed to that child and its future.
We were the first Lutheran church in Pennsylvania to accept GLBT (Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgendered) people -- "Reconciling in Christ" -- sometime in the middle 80's.

Hm. Thanks Fred Wolfe, or Bruce McCullough. My name in lights.

For the sake of a worthy epitaph, guess I should have quit this life around 1996 or so.

The Less You Understand

I’m taken back to New York.
New York City.

I lived there from 1979, when I was ordained
at Saint Peters Lutheran
http://www.saintpeters.org/
as their Associate Pastor,
until 1983, when I received a call to be the Campus
and Parish pastor at University Lutheran at U Penn
http://www.uniluphila.org/Congregation/History.dsp
in West Philadelphia. I moved there from New York
the day before my big sister Judy’s
tragic, untimely death at 41.
Interesting, troubling, cataclysmic times.

One of my mentors died this weekend.
Not Henri Nouwen, the Catholic priest
on whose gifts to me I’ve been meditating
since seeing him depicted in a film New Years eve,
who spoke so convincingly about God’s
deep love for people, in their brokenness,
in their weakness, in their utter humanness.

It was Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor to the poor
in Brooklyn, and then an author, and founder
and editor of the journal, First Things.
A lot of politics, church politics, national politics,
heady stuff, he was a leading neoconservative,
an advisor to presidents, including Mr. Bush.
And he was a friend.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/us/09neuhaus.html?_r=1&hp
He was smart, decisive, brilliant, and in print
and in lectures, he publicly abhorred abortion,
and homosexuality. He owned a four-story walk up
on East 19th close to the East Village.
AND, he hit on me, the cad.
Unsuccessfully, I am quick to add,
And slept with a gay friend of mine
from Yale Divinity School who was staying
at my place while working at my church,
which totally freaked me out. Back then,
Murder would have surprised me less.
What arrogance. I thought him an incredible hypocrite.

That he got away with this:
loathing something publicly,
which he was, and knew he was,
and still dabbling in that thing privately,
convinced me that I was touching on a world
way beyond my ken. Like the Mafia or something.
I was in over my head.

He was never outed,
as far as Google is concerned.
The brotherhood of gay clerics...
Sad that our culture encourages,
requires this.

Everyone who lived at his four story walk-up
prayed together, morning prayer, evening prayer.
I liked it, even if it was partly so Richard could
write it off his taxes as a Christian community.
After EP there was time to relax
while Larry, who lived upstairs, made supper.
Richard loved scotch, he smoked Winstons, and back then
I shared many a glass with the assembled brethren,
not to mention smokes, and occasionally, dinners.

Mercilessly, gleefully he demolished my every argument
for anything liberal. I was out of his league.

From Garrison Keillor, another writer
who’s out of my league, on New York Christmas:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/12/24/christmas/
“...slipping into St. Patrick's for Mass in Spanish is pretty wonderful. It's like a big family reunion at which I know nobody and so nobody is mad at me. Nothing said in Spanish offends me doctrinally or any other way. I squeeze into the crowd, under the placid stone faces of saints, the sweet smell of burning wax and a hundred varieties of cologne, and feel the religious fervor, and tears come to my eyes, and I light a candle, say a wordless prayer, and out into the cold I go.

“It brought back memories of Christmas Eve in Copenhagen 20 years ago and how beautiful the sermons were before I started learning Danish.

“A man gets a keener sense of the divine in a church that is not your own. Maybe Luther and Calvin and Jan Hus and all them were dead wrong and literacy is not the key nor an understanding of Scripture, and maybe the essence of Christmas is dumb childlike wonder and the more you think about it, the less you understand. Which makes me glad I am no smarter than I am.”

The more you think about it, the less you understand.
Maybe Richard’s key to the good life: a public persona
with gritty, counter-cultural screeds,
but in the everyday: sharing evening prayer,
a scotch on the rocks, a smoke, illicit love when it comes your way,
all thanks to a gracious God.
Glad I'm no smarter than I am.
Rest in peace, friend.

Losenge Sun

Still in the deep freeze.
The water vapor we all breathe out
tiptoes out our front door at night
and gets all lacey on the porch overhang
so that the warm air burgeoning out
when we walk into that bracing world each morning
shakes the snow of our own breath down on us.
We send Matteo out the door first
to clear a path for us.

Teo had his first day back at school. He and his friend Forrest were
reading books about planets when I arrived for the pickup at noon.
We headed over to the post office, as the sun’s orb slid in and out.
In the ice fog, and rising only 2 degrees above the horizon,
the sun sometimes looks like the moon, all white and hazy,
then bursts out red and robust, then turns pale again.

Driving toward our house on Birch Hill we often emerge from
the ice fog and see the sun’s full red coloring on the snow covered trees,
rosy on the surrounding hillsides, which can’t be seen at all from town
these days. It is pretty magical.

Teo loves Mister Rogers, and informed me today
that he wants to live with him. He also has grown partial to
an afternoon show called “Between the Lions,”
which teaches phonetics, I believe. Or is it Phonics?
I actually don’t know what phonics/ phonetics are,
so I’m guessing here. But Matteo learned yesterday that “ea”
is usually “long e” (beach) except when it isn’t (great).
Hm.

Sarah and Kate kept their after school date with me
yesterday at Grassroots Guitar, despite it taking
five minutes to dress down, and five to dress up again
before and after the lesson.

Kate, who’s in first grade, finally has her C Chord nailed,
and moves pretty quickly to the D Chord,
knows the Em and the A7, so she’s getting really good
and wanted to play “This Land is Your Land” and
“Blowing in the Wind,” songs I gave her when she started out
last fall, but she’s never shown interest in.
She’s been doing more of “Down in the Valley,”
“White Coral Bells,” “Red River Valley,”
and “Down by the Bay,” children’s songs
and other three-chord songs.

Sarah, her mom, had her new Martin Guitar Christmas present
which I helped her husband choose – it’s so fun to test-play guitars
and dream of having them... The ease of fingering
which a good guitar has, the sweet tone...
Now Sarah’s committed even more to getting good.
She’s working on travis picking, a rolling base line,
moving more into the folk domain.

Kate (another Kate) co-owns Grassroots Guitar,
and was Marin’s “doula” – the woman who helped her
birth Annika. She was glad to finally see me (she’s been
busy the last month I’ve been teaching there) and asked fondly
after the family. We recommend her to everyone who’s pregnant.
She was really a great help. Marin has been reminding me lately
that it was minus 44 when Annika was born last February...

When I got back from guitar lessons,
Teo was cruising around unclothed.
That’s one way to protest minus 45 outside.

I finally got to read an article about a friend of ours
who has incredible dog-whispering abilities.
Arna is my connection back to being 16 when
I was an exchange student in Sweden,
that other northern land. The photos alone
are worth opening it up. Talk about “spirituality,”
Arna shows that it’s not primarily in religion that we connect
to the deepest things that are there all around us.
(http://www.thebark.com/content/unmusher)

After supper we watched “Encounters at the End of the World,”
a recent Werner Herzog film based out of McMurdo Station
where Marin spent a couple years in Antarctica.
It is a one day rental. Had to watch it.
Herzog had some awesome footage of diving beneath the sea-ice
next to the continent. They call it “going into the cathedral.”
It was truly awesome, worth renting the film for.
The last film we saw of his was the one about
born-again bear advocate Timothy Treadwell
who met a tragic (some would say stupid) demise
in wilderness Alaska, film called “Grizzly Man.”

Herzog has a lot to say, when he narrates,
in his crisp, careful german accent.
He’s never content to stay behind the scenes,
though he never appears on camera.
Clearly he means us to read “at the End of the World”
to mean a final geographic frontier,
and also the end of human history.
In people like Tread well
and characters from McMurdo
Herzog finds people who stand on the brink.

BTW, here’s some fun art from Alaskan kids
on the “paint the plane” Alaska Air contest.
I suggest they award all the kids first place
and paint a whole flotilla of planes,
boost the economy.
(http://www.painttheplane.com/artgallery.aspx)
Helps me remember what’s great
about Alaska, and about the kids we’re raising.
They aren’t standing on any brink.

Life Choice, Annika's Community

January 6, 2009
Three Kings Day / Ephiphany /
The revealing of God to the nations


I was looking at Annika this morning
as I fed her cooked cereal, yogurt and applesauce,
and, remembering Henri Nouwen and L’Arche
of my recent posts, I realized it wouldn’t matter much to me
if she was “normal” or if she was somehow “differently abled.”
I love the children. Sometimes they drive me nuts.
But they are delightful for themselves alone,
and if Annika hadn’t received (God forbid)
enough oxygen during her delivery,
she’d be a two year old forever.
Huh. What two-year-olds do is odd and delightful.
Minus the tragedy, everything’s fine, a human
who needs me, loves me, and draws my love forth
for herself. Same at L’Arche.

It’s a matter of love.

I realized that I might have had a different idea
had we discovered when Annika was in utereo
that she as a fetus was “compromised.”

The difference is the application of love.
Before she was there to love, Annika was an idea.
She was an idea of love. Now she’s a reality.

Maybe what separates “choice” people from “life” people
is that choice is more about individuals, about their struggles,
opinions, and options, about individual (family) energy and spirit.

Life is more about communities, about trusting in what can be,
about sharing difficulty, growing into a deeper empowerment,
together...

Maybe choice is what is real for unplanned pregnancies.
When people aren’t mature enough, or when there aren’t
supporting structures like family or a social safety net,
in which case it’s maybe nuts
to “embrace the chaotic blessing of life.”

Predictably, this led me to thoughts about religion.
I was thinking about atheists, Unitarians, Jews and Christians.

I was thinking that their stories and traditions
(often shared) train Jews and Christians
in the skills of interpretation and appreciation.
(“Appreciative inquiry: The basic idea
is to build organizations around what works,
rather than trying to fix what doesn't.”)
( )

Example: how to love a story like Noah and the Ark,
where God decides to kill off the sinful earth?
Then commissions virtuous Noah to provide a parachute.
Here’s how to read this story:
look to the improbable concept of “saving the animals.”
Celebrate that. Draw it, sing it, crayon it.
Teach your children how much Love can transform
seeming disasters. (Don’t focus on the liability
of this story, which is that Love started the problem
with a big angry rain).

Ask a Lubavitcher or a Mormon and they’ll have thought about it,
they’ll focus on one detail (Noah’s improbable obedience)
or another detail (God sets a rainbow in the sky and promises
never to destroy the earth again, a free-will covenant).
Not that you’d approve of their interpretation.
It’s like movie reviews. Sometimes you can’t like a movie
no matter how “important” the NYT reviewer
says it is to the history of cinema.

But if you’re “in” the community you agree to disagree.
You’re not “in” the community
if you walk out and never return to that church.
You’re a principled dissenter, out there on your own
(maybe dragging your family along, or splitting your family).

Another thing the traditional religions teach people
is that they aren’t God, they aren’t at the center.
God or Love is at the center.
The rest is “blessed mystery.”
Love it, love the blessed chaos of it.
Forget about “explaining” the important stuff.
Even thinking you could, is crazy-making.

In this world view, humility is “becoming.”
It’s a steadying comfort. An anchoring worldview.
Whether you’re trying to understand a tragedy,
or to build a community, finding a place
for your unique self in the larger scheme
feels like a blessing to the effort. It empowers.
These traditions often give rise to leaders
who guide, console, referee fights, and bless.
(as well as leaders not up to the task,
who divide, accuse, blame, pontificate, even abuse...)

In contrast, when many are sure of their “right-ness”
their “different-ness,” the resulting populist chaos
often isn’t very “blessed mystery.” It’s bracing, but lonely.
Lots of these folks in Alaska, firing off tirades
to “Letters to the Editor,” whose wives aren’t very good
text editors (as is mine, when I float a broadside past her,
and she wisely advises: “delete.”)
In a community, it’s often distracting, annoying,
it thrashes community members,
and drives off individuals with a low threshold for infighting,
or who don’t sense a deeper “truth” happening there.

What agnostics and other non-theistic people
have going for them is that they readily question authority.
Thus, the tyranny and silliness of “leaders-so-called” don’t fly.
People don’t “do” things obediently
because the priest or minister or board of directors
say they should. But, they also don’t “do” things
that they don’t understand. That can seem selfish.
Sometimes you don’t have to understand to love.
There’s a lot which people won’t ever understand,
but could love, because of that “blessed mystery.”

I have a small experience pool,
and from my time in our funky,
end of the road, furthest north lay-led UU fellowship,
I’m wondering if other groups which are based on the premise
that “there’s no authority,” and that there are “no answers,”
can make for the kind of community I crave. If people see
no reason to compromise their freedom, why bond?
If they don’t believe in the rewards of banding together,
why would they learn the skills of community?

For the sake of the blessed mysteries which are yet to be revealed,
if they be tragic (losses, failures, sadnesses, economic disaster) or ecstatic
(getting work we love, raising kids we admire, having a justice president, reversing global warming), I long to find a community which will love my improbable family,
and in which we can sharpen our compassion, implement our desire to serve,
share our wisdom, grow kindness, and learn how to dance
with improbable partners through life together.

The Real Body

Watched “Lars and the Real Girl” last night.
It depicts how a family, their physician,
their small-town Minnesota community,
and their likely Lutheran church live into
a really difficult, actually pretty intractable problem:
the seeming deepening insanity of a sweet
but socially maladjusted young man.

Reminds me of my Nouwen blog yesterday,
of Henri dressing and feeding Adam
at L’Arche Toronto (Daybreak).
Adam was about 20 or 30, severely handicapped.
As I remember he vocalized but not meaningfully.
His movements were spastic at best. He needed to be
in a wheelchair or a bed at all times.
Henri, this 50-year-old Dutch priest, lecturer and writer,
was himself gradually transformed
from being annoyed (and feeling profoundly guilty)
by the simplicity of caring for and coming to know a person whom others
in our culture would simply abandon to their families or to care institutions...
People are transformed at L’Arche, not by big statements,
but by living presently, deeply, authentically with people of needs.

In the movie, “Lars Lindstrom lives in the converted garage behind the house he and his brother Gus inherited from their father. His pregnant sister-in-law Karin's persistent attempts to lure him into the house for a family meal are usually rebuffed, and on the rare occasions he accepts, their conversation is stilted and he seems eager to leave as soon as he can. The young man finds it difficult to interact with or relate to his family, co-workers, or fellow parishioners in the church he regularly attends.

“One day Lars happily announces to Gus and Karin he has a visitor he met via the Internet, a wheelchair-bound missionary of Brazilian and Danish descent named Bianca. The two are startled to discover Bianca is in fact a lifelike doll Lars ordered from an adult website. Concerned about his mental health, they convince Lars to take Bianca to Dagmar, the family doctor who is also a psychologist. Dagmar diagnoses Bianca with low blood pressure and advises Lars he needs to bring her in for weekly treatments, during which she will attempt to analyze him and get to the root of his behavior. She urges Gus and Karin to assist with Lars' therapy by treating Bianca as if she were a real woman.

“As time passes, Lars begins to introduce Bianca as his girlfriend to his co-workers and various townspeople. Aware of the situation, everyone reacts to the doll as if she were real, and Bianca soon finds herself involved in volunteer programs, getting a makeover from the local beautician, and working part-time as a model in a clothing store. Due to their acceptance of Bianca, Lars soon finds himself interacting more with people. At work, he takes notice of Margo, and when she reveals she has broken up with her boyfriend, Lars agrees to go bowling with her while Bianca attends a school board meeting. The two spend a pleasant evening, although Lars is quick to remind Margo he could never cheat on Bianca. She replies she would never expect that of him and tells him she hopes one day to find a man as faithful as he...” (Wikipedia)

I imagine myself in a similar situations, which our everyday lives (especially raising kids) provide us in abundance, and sense that I’m a lot like the older brother. I want to externalize the “problem,” I want others to agree with me that Lars is nuts and we deserve sympathy or can’t afford care. Or I’m like some in the town’s church council (not the pastor) who meet with Gus and Karin to discuss what to do when Lars turns up with Bianca on Sunday at church – one elder riffs that it’s “idolatry,” a robust and intriguing theological concept, but totally out of touch with Lars’ struggle, and who Lars is.

It’s the physician who takes the behavior as pointing to something important, and she “goes along” with Lars over the months, and she’s the one who gets to the bottom of it. Her vulnerability and presence remind me of Henri, one of whose most important books was “The Wounded Healer.” My idea of authentic “saints” implies people with a deep connection to real people, their foibles, their losses, their gratitude, in general.

(Note on being raised as a Christian – when I criticize myself, it’s ultimately a very hopeful move, a move which keeps alive the possibility of being a good person, or a “saint.” What I find incredibly sad is when people observe my self-criticism, and pile on, assuming that their life-choices and behaviors would gain a pass. Our hope and optimism is contingent on a self-awareness which embraces a robust self-criticism, and is scandalized by people who aren’t earnest, sincere, and true to (or at least cognizant of) the principles against which we measure our behavior.)

In relation to the film, Roger Ebert comments on this clarity of vision: "There are so many ways [the film] could have gone wrong that one of the film's fascinations is how adroitly it sidesteps them. Its weapon is absolute sincerity ... It has a kind of purity to it." Purity. Saintliness.

In his Letters and Papers from Prison, where Dietrich Bonhoeffer was held and finally executed for his participation in a plot to blow up Adolf Hitler, the young (39 year old) pastor writes on this same subject of an authentic life of faith. Bonhoeffer was recalling from prison a conversation with a young French pastor, the pacifist and peace activist Jean Laserre, whom he had met 13 years earlier in the US.

‘We were asking ourselves quite simply what we wanted to do with our lives. He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it’s quite likely that he did become one). At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. For a long time I didn’t realize the depth of the contrast. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, or something like that.

“I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of one self, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous person or an unrighteous one, a sick person or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world – watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes human and a Christian.” ("Letters and Papers from Prison")

“Metanoia” is the word most often translated from the Greek New Testament as “repentance.” It’s what Jesus offers the searching and suffering crowds that come to hear him talking about the hope he brings ("repent!" or "turn your heart around"). I think it’s a measure of “real” (as in “Lars and the “Real” Girl) that the possibility of profound personal transformation at the very foundation of your life (setting aside the red herring of “original sin”) is, to most people, a profoundly hopeful one, greatly to be desired. People almost by their nature want to be more “real,” have a greater capacity for kindness and beauty, want to work everyday “miracles.” In light of this, I wonder if it was Bianca or Margo who was the most “real,” the most miraculous, of Lars girls?

What I haven’t been able to get a handle on in my own life just yet is whether the liberal religion I’ve been pursuing the past couple years has a stomach for this kind of “real,” this “incarnate-ness.” There are wonderful stories in WWII-era Europe of “right action.” But what about the local, the personal, the recent? It’s a deeply important issue for me at this point. Can I help? Would the liberal religious community be willing, as was Lars', to "repent" of preconceived notions, and embrace significant transformation, for the sake of others, for the healing of the world?

Anyway, in “Lars and the Real Girl” you can see Dagmar the physician, Karin the sister-in-law, the pastor, and a whole community make this crucial move. They go from taking seriously their own sufferings, to taking seriously the sufferings of the authentically, honestly human (a designation for Jesus in the Christian bible was ‘the human one’) in their world.

Home With the Fearful Brave

Most of the movies Marin and I see
scare us. Maybe it’s because our life
is boundaried by children needing many things.

Maybe it’s because the films, many of them documentaries,
are well done and bring up important, challenging issues.

“Home of the Brave” scared us for different reasons.

It’s the story of Viola Liuzzo, 39, the only white woman
to lose her life in the civil rights era.
She died between Birmingham and Selma in 1965.

Viola Liuzzo’s life changed in the late 50's
when she birthed a stillborn child.
The catholic church in Detroit told her that the child
could not go to heaven, because it had not been baptized
while it was still alive.

Viola left the church. Despite having five children,
she went back to school. Was it the student activist groups
which brought her to the new place. Was it the Unitarian church
she began attending? Was it having a deep relationship
with a woman caring for her children, an African American her age?

When Viola saw black people beaten by the Selma police
on television, she didn’t just feel horrified. Responding to calls
for assistance from Civil Rights leaders, she got in her car.
She drove to Selma. She lived in the projects and helped
on the famous “voting rights march” in Alabama.
Only 150 black people were registered to vote among 30,000.
To vote, a black person needed a white “patron.”

Driving a young man back from Birmingham one night
she was assassinated. Four Ku Klux Klanners in a car
took her out. One was an informer from the FBI.
They were acquitted by a local jury.

What her five children began to discover in the 70's was
not only did the FBI informant spur the Klansmen on,
he likely was the shooter. He also was involved
in most of the mortal violence of the Civil Rights era,
including the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham
which killed four little girls, two years earlier.

The FBI had a thousand-page file on their mother,
a smear-campaign originating with J Edgar Hoover himself.
The entire file on the KKK at the height of the civil rights movement
was 1/3 of Viola Liuzzo’s.

The children’s civil suit against the FBI in federal court
that their mother’s civil rights were violated
was ruled against, and the kids needed to pick up
the court fees of around $100,000.
“I’ll never pay a penny to the US government
for the murder of my mother,” was Tony’s response.
That’s when the oldest son, Tommy, went AWOL
from Michigan into the backwoods of Mississippi.
Tony joined the Michigan militia,
a la Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.
After 9/11 with the Patriot Act becoming law,
he also went underground. The three daughters
struggled to pay off debts, live with poverty,
sorrow and loss.

The movie scared Marin
because of the devastation of Viola’s family.
What can happen to the innocent in this world
when an idealist takes on powers of evil on behalf of others,
and justice is denied. It was indeed harrowing to consider.
Having the government against you, harming you.

The movie scared me
because of the arrogance of power
wielded against poor people by the FBI.
As a follower of Jesus, the ravages of the poor
always move me toward a deep sadness.
Which we see in various forms almost daily.
The past three days Israel bombing Gaza.
And by personally not doing anything about it.

We gather in the morning darkness and sing
“May there always be sunshine,
may there always be blue sky,
may there always be Mama,
may there always be me”
in the candlelit living room
before our day begins.

Isn’t “mama” is a stand in for God,
a simple way of saying,
“may trustworthy hope always stand beside us,”
may transforming love hold us close,
and give us courage,
to stand up to all sadness, and greed
and violence and self-serving power.

If we stand there and know this,
know it with the muscle memory
of our hearts, so we can reflexively
reach for it and find it, and gather it
in the darkest most paralyzing dark
then
there is no fear.

Intrusion of a Welcome Grace

The other day I read a blog that talked about someone
who preached once at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fairbanks...
The author of the blog, a good friend of mine, talked about the experience
opening him to a whole new world of reading and thinking,
listing authors like Wendell Berry, and Natalie Goldberg,
and Thich Nhat Hanh, and Richard Nelson, and Thomas Berry,
and I was thinking, this must have been before my time at UUFF,
I want to know this guy. He was working on the same stuff
I was working on, the land, spirit, community, a deep presence...
http://discontinuouspermafrost.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/where-spirituality-is-not-welcome/

Then I realized as he wove his tale, that my friend was
talking about me... It was pretty discomfiting at first.
Like Alfred Nobel reading his obituary, or something.

It happened again last night, when I was waiting
for Marin to put Annika down so we could watch
some DVD by the Coen Brothers, a pretty weird spoof
of DC culture and spy movie thrillers (“Burn After Reading”),
triggered by a woman gripped by the need to reinvent herself
through liposuction, and a breast-and-face-job
which her HMO won’t pay for, resulting in
two co-workers at “Hardbodies” exercise gym
dying absurd deaths, plus another guy in a coma –
too many casualties for Marin and me.

Plus, we don’t like graphic violence, we end up clutching each other
on the sofa and closing our eyes, even when it’s satirical,
that is, not serious... Deaths have to have some redemption.
We’re kind of old fashioned or something.
Maybe that’s the DNA I talked about
in the earlier post about Matteo’s aesthetic preferences.

Well, while I was waiting for Marin to emerge
to watch this weird movie on New Years Eve 2008,
NPR was showing something about L’Arche,
“The Ark,” a Catholic movement which cares for handicapped people,
originating in France and Toronto. I thought,
this is going to be about Henri.

It was. Henri Nouwen, a good friend and kind of saint,
vulnerable, lovely, articulate, dear.
He was a Dutch priest, a teaching “star”
at Yale Divinity School when I was there,
and I was surprised when he took notice of me,
the famous teachers down at my undergraduate Yale College
never did... He willingly came down to New York
to preach at my ordination in 1979 at St Peters,
http://www.saintpeters.org/
and we became friends. I visited him
at the Abbey of the Genesee in upstate NY
http://www.geneseeabbey.org/
and for longer periods, spiritual retreats really,
in the 80's at the International headquarters of L’Arche
in a sweet 17th Century farm north of Paris, and at Daybreak,
the L’Arche headquarters in North America in Toronto.
http://www.larche.ca/

The movie had all of the friends I knew
from his circle, Sue Mosteller, Nathan Ball,
and the residents I met and helped care for
at the various L’Arche locations.

Henri’s way of speaking about God and spirituality
is very affecting, not sure if it’s his voice,
his expressive hands, his sincerity,
or the way he is “familiar” with God’s ways,
it fills me with a sense of hope and kindness.

This was Henri, always focused
on love and transformation,
though always rooted in his sadness and longing,
trusting in the power of being connected,
finally, ultimately, to God.

He talked in the video about “first love,” that God
always was the “first love,” the love foundational to all loves,
and when you tried to transfer a human love into that position
it becomes all sadness and trouble.
The video talked about his great sadness in the final years.
I remember the last time he was in Philadelphia visiting me,
he was very sad and needy... We all hung out,
Henri, my friends Tyler and Steve, it was
maybe November of 1994.

Henri died suddenly in Holland in 1996
when I was far away at Holden Village.

The great sadness.

In some ways the last 15 years
have been my excursus on the great sadness
and beyond, the same sadness that afflicted Henri.
Leaving the New York, Philadelphia, the east coast,
taking on life as village pastor in a small town
in the Washington Cascades,
then pastoring in Wasilla Alaska and Palmer,
and Fairbanks, and getting married,
then not pastoring, and then parenting.
An expanding universe. Or shrinking?

For Henri, it seems that the great sadness
was subsumed in his vision of the “first love?”
I totally know this. I know it in my spiritual bones.
I know how to do this.

However, I don’t think I know how to do this now.

Safe Page

Judy Blume, the children’s author, who wrote
“Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret”
was talking on NPR Morning Edition the other day. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98706074
She was talking about being a mom in New Jersey
trying to figure out what to do with her life,
making felt hangings to sell, and being able
to remember vividly what it was like to be a kid,
and writing from that viewpoint.

I began to smell the Emmaus Public Library
when it was all books and very, very quiet,
a little house sitting on the downtown “Triangle,”
with two older women who watched over it.
It’s funny the places you feel safe and alive
or the places you remember feeling that.

We keep being surprised by what kind of stories
and videos Matteo likes and doesn’t like.

At almost 4, he’s way into the Solar System,
and will watch nonstop DVD’s about the planets.
I need to make up stories about them, with Venus
being Mar’s sister, and papa Jupiter
and mama Juno (not a planet, sadly)
trying to keep the family from killing each other.
Mercury’s the best friend, very fast runner,
and Uranus is very slow... Neptune, quite the swimmer.
Not quite Shakespeare, but...

He loves Mister Rogers (which has gone out of syndication
on most NPR stations, but ours is running it...)
but he’s ambivalent these days on Sesame Street,
which I don’t quite understand. I really like Elmo,
though Marin can’t stand his sweet little laugh...
Then there’s Thomas the Train, which he also seems
to be getting over. He used to cry whenever
TTT had one of their many crashes or derailments,
which seem to be ubiquitous...

Last night we tried the Curious George movie,
mostly because we like the Jack Johnson soundtrack,
but after less than 30 minutes Matteo was ready for bed.
We tried to get out of him what he didn’t like,
he said something like there were bad people in there,
people saying no (he hates “no”), opening and shutting doors,
and there was a dinosaur skeleton collapse,
noisy and cataclysmic, which he hated...

Suspense and change, these are things that don’t sit well
with his aesthetic and moral DNA...

A couple weeks ago I launched into telling him
chapters based on C. S. Lewis’ Narnia story,
“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
He thought it was too long. He also stopped me
when the Witch had the Lion on the stone table,
about to “sacrifice” him. I didn’t get to redeem
the story. It ended with Lucy and Susan sad,
instead of the dance of the next morning,
and the freeing of Mr. Tumnus from the curse
of having become stone... I read those books
in the original hardcover, from Muhlenberg library.
They became a deep memory of
possibility, wonder and brilliance.

It’s funny the places you feel safe and alive.

Empathy

[Marin steps in for a more average family-oriented post.]

I keep trying to write my own thoughts but have thwarted myself time and again with notes scrawled on envelopes that I throw out, computer files not saved.

In a quiet moment, I muse on the children and their inner worlds. Little Girl (Annika) seems to be on some spurt of ordering and organizing – or perhaps I just stopped long enough to observe her. What I see is a little girl who’s a lot more “with-it” than I thought. In a brand new development, she climbed the whole stairwell (with a spotter) three times yesterday. She also gets the concept of putting shape blocks in shape holes, and that repetitive action like dropping cheerios or nibbling on my nose can be a hoot.

In Matteo’s world, there is the total fascination with space that now surpasses airplanes, which surpassed trains, which surpassed heavy equipment… [See photo of Matteo organizing his balls as the solar system.] Jeff and I cannot fathom what deep space is to a 3.5 year old as it’s still really a pretty heady concept for the adult mind, but he’s into it.

Back on earth, in the inner being, I see in Matteo something that fascinates me – a new sense of empathy with his surroundings.

A conversation with Matteo on Thanksgiving morning:

Matteo, “That turkey looks go-ood.”

[Naked raw turkey carcass, looking not good. I start get ready to cook a pumpkin that is rotting and a new butternut squash.]

Matteo, “Don’t kill the squash. He’s my friend.”

Marin, “But he will mold, rot, die if we don’t eat him.”

Matteo, “What’s rot?”

Marin, “Rot is like dying. He will end up in the compost pile. It’s his job to be eaten. (I stop, realizing this is not helping.)

Matteo, “But he’s my friend. Who will be my friend?”

The stand-off was diffused by agreeing to save seed to grow NEW friends. And, the squash was good.

The dawning of empathy, part two:

For Christmas, Matteo, predictably, received two solar system puzzles (and three books on space as well as glow in the dark planets and stars). One of the puzzles, a neat but more artistic representation of the planets, inexplicably had a small planet with a frown and two tears. Matteo immediately grabbed it and gasped “Pluto is crying!”

I grasped for some acceptable explanation. “It’s sad to be so far from the sun?”

“Saturn is blocking it” Matteo explained, and “He doesn’t like the Outer Orbit.”

Our puzzle process was derailed.

I created a small smiling planet and taped it on top of Pluto. We completed the puzzle but decided that Pluto (as in that piece of the puzzle) could need to come up to the table and sit with Matteo. This would clearly make Pluto happier. Meanwhile, Matteo was please to see that “Neptune is with his boyfriend Uranus.”

I’m not sure empathy yet extends to other children, or his sister, but for a young boy who has a jet for a dolly, the planets were now aligned.

A Solstice Sermon to Me

The sun has been scraping along
in and out of the clouds of the horizon all week.
They burst into flame when the sun
remains offstage, or when it has gone.
What is it now, 3 hours 42 minutes peeking
above the horizon?

The moon is higher,
and has been gradually losing its brilliance
all week long, falling behind in its race, soon
to vanish entirely, and then be reborn.

What kind of rituals to give thanks
for the wonders of our days.

Marin came home late Thursday night
(an ordeal of snow in Seattle
bequeathed 5 hours of extra airport time
on her and Annika) just in time for
Matteo’s little seasonal program Friday morning,
for which I was guitar accompanist and conductor.
One of the girls, Rika, had a birthday which the class
commemorated after the parents had left
and the cookies were gone.

Ms Hanneman laid out a universe of time on the floor:
the sun with it’s flaming hair and cheery face,
12 month names circled around it like rays,
and Rika was positioned standing on “December”
and holding a remarkably colorful, earth globe.
We sing: “The earth turns round the sun,
the earth turns round the sun,
the earth turns round the sun,
and Rika is one.”

Carrying the whole world
in her two hands, all the seas, the air, the 6 billion people
the giraffes, the gerbils, the belugas and birds,
Rika, a young and ingenuous Atlas,
walks through the empty universe, holding us all
just far enough from the sun, bound by universal laws.

“What were you doing, Rika, when you were one,”
Ms Hanneman asks, interrupting my reverie.
“Learning to walk,” Rika improvises.
And then she takes another turn
walking around the sun while we all sing,
questioned and improvising, until she’s reached her 5.
A wonderful, satisfying ritual.

I believe from years of praying and meditating,
preaching and singing and talking about it,
that the members of a tribe or community must gather together.
They find themselves sacred spaces and go there at sacred times,
to promote health, to stay fully alive, to honor their newborns
and mourn their dead, to tell the stories that hold them together,
in order to support and challenge, comfort and teach,
nurture and wonder, all so that people can live committed,
vital, changed lives, and are able then to offer
just that to the wider community and world:
A life of authentic engagement, and openness to growth,
to the health of the earth and to the generations to come.

Rousseau's Child

There’s a world where kids are always right
on some level, because how would someone
you have known all their life and whom you’ve
protected from harm and duress –
how would that child come up with a motive
to cause harm and duress. Why would he/she?

This brings me to Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778),
father of the Enlightenment, and (apparently) of Autobiography
with his Confessions, Reveries of a Solitary Walker,
and of the “Noble Savage” theory, in his Social Contract.
Here’s a quote for the day, for all of us romantics:

“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality

“In Rousseau's philosophy, society's negative influence on people centers on its transformation of amour de soi, a positive self-love, into amour-propre, or pride. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self-preservation, combined with the human power of reason. In contrast, amour-propre is artificial and forces people to compare themselves to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing people to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others.” (Wikipedia)

(An Aside: It’s so interesting that a college liberal arts education
is based on reading these philosophers in the original --
not some Grad student’s take on them in Wikipedia.
In my experience at Yale, we often discovered
in our classroom conversations after reading obscure texts,
stones in the thought of the ancients that were left unturned.
It was like meeting a close friend for the first time.
It had a huge effect on me, that kind of deep respect
and deep listening to the past.
It’s probably what led me to being a minister,
where I could dwell deeply
in the ancient Hebrew, Christian and other texts,
to find a truth which could transform me,
and other people’s days and lives.)

(To imagine again that opportunity, that use (misuse?) of my youth
reflecting on what life is about, hearing not only from
“the screaming talking heads that dominate political debate”
(KCRW Santa Monica’s “Left Right and Center’s” tagline
each Friday at 1:30 pm) but from men and women
from ancient times to the present, authors, poets, thinkers,
historians, preachers... and trying to take them seriously,
on their own terms... )

(It seems so odd to call up Rousseau
as I think about raising Matteo, since I have a whole bookshelf
of “how to” books and “my story” books on raising kids,
not a one of which would know to make the connection
from the tragically failed French Revolution to the confusion
among modern Americans about what goes into
raising children to be healthy, awake, thoughtful,
confident, compassionate and hopeful members of a community
(I’m reluctant to say “individuals.”))

It’s interesting that Rousseau was raised on Calvinism
in Geneva, and managed to escape. That was the Calvinism
which, like Bush’s “Democracy” fixation, doesn’t hesitate to kill you
to free you. It’s the “burn the witch to free her soul to enter heaven”
theory, in our time – ravage a few hundred thousand families
in Iraq and America so Iraqis can vote. For what?
For Shell and BP to take over Saddam’s nationalized oil industry?
But back to Rousseau.

Rousseau would have found Calvin’s interpretation
of “original sin” abhorrent. That’s the “double predestination” thing
where if God is all knowing, then God already knows the future,
knows if you’re saved or condemned.
So the best you can do is watch your every move.
If you are ever seen to commit a wrong
(like merriment or dancing, the Puritan thing),
that means you’re predestined to hell.
If you are never seen or imagined to do wrong,
then you’re predestined to salvation, heaven.
But watch your children, Satan is always looking for an opening.

Calvin (Luther, the Pope, et al) believes all are born in sin
(note, this is not what Jews believe, who are responsible
for the story about Eve and the snake – Jews treat the story
as a vivid myth about God’s expectations and human frailty).

Later, the Christian myth (cooked up in the early Christian era –
it’s not really there in the bible)
connects the story of the “fall”
(again, Jews, who own this story,
wouldn’t call it a “fall”)
to Jesus crucifixion, in order to give stature
to an event (the execution of a beloved leader)
which was bleak in the extreme.
Bleak like some of the stuff we’re living through today:
African genocides, violence against children,
middle-class family handgun murder-suicides, school and workplace shootings
(another reason why making such a fuss over the death
of one man 2000 years ago – Good Friday – seems insensitive
and culturally myopic).

But the philosophical “move” that Christians have made isn’t all wrong:
if only we could “redeem” all the violence which befalls good, innocent people
like the Christians “redeem” Jesus’ politically motivated execution.
It would amount to this kind of myth: “Bad things happen to Good People
to make Good People better, and the people that die in the process –
somehow that isn’t a tragedy. Maybe they go to Heaven
and are happier there than they ever were here.”

But maybe to “redeem” a killing is crazy. Stop the killing!
Just stop the killing, the weapons manufacture, the rich versus the poor,
stop it. (Sounds like I’m talking to Teo...)

Back to Rousseau – his “noble savage” theory
stands in stark opposition to the “original sin” teaching
of his era, and it’s horrid stepchild, “predestination.”
Rousseau opens a window of fresh air into the stuffy Christian world,
a world which is drifting free and breaking up
after 1500 years under the boot of the Pope.

But what about raising kids? Are they in need of strict boundaries
and clear authority, rules and expectations, developmental timelines
and standardized tests, in order to measure, guide,
strengthen them and help them succeed?
Or do measurements and old stories corrupt
both the adult and the child?

A voice for Rousseau comes into my e-mail inbox
every morning from “The Daily Groove” by Scott Noelle
www.enjoyparenting.com/dailygroove
Today’s topic if you don’t have time to visit is “Truth is Overrated.”
It’s about appreciating the hyperbole of kids,
the “I could eat a horse” comments that come at face value,
to bring yourself to celebrate the odd creativity
even when it’s inconvenient to adult schedules
adult anxieties, adult expectations.

Noelle is always trying to get care givers to think like a kid.
Sometimes it helps me pay more attention, relax a little.
Though I don’t know if ultimately I agree with his approach.
I gained so SO much from mentors, careful teachers,
people who noticed me struggling or searching and had opinions
of their own, skills of their own, directions to nudge me in.

I could go on for ten pages about crucial moments where others
shared their opinions or stories and helped me shape mine.
And now as I raise a child, correction, as Marin and I
and our extended family and local community raise two children,
I wonder how much to let go and how much to dive in.

I had mixed results in years 1 & 2 with Teo swimming.
He blossomed, he was paddling around with his buoyancy belt
at 1 ½, and then by the next year, 2 ½ he was clinging to me
and crying every time I urged him to release my neck.
Face to face three times a week we’d walk around in the water
for 45 minutes
while other kids swam, splashed, laughed, threw balls, played games.
Marin told me to cut it out, drop it completely. Sick of my comparisons
(see above sentence). We tried lessons
which also didn’t work (I was there for that too,
and he was all super clingy), so I took her advice.
We don’t go near water at Mary Siah pool anymore, the two of us.

I’ve had good luck the past week with skiing, he’s usually good
at it in the beginning, capable, enthusiastic,
unless he’s all moody, then he becomes all claymation:
knees buckle, eyes roll, poles fly toward the sky with dramatic
flair followed by crossed skis and a face plant, crying, demands to go home,
sending my blood pressure up. After I get him in the Chariot,
the ensuing peaceful 45 minutes of skiing with a 60 lb weight attached
brings me back to equilibrium. Back to where we started,
with a little fitness hovering over it all, and midday sunshine
or the benediction of an impromptu blizzard.

Rousseau! The advantage of a brand of conservatives is that they
believe you can learn from the past, from tried/true recipes,
that practice makes perfect, and that character is paramount.
A brand of conservatives tries to understand and explain things,
and tries to honor voices that have gone before, heros, virtuosos,
certain moments that are relevant. Right now Obama,
thankfully, is studying Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first 100 days.

A down side of conservatives is that they feel entitled,
they can feel distant, and bookish, and they can disempower others.

The advantage of a brand of liberals is that they
believe in spontaneity, that letting go reveals inherent things,
like goodness and hopefulness, and surprise, and hidden truth,
that people will rise to the occasion if given half a chance,
and that we don’t need to be so intellectual or wary or anxious.
We don’t need to plan ahead, if we don’t have expectations.
Buddhists are liberals. Look at the Dalai Lama versus China.

A down side of liberals is that they can easily get rambunctious
when their all-relaxed theory backfires. Heads will roll, to use the
historically-appropriate analogy from Rousseau’s life and philosophy
(French Revolution, terribly idealistic until it wasn’t anymore).

It’s me when I’m trying oh so hard to not get annoyed
at Matteo going all floppy when I’m trying to get his foot
into a sock or his arm into a shirt. I snap.
It isn’t pretty when liberalism gets defrocked.

And Finally: Two Alarming Dispatches from the Trenches:

1. (Discussed above) When Matteo is singularly incapable
of letting me dress him, it’s because he’s decided he wants to be
a baby again. He told me this when I asked him. After I had
flipped out and precipitated a melt down on Saturday afternoon,
when I asked pointedly why he was behaving the way he was
he simply informed me of this.
.
2. (Discussed yesterday) When Matteo demanded a video
before a bath, before a book, and refused to budge,
even to the point of losing his right to see any video that night,
and precipitating another huge falling out,
it was probably because he and Marin had worked this out
in my absence (I used to be at UU meetings or Northern Center
Board meetings at bedtime). I suspect this not because
Marin has weighed in for the defense (she’s still in San Francisco),
but because he laid it out once again last night,
as if it were the first of the ten “lost” commandments
of life in the “Big Brown House.”
So I, being a good commandment follower
once it becomes clear it’s a commandment, went with the flow
(making me a conservative of a sort), and this time it flowed
very nicely. Video, bath, book, sleepy-pie.

Looks like another cold, brilliantly sunny day in the North land.

Tiger Tale

Whoa. Tiger by the tail yesterday.

Started out writing at 5 am.
“Ah told Jesus it would be all right if he changed mah name.”
Famous old African American hymn about letting go.
I wrote about wanting to be simple, free, loved, and on a path, a journey
of believing together with other funny, kind and wounded people
affirming that life is finally good and we can create a better community
by our remembering one another, by our kindness and truth telling.

Got into old documents from Holden Village and other places
while looking for old familiar chants and stuff. Started to believe
that I had something to offer. It helps not to be distracted
by NPR and to save checking out the NYT headlines for later.

When Matteo called from bed at 7, I was writing stuff, and it took
five minutes to finish. I picked him up and wound his arms
around my neck for the climb up the stairs.

I don’t ask him anymore if he wants to see the dark morning sky,
I just take him out for a minute. It was plus 4 degrees.
The gibbous moon was as high as it gets, we had to walk
out into the frost beyond the long roof gable to see it,
mister 86% full and waning.

Coming back in, I brought our bowl of sand to the couch
and we lit candles in the darkness for Mama, Annika,
and Grandma Oranges in San Francisco.
We sang some songs. Participation was spotty.

“May there always be sunshine
may there always be blue sky
may there always be mama
may there always be me.”
(added papa, children, families).

And
“When we wake up we always have to say
Tomorrow’s now today, tomorrow’s now today. When we go to sleep we always have to say,
Today’s now yesterday, today’s now yesterday.
Round and round go the days and nights
up and down go the sun moon and starlight.”

And, a Papa song (St Francis' actually),
which usually gets less Matteo criticism
(because he doesn’t already know and “own” it):
“Lord make me an instrument of your peace
where there’s hatred let me sow love,
where there’s injury let me sow pardon,
discord let me sow union.
Where there’s doubt let me sow faith,
despair let me sow hope,
where there’s darkness let me sow light,
sadness let me sow joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love with all my heart.
For it is in giving that we receive,
in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we are born
to a life without end.”

I was chanting that last one, and Teo said,
you’re singing too quiet. So I sang it again
this time paying more attention
to the sweet, truthful, challenging words.

He went to school, I checked incoming emails every little bit,
not much coming back in from stuff I’d sent to friends
earlier in the morning.

I have music, teaching guitar to four children and one mom
(3 lessons a week). I love to sing, I long to celebrate
the life we’re living as it takes wing and soars...
There’s family skiing, I’m teaching Teo to ice skate,
there’s writing, at least this week with Annika down in SF.
There’s reading, I just started John Haines after hearing him speak
down at the Library on Thursday...
There’s the moon, the candles, the exhilarating short short days,
the cold, the future, the life passing so fast,
not pausing an instant for me to get it right.

"He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise." William Blake

Maybe that explains the rest of the day.
It went down down down, I think.
Maybe I’ll change my mind as time passes.
You be the judge.

Picked up Teo at school at noon, and headed out to Birch Hill.
We saddled up the Chariot, but he was interested in skiing,
which is good.

(Note: if I were to share joys and sorrows
from the week before, the joy would have been Matteo
skiing on his own Saturday at the University trails for a good hour –
a first! – part of it being pulled on his skis behind the chariot strapped to me,
as if water skiing, and falling down, and laughing hysterically...
And the sorrow would have been trying to get him dressed
for that event, trying, trying, trying to be patient,
and finally utterly losing it with him, screaming at him dementedly,
causing in him the hiccoughing sobbing of one abandoned
in the earth, and then holding him for ten minutes apologizing
until we were able to move on...)

Yesterday, he skied well,
but refused to parallel with me down the set trails
instead zig zagging all over the place, smiling, watching me for reaction,
and I thought: erratic, but what the hay.
We went up the hill from the stadium
and I held him vertical as he skied down the hill in the set trail,
and then, boom,
he wanted to go home,
fifteen minutes in.

He howled “too squished, too squished”
as I put him into the chariot. I wasn’t sure.

It’s so hard to know how to act when you have a backlog of evidence
that you often don’t get reliable information from someone
who screams bloody murder as he presents his demands.

Do you empower their exaggeration with your compassion,
and give up a perfectly fine afternoon in the woods?
Or do you wait and see if it extinguishes?

I chose the latter this time.
Boy cried wolf, I do believe.
After an hour of skiing out White Bear trail and back,
he was asleep, and it was snowing,
and I was exhausted and sort of relieved,
with an overlay of tense consternation.

I had set up a care giver for later in the day
so I could go to a Chalice Circle meeting at 6 pm,
but it was snowing, but I had promised...
so I started dinner early.
I made a slaw for me, brought out Teo’s requested (demanded!)
carrot apple raisin yoghurt and syriap (his word for maple syrup) salad
from the night before, and set out the (if I must say so myself) awesome
Joy-of-Cooking scalloped potatoes (with hot dogs my mom’s signature).
No thank you on the salad. No way on the potatoes.

I ate. He played with trains.
My mood plummeted as I tried to phone people
about tomorrow’s guitar class, and about Chalice Circle,
and the three calls went on a little,
and he demanded his salad from the refrigerator,
and, picking out the raisins to eat, managed to both wipe and
deposit creamy carrot and apple worms all over himself
and the table. I tried a couple of strategies
to help him get raisins on his fork without the chaos,
one-handed while on the phone with Marin because I wasn’t going to be home
for her call later in the evening from San Francisco,
and of course she reached her conclusions about paternal malfeasance
as she heard him take to howling in the background.
Though she (the good parent) did manage
to talk to him a little on speaker phone,
and he was instantly happy, which also raised my suspicions.
If I remember correctly, the deal-breaker was
that he felt entitled to ice cream,
though he didn’t eat any supper.

Couldn’t see us leaving the house at that point.
Canceled on Chalice Circle. Washed the dishes.
Read him some books, to settle us down a little.
Then he played some more with the elaborate train setup
we have been constructing together on the floor
(not a possibility anymore when Annika’s here),
when I mis-stepped and announced at 7:30
that it was time for a bath.

“No, it’s time for a video!” he countered.
I explained that we’d had this conversation before,
that we were going to get all ready for bed,
take a bath brush our teeth and watch
a nice video, so let’s go downstairs...

“NO, VIDEO, NOW!” He was adamant, furious, scolding.
“O-kay. Then there’s no video at all.” I announced.

The usual howling descent into weeping, it’s his signature
in the past few months, I can never tell if it’s actual despair
or just what he does when things don’t work out
for him. But when I followed him down for the bath,
he was in the process of repeatedly slamming the door,
loudly barricading himself in the bedroom/ cry room.

Noise-trigger. I bulldozed the door open,
hoisted him into my face, and did my overreaction thing,
and he went into his overreaction thing.
Deposited in the bath tub, he continued to sob.
It was the stuff of heart wrenching, hand-wringing,
soul searching mutual desperation.

By the time we were in bed, what triggered the spent tears
was simply his “how about a video?” request
followed by the reminder
that there wasn’t going to be a video tonight.

The issue didn’t seem to be that I had lost it, and frightened him.
Maybe I hadn’t frightened him at all. I sure frightened myself.

To his “tell me a story” I told about an Alaskan pig
who discovered the advantages of snowshoes. My brain was mush.
Teo threatened not to go to sleep unless we went back upstairs.
I waited him out. Interestingly, he slept like a baby.
At 4:30 am, I realigned him and held him for a half hour
in a full on hug.

We started again this morning with me carrying him up the stairs,
a little walk outside to hello the moon, lighting candles, and singing songs.
He sang Baby Beluga over me with amusement as I sang our other songs.
I sat him in my lap, and apologized for getting so angry,
which he interrupted and told me he loved me, I reciprocated,
but still insisted that we try harder today,
maybe I was talking mostly to myself,
I also laid out some of what we’d be doing...

Then to change the subject
he put out the candles
all by himself.

On the Move

It has been a long time since anything has gone up here, and that in and of itself likely speaks volumes. There is work, and children, and the minor dramas of everyday life. My family has correctly pointed out though that photos are pretty easy to share so here’s what Teo and Ani are doing – getting bigger and moving faster. Teo is obsessed with planets and stars & Little Peanut, at 9 months, is working on scootching around the Big Brown House, knee-toe-knee-toe style (see attached).

The other new development in our life is a colony of composting worms. They will have to take the place of a puppy for now.

Technical disclaimer – I can’t figure out how to rotate the video.

Little Girl Rageth

August 13, 2008

It’s dark now when you get up at 2:30 or 3 am.
Some hope perhaps for seeing the Perseid meteor shower.
Though Matteo has soundly rejected sleeping out with me
earlier in the summer. One of many indignities
of this season. Don’t even begin on rain.
Or average temperature. I have been known to wear
long underwear in July on 40 degree rainy days.

I was watching movies last week when I had
the middle of the night Annika shift last week.
This week even that effort seems impossible to mount.
I just rock her in the chair, she sleeps, eventually
I sleep until my own muscles pry me awake
with their screaming.

The Northern Center is looking for a director.
Again. David van den Berg left a month ago.
I was a finalist for the job last time, in 05.
Not that it would have worked, with Matteo months old.
I couldn’t imagine applying this time.

What kids will do to you. Or, what happens to your
self esteem when you’re main job is something
you don’t know how to do. And you face your inadequacies
every hour of every day. Does anyone know
how to raise kids? I used to read the books.
Get ideas. Who has time with kid #2?

It’s remarkable to even write a little.
I can’t get to emails anymore, it takes time, hours.
Two blocks of ten minutes to rub together
is a miracle, now. People tell me that it’s temporary.
I listen politely. It’s somehow impossible to believe
that there will be a second act.
Swallowed by Fairbanks, by life.

Annika woke early, three minutes ago.
I gave her a pacifier, turned on music,
put together her mobile, and I’m watching,
panicking, as the fuse burns down.
The explosion is immanent.
Matteo is on Sesame Street. He’s good
for another 40 minutes.

Ka-Boom. Little girl rageth.

I'm a Little Airplane Neeowww

I’m a little airplane neeowww
I’m a little airplane neeowww
I’m a little airplane neeowww
I’m a little airplane neeowww
neeowww, neeoww, neeoww, neeoww
I’m a little airplane neeowww, neeoww, neeoww.

Just figured out the chords for Teo’s favorite dance song (above).
It’s off an ancient-of-days Sesame Street Dance Video
we rent every so often, just for that song.
The Toot careens around the living room with arms extended
stomping down or bouncing off all the stuff that needs to be picked up.

Watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic games
at 2:30 am last night (it’s finally darkish at night again...
I like it) trying to put Annika to sleep.
It was so odd, this weird ritual of the torch being passed
from Chinese athlete to Chinese athlete in a big stadium
(It may have been explained, I didn’t have the sound on)
and then an older athlete guy with torch was picked up by a sky cable
and was swung forward as he pretended to run
(his shadow was right, but the angle of the camera
catching his actual body made it look like senseless writhing,
which, from a political viewpoint, was just right) while his shadow,
as it projected on the surface behind him with a following spotlight,
unraveled what I took to be a 360-degree television screen rimming
the humongous stadium. Finally, as if he were lighting a fuse,
he lit the bottom of the mungo torch, and the fire raced up in a line
around the ribbony architecture of the torch, and instead of an explosion,
the torch began burning (putting off something like 20 million BTU’s,
enough heat expended in ten minutes
to heat our house for the next millennium. Or something.)
And you thought church ritual was odd and wasteful?

Like I said, I shouldn’t be blogging on no sleep.

Annika’s eating food for a week and remaining constipated.
Now, that’s stupid. The formula, the cereal, it’s all
jam packed with supplemental iron. Iron’s bad. Calcium too.
I have experience. The last time I thought my bones might need help,
two summers ago, the ensuing medical debacle almost did me in.
Anyway, so I’m trying oat bran on her, but it needs to be whipped
in the blender because she apparently doesn’t like grit.
Jury’s out whether it helps.

And here’s Matteo in heaven, in the cockpit of a Black Hawk helicopter
from the Fair last Sunday. He’s taken over Marin’s Airplane book,
it’s like Roger Tory Peterson’s bird book, three or four planes per page,
in categories like float planes, twin engine, commercial, and so on.

Matteo now calls out what the plane is (or what he remembers)
whenever there’s a silhouette on the skyline. “Dash Eight!” or
“Dee Cee Nine!” Or “deHavilland Beaver!”

Closer to home, he has his
“Eskimo Plane,” a six-inch Boeing 747 with Alaska Air decals on it.
It flies all around the house on pounding little feet,
especially when Annika’s trying to sleep.
Several balsa wood planes have met their fate in his care.
We have a balsa-wood-airplane parts shop now,
undamaged pieces salvaged from the various crashes,
and inadvertent but no less disastrous crushing missteps,
some while he was lofting the Eskimo plane,
with its fuselage and wings of metal.
And, about those plastic tail fins – well they’re long gone.

Night Shift

I was toast all day,
after getting up at 4 am to deal with Annika.

Both kids were home. Teo wanted so badly
to be doing something. The sky opened up
with some sunshine. It was becoming irresistible.

Just at the end of Sesame Street
(Teo’s one TV option – it’s so great, really)
I got Annika, full up with applesauce and formula –
to go to sleep. So we had hours of needing
just to hang around and wait for her to wake.

When Marin came home at 2, we got out,
so she could sleep.

I pushed Annika and Teo up the subdivision streets
and into the Birch Hill Cross Country ski trails.
We wanted to go “to the top of Birch Hill”
which, sadly, is an eyesore of transmission towers.

Because of two weeks of rain
the mushrooms were everywhere.

Note: we have been having a great week
of potty training for Matteo. Our HUGE stash
of M&M’s is becoming depleted.
Five for a poo, two for a pee. Yaay!
And if we go a full day – ICE CREAM!

Note 2: Last night Annika went into my care
at 3:30 am, I think. I decided to try what worked
last night, sans the movie. Rocking her in the chair
with a pacifier seemed to work.
My legs had become sticks of wood, and my butt
a bedsore by the time 6:30 came around,
and I had to pee.

We did watch 15 minutes of a Nova
at 3:30 am on how bacteria communicate (!)
and 10 minutes a program at 4:00
called “Carrier” about an aircraft carrier
and what kinds of religion goes on on the carrier.

It was a little depressing. All these Catholics and
charismatic Christians talking on and on,
proselytizing, using the ship’s closed circuit TV
to push America’s religions.
And one solitary Jew, the only one on the ship.

Nothing about the people who don’t buy it. I mean,
conventional religiousity. How about the ethics
of the present war. How about killing people in general.

There were several fliers saying, one after another,
that whatever the commander in chief orders,
they’re there to do. Consummate techno-geeks.
How does that make them any better
than the Germans proudly improving the systems
in the death camps, huh?

Oh my. Maybe I shouldn’t be blogging.
At least not on this little sleep.