A moment of quiet in the storm

Christine talks about the unsettling news from Pakistan, and about the need for a bit of calm in all the violence that the world seems intent on producing sometimes. I was deeply saddened by the news of the assassination as well, and decided to "light a candle" over at gratefulness.org. (And check out the rest of the site, including a virtual labyrinth and some thoughts on peace...)

Oh, and thanks to Don, over at Country Contemplative, for introducing me to the site in the first place.

A gift

Snow between the trees,
a veil of ice cascades
over limestone cliffs.
Still I journey forward
carrying the gift within.

I'm back.

Caught up on my rest some after the grand train adventure. We wound up going sleeper car both ways, and it was lovely. While the "roomette" accomodations are indeed tiny (there was essentially no room for more than my husband's messenger bag, my small handwork bag, our coats and our two selves), they were plenty comfortable, with room to stretch out a little, a fold-out table, and a tiny closet. Meals were included, and while the selection was limited (it might be difficult to maintain a strict diet for more than a day on board), the service was prompt and the food reasonably tasty.

And they provided a space to go for quiet. While we enjoyed meeting many people over meals, it was also nice to be able to go to our own space and shut the door. In the dining car, we met train enthusiasts, a Katrina relief worker and his wife travelling to relatives, a professional dancer on vacation, a woman travelling to a school reunion and other interesting people.

I think if I were travelling with children, the train would have to be my first choice - on our way out, there were two infants on the same car with us, and a family with children. Unlike air travel, there were no major pressure adjustments, even as we travelled through the Appalachian mountains, since we mostly rode along the valleys. There was room to move about for the older children, and even my husband and I found ourselves practically glued to the windows, stopping only to sleep and eat.

The scenery was fabulous: from rolling hills and tumbling rivers to the vast open expanses of the Plains. At night, we found ourselves watching the Christmas decorations flow by. One house was plainly waiting for the train, because as we passed, they blinked the lights and waved to us. On the way back, we were able to tell when we passed the Eastern Great Divide, simply by watching the waters beside us - and watching the Potomac turn from a tiny mountain stream to the churning whitewater near Harper's Ferry was incredible.

Frequently, we found ourselves saying, "That town looks interesting. Can you tell where we are?" We were grateful for local businesses, because they often incorporate the name of the area, or prominant local features. Also, they were often nicer to look at.

As we left Chicago, we passed a large shipping yard and were simply blown away by the volume of freight containers - One part, we weren't sure - was that a warehouse made of freight containers, or simply a stack? We found ourselves thinking about the incredible wealth of a nation that produces those vast yards of food and goods. How can it be possible that we have created a system where so many lack basic heathcare? How could that happen?

Frequently, especially in some of those small towns, or along the rocky gorges of the Appalachians, we found ourselves wishing we could somehow both ride the train to see what comes next, and also that we could get out and explore the treasures that we passed...

I guess what I'm saying is... Wow, what a ride!

Memories of green shade
Soft purple phox trembing in the breeze
That tiptoes between the trees
Tickling the hair on my neck

Moss-covered limestone bones
Hold the prints of ancient years,
Beside the ironwood tree
My resting, hiding, me-place

Deep clay in the valley,
Carved by long-ago glacier waters,
Still holds Johnny Crick,
Cool water for restless feet

Tangled berry brambles,
Long meadow grasses,
Cows gaze in bemusement
As I embrace the summer wind

Crossing the Great Divide

By tomorrow, I'll be in the Mississippi River system, rather than feeding into the Chesapeake Bay. As a child, I used to watch eagerly for the sign on trips telling me exactly when I'd crossed a state line, but now, the real divides speak to me more: I've crossed between the Mississippi system and the Chesapeake system many times in my life, but still the high point that divides the waters (even waters that will eventually reunite in the Atlantic) speaks to me.

This trip, too, feels like its own watershed, as though it is the permanent division between the time of my dad's most recent deployment and the rest of the surrounding time. But like the division of the waters, it is a sort of illusion, temporary. This weekend will be the first time I've seen my dad in person since the day I lost my breakfast with worry, but had to keep going anyway, only stopping in a giftshop for a t-shirt to replace the blouse I'd been wearing. I went home that afternoon, exhausted and sad, wishing that someone who had power to stop this madness could hear me.

I've written here about many of the days in between that day and this, the worries, the hopes, the relief of hearing good news of all stripes. I poured worry and hope and prayer into the blanket that so many friends and family helped make. I've taken comfort from that blanket, the act of creating it, the act of showing it to my mom, the act of sending it out. Writing about the experiences of this deployment also has been a comfort of a different sort, as have been the lovely messages of support that so many of y'all have left. Thank you.

There were days when I thought that the rising river of tears would surely sweep me away, down to the ocean, beyond hope of return, and of course, as I said, this is still not a true ending. While I wish to shut away the time, it will have echoes in days to come. But the worst for me is over. Now, it's time to work to help others lost on that flood.

Summer afternoon.
Dappled sunlight freckled face
Napping under tree.

Waves softly lapping
My still, quiet little boat
I spot an egret.

Curious questions
Seeking Universal Light
I am made this way.

Vulnerability

Over at Peterson Toscano's blog, he has a a post on the power and vulnerability of sharing stories. His post specifically addresses the situation of people who have gone through ex-gay programs, but it spoke to the vulnerability I have sometimes felt as I posted some of the most difficult moments of the last year.

Recently, another regular reader wrote to me that my descriptions had taken her on an emotional journey as she followed my posts on the day-to-day waiting through my dad's deployment. And I found myself glad that I could share the deep tenderness and vulnerability of the wait, the fear, the fierce gladness of occasional contacts, the sadness and worry of hearing each time of another death, the heartsickness of not knowing, and the necessity of "sucking up and soldiering on."

I can remember wandering around a farm market in PA this February, clutching a cell phone, wondering whether I was really there or just some kind of wandering spirit, lost among the colorful quilts and hothoused produce... Dad's voice had a 5-second lag, as it was transmitted from him to a satellite to the phone in my hand, and I could hear that the concept of "home" didn't seem to mean much to him. He asked for descriptions of the market, and told me about the anguish of not being able to carry out a soldier's body, despite the requests of the rest of the troop, because it would have robbed precious seconds from his just barely living comrade, and possibly endangered the rescue mission.

But the one thing not in Iraq that did seem real to him was the blanket I'd made. He wanted to hear the names of every single person who had worked on it, the colors, the stitches. So, there I was, feeling like my spirit wasn't in the room, but was trying to be transmitted by sattelite, trying to give him the life, the calmness of the farm market, that seemed just out of reach for me, as well.

I want people to understand the costs of this war, not just intellectually, but with the wrench in the gut, the pure misery of that half hour, the sorrow of watching my dad flinch when a hummer drove past the restaurant we were eating in last summer, or hearing how he dropped to the floor, rolling under a desk when the heating system in his office kicked in, just before he was deployed again.

And I know that some of what I write can't be easy to read. Most Americans, it feels like, don't want to really understand what we're paying. As I was hearing my mom tell me that my dad had landed in Kuwait, I could also hear a couple of my coworkers discussing the latest "American Idol" and that also felt unreal. Is there really a world where my mom and I are sharing that heartfelt relief while someone else is discussing this total irrelevancy? Or is it that mine is the irrelevancy?

Over the weekend, Cindy Sheehan declared herself to be burnt out, and I really am not surprised. It's hard to even share my story, and hers... well, carrying on with only a small blog and a living soldier is hard enough for me. Dealing with the death of her son in the full glare of the spotlight must have been... oy.

But I do not agree with her analysis that this is it. I believe that her exhaustion and grief have led her to despair, but that only makes it more important for other stories to come forward, for people to understand that it's not just one story, it's all the stories. It's the story of thousands of families like mine, living with grinding fear. It's the story of every single soldier who has died in this conflict. It is the story of every single soldier who has returned wounded in body or soul. It is the story of every single Iraqi. Period. It is the story of what we could do, if we used the resources of this country properly rather than for personal enrichment at the cost of blood. It is the fact that every single military family, every Iraqi, every American has been sold for thirty pieces of silver, and it is a story that needs to be told.

Common Ground...

Both the image and the poem from yesterday's post have stayed with me, calling me from whatever else it was that I thought I was going to post. (I sometimes wonder who else this happens to - I want to post on one thing, but another won't quit hitting me over the head until I post on it.)

The image that is sticking with me is the idea of springs as common places, places where we put aside our quarrels for a time for the precious gifts of the spring: water, calm, warmth, healing... I think about trips up to a local warm spring to help my muscles, and how that spring has been considered public ground certainly since the foundation of this country, and possibly before British colonialism, when many local tribes considered springs to be sacred meeting places, where people could go without fear.

I think about the simple tap, there beside what used to be the gentlemen's bathhouse, where anyone may go and get springwater to carry away or to drink. I think about the pools where anyone may wade, while the guppies and crawdads investigate the fascinating pink toes...

I think about meeting my parents there, about how it felt to have that calm peacefulness invaded by the knowlege that Dad was going again, about how it felt to have that gulf between us, there on the common ground. I think about how we've planned to meet again over water, this time to go canoeing downriver together. Perhaps the river can take us again to a kind of common ground...

Breath

Many forms of meditation encourage us to be aware of our breathing.

Breathe the good air in.

Blow out the old air.

Breathe the good air in.

Feel the air moving through your lungs, giving life to your body, carried by your blood to every bit of you. Just as a fish is submerged in life-giving water, so we are submerged in life-giving air. We feel the spring breezes and the harsh winter winds. We cough and gasp when the air is polluted, and breathe deep when it is fresh.

From ancient times, the notion of breath and the notion of Spirit have been intertwined. Indeed, the word "spirit" comes from the Latin root word, "spiritus", breath, respiration. And from this root also comes the word "inspiration". We are infused with spirit, with breath, and from there, we create. And the really marvellous part of this is that each of us is individual - while we all breathe the same air, we each have a different way of living in our world, different expressions of our inspiration.

I believe that sometimes that Inspiring Breath is moving like a wind over the world and each of us tries to express that movement as best we can, in whatever way we can, whether in words, paint, actions, a smile...

It has been a heavy week. As I mentioned yesterday, the shootings in Blacksburg have been sitting heavily on me for a number of reasons. I've felt so much sorrow for the folks affected by this tragedy, and yet did not feel I could yet speak.

My family has a history of mental illness. I have an uncle who was hospitalized for a while to help him deal with his illness, and he is still on medications. Another uncle was bipolar before his plane crashed in a field. And I went to a school where extremely abusive bullying was tolerated. And I sometimes wonder what would have been the result had I inherited a stronger predisposition. So my frequent reaction to school shootings is to wonder why there is so little attention paid to the violence of bullying until it is forced by such an incident. And to feel sorrow for not only the victims, but also for the perpetrator and his family. And to wonder not only why he went down his path and I and many other survivors of bullying do not, but also what we as a society can to to better care for our people living with mental illness.

How also can we put limits on the violence of bullying? This morning, the Washington Post had a column on its editorial page that dismissed the potential of words for violence, comparing them to the Virginia shootings. And yet, violence is not confined to its most extreme examples. For instance, we would hardly say that the recent attack was not violence because war results in a greater loss of life. As a high school student, I lived with constant verbal harassment, and the occasional physical assault, including one attack by a classmate that I now know to have been a form of sexual assault, but that at the time simply left me feeling frightened, ashamed, and humiliated. I know violence because I have experienced it on the receiving end, and I am sad to say, sometimes on the attacking end.

And yes, I had some very violent fantasies about what should happen to many of my classmates. But when I got to college, things changed. I was no longer around the same people, and there were many interesting new people to meet. And I gradually let go of the anger and desire for revenge.

How can we help others to recover from the traumas that have already been inflicted and prevent more from occurring?

As a coworker said to me this morning, quoting the radio station he listened to, who was quoting the great poet, anonymous: "There are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all crew."

The God of the Quiet Place

I found myself leaving this comment on a link in Christine Bakke's blog, and felt it was worth leaving here as well:

I can remember sitting in 5th grade religion class and hearing my teacher explain that just about everybody was going to go to Hell. And I remember thinking, "that just can't be right." and I started doodling in my notebook my idea of the "path to heaven" which looked like a star, radiating paths of light. That teacher and I never did really get along well.

But I had a quiet place to just go and listen, and it seemed to me that the God I found in the quiet place was a better God than the one that my school was trying to drum into me. So I wound up with a really wierd religious journey, but I also got the God of the quiet place and She's good enough for me.

Peacemaking as liberation

After reflecting over yesterday's post and taking the advice of a good friend who commented, I checked out the Velveteen Rabbi's haggadah. While there are parts I would add, and parts that do not speak to me, this is a good one, one that tells the actual story we are supposed to be remembering, and gives context to the reminders that built up over the centuries, besides giving space for new ones and new ways of looking at the story.

The language is affirmative of the variety of human experience and the opportunities for sharing in the seder. It directly addresses the many ways we may feel ourselves to be in bondage and the ways we may be undertaking our own journeys of liberation. So I wrote a short note to the author to thank her.

In writing that note, I realized that one of the central things that spoke to me from her work was the idea of peacemaking as a journey of liberation. This year has been a year of taking those shaky, hopeful steps for me. And also a year of realizing that even small steps are indeed steps. As I recently wrote in a comment to a post over at Country Contemplative, I can't make the world a peaceful place, but I can make me a peaceful person.

And also, I've been facing down the shackles that kept me from really participating in music. Even if I don't produce beautiful music, singing makes me happy, so I'm singing if only to myself. And I'm learning to play the banjo, having won one in a radio contest. Each new accomplishment becomes a further platform for more to come. And again, whether or not anyone else particularly appreciates hearing me play, I'm happy knowing I can.

Freedom and the seder

Last night, I attended seder with my husband, his brother, and a friend at a friend of the family's house. It was, in many ways, a typical family seder - and that was good. It was warm, welcoming, and simple. There were real attempts to engage the text and yet I found myself longing for more, for a real engagement with the idea of liberation and the faithful journey.

Part of my criticism is I think my own discomfort with the way that ritual tends to ossify. For example, the story is often initiated with a ritual set of four questions intended to be asked by a young child.

Four questions that don’t make much sense in today’s food culture. We don’t dip on any other night? My grocery has several different sections of dips and condiments spread throughout - hummous, ketchups, ranch dips, tapenade, mustards, onion dips, guacamole, cheese dips, etc. We have a different posture for the seder? Not really. The particular manner in which the seder is eaten in Ashkenazic households is meant to echo the classic Roman way of eating for free people - reclining and with dips. Later, that foodway went, but the tradition stayed. Now, it feels sometimes as though the question might well be, "Why are we all in the dining room, and why can't I have my ipod?"

I wondered about the whole meaning of the bit where we are to consider the pesach - the sacrifice, the maror - the bitter herb of slavery, and the matzoh - the bread of both affliction and freedom. Has it become just another sandwich? Are we finding meaning in spreading charoset (a fruit and nut spread that is supposed to resemble the morter that the slaves of pharoah were expected to make, but which is nearly everyone's favorite sweet ritual food) on matzo and topping it with the bitter maror (usually horseradish)? Or is it simply the next bit in the prayer book (haggadah)?

I found myself wanting to replace a really beautiful passage from the Song of Songs that didn’t have enough space to be appreciated with a haiku on the beauty of the (already beginning to fall) cherry blossoms and some quiet time to think about the coming of spring, of renewal.
Part of it, I think, is the rush to get fed. Read the service quickly so we can get to the soup. I found myself wanting a more bare-bones ceremony so that it could be done with deliberation, actually thinking about what that trip must have been like. Liberating, yes, but frightening, too. What waits for us and who pursues us?

One of the most beautiful moments of the seder is the taking of 10 drops of wine from the glass in memory of the suffering that the 10 plagues caused the Egyptians. I think it deserves reflection and discussion. But it falls in the “home stretch” just before dinner. And it tends to get a little bit lost. Not wholly, but somewhat. And it shouldn't.

So I think I'm going to be thinking about journeys to freedom this week.

Good morning.

Good morning, cherry trees, stretching awake from the winter,
Your pink and white lace flowers flirting with the spring wind.

Quiet contemplation

And folks, check out the thoughts on Quiet Paths. There's an entry there, A Chapel in Time, that's well worth reading. It's about taking time for contemplation, and allowing beauty to seep into us, forging a connection. So often, we go into nature as "outsiders" - nature is the birds and the trees and so forth, but not us.

One of the gifts my dad gave me as a girl was to take me on nature hikes - we'd walk across logs over streams, sit on rocks and watch the forest go about its business, trace out the fossils in the limestone that made the bones of the hills, nibble on sassafrass leaves, and sometimes bring back trillium for Mom. Dad would sometimes pick up a daddy longlegs so we could admire the beautiful elegance, but always made sure to put him back, well off the path, so he wouldn't be smooshed or eaten by a bird.

And of course, putting up food with my mom certainly taught me a lot about my connection to the land, as did tending our garden. There's nothing that connects me to the Earth so much as eating wild blackberry jam. The domesticated variety that you get in the supermarket bears next to no resemblence to the real thing, and the berries taste sweeter for the scratches on your arms. And just a bite of it, smeared on toast in the winter, brings back a warm day, with the quiet rustle of the blackberry canes, the birds watching suspiciously as we poach some of the berries. Knowing that we, along with the blackberries, and the birds, and even the little grass snake hiding in the canes are part of the same whole.

Fallow ground

Sometimes I get frustrated because I'm not moving at the speed of a jet, solving every problem I see in the world. I wish I had more energy to do more, learn more, move more, more, more...

As though I am a factory farm with a necessary yield to be measured only in terms of ever more from ever less. Yields not good? Dump in something new - whether it be coffee or a new activity to me or a new herbicide for the farm. And yet, sometimes the best thing you can do is to lie fallow, where anything that comes up is a gift. Last night, I found myself thinking about fallow ground. A friend of mine is running herself ragged as she and her husband attempt to work a particular project - a very worthy project, but not one that can be done by two people alone on a consistant basis. I would like to help them, but I just don't have the energy to be the consistant help they need, and am afraid of further miring up an already mired down situation.

And I wonder if perhaps the help I can be is to help her find some relief in the occasional *not* doing, *not* keeping up with everything, but learning to let go of those constant expectations of keeping every minute productive, and rediscovering fallow time - time to sit and let yourself percolate, time to rediscover yourself. As my husband pointed out to me, Darwin didn't write his Origin of Species until 8 years after his trip on the Beagle. He needed time to lie fallow, to think, to reflect.

Yeah, weeds come up in fallow fields, but let's look at those volunteers, shall we? Queen Anne's Lace is really wild carrot, and does wonders for loosening up soil. (It also makes this really neat kinda pink jelly.) That old pokeweed I mentioned earlier this year also has its uses: some folks eat the boiled leaves when the plant is still young and the toxins aren't as strong, and of course, there's that bright pink dye you can get from the berries, and that toxin doesn't bother birds, so if they're eating poke, they're not eating all the blackberries. Grasses fix the soil in place and prevent erosion. Dandelions make delicious salad greens when young, and are pure beauty when yellow, and pretty and fun when they go to seed. Sweet and sour is a treat just to chew on. Wild onions and garlic - well, enough said. And the best thing is that you don't know what's going to be there or not, so whatever you get is pure gift, something to be thankful for, an extra. Fallowness lies in recognizing that these are gifts to be treasured while they are here, but knowing that they are temporary gifts, not guarantees.

For me, it's like the little figures I get at the end of folding origami - they're totally an extra. The joy is in the folding, the feel of the paper, the crisp lines, the very complexity of the whole thing. And afterwards, I even get a little paper thing that other people enjoy getting. Bonus. In the same way, a day spent doing "nothing" is wonderful. At the end of it, I may have a few inches of knitting, a book read, some visiting, and a recipe done, but those are all incidental to the purpose of the day, which is to relax, to not expect anything out of myself. I didn't tell myself I'll get that book read, but it looked interesting and happened to be to hand when I felt like reading. There was no "need" to knit, except that my hands felt restless. Yeah, maybe I planned that recipe, but cooking and visiting are naturals for fallow days.

Maybe I'll invite my friend out with me this weekend to come be lazy with me this weekend.