living on both ends - an exploration of best and worst

this speaks to my condition

The Avowal

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

Denise Levertov

a must see

Rachel Maddow interviews Frank Schaeffer (after the O'Reilly bit; it's worth waiting for)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I remember when my Christian counselor, as I was first starting to own up to my abuse issues, told me "When you say 'God told me so' all conversation stops. There is no place to go with that. Do you understand that keeps you blind?"

The more I have moved out of the bubble of Christian magical thinking and rhetoric that has little substance, while my faith in the Living God, Jesus Christ has grown, the more I understand her injunction to me. Admitting that we see through a glass darkly is not denying God; it is living in the truth of our humanness. Something I believe we are called to do.

I guess maybe I see Frank Schaeffer doing that in this interview - it gives me hope, if only we have ears to hear; eyes to see.

His article in The Huffington Post

hi

Still here. Lots going on. A interest only equity out refinance of our house in NJ; purchase of a rowhome in Graduate Hospital area of Philadelphia, L is already in South Jersey, traveling back up to North Jersey for weekends. He will stay in the house during the week and reverse commute to South Jersey, and we will stay here until the 17 year old graduates from high school in the summer of 2010. Because of the interest only refinance, needing to provide housing for L during the week, the real estate market and mortgage rates, the after tax cost to us is roughly the same. Also, last weekend I was approved by the Powell House committee to be the incoming clerk for next year, officially starting after NYYM July summer sessions at Silver Bay. Sometimes life comes at you fast.

But I saw an article today that verified what I have come to believe about faith getting confused with politics, and I wanted to post it.

Young Americans Losing Their Religion

....Historically, the percentage of Americans who said they had no religious affiliation (pollsters refer to this group as the "nones") has been very small -- hovering between 5 percent and 10 percent. However, Putnam says the percentage of "nones" has now skyrocketed to between 30 percent and 40 percent among younger Americans.

Putnam calls this a "stunning development." He gave reporters a first glimpse of his data Tuesday at a conference on religion organized by the Pew Forum on Faith in Public Life.

The research will be included in a forthcoming book, called "American Grace."

This trend started in the 1990s and continues through today. It includes people in both Generation X and Y.

While these young "nones" may not belong to a church, they are not necessarily atheists.

"Many of them are people who would otherwise be in church," Putnam said. "They have the same attitidues and values as people who are in church, but they grew up in a period in which being religious meant being politically conservative, especially on social issues."

Putnam says that in the past two decades, many young people began to view organized religion as a source of "intolerance and rigidity and doctrinaire political views," and therefore stopped going to church.

The findings and the article echo pieces of my own journey with church and organized religion. That dissatisfaction is what brought me to Friends.

poem

Broken Eternal

Broken egg shells nestled upon
my white breakfast plate.
To my left, framed within the dining room
window, the replicate Pieta --
You, motionless on your mother’s lap,
lifeless, limp, outwardly impotent.

The woman.
Holding the fecund, bloody body of a son,
encircled pain in her mother arms
both definitive anguish
and stillness beyond.

Understand? Accept? Mourn?
Right… here, right…. now
and wait, yearn

to know – is there more?
long for incompleteness
rather than defeat

Luminous marble
Illuminating sonlight
Timeless Eternal.
Oh Mary, what canst thou say?

a birth announcement

After almost exactly nine months since the time L was told he would be laid off; nine months of gestation, nurturing and care; he has birthed a new job. He is pleased as punch with the new baby, and I am thrilled that I was able to midwife parts of the process. We anticipate there will be the usual post partum letdown, messiness, lack of sleep and deep delight.

It is a position in south NJ, close to Philadelphia. He accepted it April 1 and he will start April 13th. It is too long to commute everyday, so he will be in temporary housing down there and hopefully, commute home most weekends.

The boys and I will stay in Sojourn until the 16 (almost 17) year old graduates high school in 2010 and then move. the 15 year old is feeling sad to know he will be moving between his sophomore and junior year. I hope to get him into a Friends school when we move. And we hope to start those visits next spring.

We are feeling led to explore living in Philadelphia, there is great light rail from Philly to South Jersey where L will be working. And I would love to be in a place where I do not need a car. We will travel there this Wednesday and Thursday to start looking.

There is great excitement at a new adventure and a strong sense of being well led that is comforting. There is also deep sadness at the future leaving of my monthly meeting and my yearly meeting. I want to hold this time of transition tenderly with an open heart and a trust in goodness.

L and I have changed our daily meeting for worship with a concern for vocation to meeting for worship with attention to connection. There is deep deep gratitude in me for what we have experienced and been taught these six months.

potentiality

Okay. Made the call, had the discussion. Made a few more calls while I was in the phone mood. And looks like one of us will be gainfully employed soon, and the other embarked on a volunteer project that will take a lot of time and energy.

soul soil

I need to make at least one hard phone call today. The sun is hiding, and I am hopeful there will be a light moist drizzle of moisture throughout the day, so I plan soon to put on my wellies, and head outside to prune and finish a spring clean up of my beds. I turned over my biggest and oldest compost pile for the last time yesterday afternoon, and was almost giddy with the dark rich smell emanating from the pile.

L and I have a date to make at least one cold frame this weekend, and I have our 2008 personal books to close, and a tax return to start on this weekend.

And even as I list all of the above, my worst and my best are hard to put into words. I have a very ambivalent relationship with change, and as this time of unemployment and seeking for vocation starts to come to a close, I have an excitement about the change and also a sorrow. And that is probably all I can say about that for now.

Best might be that I made Greek yogurt yesterday, and it turned out yummy. During the process of heating the milk, then waiting for it to cool to add the live yogurt cultures, then waiting for it to ferment before I could drain the liquid out (currently saved in a quart canning jar in the fridge for baking), I was full of memories. Memories of a dear friend who used to make Greek yogurt in my kitchen as she cared for the three little boys of the house, memories of the many homes and communities I have lived in and loved over my adult life. These six years in Sojourn are the longest I have lived in one house since I was eighteen.

It takes time for roots to grow. First, the soil needs to be prepared. Proper nutrients organically and slowly incorporated into a barren soil in order to create a fertile place for roots to attach to the soil and gain nurture and life.

The blossoms, the fruit, all come from the life of the soil. I have spent a large part of my life trying to root in mixed soil, part toxic, with some viability scattered around. The last few years I have experienced how good life is when the soil in my soul is mostly fertile. That soul soil goes with me everywhere.

Today, as I make that call, and as I clean out my beds and delight over the earthworms and the deep richness of the fragrance rising from the dirt, I want to remember that my soul soil is, for the most part, fertile. I take that with me wherever I travel.

chaffy thoughts

WORST - I confess that my afterglow from last week’s Saturday Meeting for Discernment/Extended Worship has faded. Our morning meeting for worship with a concern for vocation have been difficult for me this week….as I close my eyes, and relax to find Holy Presence, I start dreaming of the hybrid musk roses I ordered, wondering if that spot by the cranberries I have used to grow salad greens would work better for an asparagus bed. Dream of having either the skill or the money to make or purchase a cold-frame so I could start my heirloom lettuce seeds from Seed Savers Exchange early. Is it time to divide the day lilies, where should I seed the sweet peas, did the leaves in my leaf corral decay enough to be used this spring, is my compost ready to spread around? The questions are endless, the excitement mounting.

I’m having a concern for gardening crowded by my meeting for worships.

March Madness

BEST - For three weeks or so out of the year, I remember how much I love basketball. Two years ago, I was at a School of the Spirit residency when March Madness started. L faxed me the bracket, and the Sister who shared directing duties for the retreat center and I laughed as we talked teams and I made my picks. She was for North Carolina all the way, and kept feeding me updates all through the five day residency (yes, even during the time of the grand silence; I have always loved being a bit naughty with Nuns.) Last year, I was still focused on recovering from surgery, so there were no brackets.

This year, the family pool is complete. The 18 year old is home for Spring Break, there are five brackets filled out, and the master bracket hanging by cellotape on our mantle. I am dead last at this point, L and the 16 year old are tied for best picks. But we are still close, within five four points of each other, and we are all still in the game, so to speak.

Yesterday, a friend who is not into the tournament called while L and I were sitting at the bar, at our local sports bar, watching E. Tennessee State make a run at Pitt; “Now what it is you are doing?” she asked, and the crowd roared as an E Tennessee three-pointer fell in and closed the game to three points or so.

“We’re watching the beginning round of the NCAA tournament" Silence. "It's basketball."

“Oh that sounds like fun,” my friend with the letters PhD after her name said. “Is Lebron playing?”

“No” I said, “It’s college.”

The Syracuse alum next to L started giving him shit about Arizona State, his alum, and the upcoming match. He, of course, gave it right back. We stayed to watch the first bit of the first round end, and than left a bar that was packed and getting packeder.

First words out of the 15 year olds mouth this morning? "Mom, can you believe Wake Forest lost?”

terror

It is a word that is being re-framed for me. Moving away from the dust bowl days of my native Kansas, and the Dorothy Lange photos of the Great Depression Era, to the experience of a ‘knowing’ of a Living God.

In one of the verbal ministries shared last Sunday, a young Friend reminded those of us gathered that “the only thing more terrifying than standing and speaking the message which has been given to you, is sitting and doing nothing.” I have been holding that ministry since it was given, taking it out of my belly and admiring the many facets and the clarity. Yesterday, once again, I was sitting with those words and this weeks query came to me.

Only the experience that came to me in answer to the query was not about the last time I felt that holy terror, but a time over ten years ago. Before I found Friends, before I could name Holy Terror, but in a time and a space where the Word of God rocked, set free to call us to more truth and more love.

It was in a group I was co-facilitating, multi-cultural, multi-gendered, the commonality a desire to flesh out the story of how childhood abuse impacted the way we chose to live today. I remember I was leaning back on two legs of my four-legged chair, I was bored….a fellow survivor, a man brave enough to be in the group with other members of his community, was telling us, in sly ways, of the many powerful people he knew in his community, that he broke bread with, and I experienced his words as a shield that were keeping me away from the heart of the six year old boy, the twelve year old tween, the adolescent who I had fallen in love the day before as he shared his story in spirit and truth.

So, I was leaning back on two legs of my four legged chair, and I found myself beseeching God, “Do something, we are losing ground here…” and then I felt it start. I had no words, at that time, to describe it. I did not recognize it as an answer to my request. We were sitting in a circle of very well-behaved people. And the words that started rising in my belly, causing me to quake as I held them in, waiting for them to fully form and waiting for courage to speak them, the words were rude, confrontive.

Suddenly, I was back on all four legs, leaning into the stagnation, I drew a deep breath, and as heads turned toward me, I released the pressure and nausea that had been forming in my belly, “I don’t give a rat’s ass who you know.”

There was silence. The energy in the room shifted. Some leaned back, some leaned forward. The man I was speaking to was speechless for the moment.

I spoke it again “I don’t give a rat’s ass who you know.”

He found his words “Don’t speak against God’s anointed! The last person who spoke to me that way died three months later. You do not know who you are talking too. Don’t speak against God’s anointed.”

The air was shimmering; when I look back that is what I see, but at the time, I was only aware of the force of his words that was like a physical slap. We were a room of sexual and physical abuse survivors. We knew that energy intimately.

I lowered my voice, spoke slower, none of it intentionally, - “I don’t give a rat’s ass who you know, who you eat with, what functions you are invited too. There is nothing in that man that appeals to me. What I care about, enough to speak these words to you and suffer the consequences, is that six year old boy who was abused, that twelve year old boy who was called names, that man whose heart I saw yesterday. He is worth fighting for, and I will fight the man who thinks his value is only in attaching himself to powerful people. I care about you, not who you know.”

Two weeks later, he sent me a thank you card.