Fishers of Men/The Strength of Fields

Some days, the right words come along and stun me into silence.  I'm headed out to read at church this morning, Psalm 62:5-12 and Mark 1:14-20.  The latter has always been one of my favorite passages--that we can become fishers of men.  I am not one for proselytizing or preaching on street corners; a person's road to God is his or her own personal business.  But I've always loved the notion that behind the fishers of men line, that if we are passionate and honest enough, we can unite people to our cause, give them a sense of their own power, infuse them with the light that shines in us.  I don't think that infusion has to be relegated to faith, though it's clear that was Mark's intention.  I think we can light ourselves as we light others, filling and refilling our own depleted souls through the sharing and telling of stories that brings people always always together.

And that sharing can give us purpose.  Today, James L. Dickey says it better than I ever could.

The Strength of Fields

BY JAMES L. DICKEY

... a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power and a life-enhancing return ... 

Van Gennep: Rites de Passage 

Moth-force a small town always has,   

          Given the night.

                                           What field-forms can be,

         Outlying the small civic light-decisions over

               A man walking near home?

                                                         Men are not where he is   

      Exactly now, but they are around him    around him like the strength

Of fields.    The solar system floats on

    Above him in town-moths.

                                             Tell me, train-sound,

    With all your long-lost grief,

                                             what I can give.   

    Dear Lord of all the fields

                                             what am I going to do?

                                        Street-lights, blue-force and frail

As the homes of men, tell me how to do it    how

    To withdraw    how to penetrate and find the source   

      Of the power you always had

                                             light as a moth, and rising

       With the level and moonlit expansion

    Of the fields around, and the sleep of hoping men.

       You?    I?    What difference is there?    We can all be saved

       By a secret blooming. Now as I walk

The night    and you walk with me    we know simplicity   

   Is close to the source that sleeping men

       Search for in their home-deep beds.

       We know that the sun is away    we know that the sun can be conquered   

   By moths, in blue home-town air.

          The stars splinter, pointed and wild. The dead lie under

The pastures.    They look on and help.    Tell me, freight-train,

                            When there is no one else

   To hear. Tell me in a voice the sea

         Would have, if it had not a better one: as it lifts,

          Hundreds of miles away, its fumbling, deep-structured roar

               Like the profound, unstoppable craving

            Of nations for their wish.

                                                      Hunger, time and the moon:

         The moon lying on the brain

                                                    as on the excited sea    as on

          The strength of fields. Lord, let me shake   

         With purpose.    Wild hope can always spring   

         From tended strength.    Everything is in that.

            That and nothing but kindness.    More kindness, dear Lord

Of the renewing green.    That is where it all has to start:

         With the simplest things. More kindness will do nothing less

             Than save every sleeping one

             And night-walking one

         Of us.

                   My life belongs to the world. I will do what I can.

3 Things Worth Watching

Justin Townes Earle, Trailer for "Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now" 3.27.12

L.P., "Into the Wild"

Melody Gardot, "If the Stars Were Mine"

Good Reads

If you are a bibliophile and you're not using Good Reads, you're missing out.

You can review books you've read, build a digital library, read reviews of things you're interested in reading, connected with other book loving like minded friends, win books in random giveaways (I just received my first--a hardcover copy of Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn West--it won the National Book Award), and you may be solicited by Good Reads editors to submit questions to your favorite writers for upcoming features on their site.  Today, I wrote three questions for Anne Lamott.  Anne Lamott.  As in Bird by Bird, Traveling Mercies, Plan B, etc.  I love her, and because I read constantly and use this site, she may answer a question I wrote.  So cool.

So, anyway, Good Reads.  I cannot recommend it enough.  Join it, find me, let's read together in 2012.

Who's in?

Let Go

When I was in high school, I was pretty.  I didn't know it then.  I look at pictures of myself from that time and think, man, I had a good figure, great hair, but I thought I was overweight and strange looking.  That my hair was too big, too blonde, my hips too wide, body too...developed.  The girls who were sought after played sports, had flat chests and wore size two jeans. I was bookish, curvy, and a size twelve.  I wasn't big, I just felt that way--conspicuous--like all eyes were on me.

And, because I was self-conscious, I didn't date much.  I also thought most boys my own age were stupid--which admittedly, may of them were--I'd been reading since I was three and made it through the entire College Prep List by the time I graduated simply because I wanted to prove I could.  That wasn't sexy or alluring, it was just weird.  I had friends, I even had a couple of odd relationships that you might call boyfriend-girlfriend, one junior and one senior year.  They each ended tragically--the former when he paid $5 to enter a building I was in watching a friends band play just so he could break up with me, the latter about three weeks after I had sex with him (my first time) so he could take someone else to prom.  Winners, those guys.

In retrospect, and I can only say this in retrospect, I was probably a lot to handle.  Emotional, clingy, desperate to be loved.  But still, they were pretty dickish, right?

And I had male friends.  Lots of them.  I was the girl they all wanted to talk to about their relationships, the one they told their problems to, problems with parents and teachers, friends and girlfriends.  And, when we were at parties, after a couple of drinks (almost always them, not me), they wanted to kiss me.  To tell me how pretty I was, how they wished they could meet a girl like me, how they would so date me if it weren't for some girl whose name ended in an 'i' or an 'ee' or a 'y'.  And I, emotional, clingy, desperate to be loved, let them kiss me, kissed them back, always thinking on Monday morning they'd see me at school, remember our fumbling liplock from Saturday night and know, in that hazy moment in the SVHS hallway, that I was the one they really wanted.

But, as these stories always go, that didn't happen.  Instead, there was awkward avoidance (theirs) and hurt sulking (mine) that had to smell like sulphur on a hot day, the slow smoking pain of adolescent rejection rising like so much smoke off the burnt orange carpet.

That feeling of rejection, of being someone's secret, of not being good enough to like in public has haunted me for twenty years.  I've felt less than, humiliated, unwanted, and plain old shitty about myself for so long that now, at an age when I finally feel ready to embark on a real relationship, I'm scared to death that I'll wreck it because I can't quiet that fifteen year old girl in my head who says not to trust, that it's too good to be true, that--come Monday--none of this will matter.  But in my heart, I know it does matter.  That love can exist, that something good can be true, I know it can, I just need to let myself live in that knowledge.

So, I need to let go of that voice.  I need to let go of that girl.

Here's hoping I can.

I Would Prefer Not To...

In this crush to resolve, well, everything, I find myself oddly uninterested in resolutions--making them, achieving them, working towards them--in large part because I don't think we ever really resolve anything inyour lives, we just learn how to move through or beyond it. So, when it comes to making resolutions this year, I would prefer not to.

Like Bartleby, I find it profoundly depressing to scuttle through the same slog day in day out with little to no variation, I don't like doing things simply because it is expected of me, and I certainly don't want to live a small life (see Mojo, etc. for an excellent post about this fear). And making resolutions, saying I resolve to do this or that, seems to feed in to all of the three things above. Every year, I--and millions of others--make resolutions that we break within days or weeks simply because our resolve to be resolute is leto than our desire to remain exactly who we are. It's easier to stay static. Change is a bitch in four inch heels with better hair and a more expensive wardrobe than I could ever afford. So screw her.

But, even though I would prefer not to make any resolutions, I find myself fixating on the what ifs. What if I did work harder to save more money, what could I accomplish? Travel? Paying off some of my debt? That elusive beast known as financial security? What if I did lose some weight, not because I need to look better (I really truly do dig how I look, it took awhile, but i'm there), but because I'd like to feel better. A little less back pain, sleeping better because my body was exercised and healthier. And what if I really could let go of all the past hurts and insecurities and live, truly joyously, presently live I this day, this moment, and in the radiant light of a hopeful future? What if what if what it.

So, this year, though I prefer not to make resolutions, I have decided to make myself a few promises about trying. No absolutes, just suggestions for myself ppthat, unlike resolutions, won't leavening me buried in a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk when I slip up.

This year, I will try to be more forgiving of myself first so that I am more capable of forgiving others.

This year, I will try to place physical health and well being on my list of priorities.

This year, I will try to attend church more not because I need to perform my faith for it to be meaningful but because that space centers me and guides my feet for the week ahead.

This year, I will try to think first before I react to situations that threaten or scare me.

This year, I will try to love myself as unconditionally as I love others.

This year, I will try.

End. Begin. End. Begin.

" For last year's words belong to last year's language
     And next year's words await another voice."
--T.S. Eliot


Last night, made up, readying for a night on the town.

This morning, no make-up, cleaning the house, laundry, taking down the tree.

I am happy to report that finally, at 35, I don't have a preference when it comes to these two photographs.  Time was, I would have died before showing myself without make-up, but now...this is who I am.  And I think she's pretty okay.  


So here's to 2012.  It's just has to be better that last year.  It just has to be.

Would It Be Better If...

It's the end of another year and I find myself as reflective as ever, hours spiraling away like cottony dandelion heads blown by breezes far too warm for any self-respecting December afternoon in Kansas.

Nothing and I mean nothing feels real today.

I could chronicle in grisly and gothic detail the year that ends tonight, I could recount months spent coming to terms with myself as a divorced woman, as a woman who experienced a transformative return to faith, a woman who loved a man so desperately she nearly lost her mind when he disappeared, a woman who had to hunt through the dark, cold and alone and terrified, to find the only light she could ever actually be guided by lived and lives inside her own heart.  I could tell all those stories, but none of them alone says what I need to say today.

I keep wondering, would it be better if I'd made this choice instead of that one, if I'd said no instead of yes, if I'd spoken instead of stayed silent, sung instead of whispered...in the end, though, a year is a drop in the path of a human life, not even enough of a rock to impede your path unless you let it.  I am choosing, today, to walk past this last year, to give it back to the earth, to say no thank you and to happily, and hopefully, accept the next stretch of time as one that will be better.  I deserve it.  You deserve it.  We deserve it.

1957, Milo Greene

Light

First day of holiday break.  Shopping/errands, laundry, "Crimes & Misdemeanors" on HBO, Charlie Rose w/Angelina Jolie, some new Caramel Chai tea, gave the dog a bath, now watching "You've Got Mail."

I love this movie for so many reasons.

1. It's New York, and though I don't think I could ever live in that city, it is incredible and I have been itching, itching, itching to revisit it for a very long time.  I especially want to go here: The Strand

2.  It's about bookstores, and people who love books, and smart people who love to talk about books.

3.  It's about falling in love with someone whose heart and mind speak to you on a level you didn't know existed.

4.  But most of all, it's about hope.  That everything will get better, that life can be beautifully rich and lovely and full of warm sweet tenderness and I love this movie because I want all of that.  All all all of that.

So, happy holidays, all.  Here's to light in 2012.

Dark

I can't tell yet if the malaise I've been feeling lately is tied to the holiday season and it's lack of snow/good cheer/general kindness, or the strained relationships with some of the people I love most, or if I'm just in a particularly undefinable but completely unsettled mood, but--whatever the root cause--I find myself stunned to tears by the smallest gestures of kindness lately.  I think I'm hungry for something more beautiful and less complicated than my own life.

I cry at commercials, at bad television shows, inspirational videos, my dog playing with me, so effortlessly happy in her running around that I want to choke on my own inability to be--simply--joyful.  Where did that go?  Honestly.  I have no idea.  I used to count myself a pretty joyful person, optimistic, hopeful, ready to believe that all would be well with little to no encouragement because beauty and possibility trumped darkness and fatality at every turn.  But, now...

Not so much.

The person I want to be--strong, intelligent, kind, thoughtful, loving, loved, inquisitive, trusting--is in here somewhere, I know.  I've met her and she's pretty outstanding.  It's just that lately she is buried under this scared little girl who wants guarantees that everything will work out okay.  And because those guarantees don't exist, much as she loves the sun, she'd rather sit in the dark and wait it out, knowing in her heart that all the magic she imagines may be nothing more than illusion, and that these dark hours are all she can count on.

All I want is a little joy.  A little safety.  A little assurance that everything is going to be okay.  I know I can't have it without trusting myself, trusting God, trusting the people I love.  I know that.  It's just easier said than done.

An Open Letter to Jay-Z

Dear Mr. Carter,

I want to first thank you for the amazing contributions you have made over the past five years towards the lessons I teach in my high school classroom. I've used "99 Problems" to discuss the need we all have to name our issues. When my students were learning about allusions, we spent a day studying "Empire State of Mind."  And, just this semester, I've been teaching the concept that words matter, that they have value, so when my Midwestern male high school students use the word SWAG over and over again in an effort to establish they have swagger, I remind them that you are the poster boy for swagger in part because you never need to say you have confidence or infuence. You have it, so people know you have it and, conversely, people know you have it because you do.

I read today that you recently told reporters you would be happy to pay higher taxes if the cause were a just one: education, children in poverty, etc. I impressed with your specificity here, making our poorest children and the intellectual concerns of our American children such an important piece of you life.

As a high school teacher (with a masters degree in my content area--English), I make less than $50k a year and am crippled by student loan debt. This letter, Mr. Carter is my way of asking your charity to start smaller.  No need to rush to the IRS to amend a return, there is a faster way to begin contributing to education.

I'm asking you to choose ten teachers from around the country who owe over $100k in student loans, and then you pay off their debt.  It would cost over a million dollars, but you would be guaranteeing decades of lower stress for people doing one of the country's most exhausting and thankless jobs.

I recognize that you are busy with your own child on the way, you are on the throne so many of us are watching, and I am certain you have many projects to address at this time. I only ask that, now, at the holidays, you consider giving a gift very few people are capable of giving. Give ten teachers their lives back, keep us from scrambling paycheck to paycheck, let us love what we do without that love crippling us financially.

Finally, you could have read anything else in the world today, but you read this from me, and I appreciate that.

---Ms. D

Thankful

I am thankful for:

--My relationship with God.  I feel such strength in acknowledging and actively participating in my life as a woman of faith.  I had doubts for a very long time--I still do, in fact--but I believe anyway.  Isn't that what true faith is?

--Therapy.  The couple of months I spent talking to a complete stranger about the fears I've carried for years helped me to let down so many burdens.  I feel lighter, freer, and more capable of loving myself than I ever did before.

--My job and my students.  I wake up every morning excited about my day, thrilled that I get to speak to inquisitive young men and women who are learning about the world and their place in it.  Their optimism and curiosity is the greatest byproduct of my job; I am so proud to be a teacher.

--Love.  Over the last year, I have discovered real love cannot be denied or ignored, hidden or masked, forgotten or undone.  This is quite possibly the most shocking and breathtakingly beautiful lesson I have ever learned.  It is also without a doubt the hardest.

A few lamps are lit, the house is aglow with warm yellow light, the only sound in the room is the breathing of my sleeping dog.  In this stillness I hear my heartbeat thumping out two words, over and over: thankful, thankful, thankful.

Reading

This morning I (1) finished a novel, (2) read a tongue-in-cheek manual on how to be a good boyfriend, and this afternoon (3) I read another novel.  

I find, often, that words are the escape I need when I can't articulate what's happening in my own life.  It's not that I don't know what I want to say, it's that the language with which to say it is so evasive it may as well be a boy--okay, boys--I made out with at parties in high school who, come Monday, look at me like I am a visitor from another planet.  Words can be just that distant, with that same glassy 'please don't talk to me and make me admit we were close in any sort of way once' stare.  I have loved language longer than I have loved boys, but that doesn't make it any easier to adore.  

When I read something that makes me vocal--a sigh, an inward 'mmm hmm,' a catch of breath at something to beautiful to be real--I know that work is good.  Maybe not all 215 pages are well crafted, but that one sentence or phrase that gives pause, that yanks sound from deep within my chest and forces it through the thick red wall of my throat until the noise escapes, hanging in the room like yardsale curtains, lovely and thrilling for being cheap but always somehow feeling like they belong in someone else's house.

Emily Dickinson said to Thomas Wentworth Higginson--a man she saucily propositioned with the a version of the question "Tell me sir if you think my poems might be alive?"-- that she only knew if a thing were poetry if "...it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it.  Is there any other way?"  (and even she was stealing--this is apparently paraphrased from her sister-in-law with whom it is rumored Emily was quite enamored).  My point is, all of us, at one time or another, get the itch, the bug, the burn. the wild hair to express just what it is these magical expressions of others have done to us, and even we--writers by choice, word lovers by fate--don't always know how to do it without paraphrasing.

These are three things that got me today.  I hope you read something that moves you soon, and I hope you share it with me.

1. "We have a great belief, those of us who live in this income bracket and this postal district, in the power of words: we read, we write, we talk, we have therapists and counselors and even priests who are happy to listen to us and tell us what to do.  So it comes as a bit of a shock to me that my words, big words it seemed to me at the time, words that would change my life, might just as well have been bubbles: David  swatted them away and they popped, and tehre is no evidence anywhere that they ever existed. 

So now what?  What happens when words fail us?"--How to be Good--Nick Hornby

2.  "Think of the first boyfriend, Adam. You think he wasn't baffled by his girlfriend? You bet he was. Now, there's a guy who could have used this book. You may not think he needed it -- after all, he was alone in paradise, had some snacks, and Eve was already naked. But we beg to differ.

Their problems weren't over money, getting out of dinner with her parents, or his addiction to online poker. No, their issues revolved around a small piece of red fruit. God said, "Don't eat it." Eve said, "If you love me you'll bite." The poor guy had God on one side and Eve on the other; talk about a rock and a hard place. Adam tried to reason with his girl, warning her of the dangers of breaking the one rule God had made, but she wouldn't listen. From her point of view it wasn't about the apple or God (she wasn't hungry and had never even met the Big Guy in the sky), it was about whether her boyfriend took her seriously and understood her feelings. Sound familiar? In her mind, Adam was trying to control her … again. Talk about a power trip. Who died and left him in charge? There he was telling her what to eat, what not to eat, and by the way, was this "don't eat the apple" thing his way of letting her know he thought she was fat? Great."--The Practical Handbook for the Boyfriend--Felicity Huffman & Patricia Wolff (I bought this for the 50s noir book covers that corresponded to each chapter title but decided to  read the dang thing before I cut the book apart)

3. "Lying in bed, at night, my stomach growled. I rolled over and tucked my knees to my chest. I saw myself smaller and smaller, like a seed in the black night soil of the earth. Here were the stars and here was the city. Here was the net of the world and I was waiting deep down inside it.

In the morning, I took one piece of strawberry-blond hair and cut it with a razor, zigzag bangs across my forehead; I hemmed my skirt three inches above the bare knee; I blacked out my eyes with kohl, just like Astrid did. I had always been such a nice girl; I was still such a nice girl. My mother took one look at me and asked, "Why would you want to be like that?"

I ask you, why, why not?"--Whores on the HIll, Collen Curran

New Words

I am buried by grading which tends to exhaust and irritate me.  However, I learned two new words today--thanks to the inexpert editing of my students--that I simply must share with you.

MULTIPUBLE, as in "he had done so multipuble of times", and PANTYHOES, as in "he kept his girlfriends pantyhoes to remind him of home".

Who's got the OED address?  These are in dire need of being added.

Whitman

Most days, I believe there is something in me greater than myself.  A capacity to love, an inclination towards compassion, an ability to empathize.  Most days, I am confident, secure in the truths I know about my strength, my talents, my worthiness of love.  Most days, I can shake off a bad dream, the kind that wakes me in a sweat, hair sticking to my neck, mouth dry, throat parched as if I've been screaming.  Most days, I know everything is going to be alright, that all will be well, that the dreams I have will come true.
On the other days, I read Whitman.  From "Song of Myself" (section 51):

There is that in me... I do not know what it is... but I know it is in me.
Wrenched and sweaty... calm and cool then my body becomes;
I sleep... I sleep long.
I do not know it... it is without name... it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary or utterance or symbol.
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Long Overdue

Music has been a part of my life longer than I can remember.  The story around my house is that the first song I ever learned was "She's Always a Woman" by Billy Joel from the '77 record The Stranger.  I don't recall my parents owning this record, but I learned it somehow--radio most likely--and would wander around the house, two years old and already crooning, the word 'woman' over an over again.  As in, 'woman woman woman.'  Even then, I knew what I was going to grow to be.

For a while this year, I've had a hard time listening to music.  So much of it inspires such bone deep reactions--from tears to melancholy to the unbridled wildness inspired by Heart's Barracuda.  Seriously, if I'm ever pulled over for speeding it will probably be because I was listening to this song and singing at top volume.  There are moments in life when my own emotions are so close to my skin that I simply cannot hear a song that will push me over the edge.  But, I'm not having any of those moments right now.

In fact, I can't get enough of my music.  I was wandering through old cds last night and realized how much good music I own that I never listen to simply because I get caught up in whatever's current in my ipod or cd player.  Today, grayish cold and windy, I am going to wallow in my music collection, cassette tapes, vinyl, and all nearly 1000 cds will get a peak, what to keep, what to retire.  I haven't been this excited about a long indulgent Saturday in a while.  Here's the gem from the morning--if you haven't heard this in a while, you--like me--are long overdue for a listen:

The Book of Love

There is a song by The Magnetic Fields called "The Book of Love," that Peter Gabriel covered (I know, there's humor in the original, Gabriel's is more of a ballad).  And every time I hear the Gabriel version (and I mean EVERY time)--brings me to tears.  There is something in it that grips my heart and pulls it up into my throat until I am gulping back sobs that want to take over my whole body.


The first time I heard it, and the time tonight that prompted this post, was in the film "Shall We Dance" with Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, and Jennifer Lopez.  I have a thing for Sarandon--ever since Bull Durham I have wanted to, in one way or another, be her--and I secretly love Lopez, too.  I think she is simply beautiful, and I believe her in films.  Is she the greatest actress?  Well, she's certainly no Sarandon, but there's something likable about her.  And so, I watch this movie whenever I see it is on, and the song slays me again and again.


The thing is, every time I hear this song, I imagine someone saying these words to me or--better yet--proposing while this song plays.  I know, I know.  Silly.  But, see, I never had a real romantic proposal.  I love my ex-husband, he is a good man, a wonderful friend, but we both played at marriage like two kids who felt like it was what grown ups did; neither of us really knew what that meant.  So, the proposal wasn't thought out or romantic at all, it just sort of happened.  And I didn't think I minded at the time because I'd convinced myself I didn't need or want some elaborate thing, but honestly, I did.  


I do.


So, silly as it may sound, I want every damn thing in this song.  Someone to love me like this.  It may be a long time before I have that, but I believe I will someday because I deserve it.  


We all do.

An Open Letter to 6th Hour

Dear Students,

Today I had to speak to you in tones harsher than I have had to use with you before.  You all sat, wide-eyed, silent, knowing my words of admonishment were founded, that your behavior yesterday--when I was gone for a district meeting and you had a substitute--was completely uncalled for.  You knew, with every word I spoke, that you had done wrong.  In fact, you confessed to it even before my take down began, saying you knew you had been "really bad" yesterday.

You told me you missed me.  Several of you, as you walked into this room, said you had missed me yesterday because I make you laugh, or because you like hearing me lecture--this one nearly floored me--or because you look forward to seeing me all day.  You said such nice things, it made me sick to think of all the negativity I was about to rain down on you.

But, 6th hour, I have to put you on lockdown.  I had to tell you how disappointed I was, had to make you see that your behavior was wildly disrespectful to the substitute, to yourselves and to me--the teacher so many of you profess to love.  I had to do this so that you would understand our dynamic, laughing and relaxed and open, is one to be valued and honored, not taken for granted. 

You should know I hate speaking to you like that.  Telling you that I was sick all day thinking of the speech I was going to have to give you, how hurt my feelings were that you would act like that, that any help you needed would have to be solicited through email or before or after school because you had lost the privilege of getting my help today.  And now, watchin gyou work so seriously, trying so hard to prove you are better than the humans you were in this room at this time yesterday afternoon, my heart is so full of love for you all that I am having to bite my tongue not to say so. 

You are a good class, 6th hour, a great class even, fun and curious and full of energy--all things I encourage and that will serve you well in the future--but today's lesson is one knowing hte right time and place and audience for such exuberance.  It is an awful, sad lesson to learn, and I am so sorry to have to be the one to teach it to you, but that is my job.  I don't want you to just be better writers, better readers, better critical thinkers; I want you to be better humans.  I want us all to be.

Love--Ms. D

Trust/Doubt

“Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason."--Ralph Waldo Emerson
I love Emerson.  I love his transcendental point of view, his affirmational writing style in Self-Reliance, his awe of nature, his conviction that there was a better way for society to progress and that we, as members of it, were the key to that success.  Not just our elected officials or representatives, but we ourselves were the voices and vehicles by which change must occur.


But this quotation, this concept of trust, is rankling me tonight.  I am a woman of faith, more active now in that regard than I have been since my childhood, and I am a woman of forgiveness, believing that in order to move forward, to progress, I have to forgive the transgressions of those who have hurt me if only so that I can be set free from the pain of their prior acts.  And yet, despite my faithfulness and forgiveness, I am grappling with my own ability to forget the things that have happened in the past and so trust is taking a back seat to Doubt which, it turns out, is a pretty loud and ominous passenger.  


Doubt climbs into the car with all of its bags haphazardly packed and won't let you throw them in the trunk or in the backseat.  Doubt carries all its baggage in its lap, right out in the open.  Doubt's bags make it hard to see out the side mirror, to maneuver the air vents, to change the cd or radio station.  
Doubt takes up so much space; don't even think about using the cupholder.  


Doubt does not want to talk to you.  Or, more accurately, Doubt doesn't want you to talk.  Doubt sucks up all the air in the car and sets loose on a long and winding story that never seems to end, circling back again and again to that point in time that led you to invite Doubt in in the first place, a time so dark you don't remember what day it was, what the weather was like or whether or not you remembered to eat.  
Doubt has no interest in current affairs, future plans, or the good news of the day; Doubt wants to rehash the past, to scratch and claw at those old wounds until the scars left behind are jagged, weeping welts of pain, oozing and open to the elements, unable to heal without immediate and expert attention that you, driver, cannot see to just now.


I want to kick Doubt the hell out of the car.  I want to go back to the rest area where I fist met Doubt and avert my eyes when Doubt looks my way.  I want Doubt to sit in the rain, cold and lonely, waiting for some other poor sucker to come along and pick Doubt up.  I want to, but I am having the damnedest time making it happen and that may be because Doubt is one rational son-of-a-bitch.  All of Doubts arguments make sense.  Doubt says, "this happened before, it could--and probably will given your luck--happen again, so don't get your hopes up."  Doubt is a master of empirical and anecdotal evidence.  That's what makes Doubt so popular at conventions.  


But, I am sick of Doubt.  I am sick of the way Doubt smells--sour like laundry you forgot in the washing machine overnight--and I am sick of Doubt's heavy breathing when Doubt sleeps.  Mostly, though, I am sick of being unable to hear myself think as Doubt huffs and puffs and sighs through our journey together, so I think it's time to pull over, open the door, and run for my life, trusting I'll find a path worth taking before too long.


I never liked that car anyway, and besides, I feel like walking.

The Thread

This morning, at church, my pastor read a William Stafford poem to end his sermon.  He spoke on the nature of the relationship between God and ourselves, that we are called to hang on to the thread that connects us to God, that keeps us even and steady even in the midst of great suffering and storms.  


I have not always had an easy time feeling that thread.  I have always felt a pull to something greater than myself, but I spent some years in a state of serious doubt brought on by academia and personal trauma that seemed to be impossible if God truly existed.  But, then, the moment of faith came--the one that showed me nothing but prayer and belief was going to make me feel better--and I knew, deep in my bones, that my faith was one that belonged to me.  That it wasn't just a faith I was raised with or of my parents and grandparents, it was and is mine.  


I have a hard time with my faith, often wondering how the miracles God has worked in my life can be given that some of them seem in such direct opposition to biblical teachings, but I have never been one to take the Bible literally, and so I am working on it.  It is hard to love your neighbor as yourself when you struggle, on occasion, to do the latter.  It is hard to turn the other cheek when they've both been slapped so long, and it is hard to practice perfect love and compassion in a world so intent on revering fear and isolation.  


But, I am trying.  I am trying to hold on to the thread that connects me to God, to answer His call in my life, to have faith not only in Him but in myself and in the actions and words of those around me.  I am stuck, today, in a particular relationship that is not moving as I would like it to, but I need to let go of my attachment to the outcome and trust that--as He has seen fit to do so far--God will lead me where I am supposed to go.  Until then, I'll keep holding on to the thread.


The Way It Is, William Stafford


There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change.  But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Light

"The poem...is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.  And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see--it is, rather, a light by which we may see--and what we see is life."--Robert Penn Warren

Tonight is our last performance of The Laramie Project at LHS.  Directing this show has been an incredibly emotional experience for me not only because of the subject matter but because, during this process, I have come to appreciate a part of myself that I do not always see as positive.

I am a very emotional person.  Very.  Commercials, movies, stories people tell, stories I read, the look on a sad dog's face, just about anything can make me tear up.  I have a heightened sense of empathy--I learned there's a word for this, it's called being an empath or being an empathic person--which means I soak up the energy of those around me and reflect it back, sort of like an emotional mirror.  This is great when I am surrounded by joyful, creative, positive energy--as I have been much of the past few weeks--but it can be exhausting, too, when the energy surrounding me is negative or anxious or fearful.

Any time I direct a show, I try to settle the students on the nights of performances with a positive message that, sometimes, takes the form of a guided meditation.  I ask them to close their eyes, hold hands, breathe deep, and focus on the light within them, the positive message they're sending, the joyful act of creation of which they are a part.  As I say these things to them, I am, of course, speaking to myself, my voice rippling over them in waves, carrying them to what I hope is a more centered, peaceful place from which to bring the show we're working on to life.

And now, after weeks of nervous anxiety, elated successes, tearful worries, and joyous celebration, it is almost over.  I find I am terribly tired and--while happy to have been the director of the process as well as the overseer of the product--I am grateful the end is near.  This does not mean I haven't enjoyed the work--I have, immensely--it's actually been one of the best processes I've been part of in that I gave up so much control and just let it all breathe itself into existence that I never totally lost myself, which is a first.  But, like the Robert Penn Warren quotation at the beginning of this entry, I am ready to allow room for something else to make my life meaningful.  And that something is me.  I want to find meaning not just in the work I do, but in myself.  My shining, emotive, overly sensitive, often anxious little self.

I am ready to accept the myth of myself as poem, as poetry, as motion, as music, and see what kind of light will shine once all the other noise and light quiets and dims.  So, tonight, when the final bow is taken, the last set piece struck, the lights turned out for the final time on this run, I believe a new light will begin to sparkle in the distance.  May it be just bright enough to shine me home.