What the Dickens?

“The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far we are pursued by nothing else.”

Take a look at the moon as it rises.

Though hell should bar the way

I once memorized Alfred Noyes' The Highwayman for a talent show. My favorite line was:

"Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight,
though hell should bar the way."

Something feels so claimed, fierce and devoted about someone saying that they will come for you though hell should bar the way. The whole "claiming" concept and being "chosen" twangs so deeply on the strings of my inner being that it was a multi-month topic when I saw my therapist several years ago.

Both growing up and in my adult life, the people important to me chose service to the church over what might have been best for me. A good part of me understands that this perception is skewed and not necessarily the truth, but the other parts of me feel abandoned and betrayed over and over again when I remember...

...the Bible study schedule that racked up the Michigan miles on the baby blue 1979 Chevrolet wagon. The knock on the door at dinner time. The holidays interrupted by another's breaking heart. The ministers who made parental decisions. The new year welcomed on our knees in prayer rather than watching the ball drop in Times Square.

The vacations that never happen. The cell phone that doesn't stop ringing. The weekends that end before they begin.

Life in a parsonage is like the Fishbowl California where you may checkout any time you like, but you can never leave.

We are, indeed, prisoners of our own device repeating the patterns modeled for us. I have put service to others over the needs of my own children. As the director of an organization that provides access to nutrition with a variety of different programs, it is ironic that it is easier for me to think about dinner for 70 than it is for me to consider a simple meal for the four of us. We eat in parts and pieces just like we live our lives.

Doing good is not always right.

It makes me sad to realize that I have created another child who will listen for the voice of the highwayman calling: I will come for you by midnight though hell should bar the way...

The Ways We Touch

"Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What appears bad manners, an ill temper or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone."

Miller Williams

Find a good thing

"English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

(I wish I could attribute this quote, but I can't seem to find a reliable source.)

So, I was thinking about words...

Mark Twain once said, "When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear."

With all the words available in the English language, it is a sad lack of imagination that relies on common four-letter words to spank the offending party. There is nothing like the overused F word to reveal a withered IQ.

The other day my children, who are angels, were in a heated dispute. The best they could come up with was "you are such a bitch." It pained me, but not in the usual way. How could my offspring, conceived on a bed of lexicons, have become so atrophied that they couldn't rain all the demons of the English language upon each others heads?

I remember when Jayna could take someone off at the knees with "subbarena" and "sandbagger." These were her word daggers. The only swear word she knew was "shut up." Jared was slow in language acquisition, but I knew he caught up when he likened someone to "a worm without any eyes." He was four. (I personally haven't seen a worm WITH eyes, but that is beside the point.)

When we were growing up, Charlie and I would tell our younger sister that we found her in a frog swamp. I think we heard a shtick like that and applied it to Janelle with glee. We would chant, "adopted, adopted" whenever we felt she needed to be put in her place. That one word, selected with intent...

The power of life and death are in the tongue (or pen.) The words we choose choke the spirit or set it free. He who finds a word, finds a good thing.

Have it Canned

On my new résumé I included my blog name. I am certain that future employers will be so struck by my insights that they will immediately create a new position within the company structure that allows me to blog all the day long. They will congratulate themselves on recognizing my talent and ask themselves why they didn't think of screening applicants through the blog system sooner.

"The creamed corn of the crop," they will exclaim. "And, she is all ours."

Listen, blogland is tough. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

Dear Future Employer:

You don't know me, but I would like to direct you to my "blawg" to learn a little bit more about me. Things like: my daily elimination, creeps who have wronged me, how I really feel about authority, and how inflated my opinion of myself really is.

That is C-A-N-N-E-D-C-O-R-N-A-G-A-I-N because if you can't have it fresh---you oughta have it canned.

constellations

They slide down my throat like goldfish.
To swim in a pond of bright green bile
Until they swell up fat and toxic.

They mutate and divide like cancer cells.
And grow without a sound up through
My nose like branches of a sycamore tree.

Strange birds land on their twisted boughs
And pluck them one by one by one
Like eyebrows to line their silly nests.

Until the wind snatches them back and runs
On strong legs far as the east
Is from the west and beyond the blue moon.

While they scatter like the mustard seed
Bruising my faith and resting place
Until I am tempted to swallow again.

Rough Road

"Ad astra per aspera" means "rough road leads to the stars." A literal
translation is "to the stars through severe hardship."

I petitioned the angels
and pled for my soul,
while I waited at the altar
in the church of childhood.
Their faces mocked me.
Suffering children are
safe in nobody's arms.

I climbed the constellations,
but did not reach God's ear.
I fell short. I landed hard.
Now I leave absolution
in the midnight sky.
And place my feet
on solid ground.

Redemption draweth nigh.
Raise the windows.
Lift the sash.
Be ready. Be ready.
Keep oil in your lamps.
And wait inside the wind
on a bed of softest rain.

What is real?

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.

From The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Children of the Corn

More than Kool-aid

I have been pondering many things this morning. Jim and I were talking last night about the parts of the Kingdom that we miss. There are many. The Sabbath, the Feasts, the tradition, the infinite extended family. We agreed that we both still feel loss even though we would never go back to the way things were.

Yes, I chafed under the rules. I never quite fit, but I belonged. My feet always had a place to stand. And I guess I do miss the sense of purpose. The connection to something more.

A few months ago someone left the television on in the other room. From where I was in the house, I could hear the voice of a faith healer calling through the screen.

"Repeat after me out loud. OUT LOUD," he commands.

"Lord, Jesus..."

And the crowd obeys.

"Come into my life right now."

And the crowd mumbles back and then everyone cheers.

What is it about spiritual authority that so attracts and repels? What missing pieces keeps us searching for something more? How do people get taken in?

Remember George Orwell's Animal Farm?

From the moment Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer stepped out from between the pages of Orwell's novella, Animal Farm, into my imagination, I was reminded of the Kingdom structure. Not unlike the elite class on Orwell's Animal Farm, certain Kingdom leaders manipulated information to exploit the others in the name of truth for their own purposes.

Orwell's porcine princes set out to form a utopian society. They constructed fair rules by which all would live. They posted the rules. And, then told others what the rules said. What they meant. How they should be lived. In the final chapter of the book, if you remember, all rules are broken save the last which has been modified to read: "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Even principled people are corrupted by power.

The human condition requires the hope of something more. C.S. Lewis talks about the "eternal weight of glory." Lewis recognized it is that very longing that motivates us toward heaven or hell, to becoming a child of God or of the Devil. He also understands that we do not journey alone instead we intertwine with our fellow sojourners. No action of ours is neutral; each holds eternal consequences for us and for those whose lives we touch.

And people have been drawn by this through the ages. Purpose. Community. Understanding. Interconnectedness. More often this longing inspires someone take a yoga class, join a reading group, take a creative writing class, study enlightenment, or eat chocolate.

But the intrinsic longing for utopist ideals sometimes causes people sell their homes and move their families half way across the country to join religious movements. Young zealots, fresh from college, are seduced by charismatic men of God and fall into the rigid strictures of "community." And, manic depressive leaders build their vision on the backs of those who want to believe.

Sometimes they do drink the Kool-aid. And sometimes they die in fires when the government storms their compound. Sometimes they build spaceships and lie down to die in hopes of reaching The Kingdom Level Above Human.

Sometimes I think those may be the lucky ones. Lucky because they died believing instead of living to learn the truth.

Candy Mountain, Charlie

Frosting for Divagators

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost

Preparing to live

My friend Jan whose presence spanned my entire life has been gone for just a little more than a year.

I wasn't very old when my mother was struck with pleurisy. My parents lived and worked on the Goshen farm. Jan was one of the "withersoeverers," sent by headquarters to help take care of us kids and carry my mother's load of the chores until she could get back on her feet. Jan was barely nineteen and painfully perky. Her sense of humor and adventure kept us hustled and bustled and well-cared for during those months that my mother was too weak to leave her bed.

Years later during my first (and last) year of Bible school, Jan and her husband would let me stay with them when a stomach ulcer grew like a Sycamore tree up out of my guilt. She would make me peppermint tea and lend me books that were definitely not on the approved reading list. I learned to appreciate her spirit, and how even though she tried to bend and conform, she never really lost herself.

In the early 90's when Jim, Jayna and I moved to NH, we worked on staff with Jan and her husband. She had given birth to a daughter late in life. We had something in common through our girls. Laurie was two and Jayna was three when we began to know one another in a new way. We learned about each other over our children's squabbles, through the sticky days of lemonade stands and cookie baking, and in those moments of deep motherhood understanding that you share when you watch your children climb on the bus the first day of school. The bus is so big, and they are so little that you are sure the doors will close and they will disappear forever behind that hinged mouth. We prayed for our kids. Swapped recipes. And, we tried to be good wives and mothers.

We also shared an intense passion for yard sales. Because we didn't shop on the Sabbath, we would sometimes take the van to Lewiston, ME where yard sales always started on Friday. We would leave before the sun came up and arrive at the Ramanda Inn just outside town. We would gulp coffee or cocoa from our thermos and eat some sort of nourishment from a baggie. Then we would buy the paper. Jan spread a laminated map out on the hood of the van. Because she was most familiar with Lewiston, it was her job to circle all the addresses as I read them off. This process would take about 10 minutes. Then Jan would calculate the best route to hit the most yard sales in the least amount of time in the best neighborhoods first. This ritual was always part of the trip, and it yielded us both a great deal of pleasure and treasure. We would fill the van and sometimes even strap furniture to the roof as we headed back home at sunset.

It was Jan who taught me how to haggle. How to look not interested when you were most interested. It was a fine art, but one she had mastered. While my heart would pound at the mere thought of asking someone to lower the price on their mother's rocking chair, Jan would maneuver so smoothly that the people would end up thinking it was their own idea to take $10 off the original asking price.

The fall before she died, I visited Jan with my friend, Peter. I wanted Peter to know who she was. She loved him and was every bit the gracious lady sitting with us in a pile of leaves on her lawn. Her full denim skirt billowed like a tent around the flesh and bones that had been so dear to me through the years. She weighed 105 pounds at the time.

A few weeks later, I returned alone to see her. I spent two hours with her in her room helping sort photos of her life. When she got tired, I lay with my head in the crook of her arm. She absent-mindedly stroked my head and comforted me. If that was wrong, I am sorry, but I needed a chance to say g'bye to a woman who had meant so much to me through the years.

She asked me if I thought God intended sickness, and did I think that maybe if she just believed more, would she be healed. Grief and anger choked me too much to respond immediately.

When I did answer, I said: I don't know what you have been reading or who you have been listening to, but you need to stop. NOW. God does not always heal people, and it doesn't mean that you failed somewhere along the way.

We had been so taught that if bad things happen, it could be directly traced to sin in our lives. Like the guy in the Old Testament who hides something in his tent and everyone gets sick until he confesses. The legacy. Our legacy. Even at the end.

She said she was preparing to live and preparing to die. And, I thought that if I learned nothing else from my dear friend, that was a lesson I could practice every day.

Less than six months later on a Sabbath morning in March, I was traveling to the Maine Boatbuilders' Show in Portland. What prompted me to think of Jan in that moment, I will never know, but an image of God's breath warming Jan from the inside out came to me in such a real way that I felt only peace. It was then that my phone rang, and I heard the news that Jan had gone to heaven.

"Prepare to live while you prepare to die."

I don't think you can go wrong with that one. No regrets.

My Scream

A few summers ago I saw the movie Garden State. It is one of those "working-out-present-relationships-through-painful-past-experiences" type movies. It was a story about the things that we all have to do. Over and over. It was about the lessons we summon from between the windows and behind the doors that lead to the church of childhood.

My initial reaction to the movie was to want to lie right down on the sidewalk outside the theater and sob. I didn't know if I wanted to be held, or if I wanted to kick and claw and scratch at anything that came near me. Of course, I didn't lie down on Tremont Street and do any such thing. I just felt like it.

Several scenes from the movie stirred a memory of the primal scream that still rests behind my tongue. The one that bides its time. The scream that one fears will never stop if ever it makes its way to the lips.

Have you ever started to scream and felt like you couldn't stop?

That happened to me once. It was the only time I felt like I was completely and utterly out of control. It was when we were living and teaching on a small campus in rural New England. My husband and I were fighting about something. I don't even remember what it was now, but I know I felt like a cornered animal. Trapped. I could not take one more second of what he was saying. More importantly I could not take one more second of the pain that grew like a tumor in my heart.

And, I started to scream.

Just a little at first and then louder. I think we were both stunned. I ran from the house and down over the wide front lawn towards the swamp across the road. Wailing. Sobbing. It was like every scream I had ever suppressed was demanding to be heard. As my feet flew over the ground, the sky ripped wide open. The heavens mixed rain with my tears and sent thunder to punctuate my cries.

I will never know if I would have kept running that day if he hadn't physically stopped me. When he caught up to me, I fought him as if he had been commissioned to steal my soul. He wrapped himself around my flailing arms until I sank to my knees. Even as I tried to crawl away from him, he didn't let go. Only with my face against the ground, was I finally quiet. The wet grass stuck to my hot cheeks and the damp earth cradled my head.

I wonder sometimes had I actually reached the swamp if the marshy waters would have closed over my screams like a soft, woolen blanket. Muffled. And then silent.

Emerson once said: "A scream is better than a thesis." And, he is right.

We scream in fear. We scream in ecstasy. We scream in frustration. We scream in anger. And, sometimes we scream just because we don't know what else to do.

I have since learned how to sort the pain that drove me out the door that day. I do better sometimes than others. I don't go running toward swamps in a literal sense anymore, but I suppose I do run toward swamps of my own making. Trying to reach the waters to ease my pain. I run every time I feel trapped in the same pattern that sent me out the door in the first place.

I don't think that he tries to stop me any more. And, I don't blame him. Not really.

The Truth

The man who baptized me was named simply, "Uncle." He was the movement's man of God from the late forties until the time of his death in 1978. He really was my great uncle, and his name began with the letter V.

He scared me. Petrified me. One look from his stern face could make my heart gallop. I learned to watch his ears. No matter how grim he looked, if they wiggled up and down, then he was joking. If they did not move, I was in for a rebuke.

We kept a special room in our house for when he came to visit. We didn't have much money, but I remember that my mother bought a new bedspread and towels that we saved for him to use. He clearly was a special man.

Anyway, it was Uncle who held the back of my white gown and plunged me beneath the baptismal waters. It was Uncle who told me that the blue ribbon pinned to my collar was for truth. It was Uncle who lifted me up over the edge of the tank after I came sputtering to the surface while people applauded and sang, "Oh happy day..."

After I was back in dry clothes and my soggy braids had been blotted, I declared my faith for the congregation. I stood on my seat and said: "I love Jesus so much that I could kill him." Everyone laughed, and I cried.

After Uncle died, we found out that he wasn't so good at truth after all. And, I have always wondered if my baptism really counted.

Cute bangs...

Ability to Inherit

It is always a sad thing to have a marriage come apart. The hope that once was bright, the future that "falls down midflight," and the heart once full of promise, collides at the intersection of faith and reality.

A friend of mine is going through a divorce right now. The process has been slow. Who gets what? What is a product of the marriage? What is fair? Are there any children? Who gets the tax deduction? What insurance should be carried? Who contributed what? There are so many parts and pieces to sorting the debris.

Most of the equitable distribution has been textbook. I was surprised to find, however, that one's ability to inherit plays significantly into a divorce settlement. For example, if one's parents are worth millions and one's spouse stands to inherit a good portion of that, it is factored into the final settlement.

Interesting.

Who has the best lawyer? And, when do you stop caring for the other person enough to protect yourself and your own future?

Frolic the Moors

"...so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same..."

~~Catherine in Wuthering Heights

When I was a teenager, I loved to read Harlequin romances. You know the kind of books with the woman bent over in some impossibly uncomfortable looking position whilst some Fabio looking creature poises to ravage her neck? We called them "bodice rippers." Ashamed to say, I could read three or four of these books in any given weekend.

My father was alarmed at this voracious appetite of mine for trashy novels, so he said one summer that I could not read any more until I had completed both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

It was between the pages of Wuthering Heights that I first met the notion of soul mates. Of course, the seduction was less apparent than the romance writers to which I had become accustom, but far more powerful in the end because it pulled a response from both the mind and the body.

I guess I like to think that my soul will frolic across the moors long after I am gone.

The Boy-Kickers

I loved my shoes from the minute they met my feet. I found them in a little shop tucked around the corner over by the Boulevard. They were on the bottom shelf on the far left hand corner. There were so many other colorful shoes shouting for attention that day; I almost didn't see them sitting there in their quiet dignity.

These were sensible, heavy-soled shoes. Sturdy leather. Boy-kickers, really. They were the kind of shoes you might own once in a lifetime. They looked good with jeans, and more than passed muster with a pair of tights and a skirt.

My boy-kickers tromped me through the streets of Boston and NYC. They traipsed the halls of power in our nation's capitol. They traveled by moonlight, and they embraced the light of day. They took me through snow and even splashed in a puddle or two.

They held my feet steady while I delivered speeches, formed partnerships, and closed deals. They carried me where I lacked the courage to go. And, they helped me walk away from things that really needed to be left behind.

I used to suspect that shoe shiners everywhere recognized how much I loved those boy-kickers of mine. From their street corners and airport terminals, they would beckon my shoes to step up to their stands where they would treat them with the holy ritual of polish and gloss. They understood the value of maintaining shoes you can trust.

Shoes are not unlike the friends who matter the most to you. Trustworthy. Easy

Last winter my boy-kickers died. I wore them until I could no longer ignore the fact that the beloved leather had broken loose from its seam on the instep of my right foot. It flopped as I walked and let the winter slush eat my toes.

I should have thrown them out.

But like a friend, I was reluctant to let them go. The shoes reminded me of the few people in life who have become intimates. You break them in. They wear well. And even when they, like my boy-kickers, start to fall apart and let in the cold, it is hard to toss them away.

New friends and new shoes are always a gamble. They look shiny on the shelf, but they can chafe your heel. Crimp your get-a-long. And, there is always a chance that they won't go with everything. Instead of pitching out the old and replacing it with a fresh new style, I tend to find a different place for these "sole/soul" mates to rest. One that doesn't matter so much, but where I can always find them.

I am thinking about making my boy-kickers into a geranium planter this summer. Maybe a handsome pair of bookends. Would bronzing them be too much?

My faith lives in Vancouver

Sitting cross-legged under a scraggly tree was a girl not much older than Jayna. She was staring straight ahead as if to tune out the tears. A poncho covered her thin shoulders and her cardboard sign read simply: "I am broke and hungry."

I walked by her, because that is what you are supposed to do with street people. There are so many and the need is so great that you cannot possibly make a difference. But, that stare and the young face haunted each step that took me down the block. My own tears pushed hard behind my eyes until they finally fell.

"How old do you think she was?" I asked Anne.

Anne had to think for a minute who I meant because we had gone three or four blocks past the girl. Then she answered, "Jayna?"

And, I cried.

Something about it hurt so much. Not knowing her story, I couldn't assume that she had a home. I couldn't assume that if she did, it was a happy or safe one. I couldn't assume that she was a drug addict. I couldn't assume that she wasn't. I just knew that if she had a better gig going on, she certainly would not be sitting on the cool October pavement at 10 o'clock at night asking for food.

You know sometimes you can feel compelled to do something even when you know it doesn't make sense? This was one of those times. I walked to the nearest store to buy her dinner. The turkey pita sandwich and apple juice I bought from 7 Eleven went into a bag along with the biggest, reddest apple I could find. I bought a couple of cereal bars and some chewing gum and retraced my steps to find the girl who had broken my heart.

At first I thought she was gone. But, then I could see that she had only hunched down further. Seemed smaller. More forlorn. I didn't trust my voice, but I knew that I had to speak. It was part of what was compelling me.

"Hey, how are you tonight?" I asked. The streetlight caught on the tears behind her stare.

"GO HOME, little girl," I wanted to scream, but, of course, I didn't.

"This is for you," I said as I knelt next to her. The bag of food hung as an offering between us. A dirty hand with broken nails came out from under the poncho.

"And, this is for you too." I dropped several Canadian coins into her palm. Enough to buy coffee or something warm.

She smiled, and then I saw that she was not as young as I thought. Her skin was older. Her teeth were starting to rot. Her matted hair had not been glossy for years. It startled me for a minute. It caused a moment of doubt in my judgment.

But, I had been compelled by something beyond that moment.

I don't practice my faith in a church. I don't even know what I believe or how I feel about those things any more. However, I have promised myself that I would always respond when I felt that tug to reach out to another human being.

My faith stands in two things...

First, we entertain angels unaware. I used to think that meant that actual angels were walking the earth seeking our hospitality. It was a pass/fail sort of test. Now I believe that the angels we entertain unaware are of this earth. Our fellow man. People who bless us when we help them.

And second, the scripture that reminds us: "Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me." If you remember, on the day that counted, it was the ONLY thing that separated the sheep from the goats.

My angel was gone when we walked back by less than an hour later.

God spoke to me...

More soul, please

Maybe my fundamentalist upbringing thrust me into this lifelong fascination with the soul. Or maybe I am just soulful. Who knows? Who cares?

I have been reading Soul Mates--Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship by Thomas Moore. I read it just a little bit at a time. Any more than a little would make me feel like I had eaten too much figgy pudding.

He says:

The whole world and all of life are nothing but the raw materials for soul-making. Our soul-work is a process of taking these materials and making something out of them. The raw materials are found everywhere--in the family that fate has given us, in friends new and old, in the first scintillating sign of attraction to another person.

The raw material is found in the commonness of every day living. It uses the good, the bad and the ugly experiences to weave a rich tapestry if we will just acknowledge and accept the importance of letting life dirty our ideals. (this is where there is a strong deviation from my "fair, clear and terrible" upbringing.)

Often intelligent people can't lower themselves to own up to being dirtied by the kinds of situations and feelings that EVERYONE gets stuck in. He gives an example of a woman who admitted that she felt victimized by her husband's affair, but she would constantly disown the awareness. She would tell herself that because she was a feminist she was "strong" or "prepared" for this. Her moral position kept her from getting dirtied by the raw material of the betrayal.

And who would blame her? However, it is being present to the good and the bad that sculpts richness into our souls. It serves no soul purpose to try to be above the dirt. Even though perfection appeals to the mind, the real soul does not reside in clean, tidy boxes. The soul does not establish a home in well-structured, ideal unions or relationships.

Instead it thrives where we hurt the most, love the most, lose the most, give the most.

The soul perversely feeds on the wild color of feelings and the messy tones of mood. It gobbles up the mottled shades of fantasy and devours the drama of disillusionment. It bounds forward when we struggle the most.

That is soul work--like a compost heap. Fertile. Steaming. Sometimes putrid. But always promising a rich garden if we will just let ourselves get dirty.

The Pieces We Keep

My patchwork quilt has been with me as long as I can remember. It was made by a woman we called "Aunt Dot." I don't think she was my aunt, but my parents had me call a lot of people "aunt" and "uncle" when I was growing up.

I call it my "traveling quilt" now, but it was with me at Goshen before I ever knew I could wander. I played on it with my dolls. I used the squares to divide up the space into a "house." Each set of squares was a room. The quilt went with me to the fields too. I spread the quilt out on the clover when I brought my father lunch. We would lie back on that scratchy quilt and make up stories for the clouds that played across the sky. Other times I pulled that same quilt over my head when I was afraid. The woolen squares were heavy, and they made me feel safe--invisible when I needed to hide.

Later when I was a teenager, the quilt went on sleepovers. It partied with me at the gravel pit beneath the light of the Michigan moon. It absorbed the smells of cheap booze, lousy cigarettes and the energy of youth. It rested next to an icy spring in the mountains while Ronda and I stretched out on in the sun drinking beer and reading The Screwtape Letters. At home it sometimes lay folded at the foot of my bed.

My quilt did grow up when I did though. Later it was the table for many a picnic with my children. A tent when it rained. Once Jayna and I slept outside in November. I read to her under that quilt with a flashlight until we fell asleep. When I woke up an hour or two later, it had snowed. The quilt was dusted with big white flakes, but we were warm.

The quilt went to Salisbury with me and the kids late one July for a camping trip. We piled into a pup tent under the quilt and called my mother on my cell phone marveling at the technology that would allow us to talk to her in Michigan while we were camping on the edge of a marsh in Massachusetts.

In recent years the quilt has traveled with me in case I ever want to stop somewhere. It has rested in fields of flowers. On rocks by the sea. Deep in the forest. On sandy beaches. It has served as a coat. Doubled as a towel. And it has more than once caught my tears.

Right now it is in my closet downstairs. I need to get it restored and/or washed because it is starting to fall apart. I can't stand that it is falling apart. I am weird about my things. I never let anything important go even if I stop taking care of it as I should.

Razor's Edge

"At different stages in our lives, the signs of love may vary: dependence, attraction, contentment, worry, loyalty, grief, but at heart the source is always the same. Human beings have the rare capacity to connect with each other, against all odds."

This quote is from Michael Dorris, an author best known for "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water" and " The Broken Cord." Of course, you must pay no attention to the fact that he committed suicide.

It is a curious thing to me that good writers and poets are so often victims of mental illness and depression. They end up taking their own lives when their passion runs cold. It seems that sanity dances the razor's edge wherever one finds a burning source of brilliance.

I have been reading a biography of Anne Sexton. (I recently reread some of her poetry in Transformations and her life in letters which was a book of her correspondence published after her she took her own life.)

She had many writing relationships--male and female. Words and the exchange of words were her saving grace for years. She was self-taught for the most part, but won a Radcliffe scholarship for women re-entering the workplace/literary world after being mothers/housewives. Her favorite mode of operation was to apprentice herself to someone until she learned everything they knew. She loved the messy work of words and spent hours debating with friends and colleagues over the exact placement of a phrase. She went far before she finally crashed and burned.

She said it best in "Her Kind."

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

Imps in Eager Caucus

I can wade Grief
Whole Pools of it
I'm used to that
But the least push of Joy
Breaks up my feet
And I tip -- drunken

Emily Dickinson

Something about her words hits me like a shot of whiskey. The toss. The swallow. The bite. The warmth. Who can not love this?

"A wounded deer leaps the highest."

"God gave a Loaf to every Bird, but just a Crumb to Me."

"Imps in eager Caucus raffle for my soul."

I suppose I am most drawn to what she didn't say. And, I have always wondered if she reconciled her restless struggle in a way that gave her peace.

The Pilgrim Soul in You

When You are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

W.B. Yeats

Soul of a Shoplifter

"There once was a girl from Nantucket..."

There are those who get paid to write poetry, and those who should get paid to NOT write poetry. I fall into the latter category. You can thank me in advance for not filling this space with the versification of my feckless soul.

I have always liked to say that I have the soul of a shoplifter. And, then someone asked me "WHY do you say that you have the soul of a shoplifter?"

I had to stop and think. It might be because it seems a little sassy. Or it might be that I enjoy the way that it sounds like it has been lifted from a corny movie script:

"Of all the shipyards in all the world, she hadda walk into mine. She was tougher than a leather grommet and laced with twice as much trouble. She stacked the deck faster than a twelve-fingered card shark and possessed the soul of a shoplifter. I knew it. God knew it. All the angels in heaven knew it. But, even then I wanted to believe she could be redeemed."

The serious answer, however, fits within the framework of Aristotle's friendship definitions. Relationships formed solely for pleasure or utility allow you to slip little pieces of a person into your pocket--like a shoplifter thieving his way through the department store of life. We take what we want to get what we need and leave the rest. I have always been good at those types of relationships. And, I think that is what I really mean when I say I have such a soul.

The Kesters

The Kester family lived on a dirt farm just off Millingtown Road in the southeast corner of our rural county. There were dozens of them, not dozens of farms, dozens of Kesters, or that was the way that it seemed when our school bus rumbled up to their stop each morning.

There they would be lined up in varying shapes and sizes by their rusted mailbox. None of them really looked alike, but they did share one thing in common. The rich aroma of cow manure, unbathed bodies, cigarette smoke, and dandruff flakes seeped out of their collective pores. There was another smell too. It was only later that I learned to identify that other smell as poverty. Deep, irrevocable, heartbreaking poverty.

They jostled and poked one another as the bus lumbered to a halt. Sometimes their laughter would reach through an open window. But, a quiet seemed to settle over them as the big mechanical arm swung the doors open. There was always a slight hesitation before the bravest one put their foot on the step. I say brave because as the first Kester head became visible over the seat something evil happened on that bus. Evil in a way that only others kids can be evil.

Instead of making room for the rough and tumble family, people slid to the end of their seats. People stared right through the Kesters as if they didn't exist when they tried to sit down. The Kesters sat with each other if there was an empty seat, but often they were left to walk up and down the aisle even after the bus started to move again. It must have been a living hell for them.

This blackballing of the Kesters went on for months. And, then one day, I watched Ginny and her sisters get on the bus. Their eyes said that they were tired of being pushed around. Their familiar smell was now mixed with something I had never sensed before. The heady scent of defiance rose to meet my nostrils that morning. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine them rising up like The Who singing:

We're Not Gonna Take It
no, We Ain't Gonna Take It
we're Not Gonna Take It Anymore

I was fascinated in that sick sort of that way we crane our necks to look at a rollover on the highway. I watched as first one and then another advanced down the aisle. Each planted her feet and took hold of a seat back. As the bus lurched forward, they shoved their hips sideways into the person who was denying them entrance. The plan was brilliant. People toppled in surprise to the right and the left, and the Kesters sat that day. No one could quite believe what happened, but a shift took place in that moment. And, they sat, as far as I can remember, every morning for the rest of the year.

Part of me cheered, and part of me was frightened by the overthrowing of accepted social order. You might ask me, where were you in all of this? Was I defending the rights of the downtrodden? Was I advocating for the disadvantaged?

No. I sat in the seat furthest back with my friend, Brenda. On the left. By the emergency door. It was seldom that the Kesters ventured that far back. I wish I could say that I would have shown kindness, but I know that on the days that I was alone in that seat, I prayed that none of them would sit with me. I never spoke up. I looked away like everyone else when it was too awkward to watch. Don't even ask me, " WWJD?"

Anyway, I dreamed about them a while ago. The Kesters. As they were then, not as the adults I am sure they have become. I dreamed that I went to their house and walked in through the unlocked door. No one was home, but I saw stacks and stacks of clean laundry piled everywhere. Folded. Meticulous. Fresh. Pristine.

I marveled as one does in a dream at the randomness of finding such order in a place where I expected chaos. I admired the mother who kept track of so many kids. I looked at a table set with paper plates and plastic forks. The pot in the middle held some sort of soup. There was a piano in the corner with a Thompson music book opened to Minuet in Somethingerother. No carpet covered the floor, but the wide boards were swept clean. When I heard them arriving home, I tried to get out of the house as fast as I could. In my haste to get out the backdoor before they came in the front, I knocked over all the laundry. I wept to think that their laundry was soiled by my careless exit.

Who knows what dreams mean. What parts of the past will come boiling to the surface while we sleep. And why.

Maybe it is good for me to remember how I learned the lessons I hold dear today. Maybe it is good for me to remember when I was afraid to be different even if "being different" only meant being kind to someone who the rest of the world deemed unworthy.

Maybe I just ate too much chocolate before I fell asleep, but it gave me something to think about.

Therapy

To all the therapists I've loved before who now belong on someone else's couch...

Several years ago I found myself in the unfortunate position of searching for a therapist. I made a list of questions, set up appointments and conducted interviews like nobody's business. Because if there is any business that needs interviewing, it is nobody's.

The first one was a man. He listened carefully to my questions and my basic information. When I told him I had a compulsion to eat glass and dance on lawn mower blades, he asked, "Do you think that is harmful?"

Well, yeah. Next.

The second was a woman. Older. Gray hair. Experience with life and lawnmowers. Yet, we stumbled around like dentures in the dark. At the end of our hour she sort of looked at me and said,

" What shall we do? How shall we leave this?"

It reminded me of a date gone wrong. Very wrong.

I answered, "I will call you."

And we both knew that I wouldn't be calling her. Ever.

You never want to hear your therapist say:

10. I would like to share my personal experiences with you. Get comfortable.
9. It took me a long time to save box tops for this license.
8. Could we cut this short today? I want to watch General Hospital.
7. Do you ever dream about me?
6. May I borrow your cell phone? I am over my minutes this month.
5. Here's a little haiku I wrote...
4. I am feeling a bit depressed this week. Do you think we could talk about me?
3. Luke, I am your father.
2. Does this hangnail look infected?
1. Buddy me. My screen name is ShrinkWrapHottie.

Mrs.Betty HoityToity From The Past

Once in a while something you thought you left far behind snakes forward from between the pages of the past to grab you around the ankle. This morning it reached me through the telephone line.

I was still sitting in my home office finishing a few calls and reviewing a proposal. I hadn't slept well last night, so I felt like I was moving through molasses when the phone rang.

"Hello there, this is Betty HoityToityFromthePast."

The cultured New England voice hadn't changed a bit in the years since I stood in her laundry room pressing the fine boxer shorts and blouses that clothed the backs and bottoms of the HoityToityFromthePast household members.

Yes, I pressed boxer shorts in a past life. And they all wore blouses. Even Mr. HoityToityFromthePast. His "blouses" required careful attention because they were to be BOX folded and put in his drawers NOT simply arranged on a hanger.

Those had been transitional years for me. Years where my childhood faith collided so hard at the intersection of reality that I left the career I had shared with my husband for more than a decade. Years where I avoided even the slightest shadow of the tabernacle. And years where my prayers, if they could be called prayers, were more like whispers of rage and disappointment spit through clenched teeth in the direction of heaven.

They were also years that took me back to school. They were years pieced together with odd jobs that allowed me time to study, write and still spend time with my children. Years that I pressed boxers and blouses, polished silver trophies for a local polo Princess, cooked for folks richer than I, raked leaves, baked bread, spoon fed Jell-o to a cranky invalid who spit it back in my face, changed the diapers of the elderly and held the hand of a dying woman.

It wasn't living. It was existing and a means to an end.

There was a bit of desperation in Betty HoityToityFromthePast's voice this morning. Her regular girl was going to be gone for two weeks and she wondered if I could "press" in her absence. In that moment I realized that she never heard me when I told her my path for the future. A career path that I have followed with a fair degree of success. She didn't listen when I told her why I propped my text books on the window sill next to the ironing board so that I could study while I worked.

Her smile did hold a mild curiosity when she walked me around her estate in early spring to show me the sprightly yellow daffodils pushing their funny little faces toward the sun, and I launched into a full recital of "I wandered lonely as a cloud..."

She never really saw who I was though or who I hoped to become. And that remains a shame. I didn't plan on "pressing" and "piecing" forever.

This week I gave testimony in front of a governmental sub-committee assigned to review the plight of the underprivileged across the state. As a community leader I spoke directly and from my heart. Everyone laughed where they were supposed to laugh. And they all took notes. Mostly they looked me right in the eye. I liked that. They saw me. They heard me.

"As I followed the trajectory of my life..."

(You will forgive me for not mentioning the pressing/polishing/baking/raking years, but I knew they were there. They helped shape the heart that speaks with such passion today.)

I did learn some lessons from Betty HoityToityFromthePast.

1. Always write thank you notes. (E-mail doesn't count. This was a pet peeve of Mrs. HoityToityFromthePast's. One she would speak on for a full fifteen minutes if given the opportunity.)
2. Never look through people who work for you. Really see them.
3. Listen.
4. Listen.
5. When you have enough money, you can have your boxer shorts starched and folded.

I told Betty HoityToityFromthePast that I had finished school and was happily launched into a satisfying career. My pressing schedule didn't allow time for "pressing." I thanked her for thinking of me, but I took her number just in case I decide to offer my daughter a chance to build the character that can only come from ironing the boxer shorts and pressing the blouses of the rich and famous.