Quote of the Day

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." 

~Albert Einstein

Quote of the Day

"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

Snea-kee, Charlie, Snea-kee

Here is a link to the original Charlie the Unicorn.

Who are you?

Do we see ourselves the way others see us? I am startled sometimes at the softer, fuller face that stares back at me from photos. I don't remember when the laugh lines became laugh furrows, or how the weight that I seem to lose 50 pounds at a time (or not at all) always manages to come back...and then some.

"Who gave this strange woman permission to pose as me?," I ask.

I have an unreasonable urge to destroy photos so no one can see. And, then I realize, this is what people see every day. No one else is surprised. Just me.

So, I look closer at the familiar stranger. Those eyes. Not quite blue. Not quite green. If they are, indeed, a window to the soul, they show only a smudged shadow of my devotion and the smallest hint of my despair.

The smile. It still has that crooked quirk that forever stops me from claiming symmetry. My chin is rounder, and my neck has more folds than I think are humanly possible. A crop of white hairs sprout with the tenacity of dandelions at my temples and at the crown of my head.

It is me. And, I wonder, can I be gentle with who I really am?

Safety Belt

So, here is a writing exercise: Remember a photo that means something to you. Describe what is happening in the photo in present tense. Who is in the photo? What is just outside the reach of the camera's lens? What are you thinking? What might the other person be thinking?

"How can this be my baby?" I ask myself.

Jayna is sitting in the drivers' seat of my green Mazda 626. Her hands are resting responsibly at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock on the wheel. The seatbelt harness fits neatly over her shoulder and buckles her safely in place. She is wearing a black knit cap trimmed with bands of red and gray. Her long patchwork skirt is a crazy mismatch of color that reminds me that this flower child of mine has missed her decade by more than 30 years.

It is Easter. We are in the deserted Shaw's parking lot in North Beverly. And, she is practicing her driving skills. Newly turned sixteen, she is eager to learn the rules of the road. We have spent the afternoon in the empty lot working on the fine details of parallel parking, anti-lock brakes, and any other driving exercise I can dream up.

I am so proud and so petrified when I think that she will soon be officially on the road and a little bit farther from the safety of home.

We have stopped the lessons to talk for a while. The keys still hang in the ignition.

It has been several years since she told me, in that lurching way that adolescent girls break free from their mothers, that she wasn't sure she loved me anymore. At the time, it felt like she broke up with me, and I sobbed myself to sleep. In the months and years since then, we have made a new relationship. It is a wary sort of truce, but it is growing into something better.

This afternoon though, it is hard to remember ever being anything but close.

I step out of the car and lean in through the window to take her picture. Her smile is that of a girl well on her way to becoming a woman.

I wonder if I can really let her go. Maybe, just maybe, I think, I can hold onto her a while longer. Then I remember what small freedoms mean to the growth of the soul.

How bad can it be? She already has the keys, and I did teach her to wear a seatbelt.

Upside Down

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, your world seems to be upside down. And, you wonder, will the downside ever be up again?

Safari

The summer before I turned 32 most of what I had known and trusted for a lifetime came tumbling down. With the dissolution of the Kingdom, my faith lost its resting place. And, I was left in the rubble of a doctrine that had dictated so much of who I had become.

For most of the last decade I wandered a lonely wilderness. I called that time in my life a "safari." But, I can see now that it was only the beginning of my soul's long journey to a new Promised Land.

Taming the Tongue

"Death and life are in the power of the tongue..." Proverbs 18:21

Shorthand

Last night after we climbed into bed, Jim rolled over and bumped his backside against mine.

"Butt check," he declared.

I smiled in the dark. It had been so long since I had heard him say those words. When you have been with someone for 23 years, you forget to remember the shorthand you created when love was fresh and young. And, suddenly, I wanted more than anything to pull those lost phrases, one by one, from the shadows of time.

In the early days, "butt check" was used when there had been a slight stand-off between the two of us. It was used when we wanted to connect, but needed to build a bridge between his side of the bed and mine. With a simple "butt check," you could say you were sorry; and, by accepting a "butt check," you could agree to let go and move forward. A "butt check" smoothed the differences; and, it served as a gentle reminder that we were still playing on "the same team."

Some of my other favorites:

Tapping: Three taps meant "I love you." The correct response was four taps: "I love you too." One very long tap with sufficient pressure meant, "I want you NOW." Our own version of Morse code dotted and dashed us through those early years of marriage. 

Nap clothes: These were the clothes we wore on Sunday afternoon after church to unwind. Sometimes we actually slept in our nap clothes. Sometimes we watched football in our nap clothes. And, almost always we ate Italian subs loaded with hot peppers in our nap clothes. My nap clothes for years consisted of an oversized t-shirt with a Big Boy on the front. 

Buggle: The word "buggle" was born one evening after we had both worked long hours. I was exhausted to the point of tears when Jim leaned over me on his hands and knees to tuck me under the shelter of his body. He said, "Snuggle in, little bug." Snuggle became "buggle." And, so it remains a part of our family lexicon. Jayna told me a couple months ago that she didn't realize it was not a real word until she asked her boyfriend to "buggle" her, and he looked confused.

"I'll say! I am going to start a paper route right now!" This line comes from our favorite movie, Pee Wee's Big Adventure. It is used sparingly when one or the other of us is too fired up about something. It brings a sense of reality about what is important. 

"You're livin' in the 80's!" We've found this phrase to be the quickest way to de-escalate an argument. Its origins are traceable to a heated debate Jim and I were having one day when we stopped at a gas station. As I came around one side of the car, and Jim came around the other, I punctuated my point with an emphatic, "Yeah, well you are livin' in the eighties." The person one pump over burst out laughing and so did we. How could we not?

"M-M-Mayville..." When I get too big for my britches, Jim likes to remind me of the first time I navigated a border crossing as a driver going from Michigan over the bridge into Canada. When asked where I lived, I spoke up loud and answered, "U.S." The border guard rolled his eyes and asked again, "Where do you live?" I stammered, "M-M-Mayville." Ever since then, my hometown of "M-M-Mayville" carries the unspoken subtext of "You are not so tough."

Ours has not been a perfect marriage. On the contrary, there have been times when we would have called it quits if we could have afforded to split. We have lived together, and we have lived separate. And, we have grown in so many ways to be where we are today.

Once in a while though, life reaches across the differences to offer a "butt check," and we would be foolish not to accept it.

Vows

When you take wedding vows, you say... "for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." I remember wondering even as I repeated those words what they would mean for us.

As it turned out, they meant everything.

The morning after I turned 25, Jim woke me up to tell me that he was having trouble breathing. We went straight to the emergency room. A series of tests showed that he had congestive heart failure due to a congenital heart defect. His heart was enlarged and there was an aneurism the size of a man's fist in his aortic arch. His open -heart surgery was scheduled before the end of the week.

He did recover, but that process was the turning point. Jim, who had always believed in God, began to prioritize how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. And, he put his foot on a path of service that has taken our family from the heart of the midwest to the mountains of New Hampshire to settle on the coastline of Massachusetts.

"In sickness and in health..." What does it mean for you? For me it means the familiar fear followed by a firm resolve to soldier on; it means the hospital bed intended for one that expands to hold the weight of the whole family; and it means the knowledge that the world changes without your permission.

The Forest Floor

We went lookin' for faith

on the forest floor,
And it showed up everywhere,
In the sun and the water
and the falling leaves,
The falling leaves of time.

My new header reminds me of Neil Young's song, You're My Girl.

By the way, I did not take the photo. I snagged it from the Internet. And, then I spent 48.5 minutes adjusting the title in Photoshop, uploading to Blogger, and tinkering with html. Can you imagine if I had taken the time to create nine different versions with different fonts and Bible verses--just so you could vote? I would have not the time to bake birthday cakes.

P.S. If you look real close, you will see "I love James" in the corner. 

Tiger Eyes

My brother and I used to fight over whose turn it was to lick the S & H Green Stamps my mother collected when she shopped at Musser's Market. The minty green sheets with their bold red lettering were as good as gold to our family when we lived on Goshen Farm.

The goal was to fill all the pages in a booklet with the coveted stamps. The completed booklets could be exchanged for merchandise. And, it was with the help of S & H green stamps that my parents afforded most of our camping equipment: sleeping bags for all of us, a cookstove, and a Coleman lantern.

The sleeping bags were covered in a deep blue cotton and the inside was lined in a golden flannel imprinted with pictures of Canada geese caught in mid-flight and wood ducks nestled in clumps of cattails on a marsh. Our parents zipped their bags together, for reasons we did not yet understand, while my siblings and I were happy to snuggle into the depths of our own warmth. When my sleeping bag's big silver zipper closed me inside for the night, I would feel like the luckiest girl in all of Lancaster county.

Some of my fondest memories growing up were of the camping trips we took as a family. We would load the pop-up camper and head off for a weekend. These times were extra special to us because amid the hustle and bustle of our communal life at Goshen, we were always under the watchful eyes and listening ears of others. To have our parents to ourselves was the biggest treat we knew.

We camped in places that had trails that wound through the woods and along the water. Muddy Run. Nicely's Pond. Susquehanna State Park. Many of my best childhood memories include the heady scent of new pine needles mixed with the sweet decay of old; the sight of sunbeams poked like long, yellow fingers through the leafy forest ceiling; and the mighty voice of the Susquehanna as it tumbled to empty itself in the Chesapeake Bay.

It was my dad who taught us each how to build a strong campfire. The trick, you see, is in learning how to stack your firewood in a loose pyramid over a substantial bed of paper and kindling. You need to leave enough air pockets to let your fire breathe upwards.

Around those tidy campfires, my dad and mom would take turns reading us such stories as Gentle Ben and Little Britches. We would wrap biscuit dough around the ends of long sticks and hold them over the flames until they were toasted to perfection. The doughy goodness topped with melted butter was delicious even when it wasn't completely done.

The green cookstove always sat at the end of the picnic table in our campsite. Its rickety sides protected the burners from the breeze. It was on that stovetop in a large black skillet that our mother made us the pancake men we adored. Their limbs were always fatter than they were intended to be, and their heads disappeared into their shoulders, but we gobbled them up as fast as she could make them.

After the sun set, we learned to play Rook by the light of the Coleman lantern at the picnic table while dozens of brown moths gathered over our heads to beat their protest against the night air. Later inside the camper, we would watch as my father dimmed the lantern until the mantles glowed orange through the inky dark. "Tiger eyes" we called them.

Once the "tiger eyes" burned low and disappeared, I would burrow down in the warm safety of my S & H green stamp sleeping bag to dream of a new day.

Thank you, S & H. And, thank you, Mom and Dad for lasting memories.

Hello, my name is...

The truth is...I have never been very good at remembering names. Recently, it has gotten worse. Almost every day someone will greet me by name, and the keeper of my memory vault, with stubborn defiance, refuses to release their name to my consciousness.

Perhaps, it is a function of age. I am 42 and approaching menopause. Maybe, it is the reality of a head packed too full of junk. As a habitual multi-tasker, I sometimes have to e-mail myself in the middle of the night just to make enough room in my head for sleep.

Whatever it is, I am challenged to pull correct names to my lips. It has gone beyond the point of embarrassment. It would be nearly unethical, and bordering on immoral, of me to continue on without trying to increase my capacity for name retention.

One article I read years ago suggested that when you select a word to associate with a person's face, you are more apt to remember their name. Armed with this nifty piece of advice, I headed out to a meeting of the PTO at Jayna's school. I was new to the whole PTO thing, and I wanted to make sure that I remembered everyone's name.

This is what happened. I moved through the room-- confident that my strategy would be the turning point in my history of "name-forgetting." I met a woman; let's call her "Molly," who was an artist. Her work was on display in a local bagel shop. I pictured the bagels perched on her face like a pair of eyeglasses. Molly Bagels. This was a piece of cake. (or a piece of bagel)

It was nearly a month later when I ran into "Molly" again. We both smiled in recognition. And, my mind went completely blank. All I could remember was "bagel." And, then I remembered the other details, but I couldn't pull up her name to save my life.

This tip-of-tongue phenomenon has plagued me for as long as I can remember. I am excellent about details; however, the name escapes me 9 times out of 10. And, I have decided to do something about it. Again.

This time I started by trying to better understand metacognition, or the knowledge of my own thoughts and the factors that influence my thinking. One theory suggests that all those little details, such as "bagels," are stored in the frontal lobe. One has to be certain that these reminders are robust enough to correctly retrieve the word you need from where it is stored deeper in the cerebral cortex. The stronger the triggers, the more likely you are to recall the correct name.

Here are a few other things I am doing to flex my metacognitive muscles:

1. I tell myself that I CAN remember names. This doesn't allow me to be lazy about it.
2. When someone introduces themselves, I stop. Pay attention. Too often I am busy thinking about what I going to say rather than really hearing the name.
3. I repeat the name.
4. I ask about the spelling. "Is that Ann with an E?"
5. I look for a chance to introduce the person by name to someone else.

I probably won't try to think of bagels on someone's face again.

Romans 7:15

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not, but what I hate I do."

A Question of Blog Etiquette

I do have an invisible StatCounter on my site. Because I do, I know that there are multiple visitors to my blog who never leave a comment. Their visits are logged about the same time each day. If I had to guess, I would say that a stop over to Divagation is part of a somewhat daily routine. I get that.

I have my own routine. In the morning I grab a cup of coffee and head to the computer. After I check e-mail, I read the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston.com, and our local paper. Lest anyone think I spend all morning reading online news, please note that I am skimming headlines/articles and reading Op-Ed pieces. It takes half an hour. Tops.

Then if I have time, there are a half dozen or so blogs that I check up on--all for different reasons.

Some blogs touch my heart with the honesty of life shared. Some blogs inform me.  Some blogs humor me. 

And, there are a couple of blogs I continue to follow with a sick sort of dedication because I can't believe that anyone actually lives the way they portray themselves through photos, spiritual insights, and stories. Maybe part of me hopes that perfection like that does really exist, while the other more cynical part of me knows it does not--and those authors are full of shit no matter how hard they try to package it as godly.  

In all my blog travels, I leave comments as seldom as some of my most regular blog readers. It is not that I am not interested; it is just that I don't like to leave my electronic footprints all over the world wide web. 

I have been wondering though, what is the etiquette for removing a comment from your blog? It is true; we are all masters of our own cyber kingdoms. We control who may enter, and who may post a comment on our entries. However, in three years of blogging, I can remember only once that I deleted a comment left on my blog. It was a link for some online business startup. It didn't have anything to do with my post, so I removed it.

And, I must ask, if you don't want someone to leave you a comment, wouldn't it be better to have a "friends only" or approved setting? Or, if you know the person who has commented, mightn't  you at least stir yourself to offer the courtesy notification that "No offense or anything, but I don't want your kind to be muddying up the sanctity of my blog? And, P.S. Maybe you would like to be a real Christian like me."

Fat chance.

0's in a Trillion

One trillion still sounds like one of those words we made up as kids to brag about how much stronger our dad was than everyone else or how much smarter we were than our classmates.  

Trillion. Zillion. Kajillion. Infinity. We didn't know exactly what those numbers were, but we did know that they were impressive in size and indisputable in proportion. We tossed them around with all the authority of an 8 year old and dared anyone to defy us.

Today, "trillion" with all the attending O's is not made up. It is a number used to calculate our hulking national debt--11 trillion dollars.  It is very real. And, I will admit, I have never really wrapped my head around just how many O's there are in that number.

The answer: In the U.S. and Scientific Community there are 12 O's in a trillion. 1,000,000,000,000.

In the rest of the world there are 18 O's in a trillion. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

I haven't made a career as a financial advisor or an investment banker. I don't claim to know much about anything, but does anyone else see a problem with this kind of math?

Birdie, Rest a Little Longer

I remember my Nana repeating Tennyson's Cradle Song from Sea Dreams...

What does little birdie say
In her nest at peep of day?

"Let me fly," says little birdie,
"Mother, let me fly away."

"Birdie, rest a little longer,
Till the little wings are stronger,"

So she rests a little longer,
Then she flies away...

She would finish by saying, "Julie dear, rest a little longer, till your wings are a little stronger, and then you too may fly away." It has been many years since my wings grew strong enough to carry me out of the nest, but I have never forgotten her words.

My friend Karen reminded me of this today with a post she wrote about her own little birdie who is winging her way to the east coast this week.

Maybe I am cheating by blog pimping, but it is worth a read. She says things so well.

"Fly, little girl with the grumpy face, my bald little baby who came into this world with one eye stuck shut, a startled yell your only concession to being severed from me. Go away from me, now, stern little unsmiling baby with the big hairy ears and unbelievably beautiful face. Your long arms reaching out to stop the swing. You fussed night and day until you could crawl, so why should surprise me that you leave me now? "(read more ...)

Good Mystery Gone Bad

Why is it a bitter disappointment when good mystery writers try to pen a romance novel with the name Sunday in the title? Blech! I had a similar feeling when Mary Higgins Clark wrote My Gal Sunday.  Blech! I don't recommend it even if it sports a snazzy blue "adult bestseller" sticker on the cover. Its absurdity promises only to make you gag. And, it will cure you of being a romantic forever. It wouldn't surprise me if it gets made into a movie though.

The "Rush" ans are Coming

This man is frightening. I do wish he would do something about those awful ties and his putrid politics. That such hate and disregard for mankind exists in one human being is beyond me.

Growing up, I always wished that our family was Republican because we wanted to hang onto our amassed millions. Instead our family politics ran down the rigid backbone of the moral majority. 

It wasn't until I was much older that I thought to ask, "Who made you my moral majority anyway?" I don't remember casting a vote.

Then, more than a decade ago, my adult self chose a different party than the one handed to me by my parents. And, every time Rush opens his mouth, I know I made the right choice.

Talk show hosts and commentators on both the right and the left go too far. They have to. It is how ratings are built. They say the things that offend people to the core. But, there is always the danger of going too far. Just ask Howard Stern. Imus. Jimmy the Greek.

Rush mocking the condition of Michael J. Fox. Rush encouraging a parody of Obama to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon." Rush saying he hopes Obama fails. (later amended to say "I hope his policies fail.") These are just a few highlights of a career littered with bitterness and pockmarked with pain.

How far is too far? And, when will we say ENOUGH of your silly ties?

Facebook stares back...

My children think I am the biggest dork in the world for having a Facebook (FB) account. And, I might agree with them. It all began when my sister posted the pictures of our visit home last summer on her FB account; and, I created my own account so I could access the photos.

Within in hours of landing in the Facebook world, two dozen folks from my Kingdom past had "friend requested" me. I declined no one. Although, I must admit, it was strange to see the daily (and sometimes hourly) status updates of people with whom there had been little or no contact for years.

"So-and-so is fixin' to take a nap." OR, "Whosit just finished a cup 'o joe."

Then some of my colleagues joined Facebook. Against my better judgment, I accepted their invitations. I am not sure I ever wanted to know that "Whatsername" had a tattoo. THERE.

Something about too much information all the way around made me feel compromised, and I made a graceful exit. Well, it might not have been that graceful. I just deleted the FB account with a defiant push of a button.

Months later, when Ronda and I were doing a search for someone, I reactivated the account to follow a lead. In her cozy living room, we spent a January afternoon crouched over our laptop screens creeping through Facebook and "googling" like madwomen. People searches sure have changed since the days when she had to call every "Wright" in the D.C. area phone book to find the person who might know something about someone.

With my FB account back up and running, more friend requests rolled in. My own "mumma" is on Facebook. She POKED me last month. It cracked me up to read her status update, "Paulette just finished practicing some hymn variations on the piano." Love, love, love her.

I will confess that I have directed people in my "real world" to join my LinkedIn network if they ask to keep in touch with me. Somehow mixing the unpredictable land of social networking, full of Superpokes and cow flinging, with my professional standing doesn't sit right with me.

And, there is another reason. Although I avoid joining FB causes on either side of the aisle, there are many of my FB friends who are members of causes that lean a bit more to the right than I do. This makes me nervous. (as stated in a post that I did pull down out of respect to my more conservative husband)

And then there are the gifts connected to causes...

"Would you put this dust bunny in your dust bunny garden and send me one back? Together we can stamp out leprosy."

At first blush, you might ask, what is the harm in participating? No one wants anyone to suffer from leprosy; and dust bunnies are cute. However, if you choose to accept the innocuous dust bunny, you will find that you are agreeing to terms of service that require a morning sacrifice, your first born, and access to all the friends in your network.

FB applications are invasive by design. The first thing they do is load your entire address book and ask you if you want to invite anyone else to join. Once you have established your network, FB bleeds through the cyber layers to present you with a list of "people you might know." And, the truth is...you do know them. FB morphs you through six degrees of separation faster than you can say, "Bob's your uncle."

The straw that broke my FB back came this morning when I signed on to discover that I was now friends with "Christian Freedom." I scratched my FB head and tried hard to remember when I had accepted this request. Upon investigation, I discovered that "Christian" was married to my cousin, Karen.

D'oh. Jim Jacobson, Karen's husband, my former Sunday School teacher, and originator of the friend request in question, had changed his name to Christian Freedom, AFTER I had accepted his invitation. Call me a curmudgeon, but I was not (I am not) happy about this. Isn't "bait and switch" illegal?

Beware when you stare into Facebook, for when you stare into Facebook, it stares back at you. And, it WILL get your stuff when you least expect it.

Splinters of Self

It is difficult to take a picture of one's self. There are those who seem to do it with the greatest of ease. I am not one of them. Have I mentioned that I love Jayna?

What's On Your Bookshelf

I have noticed recently that people are fond of participating in Book Meme thingy-bobs. I too participated, but refrained from posting my results. Of 100 books on one list, I had read 71. That number should really be higher than 71 because technically the Chronicles of Narnia are more than one book. Most of the titles that I checked off are ones that I read before I turned 25.

The exercise made me want to start my own book list--What's On Your Bookshelf? This would be a list of books that you have read in the past three months. My list would look something like this.

1. Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres. A raw memoir of a girl who grew up in a whacky world of fundamentalism gone awry.
2. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, essays by David Sederis.
3. Best Friends by Martha Moody
4. Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman
5. When Katie Wakes by Connie May Fowler. Another autobiography.
6. The Book of Jeremiah
7. Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell

These are just books that I have read recently that I can REMEMBER. I have been known to read a book and promptly forget the main character's name and everything else about it.

One of my favorite books of all time is, Surprise Party by William Katz. As books go, I think it is fairly obscure, but it twists and somersaults its way to the best "who-dun-it" endings that I can recall. ("Recall" being the operative word.)

I liked it so much when I first read it that I bought a copy and sent it to my dearest friend, Ronda. It was before Amazon.com. I had to actually order it over the counter at Walden Books.

Amazon link to Surprise Party by William Katz

Leave and Cleave

I suppose I married far too young. Nothing could make this any clearer than when I look at my own daughter who is just two months shy of her twentieth birthday and the same age I was when I said "I do" back in 1986.

What was I thinking? What were my parents thinking? Does it matter now what any of us were thinking? Jim and I were in love. Our hearts were full of youthful passions, ideals and dreams for the future when we stood together that day under the warm smile of the Michigan sun promising each other forever in front of my father the minister and a crowd of 300 witnesses.

I've always said that we fought as hard as we loved during those first years together. Our personalities clashed daily. I remember he once told me that I made him crave four-letter words more than anyone else in the world. And, I believe it. I could be difficult when my ideals squared off with reality...and lost.

With maturity's hard-won hindsight, I can see now that we were both going through the process of "leaving and cleaving." I have heard younger souls romanticize the Biblical admonition to "leave and cleave." The truth is...leaving your youthful ideals can be painful; and, the process of blending two strong wills is not the stuff of fairy tales.

As we made it through those first few years, our hearts did grow together. We learned what was important, and what to let go. We worked together to achieve some basic goals: college--for me; a new car--a Chevy Celebrity; a house--we signed papers right after I turned 21; and children--Jayna was born right before I turned 23; and, Jared was born four and a half years later.

Since that time, the trajectory of our lives has twined us through things we never knew we would have to face. Things that left us far apart, and things that brought us back together when we least expected it. Up out of the rubble has grown a fierce mutual respect. And, for me, that is love.

Last week I had my annual physical. As part of routine screening, my nurse practitioner asked, "How are things with you and Jim?"

My answer might have been more candid than she expected, but it was the truth.

"We are partners in this business of life."

And, I realized that was the truth. Does my heart skip a beat when he walks into the room? Not really. Do I sometimes look at him and feel overwhelmed with the dearness of this man I call friend? Absolutely.

Last night we went out for a Valentine's Day dinner at Denny's. Why Denny's you might ask? One of our first dates was a breakfast supper. I think a stray bit of my former idealism hoped to grab a meaningful memory from our shared past.

As we sat across from each other in the booth, no giddiness crackled through the air. Instead, the space between us was filled with the companionship of 23 years; and, our easy conversation was punctuated with stretches of comfortable silence.

When the waiter came over to the table, I ordered breakfast-- two eggs over-easy, hash browns and pancakes.

He ordered...a hamburger, medium-rare, with onion rings.

My Valentine's idealism bristled for only a moment...this was supposed to be a breakfast supper. And, then I smiled.

Leaving and cleaving, as it turns out, is the process of a lifetime.

In which the truth is revealed...

Haiku2 for daughterofdivagation
seek a merciful restoration of a buzz word. bite the lessons.
Created by Grahame

Swish you were here

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,

blue skies from pain.

Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?

A smile from a veil?

Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? 

Hot ashes for trees?

Hot air for a cool breeze?

Cold comfort for change?

And did you exchange a walk on part in the war 

for a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,

Running over the same old ground. 

What have you found? The same old fears.

Wish you were here.

Lyrics: Pink Floyd (photo courtesy of J. J. LaFontaine)

What's in your toolbox?

A few years ago I had the good fortune to meet with a therapist who fit my need on every level. I like to say she helped me finish growing up. My diagnosis was PTSD. My treatment was EMDR, a form of cognitive therapy. It involved a little tapping, a little talking, a lot of silence, and even more prayer.

One of the most valuable things she did during my time with her was to help me pack my "toolbox." I don't think she called it a toolbox because that would have just been too much of a buzz word. But, the lessons I learned about myself in that little basement office gave me tools that I still use today.

She took one terrible, soul-crushing incident and helped me see that it wasn't the whole of me. With her help, I stepped back far enough to see that the black tangle of that incident was just a corner in the great, rich tapestry of my life.

And, I learned...

1. You can contain any situation or emotion. You don't have to dump out all your dirty laundry at once. It is possible to treat one piece at a time. Sometimes an issue is delicate and needs extra stain stick or special care. Other situations are more durable and can be washed with like colors.

2. When something happens, ask yourself, what is the truth? The truth might be that someone else messed up. And, the truth might be that you messed up. Accepting the truth either way really does set you free.

3. You can heal from the inside out. Just as your body heals the bruises that we can see, it also holds the knowledge to heal the bruises on your soul. (for those of you who have faith, you understand what this means)

4. You can recognize what parts of you are reacting in a situation. Not as though you are Sybil or anything, but we have our child selves, our rebel selves, our good selves, our caretaker selves, our spiritual selves etc. and each plays a part in how we deal with life. When we recognize the self that is calling out, we are much better equipped for dealing with a situation.

Be Quiet in the Kingdom

The old upright piano lived in the "den." The den was not much more than a glorified closet tucked behind louvered doors, but we still called it the "den." It was where I had my desk, my craft table, and a built-in bookcase.

The piano stood against the back wall. Its thick varnish was blackened and cracked with years of Old English polish, and the ivory keys had faded to pale yellow. The piano had come to our house on Davis Lake Road after being stored in the church basement. We had it tuned, and I promptly signed up for piano lessons...again.

Our daughter, Jayna, loved to climb up on the spindled stool, and plink the keys. Even at two and a half she had an ear for making a melody. She would pick the keys out one by one instead of the crash, bang, boom that you might expect from one so young.

One day I saw her perched on the edge of the stool in front of the old piano.

Plink, plink, plunk went the notes. Plinkety-plink, plank, plunk. I stopped to listen. Her little body was bent into the keyboard and the strap of her pink and white Osh Kosh jumper fell over her left shoulder as she concentrated. She was singing as she played:

"Be quiet in the Kingdom, be quiet in the Kingdom...beeeee quiiiiiiiiet in the Kinnnngdom..."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but she sang it again and again.

Later, when I asked her about the song, she answered with all the wisdom of her two and a half years, "It spoils it if you talk about it too much."

Ten years after having left the "Kingdom," I have to agree. It does spoil it if you talk about it too much. White garments and stains alike, it was what it was. It is what it is. It was not all bad; it was not all good. But, it is the melody that shaped more than half my life. I give it that respect and move on.

Plinkety-plink. Be quiet in the Kingdom.

Featherweight

Do you remember Telephone, the game that you used to play in grade-school? The one where you whisper something in someone's ear; and, they whisper it to the next, and so on?

You might start with something like, "The bus will be late because the driver forgot his hat."

And, by the time it wends its way to the end, it sounds more like, "The mouse will inflate because the liar brought his cat."

The internet is much like a big game of Telephone. Versions of the same story get told and retold. Urban legends become gospel. And, truth is up for grabs.

This morning I remembered a story that I once read about gossip. I didn't recall the details, but I remembered that it involved feathers. So, I "googled" feathers + gossip.

You would not believe how many versions of the story I found. Depending on who told it, it was a man who gossiped...or a woman...or both. It was the Rabbi, or the priest or the pastor who told the gossiper to go buy a goose, or chicken, or a duck at the market. The feathers from said fowl were to be plucked and dropped on the way back. Or they were to be plucked and placed on the doorstep of every villager. Or, in some cases, the trip to the market was absent completely, and the feathers were already stuffed in a pillow ready to be flung from the belfry out onto the merry little breezes.

The story varied with each telling, but every single account required that the gossiper go back and collect those feathers. Words once spoken (or written) can never be taken back any more than one can gather those wayward feathers.

"...and the law of kindness is on her tongue." Proverbs 31:26

I remember reading the Proverbs Worthy Woman chapter when I was a young wife and mother. Back then I liked the idea of a wheeling, dealing woman who purchased land, laughed at the winter, and clothed her children in scarlet. What a strong role-model was she.

Now, I long only for her "law of kindness" to be on my tongue.

My own word feathers have traveled to the ends of the earth. I will never be able to take them back. And, for that I am so very sorry.

Who knew that a feather could weigh so much?

Yirat Shamayim

Let me preface this post by stating: I haven't gone to any breakup/breakdown/breakthrough/break-a-leg meetings or weekends. I haven't been talking to anyone. I haven't read any new spiritual help books. I am not dying and trying to make peace with my Maker.

That being said, my soul has been busy stirring from the molasses that has held it captive for more years than any soul should spend trapped in molasses. It is as if a spiritual antennae has been tuned to a special frequency just for me. And, I am paying attention. There have been no revelations; just odds and ends that fire random jolts of hope through the halls of my dusty heart.

One random bit paraphrased from "Are you Afraid of your Soul?" by Simon Jacobson:

The Hebrew words commonly mistranslated as "fear of God," are Yirat Shamayim which really mean 'awe of heaven.' What a difference there is between those two translations. To fear God weakens the spirit. Awe strengthens it. To fear God demoralizes the soul. Awe uplifts it. To fear God squashes joy. Awe calls joy forth. Yirat Shamayim (awe of God) acknowledges the distance between man and his Creator and calls us upward to greater things.

And, then there are the two sermons that have most stuck with me in the past decade. Both were simple in content, but they inspired lasting Yirat Shamayim.

The first was delivered by my own dear husband, Jim. The text was from the Old Testament. He brought out the illustration that God doesn't stand at the intersection of His "Thou Shalt Nots" and our free will with a baseball bat. The lines that He draws for us are not intended to be a challenge. God never says: Here is the line. I dare you to cross it. Instead he says, "My Child, here is the line. I have drawn it because I have seen the heartache that comes to those who cross it. I want to spare you that pain. Please don't...just don't. "

The second was of a similar theme brought to our little congregation by a guest speaker more than six years after my heart had responded to that first message. The lesson was basic. God knows WHAT we do. But, God also knows WHY we do it. He knows why we cry. He knows why we are empty. He knows why we sin. He knows the hurts that drive us away from him instead of to him. And, God cares about the "why" far more than he cares about the "what."

Are you one with your soul?

I have been in a relationship the same person for 42 years, 3 months, and 2 days. You might say that we have grown up together. Myself and I took our first steps at the exact same moment. We learned to talk the same way. We both wore french braids and saddle shoes. We both gave our hearts to Jesus. We went to the same schools. We kissed Rick Matthews when we were 12. We had the same parents. We wept with conviction at the Summer Convention altar call. We married the same dear man with porcupine quill hair. We laughed at Pee Wee's Big Adventure. We adored hot fudge cakes at Big Boy. We both liked movies with a twist at the end. And, we always read the dictionary before we fell asleep. We were truly soul mates, myself and I.

A sobering thing happened though. As close as we once were, I became unfaithful to myself. I cheated on myself in ways I never thought possible. I disregarded my inner voice. I hardened my heart. I walked away from the core of who I was. And, it has been years since I have sat in peace with myself.

When I think about it, Myself always tried harder than I ever did to keep us together. Myself was good at reinventing us in an attempt to keep me interested, but it never lasted long, because the truth was...I hated Myself.

Each time I caught sight of Myself in the mirror, I would remind that innocent reflection through clenched teeth: "I hate you!" And, I think I really did.

I am fairly certain that one cannot divorce one's self. So, I am seeking a year of reconciliation.

The Hebrew word "raham" means grace. It is not just any grace though. It is a word that means "a merciful and compassionate restoration of a broken relationship." I have wondered recently if the relationship that gets most broken in life is the one we have with ourselves. There is no relationship on earth more important than the one that is kept with the soul for when it is broken, all else fails. Faith, hope, love. And, the greatest of these is love.

Love for yourself is impossible with a splintered soul. No matter how far you run, the relationship that needs you the most is the one inside.

My daily prayer is simply, "raham." It is for me, and it is for anyone else who seeks a merciful and compassionate restoration of a relationship with themselves.

Heeding Direction

I have always prided myself on having a good sense of direction. My mother tells me that I get that from the Street side of the family. My grandfather, David, had an internal compass that rarely steered him wrong.

The truth is, I don't always know exactly where I am, but I can usually find my way from point A to point B and beyond with a fair degree of confidence that I will end up where I hoped to be. Most of the time, I feel superior to the road map.

A few years ago, I came back into NYC through the Holland Tunnel rather late in the evening. From there it was just a hop skip and a jump over the river and through the hoods to Brooklyn where I was staying. It didn't concern me that I went over the Manhattan Bridge rather than the Williamsburg Bridge. To my logical mind, it seemed like I should be able to cut to the left until I reconnected. I thought it might even be a clever shortcut.

This sense of optimism stayed with me as I traveled deeper into the urban midnight. A left turn. A right turn. A pause to let nightclub revelers drunken with the fever of "closing time" cross in front of me. Onward.

It wasn't until I realized that I was the only one on the road who wasn't driving a tricked out Cadillac, that I began to feel uneasy. My heart began to thud in answer to the bass boom of the supersonic stereo systems competing around me. I jumped with each flash of golden hubcap that caught across my windshield. I didn't need a road sign to tell me that I, and my rented white Oldsmobile with Massachusetts plates, needed to turn around. Immediately.

I zig-zagged back through the neighborhoods, back over the river, and back to connect with the Williamsburg Bridge as I should have done in the first place. My well-intentioned "shortcut" took 2.5 hours to correct.

Even more years ago, when I was still living in New Hampshire, I ventured one day from the cozy nest where I lived at the foot of Mount Monadnock to the big city of Manchester for some shopping. I can't remember what I needed or why I went, but any day that I left the mountainside was special.

Maybe I was giddy with the sense of independence that came from being on the roam. Maybe it was simply a moment of inattention, but when I arrived at the junction of several highways, I missed a road sign and ended up heading north on the Everett Turnpike. A toll road. And, I needed to be going south.

Now, that might not seem like a big deal to most people, but at that point in my life when money was scarce, the dollar I paid to go the wrong direction, and the dollar that I paid to turn around seemed a bitter price. I hadn't watched for the signs, and it cost me.

I remember at the time thinking that there was a lesson to be learned. What really is the price of taking the wrong road?

Sometimes we think we know a quicker way, and we end up where we don't belong. In relationships that should never be. And, far from where we know we are safe. We pay a toll for the privilege of traveling the wrong road, and we pay again when we want to turn around and say we made a mistake. Sometimes, if we are lucky, we can get back to where we started without any real harm. We are wiser for the journey although we have wasted enormous amounts of time and energy. Other times, we are not so lucky and end up bruised in a corner choking on the taste of our own blood.

In life a great sense of direction is not always enough. A map exists because someone has already been there. Done that. The tollgates, the bridges to nowhere, the one-way streets, and the dead ends have been clearly marked. The question is, will we read that map and heed direction, or will we head off on our own to pay the price again and again?

The G_d You Don't Believe In

This story touched my heart:

There once was a famous 18th century Chassidic master, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, who was well known for his empathy and non-judgmental character. One Rosh Hashanah he invited his neighbor to come with him to synagogue.

The neighbor declined, saying, "Rebbe, I’m an atheist, I don’t believe in G-d. It would be hypocritical of me to step foot in a synagogue."

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak smiled and replied, "The G-d that you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in either."

And, neither do I.

'Tis a Word Affliction

I have found that lately when I sit at the keyboard, my fingers do a little dance that goes something like this:

Plunk, plunk, plunk, stutter, stop. Plunk, stop. Plunk, backspace, delete...stutter..plunk...plunk.

These faltering keystrokes lurch their way across the blank screen to create a literary flea market all abuzz and abrim with $5 bargain sentences and $1 words. I think I keep hoping I will find something of value hidden behind the squiggles and between the lines of that glorious mess.

Alas. Writer's block has afflicted me for far too long. So, I am setting forth a task to challenge myself-six stories in six weeks.