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.