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Friday, March 29, 2013

Goodness. (a teeny, tiny post)

I've clearly dropped the ball. 
maybe my flirtations with true sorrow are confusing in their verbiage.
the boys are playing foosball, my mother calls to say she has to pick up the lamb and will be late for egg dying.
the baby is asleep, arms flung up and out in wild acceptance of her exhaustion.
this is where we are, this Friday of our sorrows.

Monday, March 25, 2013

TumblerBumblerHumbler


Quaker Meeting has begun, no more laughing, no more fun. If you show your teeth or tongue, you'll have to pay a forfeit.

did you chant that as a kid? i did.

but imagine... a guaranteed hour to sit and ponder. . . ponder, worship, pray, rest... breathe. . . what have you. . . really, its that simple.

its Holy Week this week, by the 'Church' calendar and I love it and feel saddened very appropriately by it.  I spend my time thinking of mortality: mine, my parents, my husband's, my children's... doubt, fear, loneliness, the pain of a humangodboychildman, the sadness and loss of betrayal and regret.... over and over again, i rehash the fears...the wonders, the 'how is this possibles?', will we make it? will we really get through?'
and slush, the cheapening metaphor for all of this, the icy wetness that is possibly the worst that winter/spring transition has to offer.  boy, does it settle into your boots and bones all at once...- makes me feel my aching bones as characters within my body... joe, the tibula... aaron the femur and elyse that cocky cockix..coxicxk? coxic? kockix? shoot. coccyx. had to google. damnit.

digression aside, this joining into the Quaker Meeting community has meant that I have had to seek out the rituals of the Larger Church, because there is no ritual but silence in the Meeting.  bibles abound, but there is no one to tell you what to read and when, and I love it and don't, all at once.  I am nothing if not a dutiful student, and I like to be doing my homework, I like to have my assignments completed... in that regard, Holy Week is a clear path to follow. 
but not simple, and dangerous for my spirit, in its turbulence. . . in that it is a way of fasting, facing the fears and doubts, being swamped by them, acknowledging the ultimate solitude within our daily breaths, our deep handholding with hope, sometimes grasping and crying out for to get through it all. . . and there is ash, and foot washing ... humility in the face of enormity, people seeking comfort from each other.   it is dark for me, and I will get through it because I have faith that my cross is being lightened more than I know... all the time.


*edited to add: and she says it better: http://sarahbessey.com/in-which-we-leave-a-little-room/

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Tone

I'm not tone, my muscles are not toned, my ears are not toned, nor tuned. my tunes are not toned... but I do know tone, have used tone to effect and to ill.  . . . and now I feel so much of it is wrongly pitched, I can't seem to escape its grip once heard/read or otherwise imbibed.
I'm talking about all the tone in the writings these days, the facebook posts which scream blame and shame and scorn all over the place, the 'if you really love god, you'll share this blah...' tones... the 'if you ... then... ' .
and I'm just about ready to shut it off over these tones.  you dig?

* there was a break-in at a local church and the man was caught and he was a scumbag and pissed in the font of holy water and they're calling it a hatecrime and the papers say he could be put away for life for 'hatecrime' with intent to poison. evidently his piss could be contagious.
i'm so sad for the world. the priest says his community is 'saddened'... it is sad. it is so sad.
why does a paper call him full of hate and suggest a lifetime in jail? sells more? riles people up to celebrate a jerk in jail forever. forever. ?  but i could get drunk and kill your grandmother and i wouldn't go to jail for life? LIFE?
i don't know man.  some of those church people said they wouldn't pray for him.  that makes me want to cry.

you can bite me over all this negativity, cool?

its snowing here, again... but its too late. the snow has lost its gravity, it does no more than tickle the anxiety centers that live and float around here.  spring has sprung. 

the baby is sick, and needs to be upright in order to sleep. it is daytime now, and right now i have her sleeping buckled in the car seat on the floor in the kitchen and i am typing here. here. where she is not.  thats the mom i am these days.  rocking it.
she can turn over now, did i say that?

trying to talk real to hubsJ is sort of a miss, as I am all disconnected from what is going on outside of the carseat. he does not understand this.

my tone shifts from deeply manipulative and bullying to one of sleepy darkness and exhaustion.  can you hear it?

Monday, March 11, 2013

A four day weekend, snow and whathaveyou...

we're coming out of a long sojourn into whiteness and light. and it was not quite as romantic as it sounds.  .. (and, yes, of course it WAS...visits were had, tv was watched, kids yelled and snuggled and legos were attacked, pokemon were scattered, pancakes were filled with strawberries... )  ...the sun after a two-day snow was miraculous and blinding. and we did have power this time, so at least we were warm and less full of worry.
day light savings... an interesting and romantic term i think.  the baby slept through - i shout 'Beauty'! to the skies with the best of 'em... though now she is congested and mucous-y and quite frustrated with this. . . but she loves flannel and so i douse her with it.   there is a yin and yang within - and without?  the push towards spring and the last gasps of the chill.

this morning i discovered two beagles in the windmill, having sheltered for the night.  who 'discovers' dogs? what a strange find... and i am beloved of beagles, but these ran scattered from me, and i feel bereft that i may not see them again.  how much wonder there is in the world!  really. there is. 
i am starting to dig my lack of connection lately.  i doubt it will last and so it makes it the more precious.

ah, you.  how are you?

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Self-love gone awry...

I'm not being very kind or forgiving to a whole lot of people in this post, much less myself.  there is always work to be done and today i expose how much work i have to do to make myself more proud of who i am and more humble as well...  so there. i am spoiled, almost entirely - spoiled.

we women of good fortune to have so much leisure time :
good lord, these ever-growing circles of glowing... pushing, all circular, all-inclusive. self-congratulating, oh, the virtual love that spreads so heavily on women who seem to have nothing to do but spread it. . . back and forth, back and forth... even the 'honesty' seems coerced and all the left-out bits are where it is really at.
circles as exclusive devices. c.s.lewis says something about that somewhere and its good _and right, because he says it...
are you 'evolved'? are you on a 'journey'? don't you want to make gagging noises in the corner?
argh, the yin and yang of this time in our lives, we women of time and privilege to search. how many strands of white christmas lights have gone to their young deaths because of our need for glitter?

in mothering: self-love expansion, in the five year old, not understanding co-dependency and the years of mothering...and what they have to do with trying to teach a five year old some perspective. damn.
self-love and self-kindness being all that there is, he not seeing a wider world, outside the circles, outside the 'what I have.'... how do you give a kid that? how to expand his circle? make its walls permeable?
and if i, his flawed mother, cannot help the sneering cynicism, when i look at 'their' circles? how do i get beyond myself?

how to get more out of it? how to stretch the self-love until it reaches beyond the here and now, this skin? how to teach kindness as an expansion out of the circle... kindness for oneself as a gift to others as well. not the simple (but valued) kindness to the checkout girl, but the deep abiding ones... kindness in taking care of myself, taking care to impart what is good and fair and important to me, and trying to leave the ugly behind, choosing my left-out bits one at a time, when the times are right.
to leave my co-dependent awarenesses behind and be kind because it feels so good and right and makes my kids feel so good and if i teach them by modeling, how can it go awry? teach them my ugly bits and how to combat them with goodness and the work of my life. . . work, rest, work, rest, circling back, focusing in, out, in... out...
breathing.

maybe i just have to teach them breathing. . .

Friday, March 1, 2013

bits, yo.

was talking about empty bits this week, the spaces we are always trying to fill in a sort of mania of gluttony, whether we identify it like that or not.
some use alcohol, some use textmessaging phonestuff, some go with the sugar or salt of badforyoufoods. . . and so on... ad nauseum.
its Lent, something I almost forgot in my quasi-Quakerness, as they don't follow liturgical lawbooks /'church' calenders...in almost any way. but I like Lent, I like the giving up, the forcing oneself to make a small change and make our gluttony less somehow. the ritual, the cyclical nature of its recurrence. I like the reminder that the Christian mindset and miracle is all about acknowledging the importance of dying. the critically important death. DYING. not pretty, not easy, not dismissable. (and its critically important reversal!, yes!) ...
but I am all consumed with the run around and get it done of this family life and am smacking my head on a recurrent deathlike still moment that keeps happening. Empty bits, small deaths, disappointments... all glomming into dams, ruts, walls.... not easy, not dismissable, not pretty. reasons, reminders of death, endings, the unpredictability of life, the idea that consistency, dependability and all that jazz are just things we fool ourselves into believing in. growth and change are things that stretch us, make us uncomfortable... and they are much more real and helpful and life-charging than the times in between, those rest stops where we can stop and look around. . . so, i suppose they go hand in hand, maybe... the work, the rest, the work, the rest....

there is more here and i am in struggle with it, and so hopeful that i will lean towards growth and change and my empty bits will lead me ever forwards. . .

wmx