god's thumbnail

tonight the moon was what my grandmother used to call "god's thumbnail"...i believe astronomists call it a crescent. but it just seemed exactly like god's thumbnail once my grandmother pointed it out, and it's been that ever since.

i like to look at the sky at night. i'm looking for operating instructions, to be honest. sometimes it's very bright...sometimes it's very clear. i can almost always see orion in the late fall and winter, it seems. although i will admit i am so spatially challenged that as we rotate at night, i have a hard time finding him and it makes me shake my head and roll my eyes and laugh because it seems like as he moves in the same direction each night, it shouldn't be so hard to find him...but i admit i often walk inside, shaking my head and laughing and having no idea where the hell he went.

there's a sky i see sometimes...it's dark blue...midnight blue i guess (haha, snort)...but there's enough moon that when the clouds make this cool pattern, it looks like a dark blue tie dye pattern. and it reminds me of my friend jeanni. i think she has a shirt like this, but maybe i just made that up. so either way, it is what i have termed in my mind a "jeanni sky." and three nights ago (hell, i think it was three...it's been a busy week), there was a jeanni sky. and it didn't surprise me. jeanni's had some stuff going on, and i've been thinking about her lots. and i hadn't heard from her that night, so i'd been thinking about her especially because it felt kind of foreboding that i hadn't heard from her..."no news is good news" be damned.

i have since heard from her and it wasn't good news. it wasn't necessarily bad news, although jeanni could probably argue that with me if she had a mind to. and she might have a mind to. but she might also not freaking feel like it. the news was that life will change...and it always does...damn it. but why is it that when life deals you those lessons about change, it's always more than you ever wanted? and it is never the way you would've chosen.

marriage comes to mind at this point. we obviously choose to get married. but even then, it rarely goes the way you would've chosen and it's often more than you ever wanted.

but there's been a lot of change in this new year.

my friend julie is here with her new daughter...she's a week old...in her life as julie's daughter. well, a week and a day. julie's daughter is actually four years old. and she's from india. and she is the most amazing thing to hit my house since my daughter. this little one, who i've been calling ruby-roo, is beautiful and mesmerizing and just a damned good sport all around. no, she doesn't speak english. and no, we don't know her language. but we teach her a few words and she teaches us a few words and we all smile a lot because we are just so darned happy to hang out together. i am very honored that julie brought her here to share with all of us and hope it's been worth her while. (what the hell does worth her while mean? i mean, i know what the phrase means, but is that really how it's written out?...) but i'm not going to share with julie my feelings right now about change being more than we ever wanted or rarely going the way we would've chosen. we'll let her get a little further down the way and see if she notices this on her own...

but for me, right now, as i sit in the middle of these changes this year has brought, to those i love (and god, do i love them), as well as the change it's brought to my own life, i can't help but reflect on the things that stay the same (you totally saw that coming, right?).

love. love stays the same. it changes in our relationships, strengthens, weakens, waxes and wanes...like the moon...but it's always there. sometimes in different people, in different relationships, in ourselves and out. but it's there. we may ache for it in the same relationships, ache for it in ourselves, ache for it in the same ways it used to be there. and the ways will change. but the love will always be there. will always find us.

the older i get (and while i realize i may not be THAT old, i don't think anyone would argue that i'm not THAT young anymore either), the more surprised i am by the places i find love that i never would've thought i'd find it. and i'm even more surprised by how much love i find in me. now maybe that's because i've given up the belief that i am the generator of my life and i've opened myself up to the Love that is the true generator of us all. but even that surprises me. it's an act of faith. and while i've always had an easier time believing in good things (i mean really, santa and the easter bunny have never been a huge stretch for me and i never saw the big deal in my parents being the ones to really do it all...it all still happened and was good in the end...), i've always also believed that if i was good enough, did the right thing, earned it somehow, love would come. but now i know love is always there. always has been. always will be.

it may be a perspective thing. one person's trash is another's treasure type of deal. and i have learned not to push my trash on someone who doesn't want it...and the same goes for my treasure. people like to make these evaluations for themselves. we have to. that's part of the whole deal. but i know that love will always, in the end, find us. just like god's thumbnail found me tonight.

peace

ramble on

so the blogger at triangle nose posted the simon and garfunkel video to slip sliding away. she's so cool, because below the video, she posted the line, "you know the nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away." and that has stuck with me since i read it yesterday. kind of a challenging of that sense of control...the more you think you have it, the more the universe will pull you back to the reality that you don't have it. i mean, i think that's a strange statement in the sense that yes, there are things you are in control of. like...you. and only you. and really, only certain aspects of you, at that. and then there are those times we think we're controlling our lives, but actually, it is someone else and their impact on our lives we are trying to control which is, you guessed it, someone else and not a small aspect of you that you actually have control over. i have been turning that line around in my mind off and on for awhile.

then...i am attending a book club tonight. i've been invited for a number of months, but am finally going to remember to go and make the effort to be there tonight. the book we're reading is the secret life of bees, by sue monk kidd. i think i have lent my copy of it out, so i haven't actually read it...this month...or even this year. i read it a few years ago. and i am not remembering it very well. i vaguely remember the story line...online synopses have helped jog my memory a bit this morning...yes, i am cheating for my book club. i am already a book club failure...ha but i found this little passage today....

"You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart--now, that matters. The whole problem with people is--"

"They don't know what matters and what doesn't," I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.

"I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters" (147).

i had a post i never posted the other day that started with talking about the hiking i did when my kids had their outdoor climbing trip last week. how i had forgotten how you can follow a path when you're hiking, be trucking along, and then all of a sudden, that path stops. and i'm usually pretty focused on helping a little one on the path, so it's always kind of disorienting to me to lose the path or find that a path has ended. like, "huh? where the hell did the path go?" then i have to look around...usually behind me ("yeah, there's the path i was following, i'm not making this shit up"), then around me ("yeah, there were others on the path and they seem a little confused, too...except for that guy over there...why doesn't he look confused?..."), and then start picking out a "do-able" route to the next path i can find. (yes, i am almost always this conscious of things...it annoys me too, so get over it.)

and that's been kind of how life has been lately. i was trucking along at a good pace, feeling confident in the path and my ability to make it, and then all of a freaking sudden, that path disappeared. whoa. (i know, i know...it was hardly even noticeable, right?) well, it was hardly tolerable at times, but i think i've found another path. i have no clue where it goes, but i have faith in a greater power, an infinite good, an ancient wisdom...a collective consciousness...yeah, it's God...feminine and masculine, understood, beyond understanding. i was talking to a friend who studies a lot of buddhism the other day. i was telling him how the masculine pronouns in the bible irked me. you know...the whole perpetuation of patriarchy in christianity. so he started telling me how for something to be, there must first be a space for it to exist in. we were comparing it to breathing...how your lungs expand (or the diaphragm expands them...this isn't biology), creating a vacuum that draws in the air. so he was saying that if God was masculine, the space God came into, fills, exists in was feminine. to which i responded that the universe is the feminine uterus God exists in?!? and he said right!!! i don't know. it was a fun discussion...even if it was the blind leading the blind. :)

so anyway...doubt and misery and anger and resentment have come in and cleared out a path, i suppose. although i don't really want to be on a path created by those things.... maybe they came in and cleared out all those silly notions that i am the most important or that i am in control. and now i can hear the things i need to hear. now i can feel the pull toward what i call my true north. it's always been a very strong pull....in a direction i do not always understand because i am not always consciously choosing it...other than i am choosing to follow the pull. i don't know. hard to explain in words. but so much more natural than the last month...although i suppose that was natural, too. in a painful, uncomfortable way. there are still things i need to do. and i am sure i will get them done when i am ready. i'm on a path again, see...so i can see a little ways ahead of me. ;)

ramble off
peace

simplicity

this is a book written by richard rohr. it is subtitled the freedom of letting go. it was published originally in german, is written by a man anne lamott says "has the best heart in the world," and i bought it last week when i went to hear her speak. there are many things in this book that grab me, touch me, and strike a chord in me. i want to quote some parts of it, knowing it's hard to completely understand a paragraph when taken out of context of the whole work, but still conveying powerful (to me) ideas...

"Despite all our theology, when this sort of question [how we define God] arises the dominant culture normally carries the day. Or rather, what ultimately prevails is the human ego. We always seem to find a way to keep things firmly in our grasp. And so we've created 'God' to go on playing our game: a God who fits into our system. A God who stands outside our system and calls to us is something we can't endure. Thus, for example, we've continually required a God who likes to play war just as much as we do. We've required a domineering God, because we ourselves like to dominate. And since we're so fixated on this, we've almost completely forgotten and ignored what Jesus told us about the nature of God." ( p. 22 )

"Like many other poeple I've continually wondered why Jesus came to us as a man and why he chose twelve men as disciples. I have only my interpretation for this and no proof that it's right. But I think that if Jesus had come as a woman, and had this woman been forgiving and compassionate, and had she taught nonviolence, we wouldn't have experienced that as revelation. 'Oh, well, a typical woman,' we would have said. But the fact that a man in a patriarchal society took on these qualities that we call 'feminine' was a breathrough in revelation. So he spent three years teaching twelve men how to do things differently--and they almost never caught on. And for two thousand years many men in the Church have never caught on, because we men wanted a God of domination. We've needed a God who would allow the Germans to kill the French and the French to kill the English. A feminine God wouldn't have gotten the job done. The Sermon on the Mount was oft neglected. In the men's Church there is little room for turning the other cheek and forgiving one's enemies." ( p. 27 )

"You don't make up your mind to become powerless. If you deliberately set your sights on it, that will only strengthen your own ego. We can't convert ourselves; we get converted. We have to settle in the world in such a way that circumstances, reality, can get at us. If we're all white Anglo-Saxon Catholics with the same education and biases, no one gets converted, and everybody legitimizes everybody else in whatever stage of 'nonconversion' each one is in." ( p. 41 )

"In my opinion there are three primary things that we have to let go of. First is the compulsion to be successful. Second is the compulsion to be right--even, and especially, to be theologically right. That's an ego trip, and because of this need churches have split in half, with both parties prisoners of their own egos. Finally there is the compulsion to be powerful, to have everything under control. I'm convinced that these are the three demons Jesus faced int eh wilderness. And so long as we haven't looked these three demons in the face, we shoudl presume that they're still in charge. The demons have to be called by name, clearly, concretely, and practically, spellingout just how imperious and self-righteous we are. This is the first lesson in the spirituality of subtraction.

That lesson has many social and political implications and leads us to letting go of our political mythologies--for example, that we're the best country in the world, as many Americans believe. Pretty soon we've got to overcome nationalism. We also have to give up the compulsion to possess so many things and to have our own private stock of everything. The fact that not every one of us needs our own auto or washing machines would naturally make a good argument for physical community." ( p. 41-2 )

the thing i like about this book is that i agree with much of what he says, while i also see myself in much of what he says. he emphasizes again and again that the gospels are not about self-control (a masculine ideology) but they are about self-surrender. he says we are all who have gone before us and all who will come behind. it is poetic, but it is also heart-wrenchingly real and feels true my core. not easy...but true. God as an attachment parent. this is what i'm thinking makes sense...

this man also talks about how in worshipping our church, we are worshipping false idols. he says God is all we should worship. he talks about how, as christians, this means we have to accept that there are other ways to God than through christ. that we cannot worship the messenger over the message. i haven't fully grabbed ahold of that one. i sense its truth, but have to spend a little more time with it before i feel like i really understand the implications of that.

but in the meantime, i am inspired by this book to move forward with volunteer efforts before i start the hs volunteer group next school year. and i will keep on meditating...because i DO believe that it is through emptying ourselves that we find what is our basic truth. being active has sure helped that. but writing has, too. everything in balance, i suppose.

a little theology lite this morning...served on a large bed of faith.
peace