Rainbow Boy

I am so grateful that Rock & Sling provided me the space to share some of my thoughts about faith, identity, and family in October. Rainbow Boy has been up on their blog for a couple of weeks, and it is completely by accident that I haven't shared the link here. It took a long time to put into words, and it is still a highly imperfect thing, but I hope it will speak to others.

Messages

On vacation last week.

It was a mini-vacation, tacked on to picking up Middle from camp and taking Oldest to freshman orientation (yes--we are there, and it feels both unreal and part of a natural progression and that is all my heart will let me say about it right now.) And our mini-vacation was a highly imperfect thing for many reasons, but now, a week out, the glowing moments stand out and the less-glowing will hopefully/probably join the canon of remember whens we can mostly laugh about now that they are at a safe distance. Now, a week out, the glowing moments are scattered generously through our trip, and our day in Cuyahoga Valley National Park shines especially bright.

It is right and good, that in a beautiful place set aside for wild and wonder and exploration one will find messages. Subtle, overt, intentional, imagined, serendipitous--there for the receiving. And for answering. We found the first four below. The last was Youngest's answer. May we remember it all.

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"Imprint" at Rock and Sling

It is an honor to have my piece, "Imprint," up on the Rock and Sling blog this week. It pulls together some things I have been mulling over for months (sparked by the baby mouse and its siblings pictured below) and I am so pleased to be able to finally have it out in the world. You can read it here.

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Make it New: See it New

It is an honor to be a guest contributor on the Rock & Sling blog today. And it was good to re-read my own words. I know I am not the only one who carries the weight of current events, personal struggles (those of my loved ones as well as my own,) and what amounts to a daily battle with chaos around on her shoulders. It is only natural that we get tired. Playing with a teleidoscope last December felt like escapism at first, a place for my soul to rest during a busy time. But it became something more, reminding me that transformation is a powerful powerful thing. You can read about it here.

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Yes.

Does it matter, 

the way sunlight pokes through the blinds 

and lands on a vinyl seat at a Chinese buffet 

where you have come to redeem the day? 

Yes.

 Every ounce of effort spent towards good counts. 

Every bit of good you catch coming back counts, too. 

Those fairy tales you loved as a child (still love, it just feels a little different now,) 

that endless Story of good vs. evil? 

You are in the middle of that story, 

finding endless variations on it day by day. 

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"Help us to eliminate our cruelty to these our neighbors"

My friend Carrol shared this prayer from the The Book of Common Prayer on social media last week. I have decided to share it in turn in the form of a postcard to my representatives, along with a personal message to each on the back. Something felt important about doing this by hand, and the repetition of the words and the patterns around them. Lingering on all of it. These are words that need hearing, and attending to.

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Origami

When the news gets to be too much, send paper stars out into the world.

Not that you won’t get back to the news, the opinion columns, the how-to-survive-what’s-next articles. Not that you haven’t been talking about it, educating and comforting your children, ranting to those closest to you. You have vowed not to turn away, to do everything you can to support the people and programs and systems that are at risk.

But you know you have to find a way to live beyond the fear and sadness. The horror at each day’s developments. What do you do with it all? You told your kids the day after the election that you would keep living the way you knew you should live, and fight harder than ever for what you believe is right. But what do you do with this Waiting now, for the days to reveal just how many people have been betrayed, and how much damage will be done?

Start folding stars, for one thing.

At first they were Christmas ornaments for your family. For your children to take with them into adulthood: tokens of your love, a bridge from old home and old life to new. For the one close to you who left all extras behind as she fled a life of abuse in order to build something new and better.

It did not take long for this project to turn into something else, though.

It’s not just the working of your hands, or the bright squares of paper, or the repetitiveness of the task. It is the power to put good out into the world that compels you. To make something beautiful in the face of ugliness, and out of humble things, and with your own hands.

These are your greatest acts of defiance: beauty, kindness, love. They are not the only things, but they are the beginning, and quite likely the end. A promise to yourself and the people around you that you will not stop doing what you know is right.

And you keep folding. Take note, as you memorize the folds. So many fussy little preparatory creases: seven, followed by a cut and an unfolding, and you are holding a pentagon in your hand. Fifteen more folds and un-folds, a little pinching and arranging, and suddenly the paper pinwheels into shape. Five more creases, a tuck—and there. You are holding a star. And that moment where everything shifts into place becomes something you want to repeat, over and over.

There are no shortcuts. You forget once, and do all the preparatory folds with the pattern face side up. You try to force the pinwheel into shape anyway, thinking that maybe the backwards folds weakened the paper enough to make it do what you wished. But no. You have to go back and fold everything the right way. The paper had been weakened, yes, but in preparation for something else.

And this is what sinks deep into every cell of your body: how the folds weaken the paper, how the sheet softens in your hands. How without this weakness there would be no getting to the new shape.

Note how the new thing—this bright and delicate star—is stronger than the original.

Repeat, again and again, folding yourself into the process. Bend yourself over and over, in preparation for what is next. Hone your skills for beauty. Flood the world with stars. 

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"Bowlful of Light" at How to Pack for Church Camp

Summer camp is kind of a magical thing. When I think of how much learning, growing, playing, crying, and stretching I and the people I love have done at various camps through the years it is overwhelming. So I loved finding the online anthology "How to Pack for Church Camp" recently, and I am honored that they have now included my piece, "Bowlful of Light," on their website. There is such a wonderful collection of stories here, touching on what must be millions of raw/odd/beautiful/funny/deep/painful/holy stories that play out at camps every summer. Hope it stirs up something inside of you, too.

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I Will Keep At This

I have been quiet for a long time. Partly because my children are getting older and I want to respect their privacy. Partly because I do not feel comfortable writing what is on my mind about my students—again for their privacy, as well as for my own. Partly because I haven’t figured out an honest and real way to communicate the things pressing on my heart and mind the most. And partly because to some extent I have been avoiding writing about those most pressing things, because the thought of doing it is exhausting and terrifying.

Wednesday night, though, I shared some of my feelings on Facebook following the shooting in Orlando. I have been silent too long. I am re-sharing them here, but not before I tell you how beautiful the responses from many of my friends were. It was overwhelming. We have wonderful people in our lives, and if I had stayed silent I would not have realized how many. My children would not know, either.

The fact is, every time I have chosen to speak up about something important, yes—there were people who stepped away, and yes—it hurt, but yes—there were many who stepped closer. Each time I spoke up I found out I was not alone. And each time I spoke up others found out they were not alone. I will keep at this.

I rarely feel ready to speak about something before the rest of the world is on to a new topic, especially because I am not always convinced adding my voice to the noise will make a difference. This time, though, I have to speak up. It has been brewing for months.

I have prayed, I have signed petitions, I have given money. I have read and read and read to try to understand this from different sides. I will keep doing those things, but I also want my friends to know that as the mother of a gay teen it breaks my heart that he is a particular target for violence. That some people may never be able to see what a gorgeous human being he is simply because he is not straight. That practically every day at school he has heard his peers using words that described aspects of who he is as synonyms for stupid, or perverted, or worse. That he has friends who are terrified to come out because of how their families and communities might respond. That he and his sisters woke up Sunday morning not just to the renewed knowledge that this world is full of violence and hate and horrible loss but also to the knowledge that there are people out there who would kill him if they could, without knowing anything else about him.

I have not yet gotten over the fear of judgment from my friends, especially my fellow Christians. But I love my children more than I fear what anyone else thinks, and to me it is a matter of faith to stand beside my son and support him fully. I pray that enough others are heartbroken by what happened in Orlando—that enough people will allow their hearts to be broken—that they will start listening differently. The most important question I ever asked myself, years before my son came out but still not soon enough, was “What if that were my kid?” I believe it is a question that saves lives.

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Found, 3/16/16

Spending the season of Lent looking for signs of the Divine in the world around me.

The world around me is turning warm, turning green. I am taking notice, and taking pictures. It is beautiful. I considered shifting with the season and documenting all this tender newness--I love the breaking-out of life and color, and I love the hopefulness it brings. But I am going to trust that you are noticing this, too, and loving it, and for now I am going to stay faithful to the things that are spent or waiting. Because they are still there, fading into the background now more than ever. They are easier to miss now more than ever. And maybe because of that they embody a faithfulness that I do not want to turn away from quite yet.

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Found, 3/1/16

Spending the season of Lent looking for signs of the Divine in the world around me.

Something new, made from things found and discarded. A small act of redemption. Very small. And yet I feel compelled to repeat small acts like this over and over, fueled by equal parts rage and hope. To cluster them in bouquets and leave them wherever I can.

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Found, 2/27/16

Spending the season of Lent looking for signs of the Divine in the world around me.

The idea of transformation has been on my mind a lot recently. It has been there in the desire to take forgotten and discarded things and make them into something beautiful, and it has been there also in the attempt to change how I see things, and maybe even how others see things. Recently the more I see of the world around me the more insane it looks. This is my best response to all that. What I am trying to do here--I am going to keep insisting. And so far, the more I look the more incredibly hopeful things I see.

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Found, 2/11/16

The plan is to spend the season of Lent looking for signs of the Divine in the world around me, and to share what I find.

Last week I took part in a 7-day nature photo challenge on Facebook. Not the kind of thing I usually do, especially since it involves tagging others. But the chance to see what I can find in my yard in February--I wanted that.

It turns out my yard is full of things left behind, and yes dead and brown, but also achingly beautiful. A testimony to what was there, and what was sent out into the world. A faithfulness to life.

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New Year's Eve, 2015

We drove home from out of town in the dark last night, but the headlights and streetlights were enough to show us there was ice everywhere. All we had to do was wait for the sun to come out. And today it did, firstborn of everyday miracles that it is, and it turned things silver--trees, power lines, blades of grass. This is the third time in my life I have seen this happen and I plan to carry it with me into the New Year: the memory of things touched, shining, un-captureable, un-keepable. And real. 

Light, 12/24/15:

Today's light: fractured, bent, scattered, dimmed, hidden. Beautiful. 

I keep thinking about this.

Light, 12/20/15:

Today's light: sparks, flashes, warmth. 

Got lost in music, in making things, in the people around me. 

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Light, 12/17/15:

Today's light: magnetic. Reminding me of every time I realized there was nothing 

to do but turn towards whatever light I could see at the moment.

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Thankful, 11/2/15:

For the moments (however brief) I can look at a fallen leaf and see a love note.

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Learning to Speak

1. Yes, I am convinced by now that God speaks—all day, all night—in a stream of beauty and oddities, in kindness, in the words of friends and strangers, and also in pain, in shake-up, in freak occurrence—anything that cracks the veneer we seem so fond of. There was a time I could not pray words, at all. Had nothing but some kind of silent reaching, and looking, and listening, hoped that what I had could be enough. If I could see one beautiful thing, or enter into a phrase of music that reached for heaven, or hear words from a friend or a book that touched the rawest, hurt places, I could take that personally. Maybe God was not silent. Maybe I could listen more carefully. Maybe I could learn better the language I was hearing the most. It is a delicate, difficult language—

2. We visited Oldest at music camp and after four weeks finally got to hear him talk and talk. It was the most comforting wonderful sound. I took pictures of him, even though he did not want me to—couldn't help it. Mostly I took them from the side or behind, but in one picture he is looking straight at me, part pained, part perplexed. Why, Mom? When we hugged him goodbye (two more weeks) and left I was not crushed—only because he told us things. At the parent meeting on the first day of camp, we were given advice: You are not doing anything interesting. There is nothing going on at home, you are not having an amazing vacation without your child. You do not need to encourage homesickness, and your sons and daughters need to focus fully on what they are doing here. I am trying to follow this advice, remembering that “We miss you” gets boring, anyway. I send texts and pictures: oddities, funny happenings, shared memories. Translation: I love you. I am here, always. Recently it dawned on me what language I am speaking.

3. It is a tricky one, this language. Delicate, difficult—language of giraffe’s eye, seed fluff, spark—language of lifted veils and torn curtains. Language of accumulation: snowflake-upon-snowflake, word-upon-word, phrase-upon-phrase. Tear-upon-tear and kindness-upon-kindness. The stars speak it fluently, also the very old, and the very young. And trees, their arms forever lifted. I am only learning, the syllables clumsy on my tongue but also round, smooth. Phrases catch in my head, circle softly, carve deep. I hear them in dreams, they fall at my feet. Listen, and listen. Finally venture a word here and there, cringing at my own accent: beads of honey, hints of salt. 

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Into the Wind and Back

I have been on vacation. Enjoying family and friends, conversation and quiet. Birch and pine trees, and the cry of loons, and camp songs. I reached the top of the climbing wall I wasn’t strong enough for last year. I went out one afternoon, alone, in a kayak—set my eyes on an old friend of a landmark and did not stop paddling until I reached it, promising myself an easy return trip with the wind at my back.

Working the kayak

against waves, against wind,

baptized over and over

with each roll of water—

cross-rhythms of paddle and wave,

cotton-cloud and spray:

this is all,

amen.

The trip back is longer—

I cannot find my rhythm.

Over and over

my thumbs catch

between boat and oar.

Only the splash of water is familiar,

drops gleaming warm

on my arms, my legs.

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