Squeal

My daughter called me a pig last night.

But it's not as bad as it sounds.  

She unrolled the print of Michael Sowa's "Kholer's Pig" she'd found tucked away in a dark basement corner.
 

"Mom, you are this pig," she said.  "You've been pushed off the dock.  But you're going to land in that water and it's going to be really refreshing." 

She's right.  A lake lush with trees, reeds and lily pads.  Humidity softening the horizon.  It's gotta feel great in the water.  That pig's no fool.


Leave it God to use my love of whimsy, plus my tendency to procrastinate (never did get around to framing the print for my office), plus my teenage daughter's wise insight to speak a recurring theme to me.

Freedom.

I wrote about freedom here, but I'm feeling it more and more these days.  Maybe it's the early spring with new flowers emerging by the minute and grass so green it makes the heart ache.  Windows open, verdant evening air, coats left in closets.  The sheer pleasantness of it all.

Hope springs.  Possibilities sprout.  Enthusiasm flourishes.

My husband and I have mostly tried to buffer our kids from the recent painful events.  We've shared a few details with them, but not a lot.  They know we've been disappointed and sad, and they too have experienced transition pains.  But we've tried to shelter them from the brunt of it all.  We don't need them to carry the load for us, or even with us. 

Still, they're rooting for me.  Sweet, kind, encouraging comments.     Like calling me a pig.


It's true.  I am that pig.  I recognize the initial shock, fear, panic of the jump.  The increasing exuberance of flying through the air, weightless, worry-free for the moment.  The anticipation of entering the water, slightly anxious while also hoping to make a big glorious splash.  

Yes, the water is indeed refreshing.

And if you listen closely, you might just hear me suppressing a squeal.

Relinquish

One of my favorite things about yoga is this: If you hold a pose long enough, particularly a stretching pose, at some point your muscles let go and sink deeper into the pose. You think you are stretching your muscles as deeply as possible, but suddenly there's a release and you're able to stretch even further and more comfortably.  Every time this happens to me, I marvel at how tightly my muscles had been clenched without me realizing it and how much more natural the pose feels after they do relax.

Unfortunately, this is not what I look like doing yoga.

For this reason, my favorite yoga style holds stretching poses long enough for the release to occur.  (I'm not so much a fan of holding strength poses for long, but that's a different blog entry.) Sometimes the instructor encourages us to use sinking breathing, to make our exhales last longer than the inhales. It's amazingly effective in helping those muscles let go.

THIS is what I look like doing yoga.

Lately, it seems God's been holding me in a few teeth-gritting "yoga poses."  I haven't understood why entirely.  I was already flexible (I thought), fairly strong (I thought), somewhat peaceful (I thought).  But after holding these poses for several months now, I'm finally beginning to feel my jaw relax a bit and my muscles loosen.  I'm beginning to give in to the pose.  To relinquish...  


This Lenten season is a time of relinquishment for me.  Releasing...

• Reputation – I want to be well-respected and appreciated.  I hate being misunderstood and misrepresented.  (Don't we all?)  But Christ was misunderstood, misrepresented, marginalized.  Should I be different?  I relinquish my reputation.
• Control  –  Though I've never considered myself a control freak (perhaps I'm fooling myself?), I usually make every effort to ensure results turn out the way I think they should.  But hard work and (what I think are) good intentions can only go so far.  I cannot control others and their actions and should not try to do so.  I take my hands off the reins.
• Consequences  –  Consequences themselves are a grace. (Got that from my spiritual director.) Just as negative consequences eventually brought the prodigal son to his knees and to his true home, consequences do the same for us.  If I were to dictate consequences –  my own or others' – they would not be grace.  I choose to let God choose the outcomes.
• The future  –  My dreams, ambitions, hopes, expectations, speculations.  I thought I had found a vehicle to realize many of these, but that was not the case.  I am free from those false hopes.  Possibly, I am also becoming more free from needing to prove myself to myself and to others.  I do not stop walking forward, but I surrender the lead.
• Ministry  –  My usefulness to God, my purpose, my outlet.  So often when I've left one type of ministry, another one awaited. Now I scan the horizon and see only dim, indiscernible shapes. God will make them clearer in time, but until then He'll let me squirm a bit in my "uselessness" as I learn to relax into his unconditional love.

In his book Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, Richard Foster writes:

The Prayer of Relinquishment is a bona fide letting go, but it is a release with hope.  We have no fatalist resignation.  We are buoyed up by a confident trust in the character of God.  Even when all we see are the tangled threads on the backside of life’s tapestry, we know that God is good and is out to do us good always.  That gives us hope to believe that we are the winners, regardless of what we are being called upon to relinquish.  God is inviting us deeper in and higher up.  There is training in righteousness, transforming power, new joys, deeper intimacy. (p. 52)

*****************************

A creative and artistic friend of mine, who writes a really lovely blog recently hosted a group of moms and daughters for a self-portrait-collage-making session using gel medium transfer.  (I feel a tiny bit impressed with myself for that previous sentence!)  For her own portrait, she used a photograph of herself with her arms out, palms up, and from the photo, she collaged butterflies releasing, flying upward and outward.  

I've thought often about her artwork since then.  Is it possible that as I relinquish my tight grip and release these things, they then become things of beauty and freedom? 

I release with hope.

For the Coming Day

Evening Prayer

Lord, You have always given 

bread for the coming day; 

and though I am poor,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always given

strength for the coming day;

and though I am poor,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always given

peace for the coming day

and though of anxious heart,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always kept

me safe in trials;

and now, tried as I am,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always marked

the road for the coming day;

and though it may be hidden,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always lightened

this darkness fo mine;

and though the night is here,

today I believe.

Lord, You have always spoken

when time was ripe;

and though you be silent now,

today I believe.

From the Northumbria Community and the Celtic Daily Prayer book

In the Morning I Will Sing

It's a drippy overcast November day, the kind of weather I love... on occasion.  Makes we want to drink tea and munch on toast with Nutella, to wander out in a pea coat, scarf and no umbrella, to scribble furiously in my journal.  Reminds me of my semester in Oxford, the richness and adventure of that time.  Perhaps that's why this weather feels adventurous to me.  My soul is a little bit excited on days like this.


Yesterday was a day of festering conflicts and messy but effective resolutions.  All conflicts are not resolved; the big one continues as complicated and muddled as ever.  But some small nagging conflicts moved forward yesterday.  Hopefully the progress was real.  


Yesterday was a day to take down the autumn decorations I love so much and replace them with Christmas decor.  The tree is up - thank goodness.  This year, Rough and Tumble helped me assemble our imitation tree and line it with white lights.  That's my least favorite part.  He loved it.  I loved his company.


Piles of fall items await their long months of storage.  Boxes of Christmas items await placement.  And I, the placer and store-er of these garnishes, sit blogging and listening to David Gray.

Usually, I listen to Christmas music while decorating for Christmas.  But in the absence of a working CD player and with my iPod not yet loaded with seasonal tunes, I'm left with the usual iPod shuffle, which has lead me to this song (lyrics below the video link):

Flame Turns Blue
David Gray


I went looking for someone I left behind
Yeah but no-one just a stranger did I find
I never noticed hadn't seen it as it grew
The void between us where the flame turns blue


Different places yeah but they all look the same
Dreams of faces in the streets devoured by names
I'm in collision with every stone I ever threw
And blind ambition where the flame turns blue


Words dismantled hey and all the books unbound
Conversations though we utter not a sound
I heard a rumour don't know if it's true
That you'd meet me where the flame turns blue


So I venture underneath the leaden sky
See the freight train with its one fierce eye
And then I listen as it tears the night in two 
And a whistle and the flame turns blue


In the morning I will sing
In the morning I will sing


Through the lemon trees the diamonds of light
Break in splinters on the pages where I write
That if I lost you I don't know what I'd do
Burn forever where the flame tuns blue
Yeah if I lost you I don't know what I'd do
Burn forever where the flame turns blue


In the morning I will sing....


I love David Gray and actually got to see him in concert this summer.  The man can belt out an emotion-laden wail better than anyone in the business.  And he writes such deeply insightful lyrics and evocative melodies.


"I'm in collision with every stone I ever threw and blind ambition where the flame turns blue."  "Words dismantled and all the books unbound."

What caught my attention in this song today, what made me abandon my decorating to replay the song and sit to listen, was the repeated phrase, "In the morning I will sing."


Possibly it's the weather.  Maybe it's that combined with the relief of resolved conflicts.  Perhaps it's the six nights straight of good sleep after a rest-less month.  But my heart feels a bit lighter, a tiny bit hopeful.    


I've experienced this lightness in brief snatches during the past week, times of relief, stretches of deep peace and trust in God.  They don't last yet.  I know that too.  Behind them follow deep dips of discouragement and doubt and hurt.  But just as I do not question the dips, I'm trying not to question the lightness.  Yes, it seems incongruous, but it's no less real.  And when it comes, it's a welcome respite from the times of pain and struggle.  I will accept the lightness for the gift it is.


And I will pray with the strength this lightness brings.  


*****************
Quoted in Celtic Daily Prayer 
I see your hands,
not white and manicured, 
but scarred and scratched and competent,
reach out --
not always to remove the weight I carry,
but to shift its balance, ease it,
make it bearable.
Lord, if this is where You want me,
I'm content.
No, not quite true.  I wish it were.
All I can say, in honesty, is this:
If this is where I'm meant to be,
I'll stay.  And try.
Just let me feel Your hands.
And, Lord, for all who hurt today --
hurt more than me --
I ask for strength and that flicker of light,
the warmth, that says You're there.
-- Eddie Askew, Many Voices, One Voice

"For you are with me...."

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies."
*******************

Okay, I know it's corny.  But I love owls and I love watching the contentment with which the screech owl seems to enjoy the petting.  Picturing this video helped me fall asleep on a recent restless evening. 

Fire

.

"God is with us."

This is how a friend signed her email today.  The email was about the difficult situation I've been blogging about, the knothole I've been squeezing through.  


I think I wanted her to say, "God is with you."  To reassure me and me alone He is with me, the wronged party, and not with those who have done the wronging.  But that's not true.  He loves them too.  Sometimes I pray that they will experience that.  


And He is indeed with me.  In the midst of all the turmoil, I have felt his presence most in the quirky little messages he seems to be sending my way.  Perhaps these messages don't mean anything and I'm just choosing to imbue meaning into silly things like Sesame Street books and Facebook reposts.  Or maybe He knows I need the encouragement and direction and He's sending them to me in ways he knows I will best receive them.  Things like mustachioed robins. Encouraging emails from friends speak volumes to me.  I print them out and reread them periodically.  But funny little coincidences really catch my attention too, especially when I'm on the lookout for them as I am now.  Perhaps they are always there, things God scatters about with a chuckle, but I do not notice them because I am not looking.  


On Tuesday evening a significant event occurred in relation to The Situation.  I was not there, but apparently it did not go well.  That is no surprise.  As my husband recapped the event, I felt a whole new round of anger and despair.  The sort of despair that makes you wonder how you will make it through the next five minutes much less the rest of the week.  The sort of despair that keeps you awake, heart pounding, even when you're taking ibuprofen p.m. to sleep.  It is a horrible feeling to be misunderstood and misrepresented. 


Wednesday morning, when I logged onto Facebook, I found posted this article about a massive fire at St. Malo Retreat Center near Allenspark, Colorado.  A million dollars worth of damage. 


Last March, I spent a week at St. Malo as a part of a spiritual formation institute in which I'm participating.  It's a stunningly beautiful place.  The main lodge has a huge fireplace in the center surrounded by lots of comfy chairs -- places to cozy up and chat with God, others.  The big wall of windows looks out toward Colorado mountains.  Majestic.  It's the sort of place you want to sit and linger, savor.  Good things happen there.  

So do fires.  Unexpected destruction.  Despair.


The St. Malo fire feels metaphorical to me, to my situation.  I had hoped to construct a place of retreat and peace, a place where people could meet God and one another, a place where God's majesty would be captivatingly evident.  Not a physical place, mind you, more of an environment.  But I had what I thought was the perfect spot to do it.  


Then it caught fire.  Like the St. Malo fire, a whole series of events combined to create the perfect storm, or rather the perfect burn.  Destruction, massive amounts of it, occurred, are still occurring.  


One looks at the St. Malo destruction and at the estimated rebuild costs and wonders if it's even worth it.  And if it is is worth it, how can it happen?  Where to start?


I have no idea where to go from here.  No clue.  It's as if fog has descended masking the tiny amount of clarity I once had.  Perhaps it's smoke, not fog.


And is it even worth trying to rebuild?


In St. Malo's instance, the answer is absolutely.  I think God is possibly telling me my dreams are also worth rebuilding.  


Maybe I will relax for now.  Let the dust settle.  Let the winter pass.  In the Spring, when new life emerges, maybe I'll have ideas, rebirth, growth.  St. Malo could have used a bit of updating.  The restored version will be better than before.  The surrounding beauty will remain.  I hope this is true for me as well.


Have I mentioned what part of St. Malo's Center did survive?