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 |  Just play: don't look at your hands! |
What a dumb title for a person who never got a single star  on her piano lessons!Daily practice is the thing though: the practice of noticing as well as of writing.  However, I'd much rather play duets than solos, so hop right in! You can do the melody or the base part, I don't care.  Just play along--we'll make up the tune as we go. I'll try to write regularly and deliberately. Sometimes I will do it poorly, tritely, stiltedly, obscurely. I will try to persevere regardless. It seems to be where my heart wants to go, and that means to me that God wants me there too. See you tomorrow. ![Merit Badge in Journaling
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| I've been playing around with templates for my blogspot.com blog, and, I must admit, having fun. So far I haven't put any content in it that isn't in here. I don't have time for that much creativity. I still haven't figure out how to collect images from here and there, not having a right click button on my mouse. Besides, how do you find pictures that don't belong to someone else? I saw some listing on this site to find images, but the link no longer connected or the site was gone. Can't remember exactly. I was hunting for a nice little groundhog picture, and settled on a widget of a hedgehog, but I couldn't get it in here. It was animated. Didn't we used to be able to use animated images, or do we still and I just didn't find the right place? Anyway, please come visit me at http://oldcactuswren.blogspot.com/ so that the dot for where you live will show up on my map. Then someday maybe I can figure out how to put a map here too. That is one of the things I really enjoy about WDC, that we live all over the world, come from all different backgrounds and cultures, but share the love of words. Thanks! |
| I've had a variety of odd topics go through my head today but no time to elaborate on any of them yet. I did get them jotted down though. When I was grocery shopping for green onions and black beans to make some more couscous salad to take to a nurse friend whose father just died, I noticed something odd in the bakery. In fact, I asked the baker behind the counter about it. There were lots of Valentine choices for sale already: cookies, cakes, heart shaped doughnuts. But not a single Ground Hog Day cookie to be had!  She stared, and finally laughed, but I'm not sure she realized I was making a joke. Can you believe there's a holiday we haven't commercialized yet? I see great possibilities here, although Hallmark is probably already in the market. But cookies, cakes, tiny lights on strings, groundhog costumes, special issue celebratory champagne for the days he doesn't see his shadow.... Several groceries were enticing super bowl shoppers with specials on Coca-Cola and Pepsi. If you bought three 12-can packages of Coke for $12, you could have two more for free. Or, if you bought just two packs of Pepsi for the same price, you could have three more packs free!  What a deal! I think they're both trying to convince us that a 12 pack is no longer regularly under the old $3 top price. It's bad enough to have gas go up, but please, not my Diet Coke!  On my way home, there was a pickup truck ahead of me chock full of unsplit wood, of which there is an ample supply after our big windstorm. A flurry of traffic went by as we sat at the stop sign, long enough for me to estimate the fore-mentioned tree was about thirty-five years old. Think of all the shade it's given, the birds it's been home for, and all the good warm heat someone will have. That's one more thing we forget to give thanks for: trees. Have a good weekend, and I hope you don't see your shadow. |
| A new friend-- who did not know I love, and write, poetry-- lent me a book by Maren C. Tirabassi called The Depth of Wells. She knew I work for hospice, and she thought I'd find some something of worth in these poems. I am amazed at how many of these poems are so very like my own experiences. One is of a woman who relates having been accidentally shot by her husband, with no lingering damage. “I promised I would never tell,” she says. I've heard similar confessions. Another is of a man dying in a hospital bed in his own living room, surrounded by loved ones on Thanksgiving who were watching the football game. I've urged families to keep their dying in their midst. The poem I mentioned the other day is of an old woman at a senior center, putting jigsaw puzzles together and trying to make sense of her own life. “Finally she remembers to start with the borders.” Ever since I read that, I’ve been trying to understand what the borders of my life might be. Here are some of the things that came to mind. (Apologies to Kay, who is through with being introspective.) What are my boundaries, places I would not go outside of, inner rules I would not overstep? Do I always stay within my comfort zone? Or do I push at the growing edge of me, both frightened and attracted by that which I feel most passionate about? Something I learned from a high school photography class, so many years and so much technology ago, was how to vignette a picture. You could either cut a hole in a piece of cardboard with, say, pinking shears, and shoot the picture through it; or you could actually apply Vaseline to the edges of the lens to soften and blur the parts of the picture that weren’t necessary. Those ideas have always been for me metaphors for how I sometimes look at life, choosing to see only what I want. How do we focus in on our lives, in reflection; or does it matter if our view is ten degrees off center? Don’t we frame and reframe ourselves, as co-creators of our lives? The mood I’ve been in too much lately, the worm-eating, poor-me mode, feels like a retreat from my growing edge, much like the brain atrophies within the skull. Now that’s a terrible picture, isn’t it? This is a better one: sometimes when we are in pain, we double up into as small a ball as possible, holding ourselves and literally rocking. When we are comforted enough, we can return to our full stature, resume our activities, prepare again to grow when the time is right. I do believe that we have to grow, in wisdom or in spirit or love, or we retreat. We can’t hold still for long. The question is, do we have the courage stretch out toward that growing edge again? Growth is painful. But failure to grow is death. When I work with the dying, I hope to help them think about their lives: to validate themselves, to teach their families what they've learned, maybe to try to make amends. There isn't much they can do to change the course of their lives, but sometimes they can change the ending, the meaning they leave for others. We, in the mainstream of our lives, can do even more by pulling back and taking a look at where we're headed. We still have time, maybe, to change our course, to head it back in the right direction.   This is a Lenten theme, and Lent begins next week! Blessings to all of you, and thanks for putting up with my solemn side tonight. |
I don't want to write about the children's grief group tonight-- too much sadness. Instead, I'll share a relaxing exercise I found by writing a poem for a Monday challenge from an offsite blog. Her photos and interviews are wonderful, and I enjoyed writing to her prompt. Floating, Not Adrift Thoughts slip-slap gently against my mind, moving me ever so slightly into this idea and that… Relishing the sunny day, I lie idle in the shallows, ripples lip-lapping my hollow sides, prow nosed into sandy shore, at most a tenuous hold on terra firma. No rope ties me fast, no anchor weighs me down. Breathing in the moment, letting it pass, I am borne on the water as on Spirit, held lightly, always free to go. http://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/2008/01/21/invitation-to-poetry-tell-us-what-youv... |
| Here's a lesson from Zachary Graham Howard, tired after a long moving day-- from hospital to home. He's relaxing in Auntie Elizabeth's lap. Now, everybody, open your mouth wide, close your eyes and y-a-w-n. Click on the picture to see it full sized. |
| I thought I had just enough time to take Seamus for a walk before sunset, and he was very pleased with the idea. Heading out the door leash in hand, I had to pull him to a halt to come back and answer the phone. It was the leader of the writing group I go to sometimes, letting me know that, due to the snow, we wouldn’t be meeting tomorrow. I told her I’d be busy for the next eight weeks with the children’s grief group on Tuesdays, so I wouldn’t be able to be there for some time. She asked if it was a group for children who have experienced a loss due to death, and I said yes. “Children need something like that for other kinds of losses as well,” she said. Divorce was the first thing to occur to me, but she said more than that. “Children lead such chaotic lives now, they can’t even verbalize what the loss is. It’s stability, trust, being cared for. Too many children don’t have any of that. They may have plenty else, but not those basics, and they act out. Then people say to them,’Why are you acting like that?’ and they don’t know.” It turns out that she’s a retired professor of childhood development. She went on to talk about men who are out of control. “Ever since Mt. St. Helens exploded in 1980,” she said, “the amount of violent behavior from men has gone way up. It’s because they feel helpless to protect their families, and that’s their job. Like drunks, as my mother used to say, they either get angry or they cry like babies. They’ve lost their manhood when they can’t take care of their families.” I said something about personhood, trying to take the gender issue out of it, because I believe we all do react to powerlessness, although maybe not in the same ways. What I was really reacting to, I realized as she brought the conversation to a close, is the idea that men are supposed to take care of their families, men and not women. Then I remembered that she lives in a little town that has a church sponsored university, and most of the inhabitants of the town belong to that church. It has a very patriarchal view of family: the man must be the head. Even though Bill is from a younger generation and a very different religious tradition, he expressed the same feelings the other day, that it was his main duty to protect and take care of his family. I like being taken care of and protected, but I also rail at the idea that it’s a man’s job and God intended it that way. I don’t agree with that; but, weren’t families stronger when more people believed that? What do you think? |
| Here it is, nearly 8:30 on a Sunday evening, and we've just gotten home from a Hawaiian party to say good-bye to our priest and his wife. Bill wants to be together, and the tv is on with a show I like. So how can I possibly sit and write? Just read Special Kay  's blog, and it brought up several topics I'll put on my list to explore at quieter times, which I resolve to make happen soon. I've been thinking about one of the topics a little already. Read a poem by a woman whose name I'll look up and have for you tomorrow. Nearly all the poems in her book were character sketches, and one in particular spoke to me. It was about an old woman who sat in the senior center doing jigsaw puzzles. The staff thought she probably enjoyed all the beautiful pictures of faraway places and wished she were there. Instead, she was thinking about the pieces of her life, how they made up the whole, and how she realized that, to see the picture and help her understanding, she needed to start with the edges. I've been pondering what the edges of our lives are. It's an interesting notion, and it's at the top of my bloglist. Another thing I want to do is make up a character, or several, who operate out of their need for autonomy first and foremost, and see how they interact, what that need in one brings out in the others. Back to today, church went well and so did the party. I made a big couscous salad, a recipe which I hadn't tried before, and people liked it. We have a staff goodbye lunch for Steve tomorrow. There's a hospice field trip planned at the same time, but we've had six inches of snow today with ice on top. I think I'd like to go to the lunch instead. I've missed out on so many staff meetings and relationship building because of my job, and then I feel bad about it. So, tomorrow, I'll go be a part of the staff that I don't feel very connected or important to. I'll do it for me, and because I am fond of the man, even though...even though.... |
| We have now seen a lot more pictures of Zach, looking much more contented and cute. I don't have a picture to post-- can't figure how to get them from their Kodak album to here. But here's the first video his dad made of him, the newest star of YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_QS_JmczGw I wish I had a video camera to take a picture of Bill as he watches Zach. He is entirely taken by every little movement, and it's fun to see. Bill's in the early stages of a full beard which he's growing for his part of the Admiral in H.M.S. Pinafore. The play may not go, due to lack of performers for two crucial roles. Nevertheless, it's not time to cancel and shave yet. I'd be sorry for Bill to have it cancelled, but happy to have the beard gone. Tomorrow is the last Sunday before our priest, Steven, retires, and is also the parish's annual meeting. We'll have a party for him in the afternoon. I'm of two minds about his leaving: sad because he's been a good priest and has steered the church through a difficult time, losing the inevitable members who are fiercely opposed to the ordination of homosexuals, but gaining a good number of people associated with the university and newcomers to the church. My other thought about Steve is that he has always seemed to have a prejudice against me, and I don't know why. There was another deacon when he came here, and her husband was instrumental in his being hired. She was very jealous of my connections, having been ordained a long time before her and well thought of in the community. When she was first ordained, she went to the priest and proposed a different role for the deacons in the liturgy, which he went along with. Even though it affected me too, she never mentioned it to me. She did not like it that I got along with the previous priest, the interim, because she did not. She is a manipulative person, and, I assume, she must have told Steve bad things about me when he first came. Supposedly, he emailed everybody on staff before he arrived here and was very communicative, but I only heard from him once, a long time later. He asked, in that email, how often I would like to preach, and I told him at least once every church season and up to once a month. The interim priest had been encouraging me, and I had felt excited about having an opportunity to learn to preach better. When Steven arrived in town, he said he never got my response. So I told him what I'd said, and he said we'd get together and make up a preaching roster. He never mentioned it again, and when I did, he'd change the subject. I tried several more times, but he always ignored me, wouldn't tell me what he was thinking or why. A friend told me she'd asked him why I didn't ever preach any more, and his answer was, "It isn't going to happen." The fact that he never gave me the time of day about the subject bothers me. He didn't even have the decency to say, "I've talked to so-and-so, and I don't think your preaching is up to par," or anything else. He could have said, "Why don't you write a couple of sermons and let me read them and then decide." He could have said, "I've heard from others that you do a passable job, but I want more than that." He could have said all sorts of things, but just to ignore me was very hurtful. He has also been a very critical person. I have never heard him say I did anything well. Not a single thing. Only criticism. Sure, I make mistakes. So does he. I guess that doesn't matter though. The problem is, I've lost so much self confidence that I'm all but ready to quit. I've lost interest in trying. Kind of like the experiment with the dog who jumps to the other side of the box when he is shocked. After a while, shocked on both sides, he quits jumping. Now, of course, he's leaving, and maybe the assistant will be willing to give me a chance; but I don't think I'm up to it any more. The interest and enthusiasm I once had is dead. I always knew I had a lot to learn, but I had the tiniest spark of feeling that I could learn to preach and do it well. It was exciting, and scary. Now, I'm afraid to offer again; and afraid if I do get the chance, I'll do it badly and not know. I've lost a lot of confidence in myself over the past few years. It's a shame, and largely my own fault, but that's the way it is. As I was driving down the street Friday, I thought about a naggy little verse my mother used to sing-song at me, probably when I was feeling just this way. "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me; think I'll go eat worms." I don't know what effect she wanted it to have, but it made me feel stupid for feeling bad. Not a good result. So, I was driving home feeling stupid, and decided to stop at a friend's house to return a book. I hadn't seen her for months. Everything about her is so perfect. She looks great; her house looks great; she writes and paints and cooks and socializes. The last time I saw her, she invited me for Scrabble. I may have won, but I felt very nervous the whole time. Anyway, I stopped. And had a lovely time sitting in her new room sharing our lives, as we once did when we were neighbors, and also co-workers, in another time and place. The rest of the weekend has been much better.  |
| Here we are, still hovering in the single digits-- temperature, that is. It is "severe clear"-- perfect for flying except it's a week day. Bill has been putting a trouble light under my car every night, with an old blanket over the hood, tucked beneath the wiper blades. It starts right up like a champ. In Jacksonville, FL, yesterday, the temperature was 60 and pregnant until 5:30. After half a day of inadequate labor to dilate, Karen was whisked off to the OR down the hall, and Zachary was born by C-section. He weighs 8 lbs 13 oz, has lots of long black hair, and, with his eyes all scrunched closed, he looks irritated to be out in the cold world. I'm looking forward to more pictures after he's settled in a little and starts to look around. He's quite a boy! |
| I just finished reading The Kite Runner. I've avoided it for a long time, I don't know why. Maybe because I couldn't pronounce the names, didn't know the geography or the culture. I'm so glad my son and daughter-in-law convinced me. The writing is beautiful. I love a good book with interesting characters and plot, but, even more than reading John Grisham, I love a book with words that make my heart expand. Here's a small example that won't give away the plot to anyone: "...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away in the middle of the night." Few authors write words that sing to me like this, expand my world and make me cry. If you have some favorites who can capture images and write their prose with poetry, please tell me. I need more. |
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