Category Archives: Journey

Oct29

Hurricanes, For Real

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Yesterday, after our faith community shared the names and worries and celebrations in their lives, about which we prayed as a congregation, I then closed by delivering a spontaneous closing prayer. Inspired by the impending hurricane, of course.  This was offered at at the church where I conduct my field education in Beverly. It went something like, “God, high winds are coming. We have lifted up to you our hopes and our concerns. And we know that you are the Creator who can calm the waters and create a quiet place in our lives and our hearts, a sanctuary amid the storms. Now we ask you to hold our concerns, the ones we speak aloud and the ones that we share through silence, hold them in your light.”

Today as leaves are torn from their twigs and then branches fly loose, and only tree roots cling tightly, as salty white-capped tides rush up over the causeways, making islands of green-tossed hillocks at the edge of sea and shore, as the world is shaken and blown, I’m inside writing  papers, working on an exam, finishing  deadlines, and hoping we don’t lose power, so I can fit it all in. As if I can outrace, outpace all the storms in my life. Can any of us do so?

Although classes are cancelled and businesses are closed, once the world reopens tomorrow, if enough of it remains in functioning order, we’ll be back on schedule. I won’t be permitted to turn my assignments in late, or say I didn’t have time to read my books. At least that’s how I interpret things … but I did take a break to make tea while there’s still hot water, and put a soup simmering on the stovetop. We have our candles and batteries gathered. Extra water set aside. We’re safe inside. Ready as we can be, I suppose.

So I want to pause a moment, and pay attention to Hurricane Sandy. She’s hitting the Eastern coast of the United States. We have friends and family directly in her path as she comes ashore. And likely our part of the country will experience some of her might and fury. Other parts of the country have felt the edges of her storm, which have created blizzards and snow storms, for instance. Her reach is extensive.

Always, I find comfort in language. This simple stanza by William Carlos Williams certainly speaks to our world’s weary resignation when pummeled one more time.

HURRICANE
by William Carlos Williams

The tree lay down
on the garage roof
and stretched, You
have your heaven,
it said, go to it.

Another blogger named Austen Allen collected some hurricane poetry last year. When I was researching storm poetry, his posting popped up, and I defer to that entry for a nice overview of lyrics about storms. You can find more at poetry.org.

Also, if you want to think more deeply about the words that surround our human responses to loss and disaster, consider visiting Nicole Cooley’s entry at poetry.org about the Poetry of Disaster. She argues that far from being voiceless and speechless at times of crisis, we fill the void of loss with language. We shape it. We reflect on it. We try to make meaning, to fit it into verse, so that is knowable. So we can  scale it down to a proportion we can actually understand: a size that fits in your mouth, or can be swallowed by your eyes, that can spoken and read and shared.

Sometimes the storms that lash out at us, that suddenly topple our lives, uproot our realities, or pick us up and carry us off in new directions, aren’t literal weather patterns. Maybe they’re emotional or mental assaults. Maybe their financial crises. Lost jobs or traumatized relationships. Sudden catastrophic changes. Violence or illness. Events we can’t imagine, over which we have no control, that leave us standing in a torn, flooded and sundered landscape. Where nothing is familiar anymore. All is changed and damaged. Yet we are left to navigate, to rebuild, to name and claim it all over again.

Meanwhile, consider this poet’s viewpoint about what is familiar and beautiful to you, and how it can suddenly become your undoing.

Problems with Hurricanes
by Victor Hernández Cruz

A campesino looked at the air
And told me:
With hurricanes it’s not the wind
or the noise or the water.
I’ll tell you he said:
it’s the mangoes, avocados
Green plantains and bananas
flying into town like projectiles.

How would your family
feel if they had to tell
The generations that you
got killed by a flying
Banana.

Death by drowning has honor
If the wind picked you up
and slammed you
Against a mountain boulder
This would not carry shame
But
to suffer a mango smashing
Your skull
or a plantain hitting your
Temple at 70 miles per hour
is the ultimate disgrace.

The campesino takes off his hat—
As a sign of respect
toward the fury of the wind
And says:
Don’t worry about the noise
Don’t worry about the water
Don’t worry about the wind—
If you are going out
beware of mangoes
And all such beautiful
sweet things.

Oct27

Boots, Birds and Good-Byes

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On a difficult pair of days, I wore a pair of high heeled boots, hid behind a costume, became vulnerable, wept, prayed, painted my nails, felt incredibly lonely, connected with special people, remembered those who are gone, and was visited by a winged messenger.

There has been a long silence from my end. Again. It’s been a few weeks of logistics such as deadlines, papers due, mid-term exams, and also … yes, pushing through difficult milestones such as the birthday of a departed friend and the anniversary of the fifth year since Jessie died.

Once upon a time, I wrote every day of Jessie’s treatment, and continued every day after she went on ahead of us, recounting the journey of the living. Now it takes me a week to reflect, in writing, about such moments.

Two days come close together last week. Both are difficult. One is the birthday of my friend Rebecca, who died of breast cancer a few years ago, after a long and gracious life, making a difference in the world of so many people, but especially her family, and most of all her two beloved children Ben and Anna.

Her headstone is only a few yards from Jessie’s, beneath a row of maples, at the top of the hill in the cemetery. Rebecca knew their spots would be close together. We visited those cemetery locations together. Stood while Rebecca was alive under the long shadows of old maples on young green grass, listened to songbirds, felt the stir of the wind, heard  its murmur through the leaves. Made memories up there. Had conversations we often couldn’t share with anyone else, about worries and wishes, realities and dreams, sorrows and hopes. Rebecca lived with a persistent form of breast cancer, and navigated a fine balance of hope in the possibility of a cure or new treatment, the wish for longevity and survival, edged with awareness of a threatening and mortal condition. Rebecca talked about a visit she had made to the cemetery with her family; wanting them to have a living experience with her there, as well as a place to visit in later days. We talked about where she and Jessie would both be (Jessie had already died, but we hadn’t interred her ashes yet), and how they’d be close to each other in the spaces between the maples, and imagined how maybe they’d find each other in the place beyond this one. We believed that Rebecca and Jessie would continue to visit those of us that they left behind, back here on earth.

The very next day marked the morning, five years ago, when my daughter Jessie died. Every year our family approaches this milestone differently. It is a markedly individual and separate experience for each of us as sister, father or mother. And of course, it is a day marked by our extended family, friends or her community, too.

This year, on the eve of the anniversary of Jessie’s death, I found myself locked in memory loops and traumatic flashbacks of the last 24 hours of her life. Vivid images or sensory memories came back. They blur together like this: her lung x-ray looking worse that last full day in ICU, followed by visits of specialists to her bedside, and a phone call conference from a small meeting room to consult with Chris and several medical team leaders to decide a recommended course of action, an evening visit from one transplant care team nurses who believed she’d make it, Jessie waking up that night and braking through sedation to kick and reach for me as I told her we loved her and named each member of her family, holding tight to her hand, 2am worries and conversations with a night-shift nurse as we changed her bed padding and checked IV lines and monitors and breathing tube, later kissing her as they took her off the floor — still medicated to a level of unconsciousness while on a portable ventilator — to undergo a lung biopsy, pounding on doors to get through to the room where a doctor waited to tell me she was dying, sitting in a numb disconnected state while a white-coated medical fellow knelt before me to deliver the unthinkable narration of events that transformed a scan room into an emergency operating suite, knowing our friend and minister Rebecca was beside me every step of that morning, and that Rebecca made the calls I couldn’t make, knowing that Jessie died while Chris and Sarah were en route to the hospital, walking with Chris and Sarah together as if through a gauntlet one final time down the hallway to her room in ICU, where it wasn’t Jessie waiting anymore, just her lovingly arranged body under a quilt, so we could say good-bye.

This year, those scenes – running on endless replay in my mind — recurred over and over. Sometimes scene-by-scene as they really took place. Sometimes as if I rewrote history and changed fate.

If only we had the power to change the script, stop the camera, halt the action, decide to make a different ending, give all the actors new lines, new roles … if only it was make-believe, fiction, theater … not real. But it isn’t. It happened. And there are no sequels or second versions of this particular story.

Of course, I have other beliefs about what comes next. About a spiritual life beyond this one … but admittedly, there is a difference between that spiritual and emotional comfort and the very physical and mortal reality of a child you can read to, speak with, hold close, argue with, sigh about, worry over or dance with.

During the anniversay of Jessie’s death, I always set aside productivity. I don’t do school work or client projects. I cancel any appointments, skip most commitments.

Instead, I give myself permission to be in the moment and experience whatever comes. To make space and go through this, because it will catch up to me one way or another.

It isn’t a day when someone needs to fix what’s wrong. It is simply … an unspeakably sad and moving day. A time when we are permitted to weep or pray or be pissed off or act off-the-charts giddy or stay silent. A time when we experience the feelings that are natural to such milestones; and almost every possibly emotion is likely to surface, visit and be expressed along the way.

On such an anniversary, I don’t have many expectations about what will or should happen. I may lose myself for part of the day. Or find Jessie all over again. Connect with Chris or Sarah, if possible, on this day. Retreat. Or be in the company of friends. Mourn. Remember. Acknowledge. And yes, celebrate.

We often try to experience some of Jessie’s best-loved activities on this day. For instance, my friend Martha got me started on the self-care and healing of pedicures and manicures. You may scoff at this self-indulgent choice, but it is a place of respite where no one expects anything of you, someone takes care of you for a little while, you float and let go, and you even feel a little better (or prettier, or something) on the other side of it. I did it again this year.

And this year Chris and I attended the Rotary Masquerade fundraising ball that evening. It happens every year; it just fell on the same night as Jessie’s anniversary. And what better way to celebrate her vibrant spirit? She loved dressing up, going out to dance, to be with friends.

I dared to wear a pair of black high-heeled boots and a short skirt and a wig. I was someone else: pretending, letting go, running away, wishing, and forgetting. And I was myself: grieved, sad, lonely, determined, giddy, connected, remembering, and living ‘in the moment’.

Underneath the black lipstick, fake eyelashes and sequined outfit, I was a mother thinking about both of my daughters: my beautiful intelligent grownup daughter putting away her textbooks and going out with friends to the night-life of cafes in Thessaloniki during her first semester abroad in college in Greece and my younger child whose ashes rest beneath a headstone graven with her name, marked that day by a blossom and a crimson leaf. Under the red-and-black wig, beneath the black spider rings, I was a friend who asked the opinion of girlfriends about makeup and party outfit, wanting someone to cheer and encourage me for risks to self-image when I wore an edgy costume. In the black boots and red silk top, I felt like a vamped-up sexy wife on a date with my husband, spending time together on a day that holds deep and surreal connotations for both of us, in a year that has been full of exhausting transitions, some wonderful, some challenging. Dancing among peers in masks and feather boas, capes and fedoras, applauding the band and jumping to the rockin’ music, I was one member of a club and a community that showed up to raised funds for local causes.

We aren’t binary: black-and-white, one-or-the-other, either-or. We, as humans, are so much more complex and layered and intricate and impossible to unknot or explain. We are just … who we are. And different, every moment, every day.

The next morning, I woke to the rush of wings as a bird fell or was knocked down my chimney. It emerged, eventually, from the hearth in our bedroom to circle and perch in our room. A common bird, familiar and full grown. Dark-tipped, pale-chested, bright-eyed. We caught it in a net and released it safely out the front door.

What do I believe about the sudden fall and flight or that common backyard bird that often visits the feeder outside our kitchen window? For me, its sudden arrival represented the visitation of a winged messenger, a spirit guide. A reminder that she’s here in many ways, and somewhere else, too. (You’re welcome to your own thoughts about it … whether you believe its coincidence or meaningful.)

The eve of Jessie’s anniversary, I relived nightmares. The day of her anniversary, I ‘got by’ in fancy nail polish and high-heeled boots she would have liked a lot. The morning after her anniversary, I participated in a startling and sacred moment.

And I am reminded, and I remind you, that we are connected. Body, mind and spirit. This world and the next world. All of us, always on a journey, perhaps in different places along the way, but not so far apart as we sometimes feel or imagine. Nearer than we suppose.

Oct17

Losing Your Voice, Saying Yes, Making Wishes

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This week, I virtually lost my ‘voice’, but I also made wishes, and reminded myself why I have said YES to so many opportunities.

First of all, it’s been a while since I posted, because I have spent so much time lately writing school assignments, that my hands hurt and my throat is sore. I think I’m losing my voice … my writing voice, that is … ha-ha!

But seriously, I haven’t dared consider blogging for a several days, because I needed every productive hour to meet other obligations. Right now, sleep isn’t always on the agenda! I pulled at least one all-nighter this week and stayed awake until 5am completing a paper for a deadline, since I had two papers due on the same day. In the days leading up to that deadline, I’d also delivered a sermon, facilitated a women’s spirituality group, assisted with an ‘Amazing Race’ youth group activity and launched Jessie’s floating wish lanterns onto the dark Ipswich River as part of Ipswich Illuminated … all in the same few days.

Why didn’t I work on the papers and deadlines sooner, you might ask? Getting fresh, aren’t you? Well, I did prepare in advance. Pages of notes. Re-reading books to analyze them. Creating outlines. If I hadn’t done that much preparation, there wouldn’t have been any ideas to plump up and submit as finished works yesterday.

So in fact, I did prepare. But time just … well … there was just enough time, if I didn’t sleep. Phew.

After all, there’s keeping up with regular class assignments: weekly essays, whole books to read each week, and various other assignments including oral presentations, debates and even (yes, it’s true) occasional art projects.

Plus working freelance. Plus, as some of the activities above will have indicated, field education as a seminarian working at a church in Beverly.

And yes, during the week, I actually sit down with Chris and spend a few hours being a person who is married with a husband. Or I take a walk or sip tea with a pal, and behave like a person with friends.

It was the perfect storm of deadlines and other activities this past weekend. More than usual. And you know what? I loved every part of it, even though I was very tired last night!

What did I do, when I wasn’t writing? I laughed, being with teenagers on a scavenger hunt to learn about community service and social justice organizations all over downtown Beverly, then racing to be first back to their church for a prize. I held my breath, and then delivered a sermon at First Church with just an index card as an outline, and powerful stories alive in my head and heart, waiting to be shared. Read an autumnal Mary Oliver poem and lit candles with a community of women I’m just getting to know. Applauded after watching my husband Chris and other good friends perform in the 16 Elm Street historical play.

Ipswich Illuminated? That was magical. So many people work all year, and then overtime on that weekend, to make it as beautiful as it is.

Each year, I stand boot-deep in cold river water, lighting hundreds of candles and nudging origami wax paper boats filled with wishes out onto the tide (thanks, Aileen Ang, for folding those boats). Again this year, they winked like nearby stars in a night sky: a constellation  spilled down to earth. (Thanks to friends Miri and Sadie and other cohorts who helped again this year, assisting people as they chose candles, wrote notes and gathered up their dreams to set afloat on the river.) Jessie’s Floating Wish Lanterns are the one activity we perform specifically in her memory each year, and I wouldn’t be anywhere else on that night.

Two weeks ago, we had friends Mark and Lesley visiting in our home from England. For a few glorious days, I set aside reading assignments, classwork and deadlines. Put graduate school on hold for one long weekend, to be with friends that I only see every few years. In other words, time for important activities and relationships remains a priority.

Yes, my writing voice is a little tuckered out, from finishing all school papers yesterday. Yet the subjects lit fires in my brain, and sparked questions in my heart. Despite the pace and the tension, I am where I want to be.

And I am making time, regardless all these deadlines, to do what’s important. To be with those I love. And just to be. Be.

My Harvard professors, even the intellectual ones who pile on work, will always say … take care of yourself. Find a balance. Don’t read every assigned page. Pause. Meditate. Get something to eat. Take a walk. Catch a nap in a quiet corner. And talk to someone, if it’s all too much. Always take care of yourself.

So I remind myself, and now I remind you … when you get wound up tight by schedules, deadlines, appointments, and activities … and we all do … the question is whether these are commitments that you have agreed to do … said YES to … because you care about them. Because you are moved by their purpose or use of your time. Because you believe by doing them, you make a difference, and it rekindles a light inside you, or connects you to something bigger than yourself. Or simply because it feels good to do this activity or be with this person, and restores your own internal sense of balance.

Check in with yourself. Can you say YES to those questions? Pay attention to the answer.

Me? I’m tired. I’m run down. But right now, I can still say YES when I ask myself those questions.

Oct4

The Space Between

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The hours of sunlight are short. Yet the days are long, and time seems to move fast. We can’t measure our days by the brief hours between dark and dark, as John Updike once called them. We  count the actual up-before-dawn, waking-and-productive, getting-things-done, go-to-sleep-long-after-the-sun-sets span of a daily schedule, to truly sum up how much we work and accomplish in a span of 24 hours in this season.

This quickened pace, this buzz of energy and activities, this hum in our veins … we knew it was coming. It rises like the frantic work of bees before winter. It’s part of the arrival of the school year or the busy professional season.

Autumn heralds a return to longer nights, cooler weather and more focus on work and academics. Summer slowed us down (if we were lucky) or at least changed our rhythms and tempted us to pause, linger, and have fun in the heat and light. Fall winds us up. We move faster to stay warm, or because we’re playing a sport, or because there’s something to get done once we arrive wherever we’re hastening to.

It’s the season of gathering-in. Harvest. We reap the benefits of slower times. Set aside whatever bounty we can for the lean times. Savor the brief time of abundance. Prepare for the long, frigid, brilliant months of winter that await us.

At the edge of October’s cooler presence, there’s pleasure in finding heat. It’s a dance of comfort and discomfort. We wear layers on the coldest days: sweaters and socks, hand-warmers and scarves. Then catch ourselves growing too hot, and peel off the layers again. Grow chilled and pull the protective gear back on. Then lean once more toward sources of warmth … a cozy fire, a steaming hot beverage, or an open door into a heated space.

We don’t stand still very long, because the persistent cold catches up. Amidst our rush and busy-ness, there is beauty in this changeable time of the year. It’s worth noticing: crisp and vivid.

If you stop a moment, and focus, every hair on your head, every follicle and nerve-ending, every brain cell and heartbeat, seems to stand at attention. Alive. Drinking it all in. Capturing flavors and views, burning them into memory.

Detail from a painting of County and East Streets in autumn.

Can harvest colors really be so bright? Do aromas hang so vividly in the air that you taste them on your tongue? Can sounds snap and retort so sharply? Does the tension between warmth and cold make you feel so aware of everything, so strung with tension and awareness?

Yes. Life often happens along the edges, margins and boundaries. In the metamorphosis. During the transformation. In the changes between one certainty and the next, between the point of departure and the place of arrival. Life vibrates here, now, in this transitional season, in the “space between.”

Don’t you want to stare off and step into, for just a moment, the changing hues – crimson, green and gilded — bright against a clear blue sky? Smudge your finger through the richness of long purple shadows cast by a distant sun in this season? Be robed in a swirl of golden leaves whirling and dancing in a high wind?  Breathe in, exhale out, then watch your own respirations hang there, if it’s cold enough? Extend your arms to the veiled world on a misty morning when droplets of water cling to the air itself? Watch the lights wink on in the darkness?

There is magic in this time of change: autumn. Yes, it’s busy. These schedules demand more of us.

This season also wakes us up. Reminds us that we’re here. Alive. Calls us to pay attention. To be grateful for what has passed away,  what remains here with us, and what awaits.

Sep25

Packing In, Packing Out

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You know what role you play in life by how you carry your “stuff.” In a purse. In a wallet. In an art folio. In a drawing tube. In a briefcase. In a book bag. In a diaper bag. In a gym bag. In a rolling suitcase small enough to fit overhead on an airplane.

I’ve switched from a small clutch purse and laptop case to a backpack. A heavy backpack. Lots of pockets and compartments for everything from textbooks and computer to student ID and train pass. Plus extra pens, Kleenex, snacks and change of clothes. Yes, I prepare for all possibilities, including being stranded overnight.

I’ve always been known as the bag lady in my family. Now isn’t any different. I usually have necessities for all sorts of emergencies that never arise. But heck, if they come up, I’m ready. Carry around almost everything except a first aid kit!

This also means that I tend to take on burdens and lug them around. Regardless of whether they’re mine to worry about and try to fix or not. It’s just how I’m wired. So I do a lot of work about letting go of issues that I cannot control or change, and trying to be responsible for those things that I can do something about … usually my own stuff. Sounds like a twelve-step recommendation, doesn’t it?

What I bring to campus, even with all the extras, is an editorial process every day. Some books go into the pack, others come out. Depends on the class. Sometimes I add layers like a sweater that I might need later, as the weather changes. Or extra meals, if I’ll be on campus very late.

I try to lighten the load, both physically and metaphorically. Acknowledge which texts I’ll have a chance to read, and give myself permission not to carry an extra stack, just in case I have unexpected blocks of time (usually I have less time than anticipated, rather than more). By minimizing what I need, I take a few pounds off my back, and incidentally off my mind.

To make sure I’m only bringing what I need, I often check my calendar and syllabi, reviewing deadlines for both reading assignments and papers due. Then I pick one project I can work on, using my computer or some time in the library, to keep up with course work. That’s what I’ll complete during my “down times’ for the day.

Staying focused, and one step ahead of my assignments, seems to keep my spirits revived. And that’s another way to lighten the ‘stuff’ that I’m lugging around.

Anyway, today’s journal is simply an acknowledgement that we’re all carrying a lot of burdens. Some of them pack away tidily into our chosen forms of storage and porting. Some spill out. Some just don’t fit at all, and we carry them loose, in our arms, slung over a shoulder, or in some other unexpected ways. Some burdens we try to leave behind. Or put into storage, until we have a chance to cope with them.

Every time you empty your pockets, your purse, your backpack … every time you move your gear from one container to another … it’s a chance to conduct an editorial exercise. Relinquish those things you don’t need. Collect and bring along those items that you find essential (right now). In the same way, it’s an exercise that can also lift the weight of a spiritual load, at least for a little while.

I’ve written, more than once, about the act of taking inventory, holding on to the essentials, and letting of of the rest. In sustainable ways, when possible: donating, recycling or repurposing.

My backpack is heavy. So is my schedule.

But my step? My step is light-hearted. I’m where I want to be, a lot of the time. I’m fortunate to be able to say so.

Sep24

Home

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Yesterday I started field education. That’s an internship, so to speak, working at another church. I’ll gain valuable parish experience and perform new and familiar roles in a congregation that isn’t my home church.

The difficult part of this transition is that Chris and I spend every Sunday morning together, and we have so few chances to spend time in each other’s company, that I miss those mornings … even though we’ve only spent one Sunday apart. In addition, First Church in Ipswich is the longest I’ve ever been rooted in one faith community. We’ve belonged there for 18 years. To spend a schoolyear away from my own congregation, working elsewhere, feels as if the ground is shifting under my feet.

Along with all of the other transitions, it feels as if parts of me are being torn away.

Yes, I know intellectually, that this stretching and moving away from what’s familiar and easy, is all necessary. To work and grow in this new vocation, I must step outside my comfort zone, which in this case is my own community.

It’s what I want. That’s what I tell myself, though I miss what I must give up to be there. Even after one morning away.

So yesterday I spent my first morning in a new congregation. Spent time with both pastors, who have already welcomed me onto their staff. Met some of the congregation’s compassionate and committed lay leaders and community members. Witnessed the youth of this church presenting their summer mission trip to Maryland.

It was all quite nice. Safe. Just not my own faith community.

Finally, at the end of yesterday’s worship service, a friend of mine appeared. I hadn’t expected to see her there. She belongs to this new church where I’m working (I didn’t realize it). One of the ministers is her daughter (I didn’t know that either).

This friend of mine used to be on staff at Winthrop Elementary years ago, where both Sarah and Jessie attended school. She was especially instrumental in Jessie’s successful interludes at school. We all shared an intense journey together each time Jessie made the re-entry to Winthrop classrooms and culture. Her office was often a retreat, when Jessie needed a safe sanctuary to collect herself. They developed a special friendship independent of my connection to this woman. She represents, even now, some of the most wonderful and tempestuous experiences in our long journey with childhood cancer.

So when she appeared unexpectedly in front of me, at the new church, we leaned across the pew and hugged each other. I think I yelped with happiness.

Then I burst into tears. Held onto her much longer than the embrace of friends exchanging greetings. Hung on as if she was holding me up.

I think a knot of emotions all rose to the surface. Every loss and transition I’ve experienced in the last few weeks and months. And maybe ever years.

So much has changed. So much has fallen away. Jessie is gone. Sarah is off at school. I’m starting college again. Chris and I are struggling to find times to maintain connection. And I’m spending a lot of time away from my entire community, including the church which sustained us through everything.

My friend received that grief with a hug. And then I was laughing, overjoyed that I know someone in this new place, this new congregation with whom I’ll sojourn for the next two semesters. Growing. Reaching outside myself for something more. Connecting with something greater. Trying to remain rooted in what continues to be important to me: family and community.

When my friend greeted me in that new house of worship, suddenly I felt as if this new church could also become home.

Can you be at home in two places? Or even more places? Of course you can.

I have many homes. My house on North Main street in Ipswich is intimately familiar, though rather empty now. Ipswich is where I feel connected. First Church’s congregation has been our extended family for years. Already the Harvard graduate school campus feels comfortable.

And now this new church? When I first sat through the worship service, it felt just a little off-kilter and strange. As if I was trying to transpose my former surroundings — the place and feelings of worship among old friends — onto a new and different congregation. Perhaps I was. I * want * to feel comfortable and connected there. But as we all know, as I must remind myself, that comes with time and experience.

Then my friend reached over the pew, and held onto me while I acknowledged everything I’d lost. And everything I’m trying to reclaim. Suddenly, it began to feel more like a new home. Another circle of belonging.

Sep19

New Things, New Year: Encountering Other Faiths

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On one of the first days of Rosh Hashanah, which is THE (or one of many, depends on whom you ask) Jewish New Year, I tried something new. Part of this graduate school time is to work and study and play among people of many faiths. Develop chances to visit, to dip my toe, into other experiences.

Along the way, perhaps to better understand and embrace different traditions as something akin to my own cultural identity … connected, related … though not the same. I’m learning to make that distinction.

Yes, we can share many facets of history, belief and experience in common. Yet we don’t have to be one homogenized, same-everything confluence of cultures. The days of the immigrant melting pot, when we shed our pasts, changed our names, and tried to be like everyone else (usually in a white American-European-Protestant-Christian context) are over. In the past several decades, it has become increasingly safer for people to claim their roots, their ethnicity, their language, their religion, their race, their gender identity, their individuality. That should be okay.

Does this sound idealistic? Yes. Possible? Yes. Easy to do? No? A work in progress? Always.

We should be able to live side by side, yet be different from each other. Coexist in a pluralized society that respects and wrestles together with constructing a civilization that accommodates and welcomes diversity in many forms.

As part of this journey, I want to de-mythologize other faiths. Remove the stereotypes, biases and assumptions that I have internalized, or at least carried with me as an unconscious filter.

One of the forms of education I am receiving is to recognize other religions, practices and beliefs as different, but not as something that occurs “outside” a spectrum of societal patterns. Not “apart” from what we define as culture and civilization. Not “other” or “alien.” Not wrong, bad or in any way unacceptable.

One way that I’m grappling with this goal is to take classes. To study other religions through their history, art, development in different nations and languages, their connection to governments and politics, and through a glimpse into their sacred revelation. To understand each religion in its role as part of our broader American (Western) tradition, as well as its presence in other parts of the world. To this end, I’m taking two classes on Islam. It makes me look differently, already, at world events and the media coverage of them, political rhetoric, and our responses to them.

On the other hand, it’s best to get to know diversity up close. To form relationships with people who identify themselves in association with a variety of race, ethnicity, nationality, religious tradition, gender association, cultural affiliation and other characteristics. To make friends. To get to know each other, and put a face on “differences.” To study and learn together. Ask each other questions. Share each others’ traditions. I can do so with my classmates. We all learn and share with each other, and it’s safe to ask questions and explore diversity in this setting.

Back to the “new thing” I experienced.

Yesterday I attended a Rosh Hashanah New Year’s service. It was an improvisational service led by one of the students, Jeremy. It included many readings and songs in Hebrew. Jeremy’s voice rose, rich and redolent, to the rafters. His face shone with happiness to share this time with us.

We participated in some responsive readings in English. We recited a statement of faith (This rarely happens in the  annual Jewish tradition, since this is a religion of practice versus creed, unlike Christianity, but much like Islam. In fact, it may only happen in this service each year.) We remembered the departed. We considered and let go of our trespasses from the past year, since this is a time of letting go and starting anew.

Side note: My friend Miriam, however, celebrated somewhat differently. Among other rituals she and her children participated in Tashlick, which is the act of releasing crumbs or pieces of bread in a moving body of water. Naming regrets or transgressions, and letting them go. Setting new intentions for what you can do right, better and with more integrity in the coming year.

At the end of the worship service Jeremy sounded the shofar. This is a ram’s horn. It makes a blatting cry. It resounded through the chapel. We all listened to its echoes fade.

I cannot say I understood or connected with all aspects of the service. The parts in English resonated with me. They’re akin to my own statements of faith, and align with my beliefs. I felt bound in community.

Here’s the frustrating part. Admittedly, I was restless, listening to long passages in a language I don’t understand, regardless of how beautiful they were.  I felt, right then, like a little kid attending a classical orchestral concert, with no education or appreciation for what I’m listening to, and a tendency for my mind to wander, even while I try to pay attention and let it all soak in. * sigh *

A fellow student Lauren explained that much of the language (Hebrew, so I didn’t understand some of it, though we were provided with translations) of the service is a metaphor from archery. The intention is to recognize where we have “missed the mark” and improve our “aim” through our actions and intentions, so we will be “on target” in the coming year.

Another student, a Muslim peer, also attended the Rosh Hashanah service.  Like me, she’s trying to learn. To expand her understanding on an experiential level. She asked permission to record Jeremy’s recitation. I haven’t asked her why she wanted to record it, although I suspect that the Hebrew chants echo with the art and practice of oral recitation of the Qur’an.

The echoes fell silent. The year has begun. It is a sweet time, these High Holidays, in the Jewish year. We dipped apples in honey. Left the room, a little lighter in spirit, and perhaps a little wiser … or more foolish and opened-up … than we’d arrived.

Sep17

Partings

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Today Sarah joins her college classmates and sets off by plane for Greece. She’ll study nursing in Thessaloniki for three months. Probably visit other cities, and even other countries, while she’s there. She’s considering more travel around Europe after the semester ends.

Why not? She’s young. Relatively footloose and commitment-free. When is there a better time?

And what can substitute for life experience, when it comes to education? Books and professors are great. They give us context. Theories. Even practical ideas that we can apply in the real world.

Yet lessons often come the other way, too. Firsthand. In person. As realities that we handle and experience. Eventually, to make space in our minds and hearts for greater understanding, we must touch, see, think about and feel events, cultures, people and ideas for ourselves. We cannot fully appreciate the similarities and differences that make the world so complex — sometimes beautifully so, other times tragically so — unless we take the chance to engage it.

She’s traveling to the second-largest city in Greece, steeped in history of many cultures, ethnicities and faiths. For instance, some of its inhabitants appear in the sacred text of the New Testament in letters from the Apostle Paul; she’ll walk some of the sacred sites I’m studying in books. She’ll reside in and explore ancient ground that was holy, thousands of years before Christianity was ever born, populated by Greek deities and temples. She will live in the multicultural realities of a city that was once a bustling part of the Byzantine empire, became a sanctuary for Jews outcast from Spain for a period of about 400 years. It joined the Greek nation in the early 20th century, burned in 1917, was largely rebuilt, and was home to thousands of refugees in the wake of a ‘population exchange treaty’ between Greece and Turkey in 1923. It remains a vibrant and diversely-populated place. For more detailed information, visit www.greecetravel.com/thessaloniki/introduction.html

We’ll stay here in Boston. Say good-bye and watch her walk across a threshold. It’s a coming of age moment, as she launches herself into the world, to learn lessons from her college classrooms and other lessons on the streets or in the cafes, shops, and other hangouts around the city.

I expect, as we say good-bye, that she will continue to experience her own partings. She’s leaving behind her high school self. Her friends are all already on their college campuses. Or finding jobs and moving away from home. Or serving in the military. Beginning the next phase of their young adult lives. Sarah, too, will let go of childhood and start anew.

When she walks through the security gate and later through customs, she will be walking into a new world. And a new part of her life.

And here? Though we aren’t flying away, but staying home, we’re also beginning the “next step” in our family life. Whatever that might mean … whatever shape it takes … big house, empty rooms, long work or school days, late nights, early mornings … two of us trying to make chances to connect. Finding purpose in our adult lives, now that we have started Sarah on the path to her own life apart from us. And always, the way parents do, thinking about both of our daughters.

Somewhere, Jessie fits into this transition. We’ve said good-bye before. Farewell to Jessie was different. This day, as Sarah waves and joins her classmates, this is the good-bye you’re supposed to say to a child. It means you’re doing what you should, helping your child take steps toward adulthood and independence.

After all, it’s not permanent. It’s not forever.

Yet we also realize … the young woman who comes home again after her adventures… she will be Sarah. But she will be a new, changed, more mature and experienced Sarah.

Sure, I thought I was ready to let her go. Stoic. I knew, cognitively, what this separation meant. I talked myself through it. Rallied around its importance and symbolism. Believe it’s good and right for her to do. But there’s a difference between knowing something and feeling it. It’s easy to know something with your head, but much tougher to live through it with your heart.

So I thought it would be easy enough to get ready and say farewell, because this departure has been happening in stages for several months. Years, even.

Yet we’re all on edge. Trying to be gentle with each other, but equally prickly and moody and temperamental. Right now, we often say or do the wrong thing, as often as we make the right choices, to help each other through this good-bye.

My husband I will be different, too. All of us – humans — change. Nobody is static, fixed to one moment in time and space, unable to transition. Life and consciousness itself is a response to stimuli. All humans, even when we feel stuck, are somehow in flux, moving, transforming.

We’ll all get through it. And blossom on the other side of the transition. Yet that doesn’t make the moment of parting any easier. In order to hold the love, you must also hold the pain.

Sep13

Stress: The Good Kind

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I’m so busy I almost can’t breathe. I’ve added every deadline, book, project or homework assignment, class time, phone call, advisory meeting, and other school task to my calendar to keep up with it all. Getting home at midnight one day a week, and between 8-9 pm the other nights. On campus in Cambridge all day, either in classrooms, library or quiet work spaces.

And then there’s family life; that’s being “scheduled,” too, so that I can grab some time with Sarah while she’s home again before going off to her semester abroad in four more days. (I saw her Monday night between 10pm-midnight, when we picked her up at the airport, so far.) Or to make a date with my husband Chris while we’re both awake. Mostly I maintain contact with them via texts. * sigh *

Work life fits tidily into chunks of the day when I can plug in my computer. Sometimes on the train, or in the library. As emails exchanged between classes. Or on the weekdays when I’m staying on the North Shore.

Field education hasn’t started yet. That starts next week. (I’ve already had the interviews). I’ll be apprenticed or interning, so to speak, at a UCC church on the North Shore to gain professional experience in a parish other than my own home faith community. This works both as part of the educational experience at Harvard, but also toward my “discernment” process for ordination by my denomination (UCC/Congregational).

All in all, it’s a whirlwind time. I dream about school. I’m reading books about Christianity and Islam and pastoral counseling and philosophy and language, instead of suspense and science fiction novels. I pack a lunch and dinner. Carry a to-go mug for hot coffee, as well as a water bottle. Have external pockets with  easily accessible student ID, T-passes and commuter rail ticket. Wear sensible walking shoes for the hike from train station to subway station, from subway to classroom, class to library.

In a way, this rhythm is familiar. I used to make the commute in and out of Boston to an office. Rise and go before the sun came up. Come home after it set. Rarely saw the sky, except through the office windows of executives in the buildings of the large financial corporation where I once worked. Made well-intentioned goals to get outside for lunch, walk instead of eat, but usually found that I needed every work hour to complete a project, so that I could make it home to pick up children from extended hours at daycare.

Even further back, I used to work full time, then attend classes at night. Took two courses a semester, for several years, to earn a Bachelors degree with Honors from UMass / Boston. Chris was deep in studies to pass his exams for licensing as an architect. So I’d work on my thesis until 2am, and walk home across the Boston Common at odd hours of the night, to our apartment in the city.

It seems like I’ve always been juggling a lot. All of us have been.

It’s happening to Chris now. He rises at 3-4am to start his work day. Volunteers, works, and makes time for his family when we can be here to connect. Fits in a bike ride now and then.

It’s happening to our daughter Sarah as she juggles saying good-bye to the few friends who haven’t left for college already, or makes trips to see them on campus in Boston. Then packs for her own adventures through Northeastern University’s international program next week.

Yes, it’s stressful. But I want to acknowledge that this is stress we choose, and in which we willingly participate. It leads to something more. Opportunity. Open doors. Education. Vocational shift. Personal transformation. Survival. Hope. Healing. Tangible change. Something we want. There’s incentive to take on this busy schedule, instead of remaining within the status quo.

This form of stress contrasts with situations that are out of our control. Circumstances that cause stress to which we also respond, not because we want to, but because we must. I have lived inside that pressure cooker, too.

In fact, I don’t have to describe much of it to you. Many of you knew us during those times.

Living inside a hospital as the levels of acuity increased over time. First, a shared hospital room with other cancer patients and their parents. Having roommates for weeks at a time throughout the cancer journey. Transfer into private rooms on the oncology unit, which might sound like a privilege, but was too often a bad sign. It was usually due to severity of infection, contagious complications, or more life-threatening conditions (beyond cancer, as if that wasn’t enough). Later, months of life on the transplant unit, inside a single room with changeable mood lights in the ceiling as a second-best attempt at environmental stimulation instead of being allowed to live in the larger world. Life reduced to one room, inside a HEPA-filtered unit with its own air and water circulation, and airlocks to control the environment and separate it from the rest of the hospital (though strangely, you could escape to the Prouty Garden if you traveled …  you couldn’t share the elevator, wore a mask through the halls, and didn’t touch anything).

Finally, the most critical level of care. ICU. Where they have two medical rounds a day, and I woke up for each shift of consultations, regardless of the time of day or night, because events moved so quickly that even 24 hours wasn’t enough time to assess things; we only slept about 2 hours a night. Where the lights are always on, and the number of tubes and machines attached to the patients multiplies.

Through it all, Jessie just stymied everyone. If you looked at the reams of paper, she shouldn’t have appeared as perky as she did. She shouldn’t have transitioned once off the ventilator, sat up within hours to play Hangman with her primary nurses on the ICU team, and lured us all once more into hopefulness. But hey, that’s how she lived through every hour she was allowed to be awake. And even consciousness was taken away, at the end, because she needed to be sedated to stay on a ventilator. But she broke through the drugs from time to time, to try to whisper to us, to kick her feet, to squeeze our hands, to cry, to listen to books, to be part of this world and connect with us.

We have endured that other kind of stress. It escalated inexorably for years. Then months. Then weeks. Then hours. Final moments.

That accumulated stress seeped deep into muscles, bones, minds and spirits. It took years to work its way to the surface, and be released again. We’re still letting go of it, I’m sure.

So I acknowledge that these stressful circumstances may be different in every family, caused by different issues, but that many of us live with them. Unemployment. Mental health issues. Diagnoses of chronic or terminal conditions. Economic instability. Uncertainty about shelter or food: basic necessities. Lack of access to other resources. Addiction. Violence. Crime. Death or endings of many kinds. Loss. Isolation from community. Caregiving for a loved one with an extreme condition.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I’m seeking this vocation: pastoral care. Stress is a universal experience. With many causes. We all share it at some time or another, in one form or another.

And I believe — I hope — we all have chances to experience a different kind of stress. The “good kind.”

Although my calendar is busy —  my phone vibrates often, my computer pings with reminders and alerts and alarms to keep my use of time focused, my backpack is quite hefty with gear and books, and I’m always moving —  I don’t mind. There are other sorts of alarms and appointments, meetings and conferences, phone calls and consultations, that lead to different outcomes.

Right now, this stress leads to transformation. So I celebrate it.

Sep11

Be an Instrument of Peace

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I cannot pretend to have wisdom on a day like 9/11. Nor to truly understand the depth of its impact. Simply to acknowledge that it shook not just those who were hurt or lost, and their families and communities, but all of us. It changed our world view. It rippled out in layers of distrust and violence, but also in ever-growing rings of hope and resilience.

Just yesterday a friend and I remembered being together on the day that the Twin Towers came down. We’ll always remember where we were that day. Wanting to scoop up our children and hold them close. Not sure if the world was ending.

We recalled worrying for a friend who traveled internationally on American Airlines flights to London. Was she alive? As it turned out, she was okay, but she attended the funerals of several colleagues — crew members — for weeks afterward.

We remembered the arrival of a little boy from that devastated Manhattan neighborhood to our daughters’ school in New England. His home was not habitable; his school was closed.

This past weekend, our neighboring town of Rowley dedicated a memorial to 3 townspeople who were on one of the flights. They used as their monument, a piece of steel from the site of the crash. It was moving, yet can never express all that was taken away on that day.

In my father-in-law’s town in New Jersey, where the ferry leaves every morning for Manhattan, the memorial is larger. Too many folk were connected from the small seaside town to the large city center; their passengers worked in those buildings, and many never came home.

And finally, our minister Rebecca Pugh Brown uncovered and recounted for us the story of Andrew Rice, and his journey of loss and forgiveness. His brother David was in the second tower. Andrew was a journalist at the time, and much of the rhetoric after the day of 9/11 didn’t fit his view of the world. He was angry, but he sought some sort of resolution or healing step. His story is shared on the site of The Forgiveness Project.

Then, as David Rice’s summary tells us, “Later, a group called Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation were contacted by the mother of the alleged 20th hijacker, Zacharias Moussaoui, who has been held in solitary confinement in Northern Virginia since September 11. She had a unique request. She wanted to meet some of the families of the victims and ask for their forgiveness.”

We were nervous; scared of our Government finding out, and scared it would be just too upsetting. But finally a small group of us agreed to meet Madame al-Wafi in New York City in November 2002. As we waited in a private university building, a mother whose son was killed in the World Trade Centre went down the hall to meet her. We heard footsteps, then silence. Then we heard this sobbing. Finally they both came into the room, both mothers with their arms around each other. By now we were all crying. Madame al-Wafi reminded me a lot of my own mother, who had cried so much after David died. She spent three hours with us and told us how the extremist group had given her mentally ill son a purpose in life.

One day I’d like to meet Zacharias Moussaoui. I’d like to say to him, ‘you can hate me and my brother as much as you like, but I want you to know that I loved your mother and I comforted her when she was crying’.”

Today I’ll sit in a class at Harvard University called “Understanding Islam.” There is so much education, awareness and bridge-building to be done.

I want to work side by side with Muslim brothers and sisters, to create a world that has space and hope for all of us. That’s part of my work and purpose by attending Harvard. That’s why practitioners of Islam are studying alongside me, for the same reasons.

Today is a tense, emotional, difficult day. It’s easy to step awry.

Instead, breathe. Listen. Pray.

Pay attention to what you’re feeling. Honor it. Acknowledge it. Then let it wash through you. Let it arrive. Let it go. As much as that is possible for you.

Be an instrument of peace today. For yourself. For others. For our world.