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Category: meditations

Letting in the Light

I came home from New York to the glory of hellebores.

The first couple of days after my return it was raining but warm. It seems Spring is springing in East Tennessee. Perhaps it is early; I worry a bit about that, but perhaps also we just had a condensed cold winter. Anyway, I am happy for the flowers and the light, although I cannot say that I am looking forward to when the leaves on the trees come out, and the large tree outside my office window blocks the light. I suppose this means I need to seriously consider future plans for the yard and make a decision as to whether that tree will stay or go. The time is now, or very soon anyway.

In the meantime I am reveling in the light.

Sunday afternoon a friend came over and we tackled the windows. We removed all the screens and storms from the windows that have them (mostly upstairs) except for two windows which are painted closed. That is a problem that needs to be rectified, but it can wait until other work is done in that same room. Several were jammed and it took two of us to get them out; I broke one in the effort, although I am not particularly upset about it. I wrote previously about how I hate both storms and screens, and yet I accept that I may need them. At the moment I am of mixed minds. Whatever I decide, they needed to be unstuck and come out for cleaning. In the future I should be able to put them in and out without assistance, should I decide to do so.

There are only three windows downstairs that had screens, and they are mostly in the shade sheltered by greenery, so it may not matter at all. In the upstairs rooms it has made a tremendous difference in the amount of light in my office (second photo) in my bedroom and even in the hall, where the mirror resides. As I sit here, writing this post, the office windows are open and I am caressed by a gentle warm breeze. There is contentment in a job completed, in the light, the soft spring, in the flower out the window, even the sound of the cars passing on the street below, a contentment in being in one's own place, accepting the act of living and breathing and just living one's own life, and knowing that that, alone, is enough.

February 20, 2018
A Book, A Rabbit, And Letting Go

Once up a time there was a boy who fell through a crack in time, but the truth is that he didn't fall all the way. Half of the boy remained there, on either side.

—Oliver Loving page 284

A few nights ago Tikka went crazy barking at the window and running up and down the stairs, barking and barking and barking. I couldn't fathom it. She often barks at people walking by. She wants to go meet them, to go play, but this was different, and although I looked out the window, I didn't see anything that looked like pedestrians or even a car. I calmed her down, shook my head, and put it out of my mind.

In the morning Tikka and I took our walk. We came home; she was desperate to crawl under the bushes at the front of the house, and I puzzled over this briefly, perhaps too briefly. But I had places to be, other thoughts on my mind. You know how it is, and yet you sense there was something else to know, something coming. But it was not yet time.

I have relinquished a lot of responsibilities. Turned them over, not waiting, not acquiescing, not agreeing to serve until a replacement is found, because I've done that before, and I was still there. I am closing a door I've needed to close for a long time in order to step through a new door but I still don't know which door was the hardest. To let go of something that comes easily to me, and that I enjoy because I have a gift for it, even knowing that I needed to change, knowing that I needed to move into new territory, explore other gifts. It is hard to let go of things you do well because the doing of them, even when they are not your heart, are not all of your gift or your passion, still offers security, and a known place in the world. There is comfort in a secure place, even when you know it is the wrong place. Likewise, it is hard to open doors into the unknown, even when we know that doorway leads to where we need to be. Questions abound, and fear: fear of making a mistake, fear of failing, of being laughed at, fear of being forgotten.

In the afternoon, after our walk, I let Tikka go, off her leash. I needed to take the recycle can back to the garage, and Tikka always sits and waits for me at the front door. But when I returned to the door something unexpected occurred. Tikka was there, but she had something in her mouth. It was the lower leg of a rabbit. She was excited, barely able to contain her joy, and it was easy to startle her into relinquishing her prize. Tikka safely ensconced inside, I went back out, gathered up the leg, and peered under the bush, where I found a lot of fluff and fur and signs of a scuffle. The body had been carried away.

There is an eagle in our neighborhood. I see it occasionally perching in a high tree behind the house of my neighbor across the street. It has flown over us more than once; and I always pause in awe. Another neighbor says he sees it, perched in a tree on his property, not 75 feet from his window. I have no doubt that the unfortunate rabbit was making a run for it across my front lawn and didn't quite manage to reach safety. I don't honestly know if a rabbit is too big for an eagle, although perhaps a small rabbit would be just right. Or there was a larger hunter on the loose. I have no doubt that Tikka heard the scuffle. And I am relieved that she was inside, that I did not let her out.

By the next morning, when Moises wanted to go out, I was once again filled with doubts and questions, wanting to protect him, wanting to keep him close, but also acknowledging that this desire to hold tightly is ultimately more about me than Moises. Moises is a cat. He needs to be a cat. And yet I worry.

Am I right to worry? I am a cat mom. Is that less than being a person mom? I don't know. I am a step-mom, and although I would never claim that I knew what it was like to be a mom, I too fretted and worried about those children of my heart, fretted when, as new drivers, they returned home late, fretted over boyfriends, marital spats, their hearts. I have experienced that need to protect, that desire to tear someone limb from limb after they have hurt "my" child. Giving birth doesn't make you a mom. Believe me, I know women who have no maternal feeling, who feel the child they birthed was a parasite, sucking away their life; and some of those women were wise enough to give their children to someone who loved them, although some were not. I cry for those children. And as I know that mothering is about more than giving birth, it is also about more than gender, or race, or perhaps even species.

But life is complicated. And as much as we want to treasure and protect, and hold our loved ones close, we must also let them fledge. Just as we must let the ones we love be free, we must also sometimes free ourselves of our preconceptions, our walls, and our understandings. It is human to hold tight, to protect, to avoid pain. And yet growth is, in and of itself a painful process. When we hold tightly we don't actually avoid pain, we cause more pain, although we may not see it that way, for it is easy to blind ourselves to our own motivations, to begin the process of questioning and then return to the comfortable warmth of our own patterns.

I am closer to my 60th birthday than to my 59th. It is time to open new doors. I no longer have to prove myself to the world. If I fall I know how to pick myself back up. But if I don't try, I'll never know what I could have done. So what if Moises has waited until he is 9 to want to go outside. If he doesn't go, how will he ever know what he was looking for? Yes, he may get hit by a car, but he is too big to be snatched by an eagle. Whatever happens he will have been himself, and I will be honored to have known him, and I will mourn him whether he dies in his sleep, or in the jaws of a larger predator. Whatever happens, winter always comes, and spring always follows.

These meditations have been partially fueled by a book I finished reading last week, Oliver Loving by Stefan Morrell Block. I can't say that it is an uplifting book, nor can I say that any of the characters in the book are very likable, but it is an excellent book, beautifully written, a story told with great empathy and humanity. It could have been just another of-the-moment attempt to mess with your emotions, but it has proven to be more: a school shooting, a dysfunctional family further broken by tragedy, in a broken, dysfunctional town. These are not people I have known, and yet they are, although our circumstances have been different. The author wends his way through his characters thoughts, and yes, the story is often repetitive, often mundane, just as our lives and our struggles are often mundane. But I know these people; the father who retreats into his shed, into his alcohol; the mother who holds tightly to her idea of salvation through her children, children she needs to bolster a sense of self she never really developed; children who long to escape, only to learn that though they can distance themselves physically, actual escape involves more tools than they have in their pockets.

The story is about grief, about holding on and letting go, redemption, reconciliation. Block writes complex, beguiling prose filled with humor, empathy and kindness as well clever repetitions of gradually evolving themes and phrases, and skillful use of foreshadowing and metaphor. In all of this he reminds us that no story is ever what it seems, and yet neither is what we make it out to be when we let our fears run wild. All the characters in this book, plunged as they are into their own private hells, are forced, over time, to examine themselves and their motivations, what they could have done differently, and all come up wanting at times, all are filled with remorse at times, and at times they all flee back into the comfort of their delusions. Occasionally however they see beyond their own narrow walls, see themselves for who they are, and try, if for a moment only, to become better than themselves, and in that moment there is hope.

This is also a book about regrets, about assumptions, about the way we think we know the world, think we know what is going on around us, only to learn that we were blind, and that all our assumptions were incorrect. Most of us will never experience the horror and sorrow around which this story is told, and yet we read about something similar almost weekly. Or have we become inured? Have we forgotten? Have we, like Eve, learned we "could narrow the radius of (our) concern to the body before (us)", (page 302), to that which only fits into our own personal world-view?

As I looked out the window this morning, at the tree house at the edge of my backyard and the houses up on the next hill, I was reminded of this. In the summer all of this is hidden by greenery. I can hear the road below but cannot see it. In winter I see through the trees, but the distance is deceiving, and in the photograph the perspective is even further distorted. The house across the street is a long ways away, down into the valley and up a hill again. It reminds me of how much of our judgements and our morals, our hopes and our fears even, are situational and therefore political, are based on the world around us and the way the world in which we live shapes our assumptions, as well as our own need for certainty, our need to believe that we are doing the right thing for the right reasons. Even when we begin to examine our motivations, we may touch on the truth, but we often revert back to comfort.

Every day I get up, I make my bed, and I get dressed. I open the front door and Moises and Tikka go outside for their own morning rituals. Up until that point, the point in which I open that door, I have control, or I am able to convince myself I have control. After that, who knows?

February 7, 2018
Saturday Morning Musings

You would think with a snow day, or days as it were, in Knoxville, with everything cancelled and wide open stretches of time before me, I would not have missed a blog post, wouldn't you. Obviously you would have been wrong. Somehow that empty time felt free for indulgence. Yes I puttered around the house and worked on some projects, but I also played, and I put my to do list aside.

Tuesday afternoon Tikka and I had to go outside several times to play in the snow, to get it in our hair and our eyes and to shake it off and run around in it some more. Tikka hates water but she loves snow. She was completely unimpressed with the beach. But Tuesday and Wednesday she was more than happy to go outside: to run around the house and play tag, to send snow flying into the air, to just be playful; and I was happy to play with her.

It makes my heart glad to see this side of my furry baby girl. She is usually quiet and laid back, but she has been a bit more rambunctious lately, more willing to leap and bark and play tag, and I have probably behaved more like a puppy grandma than a mom, willing to indulge her when she wants to play, at least some of the time. Tuesday and Wednesday were Tikka days. I kept coats and boots and gloves by the door (there is no mudroom or closet on the main floor of this house) and we went out pretty much whenever she wanted. I'll never know what happened to Tikka when she was on the streets, but I hope this more playful side of her means that she trusts me, and is happy, and knows that I will not abandon her.

Wednesday morning I also marveled at the pattern of the snow on the screen outside my office window. The screen, that particular tree, both are likely to go in time. I love the light in this house in the winter time (I bought it in winter). In the summer that tree blocks all the light and the view. But for this moment, it was wonderful just to look at the patterns and smile, accepting this small gift before it melted away.

By Thursday much of the snow had melted, although there are still patches here and there. I noticed this small camellia bud, caught just before emerging. A flower in waiting, a promise, ready to burst forth. We had some warm weather last week, in the 60s, before another freeze and more single digit temps. This camellia has been sitting in bud, waiting to bloom for weeks now. An opportunity which did not quite materialize, and I am grateful. This small bud waiting to emerge to me holds so much more joy and promise.

And thus it is; the pattern of life gets interrupted, and yet the promise always returns. Somehow this little flower reminds me of faith, of hope, of the certainty that the earth, that life, will indeed right itself once again, if we can but hold still long enough.

January 20, 2018
2017: The Year of Becoming Fully Myself
At this time last year I was turning my life upside down, although that is not really how I saw it at the time. In retrospect I see the year as transitional in many unanticipated ways.

I moved. I bought a house, a house I loved and still love, although not necessarily the most practical house, and I began remodeling said house, even if the bulk of that remodel was refinishing a basement and making a laundry room. And yes, having a laundry room that is not just an afterthought ended up being important to me. But the significant part of that move was that I let go of my phantom limb. By selling the old house, a house purchased to meet needs that were no longer relevant to my life, I was in effect loping off a large dead branch, a branch that no longer fed me, a branch that threatened to fall and to drag me with it, preventing me from growing in new and balanced ways, although I didn't fully understand that until after I had made the decision to leave.

I learned to travel again. I've always loved to travel. I've always been a homebody. Both of these things have been true for most of my life and the tension between them enhances both experiences. But after George's death, travel became difficult. I still traveled but I hated it. When I was away I wanted nothing more than to be home; when I was home I wanted nothing more than to escape. I realized that this stemmed from two things: one, my old house was not my home, and once I found a home, a place of inner safety, I was happier and more confident leaving it. I also realized that as much as I miss being able to share experiences with a companionable partner, I can't be a person who shares life with a companionable other unless I can allow myself to experience life for myself, for myself alone, without saying I can't. Not doing something because I wish for someone to do it with, is, in its own way a kind of fear.

And that leads into the third big thing that 2017 brought, and which I am still working through. I realized that every time I say to myself "I can't do that unless I find a friend to do it with" I am actually saying that I am not good enough by myself. There is a big difference between being a full person who is capable of sharing all of herself with both herself and the world, and a person who feels that they can only be or do certain things as part of a unit. It is the big difference between saying "I want to share because I have a lot to give" and "I need someone to share my life because I feel incomplete". Of course both are always true. We are self-actualizing individuals, and yet we are not truly self-sufficient. We need others. We need to love and to be loved. The problems arise when we grow so self-centered that we cannot share, or we grow so dependent that we can't fully be ourselves without the other. The problem with grief is learning to be fully oneself, the self that remains after the tragedy, the new growth that springs up after the forest fire.

So, now that I've tackled some big things, it seems there are a lot of little things that need work.
1. I go out to eat by myself when I travel but not necessarily when I am home. But I can go out by myself. I've never minded eating in restaurants alone. Why not enjoy both experiences, going out with friends and going out alone?
2. I discovered that I had stopped going to movies by myself. Instead I waited for them to show up on cable and watched them at home. Why? After George died I went to movies all the time. I realized that I went to movies then because George didn't like going to movies, it was something I could do alone, but I was still defining the activity in terms of my loss, not in terms of myself. I like talking about a movie with friends, but I don't do that at home. It reminded me of when I found it difficult to go to concerts without George, but I worked through that. In December I started going to movies again, both by myself, and with friends.
3. I'm not always comfortable going to events or big parties or fund raisers just because I want to go, not because I have a role to play, unless I go with someone. I tell myself I can't do that. Again why? I talk to strangers when I travel. Who am I afraid of? I decided to say yes. If I myself can't go and have a good time by myself, why would anyone want to go with me? I actually do have friends who will go to things, but the trick is letting go of the crutch, and sometimes going it alone.
I've done things I've never done by myself before. I've learned that by doing more for myself and by myself, I've actually become a better friend and it is easier to share. I've succeeded and I've failed, sometimes both at the same time, and sometimes pretty spectacularly. I'm sure I will fail again, and pick myself up again. But you know what? I'm gong to be perfectly alright no matter what happens. So let's get this new year started,
January 2, 2018
Where the Squiggle Meets the Square

Sometimes it seems that the past decade or so of my life has been a series of transitions, with no time to settle into any one place before something new rolls around. At times I long for stasis, but as much as I long for meditative stillness, without movement the calm can rapidly become stagnation. I could claim this restlessness is new, but that would be misleading, as I have always had that restless side, just as I have also always had my introspective quiet side that simply wants a safe quiet space.

Increasingly I seem to think that this tension between change and stasis is part of the human condition, that we constantly struggle with both. We need security, a safe place to protect us from the ravages of the world, but we also need change. The world changes around us and we need to adapt or die. More than that, we have developed these brains that push us into further change. An essential part of our nature is to push ourselves, to create, and creation itself is an act of change. And so we are torn.

Recently, I sent a friend a quote from Ernesto Cardenal's Gospel in Solentename, this from Vol 3, page 74:

"The law of the universe is the law of evolution, that's the supreme law of God. Any other law that tries to hold onto the past is an unjust law. Father Juan Luis Segundo says that in the language of the New Testament 'sin' is equal to conservatism: it's the attitude opposed to change."

Creation is, in and of itself an act of change. Something is transformed into something else. We are born into this world, and the very process that leads to our birth, to our becoming fully human is a process of change, from cell to embryo to infant; from infant to child to adult to old age and death. Of course we are not the only thing that changes. The world changes around us daily, seasonally, eternally.

And yet, still we cling to safety and security, to stasis, forgetting that we need to move as the world moves around us or risk being crushed. And yes, I intentionally chose that word, not because of some need to feel negative, but because it is a danger we face, the crushing not only of our lives but of our spirits and it can be a process that is painfully slow as well as one that is blindingly fast.

The simple fact is that we are not islands standing still in the storm. We are creatures of relationships, and relationships are fluid, constantly changing. We are constantly changing. I am not the person I was last month or last year. You are not the person you were last month or last year. Those changes may be dramatic, but more likely they are extremely subtle. The question becomes how to be hold onto our sense of self while we also hold onto our relationships and push forward, creating a space that is good for ourselves and our relationships while holding onto responsibility for our actions, both as individuals and as a group. In short we must be flexible, even when we are not so inclined.

Six weeks ago, more or less, I was at a Women's retreat and we played a game of sorts. A series of geometric shapes were posted on the wall and we were to gather near the shape that spoke most deeply to us. I ended up at the rectangle. It was not one of the most popular shapes, but I was, and still am happy with my choice, even though I came very close to choosing other shapes, and might do so on any given day. Still, I think I prefer to return to the rectangle. Why? Here is what was written about the rectangle (from a management training program from the early 1990's):

Strengths: confused shape, not frozen they are going through a change such as a new manager, just moved, etc. Going through a transition or soul searching. Represents growth — everyone of us has been this shape. Can be this shape for 1 day to 15 days. In turmoil of some extent to see what works and what doesn't. Change from day to day, hour to hour. They are growing all the time. Weaknesses: They make a lot of mistakes — this is O.K. as it is part of being human.

I got the impression the author didn't really like rectangles. I get that. Much as I feel drawn to change, see it as necessary even, I don't always particularly like it much. When faced with too much change I would rather crawl under the covers and never get out of bed. I don't think I am alone in that feeling.

I like the flexibility of the rectangular shape. It can be short and squat, almost a square, or long and skinny, almost a line. It bridges the space between the other two shapes I was most drawn to, the square (or box) and the squiggle, or bent line. The square and the squiggle define in some ways my ongoing struggle between my boxy, organized, structural and meticulous side with my creative, questioning, innovative and conceptual side. The part of me that wants order fights with the part of me that never stops thinking of new things, that revels in chaos. Perhaps my happy place is one or the other but something else, something in between: the good old rectangle. Most of my life I have struggled with organization/disorganization and stasis/change. I will never be the most organized. I will never be the most creative. But I am perfectly comfortable with the less strictly defined boundaries of that rectangle, and growing more comfortable as I age, now that I realize that life doesn't really have to be an either/or. Perhaps that squiggle just needs to poke into that old square and drag it out, just a little bit, creating something new in the joining.

I do think the author is correct in that we have all been in transitional spaces, and we all return to them occasionally, just as we probably all have dominant spaces where are personalities are most comfortable residing. When I was younger my organized structure-loving self struggled with my chaotic creative self, but I am growing more comfortable in the spaces in between. I can't stay there, in between, but gradually I am accepting the ability to let life and my relationships, both to the people I know and love and the earth I live in, temper my stance. Perhaps growing older is a process of growing more comfortable with more fluid understandings, with an acknowledgement that one does not lose the self by relaxing the boundaries, but perhaps finds oneself more fully.

December 5, 2017
Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you are all having a wonderful day filled with family and friends and good things.

I am dancing in the kitchen, er I mean I am cooking. I am always happy when I am always cooking, so I think we should all give thanks for the good times, for the times of trial, and all the blessings that make up this world, even when they don't particularly feel like blessings. And most of all I hope that we all can share the things we love with others, and the things that make us cry, and together we can heal the world.

November 23, 2017
My Edges Were Showing

Darn My intellectual side was showing again! I don't particularly think of myself as an intellectual, per se. And yet, I always seem to default to the odd, the obscure, the off-kilter. (and when did choosing the unusual become intellectual anyway? Believe me when I say I do not possess the rigor of mind required for a true intellectual)

The above poster, of a painting by Picasso, was given to me in college. The person who gave it to me said it reminded him of me. I still love the poster. At times I am perplexed at how it has anything to do with me, because I see myself as a fairly simple person. But here's the rub. I increasingly we think we all see ourselves as simple people because we all know our own inmost desires. We see our own simple selves, but we do not present those simple selves to the world. I know for a fact that some of the most complex people I know also see themselves as simple souls.

Today, I see the complexities, and the similarities more readily. But these too are not unique to me. We also all have disparate bits folded in ourselves, perhaps some of us more obviously so than others. But there is also something universally human in that painting, in the seeing and wanting and doing and all the competing urges that make us who we are

Thursday evening I was at a dinner welcoming newcomers to the parish community. Part of our introduction was to say who we would like to be if we could be anyone from history. At times I fret with those things, the girl who was accused of being too serious comes out, and I really don't want to be anyone but myself. But this time I didn't hesitate. If I could be anyone, I would be Henriette-Lucy Dillon, Marquise de la Tour du Pin, although I just said Lucie de la Tour du Pin. Leave it to me to chose someone no one has ever heard of. Lucie de la Tour du Pin was smart, and resourceful, and not an intellectual; she also had gumption, started over more than once, and survived a turbulent period of history. She was, or at least gave the impression of being, at ease being herself. Equally obviously, no one had any idea of whom I was speaking. Admittedly, that too, may be one of the reasons I chose her.

And yet, in retrospect I am also somewhat bemused that I was so ready to leap. That very morning I had held back in another discussion simply because my choices were going to be "out there" compared to the rest of the discussion. My morning study group had reconvened after its summer break, and we were discussing books we had read over the summer. As people talked about Karen Kingsbury and other popular authors, authors whom I have read, and enjoy, much the way I enjoy an occasional chocolate cupcake, I pulled back. Of the thirty or so books I read this summer, some of which were popular fiction, the two that stood out, the two I would most love to discuss were Lincoln in the Bardo and Elmet. They were the two books that would have most marked me as an intellectual, an outsider, and I didn't want to be on the fringes, I was happy to be back in the group, and I wanted to stay there, safely hidden in the middle.

Obviously all such concerns had fled my brain by evening. Or the group was different. For whatever reason I was much more comfortable letting my edges show.

I've admired Lucie, Marquise de la Tour du Pin since I first read her memoirs, Memoris of Madame de la Tour du Pin, when I was sixteen, and this is not the first time I have written about her. I still admire her. I reread her memoirs when we were packing to move to Knoxville. At the moment that volume is in a box in the basement, or I would be rereading the memoirs yet again.. There is also a biography by Caroline Moorehead, Dancing to the Precipice. I haven't read that, but it is on my list of books to be read, a list so long as to be massive.

I'd still simply prefer to be myself. I suppose with maturity comes some sort of accommodation to wisdom. I'd no longer like to be someone else when I grow up, I'd just like to be the best self I can be. And I'm not convinced that we ever really grow up, we are constantly en route to being our next best selves. If my best self is likely to leap in without thought and take the slightly off-kilter path, so be it. At least it is my own path.

.

September 9, 2017
Creator of Radical Compassion

That is who I'd like to be when I grow up, a creator of radical compassion. The idea actually came from one of those Facebook memes, perhaps the one titled "what's your solar eclipse identity? It is all frivoulous, and meaningless, and yet the idea resonates simply I yearn to see more compassion in the world. I don't think I could ever quite measure up, but its one hell of a goal to strive for. Perhaps I need to make a sign above my desk, embroider or needlepoint something, just to remind me, especially on those days I am tired or stressed, days I all too often need reminding of good goals.

This summer has been a summer of questioning for me, and I certainly don't have any answers. Perhaps that little internet meme resonates because it seems that I haven't really seen a lot of compassion, and that is exactly the kind of thing I fret about. And this sense of things falling apart, of a loss of compassion, of concern for each other, is not unique to me. It has been a year of hard questions in many ways for many of us. To some extent the upset revolves around change and the fear of the unknown. We live in a world that changes rapidly, that has changed rapidly even since I was a child, and I suspect many fears are rooted there, rooted before my memories even began. But the fear reproduces itself. As we see the world becoming more uncertain, we cling to our own "certainties" more tightly and the entire cycle perpetuates itself, growing in on itself.

But the thing is, we change all the time. The world changes, and yet it doesn't. Our bodies change daily, replacing old cells with new cells and if we didn't change we would die. Sometimes we hold on to things tightly, thinking there is security in that, but more likely by the time we grab hold of it, what we seek is already past, we have already lost it.

I was reading Manjit Kumar's book about Einstein and Bohr, Quantum and, although the science and the biographies were interesting, the part of the book that struck me most forcefully this particular summer came near the end when the author was writing about the fundamental disagreement between Einstein and Bohr, and the energy surrounding that disagreement. According to Kumar, this battle was perceived, at least by some, if not many, as the old guard struggling against the young guns, or the seemingly eternal war between comfortable truths as opposed to new insights. But, that idea was really missing the crux of the question, at least as Einstein apparently perceived it. (It is more than possible I misunderstand). Others felt that Einstein had grown settled and could not accept the new idea of quantum mechanics as opposed to classical physics. But I got the impression the author was telling us that the inverse was true, Einstein felt Bohr and his peers were still defining quantum mechanics in relation to classical physics, they still used classical physics as an underlying frame of reference. Einstein felt the question wasn't classical physics OR quantum mechanics at all, If my understanding is correct, he felt the entire frame of reference was wrong, that there had to be something else that no one understood (yet) (if ever) a frame of reference that would include both.

But don't we always do this? We make decisions and judgements, often on little information, on fleeting perceptions, and those are based on our own biases: our own history, what the world has taught each of us, and our own confidence that our perceptions are universal when they aren't. If we don't question, are we not trapped in an endless circle? If my understanding of what Einstein was saying is correct, what appears conservative could actually be radically liberal, and what appears progressive could be regressive. What appears safe and secure could be a trap, like the trap the rabbits find in Watership Down, when they learn they have been lured into what at first appeared to be a safe haven and later proved to be a trap. But the trick is, the rabbits knew something was off, they had that uncomfortable feeling of something being not quite right, but they were tired, and so wanted security, that they ignored all the signs.

I've started working my way through the Man Booker long list, not in a particularly organized fashion, just randomly with diversions, and my reading has served to fuel my generally wandering mind and occasionally clarify my thoughts. But of course reading always does that, and novels in particular, if they are good, teach us much about ourselves, and about compassion, that we cannot necessarily learn unless we can escape from our own brittle shells. But what I learn today may not be what I learn from the same book tomorrow, as reading, in some ways like life itself, is a relationship, constantly evolving (changing)(damn! there it is again).

But before I started this year's books, I read last year's winner, Paul Beatty's novel The Sellout. The truth is that I struggled with this novel initially. It is written from a point of view, from a knowledge of an aspect of culture with which I am both completely unfamiliar and fairly uncomfortable, and I found it quite difficult. This doesn't mean that the novel isn't brilliant, it is, and it is brilliantly satiric, which of course explains a lot. If satire doesn't make us squirm in our seats, almost make our skins crawl, it is not doing its job. The Sellout does all this, and at the same time it makes the reader dig deeply into his or her own assumptions about race and culture and society, about what is the good fight, and what is not. I came out of this novel rethinking much of what I had previously held to be true. I read the novel before I read Quantum, but I realized in retrospect that the same question was being raised. What if our entire frame of reference is wrong? Where do we go from here? And how do we take as many people with us as possible?

I just finished reading Fiona Mozley's Elmet, a beautifully written and haunting book. Mosley's prose is so finely wrought, so poetic, and the conceit of Elmet, of the world of the copse where our characters live, almost outside of time and space, with the haunting overlays of timelessness and the intrusions of time, is beautifully rendered. In fact it is so beautifully drawn that the purely unadulterated visceral shock of the violence feels unanticipated, even though it has, in fact, been clear from the very opening lines that it is coming. Thus the author captures the seductions of life, of the stories we tell ourselves, of the innocence of children, and there are children here, children who are both wise, in the uncanny ways children on the cusp of adulthood can be, and yet also innocent in a way that we can barely imagine as adults. The story itself is beautiful, and thoughtful, highlighting wisdom and innocence and blindness, the way we are often all blind, the way we often make judgements and assumptions without really knowing either ourselves or the world which we are judging, and in the same way we are also innocent in that we rarely know the truth, and that which we are judged for often has nothing, or very little, to do with the way we see ourselves.

Between The Sellout and Elmet, I read Emily Fridlund's History of Wolves. Both Mozley's and Fridlund's books are, on one level, coming of age novels, although in radically different places and with radically different outcomes, and yet there are common threads. Both narrators are looking back on an episode that changed their young lives, Both narrators exist on the fringes of their respective cultures, and although they are aware they are outsiders they are not yet mature enough to understand why they are outsiders. The insiders are often blind to their own motivations and guilt as well, as we all are, defining those who are different as "other" and then somehow being shocked when the other doesn't understand the rules and expectations that have been placed on them, even though no one has bothered to teach them those rules.

As for me, I don't really know what I think about these books yet, just as I don't know what I think about the general unrest that has plagued me. I think, in these novels, that people expect too much, and I think we do as well. I see expectations that are somehow disconnected from the realities portrayed. In both of these books, and in life as I have perceived it this summer, I see a world in which the discomfort is there, but is not addressed, because we would rather not address it. Actually it is more than that, more like a denial of reality, of difference, of expecting that everyone will know what we expect because we assume that the world is like us, and, because we assume our knowledge is common knowledge, we can absolve ourselves of responsibility and blame the other. But life isn't really like this. And responsibility is always shared.

In Fridlund's book a fifteen year girl who obviously lives a mostly solitary life, already on the fringes of her society, is expected to suddenly have the wisdom of a fully educated and integrated adult. She is expected to have seen and understood what the adults themselves did not see or understand, or perhaps did not want to see or understand. In Elmet, well in Elmet, there are multiple layers of misunderstanding, topmultiple levels of denial, Mozley manages to create a world that seems completely unlike our own while at the same time capturing a level of dysfunction and denial that is probably closer to our own lives than we would comfortably like to admit. In all four of these novels, the implications of both action and inaction ripple out in overlapping circles, becoming something beyond control, something far greater than was intended or imagined.

Do you see the link? Why compassion weighs so heavily on my mind? We need compassion. We need compassion for ourselves and for others. Because it seems to me that without compassion, the things we haven't done would damn us far more than the things we have done. And in that, at least, we are each and every one of us, alike.

top photo: War Mother by Charles Umlauf. Photo taken at the McNay Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas.

August 26, 2017
A New Bishop

We elected a Bishop in East Tennessee on Friday. I say we not only because I am part of the diocese of East Tennessee, and I deeply believe that any church is in reality its people, not its structure. The structure, including Bishops, priests, deacons, elders or whatever else they may be called, are there to facilitate and support the growth of the body as a whole — ie. the body of people. But I also say we because I was a delegate to the electing convention, and I was thrilled and honored to be there. Being a part of that process was a privilege. You can see me in the video below in the second row on the left.

I found the process fascinating, at least the part I was involved in, which is in a way the smallest part. Truthfully, I wanted to be a part of the Bishop-electing convention simply because I believe so deeply in the idea of laity. I also entered this process without a real understanding of what a bishop does. Research was needed, and I took that task to heart, reading rules and regulations and bylaws, thinking about organizational principles and trying to balance all of this with faith and people, and the deep uncertainty of a changing world. But all of my research and thought and good intentions would have been useless without the hard work of the people who ran the bishop search, who did the work to present the electing convention with a wonderful slate of candidates for bishop.

I read the information provided by and about the final candidates. I attended the walkabouts, where each candidate spoke to a small group of people and answered questions. I listened to my fellow parishioners, thought about their opinions and weighed my responses and thoughts. I honestly can't say it was a clear path. My choices on paper were not the same as my choices after actually listening to the candidates, were not entirely the same after listening to other opinions, but there were consistent themes. I have friends who are happy with the final choice, and I have friends who are deeply disappointed. Nonetheless I am happy with the results of this election, am honored to be part of the process of calling Brian Cole to be the new Bishop of the Episcopal Church in East Tennessee.

Part of a process like this involves weighing options, of trying to find the best choice among many. In the end my vote was my choice, and I had to vote my conscience. That is the thing about an electing convention, about any human convention actually, is that it depends on the delegates and their consciences. How well the convention works depends on what the delegates believe, or don't believe, and even, although this is hopefully not the case in a faith-based community, whether they follow their conscience at all, or some political or emotional agenda. But the choice is about more than what I believe, what each delegate believes, it is about more than what our faith (and I am using faith loosely here — humans appear to be the only animals who organize their lives around some faith that arises completely out of their imagining, beyond the basic needs of food, shelter, procreation) tells us the world should be. Electing a bishop is about who we want to be, it is about what we believe we want, as well as about what we actually want, about the way our history and circumstances and expectations shape us. It is about the ability to compromise and weigh choices for the greater good. It is also about our history, what has come before, where we are now, how we perceive the world to be and what we think it might be. Electing a Bishop is about whether our dreams of who we want to be are in touch with who we actually are right now. A faith-based electing convention is about faith, faith tempered by reason, faith tempered by wisdom, faith tempered by experience and compromise.

Although I have no intention of putting a sour note on this, I am reminded, much as I believe the best possible decision was made, much as I am in fact happy with our choice, that we humans rarely actually know what we really want. We interpret the world based on our own predilections, our own beliefs, or own natures. This is true across humanity. Even in churches more dogmatic than the Episcopal Church, even among those who proclaim not to believe in any god or religion, there remains a wide gap between what people actually believe and what they profess to believe.

I am reading A Clash of Kings, the second volume of George RR Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire. Martin is a far better writer than I had expected, and excellent with complex multi-faceted characters and complex plots as well, but what I love the most is the way he crafts sentences that take my breath away. Not always mind you, but enough, enough to make the book worth savoring. Anyway, in the second volume there is a red comet in the sky. It is recognized as a comet by the scientific sorts, by most of the educated in fact, but also it is interpreted by each to suit his own needs, his own beliefs, his (or her) own temperament. There is nothing new in this insight, and yet we need reminding. We all interpret and evaluate and hope that we are making the best decisions. But to some extent we are always blind, never knowing from whence the wind will blow.

August 1, 2017
Sanctuary

Relaxation.

Is the sign of being fully settled the ability to kick back and fully relax? Perhaps so. I might have said I was settled a month ago, and it was true, in that the major items needed for functioning were unpacked, that this house felt like home, that I was content. But even as I said that I wasn't fully settled. Home was not yet quite my sanctuary. We are not all seekers of sanctuary; I am sure there are those of who do not, at least overtly, see the need. But I am a homebody and always have been. I love to go, love to travel, and I love to come home.   I am home.

The other night I was home, sitting in the living room, listening to Bartok string quartets and just enjoying that sense of presence and of place. I was looking at the most recent issue of American Craft magazine, which had somehow gotten shoved into a pile when it arrived. Dinner was simmering slowly on the stove. I was making an Indonesian-style curry, or at least that is how it began, with an idea, and a recipe, but it evolved to accommodate the two large squashes given to me by a friend, the contents of my 'fridge, the lack of something, the addition of something else, my mood.

I picked up my knitting. It has been a long time since I could contentedly sit and knit without fretting about other things that needed doing — either my own always too long list of things to be accomplished or some general sense of unrest in the world. It had been a long time since I felt that sense of sanctuary, that place where I didn't need to either actively busy myself, or intentionally seek silence and meditation to find peace.

Sanctuary.

You know our sanctuaries are where we make them, where we allow them to grow. And it is often we ourselves who hinder our own ability to find peace. It is easier to blame circumstances or others or the weather, than to admit that peace is there if we will simply drop our guard, simply accept that it was here all along.

Near me, near where I at on the sofa, the music washing over me, I looked at the round painted table that had belonged to my grandmother, a table purchased when she and my grandfather lived in either Peru or Columbia, I don't actually remember which.  Where the table is from is less important than the fact of its own history from making through generations of use. The table has traveled with me for years, in my mid-century modern house in Hyde Park, where it probably didn't fit, the first house in Knoxville, and now here. In fact it took a while for that table to find its own space here in this house as it is right now, to find its corner, to accumulate its pile of memories and artifacts. That table looks more comfortable than it has in years, just as I perhaps feel more comfortable than I have in years. But I don't believe I would have ever anticipated that I would create such a crowded vignette on an already busy table in an old house. I would have told you I wanted simple open spaces and minimalism. How little we know ourselves.

Yes, I'll repeat that. How little we know ourselves. I do not believe I am unique in this. We all think we know ourselves until something, and it may be something minor, uproots that sense of confidence or complacence. And we are reminded once again of how delightfully complex we humans are, how maddeningly inconsistent, of how much we coast by on surfaces and little we plumb the depths, our own or those of others.

I sit on the sofa, knitting on my lap, my grandmother's table beside me, and think we have both found our place in this moment, here in Knoxville TN. A handmade, hand-painted table from Latin America, a Kiddush cup from somewhere in the Austro-Hungarian empire, an African basket, a pot made by a native-American artist, a small sculpture given me by my daughter (heart-daughter, step-daughter, are the designations truly useful?), the artifacts of histories and families and lives well-lived. Perhaps our sanctuaries are simply where we can be ourselves, where all our bumps and lumps and out of place bits can hang out without judgement.   But to remain sanctuaries they cannot become memory-chalet's, they must be open to the new, the out-of-place, the uncomfortable, because that is, indeed what it means to be a sanctuary, a place of welcome, lumps and all.

Home is my sanctuary. To remain a sanctuary it must never become a prison, a place of exclusion, a place that locks out the world. All are welcome.

July 18, 2017