Here's My Heart

The issue under discussion was whether the three boys needed to attend an evening devotional last Sunday evening put on as part of a Father's and Son's Camp my four men were attending that weekend, at which Chad Lewis, former Philadelphia Eagles tight end, was speaking.

The boys didn't want to go because they had already had three hours of church that day. Kevin wanted them to go because he wanted them to go. I didn't really care whether they went or not. I was just there in the cafeteria eating an awful meal with them that I thought for sure was the dregs that got pulled out because the chef underestimated the sheer amount of food 200 aging ex- and wannabe-jocks and their male offspring could pound away on a Sunday evening. (On checking the menu online for curiosity's sake, I discovered, to my horror, that they really had planned to serve Wonderbread rolls, shiny roast beef and chemically-derived brightly yellow anbd viscous cheese product at that particular station.)

Like a parody of sage Deborah, I inserted myself into the words going back and forth between Christian and Kevin: Why? Because? Why? Because? Why? Because? I made things worse: "So, let's hear you articulate why you think the boys should go? Kevin looked at me in dismay, sort of like, "Are you kidding me? Are you even going to make me go there?" And I smiled wisely: "Yes . . . Because 'because I said so' isn't a very good reason."

So, he tried, "Because we signed up for this camp. Because this is what we do as a culture. We go to firesides."

"But why?" This time coming from me.

Christian: "But I already went to church . . . with a smile" (one of our particular requests of a child who can darken any classroom he cares to if he decides to pout). "I already hung out with these people for 2 whole days, and I have to hang with them tomorrow. I just don't want to go." The two younger boys, who were jumping through the rock garden outside the cafeteria with their cousins, didn't really have an opinion. They were just copying Christian's attitude and would do whatever he decided.

Kevin added, "Because we seek further light and knowledge. Because I want to go and I want our boys to go with me." Tessa aka Deborah decided, "Okay. Those are good reasons."

After some rather tense moments, parental authority decided that the 3 boys would be attending the devotional, in their church clothes, which were probably lying on the floor in their bedrooms at home. They went home to change while Kevin and I walked to the ballroom where the devotional would take place. On the way, Kevin told me bluntly that part of the reason we don't have children who take piano lessons, or voice lessons, is because I let them have a say in everything. Everything is open for discussion. "If I had said I wanted Christian to go, he would have just gone. No discussion. Not everything has to be open for discussion."

"Well, I didn't think they HAD to go."

" But if I said they needed to go, they would go. No debate."

"But I think the debate is good. I think Christian should choose to go because he wants to honor you. He doesn't have to want to go. You can't force his attitude. You can't force him to want something."

"But that's the problem with our kids. . . they just do what they want to do and not what they don't want to do. That's why they don't play the piano or any kind of musical instrument. We let them out of hard things."

"But they're going to the fireside. They are going, and they're doing it because you asked them to, not because they have to." I hadn't wanted to share this with Kevin, but I didn't want to go either. I had thought I was going to join them for dinner and then go home to a quiet, twilight house. The thought of attending the fireside never crossed my mind, until I was in the cafeteria and realized that Kevin was assuming I would go. (I thought it better not to raise that point in front of Christian.) "You know, " I said in a tentative voice, "I don't want to go to this fireside. It's not how I would choose to spend a Sunday evening. But I want to spend time with you so I'm going to the fireside."

"Well, go home then. You don't have to be here."

"I know I don't have to be here. But I'm choosing to be here because I want to spend time with you. I don't care about Chad Lewis or what he has to say."

'Well, go home then. You don't have to be here."

"I know I don't have to be here. I'm choosing to spend time with you, which, means I attend this fireside. So, I'm here. Christian can choose that too--to spend time with you. He doesn't have to want to go. He can just want to make you happy. That's a good enough reason to go."

We ended up at the meeting. Kevin and I sitting together, for the first time that weekend. The three boys came back, dressed in church clothes, and sat behind us with their 6 or 7 male cousins. We all listened to Chad Lewis, who was personable, told a good story, talked to the boys at their level (which isn't my level at all). At the end Christian said, "Thanks Dad, that was great" and I got to have Adam sit on my lap halfway through and to smell that warm sweaty curve behind his ear. Kevin got to have all his boys with him, while he sat with his brothers and listened to Chad Lewis. So, all's well that ends well.

________________________

As I've thought about this exchange we've had, I've thought about a question Kevin asked me that revealed, as we talked and walked, a philosophical divide I wasn't completely aware of between the two of us. It revolved around the concept of "have to." I don't believe "have to" is a reason to do anything, even a fireside. So, I was explaining to Kevin that I didn't think that just because you belonged to a community, you had to act in a certain way: "There is no have to, Kev. That doesn't work for me."

"You mean, there is nothing that we have to do in life?"

I thought for a moment. Silence. Thoughts ran through my head: baptism, marriage, temple, obedience, white shirts, nylons, flip flops, food storage, fidelity, tithing. He repeated the question into the silence. "I'm thinking . . . . Yes. There is nothing that we have to do in this life."

"You're wrong. At the very least, we have to get baptized."

"No, you don't. You only have to get baptized if you desire a certain end result. I don't think there any any actions in this life that are mandated."

"Nothing?!"

"Nothing. It just depends on what you want and where you want to end up."

"I think you're wrong."

"I might be . . . but that works for me. That thought process allows me to feel as if I am choosing my end result. Feeling like I am choosing is important to me. It allows me to feel like my life is mine, that I have chosen it."

_____________________________

I've never been a joiner--which is strange because I've always looked at groups and wondered how people got to be a part of them, and wanted to be a part of them, almost. I look at the women who lead our the women in our church and commiserate to myself that I will never be one of those women because I'm not "pink." Not soft, not twinset, not flowers on the left breast, not carefully styled and modulated. But do I really want to be? Part of me wants to be accepted by this culture and counted as one of them.

On the other side, there is a part of me that doesn't like a wall, doesn't like a given, a set or a series of musts. Rules don't make me feel secure. I feel hemmed in. So, to hear my husband say that my children "have to" attend something that to me seems marginally profitable makes me narrow my eyes and cock my head, an old crow about to fly down off her telephone wire to interfere in a fresh mound of roadkill.

I don't know what it is about me that bridles at the language of "have to, "must," or "only way," for example. I'd like to think that it's my fierce commitment to the principle that God will force no man or woman or child or horse to heaven. But, at the same time as I commend myself to that principle, I can hear Neal Maxwell's rasping whine describing some who are "so afraid of being taken in that they remain forever without." It's been at least 25 years since I heard that phrase and I have never forgotten it, perhaps because it sings up against an aching tooth in my soul.

I suppose there are others for whom the challenge is to comfortably stand apart. They are made differently than I am. Their way is a no less valid way, and their refining process is perhaps the other side of the pendulum from which I swing. To get around this thing that is hardwired into me, I've come to think about situations in ways that allows me to feel like I'm freely participating: I choose this fireside because I would like to sit next to my husband for an hour and do nothing but feel the air-conditioning and his leg pressing against me. I will provide white shirts and ties for my two older sons because one of them doesn't want to stick out and one will wear it because he's been asked to.

I also try to parent the same way, trying to explain things so that my children are able to consent at some level. I know there are risks to this way, as there are with all ways. My children might think everything is negotiable. They will have a hard time with people who don't talk to them like they can think. They won't understand the wielding of authority like a club. But, I hope we are providing for them a way to participate in their world, to act and not to be acted upon.

Is it acceptable for Christian to attend church because he has to? Not really--for me. But can he choose to attend because his parents want him to and because he is trying to be the kind of person who honors his parents. Yes. Honoring the wishes of your elders is a good reason, in any culture, to participate in an activity. Can he choose to attend because his mother has promised him that if he listens with an attentive heart, he will hear something in the space of that quiet hour? Yes. Does it matter that he goes to honor his parents or because of his morbid curiousity to hear a voice than because he really wants to? No--not to me. Because, just as happened last Sunday evening, I have learned that when we are in the right place (either by choice or by commandment), our presence and participation is counted unto us, blessed by providence if you will.

After all, what more could a woman ask for than the still-willing weight of her ten-year-old son on her lap and the smell of his hot hair in her nose, the press of her husband's thigh against hers, the prospect of Rocky Road ice-cream in a while, and the "Thanks Dad" coming from previously recalcitrant lips. An hour is a small entry fee for such things.

Title: from "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing," by Robert Robinson.

Okay Is Alright With Me

"Fear thou not; for I am with thee:
be not dismayed; for I am thy God"

--Isaiah 41:10

Last Sunday had us all at the banks of the Jordan assessing the temperature of a willing soul. What would it take to walk into the river carrying the ark? The teacher asked, "What would you think, if that were you on the river bank? How would you feel?" The responses were cut from the same cloth: "Afraid." "I would wonder whether I was really up to the task. Whether there wasn't somebody else who could do it better." "How could I ever live with myself if the ark dropped into the water? What if I fell? Why me?"

I leaned to the young husband sitting next to me and said, "What does it matter what we feel?" He looked at me quizzically, as if to say, "You talking to me?" I sit by myself in Sunday School because Kevin's normally off somewhere, so I just chat away to whomever's next to me. But then he smiled the half-smile where the corners of the mouth rise slightly and the eyebrows lift up. Accepting the invitation, I went on: "It's not our ark. It' God' ark. If he wants it wet, it'll get wet. If he wants it dry, then it'll stay dry. Our job, if asked, is to walk into the water. I just hope that it's not too cold. I don't do cold water well."

Young husband cocked his head as if to say, "Um . . . I don't know why you're telling me this but I'm not going to shut you up." So I just went on, whispering in his ear. "We're asking the wrong kinds of questions: 'I' this, 'I' that . . . blah, blah, blah. They make us so preoccupied with ourselves, with taking our own temperature. God's made the children of Israel wander for forty years to teach them to look up, past the idol, past the leader ,up to Him. The children of Israel made the 'I' central. 'I'm hungry, I'm scared, I'm afraid.' He's trying to show them the 'I's' irrelevant. . . unless it is the I am. The I am takes care of the 'i'."

My ramblings stayed just between the two of us. It's not kosher to interrupt heartfelt sharings about personal inadequacy and about the fear of failure in comparison to others who haven't been asked to perform the task we have. (I understand why we do ask those "I" questions. Those questions keep us in the theoretical. They keep us from moving forward into failure. They also prevent us from actually finding out that we are inadequate.) But I went home thinking about fear and doubt, and about the rather irritating tendency I have to want to get it right all the time and how that hinders me.

Kevin and I have a comment we make when one of us does something that doesn't work out so well: "I was trying my best." It's funny now but wasn't always a source of humor. When we were first married, he would try and I would critique. His response to my criticism was "I'm trying my best." I would reply, only half in jest, "Well, your best obviously isn't good enough." I tried to explain that I wasn't saying he was a deadbeat, I was just saying that "that best" wasn't really working, so we needed to find another way to do things. He would look at me in disbelief with that hurt hardening in his eyes. What to do when your best is still not a passing grade? He struggled with disappointing me, with being found deficient in the face of his best effort.

It worked the other way as well. Morning intimacy was difficult for me. Kisses were out of the question. Nobody should want to share morning breath. No lover should realize the other produced morning breath. That sort of revelation is close to insurmountable. How can morning breath be loved? Nobody loves morning breath. It is fundamentally, at its very core, unloveable. To know that your body can produce such a smell and a taste and a furry sensation, and then to willingly pass that information along to somebody who's supposed to find your body pleasurable. Well . . .that whole concept was almost beyond me. I also didn't want to be measured, tasted, and found lacking.

It's that fear of failure, of being less than we dreamed we would be that stops us at the riverbank and makes us hesitate. What if, what if, what if?

Anne Lamott, one of my favorite voices, writes of giving a large, televised, presentation with Grace Paley, one of her mentors and role models. Anne suggested a more informal presentation style, sort of like a fireside chat, instead of the conventional reading of prepared speeches. The presentation failed spectacularly. Grace Paley's husband called it "a disaster." Anne felt the lifelong, deep fear of failure rise up to overwhelm her. After all, "if you are what you do--and I think my parents must have accidentally given me this idea--and you do poorly, what then?" In her hotel room after the presentation, she felt "stricken, and lurky and dark." She cried a little, then closed her eyes, bowed her head and whispered, "Help."

I'll let her her tell the rest in her own words:

Out of nowhere I remembered something one of my priest friends had said once, that grace is having a commitment to--or at least an acceptance of--being ineffective and foolish. That our bottled charm is the main roadblock to drinking that cool clear glass of love. . . . I do not understand the mystery of grace--only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. It can be received grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny tastes, like a deer at the salt. I gobbled it, licked it, held it down between my little hooves.

The review in the newspaper the next day was not very good. But by then I'd figured out the gift of failure which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it's the gift of feeling floppier. One of the things I've been most afraid of had finally happened, with a whole lot of people watching and it had indeed been a nightmare. But sitting with all that vulnerability, I discovered I could ride it.

I do not know why life isn't constructed to be seamless and safe, why we make such glaring mistakes, things fall so short of our expectations, and our hearts get broken and our kids do scary things and our parents get old and don't always remember to put pants on before they go out for a stroll. I don't know why it's not more like it is in the movies, why things don't come out neatly and lessons can't be learned when you're in the mood for learning them, why love and grace come in such motley packaging. But I was reminded of the lines of D.H. Lawrence that are taped to the wall of my office: "What is the knocking?/What is the knocking at the door in the night?/ It is somebody who wants to do us harm./ No, no, it is the three strange angels./ Admit them, admit them.

And by the time I arrived in the second city where Grace and I would perform, I understood that failure is surely one of these strange angels.

Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies, pages 142-144.

I suppose one of the most liberating truths to settle into my life is the idea that despite my efforts, I will fail. Despite my very good intentions (I do have a good heart I've come to recognize), there will be days where it does not work as I had imagined. I will not be good at what I do. I will offend. I will tell one of my best friend's mother that her quote "big hair" unquote is blocking her husband's face in the family picture I was taking of them. And I will realize that this comment was probably quite rude, but only the next day, when Joyce is on her way back to Idaho without my apology. Despite my failure, I would never intend to offend or to drop the ark. It's just that sometimes, I do. Joyce knows that, and so does He.

If, as I stand at the river's edge, I acknowledge the odds are 2:1 I will slip in the silt that lines the river, or that my arms will cramp and I might drop the handle despite my best efforts to cradle it in the crook of my elbows, then I have no arm of flesh to rely on. My eyes and heart have to rise up past the handle, past the river bank, past the horizon stretching out toward the Promised Land. If I acknowledge I might/will fall, then the only place I can look is away from myself, up and out--where, we are promised, there will be a shadow by day and a pillar by night.

Having the certainty of failure fall into place in my personal theology allows for grace to become a part of my everyday life. Knowing that I will fail frees me up to act, to just walk forward--ineffectively perhaps. But, because I have moved, God can step in to close the gap between my intentful stumblings and His desires. Ultimately, the whole point of the Jordan River crossing is not that the ark get to the other side. He has wings of angels for that. The point is that I walk into the water. The ark is God's ark. The river is His river. If it matters to Him that the ark stay dry, He will take whatever measures He needs to make me--the imperfect vessel--capable to the task. If He doesn't care whether the ark is dry or wet, He'll keep me company, standing on His promise that "when thou passeth through the water, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee"(Isaiah 43:2) while I thrash around, flailing and failing my way to the other side. But I won't know that, I won't know that He does come to attend, until, hefting the weight of the wooden handles and feeling it settle into my shoulders, I step into the cold waters of my River Jordan.

Title: adaptation of Eric Hutchinson's, "Okay, It's Alright with Me." (I don't hear lyrics very well, so when I heard this song I thought he was saying Okay is alright with me. I'm keeping the malapropism for the title.)

Such A Tired Game

“I love young people,” Harmon said. “They get griped about enough. People like to think the younger generation’s job is to steer the world to hell. But it’s never true, is it? They’re hopeful and good—and that’s how it should be.”

Olive Kitteridge, page 80.

This weekend, I watched a sixty-three-year-old man shout at a sixteen-year-old kid in full public view. He wasn’t his father, he wasn’t his grandfather, he wasn’t even his legal guardian. Yet, by virtue of his position, this adult felt it appropriate to yell at this young man: “Skyler, are you ever going to make that shot? Does that shot ever have a hope of going in? You’ll make that shot one out of 40 times . . . one out of 40 times. What the hell are you doing taking that shot? And you haven’t made a free throw in two weeks. Not one in two weeks.” (A lie: Skyler was knocking down free throws with confident élan only two weeks ago in the Tenterfield tournament.) With those words of encouragement ringing loudly in his ears, Skyler stepped up to the line to try make his free throw in a tight game.

The gym was quiet during this explosion. Everybody on the bleachers could hear exactly what Skyler’s basketball coach thought of him. The parents who would never talk to their son this way heard their son being publically and viciously dressed down. And why, because this man is a high school coach and Skyler is one of his players.

The more games I watch, the more I am stunned by the sheer thoughtlessness, mediocrity and even cruelty that masquerade as paid high school coaching. Because our family plays sports, our children are subjected to adults for hours a day that I would not allow them to associate with in any other context. Yet, the school districts continue to employ these people because winning i.e., scoring more points than the other team, is apparently justification enough for behavior that would get a math teacher fired if it happened in the classroom.

One particular coach considers himself the master of reverse psychology. He will say the opposite of what he wants the intended action to be. Example: He will tell a player that he desperately needs for next year’s season because his very young, big man whom he selected last year to be the next star is not playing as “big” as he would hope: “I’ll sign the transfer papers for you whenever you want. You can go play for another school.” Imagine this sixteen-year old heart and mind hearing this. Does he know his coach needs him? Does he know that he is an integral part of the program and that he needs to work on his positioning under the basket, and his first step around the defender? No. Brig leaves the locker room thinking that his coach hates him, and that he must look forward to the season, where he will be treated to more of the same, with a liberal sprinkling of “ass wipe,” “retard” and “what the hell were you thinking, get out of my sight” thrown in for daily pleasure.

Another coach tells his players whom he is counting on to almost-win yet another state championship (He’s lost the last two years in the finals and semi-finals, with the best players (plural!!) in the state on his team), “I don’t have any players in my program right now who could play in college.” When I hear this, I just shake my head. Shouldn’t one of your goals as a high school coach be to develop your players so that, because of your program and through your tutelage, they are able to attend college with some of the expenses defrayed through an athletic scholarship? If that’s not possible, as it isn’t with most high school athletes, then shouldn’t one of your goals be to use your knowledge to enlarge their skill so that your players become as proficient as they can be. At the very least, if you’re not a good enough coach or a creative enough mind, couldn’t you let them dream their particular dream for as long as they can? They’ve spread their dreams beneath your feet. Tread softly.

It also causes me to wonder about the logic that tears down to ostensibly build up. I wonder at the emotional intelligence of this coach as he sets about to methodically destroy hopes and dreams that have taken root years before these boys ever heard of his high school program. I ask my son, “Did you tell him, ‘Lucky for us you don’t get to make that decision.’” The comment is flippant, and he would never talk back to his coach. But I see the hurt in his face as he struggles through the lesson that there will be times in your life when you have no other choice but to work for whom you work for. The only way out is through. I regret that his coach prides himself on being “a tough nut.” In my opinion, it’s his self-granted license to be cruel, to be thoughtless, to be whatever he wants to be, because he mostly wins. Tellingly, despite twenty-five plus years of coaching, there won’t be any babies named after him.

I appreciate that in the Marines, there is an approach to team building that tears down before rebuilding so that when the Mogadishu rebels open fire, the Marine doesn’t sink to his knees in terror. But, these boys. . . they’re not soldiers. They’re not defending America’s right to bear arms or to burn the flag or to import cheap oil from the Middle East. They’re just playing ball. They don’t need to be torn down or rebuilt. They need to be instructed, corrected, and instructed some more. They need praise; they need criticism. They don’t need to fear. (Fear as a performance-enhancing factor in the creative game of basketball is completely overrated.)

The correct principles of motivating players include the following: Young players perform exponentially better when coaches use a ratio of 5 praise comments to 1 criticism; critical instruction is best delivered some time after the moment of infraction when the player is already aware that he messed up; hard criticism is best delivered privately, not in front of team mates or fans; players assimilate instruction better when they are able to talk about what they did and work out ways to improve; players play for fun and when they’re being shouted at like they killed somebody, it’s not fun.

All players, even professional athletes, need to know their coach believes in them. Players need to know they contribute something important to the team, whether it’s their drive, their energy, their defense, their speed, their three-pointer, or their leadership. Phil Jackson, coach of the Lakers knows that “"Deep within the NBA heart, there are still some insecurities where they still need to have a lot of compliments about how much they mean to the team, how their energy is important, how much they're doing for us, and what they can do better.” If this need is still present in these demigods of basketball, how much more needy are these teenage ball players.

In my better world that I construct in my head, this is what I wish for: A coach who, when he sees my son, thinks, “That’s a great kid”; a coach who likes teenage boys or teenage girls or preteen soccer players, whatever age group they actually coach; a coach who tempers himself in consideration of the tender feelings that sit along his bench; a coach who continues to learn, to read, and to rework what she does in light of whom she has on her roster; a coach who knows that soccer isn’t war.

A coach is somebody who sees what you possibly could be and tries to think of ways to allow you to become that; who thinks of ways to explain, to teach, to make concrete what is only theoretical. A coach allows a greater horizon and causes you to lift your eyes, to see more than you had actually imagined, then shows you the way. A coach is the arm around the shoulder during the long walk back to the locker room. A coach is the bigger heart, the clearer voice, the kinder eye. It’s the calm, centered voice from the sidelines that says “nice shot . . . get your feet under you next time.” A coach is the consistent, persistent correction until muscle memory unites with cerebral processes and the foot follows through the ball on a pendulum swing every time.

A coach can be all those things. What coaches should never be, unless they cannot help themselves (which is when they should be helped out of the building or off the field) is the deliberately erected obstacle through which a young heart and mind has to struggle to find its way to play what is, really, just a game.

Title: from “Crying Shame,” by Jack Johnson.

Hey, Soul Sister

Not all things are worth measuring, especially when you use those measurements to determine your worth. It's probably best to use the guide who knows the metes and bounds by which we will ultimately be measured and uses those real, eternal measurements to help us see the actual bounds in which we live out our lives.

God measures the cleanliness of our hands and the purity of our hearts. He assesses the change in our countenance. He notes our actions toward his poor, his fatherless and his widowed. He records our gifts given with willing hearts, our talents multiplied, and our tithes and offerings--comparing us always to the widow's mite. Those are real measurements, eternal measurements of actual consequences.

We do however live in a physical world with physical dimensions. Still, we can recognize the good and real measurements and choose to be measured by those. Some physical measurements have actual consequences.

It is, for example, worthwhile knowing that your hips actually measure 44 inches, instead of the 38 you insist they are--especially if you're bidding on the 35-inch hip Anthropoligie Marimekko skirt on eBay. There is no sense lying to ourselves about our physical dimensions. It just results in really tight clothing and an irresistible urge to pick. It is also useful to know one's body fat percentage, or where we are on the obesity scale as used by the National Center for the Chronic Disease Prevention. It is also probably more useful to know that percentage than your inseam in Gap's Hip Slung pants. Those measurements are an indication of our overall health, which is part of our stewardship. The numbers of those measurements have actual consequences, ranging from heart disease to diabetes, to system failure. (This does not mean I will stop closing one eye and tilting my head when I get on the scale. Eyes wide open is sometimes too brutal.)

Other less valuable physical measurements are those that impose a value on a person's weight, size, or height. I can think of very few occupations where your body weight is of such importance that it needs to be tracked and measured. Perhaps a jockey or a wrestler--but then only to make the playing field fair. All cultural pretensions aside, dancers and cheerleaders and volleyball players and gymnasts don't need to be measured; neither do they need to be under 100 pounds. The human body comes loaded with talent in different packages and there's enough lycra on this earth to cover all of them. (Case in point: Beyonce and her two dancing beauties who shake the roof in the music video, Single Ladies.)

For my daughter, I have tried to keep her out of those cultures which are dangerous to a woman's soul by placing undue, unnecessary emphasis on size and shape. These are so physcially demanding, even unrealistic, that the pressure to be something almost physically impossible causes delusions of size, of strength, and most importantly, of worth. When pre-pubescent 6th-graders, not yet menstruating, spend five hours a day dancing, and skip school lunch because they're on a diet--it's the beginning of a potentially dangerous cycle. Soon they will not be able to see themselves as they are, only as they are not and what they could or should be. As the mother of my particular daughter, I refuse to value her or to let anybody else value her in inches and pounds.

There are some numbers which are really, wounded pride and visions of aesthetic perfection aside, irrelevant. Case in point: my life-long disappointment with my short femurs--the shortest of all the girls in our family. What can I possibly do to change my fundamental, Shetland pony-like attribute? Nothing. It's bothered me my whole life. There is the possibility of a femur implant . . . . ! But, even I could not go that far. After all, a 19-inch femur can still take me across the Appalachian trail. Just not in as much style as I would like. More of a stomp than a stride, you know. My legs are, alas, perfectly functional; they're just not perfect.

Most dangerous of all, there are some measurements that are patently false because they combine the best of each to create an average most of us cannot hope to obtain. The perfect creature obtained from combining all the supermodels; the perfect woman obtained from combining the best of all the women in the neighborhood; the airbrushed perfection of seventeen-year-olds who have the genetic combination desired by Madison Avenue. Even the measurement of parents, expressed in years of disdain, control or pressure to succeed, can be false--a figment of their own imaginings, and nothing remotely connected to one's real worth or value. These measurements can be discarded. They're not worth the pain nor the effort to try reach them.

I suppose no matter how old we get, we still face the woman in the mirror; and we carry her with us. We also carry with us the woman we wish we were, after years of smoke and mirrors, and Victoria's Secret. The struggle is to see clearly, as we really are, not as we think we should be. The beginning of faith is the ability to see truly, to come to a knowledge of things as they are.

For what do we need this body?

We know what Satan does with women's bodies: it's all around us. He constructs a world that celebrates an almost prepubescent female body as the ideal norm. So, whenever most of us look in the mirror, we are reminded of what we are not. I could hate this body of mine. I could rage against it, and the hillock of belly fat that hovers along my C-section scars. The fact that I could have made a bundle if I had been born and willing to pose nude for Rueben is scant consolation.

The master of darkness would have it just this way. He would have us think, every time we look in the mirror, of what we are not. He would have me think that because my body does not look a certain, supposedly desirable way, it is not worth having at all. Thus, we enter into a war with our bodies, hating the very flesh that makes us potentially divine, despising the tabernacle our Father has given us. If we lose ourselves in fixating on our bodies, either vanity or in self-loathing, then the deceit is complete and the power of our bodies remains untapped.

Again, for what do we need this body?

So that, slipping through holy water, we may covenant to follow. So that we may feel, in a real, physical way, the promptings. So that we may learn, through our physical senses, how our God speaks to us and thus learn to recognize his voice. So that we may know pain and the blessed relief that comes with healing. So that we can actually feel, in the absence of pain, the grace of God--a physical process of healing that echoes perfectly the spiritual process our souls must also undergo. So that the sun on my cheekbones after a long winter that lights a column of warmth to my center can foreshadow Him.

So that we may join with another in an expression of love and intimacy that binds hearts and minds together in a marriage. And, especially for women, so that we may learn, in a physical way, the Christ-like sacrifice of offering our bodies for the salvation of others. So that we can participate in the great act of creation, of making physical that which was only spiritual. So that we can have stewardship over a temple, can learn to care for it, to prepare it, to make it ready for the work that He would have us do.

From: Hey, Soul Sister, by Train.

Did You Get the Chance to Dance Along the Light of Day?

The earth is full; there is enough and to spare.

I'm walking on Sunday evening, into a beautiful spring sunset with blossoms exploding around us, with Friend. She wants to know what to do that will make her happy. To be more particular, she wants somebody to tell her what will make her happy. She proclaims to the pink-tinged sky: "Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it. Just tell me what to do. I'm very obedient. It will be done in an instant." I start laughing, "I wish it worked like that. Somebody comes and tells us what to do that makes us happy."

She's at that point we all get to, those of us who are very good box-checkers, those of us who love to fill in forms. (Mine might have been the first census form to have been filled out, but I waited until April 1, so that I could accurately report who actually stayed in the house that day. Wouldn't want to file a false document with the federal government). Graduate from high school with honors. Check. Attend best college you can, preferably on scholarship and in another country. Check. Get graduate degree. Check. Get married to athlete who makes you laugh. Check. Have children. Check. Pottytrain children. Check. Get children to first grade where day becomes your own again. Check. Option A: Develop career and get lots of awards. Check. Option B: Remain at home and create brilliant pianists, soccer players, singers and prayers out of said children, plus master art of digital scrapbooking. Option C: Options A and B. Check, check, check.

Then, one day, about fifteen years down the road, you wake up one morning and think, "Is this it? Is this it for the rest of my life? Is this what I get to do, everyday for the rest of my life?" You look at the body sleeping next to you, in its slack, morning-eyed sleepiness, and think, "Are you it for the rest of my life?" It's round about this point that some women have another baby, because that's another venture to start on, something that breaks up the monotony. Men, I've noticed, buy younger models—of either sports cars or wives, or both.

Friend—who doesn't want another baby and can't afford a sports car and can't marry a wife in this state—breaks out in a frustrated utterance, "I didn't realize that 'endure to the end' was going to be fifty years long. Somehow I feel robbed. Like I worked really hard to get here and I'm not anywhere. I just want to be told what to do next. And there is no next." I'm laughing as we head down the hill: "Well, there is a next. But there are no more boxes. So, now, scary as it may seem, you get to decide what's next. It's utterly and completely your choice." She wails, "But I want to be told what to do next. I'm very good at that. I don't want to have to work it out. That's frightening. "

____________________________

Exodus 32 is normally boiled down to silly children of Israel lose their heads while Moses is gone and go on idol-making rampage which results in Moses and the Lord getting really upset. Moral of story is obviously that we should not make "golden calves" in our own lives. (Just received change of assignment in church which means I now have to teach Old Testament to adults. Bear with me on the OT references while I settle in). But, I'm not so sure about this obvious message. Again, the "why" gets lost in the "what."

Here's another way to look at it: A people, in slavery for 470 years, are liberated. There's a certain psychological comfort, or at least certainty, in slavery. You don't have to decide what to do, what to wear, when to work, what to eat, and when to sleep. While you might chafe against the restrictions, there is also no opportunity to go horribly wrong of your own free will and choice. So, imagine the "growing up" that needs to go on in a person's mind to be able to go from "slave" or "child" to independent, free thinking adult. As I read through Exodus, I appreciated how the children of Israel are tutored in steps by a patient, understanding parent God.

First, he requires them to work out how much manna it is they really need, each "according to his eating." This is a little bit of independent thinking. "And no, don't hoard it. If you do, it will stink. Okay, now it's stinking. So, work out a better amount tomorrow." After a few days, they get it. They understand that this manna will appear in the morning, and melt in the hot afternoon sun. And, if there's any left over by night, it will turn rancid and wormy in the morning. They understand that their responsibility is to gather it and correctly calculate the amount. Even still, a few, myself included, not willing to trust that there will be nothing on the seventh day, or perhaps wanting fresh manna instead of baked, go out on the Sabbath morning, and there's none. Our appearance to look for manna when we've been told there won't be any gets a warning. So, they're learning to figure out how to be obedient without the immediate consequence of a lash or a deprivation.

Then Moses learns how to lead. The only leader of any weight that Moses has seen is Pharaoh, a centralized, powerful figure to whom the entire Egyptian people look. So, when it comes time to fight Amalek, Moses becomes just that kind of leader. He parks himself at the top of a hill and raises his arms. As long as Moses raises his arms, the battle goes in their favor. When he gets tired and lowers his arms, the battle turns against them. Why didn't Moses choose to hold up a flag on a stick? Far easier to hold and to handle. Perhaps because he thought he had to be the center of his people's focus. (Or maybe to provide us with an easily packaged moral imperative about the necessity of supporting your leaders.) But, with the aid of his trusty lieutenants holding up his weary arms, the Israelites win the battle. Still, Moses is the central figure and they look to a leader to give them confidence and direction. Their leader, however, needs to learn that he cannot take everything upon himself and so Jethro wisely tells him to cut out the all-day answering of questions and concerns. Delegate to capable leaders and take yourself out of the middle of things.

Together, the children of Israel and Moses develop small steps of independence. God, in chapter 19, decides to make them his covenant people. He asks them to purify themselves in anticipation of the making of the covenant. They take three days to purify, and then, in return, they get lightning, thunder, fire and clouds as the Lord reveals himself to Moses and makes the covenant with the him and his people. Once again, they interact with their God through their leader and they get instant reward in the form of visible signs of divine power. Then they get instructions for living, in the form of the tablets of stone and they get instructions for worship, in the form of how to build the Tabernacle. They promise, the entire audience, "All that the Lord has said we will do, and be obedient."

So, fast forward to the crucial moments before the making of the golden calf. Moses has left to talk again with the Lord. Aaron is left in charge of the camp. Their leader, to whom they have looked for manna, for water, for battle commands, for divine law, for intercession with the Lord, has gone. There is no-one to look to. There's no smoke, no fire, no thunder or lightning. It's almost as if God and Moses conspired to leave these children alone for a time to see what they will do in the absence of power and authority. What steps will they take on their own?

What do they do in the space provided by the Lord in which to prove themselves? They panic. They return to their default setting. I know they have all they need to see them through this time of separation—tablets of Commandments, lists of worship instructions, and a personal commitment to carry these out. But sometimes those don't feel like enough. Sometimes, you want your hand held. Moses' absence was too much to bear, the space and silence created by his leaving too much to contemplate. So, "when they saw that Moses was delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron and said unto him, 'Up, make us gods which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, . . . we wot not what is become of him."

To a people so used to being led, to being shown, to being provided for, to having their manna and quail set out before them, they found themselves unaccountably, horribly alone. There was no one to tell them what to do, no one to tell them just exactly how to be happy. So, they make a leader for themselves, out of gold, in the shape of a calf. It comforts them—at least until Moses gets back into camp and reads them the riot act. I suppose it was then the penny dropped that perhaps the golden calf was exactly the kind of graven image prohibited by their new set of life rules. That was something they probably hadn't realized. It was one of those ideas that look better on paper than in execution. After all, all they wanted was a god to lead them, just like they had always had. They didn't realize that those really detailed instructions they had been given over the past months/years were designed for exactly this moment, to allow them to lead themselves.

I feel for the children of Israel. I recognize their good impulses. They don't suddenly get a wild hair and decide, "Yes, Moses is gone. Let's play." They actually want to worship something. They want a visible leader, somebody they can turn to. And, in their fledgling faith, they do just about everything right: they approach Aaron, the leader in Moses' absence, and ask for a visible god; the women offer up their golden jewelry, sacrificing their own belongings; their leader makes the calf for them and proclaims a feast day unto the Lord; they build an altar of earth in front of it, just as instructed in Exodus 20:24; they come early in the day and offer up their burnt offerings and bring their peace offerings. Just about everything is done right, except for the one prohibition that they were told three times: don't make any graven images, in particular, don't make any golden or silver images. Just don't. And they still do.

Why is it that they couldn't remember this one small detail?

Because when we are left alone for the first time to actually choose for ourselves the life we will lead, sometimes we freeze. We don't actually know how to choose for ourselves. We don't know what to choose. We're used to that undercurrent of authority showing us what our choices "should" be. It's hard to choose something when there are no more boxes telling us what to chose. When there is no obvious "should" i.e., when there's just space and time to fill, we flounder. Into this space, sometimes we pour more boxes of our own making, perhaps a golden calf or two, just because we're used to boxes. That this tends to lead to a life lived under the pressure of false imperatives is problematic. But, the familiarity of that approach can be comfortably numbing. At some point though, just like the children of Israel, there will come a time when we are left alone, with the Lord's devices, to fashion a life of our own choosing, a life that is of our own free will and choice.

____________________________

My lovely Friend has all the education, career, husband and children she needs. What now? This was the question she asked herself and her husband during one of those frankly honest, even-toned, perspective-altering, kitchen table conversations a few weeks ago. Start again? Because in ten years, if she threw this set of husband, children, and kitchen table in, she would be back in the same position she is in now, with a new husband, new children, and a new kitchen table. And, in all honesty, it was this particular man she wanted to share the journey with and these particular children she would like to see through to the end.

Which brought us at the middle of the walk, as we rounded the irrigation canal, to the nature of this journey and the massive space between the last box and the last breath. I asked her, "What story do you want to tell? In twenty years, what is your story going to be?"

In my particular space, I told her I would like to hike the Appalachian trail (even better if Bill Bryson were chugging along with me); learn how to drive a big rig; oil paint; live in New York City or London or Sydney or Florence; spend every afternoon I possibly could watching my children play sports; see how tall the trees I'm going to plant next month in our new orchard will grow; go to Scotland with my beautiful sisters to find my presently unknown but I am sure equally short-legged, well-endowed second cousins in Firth; take my children to live where they are the theological and perhaps racial and linguistic minority; hike the Grand Canyon and ride the Colorado River out; attend the U.S. Open in New York in September and the next World Cup; buy a kayak and use it during the summers on the mountain reservoirs; track down an ocean and plonk myself next to it for as long as I can every year; earn my lifelong membership in the Fancy Skirt Tennis Club, and have that mentioned in my obituary along with the Lovely Ladies Luncheon Book Club; go to every funeral I can for those people I've shared this journey with; notice need and find ways to fill it; sit in grey-haired, raucous conversation with my brothers and sisters as often as we can and hopefully belt out Christmas carols every year at the top of our slightly off-key voices (mine the worst), Paul on the piano, Laura on the guitar, Angus on the drums; see the magic of my children and my brothers' and sisters' children unfold before my teary eyes; continue to love this man I've lain next to for nigh on twenty years; maybe write a book if I can muster up the energy; and the list goes on.

"But, what if that doesn't happen? What if you can't find a publisher for your book? What if you get mugged on the trail? Or shot in the New York subway like Brian Watkins?"

"I don't care. It's my story. I get to try writing it. It's my space. I get to try filling it. I start by thinking about what I would like to go in it."

Title: From "Drops of Jupiter" by Train.

I Really Need You Tonight

There is really nothing more to say--except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye.

The traditional teaching of chastity to our teenagers goes something like, "Sex outside of marriage is wrong." Then, it's followed by a laundry list of things one mustn't do so that you couldn't possibly have sex before marriage: touch any area covered by a swimming suit, be alone with a boy in the basement watching movies, be alone with a girl in a car with a bench seat, look at pornography on the Internet, and (this is my personal one) listen to and see any Shakira videos (Have you see the She-wolf video? It's depraved. And I'm desensitized). The repercussions of such activities are dread: Illegitimate children, sexual disease, immorality, loss of virginity. All those things that might possibly happen and which would spell the end of life as you know it. And so, sexual intimacy is run through with a thread of fear, colored with the forbidden, and becomes a place to either run from or to peer around the edge at with the morbid curiosity of children, forbidden to eat sugar, looking into the pantry of their friend, whose mother apparently owns stock in General Mills.

But then our children notice images, sounds, lyrics, dialogue that portrays sex generally--inside and outside of marriage--as really rather fun. During their first forays into sexual intimacy, the feelings that accompany their exploration are exhilarating. Those feelings don't feel wrong, in and of themselves. How does something supposed to be so wrong feel so good? There's a disconnect between what they hear at church and possibly at home and what they feel within themselves.

For the sake of my children, of my almost-adult Julia, and my three boys who are charging into sexual maturity and therefore sexual interest, there must be a better way to teach the principle that sexual purity, even waiting until marriage to engage in sexual intercourse, is a better way. Not the only way, we have to recognize, but a better way than the satisfying of an appetite that is commonly portrayed. And, teaching a better way must center on principles, not laundry lists of what actions are wrong, until you both say “Yes,” and then the whole smorgasbord is open for business (Because that in and of itself is a little confusing; at least it was for me).

What reason is there for reserving physical intimacy for marriage, besides, the Lord forbade it? In all honesty, the logical reasons that WERE given for maintaining moral purity aren't as convincing anymore.

Traditionally, I would think, the concern for children born outside of marriage and their accounting for in the legal system drove much of the proscriptions against extra-marital sex. However, given the development of science and technology, some of the traditional reasons for abstaining from sex until marriage don't apply anymore. Birth control prevents the conception of unwanted children. Thus, careful people (adults and teenagers) can engage in sex 99.5 percent of the time without getting pregnant.

If birth control should fail (real birth control, taken regularly, every day at the same time, not like the 7 out of 10 pills I took before our July 7 wedding which method resulted in Julia Rose due April 8 of the next year) and a child is conceived and delivered, then science can now take care of prickly legal issues. The fetus can now be aborted in relative physical safety to the mother--one option. Or the child can be delivered and adopted out--another option. Or, the child can be kept without many of the legal and social ramifications that used to haunt "illegitimate" or "bastard" children.

Blood and DNA testing allows one to establish paternity even if the parents are not married to each other. This allows children born outside of a marriage to lay claim to inheritances, land, and other benefits of identifying their biological father. This also allows the mother to lay claim on support for the child from the biological father.

If, as we read in law school, a wife, married to a husband, should have sex with a man outside of her marriage that results in a child, prior to DNA testing, the law recognized the child as the husband's, even though he didn't contribute any DNA to the child. The law still does recognize that child as legally his. But, if that frisky sire was really rich, then, today, the child could establish the identity of its biological father through DNA testing and lay legal claim to a share of its rightful inheritance. Or, as in the case of Anna Nicole’s child, if the child turns out to be really rich, the father could use DNA to establish it was his contribution that spawned the child and so get at the family jewels that way.

So, children born without the legal identity of a father can now inherit. Women who give birth without the financial protection of a husband can now lay claim for support. Sex does not generally end in pregnancy. Sexual diseases can be treated, although not entirely cured so one doesn't have to watch one's nose rot off as used to be the case with syphilis. But, the prohibition remains: no sex outside of marriage.

Traditional science would have us believe that actions of the body are separate actions. Descartes theorized that the world was like a clock, made of separate parts, and all science/philosophy had to do to understand existence was to break apart the pieces. In his theory of dualism, the mind and the body were distinct entities. The mind exists apart from the body, and does not exist in space. Likewise, the body exists but does not think. In a theory like this, one could, I suppose, engage in repeated sexual acts without them having an effect on the mind or the soul.

In the middle of the century, quantum mechanics challenged the theory of separation. Quantum mechanics views the world as being in constant dynamic interaction; nothing, no event nor action, is independent of all others and exists in and of itself. In a world interpreted by quantum mechanics, separate events are not really separate. All events are interconnected and interdependent. Every part of the body knows what the other parts of the body are doing and responds accordingly. Every part of the soul is aware of what the body is doing, and responds accordingly.

Given that, I believe that our body and spirit respond in kind to when the body and heart move toward intimacy. A heart that begins to love will move the body to press forward. A body that becomes intimate will inspire a heart to long for sustained, emotional intimacy. When one happens without the other, the physical and spiritual pathways get confused and work against each other.

Remember Julia Roberts as Vivian in Pretty Woman? Her rule was she did not kiss on the lips. She could do all other sexual acts, but kissing on the lips, requires an intimacy and an honesty that disturbed her. Kissing requires face time; it's a moment of truth: the moment in which you smell him, taste his breath, his skin, and you look into his eyes. The moments where you find out, in a precursor, whether you fit together. I imagine Vivian thought that if she did not kiss, then she did not have to engage in the soul-seeking and -identifying behavior that accompanies kissing. Because, in a very real way, a kiss is always a question: Who are you? Will you? Can I? Under the influence of the kiss, the body and soul, working in awareness of each other, respond according to design.

I realize that not all cultures kiss like Western cultures do; but there must be some other method of intimacy that precedes intercourse itself and that serves as a gateway to the assessment of whether this body fits with my body, and thus this soul with my soul. Eskimos stand nose to nose. Still she breathes him in. Other cultures press forehead to forehead. Another moment to stop, to breathe, to smell and to wait for him to register, like a bolt sliding home, or a lock tumbling open.

Like kissing, physical intimacy is the portent of a promise. When a woman opens herself to a man and takes him into her body, she opens the center of herself to him. The opening of her body mirrors the opening of a soul. I know there's sex when the grocery list is running through your head, but, then there are other times. Those times when your eyes are wide open, and you can see, as you can feel, through his and through him to the very center, not just of your own union, but almost to the meaning of us all.

In traditional Episcopalian wedding ceremonies, the bride and groom vow: “with my body I thee worship.” This language of betrothal promises that each party will use their body to reverence the other. In this vow, physical intimacy becomes, in a very real way, the reverencing of your spouse. The use of “worship” also suggests that physical intimacy is more than just a linking of bodies, but is instead an activity of both body and soul. When joined, the bodies become the physical evidence of the emotional and spiritual commitment. It's this act, fittingly, that has the potential to give rise to another human being.

Some try to characterize sexual intimacy as just the fulfilling of a bodily appetite, like urination or hunger. The teaching of sex as an appetite, and talking about it as “having” ignores the interconnected body/spirit reality in which we live. This thinking returns us to the Cartesian duality of a separate body and mind. In my life, spirit, blood, and muscle are all connected. I cannot promise with my body and renege with my spirit without causing an effect in my life, in the life of the person I join with, and in the lives of those who follow me and him. The lie at the center of that impatient act colors everything.

How many times can one open one’s very center to another person and another person and another person without being torn apart? The incongruency between the intimate body and the uncommitted heart and mind would lead, I am convinced, to a broken idealism. Each encounter of bodily intimacy would call out to a wary heart, begging it to follow, promising, like the boy who cried “Wolf,” that this time it’s for real. If that were me, and I’m speaking only for me, I would fracture under the duplicit hopefulness of it all.

Because it is tied, at the heart of its function, to the creation of another human being, and to the clothing of a soul, sex is more than just appetite. Because it has the capacity to open worlds, and to allow men and women to participate in the creation of another world, sex is more than just biology. Because physical intimacy, not even sex, can leave you feeling discarded and utterly bereft, it's better entered into body and soul. Because I have been there and been part of it when it has taken me to the very center of myself, and my husband, I recognize and will teach that sex is always about the body and the soul—mine, his and the ones that will be.

For me, physical intimacy is, literally, about “making love”; it’s about giving and about receiving. It’s not about “having” sex, like having a drink of water or a swig of condensed milk. It’s an act of building, of repromising, and of closing the gap. It can be worship of the most poignant, tender kind that fills body and soul with wonder. Those moments are more likely to be found with the one with whom you fit, whose breath and smell you know and love, whom you have vowed to stand by and to support and to whom you have returned time and time again.

For all these reason, I will teach my children it’s better to wait.

From: Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"

All Things Well Made

Musings from Mexico I

My sister and I and our children just spent a week in Mexico for spring break. Not Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, all-you-eat-cruise-ship-Mexico with palm trees. More bring-your-own solar panels and generator and bottled water, and we'll supply the tortillas. Mexico not-so-grande. But, in return for the fifteen-hour drive on roads and through places I didn't know existed (and still wonder why they do; take Vidal, California, for example), we got the Sea of Cortez, thirty kilometers south of San Felipe on the Mexico side of the Baja Peninsula. On a still morning, it is literally Katherine Bates's "shining sea" as the sun rises out of the ocean in a ribbon of pink and orange. It's strange to see the sun rising out of the ocean on the west coast; wonderfully disorienting, as we're used to seeing it set off the California coast.

The Sea of Cortez is a shallow, fertile oceanic nursery formed by a 700-mile finger of land stretching along the western edge of mainland Mexico. From the second-story deck of our home on a little bay, I could see flocks of pelicans, gulls, sea terns, ducks and geese, and solitary herons stalking the shallows. From the sea, I could see fish jumping at manic intervals throughout the day. From the rock pools, which were uncovered in a stunning, hundreds of feet, retreat of the sea from the high tide mark, Adam and his cousins pulled octopus, crab, urchins, anemones, clams, mussels, shrimp, and "silver fish"(their technical term for the miniature sardine-like fish that swarm in thousands on the surface of the ocean).

Underneath the ocean, well, apparently, there are stingrays, that hang in the sandy benches behind the tidal rocks that are exposed at low tide. Mostly they just float with the tide, but, National Geographic says that "when they are inclined to move," they undulate their flat bodies like a wave. We were told to do the Baja shuffle when walking in the ocean, which attempts to alert any stingrays in the sand that a large creature is coming at them from the side. Footsteps from above aiming for the head of a stingray are almost certain to get stung.

Christian says he was standing still when he was stung, although stung is a euphemism really. Imagine a bone trident wielded by an irate, Smurf-size, basketball referee with little man syndrome. That's about what it felt like to him when the stingray hit him in the bone of his heel. The poison spread so rapidly that by the time he got up to the house, I could see lines of red stretching up both sides of his ankle into his calf muscle, with blood trailing out of the hole in the back of his heel. Laura, who had been bitten two years earlier but waited for a few hours until the pain got "worse than childbirth" before she went to the local doctor for a Novocain shot, bundled him into the car and we took off. The pain of the poison was so fiery Christian didn't know that the doctor's wife (el doctor was out) plunged a wide needle up to the hilt into his heel, and he was still waiting to feel the bite of the needle while she manipulated said thick needle in and out of his heel at various angles (seemingly the same motion the dentist uses during a root canal to reach all three roots). When she was done, he was still waiting for it all to start.

That put a damper on Christian's day. He retired to the sun chair on the deck, and his twelve-year-old cousin Jenny and her friend Brit, played nursemaid to him for the rest of the evening, including making up one-act plays reinventing new endings for Christian's social life and dilemmas with Star Wars Galactic Heroes figures.

On the ocean the next morning, kayaking across our own personal sea of glass, I wondered "Why a stingray?" Why, at a very simple level of necessity, does a sting ray exist? Laura offered a biological developmental theory: these creatures were put into play and evolution over the centuries has created mechanisms in them that allow them to survive in their environment. I wasn't looking for a Darwinian explanation. On other days, it might have worked, but I was on a more "Why did God start this?" train of thought. I didn't know then that ancient Greek dentists used to use the poison in the spine of the ray as an anesthetic—which perhaps slightly justifies a stingray's existence on a usefulness level.

But, I couldn't find an initial reason for the stingray. None of the criteria for justifying an existence really came into play: wasn't useful, wasn't necessary, wasn't beautiful, wasn't kind (like drowning sailor rescuing dolphins), wasn't comic relief, wasn't redemptive, wasn't a foil for some larger creature, wasn't an integral part of the food chain, wasn't a symbol of larger meaning (like the sand dollar husk). Stingrays just are. They are.

I felt a truth knock in me as I watched the pelicans with their clumsy heads sweep low over the blue surface. They were watched by a heron, standing so elegant in his knock-kneed slim silhouette, at the shore. "Each in its own sphere," came to mind. I thought about the human tendency to rank and to assign a value to a thing's existence based on criteria of need, beauty, power, and conformity or whatever comparison-based scale gives the ranker more power, rather than allowing each creature to stand unassailed in its own sphere. I thought of the uselessness of comparison in the natural kingdom. After all, how does one compare a lion with a sea cucumber? Better to just let them both be.

I thought about the word "variety." When the gods created (using whatever creative mechanism you prefer—six days, six creative periods, geologic eras, shifting planets, whatever) the life on this earth, a stated goal was "to give variety" to the earth. The variety standard necessarily denotes that difference and discrepancy will always exist. Designing for variety means that "sameness," variety's antonym, is and will remain, despite our best effort's to induce conformity, an impossibility. Variety means there will always be multiple ways of being, of moving, of looking, of making noise, of thinking, of eating, of protecting. At its heart, variety means that existing is justification enough for being.

That morning, as I contemplated the stingray, I came to see its purpose: to be a stingray. To float with the tide, to burrow into the sand, to move "when they are inclined" in sinuous waves of its wings across the ocean floor, and to sting, when threatened, with a spiny, poisonous tail. Because the stingray is, I cannot say that land and forward-looking eyes and a warning voice are the only, or even a better way of existing. When I look at nature's variety, I must conclude that water, land and air are equally suitable spheres in which to live, and that wings, bellies, legs, and suction cups are all effective methods of moving from place to place. I must allow for hide, skin, scales, jelly and shell as coverings. Orange, black, blue, brown, grey and green become equally suitable colors in which to live out one's life.

As I paddled through that Mexican morning, I found thinking these things and praying for the same equanimity of gaze that I saw in the solitary heron as it watched the flocks of bulbous, brown pelicans fly across its horizon.

Title: from "All Things Bright and Beautiful" by Cecil F. Alexander (1848).