I Thought God Drove A Silver Thunderbird

Sitting here working to Marc Cohen, raspy vocals, syncopated piano, hot afternoon on the cusp of the summer solstice, and suddenly I'm smiling at the image of God driving down Main Street in a silver Thunderbird, hairy arm resting along the top of the door frame, fingers tapping out a rhythm, shades on his face, slight smile tugging his lips, as he feels the evening sun across his face.

The lyrics actually go like this: Cohen describes a car driving down the street, with so much chrome you can't even see the driver--who has a fondness for Brylcreem and pocket combs--and then he imagines what the driver says to him, "Don't you give me no Buick. Son, you must take my word, If there's a God in heaven, He's got a silver Thunderbird. You can keep your Eldorados and the foreign car's absurd, Me I wanna go down in a silver Thunderbird." I like the image of God in a silver Thunderbird, sunburned forearm beating the universe's time with his middle finger. Works better for me than God in a minivan, or God in a three-piece suit with Hitler-path in his hair, or God in a white polyester robe and Santa Claus beard.

But, I don't know whether what I envision is even close to the center of Him at all.

________________________

I'm having what I'm coming to think of as "a man of God out of Judah" moment these past few days. This particular man of God is chosen by God to warn Jereboam about his false temples. After successfully delivering the message and then healing Jereboam's hand when it had shriveled after reaching out to touch the altar, the prophet turns to leave.

Jereboam asks him to stay and eat with him. The Man of God out of Judah declines, saying that one of the constraints of this particular mission was that he was to "Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn away by the same way that [he] camest" (1 Kings 13:9). So Man of God out of Judah leaves, apparently having passed his particular prophetic test. On his way, he gets stopped by "an old prophet of Beth-el" who tells Man of God out of Judah that he is also a prophet, just like Man of God out of Judah is, and that an angel has told him that it's alright for Man of God out of Judah to have dinner with Old Prophet from Beth-el. So, he does--which he shouldn't really . . . but when one of your own fraternity comes to you and says, "Hey, come to dinner," do you really get suspicious?

As soon as the meal is over, Old Prophet chastises him, "Thus saith the Lord, Forasmuch as thou has disobeyed the mouth of the Lord, and has not kept the commandment which the Lord thy God commanded thee, . . . thy carcase shall not come unto the sepulchre of they fathers." Sure enough, on the way home, Man of God out of Judah is attacked by a lion, which lion is kind enough not to eat his carcass but to keep the ass upon which Man of God out of Judah rode company until Old Prophet comes by to pick up the body.

I don't like Hummers. I don't get people who drive Hummers. I just don't get Hummers, cars or drivers, on so many levels. Somehow, they feel wrong to me. The same wrong I feel when I see the university's ROTC soldiers practice military maneuvers in the park just as the elementary school gets out for the day and the children walk home past soldiers in full regalia and rifles wriggling their way between the black locust trees. Bizarre. When I read about Man of God out of Judah being killed by a lion, albeit a vegetarian lion, it felt like God just drove through my world in his suspiciously squat, carapaced, slinty-eyed Hummer. I don't recognize Him. And, in all honesty, don't really want to know that version of Him.

________________________

The last week of May our chestnut tree was a vision of Spring. Teenage leafs, in Vermont green, surrounded virile, fully pink-stamened chestnut tree flowers. In about a week, the tree would drop all its beauty in messy, oily clumps on the newly poured patio, like mascara the morning after. But for that glorious week, the tree took center stage in the garden.

Until it snowed. Not a polite dusting. But a heavy, wet, low-ceilinged, dark grey storm that started as I walked into the gym, was still going an hour later, and kept on going for hours. Heavy, wet winter snow falling onto peonies, and forsythia, and basket of gold, and daffodils, and the trees in their Spring finery.

The chestnut had lost the third of its branches facing the mountain by the time I got home. Some branches had completely broken off. Others were ripped in two, like a simple fracture, a tiny sliver of under branch still hanging on vainly. Then there were the Greenstick fractures, branches so badly bent, that even though they appeared intact, they were, as far as lifelines and arterial blood go, cut off from the main trunk.

I saw her through the kitchen windows, bravely trying still to be beautiful with her back third ripped away, and screamed. "Just, no! No! No! No!" "What on earth is it doing snowing a week from June. Why on earth does it need to snow now? It's enough. Just enough."

Kevin walked in and heard me, "What's the point in getting angry? Don't tell me you're getting angry at God?" That's when the guy rope slipped out of my head and I lost my mooring.

"I'm not angry at God. I'm just angry--at whatever God makes the weather. This is ridiculous. It's enough that I have to live in this place. It's enough that I have to have snow for five months of the year. It's enough that I have to learn to ski, and that I have to live through February and March, the most depressing months of the year. It's enough that we've had the longest winter in living memory. This is enough. It does not snow in May. It is not supposed to blizzard in May when all the trees are in full leaf. This is absurd."

I turned again and looked out the window. Yes, the chestnut was still mangled. "Just no! No! Enough. It's enough." I screamed. One of those shoulders back, chin at the sky, arms spread out wide in a question mark, howling at the moon screams. Then I got out the phone book and started calling trees services to see who could come and heal my crippled chestnut tree.

A Sunday morning last month, I was on my pre-church walk. This particular Sunday morning took me along an old lane which used to run through orchards that, even though long forgotten and untended, still fruited because the roots of the trees fed off the earthen irrigation canal. After the canal got pressurized and piped about ten years ago, the trees didn't have a source of water much past April when the ground absorbs the melting snow for a few weeks. So, they don't fruit like they could.

This particular morning as I ventured down the lane, I noticed that the plum trees were carrying fruit, as if they were getting weekly irrigation water. Then I noticed apricot trees amongst the plum trees showing gold at the end of their branches. As I rounded a slight turn in the lane, where a natural spring seeps slowly across the path, I lost my breath. There she stood, beside the spring, in all her beauty. An apricot tree, perfectly proportioned and dressed with golden orbs apparently arranged by the best Macy's Christmas window dresser heaven had on call. Archbishop Latour would have been proud to have her in his diocese garden. I just stood there and looked at her, smiling at her beauty, at her defiance, at her absolute confidence that she was an apricot tree, and always would be, even if they piped the canal. (I talk to my plants).

The thought crossed my mind, like the dash of the lizard's tongue, "No fruit in July, if not for that snowstorm in May, and that long ugly winter that never ended." I thought about that as I tromped my long way home. Would I have chosen to lose the backside of the chestnut tree so that this apricot tree could bear fruit this summer? No, not really. But, there never really was a choice. There was just a snowstorm that broke things and destroyed buds, and ripped the heart out of hundred-year-old trees. And now, there is an apricot tree in all her proud, golden-balled beauty.

On the way, as my feet walked and my arms swung and Colin Hay was singing about his beautiful world while the sun hit my bare shoulders, I felt a knowing slip into place: "Get one, get the other." I felt a space open up in my head for the God who shows himself in the snowstorm, the God who, this particular day, shows up in a way I had never imagined, in the Hummer or the minivan with a briefcase.

________________________

I see her every year, when I register my teams for the upcoming soccer seasons. She epitomizes tawny. Golden skin, copper hair, freckles like pennies. We had classes together at university twenty-five years ago. She runs for miles, and volunteers as the registrar for the local soccer league. Her children play the piano, and soccer. Her husband coaches soccer, and works at the university. Her front room has a piano and her front lawn always has a couple of kids. She's me, with longer legs and better wind and better hair.

I saw her yesterday. She came shuffling around the corner from her kitchen into the front room. She must have weighed 80 pounds. She was white. White face, white thin legs, white knitted cap pulled low to her white cheek bones. I stared at her in bewilderment.

"I have cancer. As of a month ago, I have lung cancer." I reached out to touch her, to steady the altar, like Jereboam. Not quite taking it in, feeling the sheer incomprehensibility well up in my eyes.

I still can't take it in. How a woman in her early forties, who has never smoked, and who runs ten miles a day, comes down with lung cancer, I don't know. Doesn't make sense to me. Makes me, just a yearly visitor, want to shout out, "No! Enough. This is just enough." I thought about her all day, as I drove, and sat in the coaching course, and got into bed. She floats across my consciousness, an unanswerable question. All I can dredge up is a faint refrain with words like, "works of God being made manifest." The lizard tongue that flicks across my brain.

________________________

After Sunday School the day I talked out my bewilderment about thinking I know God, and then coming to realize that he sends lions after prophets who have completed most of their mission, Reynie, a therapist with troubled youth, came up to me and said, "I've thought for a while that the reason we are given the frontal lobes in our brains is so that we learn to overcome the frontal lobe, the need to reason, to have it all make sense."

Sometimes, all we can do is kneel before the unknowable, and wait for God to show Himself. Then to make space for Him when He does, if it is different than we imagined. I don't know how He plans on showing up in Mel's driveway, but I'm asking that the delivery van, when it shows up--and I utterly believe it will show up--bring Mel an apricot tree, in all her golden-fruited beauty.

Title: from Marc Cohen, "Silver Thunderbird."

But I Said No, No, No, No

I'm driving north this morning on I-15 to spend three hours in continuing legal education classes. Today we'll be discussing capital murder case litigation. On the seat next to me is a pregnancy test. If I'm brave enough, I'll pee on it during one of the breaks. I don't think I'm brave enough though.

I've been awake since four this morning contemplating the meaning of the oily roll of abdominal muscles that I feel. Are these cramps? But no bleeding--yet. And these tender boobs--period tender or pregnancy tender? I'm not tired. Not the tired like I normally get when I am pregnant. Then again, the last time I was pregnant, I was in my first year of law school and working. I should have been tired, extraordinarily, head hitting the carpet while trying to study for Property Law final tired.

Can I even remember when I last had my period? I have the day the American Express card and the mortgage payments are due engraved on my heart. All the others are entered on my phone, three days in a row, to keep me on track. One would think that I would remember the day of my period. But I don't, not accurately anyway. Hence the slow-building panic that is spreading cold across the bottom of my gut.

I always thought IUD's were 10-15 year propositions. Somehow I am remembering the conversation between me and the physician's assistant who inserted it as her saying, "So this will last you about ___ years," and me thinking, "Great, I'll be about 42 and surely I'll be done menstruating by then." I don't really remember the actual year number she gave me.

Standing along the third base line fence yesterday evening, Monique informs me, upon hearing of my ruminations of a possible pregnancy, that "Yes, I love my IUD," and "No, they're only a seven to ten year deal."

"For real?"

My heart sinks a little lower than it already is. I'm realizing that perhaps IUD's are not the same as water filters in the fridge. The red light is more than just a suggestion. My African-raised brain sees the red light on the filter and thinks, "We get our city water from a mountain spring. Why does it still need to be filtered?" I make mental note to call OB-GYN in the morning, for first visit in ten years. But, I fully acknowledge this might be a little bit like shutting the barn door after the horse has already bolted. Or whatever that simile is in reverse. Raising the drawbridge once the Trojan horse is already within the city walls?

Kevin grabs me this morning, asks if I have started bleeding yet. I shake my head. There's a gladness in his eyes. Almost a giddiness at the prospect. He would shout Hallelujahs from the rooftop. His hands grip both my upper arms, he's leaning into my face, our eyes are only inches apart. "We could be having a baby." If he giggled, he would be giggling.

I don't want a baby. I've just uncovered what I think may be my hipbones, or at least the subcutaneous fat that was covered by the extraneous fat, both of which lie above the hipbones. I've been able to sleep through the night for the past 2 years without children in my bed. I have a really cute, polka-dotted purse from South Africa which doesn't accommodate diapers and wipes. I've been dying my hair for the past 10 years. If I went white, like I am underneath, I would look obscene: a pregnant, wrinkled, white-haired crone--somebody who shouldn't be having sex, let alone be getting pregnant. I'm 44. I'm afraid of Down Syndrome. Have been since a child. Paranoia, straight up and rampant, but real nonetheless.

On the other hand, I'm strong. I can bench press. I can do lunge to one-legged stand with 25 pounds in each hand. I can do ball bridge and side bridge raises with 20 pounds tucked into the hollow between my hipbone/hipbone fat and ribs. I can dig clay soil and clear irrigation ditches for hours. I'm unemployed. Julia just moved out. We have an empty bedroom. Maybe Kevin's dream of twins will come to fruition.

My mind swings back. I don't want to play Solomon to my own dilemma. I don't want one baby. I don't want two babies. We're done. Perhaps I will miscarry--like I have before. Even knowing the emotional suffering in the the aftermath of miscarriage, I hang my 44-year-old hat on the hope of a possible miscarriage for my possible pregnancy. Because I have actually been in this panicked state before, I know that I won't get an abortion. I've thought long and hard and decided that I probably wouldn't be able to carry through with that procedure. I know Kevin would find it hard to live with a wife who could and did. But, there is always the hope of miscarriage.

__________________

One of the most pregnant lines used to describe Mary is she "kept all these things and pondered them in her heart." "These things" were, of course, the news that she was pregnant, and would give birth far outside the normal order of things, that angels attended the birth, that shepherds traveled miles to see the child and then returned spreading the news. Most people view her silence as the indication of her humble nature, her devotion to God, etc., etc., etc.. I'm thinking there are other explanations.

One, she's not sharing her thoughts with Luke writing decades later. Had Elizabeth been given page-space in the New Testament, between Luke 1 and Luke 2, to write a journal of the discussions the two strangely-pregnant women had in the three months they lived together, there might be other ways to skin this particular story. Two, Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart because her world as she knew it, as she had imagined it, the future as she had planned it had just been blown to shreds. What could she say, without casting her lot with the unbelievers?

__________________

It's an interesting philosophical place to be, contemplating what to do where there is really nothing to be done except wait and see, or pee. But, of course, this isn't philosophy. It's simple biology, physiology, with a very complicated result. My body is suddenly more than just my body. It's a receptacle, a safe harbor, a waiting place--mine and perhaps somebody else's.

Perhaps by design human pregnancy is nine months long. Nine months is a long time. Almost long enough to get a heart into the same place the body has been for three trimesters. It's long enough to feel the hiccups, to get to know a child's nature, to see whether she pushes back in a game of womb-tag, or if he rolls over, twice a day, like a walrus changing painful, lumbering position. It's long enough to grow fond of the little intruder and intrigued enough to meet it. It's long enough to get so large, so inflated, so swollen that you'll do almost anything to get it out. Long enough to realize that the clothes at Old Navy are so much cuter now than the one's available at Mervyn's 20 years ago. Long enough to finally give yourself up, the Lord's handmaiden--to chip away at the disbelief, the amused absurdity that a child could result because you forgot to change the water filter. And certainly long enough to find your own Elizabeths with whom, in the sanctuary of female space, you can scream and cry and quiver and waiver and move beyond that to some kind of bewildered faith, so that when the official story is written, it will say you "kept all these things and pondered them in [your] heart."

That's what I'm hoping anyway.


Title: from Katie Tunstall, "Black Horse & The Cherry Tree"

Wish I Could Keep You Much Longer

One of my larger neuroses that I've carried with me like a hump on a dowager's back since I gave birth to Julia almost twenty years ago is that I am not really a "real mother."

Perhaps it has something to do with me working, part- and full-time, since before they all were born. Or maybe it's because real mothers don't fall dead asleep in their own beds hours before their 16-year old son returns home. They prop themselves up on the edge of the couch and wait, in fitful dozing. Or real mothers don't flinch when they hear Andrea Westley say that her favorite time of day is that 3.30 hour when the door slams and the children pour through to eat the freshly baked cookies. And a real mother certainly wouldn't say to her child, who, also having heard Andrea Westley say said statement, asks, "Why don't you do that for us, Mom?", "Well, make friends with Danny Westley and go home with him."

Whatever the reason, I have always felt a little deficient when it's come to mothering. I enjoy my kids; I actually enjoy being with them, talking to them, watching them. But, just this afternoon, during a third- and fourth-grade Little League game, Adam stood with the bat on his shoulder while the umpire called an inside ball his third strike. And, mother-of-the-year-me, shouts from the bleachers, where I am sitting with my sister, "That's why you just swing on the third strike." Never mind he's catching for the second time in his life and hit a two RBI double during his last at-bat and then stole home, and the pitch was so inside, it would have hit the edge of his cup, if he were wearing one.

Just before that, Laura had just confessed to me, as we talk about adjusting to the hours of summer that sometimes she thinks that just a little baby would be quite fun (She's just turned 41, and her youngest is 7). I think about that same prospect of "just a little baby" (while I shout at Adam), "Just take me out behind the shed and shoot me." (I'm 44 and my youngest will turn 11 in a few months, but every few months I panic because I think my IUD is about worn out and my eggs are obviously not).

So, there are times when I just think I'm not quite into it enough. I feel that other women feel so much more deeply about motherhood than I do. I'm sure they are overcome with paroxysms of joy and delight at the sheer contemplation of motherhood, in theory and in actuality. They dream of babies, theirs and others, and feel to fly to Haiti to adopt, legally or otherwise, all motherless children. I'm surrounded by professional mothers. Sometimes I feel like I'm the one who got hired for the night-shift at 7-11.

Nevertheless, there are four people who call me mother, and sometimes "Tessa" or "Tess-dog," if Christian is so inclined. My first and most fabulous recipient of my mothering faux pas (what is the plural of pas?), Julia Rose, moved out just before Mother's Day. Yes, it's only to an apartment three blocks away and she still comes grocery shopping at Julia's Mother's Pantry after her mother has gone grocery shopping at Costco. But, she is not here when I wake in the morning, and the molecules in the house don't vibrate as much without her presence.

However, I hadn't actually cried about her absence. I hadn't pined for her, gone off my food. Life went on. Sometimes, when I would drive up the driveway and her car wouldn't be there, I would think, "Oh, Jules isn't home yet." Then I would correct myself, almost like Goldilocks, and say, ". . . and she's not coming home." But no tears. No heart torn from my breast by her absence. I had wandered at my rather measured reaction to her departure. Was this, yet again, another small sign in a series of small signs, that I didn't have that pure, Vitamin D enriched, mother's love running through my veins?

The first Sunday after she moved out was Mother's Day. My first Mother's Day without her on the bench. Understand, she is my bookend, the warm body that sits to my left and does up the hook-and-eye that is invariably left undone as my dress is thrown on at 10. 45, 15 minutes before the opening hymn. She's the wet finger that wipes away the mascara flecks that come to rest on my cheekbones after having been applied in the parking lot at 10. 57. She's the other girl in the family, part of the female bulwark against which all the maleness comes to crash. Yes, she had called me earlier that morning from Texas where she was playing softball for her university to wish me "Happy Mother's Day." But, it was at that particular moment, halfway through the opening hymn, I noticed, in my marrow, she wasn't there next to me. For this first time, on this geranium day, Julia Rose wasn't next to me.

I started thinking about her, about the Julia that has filled our lives, that we have watched and wondered at for nineteen years. I thought about the things I did to her that I have never done to any of my other children, because I learned, through her, that they did not work and never would. The reading I forced her to do before she knew the words, the cries I told her to swallow so I wouldn't have to hear them, the soccer camp I signed her up for at which she made no friends and sat, alone for two hours each dinner time, waiting for the next sessions to begin. These are just a few of the more flagrant fouls I have committed.

I thought of all these things. Then I thought of the conversation that we had had just a few days before talking about her studies. She told me she wanted to major in Business, with an emphasis in Entrepreneurial Studies--just like her father. Then she said something which dazzled me: "Mom, I just really want to be a mom. I think that would be so much fun. I can't wait."

Can I admit that I looked at her with wonder? That I let go of the breath I seemed to have been holding since she entered the world, the deep breath that I took at the beginning of the venture and forgot to exhale. My worst efforts notwithstanding, this young woman, this first child of mine, actually wanted to be a mother. Now perhaps it was to provide her children with all the things I haven't, like baby books, and cute outfits (none of which will, she swears, involve overalls) and coordinated frames for school pictures, and make-up and hair-styling lessons, and mixers and Kitchen Aid appliances in cherry red that actually get used. Even so, that she wanted to mother, having experienced my mothering of her and her brothers, was the sweetest benediction.

So, I sat on the pew, thinking these things, marveling at the munificence of that child's heart. I thought of my efforts: fierce, flippant, short-tempered, wide-armed and tolerant, analytical, generous, sharp, always with some kind of distance, to allow them to almost-fall on their own first. And yet, despite all this, she was not scarred or scared. I felt my being fill with longing for her. I would not have kept her back. Yet I missed her, missed her, missed her. Was that really all we got with her? Just those short few years? We talk of fibers of being. That day I knew what that phrase meant. The longing welled up from I don't know where, but came swelling through my gut, breaking out through my shoulders, and, if I had looked with capable eyes, was flowing through every row to fill the chapel. A church filled with my mother-longing for my child whom I cannot keep with me any longer.

Title: from "Keep You Much Longer," by Akon.

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.