Happy birthday, Mark

48 reasons why I love my brother:

1. Earnest
2. Serious
3. A thinker
4. Thoughtful
5. Loving
6. Funny
7. Committed
8. This picture, taken the day we "borrowed" the car to drive to DC
9. His family
10. Jean
11.Helen
12. Sarah
13. Grace
14. John
15. The way he treats his children
16. Pearl
17. That year he started biking and got so fit so fast
18. Grilling, cooking, feeding the masses
19. His unbelievable talent in art
20. His unbelievable talent in rendering
21. His ability to problem solve
22. Not afraid of hard work
23. His gentleness
24. His gentleness that I see in the way he talks to his kids when they are down
25. His gentleness that I saw when he was with Grammy
26. His brave gentleness with mom
27. His fieriness, as it is a witness to his beliefs
28. He puts his money where his mouth is
29. He has been helpful to me
30. He calls it the way he sees it
31. Forgiveness
32. Sense of color
33. Gives great gifts, including some of my favorites (a vacuum labeled "40 sucks" for my birthday, and a "Life is Good" blanket when life was not so good for me)
34. His relationships with his extended family
35. His ability to fix things
36. That he does not veer -- when he knows something he knows it
37. His love of rap music
38. The way he sings in church
39. Fashion sense
40. Hits the mother f***ing hell out of a golf ball
41. He loves what he loves
42. The treehouse he built his kids
43. His house, his backyard
44. He is a good son
45. He knows his kids intimately
46. Christmas mornings
47. Especially stockings
48. His smile, when he is really smiling -- it lights up

Next year, maybe 49 more...

Weird

Dropped my iTouch on the way out the door, today. I need to use the stopwatch part during a race at school. When I turned it on (at 9:20 April 26th), the above is what the screen read.

I just want to say this: Hi mom. How are you? Thanks for showing up so frequently. And, yes, I know that every day we can be on the edge of a new year. Even today, especially today, as we are launching full throttle into spring.

Of God and Men

Saw this movie tonight, the story of Algerian monks who get held hostage and, ultimately, killed by their Islamic captors. It's not about the captors, though, nor the popularized battle between Christianity and Islam.

It's really about this one question: how far would you go for your faith? And maybe this question too: could you really love your enemy as you do your friend?

I was uncomfortable in my seat in the climate controlled theater. Kept squirming because my knee ached, after a pleasant walk from my house down to the Cedar Lee. I teetered and tottered in my place, trying to ease the pain. So, yeah, I really wonder how much -- even physically -- I could put on the line for my God.

Kneel for God? Nope, probably not. Sit for hours in still prayer? No to that too. Eat soup and potatoes? Tend the garden? Sleep in a single bed? Well, that's all doubtful. And these things were nothing compared to what the monks endured.

The lasting image for me happened when some troops flew over the monastery in a helicopter. The monks rose and sang to God, even as they wondered if they were about to be shot.

I love to sing to God. Love to sing to find God, settle into God, share joy and sadness with God. But sing to God while facing my death? That, I think, is hard to imagine.

What can I do for God? Claim God, first. Claim God unembarrassingly. Even writing this is something, I guess.

For years, I wondered what God would do for me. But now, in this half of life, the opposite is true. What can I do for God is the far more dangerous and interesting question. It really is.

What it is not; what it really is

For a loner, I can be quite a relational person.
This Mercury is not the statue in the art museum;
it is the place I met a person I instantly knew I would not like.
The blow dryer I used this morning is not a mere household object;
it is a remnant someone left behind in the drawers on the right side of the sink.
The throw blanket on the couch is not just the thing that keeps me warm;
it is the note that came with it. Something beautiful my brother said.
That mug, to my left, is not the thing holding my decaf coffee;
it is the souvenir I got from a writing workshop in Grand Rapids,
the workshop where Kate DiCamillo reminded me to write.
The necklace hanging around my neck is not a piece of jewelry;
it is the person who gave it to me. And the day on which it was given:
the horses, the blue sky, the church near The Center of the World, OH.
That necklace is laced with chicken wings, an azalea plant,
the smell of fire burning, the lazy dog by the fire, that moment in the car,
the one after the silence, when I said, "Yes, you can come. Come follow me home."

Good Friday

I have been waiting forever to feel – feel something, anything. Those few crying jags at Holy Conversations were not really feeling; they were a bad habit gone awry. Talking and crying have become, at some times, synonymous for me.

Neither Lenten services moved me at all, and that’s not just because I had a leadership role. Palm Sunday, same thing. I felt like I was growing farther and farther from God, and, without a doubt, farther still from Jesus.

I even said it. Claimed my non-commitment to Jesus at the last Holy Conversations meeting.Even after all of this work, the disciplined worship. The hours at this church. Even after the fuller elder commitment, I remained uncommitted. Denying almost. Like Peter. Yes, I was Peter.

I want every savior to sit at my dinner table. I want the unleavened bread of Jesus, the wine. I want the rice flour seasoned with mugwort filled with azuki paste of Buddha. The sweet dates of Muhammad. I want to chomp on the native Ohio grass of the wild buck. I want to drink in the electric current of the energy work. I want to eat the brown dirt of the earth like a pagan. I want spirit to enter me as spirit chooses to enter. Through my mouth. My ears. My drying skin. My bare feet. Through the kiss on my lips.

And, as I have become more open, to these idols false and oh-so-real, I have wandered away from the man-god who made me enter the sanctuary. As I widened the definition of what sanctuary may be, I had lost the cross.

This numbing saddened me. No, frightened me, actually. It is a short stumble from grace to gone for me. One tiny adjustment to nothingness.

Today was a vacation day from school. I even laughed about earlier in the week. “I mean, who actually needs Good Friday off? What are we supposed to do? Go and celebrate the crucifixion of the Lord by taking in a matinee movie?” I didn’t even get it. What is so good about Good Friday? What about this day prevents us from learning algebra and the counties in Ohio? Especially when the OAA tests are right around the corner.

Somehow, I am not sure why or how, I ended up in church. No place to hide in that egg shaped circle. I wanted my habitual aisle seat by the window. But there was one chair next to Kevin and so I sat, knowing, if nothing else, I would like hearing his harmonies in my ear.

The first song got me. The shadowed green of the walls got me. The story of Pilate, how desperately he did not want to arrest and condemn Jesus. How he tried over and over again to lift the burden that could not be lifted. My heart widened to Pilate. That got me. And then the way the woman across from me kept whispering “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…” during the prayers of the people. The prayers got me too. How powerful a force destruction is. How willingly our world falls to the lowest entropy.

Then the purple robe of Jesus. How he was slapped on the face. I had only ever pictured the easy flogging of the back before. Him kneeling and the soldiers injuring this blank slate of a back. I had never imagined his face – with those lake eyes – struck.

That got me. How I may be striking Jesus every time I say, “No, not Jesus. Not him. I cannot really believe in him.”

I am Peter. And I guess I am the soldiers too.

Then the sign Pilate made written in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, so that everyone could read and know. King of the Jews. How Pilate, in repeated ways, acknowledged Jesus for who he was. I am not even as strong as that.

By then, slow molasses tears were sliding down my cheeks. The words were being read, the songs were being sung. Kevin was singing a delicious tenor inches away from my ear. And, across the way, a baby was babbling. It seemed right somehow, how living goes on in the midst of the death.

Another reading. Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Jesus, came to take away the body. That grabbed me. Grabbed me. Felt just right.

For years I had seen myself as Zaccheus, up in his sycamore tree. The sinner called down. And on this day, I felt the Peter in me. The soldier too. All of these fringe people not quite ready to stand firm.

But there was something about Joseph of Arimathea, the secret follower of Christ that sat right in me. I did not know why. So I was thinking about that as the words were being read, and we moved into song. Was I really just this Joseph? Someone who knew Jesus, wanted Jesus, someone who would even tend to the dead Jesus, clean his bloody and limp body? There and not-quite?

As I was thinking this, wrestling with it, the baby across the way, started kicking up a storm. Making noise.

I caught her eye as she poked her head under Lynda Bernays’ chair reaching to grab a pink sock. She caught my eye. This fifteen-month old. I caught her eye. And, immediately she silenced. She just looked at me, this baby wonder. And I looked at her. She would lean back, out of view, then she would put her head under the chair again to look at me. I did not try to make her laugh in the peek-a-boo way. I just looked at her. Those black lake eyes. And she looked at me, not making a peep. Her mother did not know what was going on, what had settled her. No one in the room knew what was going on, just this child and me.

And somehow I knew it was all connected. And, God, I know that this is going to sound insane, but when I was wrestling with the idea about being a secret follower of Jesus, Jesus poked his head under that chair and said, with those silent eyes, I see you. You see me. There is no denying it. Jesus said, “See the calm you can cast? Feel the calm I can cast?” Jesus said, “Yes, this is me. I am right here.” And then Jesus said, “And, I need you to look at me just as much as you need to see me too.”

Some swoosh of peace came over me as I cried. And it all made sense. This is not an either/or situation. A knowing/denying paradigm. I can say yes to the love of God through the Tibetan monks. The poetry of the Qur’an. The matzah cracker handed to me at lunchtime. I can say yes to the grace of God on the gravel path at River’s Edge. And on the cranio-sacral table. I can fall into the safe arms of a loving God by saying yes to Jesus. And yes to the song. And yes to the noon grey sky. And yes to the baby. The eyes looking in mine.

There is no need to deny Jesus, no need to not commit.

There is no reason to sit on the cold stone of Gabbatha judging Jesus or judging who I am or am not to Him. He is. I am.

And it is all part of the widening and yielding yes. Yes, even Jesus is part of this amazing yes.

Gray hairs and inconsequential eggs

It was hypothetical until it happened, but then again, I guess everything is. I knew, at some point, I would enter menopause. And, as that seems to be happening, I had previously been mostly afraid of those hot flashes I saw my mother experience. Those migraines that seemed to come out of the blue. The ones that caused my father to pull off to the side of the road so that my mother could vomit.

I fear that happening, but I never expected this: to be mourning the last egg to fall. The last egg, like all of the other eggs, not chased down by sperm. Each one a spinster egg, really. Picture them all, dressed formally in a tight bun, with dark stockings, a solid handsome face.

It’s been 39 days since my last period, and that last one was an insignificant one-day affair. As I crossed 28, then 30, then 35 – as I counted the days on the calendar repeatedly to see if my calculations were right – I find myself thinking that there will be no more.

Even though I have known for a long time that I would not have children, I have not felt that as a core – deep -- reality until the last few days. What would half of me had become? Would I have had a tomboy named Ellie? Floppy brown hair and a shy smile. Would I have had a thick boy named Will? Strong and happy. The first kid to climb a tree. Maybe a girl named Cooper. Or a boy named Sam. I can see them, tonight, like ghosts floating around my house. These lovely children I would have loved.

When that last egg does not fall, it is easy to ask all of these things: would I have been a good mother? Would I have known how to comfort?” How to challenge? Would I have been capable of giving myself away, something I have not had to do in this life I have led. Is there some part of me that will live on in this world after I am gone, if there are no children that follow? Has what I have done mattered at all? How is this a life, really, without love – the making of love, the giving of love, the rituals of love, the passing down love, the daily mess of love, the spaghetti twist of love, the clumps of dirty handed love that children give?

Does anything I have said matter without those exchanges -- those sentence bites of love, that do not even look like love at all? Brush your teeth. Let me comb your hair. Snuggle here with me. Get your library book. Hold my hand. Eat your broccoli. Wipe your face. Say “thank you.” I will rub your back before you go to sleep. Socks before shoes. Let me kiss that boo boo. Hmmm. Has my life been anything without boo boos to kiss?

I thank God for the children I have been able to know and love. The ones that reach for me like a third parent. The ones who call out. Find me. Let me spread some of my unused love on them.

But tonight, I am wondering who my children might have been. I am wondering about their little feet. The curve of their ears. The sound of their voices. What we might of said to each other. What we could have been for each other. How wide my heart would have had to become, stretched by the lives of others. Sprung open wide.