A Few Things

1.) Thoughts on laptops in class:

a.) good! taking notes is awesome with typing ability.
b.) good! can ignore people who are asking boring questions by blogging.
c.) bad! blogging during class bad!

2.) Thoughts in worship:

a.)"It can be hard to tell the difference between a stomach ache and a message."
b.)"I think I have both."
c.)"Meeting is too chatty to tell for sure."

3.)Oh my crap:

a.)Most boring guy in last semester's class who asked the most inane questions is here!
b.)Asking the same questions again!
c.)And making the same inane comments!
d.)Will never stop talking, which is why I am blogging.
e.)He is still TALKING.

Some poems to take into worship

1.

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape. Walk out
like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You are covered with think cloud.
Slide out the side.
Die,
and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest
sign that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon comes out now.


2.

There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplied silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.

3.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you truly want.
Dont go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill.
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

~Rumi
Trans. Coleman Barks.

Borderlines

I am being all skittery about changing to the new google blogger. Darn all these ongoing innovations.

It's interesting times here. Trying to get a grip on the monster final paper due tomorrow. I also just realized we're supposed to go out for drinks when we hand it in, but I'm down the dregs of the bank account. Poop. I am working on fixing up my financial life so that I don't spend so much of my mental area chanting almostfridayalmostfridayalmostfridayalmostfridaaaaay... though I've been financially independent (oh, so very different from independently wealthy) for six or so years now, I still generally end the pay cycle with -3.98 plus -58.00 bank fees. Eeep! Enough! I need to work my way past my financial puberty and become some kind of fiscal grown-up. I'm also trying to tidy up some messes left behind with ancient unpaid medical and cell phone bills and other things that make for ugly credit. And trying to get one of those “build your credit” credit cards without a billion dollar annual fee. Yawn! Why am I still typing about this? I bore myself. Ick.

I went to my first business meeting at the "new" meeting (the one I've been attending for 18 months and living at for 12? Yes. That new meeting) It was pretty powerful and I've resolved to go more often. Several long-long term weighty attenders applied for membership this round, which made me feel like less of a waffler. Other people wait a long time to join, too! Nyah! Ahh, defensiveness.

The "thereness" of my spiritual life waxes and wanes with my moods. I am still battling chronic depression, but I'm well armed this time with therapist and other helpers. Okay, lots of unquakerly word choices there. But it gets the point across. A lot of the time it is a battle, with all the weariness and bloodiness the word implies, but hopefully, in the end, with a much more positive outcome. It is kind of depressing, how much energy it takes to be depressed. Or, rather, to try not to be depressed. Sometimes I think that if I didn’t have to spend most of my time managing my mood, I would make a million dollars and take over the world. Le sigh.

I've been spending a lot of time sinking into a search for the core of my spirituality…sort of plumbing the depths to see what’s in there, what’s solid. I am always sort of doing this, but recent events have driven me to a deeper, more methodical exploration. As usual, I’m not entirely sure what I am coming up with, but I am getting an idea.

Christmas was a very hard time. I was physically depleted by a violent attack of viral gastroenteritis that left me sniveling and shaking on the bathroom floor and delaying my flight to NC. There was also had a big emotional and spiritual purge that left me feeling similarly drained and shaky: my parents, who love me very much, informed me that any hypothetical Quaker wedding of mine with my dear, Queer friends invited will be unattended by the family.

Which, while still hypothetical, is really, really sad. It has been hard to work through the initial shock and grief into a better place of spiritual adulthood (not that I am there, yet.) It left me feeling a bit orphaned, though I know my family meant nothing of the kind. But I guess a line was finally drawn, a wall was finally raised, and in the end, I found myself standing outside.

It is a perplexing reality that my parents and I are standing on opposite sides of the same Bible verse:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me
and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

with both parties feeling a little bit crucified. I cannot deny the truth I feel is revealed in my heart without being unfaithful to my revelation of Christ. My parents cannot deny the truth they feel is revealed by the Church without being unfaithful to their revelation of Christ. I can feel their pain because I'm sharing it, but through the looking-glass.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother...

What does this even mean? I've always struggled with this text, but unlike other trying verses, I've never been able to properly discard it. Obviously a loving God can gain no satisfaction from family strife. In a sanctified world, there would be none.

I know I am growing, in many ways, because of this separation, and I know that is good, and holy. But what a price.

And it is a separation. Even though we are still communicating with love, and still trying to be there for each other in all tenderness, there is a breach. There is a tear. There is a wound.

When the news hit, the first warning that my heart gave me was the extreme importance of not snapping up a martyr role. (Woe is me, as I suffer for my faith!) The second was to examine my soul and make certain that I was sure. Sure of what?

Of my conviction that I have found a true and fruitful spiritual home outside of the Catholic church, one which is founded on solid ground, no matter how fragile my day-to-day practice. Of my conviction that God blesses each and every relationship founded on openness, generosity, and deep love, that the fruits of love are holy, and that all true love is sacred in the eyes of God, without regard to exterior gender or preference.

And the answer is, I am sure.

I am ashamed, in a way, that it has taken me this long to post that. I have hidden much of my own declaration of faith, especially the part about the equality of same-sex relationships, out of fear of rejection and outright condemnation from my family. I have not denied, but I have not affirmed.

I am blessed that my family does not reject me or condemn me outright. Their love for me is strong, and I have great faith in that love to keep our relationship intact over these walls and these seeming chasms of difference in faith. Their courage in drawing the line as lovingly as they can has lent me the courage to examine and declare where I stand. In my deepest heart, I wish that this were a simple matter of difference of opinion, as I had hoped it might be. I would give up my attachment to a great many opinions for the sake of my family, and I think they would do the same for me. But in the end, this is not a difference of opinion, but a difference of conviction.

Please pray for us all, friends.

Thoughts on John 14 in times of Loneliness

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.
And you know the place where I am going...

I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live you also will live.
On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you...

I have said these things to you while I am still with you
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all I have said to you.
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid...

Oh Happy Day

Two years ago, after coming home from a champagne birthday celebration with two of my dearest friends, I opened my email, slighly tipsy and feeling warm and loved, to an email from a mysterious gentleman who said:

"I pulled your e-mail address off a comment that you left on the Quaker Ranter – hope
you don't mind! (I'm not a stalker, just a resourceful former journalist.)"

And then said a whole bunch of funny, balanced, and perceptive stuff about plain dress. And then emailed me nearly a hundred more funny, balanced, and perceptive notes. He lived in MA, and I was cosily tucked into NY. And then he came to NYC to fall headfirst into a caravan of my silliness, survived my attempts not to kiss him (I was DONE. WITH. BOYS.) and had me head over heels in love with him before he had to get on the next chinatown bus home. We took pictures, I cried, he got on the bus. And we emailed more. We talked on the phone late into the night, and often ended with periods of silent worship, faint rustling and powerful feeling coming over the line as we each sat and pressed our cell-phones to the sides of our bent heads.

Then a job came and I moved to Cambridge to be with him and to seek my fortune and my degree. In the past two years he has seen me through a tedious and wrenching legal process, a nervous breakdown, and countless tantrums and crises of faith (often the two are conflated.) He has prayed with me and joked with me and comforted me and challenged me. We have travelled together and watched bad 80s TV together. He has lent me his Pug and his unique point of view. We have brewed beer, drunk beer, and read about how to make better beer. He makes the most ridiculous silly noises and the most annoying silly characters. He is tolerant when I forget everything and remembers everything I forget. Also, he is adorable.

He's the best, and he loves me.

He was the best birthday present ever. I love you Jeff!

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor.
For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe unto him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."
--Ecclesiastes 4:9-10.

PS: I wrote this post two days ago and tried to post-date it for Dec. 15th, my birthday, but it didn't work. grr.

I do believe
the most of me
floats under water.
And men see
above the wave,
a jagged, small
mountain of ice
and that is all.
Only the depths
of other peaks -
may know my substance
when it speaks
and steadfast
through the grinding jam
remain aware of what I am.
Myself I think
shall never know -
how far beneath the wave I go.

~Edna St. Vincent Millay

Winter Trees

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

~William Carlos Williams

Belated Bloggiversary to me!

I have posts brewing, but in the meantime I just wanted to say Holy Cow! Two years!

And I am still kind of here. :)

A Very Long and True Sentence.

"All that each person is, and experiences, and shall ever experience, in body and in mind, all these things are differing expressions of himself and of one root, and are identical: and not one of these things nor one of these persons is ever quite to be duplicated, nor replaced, nor has it ever quite had precedent: but each is a new and incommunicably tender life, wounded in every breath, and almost as hardly killed as easily wounded: sustaining, for a while, without defence, the enormous assaults of the universe."

~James Agee

In other news, I crashed my bike again last night but got away with only an acre of immensely stinging road-rash and a pumpkin-sized bruise. (bah!) Everything hurts, but not in a for-12-weeks way. Also I need to write a response paper. Also the semester is almost over and how did that happen? Also things are still as tough as always (maybe recently a bit tougher) and I still need prayers.

The more often you say "doom" the less it sounds like a word.

So, maybe it is the weather or the season or the sleep deprivation, or the fact that many people are dying these days, but I've been suffering with a mundane but sticky case of existential horror. I was hauling a half-dozen water-logged barrels of dead leaves to the curb, and thought, "gee, why can't leaves be more durable? How come the tree needs to lose them and regrow them every year, and I have to rake them up every year? Inefficient! Grr."

Then in meeting, whenever I closed my eyes I was filled with images of everyone I love eventually dying, and their precious bodies turning to dust. And then I looked around the meeting room, and saw everybody there turning to dust. And then I watched a documentary about the 80's club scene in New York, and almost everyone featured in the movie was dead from some combination of drugs and AIDS. And then I was in my 100-student strong psychology class, and realized, "in less than 80 years, everyone in this room will be dead." Then I went home and read some bible out loud to my walls, including the part where God is solidly cursing Adam "you are dirt, and to the dirt you shall return." And I thought, what a waste. And then I realized that it's not exactly a waste, since all these someday-to-be-dead people are loving, reproducing, producing, etc, but then I thought well, what extravagance then. Imagine buying a new car each morning, driving it to work and back, and then sending it off that evening to the junkyard to be scrapped for metal for a new car. Imagine a whole new set of people every generation.

But I figure if God can afford it, then that's cool.

"We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand."
Jennie Jerome Churchill

ETA: I sound like a total materialist in this post and I don't necessarily mean that, but I haven't got any coherent information about the afterlife, so I'm just talking about the here and now and the dying part. I also mean this post in sort of a "woah" sense rather than a doom sense. Doom. Doom Doom.

Speaking of doom,

I am sitting here shuddering at the Monday before me. I'm much luckier than most, I don't have to face Mondays until lunchtime. But still. It always seems like you are going to go into work and find that the world has fallen down over the weekend. Eek!

Enough whining. I did have a very good weekend. Friday night I went to my friend Holly's house and we cooked a pseudo-thanksgiving dinner, and it was delicious. So was the company and conversation. On Saturday I went out and had lunch and a movie with another friend, and then window-shopped and toddled around the Square not doing much of anything until it was time for my hair-cut. It was kind of an expensive hair-cut, but it should last a while, and I like it. Then Jeff came home and there was much rejoicing. His mom is doing much better but still has a long road of recovery and enforced rest ahead. On Sunday we went to Fresh Pond meeting and were pleasantly suprised to see some of our friends were visiting there, too. It was a strange meeting for me, with a lot of fearful thoughts about death and decay that I was unable to banish, but I came out of it with a job: to read the whole bible to myself, out loud. This should be interesting. Perhaps I will be released from it before I get to Leviticus. Eek again. Then we biked back to Cambridge in the freezing rain, which was equal parts exhilarating and unpleasant, and Jeff went to business meeting while I went to bed. Bad Quaker!

Oh, Monday. Why must you have so much week ahead of you?

less doom

more cooking. I just found this blog and I am charmed and itching to make something:

http://seriouslygood.kdweeks.com/index.html

it is a little heavy on the meat for a grass and cheese eater like me, but I still really like it.

Also, more laughing. This little dude had my sides aching with sympathy. I love him!

my gosh

This blogging comes in spurts, doesn't it?

I'm on a couch with Jeff's pug. Jeff's mom is in the hospital, and so he's taken off or Texas to be with his family. As of the last report, things are improving, but still serious. Pray, please.

The pug is very happy for any company. He's here, sharing my lap with the iBook, dribbling on my arm and the keyboard in turns.

Last night Jeff and I went to the apple store to get a new computer that would better serve his burgeoning design and layout skillz. That means I get to inherit the old laptop, on an installment plan, even. Once this mac-baby is mine I will be so cool I won't even know myself. Ah, sweet consumerism.

(I kid, I kid. Even my computer will be second-hand. My shoes leak! I ride my bike everywhere? What do you want from me?! :) )

I've been thinking a lot about paralysis. There are times when I cannot rouse myself to do a single thing. There are other times, only marginally better, when I can only rouse myself to put on the outside trappings of life, and stumble through the day, week, month, waiting for something else to start, for some spout of energy to get me through. I coast, for shameful amounts of time. I hibernate, if only internally. I cocoon, but without any promise of metamorphosis. Sometimes I feel like I'm parked on the side of the freeway in the driving rain, watching cars shoot by, unsure if I can make it back into a lane, unsure of my courage to try, unsure if my car would even start if I tried. I hate freeways, and I can't drive, but it's a good metaphor.

Sometimes my whole life is like this, with only my close relationships spared. Work, school, daily eating/walking/breathing/doing can all pass in a blur, and the only time I feel anchored and present is when I am engaging one-on-one. I'm trying to branch out in my Quakerism, trying not to be a Quaker-In-A-Can, but I freeze at the thought of the expectations any group involvement might require of me. It's not that I fear committee work or community involvement per se, it just seems like I'd be adding a new group of people to let down, and there are times (too many times) that I can't avoid that letting-down. When it is just me and a friend, interacting, talking, sharing a beer, knitting scarves, I can be true, I can be real, I can be present, and sometimes I can even be on time.

The mantra my therapist sent me off with last week was "it's okay to make mistakes", and I am really struggling with that one. It is okay to put too much baking powder in the muffins. It is okay to put a red facecloth with the white sheets. It's alright if you overdraw your bank account by $3.58. But there are so many possible mistakes.

My mother quoted my grandfather: "Once is a mistake, Twice is stupidity." I guess my mind has always translated that as "if you can see ahead, if you have experience, and you still screw up, The End." Add to that a fear of outrunning one's guide, of assuming anything, of 'writing checks your ass can't cash' . . .

I know I am babbling, but sometimes it feels as if that's the best blogging for me. I'm so afraid most of the time. There are mistakes, and there are consequences for those mistakes. Hearts, minds, fortunes, lives, souls, happiness, futures . . . so much hangs in the balance. I could be careful, or I could be a coward, I'm never sure.

Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble.
Say to those with anxious heart,
"Take courage, fear not.
Behold, your God will come with vengeance;
The recompense of God will come,
But He will save you."
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened
And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
Then the lame will leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy.
For waters will break forth in the wilderness
And streams in the Arabah.
The scorched land will become a pool
And the thirsty ground springs of water;
In the haunt of jackals, its resting place,
Grass becomes reeds and rushes.
A highway will be there, a roadway,
And it will be called the Highway of Holiness.
The unclean will not travel on it,
But it will be for him who walks that way,
And fools will not wander on it.
No lion will be there,
Nor will any vicious beast go up on it;
These will not be found there.
But the redeemed will walk there,
And the ransomed of the LORD will return
And come with joyful shouting to Zion,
With everlasting joy upon their heads.
They will find gladness and joy,
And sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Isaiah 35:3-10

Okay, nifty!

So, this is just a Meme, but it's a pretty good one. I wasn't tagged, I just grabbed it off another blog because it appealed to me:

1. Grab the nearest book. If you are currently reading something, that'll be fine too.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your Blog along with these instructions.

5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet I know that is what you were thinking!

6. Tag 5 people

Here is mine:

"And so, late last week, on the advice of his professors, he had packed up and left St. Louis. They had advised him to go home and look for a job that would not tax his moral sensibilities and maybe next fall he could resume his studies. They told him if he could learn not to be quite so hard on himself and on the rest of humanity, if he could learn to relax, then he would be free to develop into one of the most brilliant ministers that the seminary had yet produced. They said they'd pray for him"

--from Grand Opening by John Hassler

I've spent this week having conversations about seminaries (no, I'm not thinking of going!) and ministries, and praying, and being able to deal with jobs, and being hard on oneself. I am reading this random novel I bought at a book sale for 25 cents, and I haven't even decided if it is any good yet, but this snippet is pretty interesting, given all that.

As far as tagging people goes, that always feels wierd to me, (is it the chain-letter thing, or the popularity contest thing?) so I'll just say, do it if you want to, and let me know where to find the results.

Blogless in Cambridge

School and work have conspired with volunteering and exhaustion to just about kill every ounce of blogger-urge I once posessed. Every now and again, I'll have a thought creep in and I'll start mentally composing a blog post. This often happens, uh, in meeting for worship, when a message will stir but not rise up, or rises up, but the room is already too full of words. But I don't follow through, and the idea or message passes. This may be for the best, anyway.

Things were tough here in Amanda-land for a while, emotionally and mentally, but most of the bits seem to be sticking back together. I think maybe the anticipation of spilling my guts in a weekly therapy session has also curbed some of the confessional impulses I used to indulge in with the blog.

The best thing I have going on these days is volunteering with a healthcare for the homeless program at a veteran's shelter. My responsibilities are minor--I'm mostly just cleaning up the occasional bit of pee and taking vital signs, and filling basins for the weekly foot-clinic soaks, but on a selfish level, it feels like a tangible step towards medical school, and on a deeper level, it's humbling and grounding to work with these men who have given so much and gotten so little in return. For the most part there is only occasional bitterness, and disproportionate gratitude for the little services we can offer. Here's a bandaid, here's some antifungal powder, here's some socks. Have a cough-drop. Almost every single man I've come across there has a powerful sense of humour, and the friendships that seem to exist between most of them are fully of lightness and in-jokes. I feel strange whenever I try to write about it, because the homeless are so consistently sentimentalized, and there's a lot at the shelter that is bleak and painful. At first, I was a little embarassed to make conversation with the clients. (that's most of the reason I'm there: to set up the clinic and then stay with the men and talk to them while they soak their feet) It's gotten easier as I get to know the regulars, and the things we have in common, like halloween, can lead to fascinating stories of pranks and costumes past. Other subjects can get sticky in ways you never expected. When they find out that I want to be a doctor, there are lots of jokes about me getting rich and forgetting them. If I mention off hand that it's cold outside, I can be sobered by tales of being homeless in January and losing toes to frostbite. These moments, where the distance between us is underlined (namely, my relative privilege, youth, opportunity and wealth) are generally brief, but leave me sheepish and speechless.

But I always feel human and connected at the clinic. When struggling with depression, or even just the esoteric demands of homework, those feelings can sometimes be in short supply. I am glad I'm getting to do this.

I guess that's all for now.

Home

The Journey
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mobtown sent me this poem in an email, which I know, but have never really owned before. I am back from the last leg of the harrowing journey to put an offical end to a terrible, hateful, grief-filled chapter in my life. Another thirty days before the weight lifts all the way off my shoulders but I'll never have to pass through this particular tunnel again. Now I can settle down to the task of rebuilding that I've already been at (with amazing amounts of support) for several years.

Amen!

Today was filled with unexpected blessings. Alone in a strange city, I was dismayed to find that I couldn't get to Meeting as I had planned--the train does not wake up until eleven in the morning on Sundays. I sulked in the lobby over lukewarm vending-machine coffee and a syrupy blueberry muffin, annoyed that I'd turned in my room key too quickly. But dear Mr. Mobtown Blues, whose blog is a favourite, still managed to make conact, and I was treated to a drive around Baltimore . . . it is a lovely city, and I found myself unable to harbour hard feelings against it despite the unpleasantness of my errand. Mobtown and his wife, the lovely Meerkat, took me to brunch in a colourful and funky cafe full of prints and paintings of the Last Supper and skinny hipster waiters with braids and messenger caps. We talked about Meetings and music and starvation over plates heaped with lox and fried dough. I talked a lot, and they listened a lot, and they had a lot to share. Meeting Friends in such a sweet and unexpected way warmed me to the core. I'd gone to bed expecting a few cold days of unrelenting dreariness, but woke up to find friendship and sunshine. It was a beautiful day here too, the sun was warm, and there was a steady, cool, clear wind. I got to listen to a tape of Shape Note Singing for the first time, and in that abbreviated taste of the sacred music I could already hear the space it contained for heartbreak and hope: music into which one may empty an overburdened heart.

After I took my leave of the Mobtown-Meerkats, I strolled through the streets. I scrolled the ipod to Johnny Cash and drank a fresh, bitter, expensive, and exceedingly refreshing gingerale and I walked, smiling at the strange film mundane city life made when watched to the soundtrack of "So Doggone Lonesome". I called up a friend I've known since I was fifteen. We've never been close, but we shared a love of ninjas and Diablo II and fart jokes, and stayed up way too late together with my brothers, playing Risk or Warcraft, back in the day. He and his wife have recently moved to Baltimore and they took me in for the night. I made them Mexican food and scones for dinner, and we laughed at all the stupid internet videos that have been making us laugh since 1997. I was afraid it might be awkward after several years, but I slipped back into old times like an old coat, and it was immensely cheering to be transported back to easier, sillier days. Other friends, and family, called and texted and emailed, weaving a solid net of comfort to hold these long intervening hours. Now everyone is asleep and I am on the couch, pondering what is to come, wishing prayer would arrive a little more easily. But today has been a prayer: a breath of thankgiving to find myself falling into open arms and a sense of awe when I realize the expected shock of hard and rocky ground has not reached me. I am afraid to pray about tomorrow, but emboldened by the blessings of today, I will try to face it with a clear heart and a measure of trust.

As usual I am trolling my poetry for comfort, and Emily Dickinson knows all about tomorrow:

A darting fear -- a pomp -- a tear --
A waking on a morn
To find that what one waked for,
Inhales the different dawn.

~Emily Dickinson

Sleepless in Baltimore.

Jeff lent me his beloved Ipod for this trip. It was a great comfort and an agile companion as I hurtled through the skies. Belle and Sebastian played on...

"I'm lucky, I can open the door and I can walk down the street
Unlucky, I've got noplace to go and so I follow my feet

A choice is facing you, a healthy dose of pain
A choice is facing you as you stare through the rain
A choice is facing you but I choose to refrain for today
Tomorrow we'll be back in trouble again...

Why is this happening to you? You are not a child
Why is this happening? You've too much on your mind
Things creep up on you when you are fast asleep
You are dreaming, you are sleepy
You are stuck to the sheets

In a town so small there's no escaping you
In a town so small there's no escape from view
In a town so small there's nothing left to do"

The sunset clouds from the plane were infinitely forgiving and welcoming, tipped with light: a pink and fertile field. Come to me, all you who are weary . . . I listed to The Postal Service sing a familiar song and realized with a sudden rush
of understanding and a flush of stupidity that it had always been about airplanes.

Knuckles clenched to white
as the landing gear detract for flight
My head's a balloon
inflating with the altitude

...

I watch the patchwork farms' slow fade into the ocean's arms
And from here they can't see me stare
The stale taste of recycled air
I watch the patchwork farms' slow fade into the ocean's arms
Calm down, release your cares
The stale taste of recycled air

I imagined the plane was going to crash, and I looked at the sleeping young man beside me who was shedding years with every moment he slept until he looked almost new-born, and I started to cry, and Sufjan Stevens sang.

"Oh the glory that the lord has made
And the complications when I see his face
In the morning in the window

Oh the glory when he took our place
But he took my shoulders and he shook my face
And he takes and he takes and he takes"

The clouds grew thicker and warmer and pinker, and I began to cry a little harder, good hot tears. I'd upgraded to first class, for the first time in my life and thirty dollars, so I had a lot of room to bury my face, and extra-deluxe napkins for my tears to go with my complimentary mint cookies. I woke up the sleeping innocent beside me and when he looked frightened I scoffed away my tears. It was Bright Eyes when I really wanted Simon and Garfunkle, but it did the job.

"if you swear that there's no truth and who cares
How come you say it like you're right?
Why are you scared to dream of God
When it's salvation that you want?
You see stars that clear have been dead for years
But the idea just lives on...

We are nowhere and it's now
We are nowhere and it's now

Like a ten minute dream in the passenger's seat
While the world was flying by
You haven't been gone very long
But it feels like a lifetime "

Now I am sleepless in my hotel. I floated in the hot pool in boy shorts and a tank-top, not having bought a bathing suit since my teenage years. The room was close and empty, and the heavily chlorinated steam stung my lately dried eyes. I went up to the cable TV and every channel was murder, save one, which had the Osbornes unintelligibly swearing at each other and dogs. I plugged my dying cell-phone into the wall and woke up a couple of friends and a sister for the company and drank a glass of wine. Billy Bragg sang.

"Thank you for the things you bought me--thank you for the card
Thank you for the things you taught me when you hit me hard
That love between two people must be based on understanding
Until that's true you'll find your things
All stacked out on the landing, surprise, surprise..."

And then I read my favourite poem again. (if you've been reading this blog for long, you have likely read this poem.)

The Only Animal
by Franz Wright

The only animal that commits suicide
went for a walk in the park,
basked on a hard bench
in the first star,
traveled to the edge of space
in an armchair
while company quietly
talked, and abruptly
returned,
the room empty

The only animal that cries,
that takes off its clothes
and reports to the mirror, the one
and only animal
that brushes its own teeth

somewhere
the only animal that smokes a cigarette,
that lies down and flies backward in time,
that rises and walks to a book
and looks up a word
heard the telephone ringing
in the darkness downstairs and decided
to answer no more.

And I understand,
too well: how many times
have I made the decision to dwell
from now on
in the hour of my death
(the space I took up here
scarlessly closing like water)
and said I'm never coming back,
and yet

this morning
I stood once again
in this world,
the garden
ark and vacant
tomb of what
I can't imagine,
between twin eternities,
some sort of wings,
more or less equidistantly
exiled from both,
hovering in the dreaming called
being awake, where
You gave me
in secret one thing
to perceive, the
tall blue starry
strangeness of being
here at all.

You gave us each in secret one thing to perceive.

Furless now, upright, My banished
and experimental
child

You said, though your own heart condemn you

I do not condemn you.

In gratefulness for the tall blue starry strangeness that is me, and gratefulness for Jeff and ipods and clouds, and turning my face to the morning, now I'll try to go to sleep.

Poem for a Hard Time

Someone sent me this poem once in a hard, frightening, and lonely time, and it found me again just in time for the three hard and frightening and lonely days that I am facing just now. (Long story. Sordid. Sad. Hopefully with a happy ending at the end of these three days.) I am very lucky to have so many friends who are carrying me in their hearts at this time, and also very lucky to have poems.

The Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver


You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
        love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I have not forgotten . . .

. . . about my promised post(s). I've just been waiting for them to ripen while I keep busy. I am not sure if I have time to finish a whole Important post before it is time to crumple into bed courtesy of the No Bad Dreams for Now pill, but I thought I'd type for a while anyway.

At some point I want to talk more specifically about what my NEYM experience has to do with the new shifts in my faith life, but I don't know if I have the attention span for a nice coherent post encompassing both NEYM and the new stuff haunting my soul. So for now I will name the two or three major things I (re)learned there, and maybe post a little about what I plan to do about them, and how they make me feel. And maybe then I'll post a whole lot of unrelated stuff about how I feel because I seem to have more feelings than I know what to do with most days. Poor Jeff and my mum absorb the bulk of them, other friends get the backsplash. I would like not to be so drippy and emotional sometime soon but I also know that's not entirely up to me.

So. What I've Learned.

1.) "Art thou a child of the Light, and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?"

So, since beginning my Quaker path I've had this strong beautiful and demanding phrase echoing in my head, but I've only listened to the last third, and only as it applies to vocal ministry. "Are these words inwardly from God? Hmm, yeah, it feel like it, I guess it's time to Quake."

But am I child of the Light?

Have I walked in the Light?

I don't know. It seems as though I've been claiming Quakerism for the Old-School Hicksite theology (short order form: I will be a Christian but I don't think God demanded Christ's death as revenge/atonement) but expecting all my spiritual life to take place on some other plane. It has been revealed to me that I've been extremely anti-community since becoming a Quaker. I still want my solitary mystic path, I just want to be a Quaker while I do it. God does not seem to agree.

What I am Going to Do About it?

a.) well, I was told inwardly that for a start I need to stop beign scared of YAFs. And that I should stop seeking the inward title of "Minister" if I am afraid to minister to my peers. I met some rising YAFs who seemed so ready for God and a life of Faith, and saw that maybe I have a part to play in helping create a community for them while they learn how. Yikes, scary. I hate people my own age. I spent my childhood being precocious and being admired for it every now and then. I clung to that admiration and I guess I still seek it. It is humbling to know that I've been rejecting things God might like me to do because I'm still seeking the thin rewards of a savant.

2.) A phrase from last year's YM:

"And you will be carried where you do not wish to go"

This is a translation (unidentified) of John 21:18. I realized that perhaps all of my blubbering about no leadings from God was shameful and that I might have valuable opportunities for service in places that are ultra-familiar and unpalatable to me at first (my home meeting, and also YAFs)

3.) Trusting the experience of others. It's a hard pill for an independent Quaker to swallow on the surface. Isn't this faith supposed to rest on the direct experience of God?

Maybe not always. The truth is, I can go long dark miserable stretches of time with no direct experience of God. And another truth is, the experience of God is available to me in those times, too, if I am humble enough to seek it in the testimony of others. When I am fretting over this or that moment, trying to decide if it's a valid experience of the divine, I could turn to the experience of those I trust and admire and recognize as faithful teachers/companions. I shouldn't be so jealous of my own experience that I'd rather sit around sad, lonely, and Godless, when there's someone else willing to share their experience with me.

There is more, but that's a mildly disorganized start.