Wherein Amanda talks about witchcraft, deception, trickery, striped socks, and other things that might have her burned/read out of meeting in 1700.

Yeah. Halloween.

It's been my favourite holiday for a long time. I am desperately bored with the history behind the whole thing, how it went from a Feast Vigil into Satan's playground, and I'm sure you are, too, so I won't go into that. I am intensely uninterested in that particular set of moral dilemmas.

It's enough to know that around the age of 8, Halloween in our house turned into All Saint's Day. I can't say I was thrilled. There are not very many Rainbow Brite Star Wars Polly Pocket Fairy Princess Carebear My Little Pony Saints in the catalog. But I still managed to work around the restrictions. I'd pour over Lives of the Saints, choosing mostly by the pictures, and by who had the best outfit. Sometimes we'd stretch the boundaries and label anyone that showed up in the bible (except Satan) fair game. I got to go as an Egyptian Queen, (the chick that found Moses), a queen, (St. Helena), a queen, (St. Elizabeth of Hungary),a grotesque burn victim (St. Lawrence of Rome), and a zombie..er...leper...er...St Lazarus. All scoffing aside, it was always a fun time, and it's probably why I can tell you the lifestory of many obscure saints.

As soon as I could, though, I trekked my way back to the evil door of Halloween. I've worked for three different costume shops. I have three professional books on stage makeup. One year I was paid $100 bucks to design the make-up for a low-budget horror film revolving around Demented Clowns. That was the same year I set up a little side business attaching those gross latex things to people's faces. Right now I am costume mistress at the Ballet Theatre. I'm the chick everyone comes to for help planning their costume for any costume event. Before I went plain, half my closet was devoted to "this will come in handy for someone's costume".

Oh yeah.

I went plain.

I'm still dressing up for Halloween. I'm going to be a DooWop Vampire. Yes. I am.

Last night I was discussing Halloween costumes with Rachel. I noticed Jeff looking utterly ambivalent, but I tried to ignore him. Later, we walked the dog.


"I am a frivolous beast." I declared.

"What? Why do you say that?"

"I just am."

"????"

I explained that pretty much everything I like most is "pointless" and does not "further the glory of God". It's true. I like brightly coloured underpants. And tutus and pointe shoes. Also useless miniature figurines like the ones that come in Monopoly. I like movie musicals and muppets. I like theatre and opera and sketch TV. I'm not crazy about the Carebears any more but I sure do like Smurfs. I eat gummi bears from Germany. I like ultra-amoral back-and-white French New Wave art films. My favourite t-shirt of all time was from Old Navy and it was 100% rainbow striped. I enjoy eating peppermint flavoured lifesavers by the dozen. Once I was a ren-faire dweeb. I enjoy reading websites about cryptozoology, and I watch shows on The Discovery Channel like "The Half Ton Man" and "I Am My Own Twin". I eat Sugar Daddy lollipops. I miss fishnet stockings in several colours and getting my picture taken in fours in the pub photo booth. I like scotch and I even sometimes drink "Bitch Beer". I read Science Fiction and all kinds of novels, and I adore poetry. I giggle when people teach me a new obscenity and practice it to myself in the mirror. I've always wanted to play paintball, just once. I like Bollywood. Sequins are fun. I still read the American Girl Catalog. I was happiest with my hair when my hair was cut like Ringo's and dyed a nutty auburn. I like brightness and shininess and things that are red. Especially if all those three qualities are found in a shoe. I love blankets and wasting time lying in bed. Also, I like kittens. Puppies. Rabbits.

And I love, love, love to dress up.

"How," Jeff asked "can you be plain and celebrate Halloween?"

"It's...it's...it's play." I said.

We had a long and fairly thoughtful conversation. Jeff came up with a few good answers to his question, though he said he still couldn't see how it was to the glory of God. But all I could think was, "It's play! I'm still allowed to play, dammnit, grey socks, black shoes, and white underpants notwithstanding."

(I don't really wear white underpants.)

And I felt something very like panic rising up in me. Also something very much like pouting. I felt horrible. Again and again I have given up things that I loved because I couldn't see how they were in service to God. Like that fateful time I gave up the opportunity to get my BFA in acting and last minute threw myself into a religious school I knew nothing about, all because it seemed somehow likelier to please God.

I said something to the effect of all this to Jeff, and he asked:

"Well, did you ever think that maybe a life of monasticism and plainness is not for you?"

It felt like a slap in the face, though I knew it was said in love. Without thinking, I reacted with a flash of self-hatred.

"It's not meant for my corrupt fleshy bits. It's meant for my good bits. My saintly bits. And for now the crappy frivolous beasty bits out-number the rest. Okay?"

I backslid right into a steaming pile of Original Sin, an idea that has always curdled in my soul. A feeling that I'm somehow tainted, wrong, off. That I must do violence to myself, cutting off my hand or eye. That there are parts of me that are rotten and putrid and that must be stripped away, pruned, weeded, burned. Choose your illustration.

As I stewed in these thoughts, I began to wonder, "Well, what is this will of God I am always supposed to be sacrificing things to? How does this or that bit of denial "Glorify Him" more? What does God want? What Glorifies God?"

Well, the answer's pretty familiar. We were created to love. We were created perfectly to love. We are created in the image of the Lover. That's what we are, that's what we're here for. In the absence of any other evidence, with the presence of a thousand "X-factors", this is the only Will of God we know or have any way of knowing. Love is the glory of God. And if we're created in Love, by Love, and to Love, then the only things that need to be stripped away are the things that are not us, that are foreign to us, that have been added on after the fact. Anything that comes between us and our created ability to love has got to go. God requires from us authenticity....to be our true, created selves--the selves that are perfectly tuned for Loving.

Jeff was talking about the fundemental difference between Simplicity and Plainness. From what I gathered it had to do with Plainness being a sign of a religious witness/committment. To dress for the glory of God.

As I've been struggling with my plainness in the past few months, I've found this division difficult. I went plain because I didn't want to be the rich young man who went away sad. I had several issues at hand...I felt that I used fancy clothes as a way to be other than my Authentic self...the self who was created to Love. I also felt that consumption and materialism have real, measurable effects on the world around me. Abusing my fellow creatures, who labour in sweatshops, and abusing my home the earth, which staggers under the weight of landfills and poison, is not Loving.

But the grey, and the long skirts, and the kerchief?

I don't know. In the beginning I wanted them to connect me to Quakerism in some sort of tangible ways. I wanted a feeling of kinship with the long-dead Friends who taught me in their books. I also wanted a feeling of togetherness with the plain people I ran into online, who all seemed to think like me. These people, I felt, called out to my more authentic self, and I wanted to honour that, to make myself as palpably a part of that as I could.

I have found that greatly restricting my wardrobe has led to much less consumerisim on my part. The ideas about clothes have spread to other areas of consumption. Freeing myself from every-day makeup was a revelation. I didn't feel that I had to "fix" myself so much anymore to be ready for people to see me. Not spending $40 to $120 (yes.) dollars on haircuts every two months was another important step. I can't live like that when the world is starving and call myself a Lover of God.

I have found that the grey, the long skirts, and the kerchief do often help me to "act holier". I move more cautiously and gently through space, and I feel a bit more meek. I never flirt with counter-help or grin at someone across the subway when I am in a long black dress the way I might in a cute pair of cords. I don't shoot whiskey in a bar with my head covered. I think a lot about "what kind of image I am giving?" when I look "holy". And this is, I think, for the better.

If the grey makes me more loving, I'll keep wearing it. But I'm not sure if I am more loving in grey or in a pair of rainbow-striped kneesocks. I'd hope that as long as neither the grey nor the rainbow was made in a sweatshop, and the rainbow kneesocks were not a sign of me trying to be other than I am, then I'd be equally loving in both.

Am I called to a life of monasticism and plainness? I don't know. I'm called to life of love and authenticity. Every choice I make, from clothes up, should reflect and further those ends. Because those ends are the only Will of God I am likely to ever know. I can't claim to know what God's fashion sense is. I don't know if that puts my clothing/practice into the "plain" corral. To be honest, I'm not sure that that particular tag is so important to me anymore.

Whatever happens with all of the above, is authentic of me to play, and dress up. Play and imagination and fantasy are a large part of who I am.

I will have it be known that have never been less loving when I was wearing fangs.

Aliens and slurpy sounds. And dish-pan hands.

Well, I fixed the "I am a Vegetarian" link in the last post. It's about Turducken. You want to know about Turducken? Yeah? Are you sure? Then click on the link!

Here's a brand new link for you, from a very dear donor:

Jeff Hipp Loves Klingons. And the Word of God.

(ps. he didn't make it. he just found it. if he'd made it then I'd probably have to kidnap him and keep him in my sock drawer for sheer cuteness/dorkiness. And for his own safety.

...might have to do that anyway.)

Okay, onto serious things. Wellll...I seem to be malingering

(ma·lin·ger
intr.v. ma·lin·gered, ma·lin·ger·ing, ma·lin·gers

To feign illness or other incapacity in order to avoid duty or work.

[From French malingre, sickly.])

with some sort of sub-par psychosomatic, hypochondriac grumbling bug. I woke up this morning and asked myself if I was feeling ill or just lazy. I decided that if I had to ask, I knew the answer. But then my boss told me I looked sick, that I have "fever eyes" (Yikes! Fever Eyes?) and should rest. So they are all enabling me.

For all that I am working and geting lots of stuff done. I've cooked myself up a little mess of shrimp Ramen

(I guess I am not a vegetarian. I am no-warm-blooded-creatures-arian)

and am taking this work-a-day pause to sip Ramen and watch the boxing match inside me. The feelings of luckiness that the trees on my street are turning pink, that the rain has called in sick, that an astonishing array of astonishingly wonderful people care about me, that I have good health insurance and time-shared cats are at war with the snotty-nosed whiny cry-baby feel-sorry-for-myself feelings that have grumbles about work and money and how much I prefer my bed to my desk.

I think I should have brought popcorn instead of Ramen.

What does all this have to do with my spiritual life? Well, it IS my spiritual life, I'm realizing. I often wish I could take the day off to be a good Quaker. Bah.

Lately I've noticed that a lot of the (very relative. suffering is relative.) trials and tribulations I've been going through recently have left me feeling wrung out. It's a weird feeling, not a pleasant one. I'm sort of damp and scrunchy and full of holes. Like...like...

A Sponge.

Only perhaps a bit more square.

Let's try again.

A Sponge.

Hey kids, it's a whole new metaphor for Amanda to flog to death! But really, it's true. Things I've always known, like, Life is Not a Dress Rehearsal, God is in Your Daily Work, Carpe Diem, etc, are slowly seeping in. I've been squeezed, brothers and sisters. I've been twisted and compressed and squashed and drained and left to drip-dry. I know I was holding one heck of a lot of greywater

And now that it's gone, I've been floated on a puddle...a pool...a stream of living water?. Things are seeping in. I'm trying to learn how to make my damp and squishy days into days that still somehow further the purpose of God. I sat in an office, during a pause in dictation this morning, and looked out the window with my Fever Eyes at a tree that has leaves like ferns. I looked at the leaves and watched the wind, and thought about all the students I type recommendations for. Some of their gifts are catalog-able. I thought about all the different gifts I've tried on for size in the past. None of them have fit right. I looked at the tree, and asked idly, "Well, I am not up for any amazing awards or fellowships. What I am here for?" and I knew the answer was love.

Which again, we know. But it's seeping in.

It seems that a big part of my work is learning how to love from my mudpuddles. Learning how to further the cause of love when I feel damp and wrung out and the thought of sopping up anything else makes me tired. Or how to be tender to the people I meet on the days when I am dried out and crusty and molding on the edge of the sink. How to be loving when it rains for ten days, or when I'm staring at the heating bill, or when...whatever. When I have Fever Eyes. When my metaphor is tangled.

And not learning how to love in spite of all of the aches and pains and little moments of misery and wrath that I collect, but how to love IN them, and THROUGH them, and DURING them. Doing anything in spite of anything takes too much energy. Or at least, it's not efficient. I'm not going to stop falling into my little potholes any time soon, so I have to figure out how to be good in the middle of them.


Back to Aliens. I just read The Sparrow, which I can only describe as Sci-Fi with God in it that doesn't suck at all. I enjoyed it very, very, very much. It's fun to read something from this century. Or the 90s. Whatever.

Oh yes, and:
I may be a no-warm-blooded-creatures-arian. But woah. Awesome.
(thanks, Sol!)

This Blog Entry has been brough to you by the Number Ramen and the Letter Diet Coke.

Are you SURE it is not Monday?

So, this morning I was doing work-study at the ballet theatre. The revered blind pianist, Rosie, comes in. I help her to her seat.

"Is Bridgette around?" she asks.

"I'm not sure." I say "What does she look like?"




Just as I realize what I've said and am choking back my howls of humiliated despair, without missing a beat she snaps:

"I said Richard, not Bridgette! What, are you deaf?

Auuuuuuugh.

AAAAUuuuuuuuuuugh.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!

Through the various tribulations of today, this link from my much loved office-mate has helped a lot:

Just Click. Now.

Also,

I am a Vegetarian. But woah.

One more...

I know it's totally self-indulgent and has nothing to do qith Quakers, but I am bored and this is fun. Also, I like getting other people to do this, because then I get to learn tidbits about them.

What I was doing 10 years ago:
Ten years ago I was twelve. We were all still living in Canada. I was already somewhat depressed and struggling a lot. It was a very hard time for the whole family. But we had our little farm, and we lived on a lake where we could go fishing in a leaky boat. I had my own flock of geese. We learned how to chop wood and make strawberry jam and pickles. We tried sewing our own dresses with the help of Mrs. Stanistreet. I think it was that year that I got the chickenpox so badly that I hallucinated. We went to Latin mass. I had a monster crush on a blond 15 year old altar boy named Jeff and couldn't concentrate on my prayers when he was serving.

5 years ago:
I was seventeen. I was cast in my first-ever production, Cinderella (that's the same theatre but a different year). It was one of the very happiest times of my life. That's really all I have to say. I can't believe that was 5 years ago!

1 year ago:
I was living in NYC, and had been attending 15th street meeting for a few months. I was working as a florist for a "big name" shop, doing flowers for the Ritz, but pretty miserable with the working conditions. I'd made friends at a nearby piano bar and was singing there about once a week.

Yesterday:
really, really wanted to go to ballet, but there was only an elementary (higher than my level) class. I really debated going, even though I just intended to take the barre. But finally I decided to go. I asked the teacher's permission first. She was sweet, and the barre combinations she was giving were lovely, even though they were too hard for me. It wasn't that they were too hard, but just too fast. I didn't have time to pay attention to my knees and my chin and my ribs and my heels, etc. I also kept losing my place...they were obviously a lot more complicated than I am used to in my intro class. I was freaking out a little bit, and embarassed to be beside some of the good dancers in the class. This teacher is a favourite who I'd heard amazing things about and many intermediate people were taking the class. So, my cheeks were burning with shame, but even when I was feeling hopeless I at least tried to finish the exercise in good form.

After the barre, during the break, I went up to the teacher to thank her for letting me try it, and to tell her I'd give it a few more months before I came back. but before I could say anything she said that I did a good job out there, and that she'd love to have me come back, and that as long as I don't get frustrated, I'll find myself picking up something new each week. I think I'll wait, though. I felt like I wasn't able to work thoroughly at that speed.

5 snacks I enjoy:
a chocolate Odwalla bar
dates
a pomegranate
sunflower seeds
salt and vinegar chips


5 songs I know all the words to:
In My Own Little Corner
What Child is This
Love Hurts
Matty Groves
Part of That World (yes. from the Little Mermaid)


5 Things I would do with $100 million:
Buy a farm for my family
Set up a college fund for the sibs
Pay off the debt of myself and everyone I love
Live off it and devote all my time to Quakers, ballet, and travel
Buy a farm for myself


5 locations I would like to run away to:
Nova Scotia
Pendle Hill
Argentina
Scotland
Narnia


5 bad habits I have:
I interrupt people when they are talking
I misplace and leave behind important things
I talk about myself too much
I chew my nails
My intentions are always much better than my follow-through

5 things I like doing:
Reading
Dancing
Playing the Zombie board game with Jeff
Camping
Napping

5 things I would never wear: (We need visuals!)
Beast master!
But what if it gets cold?!?!
My saddlebags--meet the world. World--meet my saddlebags.
The poor kitty cat!
Aaaaagh!

5 TV shows I like:
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Gross surgical "Medical Mysteries" shows on the Discovery Channel
The long-dead Firefly on DVD (going to see the movie, finally, tomorrow!
Animal Cops (shut up!)
Growing Up... a show on Animal Planet about baby animals. (shut up!)


5 biggest joys of the moment:
Being with Jeff
Pictures of my sibling
Updates on my mum's blog
Break-throughs of inspiration
Fall and the wind


5 Favorite toys:
My computer
My library card
Fancy stationary
...
uh, I'm out of toys.

5 Next victims:
My mum...
and whoever else want to do it.


Okay. No more from me for a while!

Taps

No, no, no...no bugles involved. We still don't know what meme actually means in the context of the blogging world, but I like them. Because usually they involve talking about me. Me. ME.

I've been tapped with two recently and I figured I'd better get them out!

Okay, first, Beppe wants to know 5 idiosyncrasies about me...

id·i·o·syn·cra·sy
n. pl. id·i·o·syn·cra·sies

1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.
2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity.
3. An unusual individual reaction to food or a drug.

Well...this has turned out to be harder than I expected. This list is very random. Honestly there aren't that many things that are peculiar just to me. In fact, I bet nothing on this list is. As for unusal reactions to drugs, some antibiotics make me throw up. But that's not unusual. It's just gross. Here goes.

*I've been on an informal ice-cream strike ever since "Jerry's Jubilee" a flavour that was half Cherries Garcia and half Chocolate Fudge Brownie was discontinued. I've been relenting, lately. And the Cherries Garcia frozen yogurt is not bad. I've been tempted several times to make my own Jerries Jubilee...but it seeems so indulgent...

*I twitch and shift my legs, hands, feet, fingers all day but somehow manage to sit (mostly) still in meeting. Proof of the existence of God?

*I wait anxiously for the cold weather to arrive so that I can sleep under my 30 lbs of blankets. I sleep so much better that way!

*When I cook, I have to be very, very careful to scale things down, but still hardly ever manage to make the right amount. After making spaghetti a thousand times for my family, I can't wrap my mind around the tiny amount you need for one or two people.

*I honestly know I'm not as weird as I think I am, and so I can't think of anything cool or weird enough to fill out the fifth spot?

Was that lame?


Next,
Seven Things

(This feels a litle like answering paegent questions!)

7 Things I Can Do:

* Train a dog.
* Raise kids. (Well, I'm pretty sure that I could. I've had practice.)
* Read between 2-5 whole books a week.
* Milk a goat.
* Remember my dreams when I wake up.
* Remember inane little things from before the age of 2.
* Obsess over irrelevant details until you run screaming from the room.


7 Things I Can't Do:

* can't do any decent jumps in the center portion of ballet class.
* can't skip rope double dutch. I used to be able to, but no more.
* can't find anything I need when I need it.
* can't swear to be on time.
* can't sleep if there's anything to look forward to tomorrow.
* can't do algebra.
* can't remember to do my laundry before I run out of underpants.

7 Celebrity Crushes:

Okay, not all of these are current. I don't think I could sustain seven crushes at once anyways. And I don't think that I've really crushed on all of these people, but they're ones I've thought were cute at one point or another. Plus, no particular order.

* Harrison Ford, but only if George Lucas is involved.
* Liam Neeson, but only as a painfully noble IRA leader.
* Jake Gyllenhaal, but only in October Sky.
* Rob Thomas, but only because I was fourteen. (shut up!)
* Nicole Kidman, but only as Virginia Woolf.
* Ewan McGregor. All the time.
* Erm, I'm out of celebrities.

7 Things I Find Attractive (changed from "Attract Me To the Opposite Sex"):

* Height. I know it's shallow, but it's fun to tip your chin back for a kiss.
* A strong sense of silliness.
* A bit of a baby face.
* Nice eyebrows.
* Big eyes.
* Nerdiness.
* Patience.

7 Things I Hope To Do Before I Die:

* Live on a farm again.
* Dance en pointe.
* Achieve zero gravity!
* Adopt a baby.
* Become fluent in French and Spanish.
* Visit Argentina and meet my father's family.
* Scuba dive and do that thing where you tickle a clown fish under the chin and give the camera a thumbs-up.

7 Things I Say Often:

* "Oh, expletive, I left my purse ___________! Aaaaaaaaaargh!"
* "Oh, expletive, I'm supposed to be there in five minutes!"
* "Pugsley, you smell horrible."
* "Pugsley, please stop licking your nose."
* "Whoops, sorry."
* "Hmmmm. I don't know."
* "I love you."

7 Bloggers I Would Like To Infect With This Meme:

*Twink
*Claire
*Rob
*Beppe
*Kate
*I'm embarassed to ask most people their celebrity crushes, so that's it for now.

Also, I found this on Polly's blog, and it's funny. You google your name with the word "needs" after it and find out wat you really need. Here are my best ones:

*Amanda Needs Herself A WIDESCREEN TV.
*Amanda needs your help building her bike! (no, Jeff, seriously, it was there when I googled!)
*Amanda needs to know: Why?
*Amanda needs wisdom & strength to do what is right.
*Amanda needs to relax.
*Amanda needs to chill out.
*Amanda needs to suck on a pacifier to clear her ears

Not Alone

I was read this touching blog and came across this:

"...in that short span of time when it was just me and the prayers, me and my struggling through the Hebrew, I was suddenly Not Alone inside my heart. In that way I remember from the Rosh HaShanah service of eight years ago that was my first glimpse into the world I was missing and knew I was meant to be a part of. And that feeling is....ah, well, beyond expression. But one aspect of it, is that all that resentment---why me? why this? why now?---drains away, and I am full of sorrow and hope and the full knowledge that I do not carry the burden of this life alone. I am both more fully in reality about my failings, my sins, my mis-shots, and in full and total belief as solid as reality, even more so, that I am in partnership with Someone/Something in my journey toward reparation. So fully aware of my imperfect human-ness while knowing a perfect Holiness exists and holds me as I stumble.

I wish I carried that feeling around more often, could reach in and find it when I need it. But to have touched it again, when I haven't in so long it seems, was....ah, I don't have words."

and I was nourished by the Truth and Sameness of the experience of God.

Universal Reconciliation

I've been feeling a blog post creeping up on me. I hope nobody has been feeling too alienated by my bursts of poetry. I've quoted Emerson before, and I shall again: The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more. Sometimes poets are very much more myself than I am, and I am grateful to lean on their understanding for a while.

Meeting at Cambridge was almost silent this First day, but very full. I'd been reading a bit of the book If God is Love, which I am finding very moving, as I read it snatches at a time. I'll buy it soon. In the introductory chapters, the authors talk about the fear of God. Though the book is written by two Quaker ministers, one who grew up Roman Catholic and one who grew up Evangelical Christian, it is written in first person. I feel that it suffers a little bit in this as it tends to lean towards the Protestant experience, but I'm still finding myself struck. The narrator speaks of growing up in a loving church, with loving parents, teachers, and preachers, and yet growing up to fear an abusive God. One quote struck me through the heart:

“Fear and love are incompatible. . . . A child trembles when a parent threatens, `If you don’t behave, I’ll send you away.’ A wife is terrorized when a husband warns, `If you leave me. I’ll kill you.’ Human beings cower when God commands, `Serve me, or I’ll damn you to hell.’ Where fear is encouraged, love withers.” “Fear indicates our distrust of the one who claims to love us.” (IGIL, p.26)

As I sat in meeting, my mind was filled with memories of pain and rejection and fear and loneliness that touched on all of those examples. I was deeply shaken, reliving each moment, and seeing how they were all connected. I was a loved child, but every childhood brings its challenges. I have experienced and witnessed abuse between partners. And I have lain awake at night wondering who of the people that I loved might be going to hell, and how I could save myself and all of us. I used to have recurring nightmares where, hysterical, I rushed around our property frantically trying to get all of my little brothers and sisters into the house before the Three Day Darkness.

Even when I wasn't worried about the literal Three Day Darkness, there were so many people I knew that might not make it to heaven. My religious training was very thorough, and it was made clear to me that we never know the final destination of any soul, that only God can know the true heart of anyone. It was made clear that God didn't send anyone to hell, people sent themselves there. When I got older, I read Screwtape and the rest of C.S. Lewis. I read Aquinas and Augustine. I studied the catechism, and I realized that the Three Day Darkness was not a doctrine sanctioned by the Church. It wasn't the literal event I'd grown up believing it to be, but it still held deep hold over my soul. However you wanted to frame it, some of us would be destroyed in the end. God was merciful, but he was also just, and held to the laws of justice. I understood it all intellectually. I knew it was so, and why. Cross-referenced.

It still hurt, though, to look around me at all the souls in the supermarket...my human brothers and sisters, and know that some of us weren't going to make it. I often wondered...if I am made sad by the temporal suffering of those around me, how could I ever be happy in heaven knowing that some of the Communion of Saints were missing, disowned, burning in unquenchable fire as I moved into my mansion? And as for justice, I wondered, how could a temporal act ever merit eternal punishment? My blood often ran cold. I pictured a family around a table eating a holiday meal, one child missing, unable to be mentioned, his existence wiped away. I felt the loss. And I wondered. I am a lowly human being, full of faults, and my love is broken and impure, and yet, I am horrified by the thought of someone suffering like that. And God, so infinitely greater and more loving...how could He stand it?

A priest sternly told me I was not to judge God. That His ways are not our ways. But my heart protested. I am made in His image, and all that is good in me, my compassion, my love, my mercy, my gentleness, my tenderness, came from God. It can't contradict His being. I've been told of the theological errors implicit in this belief, but it is something that goes much deeper than dogma. This is not theology. This is Truth.

“Human transformation comes when love casts out fear, assuring us we’ll never be disowned, abandoned, or destroyed. Only in the rich soil of unconditional love can we truly grow. Believing in God’s desire to save every person calms our fears of acceptance. Grace gives us the freedom to live boldly.” (IGIL, p.27)

This was not meant to be a post about why don't believe in a literal, eternal Hell, but that's what it's turning out to be. For anyone interested in the deeper theological reasoning, I reccommend the books of people like Philip Gulley and Jim Mulholland (who wrote If God is Love and also If Grace is True) and Philip Yancey, who wrote another book I've been dipping into, called What’s So Amazing About Grace?, and Thomas Talbott who wrote The Inescapable Love of God, which I have not read (beyond an excerpt) yet, but have on my list. They are all more articulate than I. I don't mean to build up and defend a stance of apologetics, but instead to share what I have been shown.

So I sat in meeting and I thought of all this, and I leaned forward in my bench and I tried to shush myself, but as soon as the room had settled I cried, full on and unquenchably, like a baby. It took me a good long time to be calmed. Finally, I was still and felt my mind and heart moved in worship. The last lines of a poem I love dearly came to me, over and over again,

You gave me
in secret one thing
to perceive, the
tall blue starry
strangenesss of being
here at all.

You gave us each in secret something to perceive.

Furless now, upright, My banished
and experimental child

You said, though your own heart condemn you

I do not condemn you.

And over and over again,

though your own heart condemn you

I do not condemn you.

again

I do not condemn you.

and again

I do not condemn you.

And I knew at least for a moment, that it was true. As I rested in this little moment of peace, in the silence that still bathed the meeting room, my face hot and flushed against the cool wood of the bench before me, a small, wavering, crackled old voice from a bench somewhere behind me began to sing:

How could anyone ever tell you
You were anything less than Beautiful?

How could anyone ever tell you
You were less than whole?

How could anyone fail to notice
That your loving is a miracle?

How deeply you're connected to my soul.


-----------------------------------

“There is nothing we can do that will make God love us more. There is nothing we can do that will make God love us less.” -Philip Yancey

Waiting

by John Burroughs

(I thought I should edit this to add: I loved that this poem seemed applicable to so very many things, not the least of which could be a Divine relationship. It made me smile warmly to think of these as God's sentiments. Yes, this from me, the one who wrestles with my concept of Personal God. I know it's overly sentimental of me, and I know it shouldn't quite fit the conventional idea of God's "personality"...I mean, it implies that God once did rave 'gainst time or fate. And if that was true, then the unchanging God would be admitting change. In fact, the poem has more to do with time than we might ever assign to God, unless we think that by mixing Godself up with humans, God has been commtited to dealing with our pesky delays. I have to admit, it is a huge bit of poetic license, (whether on my side or on the poet's) which I find incredibly delightful. And so, the poem.)

SERENE, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For, lo! my own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it hath sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.

The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.

The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.

Instant poetry

I got this sweet idea from Polly, whose blog I read in one sitting. I'm so enchanted by her family and her little farm...that's exactly what I hope to be doing with myself one day. I spent enough of my growing-up time on farms and milking goats and waiting up in the hayloft all night with a friend while her sheep lambed to know all the dirty, boring and difficult bits, but I still love it, and I feel my soul tug towards it when I read her blog.

Anyway, here's the idea:

"I saw this little formula for creating instant poetry. One just completes the sentences.

I am
I wonder
I hear
I see
I want
I am

I pretend
I feel
I touch
I worry
I cry
I am

I understand
I say
I dream
I try
I hope
I am"

(make sure you read the lovely poems from her sons!)

I'm not convinced that the jaded self-conciousness of a me can make "poetry" from this like the poetry Polly's little 9 year old made, but I'm just going to fill out the blanks with what comes into my head. I'm also going to take out the paragraph breaks. Also, for no particular reason but that your names popped into my head, I tag Rob and Kwake.

I am often very tired when
I wonder too much what will become of me in the end
I hear less than I should because when I stare over your shoulder
I see my fresh-bought $2.79 orange dahlia bloom and
I want more and more dahlia blooms
I am often twitchy at work and so
I pretend, still, that I am secretly royalty
I feel as though I should still be twelve
I touch as many leaves as I can when I walk by a shrub and
I worry about my family all the time
I cry more than I like to admit but
I am not as strange as I like to pretend
I understand that often
I say too much about the things
I dream every single night and most of my days
I try to come back to earth without a bump and
I hope to be graceful but instead
I am eating peanuts and making a mess of the carpet

More Whitman

With the parts I love best in bold.

--------------------------------------------------------
O VAST Rondure, swimming in space,
Cover’d all over with visible power and beauty,
Alternate light and day and the teeming spiritual darkness,
Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above,
Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, mountains, trees,
With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention,
Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee.

Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating,
Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,
With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with neverhappy hearts,
With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life?

Ah, who shall soothe these feverish children?
Who justify these restless explorations?
Who speak the secret of impassive earth?
Who bind it to us? what is this separate Nature so unnatural?
What is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours,
Cold earth, the place of graves.)

Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out,
Perhaps even now the time has arrived.
After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.

Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified;
All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth’d,
All affection shall be fully responded to, the secret shall be told,
All these separations and gaps shall be taken up and hook’d and link’d together,
The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely justified,
Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish’d and compacted by the true son of God, the poet,
(He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains,
He shall double the cape of Good Hope to some purpose,)
Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more,
The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them.…

Passage indeed O soul to primal thought,
Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness,
The young maturity of brood and bloom,
To realms of budding bibles.

O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me,
Thy circumnavigation of the world begin,
Of man, the voyage of his mind’s return,
To reason’s early paradise,
Back, back to wisdom’s birth, to innocent intuitions,
Again with fair creation.

O we can wait no longer,
We too take ship O soul
Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,
Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,
Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O soul,)

Caroling free, singing our song of God,
Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.

With laugh and many a kiss,
(Let others deprecate, let others weep for sin, remorse, humiliation,)
O soul thou pleasest me, I thee.

Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in God,
But with the mystery of God we dare not dally.

O soul thou pleasest me, I thee,
Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night,
Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death, like waters flowing,

Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite,
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over,
Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee,
I and my soul to range in range of thee.

O Thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath,
Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them,
Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving,
Thou moral, spiritual fountain—affection’s source—thou reservoir,
(O pensive soul of me—O thirst unsatisfied—waitest not there?

Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?)
Thou pulse—thou motive of the stars, suns, systems,
That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious,
Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space,
How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, if, out of myself,

I could not launch, to those, superior universes?

Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God,
At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death,
But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me,
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs,
Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death,
And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.

Greater than stars or suns,
Bounding O soul thou journeyest forth;
What love than thine and ours could wider amplify?
What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours O soul?
What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength?
What cheerful willingness for others’ sake to give up all?
For others’ sake to suffer all?

Reckoning ahead O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d,
The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done,
Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain’d,
As fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found,
The Younger melts in fondness in his arms.

Passage to more than India!
Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?
O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those?
Disportest thou on waters such as those?
Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas?
Then have thy bent unleash’d.

Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas!
Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling problems!
You, strew’d with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living, never reach’d you.

Passage to more than India!
O secret of the earth and sky!
Of you O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers!
Of you O woods and fields! of you strong mountains of my land!
Of you O prairies! of you gray rocks!
O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows!
O day and night, passage to you!

O sun and moon and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter!
Passage to you!

Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!
Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?
Have we not grovel’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?
Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?
Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

O my brave soul!
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!