flattered, in lowercase

(why all the lowercase letters on this blog? former grammar teacher, syntax sister, apostrophe nazi that i am? because, as you've hopefully read by now, it's not about me. or my words. or my thoughts. despite that, i'm all over it. so if it must be, let it at least be in lowercase.)

a quote from soren kierkegaard, sent to me by a friend (a little something that i hesitate to post but that maybe sort of speaks to add a bit to the why of this post):

What is a poet? An unhappy person who hides deep anguish in her heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music… And people flock around the poet and say: ‘Sing again soon’ - that is, ‘May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music! That is blissful!

i ran into a friend yesterday who i've not seen since she lost her son (within a week, i think, of when we lost eliza). she said she's been reading what i've been writing, and i've got it and should keep doing it. and another friend who very recently lost her father said what i've written has helped her mother. so i'll keep doing it. in lowercase.

if you'll allow me to cut and paste

(okay, hang with me on this one. i promise--no, but at best i can hope--it'll be worth it. because when so many other people have already said it so well...)

If the first and lowest operation of pain shatters the illusion that all is well, the second shatters the illusion that what we have, whether good or bad in itself, is our own and enough for us. Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We 'have all we want' is a terrible saying when 'all' does not include God. We find God an interruption. As St. Augustine says somwehere, "God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full--there's nowhere for Him to put it." [...] Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call 'our own life' remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make 'our own life' less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?
c.s. lewis, the problem of pain

it's no wonder, really. look how much we have lost.

Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love,
Uninterrupted joy, unrivald love
In blissful solitude;
[...]
and over head up grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and Pine, and Firr, and branching Palm,
A Silvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woodie Theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than thir tops
The verdurous wall of paradise up sprung;
[...]
And higher then that Wall a circling row
Of goodliest Trees loaden with fairest Fruit,
Blossoms and Fruits at once of golden hue
Appeerd, with gay enameld colours mixt;
On which the Sun more glad impress'd his beams
Then in fair Evening Cloud, or humid Bow,
When God hath showrd the earth; so lovely seemd
That Lantskip: And of pure now purer aire
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair: now gentle gales
Fanning their odoriferous wings dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmie spoiles.

milton's paradise lost, 4.67-9, 138-143, 146-159.

and all this merely the beautiful wall to keep satan out of the garden. imagine for a minute the rest of what we lost just that one day.

why did adam and eve lose the garden? why do we take away a child's toy? why do we fast?

because loss leads to longing. if a child fails to share a toy with a friend, we take it away in hopes that, in longing for the toy, the child will learn the importance of sharing. as we fast--from a particular food for lent, for example, or from any sort of indulgence--we attempt to use the longing we feel for that thing to redirect our thoughts to God and to sacrifice and to true longing. adam and eve had no idea how good they had it until the garden was taken away. paradise! and God Himself there walking in the garden with them! did they learn to long for God? (does the child learn to share? do we remember to redirect our cravings?)

we experience so much loss in our post-lapsarian world. we lose loved ones, health, wealth; we lose friends, abilities, belongings. we lose home, over and over again. craig barnes hits it right in his book sacred thirst:

Have you ever been at a place where you had gotten your life just right? You had close friends, a wonderful home, a healthy family, enjoyable work, and a good church...didn't you want to freeze the moment by saying, 'This is it. This is just right. Nobody move!'

Well, quick, take a picture, because this is always the moment when Jesus blows the whistle and says, 'OK, everybody out of the pool.' Jesus didn't build a lot of houses; He didn't join a lot of clubs or churches. He just kept walking toward Jerusalem. And if we are going to follow Him, our lives are going to keep moving around on us.

Now, why is that? Why must we keep growing and changing and maturing? Why do we have to keep losing things along the way -- our health, our families, and our dreams? Why can't we all just stay right where we are? What is so special about Jerusalem?

it's no wonder, really, why we have to lose so much. because loss leads to longing. if it's all good enough here, what do we need There for?

'One of the Fathers has told us that joy always depends on pain. Pain is part of joy. We are hungry and then think how we enjoy our food at last. We are thirsty [...] We deny ourselves so that we can enjoy. You have heard of rich men in the north who eat salted foods, so that they can be thirsty--for what they call the cocktail. Before the marriage, too, there is the long betrothal [...] Pray that you will suffer more and more and more. Never get tired of suffering [...] that is all part of heaven--the preparation. Perhaps without them, who can tell, you wouldn't enjoy heaven so much. Heaven would not be complete. And heaven. What is heaven? [...] Your children do not die there [...] You will never be afraid there--or unsafe [...] Nobody grows old. The crops never fail. Oh, it is easy to say all the things that there will not be in heaven: what is there is God.'
graham greene, the power and the glory

we need There. we long for it. and we need to long for it. we must lose good-enough to be reminded over and over again of so-much-better. will my child one day thank me for giving him the gift of taking away that thing he couldn't seem to share? if he won't thank me, at least i hope he'll receive the gift, learn the lesson, and maybe even be grateful for it. even if he doesn't remember the lesson itself or where it came from.

will i thank God for the loss He has given me--given, yes, even gifted to me--as a reminder to long for Him?

speaking of the right words

people sometimes ask why this blog. because it's cathartic? maybe. though a private journal could contain my catharsis. because it's what i do; that's some of it. writing is what i've always done, what i've always taught, what i've always loved. and i don't know how else to do this thing that i'm living, whatever it is...so that's part of it. because it's a way to invite people in? yes, in a marginally-safer way, in an i'm-not-even-sure-if-you're-there kind of way. (welcome in, glad you're here, i guess, whoever you are).

and then i read this, on the blog of this person who is my irl* friend (whose blog i very much recommend), who borrowed it from the blog of this person i don't know, but who i think is her irl friend (whose blog i now also very much recommend), who quoted this person, who i also don't know, but who has definitely found the right words, the rest of whose words i'm thinking i want to read:

(*irl = in real life, which i learned from this person, who i also don't know but whose blog--which is absolutely unrelated to this post except for the irl* thing but very much related to some other posts and also this thing i'm living--i definitely recommend)

All ambition has the reek of disease about it, the relentless smell of the self....
So long as your ambition is to stamp your existence upon existence, your nature on nature, then your ambition is corrupt and you are pursuing a ghost.

Still, there is something that any artist is in pursuit of, and is answerable to, some nexus of one's being, one's material, and Being itself. The work that emerges from this crisis of consciousness may be judged a failure or a success by the world, and that judgement will still sting or flatter your vanity. But it cannot speak to this crisis in which, for which, and of which the work was made. For any artist alert to his own soul, this crisis is the only call that matters. I know no other name for it besides God, but people have other names, or no names.
....
An artist who loses this internal arbiter is an artist who can no longer hear the call that first came to him. Better to be silent then. Better to go into the world and do good work, rather than to lick and cosset a canker of resentment or bask your vanity in hollow acclaim.
....
We come closer to the truth of the artist's relation to divinity if we think not of being made subject to God but of being subjected to God -- our individual subjectivity being lost and rediscovered within the reality of God. Human imagination is not simply our means of reaching out to God but God's means of manifesting himself to us. It follows that any notion of God that is static is not simply sterile but, since it asserts singular knowledge of God and seeks to limit his being to that knowledge, blasphemous.

Christian Wiman, "Love Bade Me Welcome"

i've wondered why, oftentimes when i can't sleep at night, it's this thing or that thing i want to write that won't let me rest. this thing or that thing that i'll post on this blog or that one or this other one for someone or maybe-you or no one to read. or that other thing i'll write in my journal for certainly no one to read. or even that email response, electronic conversation such as it is, that i have yet to finish, whose just-right words--or what if they're just-wrong?--may make or break the creation we call relationship.

i'm not sure i'm ready to weigh in on the genre of the blog, whether it's an art form (and oh! the definition of art and ever-so-many delightful intellectual rabbit trails we can walk in person some day maybe), though those bloggers, friends irl and not, who i mention above are certainly artists-at-work, as their blogs show so clearly. but if writing is a craft, at least, then the craftsman is in question for sure. from whence comes the call to create?

(and may i add that i've been thinking about dreams a lot lately, too, and where they come from? you'll see why--that is, why i add this--in a minute.)

"Human imagination is not simply our means of reaching out to God but God's means of manifesting himself to us." if God gave us our imagination, created it and all its workings, why not use it to be with us and in us and molding us? if God gives us the capacity to think, to dream, to paint or sculpt or write, why can't He use these very capacities to reach us? i love the idea that if we pursue Him in our craft, we are by so doing being pursued and filled by Him who gave us the capacity to create, even He who invented creation and Creation...and dreaming and drawing and dancing.

i know that God uses the artwork, the craft of writing, of so many irl and not-irl friends to teach me, but for Him to use my craft to be with me--my sleepless nights thinking of things i inexplicably somehow need to write--well, that's ever-so-much better. "subjected to God": i'll take it.

i'll be writing tonight, whether you're reading or not.

wordiness

sometimes words feel graceful. slippery, even, they slide out on their own. like i couldn't hang onto them even if i tried. other times, they're awkward. always just the wrong one. and there are some things they just don't make words for.

and then there are the times that someone else's words fit just right. i didn't think this was one of those times.

God, if you're there, I wish you'd show me,
And, God, if you care, then I need you to know me.
I hope you don't mind me asking the questions but
I figure you're big enough. And I am not big enough.

on saturday, i heard that song for the first time in a long time. it's a song i knew so well once, but before saturday, if you had asked me to sing "big enough" by chris rice, i would probably not have even remembered the tune. but as soon as i heard it, all the words came back.

and got stuck in my head.

i used to think they were pretty cheesy words, to tell the truth. convenient rhyme. nice tune. catchy. but not all that deep. not my words, they didn't fit all that well. but that song does get stuck in my head. i heard those words--again and again and again--in the soundtrack in my head all night and all day sunday.

and i think heard it for the first time.

and then sunday night, i sat down to start a new book, a mother's rule of life by holly pierlot, and read in it this prayer, prayed by the author at an admittedly low point in her walk with God:

God, if you're there, I figure it's your responsibility to show yourself to me. I've done everything I can with my life here. If you want me to get to know you, you need to reveal yourself to me; and it's up to you, because if you are God, I'm sure you can find a way.

i don't believe in coincidences. so i'm listening.

i think, when i used to hear that song, i used to have in mind my big--and not so big--intellectual questions. the i-can't-wait-'til-i-get-to-heaven-and-can-ask-God-about-that questions. free will and predestination. mosquitoes. all those planets. the stuff i lose sleep over when i have nothing else to lose sleep over. but i'm not sure i care all that much about those questions anymore.

i am not big enough. amen. that is the part i'm hearing for the first time. i am not big enough to work out anyone's--even my own--will or destination. i am not big enough to figure out the tiniest little bug or the biggest universe.

and i'm thinking i can be glad that i'm not big enough.

---

*****
i'm a story-reader, not so much a fan of poetry. give me well-developed characters, gripping plot twists and turns, soul-full dialogue. all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players (okay, so shakespeare and i have more than a little bit of history, but really never the sonnets. really.). i believe real life is full of great stories, and those are some great ones to read. the real ones. jacob. job. Jesus.

so i've never been so much into the psalms. poetry and all that. but this weekend's words that i couldn't escape reminded me of some other good words, words that haven't really seemed to fit before.

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy? Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. (Psalm 42:1-3,43:2-3)

---

*****
if david, the Lord's anointed, could ask God, "where are you? and are you big enough? because i am not big enough," then i figure i'm in pretty good company if i do the same. i'm going to quit losing sleep asking for explanations of the things i'm not big enough to hold. i'm going to let God hold those things for me, like He has always wanted to. i'm going to ask God to show me and know me and bring me to dwell with Him. simple, really. honest. and raw. and i trust that He wants to hear it.

and i'm going to remember to thank Him, too, that i'm just not big enough.

metaphorically speaking

you know when you get hit by a metaphor that's just so good you can't wait to write about it? can't stop thinking about it?

okay, so maybe that's just me. anyhow, this one feels that good.

what follows is excerpted from an article by Ellen Kuwana, a staff writer for Neuroscience for Kids. it was published in 2003 at http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/reeveb.html.
(as a former plagiarism detective, i am now satisfied to share the excerpt).

Actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed eight years ago, can now breathe on his own thanks to an experimental surgical procedure [...that...] was possible because Reeve's phrenic nerves were not injured in the accident eight years ago. Phrenic nerves carry the signal for a breath to be taken. In Reeve's case, the phrenic nerves are intact, but they no longer receive the signals from the brainstem to initiate a breath. [...] Researchers at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, had experimented with attaching electrodes to the diaphragm in the place where the phrenic nerves innervate the diaphragm. This area is called the "motor point." When the motor point is stimulated, the muscles in the diaphragm contract, bringing air into the lungs. When the nerve is not stimulated, muscles in the diaphragm relax and the lungs deflate. This cycle of muscle contraction and relaxation is the way we breathe.

Reeve can "breathe" this way for approximately 15 minutes. His muscles need to build up tone again, after many years of not being used.

i remember reading this about christopher reeve back then. and i also remember reading that some people were upset by his public appearances when he seemed to breathe normally, talk normally for fifteen minutes or so. because he wasn't, really. and he was so exhausted by the work of it that there wasn't much left afterwards. but on the talk shows when he shared his inspiring story, all we saw was the miracle: he's breathing on his own! talking! amazing.

that's how my "normal life" muscles feel right now. not firing like they used to before the trauma. i can flex those muscles for a little while and put on the act: amazing. she's back on the horse already. but those public appearances are all i've got. those normal life muscles only have a couple hours before they're too worn out. they need to build up tone again.

but speaking of building up tone, how does one do that, really?

As his muscles continue to get stronger through these 15-minute training sessions, Reeve should be able to breathe on his own for longer and longer periods of time. Not only will he enjoy the relative quiet of his own breathing, he will be able to smell scents and to talk. Reeve has had trouble talking with the breathing tube in his throat. Right now he can only talk in a whisper, but with time, his voice should get stronger, too.

Reeve has again proved that hard work and medical advances -- and staying hopeful about his future -- are the keys to his amazing progress.

training sessions can only be so frequent. and only so long. if i want to build arm strength, i have to lift weights. but only for a little while, every day. i can't just move into the gym and work out full-time. with time--with fifteen minute training sessions over and over and over--my arms will get stronger. and probably my shoulders and back, too.

but if the keys to reeve's amazing progress were hard work, medical advances, and hope, what are the keys to training my normal life muscles? hard work, yes. but not so much mine. you see, i have to be willing to be worked on. just like reeve, actually. sure, his were the muscles being trained, but he had trainers--lots of them, for sure--helping him do it. telling him how to do it. and then he just had to jump in and do the work. a little bit at a time. every day. being coached and worked on and trained. and, of course, staying hopeful.

so i'll do my work little by little, trying out and flexing my normal life muscles little by little. i'll rely on my trainers and my Trainer. and i'll hope and trust that i'll be breathing on my own before too long.

her share and my seat

it's a question of where to sit.

for the past three years, i have joined an amazing group of women on wednesday mornings to study scripture. we meet in one friend's livingroom, seated in a group comprising two couches facing each other and an assortment of chairs completing the circle. we are women from all walks of life: grandmothers and new mothers, singles and wives, experienced moms of school-aged kids and moms with miles to go before we sleep. did i mention it is an amazing group?

three years ago, we were barely a handful. as we dug into scripture together, we dug into each other's lives. and though we can rarely sort out each other's problems--other than to redirect each other to the One Who Can--as women, we can certainly sort ourselves. that is, we've always known where to sit.

even when we were a group of just eight--and especially now that we're a group of more like twenty--we brought along a lot of kids. all in varying stages of independence. the ones who are old enough to be away from mom but not yet school-aged spend their time upstairs with two wonderful, amazing (so thankful for them!) babysitters; but there are always among us those children in varying stages of not-yet-independence.

for whose mothers are reserved the seats on the couch.

of course, a pregnant mom certainly deserves the cushiest seat in the house. and a nursing mom needs the throw pillows to prop up her arms and baby's head. a mom of a snoozing baby needs a comfortable place to be still and still and still so as not to disturb the all-important nap.

it's always been an unwritten rule that seats on the couches are reserved for those moms. and for almost three years, a coveted corner of one couch--throw pillows and arm and all--was reserved for me. in fact, as our study started up this fall, i often benefitted from part of the center square of that couch, too. because i had a baby--a growing baby who took up more than her fair share of space--for almost three years.

more than her fair share of space.

when our study resumed after the christmas break this year, i showed up that first week not knowing where to sit. an amazing number of babies and about-to-be babies were now part of our group, and all needed their seats on the couch. and i didn't. so i moved to a chair, where i now regularly sit between two vibrant, fun, intelligent "grown-up" mothers of adult children and grandmothers of grandchildren, women i so respect and admire and hope i'll resemble someday.

but women whose life stage is so not the same as mine.

because that more-than-her-fair-share of space that eliza consumed is empty now.

which is not to say that i don't think often about whether and when i'll sit on the couch again. i won't fill her space, a space whose emptiness literally aches. but is there another space? part of me is content in the chair, luke happily at school and no longer in need of the nursery care upstairs, my arms free to hold my bible and my study book and even a drink or a piece of homemade bread made by my grown-up friend sitting next to me. my back doesn't ache (because no matter how many throw pillows, two hours of holding a forty-pound "baby" takes its toll). i'm not spit upon, diaper-leaked-upon, weighed upon.

an empty space is a lonely space. i don't--will never--begrudge eliza the more-than-her-fair-share-of-space she consumed in my life, nor will those women begrudge her the space she consumed in our group or on that couch, i know. but how will i ever move back to that couch while maintaining that big empty space?

because i want that space. empty.

forgive AND forget

i grew up in the catholic church. so now that i attend an anglican church, the liturgy is very unsurprising. very. it's not often that something new jumps out at me. but this sunday i was struck in a way so very unfamiliar by some very familiar words:

The Lord has promised to remove our sin from us as far as the east is from the west. When the Lord forgives our sin, He remembers it no more.

we have a God who is So Big. He knows everything, sees everything, understands everything...past, present, and future. and yet He forgets. He forgets. He doesn't just forgive.

how many of us can say that? i certainly can't. sure, i'll forgive you, but will i really forget--in the sense that the offense is absolutely gone--how i was wronged? doubtful.

but with God, we always have a clean slate. He does not think, "oh, she did it again," or, "won't she ever learn?" each time we wrong God--after thousands and thousands and thousands of times--it's as if there's no history of having done the same, no future full of the same offenses. we're totally clean, totally forgiven, our offenses totally forgotten every time.

our God forgets. we, forgetful people as we are, can't get a million little offenses out of our minds. oh, we can forget God's goodness to us, His faithfulness, His love. we follow in big footsteps historically; even as He rescued them from slavery in egypt, God's people forgot His care for them--day after day after day--and grumbled against Him. but do we forget our neighbors' mistakes? our friends' betrayals? no matter how much we forgive, it's so much harder to forget.

so here's the big news: when God forgets, the offense is gone. because it's all His. and if He gives it up--or more accurately, takes it away--it doesn't exist anymore. it is gone. all those offenses i've been forgiven...how can i forget to praise God for his forgetfulness?