bridge of birds

This morning, I decided to wear my bird necklace to Meeting. The necklace has six strands of tiny abalone birds. My grandmother gave it to me over 25 years ago, and so it has special meaning for me.

Through a process I don't understand, the strands of the necklace become tangled around one another. Every so often, I have to untangle them as best I can. I hold the necklace by one clasp and gently work the strands smooth. The birds catch on one another, and the necklace is somewhat delicate, so I have to work slowly and carefully. Working one end free tangles the end by the other clasp, so I have to turn the necklace upside-down and repeat the process. Which tangles the first side again, although not so badly as it was originally. After several repeats, the necklace is almost tangle-free. I've never managed to work all of the tangles out, but it gets close.

So, necklace mostly untangled, I headed off to Meeting.

There are many knotty problems before me, both in Meeting and in my personal life.

I put these problems before God as I settled into worship and waited for guidance.

The image of a long strand of the necklace working free came to my mind. Each of the problems I faced, I suddenly saw, would benefit from the slow, gentle approach that I use to untangle the necklace. I would have to work the strands of these problems free slowly, one bit at a time. Likely there would be other snags in the process of working through the problems, and I might have to turn things upside-down a few times before I could work things out. Even then, the problems probably wouldn't be fully solved. There would still be a few small tangles in them.

Once solved, however, I'd have a bridge of birds to hang around my neck, a tangible link between the past and the future, a lovely thing worthy of the care it demands.

fitness witness: weight-lifting

I recently resolved to attend to this blog more faithfully.

 I thought perhaps I would record a few thoughts about worship each First Day. 

This last First Day, for example, a Friend read the advices and queries on Integrity. Several Friends spoke on Integrity, and I also felt moved to speak of this testimony that is the dearest and truest of all the Quaker testimonies to me. It flitted through my thoughts that I might blog about Integrity, that it is a good weighty subject to which I have devoted much thought.

But no.

What I feel called to write about is weight-lifting.

I have been doing strength training all of my adult life. The kind that I have found easiest to stick to and most beneficial is high intensity, super slow strength training. Work each muscle to exhaustion in a set of 8-12 repetitions, with care to do each repetition slowly and carefully.

I had my appendix out in February, and I have found getting back into shape to be slow going. Some of this is due to lingering effects of the surgery, but much of it is simple laziness and self-deception.

I went back to dance as soon as I could. I worked back in slowly (although probably not slowly enough). During this time, my knees ached abominably.

I wondered if perhaps I was past my ability to do this kind of dance. Maybe my knees had suddenly, over the course of my surgery, gotten old. Perhaps I should find an easier, less stressful type of exercise.

That was a possibility, but it seemed more likely that my muscles had gotten soft, that they were no longer doing the work that protected my knees while I danced.

I told the instructor about the type of pain I was having and asked if she knew of anything I could do to strengthen my muscles so I could dance without pain. She was able, without any apparent thought, to identify the weak muscles that were causing the problem and to suggest exercises that would help.

A few weeks later, my legs felt as good as they've ever felt.

I was slower getting back into the weight-lifting, however. I couldn't seem to remember to do it or find time for it, either.

At the end of June, I wrenched my shoulder. I rested it for a few weeks hoping it would get better. It didn't really get better, but it didn't get worse either.

I'd had shoulder pain before, but I hadn't had problems with my neck or shoulders for many years. Posture work that I'd done in tai chi, as well as my strength training, had kept that part of my body healthy.

After a while, a small still voice whispered “Maybe you're having this pain because you haven't been doing your weight routine. The antagonistic muscles have gotten weak, and the pain won't go away until you strengthen them again.”

My stubborn and lazy self argued. Maybe weight-lifting would make the pain worse. Besides, weight-lifting was too much trouble and took too much time. I should let the shoulder get better first and worry about weight-lifting, you know, like, later.

Finally, something clicked in me and I said, “Fine. I'll start weight-lifting again with absurdly light weights and I'll do all the opposing muscle groups.”

After a mere two sessions, I know it's working. I can feel the shoulder moving more easily and I can feel the weak areas getting stronger.

I could turn this into a message about listening to our guidance or about overcoming our own lazy, selfish, stubborn, misguided natures or about the need for balance in one's life or about how we need to strengthen our spiritual muscles in order to live lives that are healthy in the spirit.

But no.

What I feel called to write about is weight-lifting.

Our physical strength operates on a use-it-or-lose-it principle. When we exercise our muscles faithfully, we are strong. We can more easily do our ordinary activities, and we enjoy being active.

When we let our muscles atrophy, we become weak. Our muscles no longer do the work they were designed to do, and this puts strain on our joints. We fall prey to aches and pains, leading us to become less active, leading to more weakness and more pain.

Miriam Nelson, a researcher at Tufts University and the author of the Strong Women books, determined that our bone and muscle strength declines as we age, and also that we can completely reverse this process with regular strength training. Many of the ills that we attribute to age are nothing more than the ills of inactivity.

So, Friends, this is my public service announcement to you all. If you want to do the work you are called to do in the world, you need to take good care of your body. Aerobic exercise and a healthy diet are important, of course, but strength-training is an often-overlooked piece of the puzzle, especially for women.

the unbearable lightness of being

This last First Day, I was feeling like I was sliding into a deep blue funk. My griefs were at the front of my mind. I'd been fending them off by keeping busy, but I could feel them all gathering, ready to settle.

I'd been wondering whether I should just surrender, slide down into the grief and let it have its due. Or whether it was better to keep fending just a little longer.

I got to worship early and slid into my seat, but I didn't find it so easy to slide into worship. It seemed to me that I'd been treating worship lightly, just skimming the surface. I thirsted for something deeper, something more connected, something that would fill me and feed me and give me strength for what is to come.

I made some false starts, got distracted a few times, started over.

I have my own Lord's Prayer ritual that often works to sink me into worship. First comes gratitude for all that is of worth in my life (not just the things that I like, but also the challenges and griefs that teach me and take me deeper). Next comes my regrets for the mistakes I've made recently (Father, forgive me...). Then I set my troubles and burdens and worries before God.

After I've done those bits of spiritual housekeeping, I feel ready to open to worship. To open to whatever God has for me that day.

This last First Day, however, I was so snowed in that all I could do was to lay my griefs before God.

I'm sorry, I said, I have to start from here today. All I have to set before you is my burdens.

I heard a deep chuckle.

I will take your burdens, your light, insignificant burdens, if you will take on mine.

I thought that was absurd, but was curious to see what would happen if I accepted.

Okay, I said, I'll try.

Suddenly, I was swept up into a great lightness and airiness. It was as though God was a great hawk flying through the heavens and I was on his back, clinging to his feathers. It was wonderful and terrifying and very very funny.

A half an hour later, I wondered irreverently if I was some sort of parasite, if God might try to pry me loose from his feathers with a great hooked beak.

a spiritual pruning

My father's death threw me into a mid-life review of my life.

I'm happy with a lot of the choices that I've made, particularly the ones to do with family and children.

Any life, though, has areas of damage and failure. I have acknowledged those areas. I've felt the pain and regret associated with them, but I haven't known what to do about it. In many cases, these areas are things that I must simply accept. It's either too late to change them, or they're not the sorts of things that I have the ability to change.

Okay then: I'll have to accept them.

But it was by accepting them that I allowed the wounding to happen in the first place. And if I go on accepting them, I'll just end up with more of the same kind of wounding.

So what do I do then? If I can't change them and I can't accept them, what can I do?

I kept running into this same dead end. I looked for an exit, some way out of this dilemma, but I couldn't find one. I felt like a fly caught in amber, struggling vainly to escape but only sinking deeper into the sticky mass.

Friday night, I lay awake in prayer and tears, sinking deeper into the situation until I had no tears and no words left.

I slept at last, around dawn, and woke up with these words in my heart:

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

– John Gilmore

There was a third option, and it had been right under my nose all the time.

My dad was a very smart guy. He started working as a programmer in 1961, and he was one of the most skilled problem solvers I've ever known. His problem-solving skills extended far beyond his work. Even while he was dying of brain cancer (and his short term memory was shot full of holes), he was able to focus on relevant facts, ignore red herrings, and optimize his remaining life from the ever-decreasing options available to him.

In other words, like the skilled network programmer he was, he identified the damaged areas of his brain and routed around them. He couldn't change the damage. He accepted the damage as fact and went to work busily figuring how he could work around the disabilities that the damage imposed.

Maybe it's possible to route around emotional damage as well.

In worship on Sunday, I was sitting with this new thought. As I sat, I had an image of myself focusing on this one stem with a flower that wouldn't bloom. The scene zoomed out, and I saw myself as a vibrant shrub with the potential to flower in many different ways. Yes, that one flower was blighted and refused to open, but the rest of my buds were healthy and ready to open, if I'd just transfer my energy from the blighted bloom to the rest of my life.

And, suddenly, it was as if I had been pruned of the dead wood and the failed buds. I felt clearer and lighter than I'd felt in a good long time. I felt like I could move on, instead of staying stuck in the amber of my failure.

And I looked around at the Meeting, and thought of the shrub of our corporate being, the paradox of its incredible health and vibrancy in contrast to its dead wood, failed buds, and spent flowers that had failed to fruit.

Okay then. We start from where we are, here and now, and work with the parts of us that are still alive and growing. If there are places that are damaged and can't be repaired, we route around the damage. New branches will grow to fill the open spots, and to take over the job left by the fallen branches.

There is life, there is hope, and it's time to stop being stuck in the past.

What If It's All True?

In worship, the prayer “Make me a strong vessel for Thy work” often bubbles up in my heart. I ask for the ongoing guidance of the Spirit in living my life, and for the strength and humility to follow the guidance I receive.

It is one thing to make this sort of prayer. It's easy and comforting to pray for guidance and to strive to follow the Light I am given.

It's a completely different thing to surrender myself to that guidance and that Light, to allow myself to be used as an instrument of the Holy Spirit, to feel that power guiding and sustaining me.

In worship a few weeks ago, I received a message that what we are striving for in worship is to read the future. We can only look to the comforting familiarity of the past so far. At some point, we have to stand on the edge of the continent and look ahead to the challenges that face us. We are not the Quakers of the past few centuries and we are not meant to follow where the Spirit led them. We are alive now, and the Spirit guides us now, in the present, to the work we are meant to do.

Those words reading the future stuck with me over the next several days. The next day, a quiet little voice inside me said, “Reading the future? Isn't that prophecy? Does that mean that Friends are called to prophetic witness?”

The universe stopped for a moment at that thought, and my ego strode forward to take the helm.

“Don't be silly,” it informed me briskly, “How can you possibly think that you might be called to prophesy? Spiritual gifts like that are for the great, not for such as you. Confine yourself to your proper sphere, why don't you?”

I dropped my head then, remembering how buoyed by Spirit I had felt while clerking the last Meeting for worship for business. How clearly I had felt the Spirit guiding my words during that meeting. How I had been able to draw on the calmness and love and light of the Spirit in doing that work. How clearly I had been shown the course of our work. How good and right and beautiful it had all felt, and how sure I had felt that I am meant to do that job for my Meeting.

Suddenly, I was deeply afraid. What if it's all true? What if the Holy Spirit does work through me? What if I have received certain gifts and I am called to use them? Can I be completely sane, to believe that might be happening? Can I speak of it, even to fellow Quakers, without being taken for someone a few slices short of a loaf? Will others look at me and see me puffed up with my own vanity? Worse yet, will I get puffed up with my own vanity and see the gifts as mine rather than on loan to me from God?

And what if I turn my face away from the guidance of Spirit, continuing my willful way in my own safe life? What if I confine myself to my sphere as wife and mother and daughter? What if I stick to my knitting and my dye pots and safe committee work? What if I refuse to open myself to that spiritual union? What if I go through the motions of clerking without committing myself to the Living Spirit that makes it all true?

At worship the next week, I made confession to my Meeting. I was not sure it was ministry, but I stood and confessed my fear and confusion anyway. It was, perhaps, more a clerk's report to her Meeting than it was ministry, but I couldn't remain silent.

Wisdom bubbled up through the Meeting in response. I felt buoyed by the gathered Meeting, deep in the heart of love, with a clear sense that I do not face the Unknowable alone. The Meeting is with me, and I do my work for it and as a vessel for it. I felt reassured and humbled and still deeply, deeply afraid.

God has never been domesticated. God is a force that is great and terrible, the most awesome of the awesome. It has never been comfortable to stand naked before Spirit, to channel it, to be the subject of its scrutiny.

After worship, two elders came to me and gave me gentle counsel. I continued my confession, feeling their sure presence and their own connection with the Spirit.

As we got up to go, one of them held my eyes with her penetrating gaze.

“I feel the Spirit working through you, when you clerk,” she affirmed, “Do you enjoy it?”

Yes. I love it. It is not safe or comfortable, but it feels good and right and holy.

Still my feet drag on the path. I feel frightened, unworthy, perhaps unable to meet the challenges I might be called to face.

And yet, as I find the faith to follow the guidance of the Spirit, I am led blind through the trials of my life. I do not know why I am led to do what I am led to do, or whether it will be effective, or enough. Over time, I see in hindsight what I couldn't see when I was reading the future. My part is small, but it is essential. It might be more than I think I can bear, but I have done it.

Empty Tomb

when i woke up this morning

the tomb of my heart

was empty

my heart was outside

sunning itself

in the warmth of your love

the fear that had held it bound

lay in tatters on the cold ground

of the tomb

with the stone rolled back

the tomb was just a small cave

in the faint light

it's no place for a heart to live

closed up

away from the light

Leadings from the Edge

I ran across an article in the New York Times talking about interference from the future preventing the creation of a Higgs boson. It's a crazy idea, but it's a good kind of crazy: visionary, improbable, out on the edge, pushing the envelope of the possible.

Last week at Meeting, we were visited by a woman with a vibrant smile, badly tie-dyed halter top, and bubbly baby boy. Looking into her eyes in worship, I saw how vividly alive she was, how deeply steeped in Light.

I had an appointment after worship. The dear Friend in our Meeting who leads sacred circle dancing for us was going to be out of town for our autumn retreat, and I needed to learn a few dances so that I could try to fill her shoes for the day.

Worship followed by this special kind of dance filled my soul and made me buoyant. I floated out to the fellowship hall, where I decided to engage this woman in conversation. We chatted easily about motherhood, discovering our mutual belief in homebirth, extended breastfeeding, attachment parenting, and homeschooling. Her baby fell asleep at the breast, and she slipped him into the car seat of the van where they were obviously both living.

As we talked, her whole life opened out. She had been a street kid at 15, married young, had three sons with an emotionally abusive man, left him and lost her sons, had a daughter who was currently with relatives, and then had the baby. A tough life, but one that seemed not to have dented her spirit much.

She told me that she was meant to roam the Earth, not to settle in one place. She had a vision of a traveling village, a commune that lived in many vehicles and moved from place to place. She spoke of going from town to town, collecting the street kids and making a safe space for them. She spoke of a fleet of school buses with different functions for the community.

“Whoa,” I thought, “this is starting to sound a little crazy.”

As I continued to listen to her vision, though, I wanted to believe in it. I wanted her to be able to build her traveling village. I wanted her to be able to mother the street kids that she felt a call to care for. I wanted her to be able to honor the calling of her soul, to find a way to live her vision.

Much of the vision was crazy, impractical. Many of the details clearly wouldn't work, but the heart of her vision was pure, clear, and full of Divine Light.

I told her I believed in her vision. I told her I have been called to be a tree, to dig my roots into one place, to intimately know one small space on the surface of the Earth. I told her I would pray for her vision, that she could find a way to make it real, that I would pray for her and her children as well.

She met my gaze, and it was as if the two of us were completely open there, open to one another and open to the Divine Light bathing both of us. We stood a minute in wordless prayer.

“Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly, “You need a token.”

She reached her hand into the chaos of the van and drew out a tiny object. My sense was that she had no idea what she was choosing, that she was letting God guide her hand, that she let God guide her actions. She was a child of faith, living in trust of her own vision of the Divine.

She handed me a tiny object, hard and cool to my touch. I held it in my closed hand, not wanting to break contact with her amazing eyes.

“Thank you,” I said.

We took our leave a few minutes later. Only when I got the object back to my car did I look at it.

It was a tiny glass angel. Every time I see it, it reminds me to send a prayer for Sunny Jean and her vision.

I felt good the rest of the day. It's good to know that there are people like her in the world, people who see a vision, no matter if it is crazy and impractical, and act on it. People who honor the dream in their hearts. We need those people, and we need to let go a little and become more like them ourselves. To trust that small, still, perhaps a bit crazy, voice within us.

Sunny Jean, wherever you are, you are still in my thoughts and prayers.