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I was nine or ten when my mother gave me permission to plant and tend my first garden. She was a gardener too. In addition to ten children, my mother  raised several lavish beds of exquisite purple and gold irises. I’ve associated irises with her ever since, and so they’ve always been my favorite flower.

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Thomas King, in his book, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative  writes,

What if the creation story in Genesis had featured a flawed deity who was understanding and sympathetic rather than autocratic and rigid? Someone who, in the process of creation, found herself lost from time to time and in need of advice, someone who was willing to accept a little help with the more difficult decisions? What if the animals had decided on their own names? …What kind of world might we have created with that kind of story?

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I believe there is only one power, one shaping urge, but I also believe that it infuses everything—the glistening track of the snail along with the gleaming eye of the fawn, the grain in the oak, the froth on the creek, the coiled proteins in my blood and in yours, the mind that strings together these words and the mind that reads them. Read more →

I sometimes (daily?) get overwhelmed by the minutiae of life. I often feel amazed at what others seem to accomplish while I feel like I’m drowning in dishes, dirty clothes, to-do lists, e-mail, and piles of papers. I’ve even been known to turn down a vacation because getting organized for all that just sounds like too much work.

This is particularly relevant for me this year as I take a year or more off from parish ministry to focus on caring for our baby. When I imagine going back to work as a full-time parish minister someday, somewhere, and continuing to care for our child, family, and household, I quickly find myself turning to either hysterical laughter, droll sarcasm, or the all-too-present devil, comparison. The conversation in my head or between me and a confidant usually goes something like: “So-and-So manages to do this, that, and those 3 other things.” “How does So-and-So do all that?” “I have absolutely no idea, but it makes me tired even trying to imagine it.” And also: “You mean people who have one child and know what it’s like go on…to have…another one?!”

Now I’m well aware there are a half dozen articles, blog posts, books, columns and probably cartoon strips as well circulating about how women juggle their professions and parenting, and I’m not particularly interested in stepping into that muddy swamp at the moment (who has the time?). I’m more interested in my own mind. I’m curious to understand how my own mind works to keep me from doing things because I seriously think “that’s just not possible.” Is there a way to embrace the minutiae and just be okay with it, so as to get to experience the living that is working, parenting, and playing?

I am someone who has dealt with the demands of parenting an infant by “dialing in,” eliminating any extra responsibilities or commitments as much as I am able, and focusing on finding a sleep-eat-nap routine that worked for our kid. I am fully aware that we as a family are blessed and privileged to have been able to do this—we have lots of extended family support, amazing local friends, and we had some savings to enable me to not work this year. We’ve also chosen to live in a small apartment to keep our housing costs down.  My taking a break from working enables us to not have to wrestle with daycare costs and not working has been a blessing for me…and a time of discernment.

For the six years I served as a parish minister in Central Oregon, serving that congregation was my primary focus. As I told them in my departing sermon, “Let It Be A Dance: Some Lessons Learned in Six Years of Service”, that congregation was “my baby,” the commitment and responsibility to which I gave my all for those years. It’s hard for me to imagine serving a congregation as fully while also caring for a family. And yet, more balance in our lives and leadership is something we all need and crave.

I’ve been thinking lately about how the minutiae of any task can keep us from enjoying the beauty of the work, whether it’s ministry, parenting, personal relationships, gardening, even tending to our homes. It is too easy to let the inevitable “dirty work” of any job or task distract us from its overall value. We say “he can’t see the forest for the trees” when we mean “he’s lost in the weeds, he can’t see the big picture.” I don’t want to live my life avoiding tasks or work altogether in some effort to avoid weeds. When it’s literally a garden we’re talking about, I know that weeds come along with the beauty of the harvest; there’s a balance that I accept and even embrace. As I weed, I know I’m creating space for the beets and lettuces to grow and flourish.

photo by Jenna Starr

I’m honestly not sure how to orient my mind in such a way as to get less frustrated or disheartened by all the minutiae. Dishes, laundry, e-mail, meetings, tasks, housecleaning, babies crying, bills, disgruntled congregants, disagreements that need to be sorted out, to-do lists, and did I mention dishes?: these are all realities of living. Living less won’t mean fewer tasks, it won’t mean that there are suddenly more spacious days on the beach soaking in the sun and reading novels. To get to the beach takes work. To have a happy, healthy, thriving child takes work. To serve a congregation and watch it flourish takes a lot  of work, meetings, conversations, and a lot of e-mail. To grow vegetables requires weeding. To be in the forest, to see the trees, requires setting aside the time, packing a bag, figuring out the directions, dealing with D.C. drivers, paying the bills, and so on. This is life, all of it: the minutiae and the magnificence, the crying and the curious smiles, the incredulous grin on our little girl’s face and the worn-out face covered with dried pureed yams that desperately needs a clean washcloth and a bath.

Today, on our way home from a quick lunchtime outing, our Little Bean feel asleep against her Mama C and slept through getting on the Metro, the noisy jarring sounds of the subway, walking home, street noise and the banging of our building’s front door. I said to Cathy in amazement: “Well. This is one of those occurrences I’ve seen in the movies, and on Other Parents, and thought, ‘wow.’ How do they do that?” Our kid fell asleep on 11th Street NW, near Pennsylvania Avenue, and made it all the way home on a warm sunny busy Friday afternoon in the city without waking up. That’s magnificent. And it’s the sweetest bit of minutiae in our day so far. It’s both, and it’s beautiful.

For the last week and a half the news has been pretty much all Boston bombing, all the time. Why wouldn’t it be? There was a horrific act of mayhem in which three innocent people were killed and 264 more were injured. There was a man hunt, a shoot-out, and a show-down that led to the capture of one of the perpetrators, who is now being grilled about his role in the terrible events. The media is full of interviews with everyone who has even the most tenuous connection with the Tsarnaev brothers, and their religion and motives are being analyzed to the finest detail.

In the meantime, a fertilizer plant has exploded in Texas, killing 14 and injuring 200 more. Although the tragedy was broadly announced, very little information seems to be making its way onto the public airwaves as to what led to this horrific event. Now that we know it wasn’t terrorism, we’ve pretty much let the subject drop.

What is it that is so much more compelling about the first tragedy than the second? Why does it deserve so much more of our national attention and imagination? Far more people were killed in Texas, and the property damage was devastating, pretty much flattening the small town. Their grief is just as real, their first responders just as brave.

There are, I’m sure, many explanations, but I’d suggest that the biggest reason for the different levels of national attention to the two tragedies has to do with a known flaw in the human brain. We are terrible at assessing risk. When we hear of a bombing, we imagine that it could happen to any of us. We see a world in which terrorists lurk behind every bush, and we want to do everything possible to stop the bad guys, and to punish their terrible acts of wrongdoing. When we hear of a factory explosion, it’s just an accident, and something that could not possibly happen to us, since we don’t happen to live next to a fertilizer plant.

But the reality is far different than the flight or fight systems in our brains would have us believe. The risk of terrorism to any given person in the US is infinitesimal. Your risk from a texting driver, a legal gun owner or a lightning strike is higher. Your risk, however, from under-regulated industry, of the type that caused the Texas explosion, the massive oil leaks that happened recently from pipelines in Arkansas and Texas, not to mention the Deepwater Horizon explosion that dumped over 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico as well as claiming the lives of 11 rig workers, is far, far greater. If you consider the subtler incursions of unsafe pesticides, genetically modified foods that may or may not be safe, air and water pollution and so forth, then your exposure to risk starts to approach 100%.

In response to the events of 9/11 and subsequent terrorist acts we have spent trillions of dollars and changed our lifestyles in ways that range from how we board an airplane to who sees our private information. In response to the devastating human and natural costs of under-regulated industries and corporate greed we have…a continued call for less regulation, and less money spent on enforcing the regulations that remain.

If we really cared about addressing real dangers we would have applied the trillions of dollars that have gone to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to developing and promoting renewable energy and fighting the effects of climate change. If we really wanted to make our citizens safe, we would be holding the corporate perpetrators of natural and human disasters responsible, and working to see that safety regulations were followed in a way that would prevent future disasters.

But we are bound to a national narrative that tells us that we can combat the bad guys by putting more guns in the hands of the good guys. We are tied into a story which is so dedicated to supporting the capitalist undertaking that while we are willing to give corporations the free speech rights of individuals, we aren’t willing to hold them responsible the way we would with individuals who had committed equally heinous deeds. We are quick slap the label “evil” on people who commit terrible acts, and even to extend that label to the religious or ethnic groups to which they belong. But we seem to just accept the fact that corporations will do whatever they can to maximize profit, and the costs that all of us must bear are somehow simply the price of doing business.

Sure, I want to know why the Tsarnaev brothers committed their terrible acts of violence. And I get that we are fascinated by the rare individual who commits unimaginable acts for unimaginable reasons. We already know why West Fertilizer Co., and BP and Exxon and so many others allowed terrible things to happen on their watch. And it is that prosaic, everyday pattern of choosing short-term profit over life and health that I find truly terrifying.