I really do not like waiting. I will put something back on a shelf rather than wait in a long check-out line. I will shop online, choose a different restaurant, come back later, or change my plans altogether to avoid a line.
I hate waiting for a bus too. Why stand and wait when I can start walking now? Usually, the bus passes me as I am chugging along down the street. It does not phase me. At least I didn’t wait, I tell myself. A funny logic, I know.
I remember as a child waiting for special days, like birthdays and Christmas, and feeling as though time was moving as slow as molasses. As a teenager, I would count down days until I could visit out-of-town friends or go to summer camp: month after next, week after next, day after the day after tomorrow. It felt like time crawled until finally it was … today! And somehow, the long-awaited day had arrived.
I am waiting now like I have never waited in my life. Expecting the child that I have carried for the past nine months to come into the world, I cannot make this magical event happen on my timeline. I cannot just set off walking. I cannot make a different choice or come back later.
My spouse and I have waited, counting months and weeks and days, watching my body change, following our baby’s development step by step: organs and fingernails and eyelashes. We have moved from flutters to kicks to rolls, reveling in bulges that are feet and elbows, imagining what they might look like on the outside.
The leaves are changing here in New England and falling, one by one, covering the ground, shuffling under my feet as I walk, slowly now, talking to the baby: We are ready for you. Come ahead. The days grow shorter and the ground grows colder, prepping for dormancy, for a winter of waiting. Our waiting time is now. We wait for life to emerge.
Enjoy the wait, they say. While it’s still just the two of you. While you and baby are one. Pregnancy is to be savored, they say. Well, mine has been complicated, often hard to savor, and at this point I am rather uncomfortable. But there is wisdom in their words.
And so I am practicing something that does not come naturally: enjoying the wait. I am practicing savoring each day, each moment that my babe and I are joined in this most intimate way that will never be again. I am practicing breathing deeply, being present, watching the leaves fall, waiting for our lives to change irrevocably, for our hearts to be transformed in ways we cannot imagine. Waiting becomes the practice itself.
We are over a month from the beginning of Advent, yet I have never understood the season as well as I do now: patience and reflection. Calmly, quietly preparing body, heart, and soul for the miracle that will be.
by Pablo Neruda
(translation by David Breeden)
Now, let’s all count to twelve,
then keep still.
For once on this earth,
let’s speak in no language.
For once let’s stop
and not move our arms so much.
That would be a fragrant moment,
without hurry,
without movement;
we would all be together
in an instantaneous . . . disquiet.
The fisherman in the cold sea
would not hurt the whales,
and the worker in the salt
would look at his broken hands.
Those who prepare garish wars–
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors–
would don clean clothes
and walk around
with their brothers
in the shadows
doing nothing.
Don’t confuse what I want
with true inaction:
life is only what you do–
I don’t want anything to do
with death.
If we can’t be unanimous
as we move our lives so much,
maybe do nothing for once,
so that maybe a great silence could
interrupt this sadness–
this never ever understanding each other,
and threatening each other with death–
maybe then the earth
can teach us
now
when everything seems dead,
then
everything was seen as alive.
I’m counting to twelve,
and you, become
silent!
I’m leaving now.
That shrimp plant
so determined to be seen
poking through the ginger and the fig
like a four year old
waving skinny arms and red cheeks
to those towering above
That shrimp plant
grown from cuttings of a friend
who no longer lives in this country
from a house
that has since burned down
That shrimp plant
breaks at its knobby knees and elbows
when the wind blows too hard
drops to the ground
and grows again
Universe
today I pray
please
please grant us the resilience
of that shrimp plant
The other day I got a subscription offer from a magazine called Free Inquiry, a publication of the Council for Secular Humanism. I’d been thinking about ordering the magazine. Well, here was my chance: a “special introductory offer for blasphemers only.”
Got to love the marketing department. That’s no magazine for me.
Though I am “godless”–in the sense that I doubt the existence of anything that human beings would wish to call “god” and I don’t think a religion is a place any decent god would be caught dead in–I’m neither “blasphemous” nor “sacrilegious.”
If I don’t believe in “god,” how could I be? Those are words with meaning only in God Land. See, I’m a “humanist.” But a “religious” one, not a “secular” one. (What the heck does that mean?)
Oh, that labeling thing! Why do we have to be an “ist” this or an “ist” that? I don’t want to be an “ist.” Being an “ist” is about being a follower. I don’t have any interest in that.
Sure, I get it: some religious people don’t like what I believe. Some even insist upon forcing their isty god on me. I get it. But to somehow think that I’m blaspheming about it makes me a reflection in their mirror. I don’t want to live in that musty old antique shop. There’s just too much out under the blue sky to enjoy.
Which makes me a Transcendtal-ist! Except when I’m in a Logical Positiv-ist frame of mind. And then there’s always . . .
You get the idea. The Twentieth Century was the Age of Labels. Perhaps in the mobile societies created by industrialization labels made some sense, with so many people displaced and wandering the earth to find work. Just in the art world there were Futurists, Fauvists, Voticists, Imagists, and Capitalists. Labels don’t make sense anymore. Isn’t everyone displaced now?
Seriously, folks: why does anyone need to be an “ist” at all?
There’s just too much fun stuff to think. Therefore, pietists and sacrilegists, listen up! Lose the labels and get a life.
If I’ve got to be something, I’ll take “everythingist.”
This time of year, as we approach Halloween, The Day of the Dead, and All Saints’ Day, I am often thinking of death. Granted, I am always a little bit morbid—my astrologer sister would say it’s because I’m a Scorpio. (I regret that I was too old to go Goth in my teen years, because I suspect I might have enjoyed that.) But right now, death is often lurking just under my mind’s surface.
My garden is one of the sources of my thoughts, and it is a place where there is plenty of room for such thoughts. This lovely, non-judgmental community of green friends, lets me think about whatever I fancy. And the garden is full of death. Every day I am pulling up or lopping off plants that have given their all—the perennials having given it for this year and likely to return, the annuals having lived their whole life in this one year. Farewell, I say to the enormous squash plant, as I pull it up and hold it by its roots. Farewell, I remember when you were just a seed!
The longer I garden, the more comfort I take in the ritual of going through the entire life cycle each year. I adore picking out seeds in the fall to plant in the spring. My grow light table in the basement has gotten bigger and bigger because having those tiny green babies means so much in March and early April, when the winter here in Minnesota has just gotten so long that I may go berserk if some tiny waft of a spring breeze doesn’t blow through, some tiny green weed doesn’t poke up under the snow. Tucking those seedlings into the May earth has all of the drama of sending my kid off to kindergarten, tucking tiny invisible notes into their invisible lunch boxes as I plant them. And then cheering for them in summer’s fullness as they grow up and begin to live out their life’s purpose—as zinnias’ shiny red petals glow in the sunlight, as basil or cilantro graces my table. And then, Minnesota fall means that all growing, all producing of food or flower, will cease for another long winter.
The more years I participate in this cycle, the more I love the dramatic resurrection stories so many of my plants tell me. Some are, simply, perennials, and I know as I cut them to the ground that they’ll bounce back in the spring, shiny green and new again. Others are busy throwing their seeds around the yard, winking at me and saying I’ll be impressed by their progeny. Other annuals are simply done, with no tales of regret to whisper in my ear as I say good-bye to them. All are amazing role models in giving it all away, in surrender, in generosity.
Some people believe that we’re perennials, that after our deaths, our souls reside eternally in one place or another. Some say we’ll be back, though perhaps in a different form. Whatever is and will be, I live my life as if I’m an annual—acting as if, if some part of me is to survive, it will be in the growth of the seeds I have sown in my lifetime.
With the help of wind, and birds, the exact location of the seeds which grow is unpredictable. Similarly, I don’t know which of the seeds I’ve sown will continue to bear their own seeds and keep growing after I’m gone. Given what I’ve seen in my life so far, my only prediction is that what of me keeps growing after I’m dead will be nothing I would ever predict.
My own mother, dead eleven years, increasingly comes back in memories that make me giggle. She wasn’t excessively funny when she was alive, but the memories of her humor are the ones that keep whispering in my ear now. Silly things she said forty years ago at dinner make me laugh out loud. This time of year she has more to say, I notice, as do other beloved ghosts. The pagans say that this is the time of year when the veil is thinnest between life and death, and in the garden, I feel that thinning all around me.
I don’t believe in a heaven in the sky, where St. Peter welcomes some and turns others away. But this time of year, in my garden, as the crows shout, squirrels scurry around, and geese fly over and honk their farewells, in the sweet grief of letting go and saying goodbye, I touch a tiny bit of heaven on earth.
Last month I had the joy of participating in the first Life on Fire un-conference (https://www.facebook.com/LifeOnFireTribe).
I was drawn to the gathering by the questions being asked, as well as by the beloveds who were convening us.
• Do you want to transform the world into the beloved community?
• Do you want to live a committed life that takes you to third places, abandoned places, and secular places?
• Do you believe in radical integrity?
• Do you want to live as if you are who you say you are?
• Do you know who your heart breaks for?
Do you know who your heart breaks for?
I know who my heart breaks for. My heart breaks for the neighbor who has nothing and the neighbor who lives in fear that what he has will be taken from him.
My heart breaks for the creatures of the disappearing wetlands and for the communities destroyed because the wetlands are no longer there to protect them.
My heart breaks for the transgender woman who has no shelter to accept her in New Orleans as a woman “because she hasn’t had the operation yet” and for the shelter director whose compassion has been destroyed by the unceasing need that shows up on her doorstep every day.
My heart breaks for everyone dehumanized and treated as less than by the evil of oppression, and for those so blinded by their own hate that they do not realize they have given up their own humanity in the process of denying it to others.
Who does your heart break for, beloveds?
When we find what breaks our hearts open, we can begin to live with a sense of purpose, with a mission, as a compassionate community of faith.
A.
Thucydides–that Greek
telling his story, human
doings with nary
a nod to the gods–said
the powerful extort
what they can;
the weak pay
what they must.
True enough to
make a bon mot.
The powerful
take,
the weak
give.
Person to person;
city to state; and
the empires
the worse for it.
B.
Nothing golden
in that rule. More
murder and steel,
more grab and run.
More of that little
story, David and his
giant, how the wry
win, by god, by
ignoring rules.
C.
Kant–that German
naming his absolutes
with nary a nod to gods–
said what I do
I must do
as if I give
that freedom to
everyone.
No treating others
as means
to an end
but the end
themselves.
And we’re golden.
(Buy that, David?
Beloveds, I believe that we are all in this together – and together, we can shift a culture that is dehumanizing us all –
Singer activist Ani DiFranco sang in 1995 (Not a Pretty Girl)
I am not an angry girl
but it seems like I’ve got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear
Sometimes I am an angry white woman. And sometimes, I am afraid. I am angry that children are not eating this week because human beings elected to govern the resources of this nation have decided that ideology is more important than people. I am afraid of how much harm is being done, how many lives without safety nets are crashing to the ground even as I write these words today.
And always, always, I am grateful to be a part of a faith on fire – on fire for love, mercy, and justice, a faith that walks the talk, not perfectly, but with a broken open heart of commitment. A faith that says it is okay to be angry and afraid and keep going, keep going… beloveds, let us turn toward each other in this vulnerable moment in our nation’s history.
Let us change the story together.
I can’t sleep. Again. Tonight I’m thinking about how, in the city where I live, the police shot and killed a 34-year-old unarmed woman today, with her 1-year-old in the back seat of her 2-door sedan. I’m thinking about how I’ve driven those very streets, gotten stuck in tourist traffic on those avenues, turned around with frustration and exasperation at those barricades. I don’t know what will be revealed in the days ahead about this particular person and what she was hypothetically going through, but we’ll never know for certain, will we? She was killed, in her car, with her daughter in the back seat.
As usual, I appreciate Petula Dvorak’s quick and thoughtful column on the craziness in this world. I noted one commenter in particular on this column who observed that “If she [the driver] had been a moose, or a bear, they would have used a tranquilizer dart.” Yep. We are so threatened by one another, these days, that we take each other out first, ask questions later, questions that are mostly unanswerable when the subject in question has been taken out of the equation, out of any possible conversation.
What is going on in our country? Our elected leaders can’t pass a budget, can’t resolve a conflict that is negatively impacting thousands, if not millions, of lives. But when the police “successfully” manage to work together to kill a woman in a car without first stopping her and assessing her in any way, this is celebrated. “Police said the incident showed the success of the huge security apparatus that Washington has built since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ‘The security perimeters worked’ at both the White House and the Capitol, Lanier said. ‘They did exactly what they were supposed to do.'”
They did? This is exactly what was supposed to happen? America, I say, (recognizing that by that moniker I mean the United States of America, in a Ginsberg way, not all of North America, not Central or South America. I can speak only for this country, the one in which I was born, my parents were born, and my grandparents were born, including my 90-year-old grandmother who laments that this is a country she “used to be proud of.”) America: is this who we are, now? A country which refuses to pay our bills because we don’t want to have to provide health care to our citizens, a country which shoots people first and asks why they went “off-the-rails” later—when it’s long past too late to do anything about it, a country which imprisons people indefinitely who have never been convicted of anything (Guantanamo Bay, remember? Anyone?)?
How did we get to this point? Was it always this way, or has there truly been a shift in our country? Do people like me (thirtysomething, middle-class, white, overly-educated, engaged-citizen but busy-with-my-own-life) feel a sense of ownership of “our” country anymore, or do we mostly tune it out? If we did want to do something about the violence in our country today, where would we begin? If we wanted to create some space for healing, where do we begin? Where do we begin?
I have no idea what the police officer who shot the person who may indeed have been Miriam Carey is feeling tonight. But I wonder if he or she isn’t feeling some remorse. Was it really necessary to shoot-to-kill? Maybe that’s where we could all start: some remorse. Some wondering if there isn’t a better way. A better way than scoffing or sarcasm or throwing up our hands in disgust (yes, I too watched this week’s popular Jon Stewart clip critiquing the GOP Shutdown, and I laughed. But afterwards, honestly, I felt a little…bored. I mean, hasn’t Stewart been doing various versions of this same routine for years now? How long can we keep scoffing at each other and have it be entertaining?).
There have got to be some other ways. I don’t yet know what they are. But as I try again to get some sleep, I’m going to conjure up Jill Bolte Taylor’s hands lifted up into the air in the TED talk that I watched tonight while doing the dishes. I was compelled by the feeling in her voice to set down the dishes midway, turn off the water, and come over to my computer and watch her—speaking, feeling, expressing, hoping…that her experience, her vision might impact the world. Her experience was an experience of our genuine interconnectedness. Her experience affirms for me what keeps me awake tonight: it does impact me, and it should impact me, that there are people being held as prisoners by my country without being tried, and that other citizens of my country are force-feeding them because they are on a hunger strike to demand their rights. It does impact me that a woman my age-ish, with a daughter the age of my daughter, perhaps did not receive the attention or care that she should have and, thus, lost control of herself in the nation’s capitol and was shot to death in her car.
Jill Bolte Taylor: “We have the power to choose, moment-by-moment, who and how we want to be in the world. …I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.”
Let peace begin with me. Let lament begin with me. Let a refusal to rush-to-blame begin with me. Let the practice of non-reactivity begin with me. Let new ways of being, of engaging, of listening, of questioning, of reacting, of feeling, of persisting, begin with all of us. Let us reach out and ask one another what we need in our lives, if we need help, how we can help. Let us assume not that everyone we know is well, but that everyone we know is struggling, struggling deeply, with something. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Whoever said this, whenever it was said, it echoes through the ages with truth. Perhaps this truth is one place we can start when we wake up tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, to a new day.
Let’s say you find yourself living in, oh, let’s say the United States. It’s a country where something on the order of seventy-five percent of the population claims to be Christian. Let’s say you don’t believe in any other religion, either: you aren’t Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Baha’i, or any other of the myriad religions brought to the US by immigration or popular books. Perhaps you were even raised Christian. What do you do? How do you get through the year, filled as it is with Christian holidays and tsunamis of piety every time there’s another mass shooting or terrorist act?
Then there is the eternal question: how do you communicate with co-workers and–horror of horrors–the family at Thanksgiving?
I think there are five options:
Convert
Pretend
Reinterpret
Admit you don’t believe but allow for doubt
Resist
Conversion is your easiest course. If it’s an option, go for it. Then you won’t bristle at Federal holidays built around a particular religion. You won’t roll your eyes at each proclamation of every politician concerning her or his Christianity. Convert. It makes swimming in the US waters warm and clear.
Conscience won’t let you do that? Then try pretending. Just tell grandma and Aunt Betty Lou that you love the new pope and you’ve been planning to go back, really you have. Any day now . . .
Conscience won’t let you pretend? Reinterpret. Get yourself to the nearest bookstore (NOT a Christian one) and find writers such as John Shelby Spong, Cynthia Bourgeault, Brian McLaren, and a whole–excuse the pun–host of others. These writers swim in the Christian tradition, yet reinterpret the old metaphors. For many people this is a comfortably place. After all, you can still tell your mom that you’re Christian. And the denizens of Washington, DC won’t get on your nerves quite as badly.
Then there are those who just can’t believe in the whole bloody business anymore. What then? Face it: you’re probably a humanist. You have two options. The first is admitting you don’t believe but allowing for doubt. After all, you probably don’t know how particle accelerators really work either, so it appears that the human brain doesn’t comprehend everything. You’re agnostic! When Uncle Jim mentions how atheists are ruining the country, you can go “um” and then try to change the subject.
If all else fails, resist. I don’t recommend this final option, unless you just feel that you have to do it in order to be true to your conscience. Resistance is perhaps not futile, but it is uncomfortable. You will be joining the beleaguered folks who sue the state of Texas (maybe even Rhode Island) for its latest enormity. You won’t win any popularity contests (and you won’t be elected President). Perhaps Aunt Betty won’t even invite you over for apple pie.
But, hey, the benighted ones hated Jesus too, didn’t they?
The waters of America. Not so easy to swim in for some of us. Oh, and there’s a turning leaf. Almost time for that “controversy” over Halloween. And then a snowflake will bring us a whole new chapter of the War on Christmas . . . . Keep swimming!
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