A Summer Memory
for Maggie and Lewis
As the dimming fall welcomes me back, a summer memory feeds me still.
We have risen with the sun, the smell of toaster waffles,
and the demand that I read to you.
Last night’s bedtime story put me to sleep too soon.
So we clear legos from the couch,
and return to lands of make believe,
armed with a light cotton blanket and coffee.
We move from the cool house through the neglected garden.
I can barely make eye contact with the tomatoes.
They too have somehow forgiven me and volunteered anyway.
Past collaborations must be remembered in their bones.
Onward we go, downhill, picking up speed, encouraged by running dogs.
Today we belong not to schedules, not to chapter books or tomatoes.
We belong to the lake.
We leave clothes and a few dogs on the dock
and launch ourselves into the familiar miracle of warm water.
There we are, lying on a rippling bed,
comparing our ability to inflate our lungs
and see our matching toes.
There we are, bodies almost resting now,
facing illuminated clouds
and shadow puppet tree tops.
There we are, imaginations ever reaching skyward until
floating hands touch by accident
and hold on purpose.
Too Much Noise
In the stillness and the quiet
The house is still and quiet. The only sounds are the low gurgle of the fish tank filter and my fingers tapping on the computer keys. The soft light of morning is just creeping over the pine trees out my back window and the streets are blanketed in just enough darkness that the cars outside my front window drive with their lights on.
In a few minutes, the house will be a flurry of activity. The boys will stumble down the stairs with messy hair and hungry stomachs. The dogs will need to go out. Cereal will be poured. Showers will be turned on. Coffee will be brewed, the dishwasher unloaded.
But for now, for a few more moments, the house is still and quiet.
As a child, I could never understand why my mom didn’t like the television and the radio on when we were at home. “Too much noise,” she would tell me.
Too much noise?, I pondered incredulously. How is that possible?
But now, now I get it.
There is just too much noise.
Noise on the television, noise in our workplaces, noise outside our car windows. Noise in the media and magazines, noise on Facebook and Instagram. Noise coming from internal pressures to do more and be more. Noise telling us to do this or be that. Noise complaining about this issue or that problem. Too much noise filling up space in our heads and blocking out sounds in our hearts.
Too.Much.Noise.
Lately I find myself craving less noise, and more sounds. More laughter and listening to the voices that really count. More music. More meditation, prayer and reflection, more awareness and gratitude, more stillness and quiet.
Clumsy feet are thundering down the stairs now; the morning frenzy is about to begin. Maybe you are already in the midst of your own frenzy.
We can never completely block out the noise, of course, nor do I think that we should. But maybe we could all use a little less noise? And a little more sound?
So here’s my wish for the day: May we have the wisdom to recognize the difference between the noise and the sounds. May we learn to hear our own strong and true voice inside, and may we have the courage to listen to it. And may we all have a few moments of stillness and quiet.
How do you quiet the noise?
*****
Note: This post originally appeared on the author’s website.
How Is It with Your Day?
I recently asked a friend, via e-mail, what her daily routine was like. It was delightful to get a sense of her day in an hour-by-hour play-by-play sort of way. I could tell from her rough daily itinerary where she lived (and that she and her family are enjoying the warm southern-California winter weather) and what her priorities are (her children, family, spiritual practice, personal health). I loved learning about how she wove into her family’s life some semblance of structure combined with the breathing room that allows for playfulness and ease.
I found it inspiring to read about her day-to-day, and it made me want all of us to share, post, and exchange our daily routines. It also made me want to ponder my own more intentionally. As parents of a toddler, much of my and my partner’s lives right now are focused on curating routine. So many of the parenting gurus say: routine, routine, routine — that’s what cultivates a feeling of calm and confidence, of the kid being able to anticipate what’s coming next and start to get herself prepared for getting out the door, back into the stroller or carseat, ready for dinner or bedtime. So lately I’ve had this primarily logistical, linear appreciation of routine — a leads to b, b leads to c, and so on, until the day is done and we collapse into sleep.
Through my friend’s-and-my simple e-mail exchange I realized (again) how significant our daily routines also are in terms of our spiritual health. In this new year one of my personal goals has been just to get to bed before midnight. Perhaps that doesn’t sound that ambitious, but after our kid’s bedtime is the time when we have to do the dishes and the laundry, pay bills, catch up on whatever online, get some work done, clean up, plan for the next day, relax a little bit, and, oh yeah, talk to each other. It’s easy for me to end up staying up later and later if I don’t set an intention. And that is how I aim to think of these routines — as intentions, efforts to bring some semblance of structure, of a container that can hold the over-fullness of our lives.
The routine of our day is also, I re-realize now, like a recipe. I love cooking, love following the clear outline of a recipe. Too often the to-do list that starts churning in my brain as soon as I’m blearily waking up is an unachievable, endless and random list of tasks. The beauty of intentionally outlining a daily routine is that it also lifts up the importance of things that wouldn’t make that to-do list, but are actually the most essential elements of the recipe: get up. Wake up the home (open the shades & curtains, turn on lights, bring in the newspaper). Wake up the body (bathe, shower, get dressed, have breakfast). And so on.
Many teachings emphasize beginning any spiritual practice by training our hearts and minds. Some days the simplest practice for me is to chop vegetables, clean up — my own take on the oldest teachings of “chop wood, carry water.” I end the day turning off all the lamps, the computer, the wireless, silently saying goodnight to the home. This is the end of what this day held. There is a peaceful closure to this one-minute act — it is the garnish on the day that was.
Separate from all the tasks of our lives, our days hold rituals, routines, and structure to them. Articulated, these routines have a kind of beauty, the simple clarity of a recipe. I write our family’s daily routine up and post it on the fridge. Wake up the home. Begin the day… And right there, when I read those first words, I feel a greater sense of possibility and spaciousness. Life is not an endless series of tasks unless we let it be only that.
And you? How is it with your day?
Is This Christmas, Mama?
Every time we say “Christmas,” our little one points at the Christmas tree. The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas being short this year, and our own lives being fairly scheduled, we went and got our Christmas tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Though it seemed a little early at the time, we (okay, I) also got out the Christmas children’s books and the Christmas carol piano book. We learned the ASL (American Sign Language) sign for “Christmas” and started pointing out all the other Christmas-related things as they emerged in our home and city—stockings, decorations, carolers, ZooLights!, Santas, and so on. Still, for weeks, every time we said the word “Christmas,” our Little Bean pointed to the tree in our living room. Every time she does this, I smile. She thinks Christmas is already here, actualized in the tree. The sparkling, decorated tree with the ornaments that she likes to pull off (the Big-Bird-playing-the-drum ornament in particular)—to her, that’s Christmas. And whenever this little communication occurs (I say “Christmas,” she points: “tree!”), I am jolted again into realizing: it is here. Everything that matters to me about the season is already happening, already around us. Instead of “the elephant in the living room,” there’s a 6-foot-tall decorated tree with glittering lights, silently proclaiming: “I’m already here.”
I believe that all the holidays celebrated at this time of year are, basically, about the solstice. In the midst of the darkest time of the year, we long for light and community. And so, we have holidays. With holidays come celebrations—lights, rituals, gatherings, feasting, community, songs, stories. I savor all these things at this time of year. It truly isn’t the day itself that is special to me—though I lament every time another store decides to open earlier on Thanksgiving, because we take so few days off anymore as a country and a culture. So that it is a shared day off for many, many people (not all, I know) makes it stand out. I do wish that someday we could make the solstice the actual day off, though I’m sure it’s heretical to someone to say so. Only some days do I feel like debating the literal-ness of biblical stories. At Christmastime, as a Unitarian Universalist minister anyway, I also long for time off, for time to not debate theology but savor symbology, the mementos we give each other to convey our love, the foods we make and time we spend together because we are glad to.
It is an amazing, marvelous thing to watch a small child making sense of the world. I see her making connections, putting two-and-two together, all the time. During these last few days before Christmas, I see her noticing the lights on other houses, the red so many people are wearing, the Santa hats, the presents, the decorated sugar cookies. I experience her starting to recognize the songs, and going along with unfamiliar outings to get-to-know new friends, thank our mail carrier, connect with communities-in-need through our congregations. And oh, how she is loving the special, extra-playful time with her grandparents! It’s a little abstract for a one-and-a-half-year-old, but somehow, I strive to convey to her that all of this is Christmas. All of this is Christmas. Just like that tree is decorated with a hundred ornaments, each of which has a story—so are our lives full right now with all this extra wonderment. And this is Christmas. All of this is Christmas. May the season be sparkling, stunning, and surprisingly simple for you as well.
A Garden Prayer
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
Rejoice?
First, gather friends and family. Together, build a structure with at least three sides. Roof it with bamboo or cornstalks, anything you can cut from the ground. Remember to leave spaces where the stars can shine through. Dwell in this place for a week.
“Dwelling” includes eating, talking, singing, napping, reading, relaxing, entertaining, all that is our life. Lounge here, dine here, enjoying the fruits of the harvest. Invite friends and strangers in to dine with you. If it isn’t raining and you’re up for the adventure, sleep in the sukkah you have built. The sukkah is one of the few Jewish practices that involves the entire body in the experience of a mitzvah, a commandment relating to Jewish practice and observance.
Sukkot encompasses a multitude of themes and symbols. This Jewish holiday is rich in life and lessons of an embodied faith.
Dwelling in a sukkah, a little hut open to the elements and slated for demolition only a week after its construction, one is returned to a time in Jewish history when the entire nation was homeless and wandering.
Dwelling in a sukkah invites people to remove themselves from both the materialistic things that normally fill our environment and the illusion of security that our stuff provides to us.
Many of us fill our homes with the most beautiful and expensive stuff we can afford – (sometimes more than we can afford). We are surrounded daily by our material things, symbols of our security and comfort and accomplishments.
Usually, we dwell in the midst of our stuff. Sukkot calls those who honor this holiday to leave their stuff behind for a week and return to a simpler existence.
Focus shifts from what we want
to what we need,
from what is additional
to what is essential.
Sukkot is a harvest festival, yes, but it is much more than that. It is a time when people of the Jewish faith are invited to step out of their comfort zones as a community and make sure that their life priorities are in line with what is of ultimate value. Stepping into a sukkah provides a physical framework for understanding what is ultimately important within a very intimate space.
Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg writes:
Sukkot is the holiday of change! Sukkot is a celebration of the beauty of things that don’t last.
The little hut which is so vulnerable to wind and rain and will be dismantled at week’s end;
the ripe fruits which will spoil if not picked and eaten right away; the friends and family who may not be with us for as long as we would wish;
the beauty of the leaves changing color as they begin the process of falling and dying from the trees.
Sukkot comes to tell us that the world is full of good and beautiful things.
But that we have to enjoy them right away today because they will not last.
The children in our lives get out of the way in no time flat. Our elders die, taking their stories and our love with them. The ones we love cannot not wait for us to finish other things and get around to them. The season of Sukkot brings into sharp relief the contrast between what we value and how we spend our days; the distance – if there is distance – between how we love and how we live.
And it does not rebuke us. Instead, we are invited to give thanks for our restored sight, to celebrate the realignment of our actions with our values. Let us rejoice together, beloveds.
“You’re Keeping That?”
While nursing lately, I’ve been watching the sun move across the dusty piano. “I’ve got to dust that, the moment I get up,” I think, and then promptly forget, again. But I’ve also been wondering if that’s exactly why spring motivates us to some version of cleaning-tending-sorting-purging-reclaiming of space in our lives—is it simply because the sun comes out and shows us where the dust has gathered? Why is it that my whole neighborhood seems to engaging in some mostly-silent, totally-uncoordinated-yet-simultaneous ritual of cleaning up the corners and closets of our home spaces?
I have moved, have relocated “home” a lot in my life, far more times than I can even count right now. I’ve lived in six states and it feels like close to six places in each of those states. And, at the same time, I come from a family of readers and accumulators (not hoarders, no, not hoarders, not not not hoarders!), and so every time I move I feel like I’m moving, shlepping, hauling, lifting, lifting, lifting…well, more than is logical. Something irrational causes me to keep all this stuff. In some ways I think a lifetime of moving has contributed to my attachment to things–I don’t have the walls of a house to hold memories in, I have this photograph, that journal, that well-worn cookbook, that piece of art from my no-longer-living grandmother, and so on. I keep things that I know I couldn’t find again in a store or a library or on Ebay, because they’re meaningful to me. But too much stuff leads to a blur of things that clutter. Too much stuff leads to tripping in the night. Too much stuff leads to our soon-to-be-toddler not having enough room to jump in her jumparoo. And I know that the feeling of clutter makes me feel bogged down, less spacious in my mind and heart, less open to welcoming new things, new interests, new projects, new people into my life.
So we are gearing up for a May 11 Neighborhood-wide Yard Sale, and we keep adding things to the pile that we’ll be putting in The Sale. There are things that will be hard to part with that day, but I know it’s time for them to go. It will be interesting to see what-all people put out for sale; hopefully we won’t be inspired to come home with more than we put out. Last fall, my partner and I downsized from a 2-bedroom house with a bonus room, a garage, attic, and a basement, to a 1-bedroom apartment with a bonus room. With the addition of a baby to our lives, the theme of the stuff that gets strewn about our home has also shifted markedly. It takes me almost an hour some nights to do the sink full of dishes that has accumulated over the course of just one day. I know that if we had fewer dishes, fewer cutting boards, fewer knives, one less blender–there would be less dish-doing, too. But for each thing we’ve kept this long I’ve formed a reason—in some cases, a campaign!—for keeping it.
For years now I’ve been inspired by the Tiny House movement. There are whole families raising their kids in 400 square feet. I remember being particularly inspired by a woman who knew exactly how many things she had: two hundred; and how she made sure that for every new thing she acquired, she let go of something else. Her tiny house was far less cluttered than our apartment is now, and it looked light and bright. Freed up from days of housecleaning and home improvement projects, she spent more time with friends and out in her community. Motivated by such stories, the objective of having less of an impact on the environment, as well as the challenge of simply doing voluntarily with less, I spent at least 6 months in the high desert of Central Oregon living without a fridge—just a cooler on the back porch with a block of ice in it, which I could buy at the nearby market. It wasn’t much of a sacrifice, really, and it saved me the awful noise of that particular refrigerator rumbling all night long.
My very cleaned-up dining room in Oregon
as I prepared my house to be rented out
I was energized by the idea that this was a step towards living more “off the grid,” that if I could unplug this one fundamental contemporary appliance, I was on my way. But then I moved out of that rental and into a house of my own, and set aside for a time the idea of continually paring down. And just setting aside the idea for a time meant that inertia and entropy exuded their forces and stuff gradually came to fill every spare cabinet of my more spacious new home.
I fully recognize that the whole movement of “voluntary simplicity” is precisely and only that: voluntary. For people who don’t have enough of what they need, this is an entirely irrelevant and even painful conversation. But for a good many of the rest of us, stuff just seems to accumulate. Why do you keep the things you keep? How do you decide to let go of things, even things that you have moved multiple times, from one home to the next, or taken great care of?
I am getting better and better at letting go of things, I think. That Sale is coming up, it’s a week from now. That morning when I wake up, what will I feel that I actually need or genuinely want, and what will I be ready to let go of? We’ll see, we’ll just have to see. In the meantime, I’m going to at least clear off the dusty piano.
Ordinary Time
Though March is not the season of Ordinary Time according to the Roman Catholic calendar, we are embracing Ordinary Time in this one Unitarian Universalist household, right now. (One of many aspects of Unitarian Universalist “culture” that I enjoy is that it often seems as though “rules were made to…be discussed.”) It was been a long, full, amazing, intense year of celebrations and events in our lives, this past year. In this strange but it-worked-for-us order, we went on our honeymoon (February 2012), got married (May), wrapped up 2 amazing jobs (July), had a baby (August), moved across the country (September), started a new job (August/September), unpacked, celebrated winter holidays, unpacked some more (ongoing), discovered we’d moved to Washington, D.C. (I’m seriously just noticing this lately, but let’s say February 2013) and my partner Cathy got ordained (March). Whew. We are thrilled to now be entering what we like to call “The Year of Uneventfulness.”
I also like to think of these days we’re settling into as “Ordinary Time,” and I love the term. I’ve been mulling it over for the past week. A friend asked me the other day about Life With Baby, she asked “Does it feel like it’s flying by?” My first response was still to recall the first four months, during which I sometimes had days that felt interminable–far from “flying by.” I remember clearly the days when Robin would only fall asleep during the daytime in my lap, and so I’d just sit in the blue cushioned rocker by the window for hours. And hours. I tried not to count the hours because I do believe that “a watched pot never boils” and counting the hours until Cathy would get home from work only made the day seem longer. Anyway those days did not fly by.
But now that Robin is seven-and-a-half months? Yes, it’s starting to fly by. And I appreciate the question, because it made me realize that yes, I’d be quite happy to “freeze-frame” for a while what our lives are like, right now. It feels, dare I say, like we sort of know what we’re doing, the three of us, like we all recognize each other and sort of know how to handle each other. Robin is consistently sitting happily (and stably) by herself and now regularly enjoys playing by herself with something simple like a string or a single toy–sometimes for as long as 15 or 20 minutes, studying it, mouthing it, passing it from hand-to-hand, and so on. I call that “working on her project.” Who knows what she’s already picked up from her Mamas–we like to work on our projects.
And we certainly have no shortage of projects (does anyone, these days?). But there is something so absolutely calming about realizing that these are all just the ordinary projects of life. We have lots to do–laundry, dishes, cleaning up, cooking, prep work for upcoming events and trips, appointments and errands, forms and bills, taxes and still more unpacking and sorting. But finally it is Ordinary Time. These are the tasks of living. We are so lucky to have all that we have, the components of our lives that we could so easily take for granted–each other, our lively kid, two cantankerous cats, an apartment we like in a neighborhood we love, our health, meaningful work, supportive families, our eclectic and ever-growing communities of friends. Ordinary Time means appreciating What Is, appreciating all this ordinary extraordinaryness.
The Spring Equinox has just passed; Passover and Easter are coming up. Taxes are due soon. Cherry Blossom Season is kicking off in Washington. These are all significant dates on the calendar–your own calendar may have lots of other important dates on it. And, at the same time, what I wish for all of us are more uneventful, ordinary days. Days that end with a deep breath of gratitude. Days that end with a sense of simple satisfaction. Life is an ongoing list of things to do, for sure, but as the saying goes, “Life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans.” May we all savor the life that happens on our ordinary days.
This Is What’s Happening
This is what’s happening, now.
It is the last day of our week-and-a-half West Coast trip. We are in Portland, Oregon, the city where I was born and grew up, where I know a thousand places I would love to go–this and that bookstore, that cafe, and oh, the breakfast places I would love to savor, and the parks and walks and hikes. I’d like to get my hair cut (the last time I got it cut was in December) and take Robin to that all-children’s-book store on Alberta. Instead, we are staying close to the house today. We will be running some laundry while the few friends who are free on a weekday come by and say hi. It is so much easier this way–to not make plans or have big aspirations for the day.
This is what’s happening.
One of the highlights of this trip for me was on the very first day, just after our plane landed in San Francisco, after we waited for everyone else to get off first so that we could take our time looking around under every seat and in every overhead compartment for our whole assortment of bags and belongings. We walked up the ramp and past the boarding gate, and Robin started kicking-kicking-kicking and shrieking with delight. She looked around at the bright shops, kiosks, and quickly rushing stream of people moving in all directions in that busy airport terminal and laughed and giggled, smiled and cooed and laughed some more. And I realized–startled–I realized that she may well have thought that we had permanently moved in to that Boeing 737 with 160 other people and less than 2 vertical square feet per person.
This is what’s happening.
As a Unitarian Universalist minister, an occasional meditator, and a regularly-irregular practitioner of yoga, I have a great appreciation for all the variations of “be here now” that circulate around and through our religious and spiritual traditions and practices. But I also have always loved to plan, to anticipate the next thing, to schedule and “calendar” and try my best to organize the future. A baby is a sure-fire way to cure a person of the enjoyment of planning. It is the planned things that inevitably stress me out, now. That planned gathering will fall right during her new nap time, or come with expectations of getting Her Wiggliness into some outfit that is not her usual comfy footed sleeper. Planned things will often involve driving, or bus schedules, neither of which dovetail with easy nursing. Planned things often involve other people, and most other people are so much busier than we are, these days. I have cut back, and cut back, and cut back, until, most days now, I spend most of the day barely aware of what time it is. I keep a running list going in my head of what Robin might need; that is my ongoing daily meditation now: diaper, food, nap, play, and repeat.
This is what’s happening.
Robin has just this afternoon discovered the clanging joy of banging on overturned pots with wooden spoons, wooden spoons which also make fine teethers. We leave tomorrow morning, and there are so many people and places I would have liked to have seen. But it is a privilege and a practice to set aside for now all the other things we might like to do, and just enjoy this sweet day together, with both Mamas around continuously this whole delightful week, playing in the sunlight and savoring the luscious green that is spring in Portland. An acquaintance told me she looks back on her children’s first years and thinks of them as the “I didn’t” years, a reference to all the things that go undone–dishes, projects, housecleaning, travel. I like that phrase, the “I didn’t” years; it resonates. And at the same time, I want to look back on these years and think of them as the “I did” years. We did, we are. We are choosing to focus on being with our Little Bean. We are lucky and privileged to be able to make this choice, and it is financially stressful some days, energetically challenging other days. For now, for us, this is what’s happening, right here, on the floor: overturned pots, wooden spoons, clanging and laughing and kicking, going nowhere today except around the block to look at the newly bursting flowers, letting our own focused lives be full enough, letting this be bountiful, this ordinaryness be beautiful. This is what’s happening. May it be so.
Waiting for Snow in Carlisle
Today, I carpooled to a daylong meeting with several colleagues. As we rode back toward home, we heard weather forecasts calling for several inches of snow tonight and into the morning. Now, you should know that unlike much of the rest of the country, we have had little to no snow in Central and Eastern Pennsylvania this year. My colleagues and I were all wishing for a blizzard or at least enough snow to have a snow day. Yearning for a snow day . . . a quiet day . . . a chance to slow down. . . and spend a little more time with my husband. I am just like a kid wanting a day off from school.
As she got out of the car, my friend said she would pray for snow and we wished each other a happy blizzard. I appreciate the beauty of snow when I am safe and warm inside, and I love the quiet hush that seems to fall with the snow. I even imagine playing in the snow. Yet I wonder why my colleagues and I want a snow day in order to slow down, to care for ourselves, or to take time with family. Our highly connected world has many of us working wherever we are and at all hours of the day and night. Many of us spend too many hours living like this quote from Marie Curie, “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” Our souls and spirits need time. We need to slow down and spend time not thinking about to do lists. We need to take time to celebrate what we have done, to notice where we are and reflect on where we have been. We need to time to play. Some folks wait until they get sick to slow down and take time for themselves.
So snow or no snow, apparently my colleagues and I need to slow down. I wouldn’t be surprised if you, too, need some slow time, some play time or reflection time. Do we need excuses or external events to care for ourselves – body, soul and spirit? If there is no snow, maybe we need to name some days “no snow” days.
May you give yourself the blessing of the time and space that you need to flourish.