Ornament

Creativity Boot Camp - Day 8

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I once heard a story about a man and a woman, who were planning to get married, and at some point along the way the woman realized that her purpose in the relationship was ornamental. She was filling a spot. Her husband-to-be needed to be married in order to have a certain status and in order to reach certain goals. She was a trophy, someone to hang on his arm and support and admire all of his causes. And she realized that this wasn't how she wanted to live the rest of her life. She had dreams and aspirations and goals of her own. And she broke off the engagement.

It sounds simple, doesn't it? Yet, I know it wasn't. It couldn't have been. When you have your heart and your life invested enough to plan a marriage, when you have someone who makes you feel beautiful, even ornamental, it's anything but simple to walk away. She could have lived a comfortable life in a comfortable house with a comfortable discretionary income. But she didn't. She wanted to work hard, to get dirty, to be someone. She didn't want to be a fragile ornament hanging on her husband's arm. I admire that. I am not an ornament. And I'm not living this life here to be ornamental. I want to live hard and know that if I fall I won't break. I want to be a partner to my husband and not his trophy.

Thank God I have a husband who expects me to be his teammate. Together we are strong. If he was working alone, and I was his ornament, we'd both be fragile. And we'd be lonely. The life we live is a lot more beautiful this way...more like a huge patterned quilt that wraps around and keeps us warm than a lovely, lonely ornament hanging by itself.

Fly

Creativity Boot Camp - Day 7

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I know. It's been a long time since I've visited the Boot Camp. But I'm trying hard to actually follow through with this thing. You know, you can't call it boot camp if you give up, right? So, I'm going to keep plugging away. One post at a time.

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It wasn't flying. It was swimming, but it seemed so much like flying that, for a few second, the two might be mistaken.  I was sitting on the beach, warm sand and a chilly breeze off the harbor, our two families laughing and screaming and delighting in the crash of waves larger than those we typically see in the summer at the Great Lake. My Spanish is poor to middling, and she doesn't speak English. So, we sat quietly most of the time, now and then interjecting a "wow!" or a laugh. Our children played in the waves, my daughter and her son...and our husbands...and Mane. We were the mothers sitting there shivering on the beach, smiles wide.

And I looked up to see Vespera & Niteo turn their backs to a huge wave as it crashed over their heads, saw them bob up and hold each other tight. Then Vespera ducked under the waves, and just for a second I wished I had a camera, though I knew it wouldn't do any justice to what I saw, to what was in my heart or before my eyes or in the air and the wind and the waves. A huge wave came rolling in, and just as it approached, Niteo turned his back to it and spread his arms out wide, flying free, and the wave rolled right over his head. For just an instant, I saw him through the wave, in the middle of the wave, covered and embraced...and embracing. I thought of how this has always been a freeing place for him, a place of homesickness and healing at the same time. The wind continued to blow, and the waves crashed, and Vespera and Niteo spun through the waves, ducking and diving and bobbing and laughing, as the seagulls overhead laughed and spun and dove in the wind. Flying.

I don't know how or when we are ever all free of the bits of life that entangle us, the worries of school and money and career and children and health and poverty and crime. But, I know that somehow, we are offered freedom in our hearts. We can step out of the tangle and fly. Maybe we rise above (or Rise Against?), and maybe its the wind in our faces or the waves pouring over us that set us free.

More Questions from Mane

Mane told me the other day that she has so many questions that she sees no end to them. Me too. And it only gets worse the older you get.

Yesterday she was wanting to know how it is that Jesus is God, and God is God, but there is only one God. Try explaining Trinity to an eight year old.

Then she was trying to understand how we can say BOTH that the reason the moon shines is because God made it that way AND because the moon is reflecting the light of the sun. How can one question have two answers? Oh, my child, this is only the beginning. Most questions have so many answers.

Two days ago she pointed out to me that if you look at yourself in the mirror and you have a mirror behind you also, the reflections go on forever. And she wants to know how far that is. Infinity. How far is infinity?

She wants to know if God is outside the universe or inside it, and how can God be everywhere at once, and how can God have no end? More infinity. And if there's an end to the universe, then there must eventually be a place where there is nothing. So, what is nothing?

Fluid

Creativity Boot Camp - Day Six

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My brother in law loves to tell a story about when he and his father, Mango's father, were shopping at Home Depot some years ago. As he and his dad were walking the aisles, they saw ahead of them a man pushing a cart of long metal pieces. From the side a little boy was approaching, who was eye level with the metal but too small to be seen by the cart "driver." As the metal pieces and the boys eyes were about the collide at right angles, my father in law strode forward, reached down, and placed a gloved hand at the end of the metal pieces all in one fluid motion. The boy and the cart missed each other. Neither knew that a disaster had just been averted, but a store employee, who was some distance away and had been holding his breath, saw the whole thing. Shaking his head at the close call, he congratulated my father in law on his quick, calm, and flawless response.

Every time I hear that story I get chills, and I love to listen to my brother in law tell it. I am struck by the way our lives are like this. We can't stop time or replay ourselves in slow motion in order to see the many ways that we have been saved by the hands of another. Just as my father in law moved fluidly through this moment, stepping forward, reaching out a hand, covering the sharp endings, and then moving on without so much as a shout or a sideways glance, our own lives flow on without stopping for us to see the near misses, the "almosts" and the calm buffering of strong, experienced hands.

Yet, just as certainly as I know this story is true, I know that my own story has similar moments. Sometimes we are lucky enough to bear witness to one of the instances, as my brother in law was, and we can hold that one moment of fluid time cupped in our hands like a clear drink of water. We are revived and strengthened in bearing witness.

Grow

This post is part of Creativity Boot Camp: Day Five.

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When I was a little girl
I would stand in the middle of the corn fields
and imagine myself rooted in the ground,
growing with the corn stalks,
sun on my face.

When I was in college,
I would stop in sunlit windows
and close my eyes facing the sun.
I'd say to anyone who cared to listen,
"I'm photosynthesizing."

When I was camping
with my husband and daughter
I stood on the beach
with my face in the wind
and opened my arms to the sky
like a tree.

Cornfields
and sunlight
and the wind in my face
have steadied me,
tied me to the earth,
as my life has grown around me,
a crazy wild garden.

Heavy Metal

Creativity Boot Camp - Day Four

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Yes, Creativity Boot Camp is going at its own pace in my house. And I don't know when I'll finish. That's not the point. At least, that's what they tell me over there. So, bear with me. While everyone else is finished. I am on Day Four.

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When I was about five months pregnant, Mango and I went to the Whistle Stop Bed and Breakfast in New York Mills, MN. I brought along my prenatal yoga DVD and practiced every day in our very own train car while Mango tried to convince me that pregnancy looked good on me. He even took my picture while I was up to me ears in bubble bath. (Yes, the train car had a whirlpool tub.)

We came home with a heavy chunk of metal as a souvenir: a railroad spike painted gold, the signature gift of the Whistle Stop B&B. It was such a strange gift, heavy and spray-painted. We still have it, and I've contemplated from time to time what it means (being a person who contemplates the meaning of the unexpected and unusual in life - see my posts about double-yolked eggs...oh, and there were several more double yolked eggs one morning last week - we're still wondering about the meaning of this...).

The "original" golden spike was driven by Leland Stanford at the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, a commemoration of the union of the two major railroads in the U.S. at the time. I like that - a symbolic spike tying the two railroads together...railroads that go a lot of different directions but are ultimately united and work together for the same purposes and goals. And that's what Mango and I are - two people working on various separate things in life but ultimately united together in purpose, in goals, in meaning. And there we were about to have our first baby, half of my DNA bound to half of his DNA to create something completely new and different, a golden spike, if you will, tying us together, not just in purpose and spirit but in the real physical world. It isn't that we weren't bound together before, but a baby is a tangible, physical bond...not evidence of our bond, but an actual real life bond - part of me and part of him.

I just have to sit with that for a while.

Then I think of all the things that railroads mean. My grandfather worked for Burlington Northern for his entire work career. Perhaps that's why I find some fascination with railroads, though he never spoke with me about his work. Or, perhaps, it's because I grew up with the movie Stand By Me, and there was something so captivating about following a railroad track. Railroad tracks are on a mission to somewhere and they slice through so much of life along the way. Like my life. And Mango's life. And our children. Yet the whole thing is tied together by these spikes, grounded, stable, connected to the solid terra firma and to every other track.

And it was on the old railroad bridge over Lake Calhoun where Mango first told me that I was beautiful. This was before we were a couple. And I didn't know what to say. There I was on those old tracks, not even knowing which direction my life was going or what to say about it. I like the way that old railroad tracks sit in the ground and the grass and flowers grow up around them, and they seem almost (but not quite) like part of the natural world all over again. They remind me of the past, of the people who came before me and the things that make me who I am today. And I can still follow those old tracks to somewhere...and sometimes they meet up with some new tracks, like the Hiawatha Line in Minneapolis, like the way layers of my life meet up and are sort of the same but altogether different...all tied together by those heavy chunks of metal. Heavy metal. 

Multilayered

This post is part of the Creativity Boot Camp, Day 3. 

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I've always said that healing is a spiral upwards. You keep climbing up, but the issues do come back around again. I wasn't the first person to say that. Those are just words I clung to when I was most looking for some thoughts on healing in my own life. I don't know who said them first. I've been repeating them ever since.

You cannot expect healing to be all done after your first go-round of the spiral. The first go-round is just the first layer...typically the one where you finally admit that you have a wound than needs healing and you're ready to finally face it. After that, there are many, many more layers stacked up in the spiral...like a slinky.

Hope is when you realize that the spiral is always going up. Each time you hit the same place on the loop, you're up another layer. You can't jump over that place on the loop because then the slinky and all its layers would fall apart. But, if you push through, you'll get to the other side...and be a little more healed because of it.

I'm not sure if the layers ever end, or if the slinky goes on for eternity...or, at least, until we die and meet Jesus and have our wounds healed by the Great Healer. In the meantime, each go-round of the spiral is its own new fresh layer...and also somewhat like the last go-round, like the seasons that are different every year but also somewhat the same. Each layer stacks up on the other, colorful slides of life, both the same and different each time. If you looked down through them you'd see who you once were and who you have become, all stacked one over the other...

...layer upon layer of the healing spiral carrying you ever upward.