change is imminent. we can feel its rumblings. we try to tether to something solid, something reassuring. as when fierce winds swirl around us in the woods, we scan the limbs of trees above us, waiting for the inevitable crashing-down-bow. we are unsure. we are afraid.
because change is here. we sense it all around us; we know things will not stay the same. they cannot. for this time is a time of transformation. the transition time will be full of the unknown. the re-shaping will be disorienting. we are agnostic. we are nervous.
because change is like that. it undermines our normal, throws our predictable into a frenzy, propels us past the lines we color in. it’s a metamorphosis like a kaleidoscope, ever-different, ever-rearranging. it pulls, it pushes. we resist. we dig in. we argue with the wind till we are hoarse and weary.
because change makes us fearful. we ask for guarantees that this evolution will be better, that we will feel settled in it, that it will improve things. but life comes with no guarantees and there are few among us who have not heard the words of nelson mandela: “courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. the brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
and change delivers. courage shows up and partners with strength and perseverance. belief peers from around the corner. and hands reach out to us. we see we are, indeed, not alone. we step. and step again.
and we learn to know: love > fear.
we look change in the face and say, “ok. let’s do this.”
the photograph for this post is taken of a shirt i purchased in a tiny magical bookstore on washington island. it is available – click here or on the photo above – if you would like to virtually visit fair isle books and order one in long or short sleeve for yourself or as a gift.
we put out a different water bowl in the kitchen for dogdog and babycat. neither one of them will drink from the bowl. we put their old water bowl in the next room, filled with water, so that they will be able to hydrate, but we were hoping that they would adjust to the new one. neither one of them will drink from the bowl. in the world they inhabit, one that must have low level anxiety frequencies they can feel from the-whole-outside-world, they do not like change. it’s been days and neither one will drink from the bowl.
“what now?”
in the past months and in what now feels like a broken world, we can face forward. we can set intentions and take one baby step at a time, all in unequivocal love of all humankind. we can be light for each other and we can hold fear tenderly. we can look newness of change eye to eye as we learn, challenge the status quo, embrace compassion and principle and stride confidently into a new time.
we can sit by the new bowl, encourage our dog and cat to drink from it, recognize their fear of the unknown, of change, and just love them.
ella jones said that it’s a time to “have courageous conversations.” she is the first black mayor of ferguson, missouri and, as i listened to her speak, i wrote down these words.
have courageous conversations.
senator lisa murkowski, a republican from alaska, said, “perhaps we are getting to a point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up.” i read her words, thought “it’s about damn time!” and took a screenshot.
the courage of our own convictions to speak up.
former president barack obama addressed a virtual town hall. “every step of progress in this country, every expansion of freedom, every expression of our deepest ideals has been won through efforts that made the status quo uncomfortable,” he reassured a trembling nation. i looked for these words so that i could remember them.
the expression of our deepest ideals. uncomfortable.
as we all sit together, walk together, protest together, cry together, we are talking together. in the last ten days of enlightenment, our conversations are asking necessary questions. we are desperately seeking to reach way down inside and to be honest about what we are feeling. we are intentionally trying to learn, to discern, to understand. we are debating. we are arguing. we are admitting we are wrong. we are listening. we are uncomfortable and we are courageous.
yet donald trump tweeted a letter, in a clear display of vehement agreement with the writer who penned it, his attorney, that refers to the peaceful protestors as “terrorists”.
but there’s this: “congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
and there’s hope. absolute hope. we can’t un-know what we know, un-see what we have seen, un-hear what we have heard, un-change what has changed, un-understand what we are beginning to, yearning to, understand, or un-hope for hope.
it is at that place in my memory where i can juuuust-about-touch-it-but-not-quite – the first time i heard, ‘ don’t stare into the rearview mirror. that’s not the direction you are going.’ i can’t quite remember when or where i first heard it, but it was one of those comments that i stored away as a wisdom to feed off, something that would give me strength in a moment of weak, something that would give me hope in a moment of despair.
my john glenn high school senior class song was seals and crofts’‘we may never pass this way again’. even if it’s the best. even if it’s the worst. never. this moment won’t be repeated and, with the absence of time travel, we cannot re-live it. ever.
we have all walked in different shoes on different paths. we have passed through challenges of which we may never speak; we have had successes about which we have never bragged. we have been hurt; we have hurt. and we have healed.
“healing does not mean going back to the way things were before…” (ram dass)
the thing about healing is what it teaches us. we can never be un-hurt. we can never undo what was done or what we did. we can’t return to the baseline; it has vanished with the winds of change. in a million tiny pieces of glitter, it’s in that proverbial rearview mirror.
but we can ride the river of our breathing into new normal. we can carry with us learnings and soft words of apology. we can pack our virtual baggage with tools of prevention and fairness and forethought. we can pick up techniques of negotiation and navigating in the process of coming-out-of-pain. we can avoid the temptation to retreat from moving forward, thinking that healing means it’s all back to what it ‘was’ before.
instead, we can step, in blind faith, into next, trusting that healing will bring us to a new place, a new start. that healing will have somehow gifted us, given grace to all involved in ways we may never know or understand. that healing will be like dawn, like rain, like birth.
i don’t feel as much in-a-boat as i feel that i am relentlessly treading water. but there was no handy treading-water bitmoji and i remember the exact moment that this bitmoji showed up on my snapchat mapping…in the middle of a lot of treading.
treading, treading. guessing at why what-is-happening is happening – in wide concentric circles around us, tightly close to us.
and today, both valentine’s day and d’s birthday, i want to express gratitude for this man who is standing in the water with me – waves crashing over us, undertow threatening to pull us down, riptide ever present – and holding my fiberglass-cast-encased hand. the person who is equally as perplexed at this time, who takes turns with me being alternatively flabbergasted, philosophical and soberingly pragmatic.
he continues to zip my jacket, buckle my seatbelt, paste my toothbrush, carry my music, pepper-mill my breakfast and dinner, put the ernie straw in my coffee. he has learned the fine points of where-on-the-head to place hair conditioner, how best to tie plastic bags on my arms, what stool will work best at the piano, which wine glass i can pick up at the end of a day. he has watched me learn how to hold mascara with two hands and pull up girl jeans by the belt loops. he has been treading water with me as we look to the horizon.
maybe this watershed is the thing that elicits change. at the end of 2019 i could feel it coming. and i can now, with all authority and certainty, say that the change is not that i will, smack dab in the middle of middle-age, become a professional snowboarder. nope. but there may truly be things out there i just didn’t see or consider. perhaps the things that are vexing us, stunning us, deeply disappointing us, are just the things that will propel us. ah, if that just didn’t feel so pollyanna-ish.
this life is bigger than anyone can ever live it. that includes us. treading water in the watershed might be a time that forces dynamic change. like everyone, i wish i had some prescient inkling of what’s-out-there, what-will-happen.
my perceived lack of control is maybe a misperception. maybe that which has taken away control is conversely granting control, granting the creativity that comes with grabbing onto flotsam and jetsam in a sea that seems to be swirling. maybe the grasping-at-straws is grasping-at-ernie, a touchstone that seems flimsy and unimportant, but which actually is grounding, rooting, and gives voice to more solid footing, less wave-action, more direction-choosing.
the watershed is here. moment by moment we stare at it. we roll our eyes, we yell at the angst-y details, we shake our heads in confusion, we stop and stand still and, yet hyperventilating from treading, we wonder. we try to breathe, to center, to be in the eye of the storm.
holding hand-cast, we look forward and we guess that this ain’t the last watershed on the horizon.
download WATERSHED from AS IT IS on iTUNES or CDBaby
too old. too young. too busy. too tired. too apolitical. too rabid. too conservative. too liberal. too artistic. too left-brained. too analytical. too kinesthetic. too emotional. too opinionated. too apathetic. too uneducated. too educated. too poor. too rich. too believing. too agnostic. too manipulated. too manipulative. too confident. too tentative. too work-engrossed. too free. too lofty. too basic. too orthodox. too unconventional. too open. too closed. too rigid. too fluid. too not-from-here. too down-home. too much. too little. too far-reaching. too little impact. too intentional. too haphazard. too unknown. too anticipated. too cavalier. too afraid.
d’s master’s degree embraces the organization of whole systems; when i recently read this it felt like everything he has said in a nutshell (and i, not being a nutshell person, embraced this nutshell with the glee of change). here is what i read about systems theory:
‘our family systems. our work systems. our neighborhood and community systems.’ our country. our world. the system reeling inside ourselves.
too trouble-making. too resistant. too dysfunctional. all good reasons for a system not to be too chicken to change.
life. too short. too fleeting. too few golden opportunities to learn. too few possibilities to stand tall and face down adversity. too few windows to be kind. too few chances to say ‘i love you’. too many people to laugh with. too many places to see. too many moments to miss.
all good reasons for us to be “not too chicken to change”.
the road from here to there is oft not straight. the way the crow flies is irrelevant. “the only way there is through,” joan told me quite some time ago. we were talking about grief. i had lost my sweet momma and it felt brutal; at any age the loss of a parent is profound. i was talking to joan about it – about getting to the other side of the grief. and she told me that the only way there was through it. a winding trail it was, with switchbacks and no guardrails.
that has happened for me with each encounter with grief. there is nothing easy about it, nothing straight. the grief of loss, the grief of instability, the grief of anxiety, the grief of fear, the grief of insecurity, the grief of aging, the grief of failure, the grief of change, in all its rampant forms.
and yet, out hiking, winding trails are my preference. a hike that takes me past hidden-treasure-vistas, a hike where i cannot see the end from the beginning, a hike that surprises at each turn. these winding trails are gifts in the woods, in the mountains, in between red rock formations high in elevation. there is much to see, much to learn about. they are journeys of not-knowing. they are journeys of wonder, of revelation.
we are not crows; no flightpath in our lives will be straight, no endpoint clear in our sight, no one thing all the way from here to there, no vector traveled without veering a bit off-course. even reverse-threading our lives will not reveal a straight path; instead it will reveal a vast horizon of ping-ponging and circuitous route-making. we will most definitely wind around, through decisions and opportunities, missed marks and challenges at the goal line, defining and re-defining. living.
which winds me back to joan’s wise words of years ago, which i can still hear her saying. the only way from here to there is through. winding trail and all.
it is a new day. filled with new promise, new possibility, new adventure, new hope, new light. no matter what, the light comes. it cannot be snuffed out, for after every night there is day. it is sure.
we look to the horizon and, like the most exquisite of tall-stemmed flowers, we lean toward the sun. we grow. we rest.
we know, intrinsically, that even in circumstance where our own light is dampened, when it is dark, when we feel extinguished, exhausted, profoundly saddened, the tiny light that flickers from deep within, from others, from sunrise, can reignite our zeal, rejuvenate us, restore us, bring us bravely back to day.
happy new day. happy new year. happy new decade. happy new light.
the video from My Girl made me out and out cry. it was just a little hello, sent from around a firepit in the high mountains after a long day of working. and it was perfect timing. to see her face and hear her voice was pure joy.
we walked and walked and walked. miles from millenium park’s christmas tree and skating rinks, past beautiful ornate displays of lights and simple twinkling white branches. in a rare opportunity linking my arm through My Boy’s as we strolled, i was filled with joy. the loudspeaker music and dancing lights of the lincoln park zoo just echoed my delight.
as adults, the holidays carry a different set of qualities than they did as when we were children. much pressure, oftentimes grief, maybe a slippery slope feeling of never-doing-enough, some disappointment, a measure of jealousy or envy perhaps as others-with-family-all-in-town gather together in big festive celebrations. for those of us who work on christmas eve and christmas day, there is a yet another added layer.
we walked through the woods yesterday looking for the right branch laying on the ground. we don’t yet have a christmas tree up. we have other little trees – i have collected small trees through the years – but no true christmas tree. each year in these last years, we have chosen that “tree” carefully, always something we found, something re-purposed into a christmas tree, something that had meaning. there was the christmas-tree-on-a-stick – a christmas-tree-misfit – we cut down on the tree farm, a piece of the tree that fell into our backyard narrowly avoiding the house, a branch that had snapped off of our beloved tree out front, a star suspended over a straight trunk wrapped in lights to tease The Boy.
this year i thought about just going to a lot and purchasing a tree, thinking maybe, in the midst of the ending of a really tough year for many, that might put me into the holiday spirit. but i just couldn’t bring myself to do that. we figured that the answer would become obvious, as it has done in the past years. and it did. watching My Boy, clearly proud of the decorations of the neighborhoods north-of-downtown, agree with us about how simple, beautiful and truly elegant the white branches were, made up my mind.
last night we put the first coat of white spray paint on the two sets of branches we brought home. we’ll finish coating them with paint later today and wrap them in white lights. we’ll gently place silver ornaments as we play christmas music in the background. i will miss My Girl and My Boy like crazy. i will yearn for my parents, my brother and sister-in-law and sister and brother-in-law and nieces and nephew and all their families, david’s parents and extended family. it isn’t the christmas of christmas-past.
but there still is magic. those moments of joy – when everything else ceases to exist and joy eclipses it all.
i found a note the other day, tucked inside a book. it was a jotting-down-of-a-memory and was a quote from The Boy. he was five and he said, “look at how i can snap (my fingers). at 5 years old!! i could become a snap teacher and teach everyone how to snap!” never too young to dream.
jen is zealous. she is reallyyyy zealous. i don’t think i have known anyone who is as zealous a learner as jen. it is invigorating and inspiring to be around someone who embraces all she does not know with questions and a hope for understanding, as opposed to resistance or suspicion. she actively seeks out ways to learn the new, the unknown, wholeheartedly jumping in and swimming. she knows that vitality comes with opening yourself to new things.
pantene recently ran a new video series. it’s referencing the holidays and in it transgender people talk about what it’s like to go home. it’s breathtakingly sad the number of LGBTQ women and men who are not welcomed at home because someone cannot learn, ask questions, try to understand. instead, resistance and suspicion and a whole lot of judgement fiercely reign and the dream of being all together celebrating is devastatingly dashed. squelching another’s dreams is not the ultimate job of our job as humankind.
yesterday i conducted a christmas cantata. ahead of time, i had, for hours and hours on end, researched songs to find the pieces i felt would resonate with people, the pieces that would be generously bestowing of spirit and not off-putting. i looked for the language i thought would tug at their hearts and remind them of the light, the miracle of the season. when one song didn’t quite fit for me after i had chosen it, i wrote a new one. they were labeled ‘contemporary’ songs, with melodies, rhythm, chords, years of copyright differing from the hymns in the hymnals. over thirty people participated: a choir, a ukulele band, a worship band, a violinist, a violist. the result was truly beautiful, the message clear and the music gorgeous. our little church – a church that proudly purports to be reconciling and all-embracing – had moments truly holy in that service.
h is 93. every week at rehearsal he is ready and willing to learn something. he is steeped in traditional – after all, he is 93, his year of copyright long ago. and yet, those new melodies, harmony, challenging rhythms he has learned to sing have brought a freshness of life to him. never too old to dream. he knows that vitality comes with opening yourself to new things.
but back to yesterday. i remain unfulfilled in one way. because the sad part about yesterday? all the work and time that these dedicated volunteers had put into this cantata – with my careful choices based on over thirty years as a minister of music – was not seen by the first service folks. the word ‘contemporary’ made it unfathomable for that service to host without complaint, relegating it only to the second service. the spirit of camaraderie, the support of the efforts of others in their own church, the truly beautiful music that was made was lost on this first service. i try to understand their dedication to traditional music, to choice, and i heartedly honor it in selecting music for every other week of the church year. but i fail to understand their unwillingness to even try to embrace something else, something ‘new’. i fail to understand any reinforcement of ‘different’, of divisiveness. especially as simply one day and a festive community celebration of the holiday. especially when churches are constantly looking for relevancy and vitality is one of the necessary ingredients. they do not know what they missed. closing off. what they are missing.
jen and h would like each other. they both openly embrace new. they both openly embrace others. they both dream dreams, happily engaging in life, snapping. what a gift to be around.
(©️2020 narrative lectionary resources)
reverse threading 