Easter Sunday

One thing I've learned from this year's Lenten practice of giving up take-out cups (a habit I will continue) and writing about it, is to simplify. In the process of simplifying, of giving up some pressures, I feel richer and more at peace. I've learned that even the humblest of intentional acts is worth meditating on. Today turned out to be one of the most restful and fulfilling Easters I've had for a long time. The highlight was holding my dear little granddaughter Willow for most of the afternoon, trying to lull her to sleep so her tired parents could play an involved board game with the rest of the company, and dozing off myself.

I got up early to bake three strawberry rhubarb pies, a traditional family spring favorite. 21-month-old Willow has discovered pie, not only to eat it, but to say it. "Pie, pie, pie." So the pies were in honor of her. Julia and I went to church early because David was going to perform a Sacred Harp Song, "Antioch," with the "Shouting Boys' Choir." He loves this sacred harp tune,"I know that my Redeemer liveth, Glory Hallelujah," and he loves singing it in his child's mezzo-soprano at the top of his lungs. At first I couldn't find him in the sanctuary (his South Bend friends were supposed to drop him off), but at last I discovered him on a back bench by himself. When he sang with the choir, Julia and I could hear his happy, confident voice rising through the others.

Bryan's parents, Bryan, Elizabeth & Willow were our guests at our Easter feast. It was too cold to hunt Easter eggs outside, but I hid them inside the house for David and Julia. I'd asked the kids exactly what they wanted at Easter and didn't do a bit more than that. David wanted to hunt eggs. Julia wanted only organic dark chocolate. Willow was far too sick with the flu to even want to hunt for eggs, but she loved the jelly beans with natural fruit flavors. After my lovely nap with Willow, during which everyone else washed the dishes, I discovered where I'd stashed all the colored, hollowed-out eggs we'd dyed and decorated last year, and made a table display for the cleared table.

And Bryan's mother offered each of the women in our family a folder she'd decorated with recycled pictures from calendars, inspirational sayings, collaged to create a pleasing harmony of texture, color, and image. She let us choose from a whole stack of them and we spent a long time admiring the designs and combinations she'd created.

A few days back I opened a book by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week, their historically based interpretation of Holy week. I didn't have time to read the whole book, which begins with the claim that Jesus's triumphant entry into Jerusalem was a political statement, a counter-procession to Pilate's Roman procession into the same city. But I read the final chapter on resurrection. Borg spends a lot of time showing how the Gospels each tell a different story of the resurrection, and it's even set in two different places. He discusses the appearances of Jesus to Mary Magdalen and to the disciples on the road to Emaus. Even when I was a child, these stories unsettled me. Even Mary, who saw Jesus in the garden outside the tomb after his resurrection, didn't recognize him. Borg calls the resurrection stories parables. Rather than struggle with whether or not they are literally true or verifiabl we should focus on what they mean.

To me, this year, they mean that the presence of those loved ones we have lost is still with us. We may not recognize them when they appear, because we cannot "see" them. And yet they are with us. And Christ is with us, too, in the ways in which we honor each other, in the invisible connections that bind us to each other. I didn't really understand this until I lost my parents. I didn't know until then how the love they had given me would live on, firmly rooted in my heart, each day. This, indeed is eternal life. Or at least as long as we hold it in our hearts, then pass it on to others in the perpetual rhythm of give and take.

My journey isn't finished. I'm still driving around with two or three boxes of sorted books designated for give-away to the library in the back of the car. I'll be working on the clutter, the sorting of the useful and the not-useful, for a long time to come. But by sharing the journey, I've grown more deeply aware that we're all on it together.

Snow and Sun

This morning we woke to the snow I'd been mentally forecasting for Easter. Julia helped me with some laundry and cleaning before she took off for tennis indoor practice. I then drove David to South Bend to attend a friend's birthday party and stay overnight. About that time, the sun came out and completely melted the snow. I brought student papers with me and decided to treat myself to an afternoon in South Bend, first at Lula's Cafe, and then at Notre Dame's cathedral of a bookstore. I managed to stay away from take-out coffee, got some papers done, and feasted among the books at the bookstore. The year I give up books for Lent--that will be a tough one.

I sat in the sun for a while outside the bookstore, soaking in the light, before I drove home to join Julia, who had enjoyed her own afternoon alone. Instead of baking the pies for tomorrow, I curled up on the couch with her and we watched Sense and Sensibility. A perfect end to a lovely day.

The Big Invisible Hammock

Good Friday. A quiet day at home, at last, with David and Julia, who are not in school. We are cleaning, again. They have both given me their support, and I've decided that this ritual will be fun. Something we can enjoy together. David loves to engage in teamwork, and Julia, when she has time, gets carried away with the creativity of organization. We just need time to be at home with each other. Merv is alone in the snowdrifts of Norway, finishing up his research project and won't be here to join us for Easter. I know I will be sad if the kids and I don't share the holiday with others. With their help, I'm getting almost enough courage to invite my oldest daughter Elizabeth, her partner Bryan, their toddler Willow, and Bryan's parents for Easter Dinner.

Elizabeth came over to help me do the grocery shopping this afternoon, and just as we were leaving the house, my kinesiologist's office called and said they had a cancellation in one hour. Elizabeth and I quickly gathered a beautiful array of salmon, asparagus, ice cream, French bread, and other inspiring groceries from the co-op, and then I went to take the appointment. It's been over a year since I've seen Steve, and he was tremendously helpful. He finds emotions associated with pressure points in the body, and what kept coming up for me was "unsupported." As he worked these tense areas I thought about places in my life I feel unsupported--changes at work, the lack of a partner at home, the absence of extended family--and I began to relax.

I relaxed so deeply that the next few days were a pleasure. As I write now, a few days after Easter, in order to "catch up" with the past, I realize how supported I have been all along, by my wonderful children, by the soul-searching phone calls I've had with Merv, by choosing to spend more time at home and invite them to support me in working together, by a health practitioner who works with wisdom and benevolence. Steve's acknowledgement of what I felt--a sense of weariness and no one to lean on--was, oddly, sufficent to make me feel supported. With his touch, releasing the locked muscles, I found the universe gathering about me like a big hammock. Sending these words out into the ether feels a bit like that, too, when I discover that a friend has been reading with me on these travels and has stumbled on a kindred thought. It's that resonance with another that reminds me of the ways we are all connected.

Still in Order

Today's title is borrowed from Hal Borland's out of print book of nature editorials, Twelve Moons of the year. I discovered this book last spring at the suggestion of a friend and bought it used off the internet. (One might consider this a form of participation in the right disposal of trash, or the flow of possessions.) Full of astute nature observations on signs of the seasons--such as appearance of tree frogs at the vernal equinox-- it has been a good companion in these bleak winter months before spring, in spite of Borland's old fashioned habit of referring to everything human as gendered male. The seasonal observations from the climate of Borland's Connecticut farm, not so different from that of Northern Indiana where I live, remind me of the powerful and ancient rhythms of nature that undergird everything from religious ritual to passing moods. His entry for March 20, the first day of spring this year:

"The vernal equinox is a marker on the great wheel of time, a reassurance of order in a world where confusion and disorder too often seem to have the upper hand. It is a promise of predictable change, certain as sunrise, from the rigors of winter to the benevolence of spring. It is variety in a time of doubt and uncertainty."

From the internet I found out that Easter each year is determined by the equinox. It is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox. No wonder the brilliant moon seemed to light up my window all night a few nights ago. Easter is early this year. And after a heavy winter, I'm expecting snow.

I can see clearly now

New glasses have arrived. Eyestrain gone. Lovely light frames. Support from the universe and, hopefully, the medical expense account. Now back to grading those papers.

The Secret Garden

For the past four days, Julia has been in five performances of The Secret Garden, the high school's spring musical. She's a member of the chorus, a dancer, and for about five minutes, a nurse that the invalid Colin tries to shoo out of his sickroom. She has given hundreds of hours to this musical, to performing as one of the large team of students onstage and in the pit orchestra, making a dreamlike, intense music together.

The musical changes the book in many ways, but mostly by developing the adult plot. The book focuses on the awakening of the children to each other and their mutual healing. But the play focuses on the adults, their losses, and the ways in which they isolate themselves from others by clinging to past hurts. "Most of the parts are dead people," Julia told me when she auditioned. But the dead in this musical are visible and beautiful, dressed in white, and positioned all around the characters whose hearts were frozen, all except for the lively Yorkshire Martha and Dickon.

I've seen three of the performances, plus the parent's night preview--four times in total the past week. Each time I've sat and listened with both a heaviness in my heart and astonishment to a teenager singing the part of a crippled millionaire stricken by grief, another teenager singing out the jealously and pent-up longings of a younger brother deprived of both an estate and the love of his life, a third singing her sorrow from the grave, how she never meant to leave or hurt her husband whose heart has collapsed with bitterness and grief, and inviting all who will listen into her garden. And a whole host of others, including Julia, dedicated to bringing to life and voice such songs as "Come Spirit, Come Charm." But it never occurred to me until today, after the last performance on the first sunny day in ages with a promise of spring in the air, that I was mourning the loss of my own parents as I watched this play.

The day after mother died, three springs ago, it was Mother's Day and I asked everyone to come to the garden store with me to buy plants. With today's sun, I thought of digging in the earth the day after she was buried and suddenly it became clear to me. This part of the year is so long for me because I sat with her dying, losing her breath, every day. On sunny days she would take a folding chair out to the balcony next to her second floor apartment and sit in the spring. Three years ago the winter was much milder, and there were many days of sun even in March. This March the earth is frozen where her grave lies next to my father's, a mile away from here in the Violett cemetery close to the Elkhart River. Soon the earth will soften and the hosta my sisters and I planted by their headstones of dark Pennsylvania Granite, to represent the part of the earth where they spent the bulk of their married lives, will bloom again. And I feel their spirits with me every day, even though I can't see them. Meanwhile, my children, their grandchilren, are warm and full of life in my arms.

After seeing the musical so many times, David has been asking me for "a bit of earth." Today in the grocery story when we stopped to buy roses for Julia, in honor of her final performance, we found some spring bulbs and he chose three for his garden--dahlias and gladiolas and stargazer lilies, his grandmother's favorite.

Saying No, Letting Go

This week at the college has been an unusually crowded one. I have barely been able to keep up with my classes--though the new glasses will surely help. One special event after another is taking place on campus. Dolores Huerta on Monday. Ruby Sales Wednesday through Friday. Art critic Carol Becker on Thursday. The Ambassador to Mexico next Tuesday. And three candidates for the Director of the Center for Intercultural Teaching and Learning all presenting to the faculty this week. And Julia's musical, The Secret Garden, opened last night. Besides the musical, I haven't gone to any of these events. This is much to my chagrin, as they are all things I would have liked to attend. But saying no wasn't just a choice, it was an imperative. Between being the head of the department and having to finalize course schedules, start a job search, and teach my classes, then come home as the single parent, there just hasn't been time. I haven't been doing take-out coffee, but more than once this week I've had to resort to plastic-container-ed food at the snack bar just to keep pace. So I've had to let go of purity, but also to forgive myself for saying "no." But the world didn't end. In fact, it kept on going, and I kept pace with the most important obligations--family, kids. Not much time for writing, though.

Support from the Universe

Back when I was first writing about giving up takeout cups for lent, I asked myself why I so often wanted to drive up to Starbucks for a hot latte in a palm-warming large-sized paper cup. It's like buying a bit of support from the universe: slow-release caffeine muted by milk, soothing as hot cocoa, but with an adult flavor. Now that I've given up the take-out, and find myself drinking much less coffee in general, I still sometimes feel the need for that "support." Perhaps it's not the coffee after all, but rather the need to feel that when my supply of energy, warmth, support is low, that I can drive up to a window for a refill without taking a rest, or thinking about why I need support, or, indeed figuring out where support comes from. "I lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help," the Psalmist once wrote. "My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth." Perhaps what I need more than coffee is a moment of prayer, an awareness of the breath that draws every few seconds on the support of the air.

New Glasses

I've been sleeping poorly. My wrists tingle as thought my blood is carbonated, and my eyes have been twitching from eyestrain, especially the left one. Weeks of trying to read spreadsheets at work, with all of the course times and changes, has left me feeling old and agitated. Maybe I'll have to go back to wearing wrist supports. In a surge of self-care on this non-teaching day I called a new eye doctor. Miraculously they had an opening and I went downtown to see what they would find. This is the eye doctor in town whose wife takes yoga from my teacher. They have a professional squash court built right into their living room, and when no one is playing squash, they let the kids inside to ride around on their riding toys. Anyhow, when I got inside the office, I felt immediately at home among the assortment of "plain people" working there. The River Brethren woman who helped me choose the frames had a good eye and a cheerful kindly manner. The optometrist discovered that my left eye had changed significantly, and soon I was plunking down money on plastic to enhance my vision. I can hardly wait for these new glasses.

Museums and Clutter

Tonight I encountered the extravagant organized clutter of a local historical society museum. My creative writing students and I took a field trip in a turtletop minibus to the Elkhart County Museum in Bristol, Indiana to hear the energetic new curator, Nick Hoffman, give us a framework for museum studies before he opened the collection for us to gather inspiration for stories and poems. So many of the artifacts in this museum, started by a ladies' society in 1968, have no provenance--so the place is ripe for the imagination.

Visit the Elkart County Museum Blog here http://www.elkhartcountyhistoricalmuseum.blogspot.com/

In light of the personal examination of clutter and the right disposal of trash I've been doing, this museum seemed like a wildly overgrown garden of delights. The large child models for turn-of-the-twentieth century clothing, up to date mannequins in 1968, resembled a few dolls I'd had as a child--the mannequins themselves had become artifacts in the display. The women who put together the displays that have been gathering dust for over 40 years invested in a portrait of the past that represented an idealized picture of a white, upper middle class, protestant lifestyle. In 1968, the year in which Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assasinated, these women did not deem it necessary to represent Elkhart's recent Italian immigrants, nor its large African American population, nor its historic and long-standing Amish and Mennonite communities, nor its original Miami Indian inhabitants. In fact, the museum felt something like a bulwark against their sense of chaos. They would preserve a past, transplanted out of New England--farm implements from the Elkhart County town of Middlebury named for Vermont, the stained glass window from the Elkhart Congregational Church--and perhaps the rest would just disappear. They were doing what we all do--preserving what we value, ignoring what we choose not to remember.

But the museum also includes some objects that testify to a past we would rather forget. Nick set up a display for my students that included a black clay sambo doll named "Jose," with eyes that rolled up into its head in rhythm with an ominous ticking noise, as though it were a time bomb about to go off. The doll appeared to have been made about a hundred years ago, but its clothes were not original. Its spring-armed clay hands held something--I can't remember what--that Nick didn't think it was originally designed to hold.

I'm glad someone help onto this junk for all these years so that we can know who we are and where we've been--what kinds of representations were once deemed acceptable. Otherwise, we'd just repeat the past. But, as my husband once reminded me when we were first married, our home is not a museum. Then he meant the comment to suggest that everything didn't need to be as neat and orderly as i wanted to keep it. Since that time, he's often regretted the statement, thinking that it opened the floodgates to kids and clutter and the occasionally tended disorder we now live in. But now I mean it in the sense that, in fact, I do not have to keep every record of every person who ever moved through the house. I can let go of some things. Every day we are born anew. But we carry everyone we have ever loved, every deed with us, whether or not we keep the artifacts. It's only when we want to share the past with others that our artifacts are useful. But perhaps we need to leave that up to future generations who decide to excavate a landfill.

Open to Grace

Sunday morning and I am tired, allowing myself to feel it. Last night we said goodbye to Merv again for another month. Leaving is so hard. He burst into tears while hugging the kids goodbye, and Julia was so overcome by her Dad's weeping that she started crying until she'd left a big wet puddle on his ski jacket. Merv has been coughing with this crazy flu he caught on the way home, and went back sick. This morning he called from O'Hare to say he'd volunteered for a flight bump in exchange for two hotel rooms and a voucher. This will enable him to sleep a bit more, which will probably be good for him. After I hung up the phone with him the Amish woman who helps me clean the house each week called to tell me she was in the hospital with pneumonia and wouldn't be working for several weeks. I hope Merv doesn't have pneumonia. And somehow, amidst the clutter, the kids and I are going to have to figure out how to do the laundry and cleaning without help.

During the last week family life and work life swelled to fill any time I'd saved for solitary spiritual practices. I didn't do any running on the treadmill. I didn't write in my journal. I wrote exactly one entry for this blog. I ate food in take-out containers three times, although I stuck to the letter of the law on the no take-out coffee cups promise.

Some days--some weeks--in a life lived in a network of responsibilities are just like this. Then, listening to the breath is helpful. It reminds me that the constant waves of air on which we survive ebb and flow without our effort. I can rest on the crest of each breath, opening to the grace that flows through us and connects us to each other, if I slow down enough. That's just what I did this morning. I lounged in the bathtub and read from Sharon Salzburg's A Heart as Wide as the World, which reminded me to connect with the treasure under my house by paying attention to the breath.

Eyes Wide Open

If your walk on the treadmill turns into a meditation, if you feel so great during the cool down that you want to offer up a prayer, keep your eyes open! Even at the lowest speed you'll soon find you've been conveyed right off the back of the machine if you close your eyes. The still center is really still, and if you try to fool God into multitasking during stillness, you're likely to land on your rear.

Recycling Togetherness

Our last full day together for another month, and my husband and I spend the morning putting a gargage-full of recycling into our old van and delivering it to the recycling bins at the college where I work. He's got the flu, so I tell him to stay in the car, and I step out in the sun to sort the trash into the bins. The light feels wonderful. So does our clean garage. But to avoid frustration, knowing that the trash will continue to flow through our house, I think of recycling as riding the waves. We take things in, and they flow out. Our lives flow on--in endless song . . .

Breakthrough

Looking around at the house these past days, seeing how quickly it becomes messy, I realize that our kids have learned from us to plop their stuff down and run off to the next activity. And then when we come home and see the clutter, we just add to it. A bit like a bit of litter attracting an entire dump of stuff. It's hard work to reverse that process, but this week I've been telling the kids--and Merv-instead of thinking, "It's so junky around here, why not add to it," think, "What's one thing I can do to improve our home?" as you walk through the room. This thought, I know, helps me. So today, when I stopped home from work for lunch, Merv joined me for one hour to get those sorted books out of the kitchen and into their new homes--or at least on their way, stacked in the car and ready to give to the library or a shelter. Now that I'm so much more aware of intake and outflow, I've become obsessed with the "right" disposal of trash. It helps me keep myself on track when I think of sorting stuff as a spiritual discipline. This idea makes the tedium of sorting and cleaning much more palatable. And the notion that no new ideas can flow into the house when there is stagnant clutter around, stale unread books on the shelves, hoarded junk in the corneres, puts the fear of God into me. But there's nothing like having a partner to share this lonely, overwhelming process. That's when things really start to happen--and today, for an hour, teamwork with my honey made a breakthrough in the space problem.

Clotter

Monday, Monday . . . back to class after "spring break," with many stacks of books in the kitchen and family room, the fall out of the feng shui de-cluttering project that is not finished. Merv is doing his best to ignore the mess as he appreciates the effort. Today was to be my recycling day, but it has snowed again, and morning meetings and icy roads have clustered around the clutter to block progress in this area. Ah, the effort of ignoring the clotting of clutter around clutter. I'll call it "clotter."

Sacrificed for You

Sunday I drove daughter Julia to Wabash where she performed with the Manchester Orchestra. I brought my own mug, getting to be a habit by now, and sipped the coffee provided for orchestra members and parents. The concert was great, and on the way home we stopped at Asian Buffet for a quick bite. There I saw a big man at a neighboring table wearing what appeared to be a Starbucks logo on his dark green t-shirt. When I got closer, I noticed that instead of "Starbucks" it said "Sacrificed for you," and instead of the Starbucks mermaid, it showed a figure of the Good Shepherd in white outlines. Go figure.

Welcome Home

My husband arrived home from Norway, where's he's been working for nearly a month. So good to see each other after a long absence. For this short time--the five days before he returns to Norway for another month--we take nothing for granted. Every ordinary moment spent together becomes infused with the glow of recognition. Then I tell him not to throw the paper in the trash--that I'm recycling--and we start to get used to each other again, our minute changes and preferences. My first clutter-cleaning project in his honor: completely cleaning the bedroom with feng shui inspiration. It feels wonderful. Even though the rest of the house, shall we say, is deep "in process."