BigPaw Chronicles

Seeing is Believing

2008-04-01T20:26:00.001-07:00

Here's an amazing view of disposables in America

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Easter Sunday

2008-03-23T23:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-22T23:37:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-12T19:27:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-10T15:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-06T14:45:00.000-08:00

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

2008-03-05T19:28:00.001-08:00

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

2008-03-04T19:37:00.000-08:00

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

2008-03-03T19:33:00.000-08:00

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

2008-03-02T19:15:00.000-08:00

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

2008-03-01T19:20:00.000-08:00

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."

Clearing the Clutter

2008-02-29T18:08:00.000-08:00

Remembering to bring a mug, and sometimes a bag, with me in order to reduce my use of paper and plastic trash has made me keenly aware of how habitual it is in our culture to toss stuff out thoughtlessly into the universe. The flip side of this problem is that, in de-cluttering my house and "cleaning," I'm faced with the need to throw stuff out all over again. In fact, a lot of clutter piles up in my house because I want to be mindful of how I throw it away. The garage is full of recycling. The fall pumpkins are still decomposing in the front flower bed, half-buried in the snow. Piles and piles of books are sitting on my family room floor, waiting for a recipient who will actually want them. Otherwise, I'd order in a few dumpsters and have a field day.

Clutter comes from the word "clot," I read today in a book entitled Clearing Your Clutter with Feng Shui. Once a clutter pile is started, things start to clot around it. This cluttered energy can make your whole life sluggish, can keep you from new ideas and fresh energy. So clearing clutter--whether from your living room or your arteries--is vital to health. But how does one clean up years of accumulation without leaving a footprint that would dwarf a dinosaur's?

Starting is the hardest part . . .

2008-02-28T07:02:00.000-08:00

I'm coming to terms with serious clutter, low energy, and overwhelm--that's what happens when I'm not "running" (as in busy-ness) all the time. Ironically, though, I've started running in the morning on my treadmill after a dire cholesterol wake-up call. For months I've been telling myself there is just no way I can find an hour a day for exercise. I do yoga a few times a week, and beginning belly dancing, but any more time allotted to exercise and I wouldn't be a writer (as well as a professor, a department chair, a mother, a spouse of a consultant who's been away from home a lot). Then, in the Doctor's office, while waiting and leafing through magazines, I read that someone, as a child, had been given a plaque by her mother that said: "Just begin--starting is the hardest part." At the end of the interview with my Doctor, an energetic, intelligent, efficient, but compassionate married mother of three, I blurted out--"Well, I think I could do ten minutes a day on the treadmill. But I don't know if it would make a difference."

"It would make a tremendous difference," she said. "That's exactly what we're supposed to encourage people to do. Ten minutes a day would be huge. Why don't you try that for six weeks and then we'll retest your cholesterol to see how you are doing?"

I came home and did twenty minutes, mostly because that's the smallest amount of time for which I can automatically program the treadmill, and I'm not much of a whiz with electronic devices. After doing the treadmill I felt better physically, but still really crappy in a spiritual sense. And this is my "spring" break week, the week I don't have to teach. I opted just to stay at home, and not "run" anywhere. Instead, I was going to get a lot done by staying put. Read all those student papers. Finish an article. Edit my new poetry manuscript. Clean and reorganize every room in the house. Take all the recycling out of the garage through the snow to the bins. Sort through my books and give at least one third away. By the time I faced this impossible mountain I felt my chest cave in. I could hardly breathe. Geez. It takes this much drama to get me to face the clutter in my life? No wonder I never want to stay home on vacations! No wonder I think I need Starbucks.

I've cleared out an old desk next to the treadmill in the basement. I don't want anyone to fill it with anything, least of all myself. I ran again this morning, and contemplated the one uncluttered space in the house. A place to begin again. Starting is the hardest part . . . and I feel just a little bit less stuck.

Dregs

2008-02-27T06:44:00.000-08:00

This week has been a low ebb for me. But I suppose any Lenten pilgrimage--any daily spiritual practice--has its nadir. (Why did I imagine that I'd be any different from St. John of the Cross, Mother Theresa, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simone Weil--even Augustine--in this respect? Yeah, I'm all too aware of the ways in which I differ--but having a spiritual pilgrimage without a nadir, without a coming to account, without confession?--I don't think so. Maybe one enters these things as in a dream, just as one enters marriage and parenthood through the door of romance, because if we entered them knowing how hard they would be, we would never start at all?) One starts with a resolution not to use take-out cups. And discovers all of the hoarded clutter in one's own life, and a terrible fear of letting go.

"A rabbit paralyzed by headlights," I described to a friend the feeling of facing the millions of tasks in my life all vying for top place. I imagine myself a white bunny in the white snow, arrested in her tracks by a circle of spiritual squad cars, all shining their headlights on me. I can even feel the heat. (The heat might be a bit of hormone drama thrown in for extra effect.)

Waking Up and Getting Out on the Wrong Side of Bed

2008-02-25T13:45:00.001-08:00

So, waking up sounds like a good thing, and waking up to a bad wake-up habit sounds even better. But why did I think it would be easy? Pop open my eyes and, with new insight in place, a new path unfolds--that was my vision. But in actual fact, I'm cranky, tired, and shaking so bad I can't focus. Literally. I disover I have eyestrain. That I don't know where to start sorting through the clutter. Simplify, simplify, simplify. But first, to simplify my mind. This weekend I read an interview with Canadian songwriter K.D. Lang in Shambhala Sun. She said that when people ask her if her glass is half full or half empty, she says, "Half empty, of course. I'm a Buddhist." When people ask me that question, I'm always saying, "Half full." How about full to overflowing? How about so full that I can't even remember what's in there? So full it's spilling out everywhere. No room for even a drop more of insight.

Waking Up

2008-02-25T13:19:00.000-08:00

Each time I sit down to reflect on not buying take-out coffee in take-out cups, I hear the phrase, "I need to wake up." It occurs to me that I'm in the midst of a koan. "I needed to wake up," is my excuse to drive up to the Starbucks window. Yes, indeed. Wake up. Wake up to my life. Wake up to my habit. Wake up to the fact that I'm running away from my fatigue, my fear that I can't go on. Exactly where do I think I need to go? Exactly how much caffeine do I need? When will I wake up to the wildly overextended elastic of my life? How about wake up to my need to take a nap?

I drove down to Indianapolis this weekend with my daughter who was performing in a cello competition on Saturday, and then in a Shakespeare competition on Sunday. I can't say I didn't ever go to Starbucks--I think I went once, with my take-out mug-- sometime on Saturday. But I made my own coffee for the way down, and I didn't drink any on the way back. I had a vision of Starbucks franchises closing left and right when people discovered they didn't need them after all.

Coming Home

2008-02-18T06:45:00.000-08:00

Giving up take-out cups has made me just a bit more mindful. For instance, I'm at home more, in the morning, because I'm making my own coffee, packing my own lunch. This makes me a wee bit impatient--I just want to charge out the door--but stopping to make coffee, pack a lunch reminds me what is in the refrigerator. It reminds me what I have to make for dinner. And being home makes me notice how many lights are burning and I turn them off. In fact, I've gotten rather obsessive about turning off lights. Being home just a bit more in the morning after the kids are in school has made me more aware of the tidal wave of chaos that ensues in the wake of everyone's busy habits. To pick up, put away, get organized takes commitment from everyone. And whose example has everyone been following all of these years? I rush home, drop one pile of stuff, grab another, take off again. When I spend even a bit more time at home "dwelling" in the space, I am reminded of how many resources we have that we forget about. I remember to take care, and pay attention, to where I live--both at home and in my soul. I've found that paying more attention to "inner life," makes me less inclined to grab at the world's resources to supply my addiction to the idea that I can push the outer limits of time and space. Coming home to myself I discover that I can already meet many of the needs I thought I had to fulfill elsewhere.

I've realized that my take-out habits are a way of looking to the universe to support my habit of over-extending myself. If I can find support in the form of quick take-out energy--whatever perks I need to keep the illusion going that I can bypass the laws of biology and physics--I am less likely to "come home" to myself and a realistic sense of what I can and cannot do in a given amount of time. Home isn't very pleasant when you've neglected it, and the chaos can send one right out the door again, in search of another fix. But when one begins to "dwell," home becomes a source of deep pleasure and connection. A cup of tea in a china cup at a clean table is far more pleasurable than a drive to Starbucks for a latte. And, actually, in the end, I think it saves time as well as resources.

To See the Kingdom of God

2008-02-17T00:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a meditation on John 3:1-17 that I wrote for the Goshen College Online Lenten Devotions for February 15, 2008

What does it mean to be born again? In one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s last speeches, "Where Do We Go From Here?" the great nonviolent leader retold the story of Nicodemus's night visit to Jesus. King interprets Jesus's instructions to the young Jewish ruler -- "you must be born again" -- to mean that "your whole structure must be changed." In this speech, King was attempting to convince the Southern Christian Leadership Commission to support him in calling for an end to the Vietnam War. King knew that nothing less than a radical change of heart -- reflected in structural change -- would motivate Americans to end the war. This was obvious to King because he himself could "see" from a perspective of rebirth, but many of his supporters did not share this vision.

I've always assumed that the phrase in John 3:3, "no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above," meant that we will not go to heaven if we are not born again. But in light of King's speech, I began to understand this passage in a new way: that without a rebirth -- a structural change within our hearts and minds -- we cannot see -- or even be aware of -- the extent to which the kingdom of God is present in our lives at this very moment.

Birth is not an instant process, even though the ways in which the phrase "born again" is bandied about in our culture might suggest otherwise. Birth is a journey, a crossing from one state into another, fraught with pain, uncertainty and danger, as well as joy. When we trust God to truly change our hearts, we embark on a journey which utterly changes us -- from the inside out.

Sunshine

2008-02-16T20:32:00.000-08:00

After weeks of snow and gray skies, the glorious sun broke through the cloud cover so that we could actually see it!

This morning I went to the "Young Authors" conference with David, my 10-year-old. He brought along the fantasy story he's been working on for months, "The Adventures of Jason Sylo." I was the "sharing leader" for a group of children, including David, and it was a delight to hear the stories they had written: everything from a real-life tale to fantasy, from mystery to poetry. The children were more excited about their home-made books than about the piles of new books by the visiting authors. We bought just one book by a visiting author--about making a book. A local coffee shop was selling lattes and mochas. I'd brought my own cup, and they made a mocha to fit it. David didn't have a mug of his own, so I let him have a hot chocolate in a to-go cup. I'm not going to be a fanatic, here, and kill a child's joy. Plus, I wanted the mocha, but I wasn't going to drink it in front of him and leave him with nothing. We savored our drinks on the way home, and mine tasted so good to me because it was NOT in a styrofoam cup.

Writing your own story, making your own coffee, discovering your own joy. These practices are easier when the sun is shining. But the sun is always shining, my yoga teacher reminds me. It's just that so often there are clouds between us and the sun, so we forget.

Patience Lessons

2008-02-15T06:04:00.001-08:00

According to the late Hal Borland in Twleve Moons of the Year, "February gets its name from an ancient ceremony of purification, which occurred around the middle of the month." Borland continues, "The countryman"--and woman, I might add--"has known for generations that it is a good time to cut fence posts, prune trees and grape vines, clear out brush, and wean calves. . . . there isn't much more that a farmer can do except take care of daily chores and wait out the balance of the month."

Of course, it's easy to get impatient with the weather, ourselves, and each other during this waiting period. The tedium of ordinary work can get to us. If we don't keep our sights on the horizon line, what Borland calls "the slow stretch of daylight, which is the true index of the season," we can easily get bogged down in a sense of repetitious tedium. We become aware of the cycles and routines our actions and habits have set in motion. If we don't like what we see--that we're short of money, that the house is cluttered with bills and winter boots, that our workplace continually presents the same old challenges, that we still have a few take-out cups in our trash cans from especially stressful days--it's easy in a state of light-deprivation to look down at our feet and blame others or beat ourselves up, instead of taking responsibility for creating our own mess with humble good humor.

Borland reminds us to look up occasionally from those chores and to notice the horizon, with its earlier dawns and later dusks. "Purification isn't very painful," Borland assures us. "It's mostly a matter of learning patience again." If patience is the lesson of February, we need to keep that in mind when we're driving through a blizzard, reminding sleepy children to do their homework, or even sorting through a daunting pile of laundry or filing. Curious to ponder that our Lenten Practices coincide with an ancient purification ritual, based on an awareness that the cycles of the season deeply resonate with the cycles of human souls.

Falling off the Wagon

2008-02-13T20:11:00.000-08:00

It's been a tough week. More snow, more ice, freezing rain. A body that wants to hibernate. More than enough to do at work. Meetings, meetings, meetings and no time for reflection. Good things have happened, too. My daughter gave a wonderful sermon on Sunday at the youth service on her trip into the Wilderness last summer. I gave a poetry workshop for an adult Sunday School class afterwards. The church had a big potluck after the service, and I didn't have time to make anything for it. My daughter said, "Mom, that's OK, we're bringing food for thought." And so we did. I even brought my ceramic coffee cup. BUT, I forgot to bring our tableware for the potluck, and so had to use plastic utensils and a paper plate. In order to understand the magnitude of this ecological sin, you have to know that I attend a large Mennonite church where every conscientious member already has a wooden picnic basket designated for potlucks filled with Tupperware plates and table service. As you may have deduced, I am not a very good Mennonite.

Tuesday night I finally managed to make it to Yoga class for the first time in two weeks, through a heavy snowfall. I dashed in a bit late, and, once on my mat, began to realize I was very thirsty and hadn't had any water with dinner. I finally broke down and got some bottled water from the teacher's stash. And then realized that I'd actually broken into a take-out container.

Then, today, I had a series of three meetings, one of them double-scheduled. This stressed me out so much that I ordered a latte from the student coffee shop and forgot that I'd be using a paper cup until the espresso started trickling in. Alas. I had to live with my sin.

I do notice that I'm becoming more mindful about turning off lights and reusing bags. But I also notice how easy it is to slip up and slip into bad habits, especially as soon as things get a little bit busy.

View from the Leafraker Snack Bar

2008-02-09T11:16:00.000-08:00

I was hungry. It was fifteen minutes before my 2pm class and I still hadn't eaten lunch. I dashed out to the college snack bar, the Leafraker, which has recently been re-organized by the Sodexho food service to stock primarily pre-packaged items. But not before picking up my ceramic mug. Would they let me use my own container for soup? When I told the nice woman who works the cash register that I'd given up take-out containers for Lent she looked stricken. "Can I put soup in my own mug?" I asked. And she brightened up right away.

Bag It

2008-02-09T11:14:00.001-08:00

Just how far am I going to take this vow of not using take-out containers before I start feeling like a fanatic?

Today I was really good and remembered to take canvas bags to the co-op for Saturday shopping. But many of the items, such as cauliflower, were wrapped in plastic, and the produce has to be put in plastic bags. Nonetheless, I felt triumphant to load all of the groceries into the bags I brought.

Then I went to CVS and totally forgot about bringing my own bags, and just took home the plastic bag the clerk has filled with my stuff.

How Big is a Take-Out Container?

2008-02-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

So, now that I've begun to get used to looking for, and avoiding, disposable containers, I'm starting to ask myself, how big does a container have to be before it's no longer a "take-out" container?

a gallon plastic bottle for milk?

a cereal box?

a soda or juice bottle?

those little juice boxes that go in my son's school lunch?

the #5 or #6 yogurt or orange juice plastic containers I can't recycle?

the plastic or paper bag on the loaf of bread I bought at the bakery?

All those reusable containers I forget to reuse

2008-02-06T19:39:00.000-08:00

It's not like I don't have any reusable containers. Or that I haven't thought of reusables before. My cupboards are jammed with mugs I've bought or been given that one might reuse for take-out coffee. My hall closet is overflowing with canvas bags that I've picked up at one time or another to take to the store and save a plastic or paper bag. But it's a rare good day when I have the right container for the occasion. I stop at the grocery story on the way home between appointments and errands, or running the kids places. I spontaneously stop for coffee or lunch to save a bit of time in the day because I didn't plan ahead. Grab this, push this button, expect things instantly. Spontaneity, convenience, hurry. And I'm especially susceptible because I'm a "good" person who just has too much to do. Demanding job, kids, a partner who is away from home most of the time, a household to manage, a busy writing career . . . go a little bit easy on me, world. There are a lot of us out there buying takeout, hoping we can put our hands around a cup of refreshment that someone else filled, for a change. But trash is trash, no matter how busy the person is who throws it away. If I stay busy enough, I won't stop to connect the dots. Ah, yes, the stresses of successful modern life. Squandering electricity while Kathmandu is on electricity rationing. Hustle, hustle, hustle. But it's not a lack of resources on my part, just a lack of commitment to thinking about the most intimate daily habits of my daily life. So my challenge now, for 40 days, is to actually try to remember that I have these reusable containers and to bring them with me. Because I've made a commitment. I might have to think ahead of time about that cup of Joe. Or maybe I'll wake up to the fact that I'm really I really don't need that cup of Joe. I might just have to slow down a little bit and cut out a few extras. Connect the dots.

Saving Each Other from Weak Resignation

2008-02-06T08:38:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago in church I was singing a line from a hymn--"Save us from weak resignation/ To the evils we deplore"--and longing for a little styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee after the service. Later, as I held the cup in my palms and slowly woke up, I recognized my own weak resignation. There are a lot of evils in the world I can't do much about, but here was a little one I was choosing to participate in. It didn't occur to me then that I might practice giving up such a small evil as a styrofoam cup for Lent. I kept on with my life, gave several workshops, taught a few weeks of classes, took the trip to New York--all the while trying to wake myself up with cup after cup of take-out coffee and bottled water. Then on Ash Wednesday one of the campus Pastors at Goshen College, Tamara Shantz, held a special chapel on getting green for Lent. (I wasn't actually at the chapel. I was meeting with a group of creative writing students over, you guessed it, coffee. But I'd read about the chapel, I'd been thinking about the Lenten journal I've kept as a habit for the past few years.) When I read the title of her chapel, something clicked. I realized that there was something I could actually give up for Lent that would not only help me "wake up" to my earth-trashing habits, but that would also make a tiny bit of difference in the world. So I drove to my meeting with a porcelain re-usable mug. And now I'm going to have to add re-usable containers to my daily to-do list. One of the "thinks"--as Dr. Suess would call it--that has come out of this experiment for me is that in giving up this habit, I have to think about the habit. And in thinking about the habit, perhaps I can change just a little bit--one cup at a time. And that to sustain such change I need others--those who inspire, those who witness.

Owning up to My Ecological Footprint

2008-02-06T08:14:00.000-08:00

Today is Ash Wednesday and I've decided to give something up for Lent--something I use every day that adds to the size of my ecological footprint: take-out cups. This all came about because during my visit to New York City last week to participate in the 7000-person AWP (Associated Writers and Writing Programs) conference, I couldn't help but notice the number of Starbucks take-out cups piling up in my hotel room trash can. Over four and a half days, including airport delays, I probably threw out something like twenty paper cups, plus numerous plastic bottles for water, take-out food, and the like. Sometimes the coffee had been double-cupped. And then there were those handy little paper java jackets--something like putting a sweater on your dog, except dogs don't tend to burn your fingers and sweaters are washable. Multiply this paper-and-plastic trash tossed by 7000 poets and writers and teachers of creative writing, notorious caffeine hounds, over a period of four-and-a-half days, and you have just calculated one exorbitant-sized drop in the bucket of the huge amount of waste that's being thrown away daily in this country. In the Berenstain Bears books there's a mythical monster named Big Foot. That last day in New York I turned around and recognized the size of my own paw print.

Since I've been an ecological sinner, abetted by a busy life and a desire to push myself beyond my limits on a daily basis, I have promised myself not to get self-righteous about this instructive choice to abstain from disposable containers. On good days, I hope to extend that giving up to include take-out containers of all kinds. And for extra credit, I'm going to try to give up using new plastic or paper bags at the super market. I definitely need three levels of goodness, as I'm as much a captive of busy take-out culture as the next person. Maybe more. But as Pema Chodron says, you must start where you are. And because I need accountability, I'm putting this blog out there on the web--the Big Paw Chronicles--to stay honest. If there are other recovering take-out types who need some support, great, and if you can lend some, it's welcome.