It’s very peculiar.  All of a sudden, it seems like there’s an enormous weight that’s been lifted off my back.  The long weekend began yesterday in our household and somehow, the gift of time has become especially sweet and meaningful. Last night, I had fun on my walk.  It’s mating season for the crabs around here.  This is what that looks like:

You have to look close–this one was very shy.

And like this:

This one: not so so much

I’m getting to know some of the ‘regulars’ out on my route now–cyclists, runners and dog walkers.  I like that.  I am also aware that there’s an endless newness to these rambles, sometimes very amusing.

Always waiting

This morning the water was full of sea weed and gunk on the beach so it’s been yard time.  Sherod’s back is still fragile so I had lawn mowing duties.  Early tomorrow morning, when I sit out on our little deck and drink my coffee, this is what I will see.

Gonna have lots of time to catch up on Dr. Who as well.  Life is so incredibly good.

Domkyrka-Uppsala, June 2012

I vaguely remember being pleased that a Swede had won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, though there was plenty else going on in my life so I don’t think I even paid attention to the name of the author.  Now, after so many years not using my Swedish intentionally, I found myself wanting to read in that beautiful language again. A friend recommended I read Tomas Tranströmer’s poetry.  Someone has said it is spare, almost gaunt. I am double fortunate because much of his work has been translated into English so I can read it in both languages and I catch things in each I wouldn’t in the other. It is so beautiful.  

Romanesque Arches

Tourists have crowded into the half-dark of the enormous
Romanesque church.
Vault opening behind vault and no perspective.
A few candle flames flickered
An angel whose face I couldn’t see embraced me
and his whisper went all through my body:
“Don’t be ashamed to be a human being; be proud!
Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly.
You’ll never be complete, and that’s as it should be.”
Tears blinded me
as we were herded out into the fiercely sunlit piazza,
together with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Herr Tanaka and Signora
Sabatini;
within each of them vault after vault opened endlessly.

Until this year, I got to observe things from a safe distance.  I read about the unemployment crisis and shook my head for those folks who still couldn’t find work.  I ached when I watched one story after another on the nightly news about people losing their homes thanks to the foreclosure crisis.  I was more than a little self-righteous about churches that have become financial black holes because they couldn’t change fast enough, or deal enough with the truth and reality of a changing world.  And then one day, I was no longer an observer.

The regional ministry project that got launched 3 years ago kept me going through the past couple of years.  There is a never-ending “to do” list at work that can absorb me as much as I let it and that list has been my refuge.  A theologian once said that vocation is the place where your greatest joy meets the deepest needs of the world and I have been astoundingly lucky to get to know what that means.   But a few weeks ago, the leadership of NRRM began to face into some wrenching realities that can be explained pretty simply:  spending was outpacing revenue at an accelerating rate.  There are steps we can and are taking to reverse that trend.  Two member organizations have significant potential for allowing us to keep going. I just don’t know if there’s enough of all the things we need to turn things around.

Until the last couple of days, all of this put me in vocational hell.  I wanted to spread blame for this sorry place we’ve landed in but there was nothing liberating in that exercise.  I entertained the notion that it might hurt less to “pull the plug” on my part of the ministry.  After all, it is different to say “I walked away from this” than acknowledge, if the day comes, that no matter how hard I tried, it wasn’t enough.  After weeks of over-functioning, trying to spin more and more plates faster and faster, like that could solve much, I had to slow down, even when that meant that in this part of my life too, I had to host fear, loss and grief.

Turns out that I am not in vocational hell.  I am simply being taught some more about what it means to be faithful to my vocation.  While I was starting to thrash and flail around in fear and anger because the way forward seemed to elude me, God continued the slow, patient work of forging and shaping me for this new time.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the bell meditation exercise I’ve been doing for a while. I was grateful for what it allowed me in the way of remembrance.  It also became an opportunity to start learning a tiny (really tiny) bit about Zen, and especially the notion of the “eternal now” which is only possible to reach toward when over and over, you try not to think or think about not thinking.  I needed to stop looking at NRRM against the horizon of all the fears, hopes and dreams I’ve harbored for it for so long.  In a way that I am unable to explain, I have these micro-moments of openness as I listen to a single peal of a bell go forth from my iPhone.  As fleeting as those moments are, they are helping me look at what I have in front of me with less fear, less hope that is actually more about my own projections of what things should look like.  It’s not that I care less—if anything, I care more.  But I understand my place  differently today than I did even a few days ago;  I am not nearly so important as I had presumed.

Earlier this week, I listened to another podcast with Krista Tippett.  This time she was interviewing Xavier Le Pichon, a French geophysicist who was one of the earliest formulators of the theory of plate tectonics.  Le Pichon is a devout Roman Catholic.  The conversation between Tippett and Le Pichon ebbed and flowed around the notion of fragility. For Le Pichon, fragility is essential to the potential of the Earth, our “fragile island home” and it is a profoundly transforming gift to us as humans.  In order to grow into our humanity (not a given, but only a possibility always laid before us as an invitation), we must be willing and able to organize ourselves around the very weakest, the most fragile and vulnerable in our midst.  Tippet and Le Pichon discussed an archeological site in Iraq that gives evidence of a prehistoric community that built its life around a severely crippled member.   I was in tears as I listened to that part of the interview, so aware that this was exactly what my family did for me, a child with such a serious physical disability.

Their conversation helped me reframe both the crisis we are facing in NRRM and what it invites me to consider, and maybe, become.  There is a rather lovely combination of strength and fragility in our ministry.  Some of the strongest, most capable members of our community are hard at work, examining every single possible way we can reduce our financial footprint.   I’ve been hanging out a lot with these folks, endless meetings and tough, confrontational conversations that leave me worn out and, in some respects, empty.  I can and will continue to be a part of that effort to turn the situation around.

But I see something else now too.  I have let go of the misguided notion that I am in control of the outcome of this brave, foolish adventure in church building.  Fragility is at the heart of who we are.  One part of our community is an old and failing congregation.  We are also a bunch of undocumented young people with very little education who are trying to raise their children in an extraordinarily hostile world.  We are fragile and vulnerable and our country is not of much mind to organize itself around those who are most at risk.  Part of my vocation is to recognize and remember that truth about us.  I had lost sight of that as I tried to be a part of the solution to the challenges we face.

Earlier this week, while I was doing one more analysis, looking at one more way to cut and slice the financial information we are using to guide our decision-making for the future, I realized I could be a part of the solution in a different way.  What NRRM pays me in salary can be used instead to close one of the gaps we’re struggling with, buying us a little more time to put some other solutions in place.

What started out to be a fairly reasonable response to a need turns out to be much more than that for me.  Once the wheels had started turning, once I realized that I had received my last paycheck a week ago, I was absolutely overwhelmed by my visceral response to my new reality.  Scared doesn’t begin to describe what I’ve been feeling. I thought I knew a whole lot about being vulnerable and exposed.  I had no idea.  I don’t know if this new fragility of mine will make me a better priest or person.  I don’t harbor illusions about my own nobility and dedication.  What I do know is that when I hang out with all those strong, capable people who are making decisions for the future of NRRM, I will not be “one of them” in the same way.  And when I hear the stories of those who do not have a lot of “worldly goods” I will no longer be hearing them as a detached observer.  I hope for the grace to become more human in my fragility. But I have to admit: just gauging from my initial response, that’s not guaranteed.

I once had a friend, Lista Foster, whom I came to love very much. She was a member of All Saints, already in her late sixties when I met her. I learned about Art Basel from her and when the Queen Mary II docked in Fort Lauderdale, during her maiden voyage in 2004, Lista had a big party in her small and lovely apartment so we could share in her wonder, watching that big ship come into port.  She was funny, she was smart as a whip, she had that combination of transparency, vulnerability and grit that comes from being a person in recovery.  Most of all, Lista was blessed with faith, curiosity and kindness.

In 2003 or 2004, I led an adult program called Journey in Faith, a very Episcopal kind of weekly study/discussion/reflection group at All Saints, that met over dinner on Tuesdays.  We took turns seeing to the different aspects of our meetings and one week, it was Lista’s turn to lead the opening prayer.  She brought a “mindfulness bell” and led us through a lovely meditation that began when she rang the bell a single time.  I was entranced.

Life went on, we finished our program and a couple of years later, Lista had a massive stroke that robbed her of the gift of speech.  Her fine mind was still there, that was obvious.  You could see the anger, the frustration in her eyes, as she struggled to form words, to write, to do anything to let you know she was still there.  She got more and more frail and finally, one day she died.  There was a sense of relief for her.  I preached at her funeral and as I prepared, I kept coming back to that single bell peal that Lista had used to lead us in prayer.  I could imagine Lista, her life, as that beautiful tone that was created, went forth with such clarity and preciseness—it was this tone, not that. There was a radiant singularity to her being. While Lista’s speech became more and more garbled and “meaningless” after her stroke, who Lista was always rang true, and strong, it lingered and joined with other tones.

I always meant to get a meditation bell and of course, never did.  Then recently, I listened to another one of Krista Tippett’s wonderful interviews, this time with a neuroscientist who does fascinating research on how the brain is wired and rewired over and over, through the choices we make in our lives.  The podcast made reference to a 10 minute “Bell Sound Meditation” and on a lark, I decided to try it.  I’ve been using it regularly as part of my prayers since then.  Close to the end of my walking route, there is a small park that’s usually quiet and still by the time I get there, right before closing time in the evening.  I have a bench I’m particularly fond of and I sit there with this unexpected gift.

One part of the reflection invites me to hear the bell ring again in memory, paying attention to its “onset, tone, reverberation and its fading away”.  In some ways, I find that segment to be the most intense part of the meditation. Maybe because I’m new to this, I strain to remember as completely and correctly as possible.  Each time, I discover some small new truth about that sound I can’t hear yet continues to fill me.  I also find myself listening even more attentively and carefully when the bell actually rings.  I have a new way of thinking about “presence in absence” and how lucky we are to keep the music going even when all there seems to be is silence.

At a conference a few months ago, I was introduced to the concept of the “threshold of memory”—there’s a new finality to our own death on the day the last person who remembers us dies.  Even though there is something sad about the truth that such a day comes, I delight in remembering Lista often these days.  I am thankful for the ways she is now present to me.  I wish I had listened more carefully, gotten it more right about her, captured more of the complexities and nuances of who she was.  But I heard enough to know that she was beautiful and her song still makes my day better.  I remember.

Sherod is quite a lot older than I am which means that he’s usually “been there, done that” before me.  This time, it’s the other way around. During a long conversation last evening, he told me about the way in which his mom was moved from the hospital back to the assisted facility where she’s been living for several years and where, God willing, she will be able to die with dignity and grace.  He marveled at the compassionate efficiency of the hospice team that will accompany the family through this part of the journey.  Yesterday, they moved Juanita’s bed out of the room and brought in a hospital bed instead, as well as the other things she’ll need in the weeks ahead.  Sherod choked up describing how even the director of Cedar Hill, the assisted living facility, got down on hands and knees to clean the baseboards and dust and make sure the room was clean and comfortable for Juanita.    All the staff came in to see her, and touch her and visit with her.  That too moved him deeply.

After days of meeting crabbiness with crabbiness (Sherod’s his mama’s son through and through in ways that sometimes make me giggle), I heard that different tone in his voice.  This is it.  As you begin to walk with a parent to the end of life, you wake up one morning and realize you are listening a little more carefully, holding a hand a little longer, moving that pillow a little more gently because doing all those things is a privilege you will soon lose.

One night this week, as I was sitting on the sofa in our room, putting on my shoes and socks to go walk, I looked out as night was settling in.  It was the gentlest light imaginable, washing the river and garden in those wonderful colors of dusk.  I stopped being in such a hurry and allowed myself to look at all that quiet beauty. Sunset is a kind time, a time for lingering.  We should all be so lucky to have a time of twilight with our parents, as Sherod has been given this week.

I watched María start edging into sullenness.  Her face is an open book, those dark eyes of hers getting stormy, the silence that used to make my anxiety start climbing, the set of her mouth.  We’ve learned to wait, not rise to the bait.  So finally, she asked if the three of us could have a family meeting.  It’s been a hectic few days—I had a bad case of the stomach flu, we had the closing ceremony for our reading camp at church, a couple of unanticipated, highly stressful meetings got scheduled at the last minute, and my dear, dear friend Len came to visit from San Diego.  Yesterday morning, Sherod found out that his mother had been hospitalized with difficulty breathing and they’d found a large mass in her lungs.  Even though he’s on sabbatical, he’d also been asked to go to the hospital to meet a parishioner who needed to remove a family member from life support yesterday afternoon.   María moved in and out of all this commotion in the past few days with a lot of grace and composure so I wasn’t totally surprised that things were getting shaky.

We sat quietly for a few minutes and then she said, “I don’t like BARC anymore and I want to make a deal to come back home.”  Sherod caught his breath and I said, “Maria, I love you and we can’t do that.  The way we are doing things now is the way we can still be a family and be safe. When you lived in this house, none of us were safe.”  There was a fair amount of arguing back.  She has a remarkable ability to marshal logic and persuasion at times like this.  When that didn’t work, she tried to start escalating.  I was able to say to her that if she couldn’t be nice we’d need to call BARC so they could send a van and staff to pick her up but that I imagined if that happened, she’d have to go to isolation time out.  Sherod stood up and walked away and I started reading a newspaper on the kitchen table.

I finally looked up and there were these enormous tears sliding down her face.  She reached out to touch my hand and whispered, “I love you, Mami.”  The best I could do was just clutch her hand and not start sobbing myself.  After a bit we agreed that a swim in the pool might be a good thing and then it was dinnertime.  We’d been sitting having our meal out on the deck in our swimsuits and weren’t all through eating before she said she was going to change into her clothes because she was ready to go.  She asked that only her daddy drive her, gave me a hug and walked out the door.

I am still not totally reconciled to the reality that my daughter needs to wear a lojack bracelet because she is at such risk for elopement but I’m glad right now that she has that.  I suspect inside her it is going to get a lot harder before it gets better, this new life of hers with far more structure, more immediate consequences, affection but also detachment that we were never capable of.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see her make some effort to run away next.  Sherod is on the road to Alabama, I have a busy day of “to do’s” ahead of me. I do keep having to stop to remind myself that I have to be as brave as she is.  Because today, I’d really like to scoop up my baby and bring her home.