I did it–the desk is assembled.  I am almost done with my new desk chair–the last pieces left to assemble are on the desk.  Black and white–about the only parts of my life with that kind of clarity tonight are my new desk and chair-in-process.  And in the complexity and out-n-out confusion of it all, a new kind of sharp too.

This Christmas, Sherod got a beautiful set of Buck pocket knives–and the person who gave them to him said that the smaller one was for me.  Along with a ‘lectric drill, flat head screwdriver and phillips screwdriver, I used a  pocket knife.  Never, ever owned one, never thought I would either.  And now I do. Is that totally cool or what?  New year, new office space, new lots of stuff.

For the last year, I found myself doubting my competence.  Or better said, others claimed I had none and I let the itty bitty sh*&^y little voices of my mind pick up the chant and amplify it more and more in the echo chamber of my fear.  After all, I come from a family system that’s had its fair share of alcoholism and those of us that come from that place easily slide into the shame game.

Part of getting on with life is getting past that foolishness.  Last week, I assembled the raised plant bed and then moved 12 bags (18 cu ft) of potting soil from the Home Depot store to the plant bed.  It took me three days and my muscles were sore, but I did it.  With Sherod immobilized by hip pain, Christmas shopping, decorating, and putting away fell on me.  I got help to put up the Christmas Tree and learned how to do it so I can take care of it next year.  This morning, I hauled the tree out for pickup next week.  My house is neat and clean, Christmas has been put away for another year and in a while, I am going to assemble a new desk for the office space I am carving out for myself now that my work life is in so much transition.

Of course, I understand that none of this is particularly remarkable.  But I remember being a freshman in college, watching my college roommate use all kinds of saws and other woodwork tools.  For Christmas she had decided to make picture frames for her family; I felt like I was watching an alien.  Later, I watched another of my dearest friends, Mary, and her husband Mike, put in a pool in their back yard in Memphis—and do it all themselves, from scratch, with a pool kit they had bought from some crazy outfit out in California, I believe.  This wasn’t a little kiddie pool, either.  This was a fairly large and deep pool.  I can remember seeing my buddy Mary caked in red mud from head to toe, the finernails on her strong beautiful hands dirt stained  and torn.   I marvelled that she had the imagination to see herself as capable of being the co-builder of a pool and the first time she and I went swimming in it, I was in awe.  It is only in the past 2 or 3 years that I learned how to turn on and use a lawn mower.  Until then, if I was accomplished, it was in the more “feminine arts”—sewing, knitting, cooking, batik, cross-stitch—I knew how to do all that and enjoyed myself.  But none of those accomplishments compare with the feeling of a tired and sore body that has been put at the service of a work project like the ones I’ve undertaken because Sherod could no longer do them.

Sherod’s hip replacement surgery is coming up in 13 days.  I hope and pray he will recover and regain his capacity to tinker, take on projects around the house—help put up Christmas lights. I just barely dare allow myself to hope that at least occasionally, he will be able to come along on some of my rambles.  But it has been soul-saving for me to do all this hard work, to do what needed to get done. So those mean voices?  Lalalalala—I am not listening.  I’m too busy being competent—and this “Rosa the Riveter” is here to stay.

Yesterday it was time to celebrate a little after a lot of work and thought during this Advent and Christmas season.  The Mallowman and I had some old friends over for dinner; as usual, we split cooking duties and didn’t do any coordinating with each other. Sherod was in charge of the main part of the meal, I was in charge of some of the appetizers and desert.  He prepared smoked ribs, turnip greens, and black-eyed peas.  I put out bruschettas and grav lax (smoked salmon prepared in the Swedish way) and flambéed Crepes Suzette for desert.  Might have made our guests feel a little schizy but it all tasted good…Happy New Year, y’all!

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad.

Many, many years ago, when Sherod’s life had just about fallen apart, I got a note from him telling me he was at a friend’s house, went to get something out of the fridge and saw a magnet with that phrase that was so popular at the time: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” that had made clear the finality of the changes that had happened in his life and also promised so much.  It is  cliched and over-used; it is also an affirmation of great hope for me this morning.

Yesterday turned out to be pretty hard, not because it was the end of 2013 but because it was my last day as full-time priest-in-charge of the combined ministries of St Ambrose, El Centro Hispano de Todos los Santos, and the New River Academy.  I will stay on for a while longer in a part-time capacity but only to try to keep these fragile ministries propped up long enough for others to discern the way forward.  It was the proverbial fork in the path and already, what I do is look back.

Sherod, Maria and I had decided to go to see the movie Saving Mr. Banks yesterday after I finished my work for the day.  It was your typical upbeat Disney production but it pointed to something I realized I needed to name for myself.  In the movie, the author of Mary Poppins, PL Travers, is portrayed having lived and worked much of her life in the unredeemed space of grief and trauma caused by her father’s alcoholism and death.  There is a great deal about my work in the past 7 years that fills me with joy.  And perhaps that is why the ways in which it went astray in these past couple of years are very painful to consider.  Unredeemed is a good way of describing how it all appears right now.

There are two temptations for me in this space.  I want to believe that I can engineer the redemption myself.  If I can just put some pieces together, if I can think hard enough, plan well enough, stretch far enough, I can ensure that even without me, these ministries that I care deeply about will go forward.  Of course, that just leads to one dead end after another.  The other is more overtly bleak.  It is to give into despair, anger and bitterness.  Over these past weeks I have poked and prodded and dissected implacably and the only thing that comes of that effort is blame.  There have been days when it felt like there was a circular firing squad in my head.  Neither temptations accomplishes what I so desperately need–some kind of sense that even the worst of our human failings can be redeemed.

It was liberating to realize and accept that for right now, I am in that unredeemed time.  Even more liberating to accept that if there will be redemption it will not be of my doing.  Already at the movies, something started insinuating itself to me from my time on retreat at Tahoe.  I came home and pulled up the first fundraising video I ever prepared as a handful of us were getting started with the new ministry we called El Centro Hispano de Todos los Santos.  Then I sat for a while with the Lukan resurrection narrative of the Road to Emmaus.  I am so much in the place the two disciples found themselves in–walking, yes, getting on with life, for sure, and at the same time, revisiting and reviewing the events that had turned their world upside down.  There’s a “both/and” to be found in this passage.  Be too quick to gloss over something wretched that has happened, bury it and deny it, and we will never even realize redemption was needed.  Dwell on the awfulness and our eyes are kept from recognizing redemption even when it our Redeemer is standing right in front of us.  Either way, redemption is not mine to deliver.  I can only hope for it and do my best to make myself available to my life which is where redemption will find me.

I went out and walked last night, my last ramble for 2013.  I found myself texting all the members of the staff I have been so privileged to work with.  Then I texted some of the folks who have been so extraordinarily generous and committed to that ministry we had together.  I called one of my very dearest friends and left Facebook messages a couple of others.  I got back home and called my dad.  Sherod, Maria and I laughed and giggled for a while longer, drank some delectable Veuve Clicquot and by 10:30 lights were out in our home. I dimly recall hearing fireworks at midnight.

And now, today: this is the first day of the rest of my life.