Last year, one church in particular made me miss my friend Len. This year, it’s the doors. Wish you were here my friend…

Yesterday’s adventure, a little on the misbegotten side, left my dad very tired and in pain. Today it has rained on and off most of the day. At noon, suffering from some cabin fever, I decided to hop on the ferry and go to Vaxholm, the closest town (bigger than the villages on this island) to look for a little gift for the girl Maria and do some grocery shopping. Dad had decided he would read and keep his legs up most of the afternoon.

When I got off the ferry, I enjoyed wandering around in the heavy drizzle and made my way to the church. Again, the question, “where is home”? There’s a graveyard behind the church; I saw more than one family plot with tombstones that ranged from the 1600’s to the last few years. Talk about belonging. As much as my dad and I love Sweden, I am here for only 8 more days. I have no idea, now that my dad has decided this is his last trip, if I will ever be back. My dad, older brother and I talked about the fact that Dad will almost certainly die in Panama, Hans will probably die in Holland; in the same way, Nils will die in England and I in the US. None of the rest of my family members want a Christian burial, all of them want to be cremated and all of them want their ashes scattered where there is no way to mark their final resting place.

I understand their reasons and I accept the differences that define us as a very loose-knit family. I understood something else today as well. After wandering around the nave of the church, stopping in front of the altar, admiring the pulpit, I ended in a back corner far less remarkable than the rest of the space. There was a place to drop some money and light a candle, which I did. I wept again for my mom, said a prayer for her, missed her. I realized every church is the church to remember her in, every opportunity I have to light a small candle allows me to re-enact the liturgy of the light, that beautiful liturgy we celebrate on the Eve of Easter, when we reaffirm that death is not stronger than life, that darkness has not overcome the light. I felt very much at home in that beautiful church this afternoon–maybe the best I can claim for myself is, “home is where the church is.”

Tomorrow my dad and I will be out island hopping, working our way to the outermost islands of the archipelago and won’t be back until late in the evening so I am posting tonight what I would have posted tomorrow.

This is the last time my dad plans to be in Sweden. He has slowed down in this past year, needs more rest and the journey here from Panama is long and arduous. Sweden is horribly expensive–it is not unusual for a hamburger to cost $30.00. He is concerned to make provisions for any medical care he may need further along. So there is an incredible poignancy that colors these days as surely as the beautiful Swedish sunlight.

The visit with my older brother, Hans, and his partner, Anne Marie was just incredibly fun. Hans is mischievous, sarcastic, and funny. Anne Marie has this really down-to-earth wisdom that makes it easy to talk about the hard things and see them in a new way. I could tell how much my dad loved having the three of us together.

Today, Tante Maj, and her children, Olle, Kerstin and Jurgen came to visit and brought a typical Swedish lunch with them. Tant Maj and Farbror Gunnar are my dad’s oldest, dearest friends. Farbror Gunnar, stricken by Alzheimers could not come but Tante Maj is as sharp and full of life as ever.

She knows my father well enough to know exactly what meal would make him the happiest. She herself had prepared four different kinds of pickled herring, and served the herring with all the typical accompaniments. We drank aquavit and sang old drinking songs. There was knäckebröd (HARDTACK) and Swedish cheese, new potatoes with dill, and beer.

Dessert was a “Sommar Torta” (a summer cake) that tasted exactly like our birthday cakes tasted when we were growing up. As soon as I tasted it, I understood where my mom’s birthday cakes came from–very unexpected!

After lunch, Olle, Kerstin and I went up the steep hill behind the cottage we are renting. At the top there are two cannon embankments built during WWII and you also get a gorgeous view of Linanäs.

My dad and Tante Maj tell vivid, wrenching stories of the war, of how immediate it was, even in Sweden that was neutral. And they complain about how sanitized war has become. I ache at the thought that my dad has begun to tie the loose ends of his life, has begun to say his good byes, like he did with Maj at the end of the visit. I am so glad for him to get to say good farewells, hard though they may be. But my brothers and I still have so much to learn from him and his generation…

This morning I walked to Grundvik, another nearby village

My eye keeps getting drawn to the bits and pieces of everyday life

I am enchanted with the thistles

And I was able to pick blueberries and raspberries for my oatmeal

But more than anything, what I feast on is the light.

Yesterday was laundry day around here. My brother and his partner had left, the weather forecast calls for lots of rain starting this evening. Our cottage has a great washing machine but no dryer so after each of the three loads of clothes I washed, I walked down to the umbrella clothes drying contraption and used old-fashioned clothes pins to hang clothes. I could get high smelling the clothes after the fresh breezes of the day had dried them and I took them off the line, still warmed by the sunshine.

We walk or ride bicycles everywhere we go. I have found out that Swedes are fastidious in their recycling. There are 9 separate bins at the recycle center where we take the garbage we don’t compost. There are fewer appliances, spaces more compact–my ecological footprint is so much smaller here.

I find relief and a sense of ‘rightness’ in all this. I’ve said elsewhere that these past few years have been a lot about learning to live in my body. It seems inevitable that being more aware of incarnation requires a different relationship to the Earth. The air is so clean here, there is no litter along the sides of the road, much less noise (though admittedly, we are out in a rural area so that is only normal). I sleep with my window and curtains open so when I wake up at about 4 each morning, I watch the sunlight slowly extend further and further down the trees outside my window as the sun rises. Connection to the rhythms around me is so obvious here.

There is also a growing tension in md that has become more explicit in this space. Having a smaller footprint on this fragile and distressed planet requires time. I was surprised by how long it took to hang clothes (not something I have done a whole lot of in my lifetime!). To get to the nearest shop to buy milk takes 20 minutes each way. Even something as simple as cleaning up and throwing away garbage in the process of preparing a meal takes mindfulness and care to make sure I put recyclables in their proper places so when I get to the recycle center I don’t have to spend a bunch of time sorting through the things I have brought.

I don’t mind that everything takes more time. In fact, it’s the opposite. I find deep satisfaction–something very close to life as prayer is possible here. The tension I am struggling with is this: the work I have been doing at least for the past 6 years is in direct contradiction to these rhythms of life. I discover a new grant our ministry might be eligible for and it happens to have a deadline coming up quickly? I am on it like white on rice–I try but don’t always succeed in holding on to my walking at night (all the time, though, I know it is crazy to cut back on something so essential to my wellbeing). I let the housework go, I cut corners on the cooking, I race through everything else I have to do. I am driven and disconnected and, quite frankly, not a very nice person to be around.

There is, of course, a sense of accomplishment when I meet a deadline. All the hours I spent preparing the United Way grant bought us some more time and ability to build the programs we’ve all dreamed of in the ministry I am a part of. But there is also what I can only describe as a sense of emptiness that follows each deadline. Even worse is the time I spend on efforts that are truly ridiculous. A fridge needs repair — making sure I follow the approval process for getting it repaired, finding a repair person, getting him or her to do the work right or getting another person in when the first one does a really crappy job–I do so much of this now. And the most disturbing of all–the amount of time it takes to navigate the minefields of a denominational system in crisis, where anxiety and reactiveness permeate everything, where the impulse to preserve and protect are making us more the Walking Dead than joyful, vibrant communities that don’t fear death because they live in the promise of resurrection.

My desire to have the time to leave a smaller footprint behind can become one more expression of the self-absorption of a first-world, spoiled princess–how much easier it is to wash my family’s clothes and prepare nice healthy dinners than engage the issues of justice and mercy faced by the community I serve in Ft Lauderdale. But something is not working about the way we are going about doing ministry. To find a more faithful, more meaningful way to be a priest and resident of Earth is part of the work ahead, especially now that Sherod has announced his retirement and such huge decisions lie ahead about what I will do in the 15 or so years I have left for active ministry.

The Baltic is cold. Still, yesterday was a warm, sunny day; after a long bike ride with my brother and his partner, Anne Marie, a dip felt delicious even if my lips were blue…

It was five days before my 41st birthday when we found out that Sherod had cancer. I got home from work on my birthday to find a shiny green bicycle waiting for me. Sherod’s comment was, “if I am going to be this scared, you are too”. I knew immediately what he meant. I grew up hearing a lot more about what I couldn’t do than most people. “Rosita, don’t do that, it’s bad for your hip.” “That is simply too dangerous.” “Surely, you don’t want to jeopardize your chance to have children, do you?” Some of it got absurd. I was clumsier than most kids because I had not had as much of a chance to develop all kinds of motor skills, and that got turned into a conviction that I would probably never be capable of learning how to drive a car. I had to sneak around my parents to take driving classes one summer when I was in college. Even now, I can’t think about that too much without getting very angry.

The combination of projected fears and my own clumsiness meant I had never learned to ride a bicycle. And now, here sat this rather lovely bicycle in my house. I have wondered since if part of Sherod’s decision to give me that birthday present wasn’t a small but definite push towards self-sufficiency, pushing me to push myself a little harder in case he didn’t make it. I was terrified as I started learning and being terrified of riding a bike distracted me from the far greater fears in front of me. Once I got good at it, my friend Carol and I went for bike rides at night frequently and that too got me through that time. I have a nice Trek bicycle at home now, one I ride occasionally, and am always glad to know isin my garage.

This morning, Hans and I rode bikes over to the small grocery shop in Linanäs Very quickly after we got started I realized what a limited experience of bike riding I actually have–all of it in the ever so flat world of Southeast Florida. Ljusterö is quite hilly and almost immediately after we got started, my legs were madly churning and I was huffing and puffing my way up a slope. Pitiful! But then, we hit a long stretch that was downhill all the way. Absolutely amazing!!! The feel of the breeze on my face as the bike picked up speed, the sense of freedom that came with the pull of gravity. My legs still feel a little rubbery and I imagine it will take my whole time here to get any mastery of the hills. Another small gift of discovery on another gorgeous Swedish summer day.

I woke up a little after four this morning; the sun was already shining out my window.

I got dressed and walked to town, about 1 1/2 miles away from our cottage.

The stillness. The anticipation of a new summer day that had not really begun. And especially, the silence.

It was really hard leaving today-Maria with her Strep Throat, Sherod with his pain and all the work at work pulled at me. Then coming into Newark we flew into really big turbulence–the kind that makes you feel like your stomach will come out through your nose because the plane just hit a ginormous air pocket. These are the effects of a nor’easter that’s still blowing out there. When I checked in at SAS, I got a nasty little surprise. I had upgraded to something called SAS Plus mainly because it allowed me to use the lounge for this long layover. Since NO ONE had anything better to recommend for my 5 hours here, I had decided at least to make the time productive.

Turns out the Lufthansa lounge is being remodeled and for now, only SAS Business Class folks get to use the lounge. I am getting more assertive in my old age so I pulled out my iPad, showed the lady how explicitly SAS touts the use of the lounges as one of the perks of my upgrade and asked to see her manager when she kept insisting I couldn’t go in. Long and short of it? I was allowed in.
That has made it possible for me to peck out the essentials of the bulletin I will need for the funeral I have to do the day after I get back from Sweden. I also got to write some overdue thank you notes.

Now, I am sitting in a comfortable chair, drinking a decent cappuccino and eavesdropping shamelessly, thoroughly enjoying all the Swedish being spoken all around me. All these tall, blond, blue eyed Swedes! Except that the family I am sitting next to is Norwegian. Two of the daughters, young women in their early twenties, are obviously of African (I would guess Ethiopian) origin and their Norwegian is pretty accented. They I can’t understand so well. The dad and mom–quite a lot.

So I have taken a deep breath. I am making another of one of my world shifts and all of a sudden, it feels really good. Heja Sverige!

and here I go!

My mother had a hard time with our decision to adopt María. I’ve written about that elsewhere. The silence stretched long and painful between us after our big confrontation about my determination to adopt our girl. One day, more than a year later, I got a call out of the blue from a family friend who was passing through Miami. She had a package my mom had sent me. I worked in the Blue Lagoon area in those days and it was easy to swing by her hotel and pick up the package on my way home.

Inside were five of the most beautiful little girl dresses you could ever hope to see, several of them with a matching barrett, or head band. There was also a little nightgown—the one María wore the first night she slept in our home. I could tell how much care my mom had taken choosing them. When all else fails in my family of origin, we give each other gifts. Sometimes we sweat and toil and fret almost endlessly to come up with the right gift. This wasn’t just an olive branch, it was the most extravagant gesture of a love that couldn`t understand but wouldn’t quit.

All the dresses were exquisite. I took one with me to México for a weekend when there was a big party for FedEx employees and I got to take María with me to the party. I got up before daybreak to get María and brought her back to the nice hotel I was staying in. I bathed her and put the dress on her and stood her on the bed so she could see herself in a full length mirror. The way she stared, moved around a bit, stared again, and then puffed up makes me believe that she had probably never seen herself in a mirror like she did that day. How not to love the dress fiercely, like I loved her that day?

The stories go on and on, and María outgrew the dresses quickly, well-nourished and well-loved, beginning to thrive in her new home. One day, I got a big plastic storage bin and carefully folded and put the dresses away. I regretted that my mother had never seen her granddaughter in the dresses except in pictures. Because María was making a lot of progress, I told myself we would turn a developmental corner and what I was doing was putting the clothes away for the day that would surely come when I would tell my own granddaughter about her great-grandmother Ann.

Yesterday evening, after over 11 years of not seeing them, I took the dresses out. I am taking most of them to Isabel Ann, my niece, who is Ann’s other granddaughter, the one who was born 11 days before my mom died. Mom would have been delighted to see that little girl in those dresses. Though I have not met her, I have seen several videos of a blond, blue-eyed cherub who is a perpetual motion machine of curiosity. I bet she will look like a little doll in the clothes I am bringing. Giving Isabel these dresses is quite laden with meaning. Soon after my mom died, my brother and I had another one of those epic Lindahl fallouts and we have barely spoken since.

There is no way to know where the dresses will go after Isabel. After all, they are a gift. I will confess that I briefly thought to ask that the dresses be returned to me when Isabel Ann outgrows them. But that is clinging. The dresses will go where they will go.

There is a word in Spanish that describes what holy indifference is about: despojarse. The English equivalents for the root verb, despojar are divest, despoil, denude, bereave. Despojar comes from the Latin word for stripping bark off a tree. Despojarse makes the verb reflexive. Opening that box, looking at those little, little dresses, smelling and touching and holding them to me – was an act and decision to divest , denude , bereave myself. Jesus said, “what will it profit a person to gain the whole world and forfeit her life?” In order to gain our lives we must be willing to lose them. Without death we cannot know resurrection.

I know all this sounds raw and painful, and of course, it is. But I no longer know any other way to get to the next place except through the pain, not around it. Along with the sorrow that inevitably wells up as I pack the dresses and unrealized dreams, I also feel the little butterflies of excitement about my trip, about being with my dad and brothers, one brother’s lover and the other’s new wife and that little girl. Life runs on.