Friday, September 23, 2011

When Nothing Existed but Chaos....

In this week's Bible study class on Genesis 1, Pastor Bill mentioned that Frederick Buechner says that writing is really about just sitting down every day and doing it, regardless of the fact that most of what gets written does not feel or read as if it was divinely inspired.  (I don't have citation for this idea.  I'll have to look for it in all my spare time.  Ha ha.)  Julia Alvarez says the same thing.  Anne Lamott says the same thing.  Madeleine L'Engle says the same thing.  The first step is always always always sit your butt down and do it.  So there's the what.  As for the why, Genesis 1 promises us that we are made in the image of God and that God creates.  He uses words to put the world into order.

So for the next hour I am sitting my butt down in the midst of mess that is verging dangerously close to chaos, squalor, or both, even though what I really want to be doing is eating a cookie, which would, of course, necessitate making cookies instead of writing.  Chocolate chip, I think, with walnuts.  Or maybe a nice apple cake with maple frosting....

So let's talk about the reign of chaos over our lives.  My life at least.  A blessedly close and honest friend of mine called me up last week to tell me she had a bad mommy day.  She had yelled at her daughter, mostly over her daughter's flippancy toward her part in the domestic chaos.  Oh, sister, I thought, I hear you.  But I can top you any day of the week.  I am nothing if not competitive at the sport of falling short.  My day that day had just happened to have begun with a visit to the elementary school principal's office so that one of the fruits of my loins could explain to the principal the incident that said fruit claimed to have forgotten when previously interrogated by said principal.  How did it go?  Fruit-of-my-loins, although he had made a full confession/explanation after several hours of sitting in his room and being periodically grilled by one parent and then another, claimed once again that he didn't remember the incident in question.  GAHHH!!  That same day I realized about 9:30am that, in spite of notes being sent home by the music teacher, the PTO, and the classroom teacher both in paper and electronic formats, I had failed to dress my forgetful fruit in red, white and blue for the ceremony about the anniversary of the National Anthem in which he was singing.  Furthermore, I had been invited to that ceremony, which had taken place at 9am.  Good mom.

The following day was my daughter's birthday.  I woke up feeling miserable with a cold.  Full body aches and fatigue, on top of the usual head, throat and nasal problems.  Determined to be a better mom, I got up early anyway to make two batches of pancakes: one without wheat or dairy, one with pink food coloring.  I made snacks for the preschool class and stayed at preschool the whole morning.  I came home and made lunch and strawberry layer cake.  I felt beyond awful, and when my daughter said she just wanted to lie down and take a nap, I said she could.  I didn't make her use the bathroom.  So, of course, later in the afternoon she came down to the family room, where I had just moments before fallen asleep, and told me she had to go potty.  I yelled with a scratchy voice for her to go to the bathroom, but I didn't follow her in there quickly enough, so she came back to the family room and had an accident on the carpeting.  Hearing me scream at her, she ran to the bathroom, emptying her bladder through the hallway and half of the bathroom.  Not the half with the toilet.  She was empty by then.  I screamed at her, on her birthday (oh, on her birthday on her birthday on her birthday,) but that took all of my remaining energy, so while she sat in the bathroom and sobbed (she was in the clean half), I was kneeling in puddles of urine, also sobbing, which made her sob all the harder.  I asked her, "When you have to go potty, what should you do?" over and over and over again, making her repeat the answer (go the toilet) over and over and over again, while trapped in the bathroom by ponds of urine and a sobbing mother.  On her birthday.  Incidentally, I found out today that I was supposed to have returned the picture order form to preschool on that day as well.  I just didn't know I had missed that due date until her teacher asked me about it today. 

In the mean time, my kitchen counters have been overtaken with vegetables and apples and pink cake and pans and items from the grocery store I haven't put away and napkins I haven't washed.  Apparently there's a picture order form somewhere in there as well.  The dining room is covered in sleeping bags my husband is "airing out" and the bags and camping equipment he doesn't even claim are there for any reason other than he didn't put them away.  The shower is covered in mildew.  The guest bed is covered in clean but unfolded clothes, and the rest of the clothes we own are still dirty.  Child number one wore to his picture day today a shirt that I pulled out of the dirty laundry, shook out, sniffed, and handed over.  Good enough.  The family room is unnavigable because it is covered in toys.  The pillows from the couches have joined the sleeping bags in the dining room to make a fort.  The apple tree in the back yard is so heavy with ripe fruit that some branches are nearly touching the ground, and the apples are getting eaten by worms and birds.

How did this happen?  How did I get so far behind when I don't even have a job?  I do not wish to live so frantically.  I want the water to separate from the dry land and the light from the dark.  That would be good.  But where to start?  How do other people have houses that are neat and clean?  I want that.  How do other people remember not only to dress their children in patriotic colors on the anniversary of the national anthem but also to have matching socks and hair bows for all of their daughters' outfits?  I should mention here that my daughter only has outfits because a kind relative in California sends us boxes of clothes periodically.

And yet.

I sit here writing this.  This evening I will take a child to soccer practice.  Later, I will go to band.  (I will feel guilty that I only practiced once--last night.)  I went running this morning at 5:30am.  I walked to preschool when I could have taken a car.  I biked there and back for the pick-up.  Tomorrow I will go do PTO work at the elementary school and then take child #2 to her soccer practice, and I'll probably do those errands by bike.  I will have my sister come over, if she happened not to read this and is therefore not too horrified by the mess to set foot in my house.  I will run with my running club.

The first Mary assignment in my Mary and Martha housekeeping book is to write down why I want a clean house.  It can be in poem form, or I can write it on a pretty sign and post it somewhere as decoration.  "Hurray!" I thought, when I read that first assignment.  My first housekeeping task is to write!  And I know why I want my house to be clean.  I feel better when my house is clean.  I breathe more easily.  I smile more.  I can relax (well, sort of) and play with my kids.  Perhaps more importantly, I feel that I can be more hospitable to others when my house is clean.  I want to be able to say to anyone who needs a place to meet or relax or eat or chat or spend the night: here!  Come here!  Stay here!  Sit here!  Eat my apples.  Taste one of these walnut chocolate chip cookies.  Talk to me.  Breathe and feel well and loved.

It's a good reason to spend my time cleaning and making order, is it not?

I suspect that my life is perhaps a bit too full to be completely orderly, and that is good too.  If I did not have children to feed and clothe and nurture, if they did not participate in sports or dance or music or scouts or school, if I did not have Bible study and church committees, if I didn’t chair a PTO committee, if I did not make music, if I did not read and write, if I did not have a garden, if I was not committed to ethical and healthful and joyful eating, well, then, I think I might have less mildew in my shower, and the laundry would be cleaned, folded and put away before it was needed on picture day or National Anthem day.  And while I'm sorry my house is a mess, I'm not sorry about why.
There is reason behind my chaos, if not full order.  Priorities.  Relationships.  Good.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Why it's OK to spend my Sunday afternoon writing this

I think I might be a discipline addict. Perhaps the reason I get to feeling so bogged sometimes is that my answer to everything is a new discipline. Training plans for running, Daily Guide to Prayer to recommend scripture passages, a promise to myself that I will write every day, and now, as if that was not enough, I started a new book called 31 Days to Clean: Having a Martha House the Mary Way. There are reasons that discipline is good though. It works for me with running. I need the help with the cleaning and the ordinances to keep it from getting overwhelming, and I believe that it is necessary with writing as well.

What I really want to write about today is running, so I'll get to that, but I need to take a quick side-trip to the world of writing. Or, more accurately, to being visible and vulnerable, and writing is one way I am doing that. I was going to write this today on a sheet of white paper and tuck it away somewhere that no one, not even I, would ever see it. But I am struggling struggling struggling (still, again, always) with calling. How am I to be making a difference on this planet given my particular circumstances and non-helpful array of gifts? How can I use the things I do and enjoy to be of service to others? Oh, I'd love to write some life-changing novel and become esteemed and called upon to give inspiring talks.... But here's the problem: I don't seem to have a novel in me just now. And who is that goal serving? Well, I do want to bless people as I have been blessed by some really touching novels. I do. But the esteemed part.... Yeah, that's about me, not you. (I intend to come back to that pride thing in regards to running.) The content I do have available to me is this kind of thing. I've been writing in my journal--sometimes daily, sometimes not quite--since early on in high school. Well over twenty years. Mostly, it's petty and personal and doesn't seem the least bit like service. Who needs to read what I write about my morning run or the trials of trying to clean up tar and bleach simultaneously? But lots of people have read "Why You Should Run," which is really just a spiffed-up journal entry. And some people far away and who I've never met have been inspired by it. And today at church a friend I didn't know read my blog or ran (although I should have remembered this) told me that she liked it. And it occurs to me that writing about running, and maybe sometimes about some other things, might be an act of service. A small, trivial one. A start. And maybe, sometimes, the conversation could include some more important stuff. At the least, it might let people know me enough to say hello, enough to call upon me when I am needed, enough to plant
a relationship seed.

Hopefully, that's what happened today. I've been working on some adult education stuff for church this weekend, and so I am reminded that we are supposed to be practicing talking the walk. Definitely we are called to act. We are called to feed the hungry and visit the sick and imprisoned. But we are also called to commune, to include, to form friendships, to be fishers of men, and--dare I say this?--I believe that words actually are as powerful as deeds when it comes to that sort of thing. It sounds too easy. But to some, it also sounds too hard. It's more comfortable for some of us to pitch in and do with a quiet smile and a friendly wave than to be still and reach that wave into a handshake and the do into a tell. It seems like a lot of vulnerability with no visible result. You can build a house for the homeless and see that it is done. You can cook a meal and watch the hungry eat it. Most of the time, when you send yourself out into the world, you have no idea if it has done any good. I believe, though, that if opening your doors and windows helps someone find a home in your presence, it is worth the risk.

After church today, not being burdened with a husband eager to get out of church, I got to spend some time in fellowship hall. I closed the place down, actually. My daughter had a piece of cake and some friends and some unnecessary bleachers to play on, so she was happy. I talked to some people I needed to touch base with about church stuff, and then I noticed a woman with small children who looked familiar, but I couldn't place her. She wasn't talking to anyone, but she was there in fellowship hall.

Back story: A few years ago I took a trip to the east coast to visit a good friend who had recently relocated there and was having a hard time finding a new community of friends. She is naturally far more outgoing and extroverted than I am. Not shy. Really friendly. And not finding friends. Huh. She commented that she didn't know her neighbors. I went out for a run one morning and was greeted by the woman who lived across the street. She apologized for not saying anything the past few months but now wanted to welcome me to the neighborhood. I thanked her and suggested she make an effort to say the same to my friend who actually lived there.  A day late and a euro short, lady.  I began to understand the problem.  On Sunday we went to church.  Afterwards, in an attempt to forge some connections, we went downstairs to coffee hour in the church basement.  There were donuts for sale (feeding not the hungry, necessarily, unless they came to church with cash,) and we bought a couple just to have a reason to stick around.  (A shout out here to the people who brought and served cake today in honor of their 60th wedding anniversary.  It kept the family I was about to meet in the fellowship hall long enough for me to meet them.)  All of the tables in that east coast church basement were either empty or filled to capacity (note to church: leave some empty seats at every table!), so my friend, her husband, and I decided to start a new table and hope that people would join us.  We thought it had worked when, only a few minutes later, someone came up to us and asked if the chairs next to us were taken.  We put on our happiest glowy faces, and my friend is master of the happy friendly face, and said, "No!! Please!!  They're yours!!"  At which point the questioner thanked us and took said chairs over to a crowded table that had run out of chairs, leaving us at our empty table without the possibility of being joined.  Ugh.  Don't worry: my friend is in a better place now with friends galore, but that visit made a huge impression on me.  How NOT to love your neighbor.

Emboldened by my recent committee efforts and my long-ago donut experience, I said to the woman, as she was bent over dealing with a small child, "You look familiar, but I cannot place you.  I'm Cara."  "Oh," she answered, "I heard you speak some time ago about learning how to do triathlons.  Maybe that's when you saw me.  I haven't made it here much lately."  I had, some time ago, agreed to be part of the message at the women's advent service.  It was slightly scary but surprisingly painless, and it meant that I was out there just enough to have a connection today.  And so we began a genuine conversation, sparked by questions about running and running injuries and ending with an e-mail address and an invitation to participate in a future gathering.  It may be working, this being out there thing, this sharing of trivial stories and silly details.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Time to dance on the table

This morning I watched, puzzled, as my mother-in-law dug around in the cabinet for my favorite mug and then poured juice into it. OK. Whatever. The next time I looked her way, she had found an old juice glass and filled it with cereal. And that was when I realized that I am way too uptight.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Why You Should Run

Because some night you will not sleep well, and morning will come both too soon and not soon enough. Later, you will not remember standing up, only finding yourself already up, noticing that although this time last week the days were in the 90s and the mornings were still hot and humid, today it is 44 degrees outside, and you do not remember how to dress for a run in cool weather. You will put on a fluorescent orange long-sleeved shirt, because it is still very dark out at 5:30am this time of year, and you will forget to bring gloves.

You should run because even if you went to bed anxious and grumpy, thinking about all of the things that need to get done in an inadequate amount of time in the coming week, you feel like you have a secret advantage, a stop-time machine, perhaps, when you are running through dark neighborhoods full of still-sleeping people. Or if the people in the houses are, in fact, awake, they are still lying in bed, waiting to hit the snooze button again, or standing blearily under the hot shower. Their lights are off. Their children are asleep. The peace of early morning is irresistible, and it seeps into the muscles between your shoulders and your neck, and more things are possible than were last night. Or, perhaps, fewer things really matter.  This moment is about nothing beyond the hypnotic rhythm of your own feet, the effortless strength of your thighs, the feel of cool air on your calf muscles.

You should run because you need a chance to let it all out every now and then. Because you really don't want to scream or punch things in front of your children. Because your husband really is a nice guy who is doing his best. Because no one, not even the people who already love you, really wants to deal with the full force you, but the track doesn't mind. You should run because 400 meters is just long enough to require both concentration and full effort. There isn't room in your head or your arms or you soul for anything else. You have to remind yourself at every footfall to push push push push. To be strong in your abdomen and light in your heels. Not to dig your nails into your palms, but to relax your grip, to fly through discomfort with as much peace as possible. You should run because your heart pounds in your ears and your lungs push on your stomach, but after you've crossed the line in precisely the second you wished to do so, you get a couple of minutes to calm down and look around, and you do.

You should run because some morning, three sandhill cranes might fly, croaking, just over your head and stalk around the infield while you run around them. They will pretend that you are not there, you crazy human running around and around before sunrise. They are nearly bigger than you are, anyway. Or maybe a hawk will swoop down and perch on the scoreboard, watching the field to your south for signs of snakes or rodents. He will squint at you, as if not sure whether or not to believe in you, not sure he recognizes your particular breed, but he will look it up later in his human-watching book. The killdeer will skitter across the track just ahead of you, not wanting to be trampled, but too silly to remember they can fly.

You should run because halfway through your workout, you will notice that the morning is light enough to show you your breath on the calm-down laps. When you are two repeats from finishing, the sun will have risen enough to blaze over the rooftops of the no-longer-sleeping neighborhood and blind you on the back straight so that you cannot see your watch to know if you are hitting your paces. You do not mind.

You should run because as you are running toward home across dew-soaked fields, the first middle school teachers will be arriving in the parking lot, and the high school kids will be peering out from their thick brushed-forward bangs, and you will know that for them, for you, this is another ordinary day, and thank God for that.

You should run because when you arrive home, sweaty and shaky-legged, your seven-year-old might not want his oatmeal and will dawdle instead of brushing his teeth and putting on his shoes, and as you gently shove him out the front door so he doesn't miss the bus, he will tell you that oh yeah, this weekend he had music homework he forgot about until now. You should run because your four year old's music class has been canceled and rescheduled for the same time as preschool. You should run because the kitchen is still a mess from last night's dinner and rabbits have eaten the delphinium you planted last week. But no matter what may not get done during the day or what may go wrong, you have already had an hour that was yours, and for that hour, all the world was as it should be.
Tomorrow, you should run again.