First Fast

In the midst

I think that if John Wesley had the job of planning a menu, grocery shopping, preparing meals and then cleaning up after them, and if, during the rest of the day he was taking care of a preschooler and being repeatedly asked to play rabbits or to provide snacks, he might have found fasting less of a prayerful activity.  At least, that’s how I find it. 

Perhaps I am just a wimp.  I ate breakfast only seven hours ago.  I had a cup of chai with soy milk mid-morning.  I’ll eat a later-than-usual dinner with my family.  I’ll get in maybe ten hours at most.  I’m not even doing a full grown-up fast, but my head feels funny already, and I am very hungry.  That sounds silly to say while fasting, but there it is.  I am aware, though, that the reason my body feels so very hungry is that it is used to being fed constantly.  If I did this more often, or if I was actually, out of need, starving, seven hours since my last meal would not be such a big deal.  I am spoiled and soft and self-centered.  A wimp.

But I am not a wimp.  Four days ago I ran a marathon.  More to the point, I ran those last six miles when every cell in my body was asking to please please please stop.  I did not run them quickly, but I was still running when I crossed the finish line.  Perhaps I should have run them more prayerfully.  And surely I ought to be fasting more prayerfully as well. 

It just doesn’t feel holy.  Or maybe it just doesn’t feel holy yet.  It feels hard.  I am in the habit of eating rather constantly.  It was hard not to grab handful of almonds as I was preparing lunch or putting away groceries or cleaning dishes.  When a dribble of applesauce stood on the lip of the jar, my instinct was to scoop it up with a finger and eat it.  Packing (and unpacking) carrots for Adam’s lunch, my hand could almost not help picking one up and popping it in my mouth.  And a little voice in my head kept telling me that those little crumbs of food wouldn’t count.  I would still be fasting.  And it’s at least true that I would still have been hungry.  But just being hungry isn’t the point.

My woozy head, then, is asking, “Well, what is the point?”  Why am I doing this?

The wrong (but also true) answers are that I am fasting because it is part of my religious tradition, because I have never done it, and because I am afraid of it.  Isaiah writes about fasting (that you shouldn’t just do it because of tradition.)  Jesus fasts (for forty days!!)  Jesus tells his disciples how to go about fasting (not in public—so should I not post this?)  Saints are infamous for fasting.  John Wesley fasted.  We talk about fasting in my covenant group and, oh yeah, it’s in our covenant.  We talked about it at the retreat I helped plan.  Apparently, fasting is a way to draw closer to God.  But aside from the time about a year ago when I had to fast for the 12 hours prior to my surgery, I have never tried to fast.  I’ve given up chocolate.  I’ve given up dessert altogether.  But I’ve never given up food.  I am wildly dependent on food.  I’ve seen me without food (for, oh, a couple of hours at times,) and it’s a frightening thing.  My mind refuses to focus, and my memories of these times are like memories of dreams.  Lights are too harsh and my perception of distance is skewed.  My speech slows down and my movements falter a bit.  I stumble rather than flit.  The world and my place in it become so heavy and desperate: no way I can possibly endure another minute of whatever benign activity is annoying me.  And then my husband says to me, “You need to eat.”  I will continue, with slow and slurred speech, to insist that whatever situation I am bemoaning is the real cause of my misery.  My husband will not respond with anything other than, “I think you need to eat.”  Generally about half an hour after I’ve had a good meal, everything is better.  Magic.  Food.  I am afraid of intentionally getting really really hungry if accidental hunger can have those effects.  A part of me wants to try to fast just to face down the fear, to show myself that I do not need to be afraid, which is perhaps to some a noble reason, but it’s not a Godly one, I don’t think.

I should be fasting as prayer.  I might be fasting in solidarity.  I should be fasting as a reminder of what I have and from whom all blessings flow.  I am fasting as self-discipline.

Honestly, when it comes to appreciating my blessings, I think I’m above average.  Above average is not the goal, of course.  Complete and utter humility and constant gratitude are the goal.  Without God, I would have nothing and be nothing, and this is a taste (pardon the pun) of that.  So I guess this is supposed to be teaching me my complete reliance on God. Is it?  Maybe.  We’ll see where I am in a couple of hours. 

I’m not all that bad at self-discipline either.  I regularly get up well before dawn to run interval or hill repeats.  I sometimes get in nine miles before breakfast.  I run when I don’t feel like running, sometimes even when it hurts.  I like meat but haven’t eaten any in over a year, even right after a marathon when we were in a little blue-collar town with only meat-based restaurants.

I’m not sure I’m getting the prayer thing.  But then, I’m a novice pray-er.  I was sort of hoping that fasting would make prayer easy, like music does for me, but I suspect that fasting as a form of prayer is an advanced technique.  If anything, the hunger and the discipline, the not putting the handful of food in my mouth, is a reminder that is a day set apart for something different.  If I am not constantly communing with God, at least I am behaving in a way that makes me remember some aspect of God.  How many people in my church have brought up that the true order of faith is “behave, belong, believe.”  So I behave.  Well, in this small thing I do.

The solidarity thing makes sense to me.  It reverberates within and sets to singing my decision not to eat meat.  I abstain from meat because if everyone ate meat, there would not be enough earth to feed earth’s people.  Already, there is not food to feed earth’s people.  I cannot solve that problem, but I want to acknowledge it constantly.  I want not to contribute to it.  I want to stand as witness to the fact that we can live another way.  Heck, we can run marathons another way!  Of course, I still eat plenty.  I might even eat too much on a regular basis.  The fact that I am, with a lifestyle choice, acknowledging the issue of hunger is, to me, a matter of holiness, but how much more holy to actually be hungry as well once in a while.  Ah, now there we are starting to pluck some of my heartstrings, to get my soul into the song.  Perhaps is it just my brand of faith that I would rather do something for other humans than for God?  Perhaps Jesus and Isaiah would be OK with that sort of religiosity?

Day after: Reflection

The afternoon and evening went well.  I took Adam to his basketball practice, and while I was interacting with some other moms there, people I have come to consider friends, the hunger didn’t bother me.  It was still there, of course, but it was just there.  It wasn’t eating at me.  It was just sitting there with me.  I didn’t mind.  I even, in a way, liked it.  I liked that on the outside I looked normal (I hope) but had something different going on inside, a little secret between me and God.  Interesting that Jesus admonishes his followers not to fast in public.  I understand his point.  I would not want my fasting to become a topic of conversation in that setting.  I’m certain it would have made the fasting about me: how religious I am (I have nothing against being religious, but that label always feels false to me,) how hungry I must be, how hard it would be, etc.  Ick.  That certainly would have made the hunger less holy and more disturbing. 

We had left-overs for dinner, and although I had intended all along to break my fast at dinnertime, and I did, I felt like somehow staying in the spirit of the fast.  So I served everyone else first, and I ate the half-serving of sweet potato chili that was left.  I had some broccoli and a few crackers.  It was a meal, but it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy my hunger.  It wasn’t even as much as I would ordinarily eat after eating all day.  I did not have my usual post-meal piece of chocolate.  I went to choir still hungry.  I went to bed still hungry, something I rarely do.

I am very aware of the fact that as fasts go, mine was very small, but it was a beginning.  It was an attempt.  In looking back at why I did it, and thinking back about what I got out of it, I think it is an exercising worth repeating. 

I believe it did make me more aware of the plenty around me.  It made me conscious of how easy it is to pop something healthy and sustaining in my mouth without thought.   Yes, we say grace before meals, but I do I say grace while I am making my son’s lunch and sample the sunbutter?  Do I give thanks for the left-over popcorn I munch while I’m cleaning up the kitchen?  Do I remember that every mid-day handful of almonds is a great bounty of nutrients and therefore a blessing?  No.  Today I will, I hope.

It was also, I think, a sort of prayer.  It wasn’t always an uplifting prayer.  It wasn’t a prayer with words or a clear direction.  But it was a way of reminding myself that I am trying to be with God, and I am pretty sure that God gives partial credit for effort.  Paul tells us, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). Hopefully the Spirit did something with the fast, small though it was.

The most profound affect it had on me, however, was one that I originally thought was not a holy one: I faced down a fear.  When I wrote that yesterday, it seemed a very secular reason to do something.  It is true that a person not seeking God might undertake some adventure simply to face down a fear.  But, as I realized yesterday, the process of releasing a fear is also a holy one.  For me, it was the most holy result of my fast. 

I realized with a start last night that fear is a thing that ties us to this world.  This time last week I was afraid of the marathon.  I was afraid of disappointment.  I was afraid of pain.  I was afraid of despair.  And yes, this time yesterday, I was afraid of hunger.  I was afraid of what these things would do to me and what I, in turn, would do.  But in the last week I have been in pain.  I have been tired to the point of tears.  I have felt despair at ever finishing the last three miles of a marathon.  I have been hungry.  And I have come out the other side.  These things are not exactly pleasant, but there is great value in knowing for certain that if they are demanded of me, I can do them.  I need not turn down a call, should one come, because I am a slave to fear.  The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear, but I suspect that, to some extent, fear also prevents perfect love.  If I am afraid of discomfort, I am living for myself.  If I am living in fear, I am tied to my security.  I am tethered to food.  I am tethered to pride.  I must think first of avoiding my fears rather than thinking first of living fully.  If I am about food, I am not about the life that food enables.  I do not believe that God wants me to be hungry, but I also do not think that God wants my life to be about not being hungry.  As for pain, humiliation, and despair, Psalms 51:17 says, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”  God is not looking for perfection and complete competence.  God is looking for us to be willing to walk into whatever lies ahead of us and not think first about whether or not we have packed enough snacks.

Give us this day

My husband had to go into work early this morning, and my church class was canceled, so I planned to run during the daylight hours while Gretchen was in preschool. It is lovely to break routine once in a while.

The kids and I had a good morning together. I'm usually coming in the door when they have already started breakfast, so there was a sweetness to hearing them get themselves up and dressed, to make their breakfast and lunch at a relaxed pace. Even so, the family time started a bit too early for my preference. I was hoping to get through a short yoga routine before breakfast, but as soon as the kids hear stirring, they pop into action.

Adam was excited for the 100th day of school. They were told to dress like 100 year olds. I am not sure how a 100 year old dresses. Adam suggested sweatpants, which I thought was probably as good a suggestion as any, since you probably care more about comfort than fanciness at age 100, but we thought his sports pants didn't look particularly old. He took his glasses with big nose and mustache. I drew lines on his face with an old eyeliner pencil. I tried to make him to wrinkle his forehead, purse his lips, squint his eyes, etc. so that I could see where the lines would fall eventually. His skin is so young and smooth that I couldn't find many lines even then. He couldn't even MAKE lines. My children are so young.  So (sigh) I did the face wrinkling, found all my many forming lines and drew them on him: forehead, around the eyes, around the mouth. Nothing like examining your mortality first thing in the morning.

The good part of pondering my aging self is that when, after Adam had left for school, I did get to finish my yoga and was lying in relaxation pose and thinking about my body, I felt so incredibly grateful and alive. Sore: my hamstring is sore and my knee and.... But for that moment, it was all good because it meant I am still here. I was given at least this one more moment to make my kids' breakfast and tie their shoes and marvel at their perfect little bodies. One more day to hear and bear my friends' grief and show love to them and to my family. One more day to savor. One more walk to school. One more run. One more bowl of oatmeal.

The only blessings we are authorized to desire are today's, and if we are looking for the manna, we can usually find it. 

Days Like This: Tar and Bleach Edition

Although this happened last spring, I decided to post it today, for my friend Jen, who will understand.

My husband is obsessed with our driveway. Twice a year he gets it sealed. I wonder if his zeal for driveway maintenance would be diminished at all if he had to seal it himself, but since there are apparently dozens of companies and individuals that want to do it for us, that is something I will probably never discover. As it is, it’s a minor inconvenience, in that the things in the garage are trapped in the garage for a day, and a rather minor expense. I have mentioned before that maybe we are being excessive and left it at that. I have enough other things on which to spend my petty irritation.

Monday was driveway sealing day, and since we had an early gymnastics class, I didn’t even have to worry about someone ringing the doorbell and reminding me to move my car, causing me to go out in my pajamas and crazy non-showered hair. When we arrived home from gymnastics, the driveway people must have just left. The driveway was glistening with a thick layer of perfectly even new tar. (Note: I’m not sure if what they seal driveways with is true tar, but for the sake of convenience, let’s call it that .) The driveway had been nicely roped off with florescent string and a sign. We parked in the street and walked up through the lawn to the front door. We stopped to smell the crab-apple blossoms, which were just peaking and about to scatter about the lawn in a shower of hot-pink, but all we could smell was tar. Lovely. I had to go to the bathroom, and my hands were full, so I unlocked the front door and went in, calling to Gretchen to follow.

I made it as far as the kitchen when I heard screaming. It was more of a fury scream than a pain scream, so although I turned and headed for the door, I was not filled with panic, and I was not running, and I yelled to Gretchen, “What’s the problem?” When she only continued to scream, I yelled a little more irritably, “Gretchen! What is the problem?”

You surely see where this is going. The problem, of course, was that Gretchen was covered with tar. For reasons known only to Gretchen and her omniscient God, and perhaps only one of those two, as soon as I had gone in the front door, Gretchen had gone over to the driveway. She didn’t get very far on its newly slimed surface before she slipped, skidded, and fell. Her brand-new white gym shoes were black. Her legs (thank goodness she was wearing a little leotard and no pants) were black, her hands were black, large portions of her pink coat were black, and even her face was smudged with tar. I know the rare child who really doesn’t care whether or not they are naughty or filthy or any manner of annoying or disgusting, but, thankfully, Gretchen is not one of them. She is perhaps exuberant and curious and opinionated and independent, but she doesn’t look for trouble most of the time. Somehow, it finds her. And so she was standing there surveying her hands and legs and shoes and screaming.

I’m sorry to say that when I surveyed her, scream is what I did too. Not the wordless shrieking issuing from my child but repetitions of “Why did you do that?” and “Don’t touch anything! Don’t touch anything!!” in escalating octaves. Oh, who am I kidding? There may have been some wordless screams of anger and frustration in there too. What a colossal mess. I’m surprised no one came out to investigate our mingled screams. I’m surprised we still have a rabbit infestation.

I went back into the house for a canister of wipes and managed to get most of the tar off of her hands and legs—enough, at least, to get her jacket and shoes off of her without spreading more tar. I had a little on the top of my shoe, and that was the only further casualty. She was still crying, and I was still telling her that her brand new shoes and her pretty pink jacket were probably ruined and she would have to wear them around with black on them and why would she do that? Then I took pity. She was sobbing and sobbing, tears running down her tarred face. To be fair, I could not remember specifically telling her to stay away from the driveway. I put in her the bathtub and scrubbed the rest of the tar off of her. Then I washed the tar out of the bathtub and put her in dry clothes and hugged and cuddled her until she calmed down.

Then I started in on the shoes and jacket. Lucky for us, very little tar had gotten on her leotard, and the part that had been tarred was already black. Small mercies. The shoes came pretty clean. The leather tops are more or less back to white. The fabric around the ankle openings is down to gray. The rubber around the bottom has been changed to more of a fluorescent green, but in all, they are not a complete loss. She is going to wear them the rest of the summer at any rate. Honestly, how long were they going to stay pristine anyway? They’re play shoes. Not play in the tar shoes, exactly, but if it wasn’t tar it was going to be sand or infield dirt or plain ol’ mud. The jacket was a larger project. I scrubbed with water. I scrubbed with soap. I called my mom, who, amazingly, did not know how to get tar out of fabric. We googled. I facebooked. I tried Goo Gone, which, for some reason, I had a bottle of in the basement. I got the black tar look down to a dark-grey very dirty look and left it to soak. Most facebook suggestions ended with some version of give up and get a new one.

While the jacket was soaking, I decided to continue on with the laundry in process. I transferred the dark load to the drier and put the white load in the washer. I added a bit of Clorox Ultimate Care bleach. I must not have put the bleach jug all the way back on the shelf because a few minutes later, when I was back to working on the tarred jacket, the bleach jug launched itself off the shelf and wedged itself behind the washing machine. I reached down to get it, but my arms are too short. I tried to reach it from under the set tub, which meant kneeling in a puddle of water from the drippy jacket, and found that my swimming shoulders are almost too broad to get between the sink legs. Feeling like I had done quite enough annoying household labor for one day (I had spent all of the pre-gymnastics morning fruitlessly trying to scrub and bleach the mildew stains out of my shower,) I went over to our family calendar and wrote “get bleach” in Doug’s color. I scrub showers, clean tar, and do the laundry. He can unwedge the darn jug of bleach.

I came out of the laundry room to ask Gretchen what she wanted for lunch and was assaulted by the sound of preschoolers singing “Saturday! Saturday!” in their shrill almost-off-key voices. The cabinets were practically rattling. Gretchen had just been given her new big-girl mattress and a CD player for her nightstand, and she was relaxing from the stressful tar-filled morning in her room. I did not find the din relaxing. So I shouted up the stairs for her to turn the music down. I shouted again. I screamed. The music was certainly too loud for her to hear me, so I stormed up the stairs and yelled into her room. She just looked at me with a scared and startled expression. Her eyes filled with tears. Suddenly, I felt like the worst mother on the planet. It was a jacket and shoes and a little noise, and what are those things in comparison to my beautiful, loving and joyful daughter? I turned the music down for her and hugged her for a long time and told her I would make her lunch and read her a story. It had been a long morning for both of us.

Just as lunch was almost ready, the alarm in the laundry room alerted me that I could shift the laundry again. I went into the laundry room to find a large puddle seeping out from under the washing machine. I had left a towel under the sink to catch the drips from the jacket, so I was confused. Crap. Don’t tell me, I thought, that the washing machine is leaking. Of all the days!!! But when I bent down to examine it, I noticed that it was not just water. It was thicker. Slimier. Smellier….

The cap on the jug of bleach had shattered in the fall, and of course the jug was not upright but on its side. Without a cap. And so a huge puddle of bleach had formed under the washing machine and drier, along the baseboard, and was spilling out into the main traffic area of the laundry room. Seriously. But it was lunchtime, and I have never needed a lunchtime quite so badly. So I closed the door on the laundry room and resolved that when my guests arrived, I would just say, yes, yes, my home does smell of tar and bleach. Long story.

When my covenant group arrived an hour later, they miraculously showed up with apple slices and brownies. More importantly, they helped me laugh about the whole day. It’s just stuff. It’s just one day. And it’s worth it, somehow. If this is the holy work to which I am called, then may God forgive me for having screamed in the midst of it.

And thank God for that returned sense of humor. I spent most of my morning cleaning tar and most of my afternoon cleaning up bleach. When my husband came home, asked about the “get bleach” on the calendar, and heard the whole saga, he asked, “Is the driveway OK?” He was serious. And yes, in case you are concerned, the driveway is going to make it.

On the Way To Jesus' Birthday Party

I wrote this last year, before I had started this blog, and just came across it today.  It made me smile.  Enjoy.

 

Today Gretchen's PDO program threw a birthday party for Jesus. I made a ridiculous amount of popcorn as her contribution to the party. Anything worth doing is worth doing in a crazed and overdone manner, right? We filled up four tubs and packed everything up. Gretchen wore a new jumper she inherited from a third cousin. I was hesitant to send her off to play and eat and do crafts in her uber-fancy Christmas dress from my mother-in-law, although now I'm thinking I should have gone all in on that too. Isn't anything worth doing worth doing in a crazed and overdone manner? The dress she wore was not Christmassy, but it was cute: a peachy pink with brown polka-dots. She looked beautiful but was not happy with her attire, except the sparkly shoes, of course, which never fail to make her sparkle in response. As I was buckling her into her carseat, she asked me why I put her in a dress covered with eyeballs. Ah. Now I understand. It is harder to feel beautiful in a dress covered in eyeballs than in a dress decorated with polka-dots.

As we were driving to church, Gretchen hypothesized aloud that each and every car travelling in the same direction was also on the way to Jesus' birthday party. And how does a mother argue against that? Ideally, and in a more metaphysical way than I could really get into with a three-year-old, or so I thought, one would hope that on December 14, most people on the road are, in some manner, travelling toward Jesus' birthday party. When we were perhaps half-way to church, Gretchen became quite concerned: "Who is going to drive Jesus to the birthday party?"

"What?" I asked. I keep getting fooled into thinking Gretchen far more religious and profound than is reasonable for a three-year-old. She talks about Jesus being a baby and has been practicing her songs for the party: "Away in a Manger," "Mary Had a Baby Boy," and "Merry Christmas." She seems to at least sort of get it, or so I keep thinking. And then suddenly--and this has happened to me repeatedly--things really go down hill. It's amazing how quickly the innocent questions of a three-year-old can confound a rather ponder-prone 35-year-old.

"Well if Jesus is a baby, she can't drive. Who drives her to the birthday party?" Oh boy. Or girl, if one pays attention to the pronouns. My daughter is a crazed and overdone feminist if nothing else. The world needn't fear a diminished supply of girl power while she is around.

"When Jesus was a baby, there weren't cars." I decided to deal with the gender of Our Lord at another time because I secretly think that if God wanted to be really crazed and overdone about confounding expectations of power and about showing the least to be the greatest, God would have come as a baby girl. Just my opinion, of course. But back to the discussion: of course, if the answer is easy and sort of skirts the question, it's never going to cut it with a three-year-old. You cannot change the topic to the history of cars when what's really important is the baby Jesus.

"Well then how did she get to Her birthday?"

Where to begin. I paused a moment and decided that it was time to find a good children's version of the Christmas story at the local bookstore ASAP, but, in the meantime, I have heard the story quite a few times myself and could transmit the salient elements to get some of this straightened out before the party started. So I explained that quite a long time ago and in another part of the world, Mary, Jesus' mother, who Gretchen knows about from the songs, was going to have a baby, but she also had to go on a long trip. I was interrupted by questions of how they did this without cars, so I decided to say that they probably had a donkey, although I couldn't remember if the donkey was in the Bible or just in the illustration. When Mary and her husband Josesph arrived where they needed to go, there were lots and lots of people there already, and there weren't any hotels or inns that would give them a room, but one man said they could sleep in his stable, which is like a barn. And yes, that was good for the donkey.

"Where is the donkey now?" asked Gretchen. I reminded her that this was a very very long time ago, so that particular donkey is probably dead by now. "Well, then how is Jesus still a baby? How old is She?" Oh boy/girl.

"Well, Jesus isn't still a baby. We are celebrating that God came to earth as a human, as a baby, which is pretty cool thing for God to do."

"So Jesus isn't going to be at Her birthday party?"

"Well, yes, Jesus will be there, but not as a baby you can see." That made no sense to Gretchen, and before we started to get into invisible super-powers, I tried to explain. "Jesus is God. We say there are three ways you can think of God, as God who made everything, as Jesus who was born as baby and lived as a human, and as the holy spirit, who is always with us and among us and helps us to follow God and Jesus."

"So Jesus will be at church?"

"Yes, but you won't be able to see Jesus like you see most people. We say that we see Jesus when we see people acting like Jesus taught us to act, so hopefully you can always see Jesus in the church."

"Does Jesus live at the church?"

"I suppose you could say that. He lives everywhere, but the church is sort of His home base. It's a good place people can go to find Jesus in others and to learn about Jesus."

"If Jesus lives at the church, where are the rooms? I've never seen Her room."

"He doesn't need a bedroom. I suppose if you were going to say that one room was His special room, it would be the sanctuary, where we sing and worship and learn about Jesus, but He lives in whatever room has people who love him and act like him."

"Doesn't Jesus ever get to sleep?" Gretchen seemed apalled by this thought. Lucky for me, we had arrived at church, and I could get away with just saying, "No, he doesn't sleep, but he doesn't mind." Or so I hope.

I say it was lucky the conversation ended there because I felt myself teetering on the edge of a muddy theological pit, and it was a relief to get out of such conversations with at least a crumb of confidence left that I hadn't said anything either too simplistic to be "true" or too esoteric and uncertain to be considered any kind of answer at all for a three year old. But even more than being relieved to be let off the hook, I felt lucky that I had been put on the hook in the first place. Surely such conversations make all the bodily functions involved in day-to-day parenting worth the handling.

Afterwards, when I was relaying our earlier conversation about Jesus' birthday party to Doug, I asked Gretchen if she had seen Jesus at His birthday party. "Well," she told me, "you can't see Jesus like you can see other babies, but She was there." That, my daughter dressed in an eyeball dress, is a lovely thing in which to feel confident.

On the Way to the Kingdom

You can design and create and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it takes people to make the dream a reality.  –Walt Disney

Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.    –Psalm 127:1a

The week before Thanksgiving, we took our first family airplane trip, using the money we had paid Southwest for the ill-fated Boston Marathon/California trip(s).  Long story there, and not really relevant.  Since the money was already paid and had to be used before Christmas, we decided it was a good time to visit Disney World.  At ages four and seven, our children are at the prime ages for wonder and magic and animated characters come to life.  We were prepared for them to be enchanted, transfixed, and thoroughly delighted by every experience available at what is arguably the best theme-park on Earth, a place carefully engineered and bountifully financed to be meticulously clean, generously courteous, and fully centered around the delight of the paying public.

Disney World is all of those things.  It’s spotless.  There are employees paid to rove the park and move ill-placed strollers to the designated stroller areas.  If anyone litters in Disney World, one would never know.  The whole time we were there, I saw one abandoned water bottle.  (Another do-gooder and I had to compete to recycle it.  I won.)  Disney employees are never tired or grumpy or even just ordinary.  They sell you your grilled-vegetable sandwich with pleasure and send you off on the Winnie-the-Pooh ride as though they can’t wait for you, and you in particular, to experience the wonders that await you.  And most of the rides are truly wonderful.  They are iconic and sweet, like It’s a Small World or physically and emotionally shocking, like Dinosaurs, or full of possibilities like “Living with the Earth” and “Spaceship Earth.” They are technological marvels, like the new Toy Story 3 ride, and the “It’s Tough to Be a Bug” show.  The shows and drawing studios and parades are filled with talented, trained, and beautiful people.  Everest, the newest roller coaster is the best of all possible coaster experiences: fast, tall, forwards, backwards, light, dark, monsters.  Every little girl at Disney World is “Princess.”  It is, or at least ought to be, everything Walt Disney dreamed that it could be.

And yet.

The worst part of Disneyworld, in my opinion, is the people who go to Disneyworld.  As winter approaches and I consider the next several months of darkness and bitter bitter cold, making even a trip to the library or grocery store seem onerous and unpleasant, as I try to rack up the miles before I am running on sheets of black ice in the dark, as I mourn my garden and the absolute lack of any fresh produce grown within thousands of miles of this colorless, frozen center of the continent, I sometimes ask myself why it is that I live here.  The answer, of course, is the people who live here with me.  This place is home because it is filled with family, both genetic and chosen.  Grace enters my life through the people who, out of the abundance of their hearts, choose to show me love and kindness and set for me an example of what life on earth has the potential to be.  Thanks to them, I occasionally glimpse the kingdom I’ve been promised is among us, and it’s a magical, awe-inspiring place.

Orlando, Florida, on the other hand is lovely and warm.  The highs were around 80 every day of our tenure there.  In spite of the deliciousness of wearing shorts and sunglasses and occasionally sweating just standing around in the sun, the Magical Kingdom failed to be the kingdom in which I would choose to live.  People were pushy.  They were in a hurry.  The children, mine included, were whiney (disclaimer: they have been known to whine in the cold center of the continent as well, but stay with me anyway) and dissatisfied.  We had an occasional moment of community, as when, late in the evening, there was a long line of people waiting to catch a bus from one of the parks back to the hotel.  We did not all fit onto the first bus to arrive, and so we were planning to have to stand around waiting for another 20 minutes for the next one.  Unexpectedly, a second bus followed close on the tailpipe of the first one, and when an employee announced the destination, we all cheered.  He grinned and announced it again and again, and we all cheered every time.  But most of the time the other people at the park were people who would potentially get to the good rides first.  And clearly, we were the same to them.  We were the people who were in line for the bus before they were, but who could easily be pushed past.  There was no sense of community at all.

I had a microcosmic view of this cross-section of fare-paying humanity before we even arrived at Disney World.  The morning we left for Disney World, we didn’t leave our house in time.  Maybe it was my fault.  Maybe we should have planned all along to leave earlier.  Whatever the cause, we somehow found ourselves trapped in the early-morning rush hour on the way to the airport.  Adam became convinced that we were never going to move again, that we were not ever going to make it to Disney World, and that, as a result of his extreme anticipation and subsequent motionlessness he was going to die. 

In spite of Adam’s conviction, we did eventually arrive at the airport.  We hustled into the terminal as best we could with two enormous suitcases and two small children.  In a stroke of what we thought brilliant good luck, the line to check in was nearly non-existent.  Even so, our bags were labeled with “late check in,” as we were there less than an hour before our flight.  We hurried to a bathroom and then to the security lines.  Clearly, the traffic in which we had found ourselves earlier in the day had consisted of people destined for the security lines at Midway Airport.  Gretchen was getting over a touch of pneumonia, so we had to go through the “Family and Medical Liquids” line for her last two doses of antibiotics.   Of course, this was the longest line.  To make matters worse, the security guards kept pulling people with strollers out of line behind us and hustling them up to the front of the line.  While we were waiting, our flight was called for boarding.  Then it was called again.  Finally, our individual names were called.  And there we stood, nearly motionless in the liquids line.

When we finally arrived at the first check-point, I handed over my driver’s license and asked the man to whom I gave it if there was any way we could get into a shorter line since our names had been called and we were worried.  I spoke in my sweetest, least demanding voice.  It was a plea, not a demand.  I imagine those security people get a lot of similar such requests made at varying levels of perceived entitlement, so I don’t blame him for saying “no,” which is what he said.  I was, however, rather appalled that before saying “no,” he looked at me for a long time, looked at my driver’s license for a long time, looked back at me for a while, looked back at the license… and then repeated the process with Doug.  He took noticeably longer with us than with most people, us two frazzled parents trying to get to Disney World.  I thanked him anyway and entered the next phase of the Family and Medical Liquids security line.

In the line where you must take off all coats, sweaters, and shoes, the kids and I came through slowly (and after a long wait during which strollered parties were kindly escorted ahead of us) but uneventfully.  Doug came through last, and for whatever reason, his backpack triggered some sort of suspicion and was pulled off the conveyor belt for closer examination.  I was hastily putting my shoes and sweater back on, flanked by kids, when Doug told me to take the kids and hurry to our gate.  There was a good chance that we would not make it anyway, but we certainly would not if we waited for him.  So we ran.

We arrived at the gate, panting, both kids with a look of terror on their faces, just as the flight attendants were closing up shop.  They were leaving the desk, taking down the rope line guides, and gathering near the door.  I hastily offered the man closest to the door our three boarding passes.  He looked at them suspiciously.  “May we still get on?  My husband is right behind us, in the security line,” I said.  The flight attendants exchanged glances and sighed heavily before letting us on.  My heart was pounding out of my chest as we walked through the frigid hallway to the door of the plane, but I was determinedly trying to maintain a calm voice as I explained to my kids about getting on a plane, a new and strange experience for them.

Once on the plane, things did not improve.  Southwest is a first-come-first-seated airline, and we were certainly last.  Adam entered first, and I instructed him to keep walking towards the back of the plane in hopes that we might find two or three seats somewhat near each other.  We made it to the back of the plane without any such luck, so we turned back around.  My heart was still pounding, and I was sweating.  Just then a stewardess came down the aisle toward us with the news that she had three seats near each other.  “Oh thank goodness,” I sighed and turned my kids around. 

The seats were, I suppose, somewhat near each other.  All three were middle seats, two across the aisle from each other, and so separated by two large men and the aisle, and one was two rows ahead of the others.  Oh my.  “We need to make some decisions here!” the flight attendant told me. 

Deep breath.  “OK, Adam?  You go sit in that seat up there.  Gretchen, you are going to sit in that seat,” I pointed to a seat flanked by two large men, “and I’ll be right over here.”  I pointed to the middle seat on the other side of the aisle.  Under the best of circumstances, this is not a thing that my four year old daughter would ever agree to, and even less so the first time in an airplane.  She began to scream.  What else was there to do?  I faced the two men sitting in the aisle seats and, with all the sincerity of a mother facing two and a half hours of screaming child hell (and so were they, incidentally) said, “I know this is not ideal, but it would be so extremely kind if you could each move over one seat so that I could at least be directly across from my daughter.  I think that would really help her.”  The daughter, of course, was shrieking and clinging to my leg and refusing to sit by herself between two large unfamiliar men.   The two men to whom I had addressed my plea did nothing.  They did not move.  Their facial expressions were carefully blank.  They looked at me.  Behind me, the flight attendant who had been insisting that I “make some decisions” now said to the non-responsive men with the power to prevent the entire airplane from enduring half-a –continent’s worth of screaming, “Of course you do not have to move.”  At that point I had to be careful to keep my own face expressionless.  Of course they were not going to move after she said that.  Thanks for your help, lady. 

The flight attendant again requested that I sit down, and I looked at my screaming heap of daughter in resignation.  I was bending down to physically lift her over one of the expressionless non-moving large men, which was going to be uncomfortable and awkward for everyone, when a man several rows back stood up from his aisle seat.  He was also a big man—not fat, but tall and solid, and between his large frame and his orange hair, he reminded me a bit of my brother-in-law.  He volunteered to trade with one of the expressionless men and to sit in the middle seat on the other side of the aisle, allowing me to sit next to my terrified preschooler on her first flight.  I exhaled enormously and gasped out a breathless and enthusiastic thanks.  He responded that it wasn’t that big of a deal, and he faced the guy he proposed to trade with. 

The large expressionless man continued to be still and expressionless.  He did not stand and move back a few rows.  “Really,” the nice man told him, “my seat is an aisle seat.  You’d be moving from this aisle seat to that one.”  The motionless man did not acknowledge the request.  Baffled, the would-be hero stood right in front of motionless-man, waiting, repeating his request.  Everyone within seven rows in either direction were staring, silent, watching the stand-off.  The hero stood his ground.  Not angry, just not sitting back down.  So crammed into the little aisle next to the motionless man was a screaming four year old, her breathless sweating mother, an anxious and fidgeting flight attendant, and a large red-haired hero.  If he could have played oblivious before, which was never entirely believable, he certainly could not keep up the act much longer.  Finally, the large motionless man heaved himself up and lumbered back a few rows to take a different aisle seat. 

The heroic man took his place in the middle seat next to the other expressionless large man, and I took the other middle seat, putting Gretchen between me and the aisle.  I buckled her in and talked soothingly to her until she lowered her objections to some sniffles.  Then I stood up to try to see how Adam was doing two rows ahead of me.  The very kind woman sitting next to him caught my eye and said that he was fine.  She had buckled him in and ended up spending a good portion of the flight bent over him and his workbook.   Bless her. 

And bless bless bless the hero on the plane who sacrificed his rightfully-earned paid-for aisle seat to help out a frazzled mother and her terrified four-year-old daughter.  I had thanked him profusely when the transfer took place, and again after the flight I thanked him.  He acted slightly embarrassed, as though the strength of my gratitude was out of all reason, but it was not.  I told him that I was adding him to my list of things for which I am thankful.  He chuckled and nodded his head and left the plane, walking off into the sunset that was Orlando International Airport, never to be seen again.  I didn’t tell him that I was going to be writing about him as one of the highlights of my trip to Disney World.   But he was.

The citizens of Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom—the beautiful and friendly Princess Aurora, the conscientious Jiminy Cricket, the everyman Mickey Mouse—played their parts perfectly, and we dutifully photographed them hugging our children.  I, however, was more impressed by the kind of unscripted magic of the real-life hero on the plane, citizen of another kind of kingdom altogether.  It takes a lot of vision and a lot of money and time to transform thousands of acres of central Florida swampland into the land where dreams come true but only a little compassion and a bit of self-sacrifice to make wherever you happen to be the most blessed place on earth.

A Good Thing Going Bad

[Written Thursday, although not posted until Friday, in case the references to yesterday and this morning are confusing.]

I've run every day for the last 20 days in a row now.  In the world of running, this is called "streaking."  And yes, I wore clothes.

It's funny, fascinating, and frustrating how easy it is for something to become a god, of sorts, something to serve.  I guess there's a reason why the first commandment came first.  If you can keep that one, you're doing pretty well, and the rest of the commandments will be a lot easier.

I never meant to start a streak, in truth.  I just ran for the sake of running.  On the day that I usually take off, I needed a quick easy run to center my head, to start my day, to wake up my body.  It felt good, and I felt surprisingly good all day.  I felt rested and refreshed.  Plus, I'll admit, the mileage looked kind of good on my running log, even though that wasn't the original intent of the run.  So the next week when my usual day off came around, I remembered the week before.  I ran slow and short and easy, and it was, again, like resting.  It wasn't meant to even be a run, but it was a run, so I wrote it down.  And then I noticed that, huh, I'd run for 14 days in a row.  And as soon as I made note of that, as soon as I told a friend about it and it was named "a streak," it changed.

I've been running a good amount.  For about four weeks I held my running mileage in the mid-thirties.  Then I had a couple of weeks at 38.5.  Then I ran 46.5.  Then I ran 50.  You don't get to 50 miles a week just by adding in a little 2-3 mile run on your traditional rest day, but it doesn't hurt either.  So the numbers started to take over.

I started "the streak" just wanting to run because I love running.  I ran to improve my running, to relax my spirit, to enjoy the outdoors and the time alone.  I ran for the joy of being able to run.  Some runs I ran to spend time with other runners.  I ran because, to me, running is a great multi-sided gift.  I think these are all good reasons to run.  Running for numbers is not.

I've been doing the Jack Daniels' Blue Plan for advanced runners, and I'm currently half-way through.  [Note to non-runners: Jack Daniels is a running coach who has written a much-cited running book; he is not a form of adult beverage--at least not in this context.]  It's been going smoothly, and up until yesterday I felt like my body was handling it very well and improving gradually but steadily.  Most running coaches and experts and training plans demand at least one day of rest.  Daniels does not.  The blue plan requires five to seven days a week.  Yesterday was an optional run.  I always run on Wednesday evenings, but yesterday I had a meeting scheduled just after the usual Wednesday night run, so I planned to run in the morning.  I woke up at 5am yesterday morning to cold and impending bluster, but worse, a body that really really didn't want to run.  A body that was heavy and slow and really really wanted to go back to bed.  Upon checking my e-mail I saw that the evening group run had been moved up half an hour, so I could theoretically go back to bed and run in the evening and still make my meeting.  So that's what I did.

When evening came, it was still cold and damp and blustery, but I always run on Wednesdays.  And I had run 19 days in a row!  Yes, Jack Daniels would have allowed me to stay warm and dry and go to my meeting after a nice warm dinner, but my streak wouldn't allow it, so I went running anyway.  I'm not sorry I did.  Running outside is a good way to make peace with the kind of weather we had last night.  Walking from house to car, one gets cold.  Running six miles, if dressed appropriately, one can sweat.  The other people who showed up were men, and since I was conscious of time and my upcoming meeting, I ran a little faster than Jack Daniels would have wanted me to run.  And finally, after 20 days of running and not resting, of speedwork and tempo runs and long runs and just regular runs, my body told me to knock it off.

I started out tired, but after five of the six miles, my right leg went back to its old tricks and wasn't working.  I was trying very hard to make it work again and still keep up with the fast men I was running with, but I found myself working harder and harder and yet falling further and further behind.  When one leg is not-quite-responding to the neural impulses, no amount of guts or effort is going to produce an admirable pace.  And so I stopped.  I stopped with only a quarter mile to go and stretched and got the leg turned back on enough to run me back to the parking lot.

Once home after my meeting, I gritted my teeth and got down on the floor to do some of the exercises my physical therapist had prescribed when I was regularly losing control of my leg.  They have, over the past couple of years, become rather effortless.  Not last night.  Every muscle in my body begged to stop.

And so this morning, when I could have run an easy two or three miles, I allowed myself to sleep in.  I could have run while my daughter was at preschool, but I did not.  I could have gone down to the treadmill while she was taking a nap, but I also curled up for a nap.  My legs are still tired, and I feel it every time I go up a flight stairs.  Today would have made my streak a nice even three weeks, and I'll admit it was hard to let that go, but it was the right thing to do.  I realized, just in time, that had I run, although neither my body nor my spirit were going to benefit from it, what started out to be a blessing and joy would have become, instead, my master.

So the streak is broken, and I am free from it.  Tomorrow, when I return to my training plan I will be back in charge of my running, not being required to pay homage to the numbers any more.  Free to remember that I run because I can, because I love to, because of all of the benefits I receive from running.  I will not be tempted to serve the numbers instead. 

Where to begin

I was going to write about fasting today, but now my covenant group has a new assignment.  (OK, full disclosure: I wasn't going to write today at all, but here I find myself with a quiet house and a few minutes before I have to start dinner and the floor already mopped.  Yeah, some days I feel more like writing than others.)  I actually do feel like writing about something Jen brought up: the idea of ministering to your own neighbors. 

It's been bugging me that I am, as someone trying to follow Jesus, supposed to be visiting, feeding, and clothing the poor.  I participate in Third Tuesday suppers to the extent possible given my other obligations.  I donated my cucumbers.  I've baked desserts.  On the rare non-band third Tuesday, I have really enjoyed volunteering.  I donate clothes to rummage sale twice a year.  (Hmm.  Somehow, I never run out of clothes.)  But the truth is (ugh, how stupid and immature this sounds) I don't know any truly poor people.  The truth also is that I don't do much to remedy that, so shame on me for that.  Leaving aside the fact that I ought to make it my business to associate with the poor, let's consider how I should minister to the rich, who happen to be my actual physical neighbors, not in the sense of the "Good Samaritan" parable, but in the sense of the people who I see and talk to on a regular basis.  Because here's something important: Jesus said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.  God has some miracles to work amongst us, and since I'm hanging around here not doing much ministering to the poor, I might as well give him a hand.

But how?  Is it harder to minister to a rich person than a poor one?  The rich people do not need me.  I have nothing that they do not have bigger and better and more stylish already.

I wonder if ministering to the rich can be accomplished by showing them life otherwise.  To use a secular example, I walk or bike my daughter to and from preschool.  When, a few years ago, I started doing this with my son, I was the only one.  I walked him to school when I was nine months pregnant.  I walked him to school two days before giving birth, and the only reason I didn't wallk him to school the day I gave birth was that there was no school.  And people looked at me funny.  I enjoyed the walks, but I did not enjoy being a spectacle.  I was that one who....  Then I walked my son to school with my newborn in a stroller, days after giving birth.  I had to switch to driving when the weather conditions were not suitable for a stroller or infant, but otherwise, we walked to and from every day.  Most days, I was the only one.  But I did have a few conversations with a few moms who said, "Hmm.  I should...."  And a couple of moms did a couple of times.  Often they were too rushed and the car was easier.  One woman, though, several times drove to her mom's house, which was between my house and the preschool and joined me, walking her daughter, her baby, and her dog.  It was quite a parade.  Yes, it was a hassle, but I think everyone liked it anyway.   And who knows but that we didn't make a little difference?  Three years later, here I am walking my daughter to preschool every day and biking to pick her up.  And, wondrously, most days, I'm not the only one.  Granted, the day we walked to school in the drizzle (it was not very cold and we really wanted to use the rarely-enjoyed umbrella anyway,) we were the only ones walking.  But I wonder: did some moms look out their car windows and think, "Oh, I could have...."  I suspect most were not tempted, but I also suspect that most, had they tried it, would have had a good time, as my daughter and I did. 

It's a silly example, but cannot anything we do mindfully become a witness to the Teacher who shapes our hearts?  If someone were to ask me why I walk my daughter to school in the rain or (I hope) snow, I could say, "I enjoy it," and that would be true.  But I could also say, "It's my way of enjoying the gift of the weather," or "It's one little way I take care of creation," or "I remember as I walk the people for whom walking is the only option."

I do this with being vegetarian.  Yes, I do believe that vegetarianism, done well, is a healthy lifestyle.  But that lifestyle probably doesn't include cookies.  Lean meat is probably more healthy, really, than some of the desserts I allow myself daily.  And so, when people ask about being vegetarian, which they always do, I try to explain that I do it as an acknowledgement that the way meat is produced and consumed in our society is just not fair.  It hurts the planet, it hurts the animals (which is worse than killing and eating them, in my opinion,) and most importantly, it distributes our resources in such a way that someone must starve for me to enjoy a barbecue.  If I were eating meat, I would be using grain that could feed people to feed my food and letting the people go hungry.  Does one person not eating meat solve that problem?  I'll admit that it probably does not.  But it's how I make a little difference in my own kitchen, which is where I spend a lot of my time.  And, I hope, it ministers to the rich just a little bit.  Or at least witnesses.  Yes, we may be fortunate, but remember, all you meat-eating, SUV-driving, smartphone-addicted rich people, that most of the world does not (because they cannot) live as you do. 

These are things I do and things which take up a fair amount of my time, both in execution and in planning and preparation.  And yet they are small.  I am thinking, however, that there are more such things that could be done, or at least  named.