Category Archives: parenting

aftermath

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I spent Sunday at services of remembrance.

At church, we named the pain of 9/11, and allowed the space for grieving.  Preparing for that service, I joined the rest of the nation in remembering how the world shifted ten years ago.  The music played on MPR all week and the stories shared by those who were in New York on that day soaked into my soul.  The grief was raw and real.

Later on Sunday I went to an interfaith service of remembrance on the steps of the State Capitol.  Religious leaders in our varied regalia, singers and dancers, Heart of the Beast puppets and political leaders gathered with community members to name the pain and the hope, both.  It was good to be there.  I was not in a leadership position so I was able to be present and fully engaged at an emotional level.

Mondays are my day off.  Cooper and I got up and loaded the bikes on the car and drove to a bike trail that connects Cannon Falls and Red Wing.  We were out in the midst of a changing earth.  Leaves were falling, the air crisp, and the peddling fine.  We rode some twelve miles into Red Wing, shared a great cup of coffee and peddled back to the car.

For the first time since all my children moved back to Minneapolis, we gathered for a meal on Monday night, with the late addition of Cooper’s daughter who flew in from Kansas City.  We savored conversation, laughter and food.  I lost badly at cards.  We were family.

It was gift.  After being open to so much pain and death, the opportunity to move my body in the clarity of the air felt like a powerful affirmation of the gift that is life.  Sharing time with beloveds is the best celebration of living that I know.

There is a poignant awareness of the amazing grace of breath and love.

God help us to live gratitude.  There is so much we do not know.  Moment by moment we are given “alleluias”.  Whether bellowed or whispered, may we sound them through our being.

 

who’s on first?

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It is a morning of intentional deep breathing for me and for this living thing called my home.

In the next week two people are moving out and two people are moving in.

Rachel is vacating the nest she has lived in for two years.  She has been a most delightful roomie, breezing through the days with updates on life and adventures.  While working AmeriCorps, the third floor of our home was a cheap place to live (the coffee pot is always on, not a bad side benefit).  Now that she has a grown-up girl job in her field (pinch me!  It’s so fine!) she is moving into an apartment with friends.  It’s time and it is right and I will miss her.  Luckily she will be only five blocks away.  This I like.

Son Jameson is moving out.  He landed here six weeks ago after a near-year adventure in New Orleans working AmeriCorps.  At 21, his sense of play and need for friend gaggle is great, so having a house of his own is a near desperate desire.  He got the word yesterday that his rental dream house is his, so he will move this week.  He will be a mile or so away, able to come and go and congregate and music make as he pleases.  This is good.

With Rachel’s move in the offing, we decided to rent out the third floor, so on the 31st we will move into uncharted while familiar territory:  sharing our space, but this time, with a renter.  She will have access to the kitchen and will need to enter and leave through common space.  She is a nice young woman.  I think this will work.

And, frosting on the cake and almost unbelievable to my heart, my eldest daughter is moving back to her people.  Leah has been in Denver making life and learning much and having done her time, she is coming home to a great new job and a rejoicing fan club.  It hasn’t really sunk in yet.  I don’t have to steel myself for inevitable good-byes.  I get to see her and hear her and be with her and love her crazy from a much kinder distance.  She will live here for a time until she finds her own abode. Our house will be filled with her beauty and the fruits of her tiny bread-kneading hands.  She returns bringing with her Chela, a pit bull mix.  I’m trying to send peaceful energies to my creaky black lab and to the energetic and not-well-dog-socialized Chela.  May peace reign in their hearts!

So, a Saturday morning spent alone in this house soon to be stirred into changed and new life is a precious gift.

holy chaos

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Our church is alive with the sound of children.

It’s Vacation Bible School this week.  Every night we are gathered for dinner followed by fun and learning for toddlers on up.  There are familiar faces; people who have long called Richfield their home.

And, there are new faces.  Folks who are brave enough to enter the building for the first time, allow themselves to grab sloppy Joes and sit at a table and meet new people while children are grooving on the party scene.

Tonight, one of our children approached me and told me very important news:  today is her dad’s birthday.  Could we sing Happy Birthday to him?  Of course we did.

Think on it.  This young heart loves her dad fiercely and believes that such a love is shared best in a room full of people whom she knew well would want to share in the joy of his being.

It is beautiful, this coming together of new and old, young and not-so-young.

Outside the doors of the church the stock market is tanking, political leaders are dodging and starvation and want are all too real.

By holding VBS, we are living beyond despair; we are living into the vision of Jesus.  We are gathering at table with people who become kin.  We are tending the future in our children.  We are sharing a vision for living in community based upon sharing what we have because we can and because our God calls us to bless.  We are raising up disciples of Jesus the Christ in order that our children might know grounding in care for creation.

Maybe they can help us to remember.

 

finitude

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I have read much about it and I live it through my work, but no second-hand living can articulate what my being is grappling with in these days:  finitude.

I have a birthday this month.  I will be 54.  That number in itself is not all that noteworthy, but the awareness of limits on a body heretofore game for anything is sobering.  Sleeping on the ground in the BWCA was more remarkable to me in the morning than it has been in the past; remarkable meaning painful!  I carried canoes and toted packs and savored living in my body and in the savoring I was aware of creakiness new to me.  I will bear no more babies.  My laugh lines will bear ever more powerful witness.  And gravity…well, real it is.

There is a flailing around within me of late.  What is it I am called to do with the sweet miracle of the years I have?  I am in the life-cycle breath between launching children and welcoming grandchildren.  I am in the sweet place of gained confidence and earned life lessons.  I am seeking to listen listen listen for what it is the Holy calls to me to explore.  So far, the only answer I am given is “what is”; I am called to be present to what is.

My tendency is to launch myself into much.  I have dashed down roads to school and career and child-bearing and rearing of same and I have inhaled life and its fullness with great gusto.

I find myself in the familiar mode of scanning the universe for the “what next” of life.  I have written for catalogues for Doctoral programs (compatible with my pastoral schedule – I’m not leaving ministry!).  I am reading professional publications seeking the next fascination or adventure.  I am seeking seeking seeking.

But.  But perhaps this roily itchy time is the time to digest and savor the much of what has been.  Perhaps this is the time in my life when I will “afford” the Yoga classes I have longed for and the friendships I have tended shallowly.  Perhaps, after eight years in a church that has demanded constant juggling to lead I can take deeper breaths and trust that the Spirit breathes and frolics with greater freedom with and through a congregation pastored by a less harried woman.

I will admit to a bit of anxiety.

It takes greater spiritual discipline for me to “be” than to do.  It has always been so.

Perhaps this is the season for being present to the now; the precious irreplaceable now.

Perhaps, if you find yourself facing finitude and its provocations, you might join me in being present to what is.

No work for cowards, that.  I will welcome your company.

It is deep soul-mulchy work for this soul at this time: aware of time, honoring time, savoring time, loving time, trying-not-to-clutch-at-time, time.

 

 

humanity vow

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Sometimes reading the morning paper is a remarkable dunk into the absurd.

Today was.

It was reported that presidential candidate and US House of Representatives member (from MN) Michelle Bachman has signed an Iowa Christian group’s “Marriage Vow”.  Part of the rhetoric to which she joined her name includes a statement that has me head waggling yet.  Offensive is an understatement:

“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American president.”

The document also calls for banning same-sex marriage and pornography, as well as maintaining that women and children’s safety hinges on (and only on? my question) heterosexual marriage.

Hmmmm, where to begin?

We are to know, according to the document and according to the rhetoric washing over us relentlessly is that the answers to our considerable social problems are best handled sans government.  Which is befuddling, given that considerable time and effort was taken by our government (with an impending and eventual shut-down of our state government hugely real) to maneuver an amendment calling for marriage as available to only a man and a woman.

What the document signed in Iowa seems to imply is the reason for the crumblings of the American dream is the erosion of a one man one woman family.

The quote above seems to imply that if only we were back in the days of slavery, well then children would have two parents (never mind that they were owned as property and could be sold at the whim of the “property” owner).

If only one man and one woman were married women and children would be safe!  Never mind that women continue to make nearly 1/4 the salary of men.  Never mind that the realities of physical violence against women are real both within and without the bonds of marriage.  Never mind that nearly 1/5 of the children in our state live in poverty and that the guidelines for what makes for poverty is $22,000 for a family of four.  1/5!

I don’t know if the 1/5 have a man and a woman present in their home.  What I know is that we are an increasingly broken people.  What I know is that while our children go without food and early childhood education and live with the stress that is the daily reality of poverty, the issue, it seems to me, is not mandating what gender their care givers are.

The “Marriage Vow” is a dodge.  My opinion.

The issue, it seems to me, is who are we as followers of the Way?  Who are we?

I’m reading a great book:  How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill.  In it, he speaks of how it was St Patrick was able to share the good news of the gospel by way of how he lived, how he spoke to others, how he stressed the inclusive and expansive grandeur of God evidenced in the good of earth and humanity and when oh when have we heard that voicing of what it means to be a follower of Jesus from our political “Christians”?

We live in a time when a barrage of rhetoric is meant to shut down the asking of questions, the naming of pain, the noting of increasing disparity, the mining of the teachings of our faith that would have us to know that the kingdom of God is not created based upon the one sure foundation of one man and one woman joined in holy matrimony.

The kingdom of God is created when we each; each of us different, each of us passionate about the vision preached by Jesus, each of us willing to claim a common desire to cease this nutsy-making rhetorical mud fight (gee, am I mud fighting here???), each of us willing to look around us at the faces and lives of the neighbors who are children of God and see what is real and respond in the ways taught by Jesus.  Those teachings are pretty clear.

Marriage is based upon living partnership in such a way that the fragile is tended.

Our “Marriage Vow” ought consider the fragile family of God’s beloveds.

What is needed, it seems, is a “Humanity Vow”.  It is the vow we claim as our own when we claim kinship with the Christ.

God grant us the courage and the heart for the living of these days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

memories

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Memorial Day has always been a weekend of cabin and family.  After retirement my father was a purveyor of popcorn, ice cream, pop and curiosity from his club car bus at the park in Moose Lake.  The Macaulay and Moose Lake Holyoke Railroad Popcorn Bus was a park fixture.  Dad loved the chance to interact with people, and proudly proclaimed his popcorn the best there ever could be.  He was right about that.

On Memorial Day he would drive the bus to our cabin, park it, and let the grandkids gorge themselves on all the treats they wanted.

It was disgusting and wonderful, both.  Our children would be covered in various forms of sticky and their sense of amazement at this free access to the forbidden was wonderful to behold.

Fifteen years ago, the day after Memorial Day, my father died of a massive heart attack.  I had called him in the morning to thank him and check in, and by the afternoon he was gone.

So Memorial Day, as leaves were raked, flowers planted, and time shared with my family at the cabin sans treat bus, I thought much about the unfolding of family and the changing meanings of same and the thread of grace and faith that stitches life together.

Fifteen years ago, as we hugged goodbye, never did I imagine that I would no more be able to hug that skinny and rumbly body again.  There are so many never-could-have-imagineds that have commenced since that time.

And, the flowers got planted.  The celebration that is life was shared.  The belief in the power of what will be was lived into through conversations and loving and savoring what is.

It is the shining possibility of now that makes for later memories.  It is taking in the crunch of dirt under nails, the heave of belly through laugh and the smelling of life in flower and neck.

And, there is gratitude.  Gratitude for the quirky gift that is family in all its vexations. Gratitude for the souls of those who blessed and live yet through our hearts and passions. Gratitude that thirty-some years from now, my children will be planting flowers and thinking thoughts about how it is we encountered life together.

I will be there as my father is there and so too will their children hear the stories and plant newness of life in the sweet yearn of memory.

how it is

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Blending families is not for the faint of heart.

I married a man who has three children.  I have three children.  We came together when said children were launching into life.  They were and are young adults fine of mind, body and spirit.

When contemplating this blending adventure, I drew pictures in my mind of a doubled tribe happily meshing into a glorious larger whole.  Our children, who already liked each other immensely, would take to the shared roof adventure with great gusto.

And so they have.  But not in the ways my imagination drew.

What we are discovering is that each group needs its time.  So this weekend, Cooper has travelled to Kansas City to be with his three children and mine are gathering here for a trip to the holy land of the cabin.

For a weekend, we will live rhythms of family we have known for decades.  Of course there will be cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  Of course it will be hard to get Jameson out of bed.  Of course we will sit under the stars and feel awe.  No one will have to be explained into shared memories and jokes, and the delicate work that is weaving the new will be given over to relaxing into the old.

Years ago I would have counted this parallel play as indictment of the new.  Now I see it as healthy and celebratory relishing of the power of growing up in a stew of shared assumptions and ways of being.  In psycho-speak, we’re affirming differentiation. Relishing the apart does nothing to malign the new.

So, when Leah steps off the plane from Denver tonight, we will load three siblings, a dog, a cat, and a humming mother into a Jetta (it’s a good thing we like each other and the dog will not be wet!) and make the trek to the cabin.  For a weekend, we will be teasing, savoring people who have shared so much life, love, and struggle.

When Cooper joins us on Sunday, he will be washed with the same and the glow from his own time with his babies will shine from him.

That’s how it is.  Thanks be to God.

miracle

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Tribe and heart are amazing things.

I come from a line not so different from many.  In the growing-up years of the generation before me, feelings were kept tightly held.  Like all things kept in the dark of self, contained feelings made for inner roil and outer censorship.

And then, through the soul-task that is living, feelings get named and shared and lives and hearts are changed forever more.

As she lay dying of cancer, aware beyond a doubt that her days were numbered and her heart desirous of open, my aunt said to her adult daughter four words that thrum yet in my soul:  Love is a miracle.

Love is a miracle.

Miracle is.

I stood tonight at the airport waiting for the arrival of my son.  He has been in New Orleans working for AmeriCorps.  I haven’t seen him since Christmas.  As I waited I was witness to the arrival of a man coming home after serving for over a year in Afghanistan.  I watched miracle as his family swooped him up and held onto his precious and whole flesh.  Theirs were not the only weeping eyes.  Those of us who bore witness wept along with them.

And then my son was there and my arms were filled with his sweet being and my heart near broke with the miracle of loving.

Love is a miracle.  We get to live it.  My aunt spoke its power to her beloveds and her words bespeak the ways she became willing to apprentice herself to the art of unclenching.

It is art for the courageous, this thing called loving.

My tribe is courageous.

If

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If you hate injustice, tyranny, lust and greed, hate these things in yourself.                 Gandhi

It feels sometimes as though we are consuming ourselves.

I read last week that the state of Minnesota is considering harvesting trees from state park lands to sell at the market to bail us out of financial woe.

I read this morning that cuts are being made to health care for the poor in our state.  They will be shifted to private health care in order for the state to cut its costs and while surely cuts must be made we know beyond a doubt that many will fall through the health care cracks.

Schools are fighting for survival, infrastructure is unraveling and the words being traded across public airwaves are hate and fear speak.

And most troubling to this mother’s heart is this report from my daughter.  In checking her voice mail upon entering her work day, she heard on the recording the sound of automatic gun fire.  Just that.  Just that.

She works for NARAL.  She works with an organization that works to insure that all women retain the decision-making power over their own bodies.

Evidentally the work of her organization inspired someone to spew the deadly sounds of hate and fear into her office and most fearsomely, into her heart.

How do we, as a people grounded in a movement insistent upon care for creation, get honest about the health and honesty of our own hearts? How do we root around and name the resentments, fear, injustices and tyrannies that lurk in our own hearts?  Once found, how do we exorcize them, making room for the cultivation of belief in a peace that generates life?

Rather than grinding the seed corn of our future, we are called to mulch the soil of that which we tend first and foremost:  our own hearts.  From such tending, the future of creation is made verdant.

Rather than consuming ourselves, we choose to grow grace and peace and hope, assured that there is enough for all:  enough compassion, enough food, enough care, enough.

We choose.

happy birthday mom

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Two days ago, my mother turned 82.

My mother is titan and tender, both.  I do not know anyone stronger, and this has to be great burden for her.  She has faced pains and trials too great for a well-bred beautiful hopeful woman to face.  But face them she has, with grace and grit.

This snippet of her life is illustration:  she skated in the Ice Follies.  She was one of the bespangled beauties who learned to live out of a train and share glamor and thrill with audiences and do you remember the finale of the Ice Follies?

A kick line was created.  A spinning line made of skaters linked one to the other.  Those joining the line waited on either side of the rink to skate for all they were worth to link up to the circling spectacle.  It was easy for the early joiners.  But as each skater was added to the line, the line got longer and harder and harder to catch.  Sometimes the show ended with the last skater pushing harder and harder and harder to catch a spinning line that eluded her.  It becomes clear she will never link up.  The audience cheered and groaned, both, since they wanted the determined skater to find success and they knew in their own souls the humiliation of public less-than-perfect.

My mom was the last skater.  She would pump her heart and legs and determination to join that line.  Sometimes with success.  Sometimes not.

A year ago, she was hit from behind on the freeway.  Her car rolled a number of times.  We got the call no child wants to get – the call that intimates that the author of your childhood heart is in peril.  She was in rough shape, broken of pelvis and bruised of body and for a time, we sat with her as she weighed the living or the dying of her days.

She lives.  She is walking miles a day and managing her brood and pain of body and heart are real and she lives yet.

Around her, things are dying:  her sister, the cognition of her brother, the fantasy of a family Walton-esque, friends, and some of her passions.

But the flame of life that is Barbara Jane Fawcett Macaulay Forrest is fierce and honed and hungry yet for meaning and she is much alive.  And the world is better for this.

Mothers and daughters live with hearts close.  Our hopes for each other are dense and complicated.  We are the other, we are ourselves, we are wildly different and we are often heartbreakingly lonely for each other:  for the was and the is and the might have been.

And, my mother is that last skater, determined to do the impossible:  to do it with grace and with grit and to make it look good in the doing.

Happy birthday, mom.