what a beauty!!!!

The Zodiak on a windy day in Puget Sound!

life questions

I have a few life questions:

Why can we put satellites in outer space, have cell phones, create nuclear power, and we STILL cannot invent a lotion bottle that gets ALL the lotion out of it, even as it gets empty?

Why does cheese in great quantities have to make you fat? It's my favourite protein, hands down. Middle age and cheese, can I reconcile the two? Deep sigh.......

Why do we grow hair, to shave it off? I'm not advocating extreme hairiness, which would be disturbing I am sure, but I do wonder at the point of it all.

Is there ever any point at which one has enough chapstick?

Why do people drive in the left lane when they want to go the speed limit or under? Do they not SEE the long line of cars behind them? I'd like to be a member of the Voluntary Left-Lane Patrol. I'd be good, damn good, at my job.

Should we believe in the pre-hensile tail? All the doctors say we have one.

Do we really need directions on a bottle of salad dressing?

Why does the width of the brim of a hat corollate to age? As age increases, so the width of the brim. Is the sun MORE dangerous as you get older or does the sun just give people another reason to be cantankerous, and they must therefore have more sun protection? I'd suggest then, also, that there is an inverse relationship to hipness -- as the width of the brim expands, so the fashion of the wearee diminishes.

Why do people say they love the natural world, but then go to the mountains in a ready made home on wheels, so that they can have all the 'comforts of home'?

Why does Citibank tell you to use credit responsibly and then send you a notice that says, Guess what? We've increased your credit line by 5,000 bucks?

What did they do before dental floss?

As you can see my mind is just brimming with any number of significant ponderings. Put me out of my misery and write to me: please answer my questions if you can.

By the way, Autumn is HERE!!!! The sky is blue, the trees are turning and the air is crisp. Yahoo! I've been loving my rides lately as I fly through the leaves and listen to them rustling. Snowshoeing, winter camping, and skiing are right around the corner, but biking is now. On that note, I think I'll head out for a ride!

Get out and enjoy the blessed creation -- ain't it amazin'?

land rock

Apparently I have what's called Land Rock. It's been two days now since coming off Cynthia's brother's boat, and I can't quite shake it: the terra firma ain't feeling so firma. The computer screen sways in front of me as I write this.

I had a blast -- see pictures. Sea, sky, autumn air, orcas and salmon and river otters and osprey. My heart, in many ways, is replete. Being on a boat causes one to focus on the moment. There are no distractions (when you're not the captain or the engineer or the chef!), only the journey. Not surprisingly, I slept -- a lot. The motion, the enforced silencing of mundane activities, and the cessation of all things normal was a lullaby and nighty night.

In my more wakeful times, my soul was trailing its fingers in the water as I kayaked and explored the bays we anchored in. Salmon leapt around us everywhere one night, desperately flinging themselves toward the spawn -- the stream where they themselves were hatched. Am I doing that, too? Desperately trying to find, not the metaphor for where my life is headed, but the actual life of which I have come? Out of the heart of God borne, am I finding my way back?

Attraction and response -- the salmon climb the ladders not out of want or preference, they do this because they must. They are attracted -- by what, no one really knows -- to return at whatever their internally appointed time is (when they reach a certain state of maturity in their life cycle) and when that time is now, they respond and go. Upstream. For weeks. They don't eat or linger. They swim and jump and flail until they have returned. And somehow also, they know when they have come back to that place of genesis.

With my soul-fingers in the water, I am listening: what am I incorrigibly attracted to and respond to?

I have a few days at home to let this sit, not so much in my head, but in my belly. I know I can't reason out the answer, can't call upon the Great Magician (i.e. the Analyst) to bail me out this time. I have to stay with the motion of my soul as it rocks upon the waters, even though I am back on hard ground.

darkroom

Cynthia made a deal with me: she would do the dishes if I wrote a blog. Hmmmm. Conundrum. Either avoid a creative activity or do the nightly cleanup. Okay, so you know which one I opted for! But, perhaps surprisingly, the choice was a hard one.

Creative acts still scare me. They seem too risky. Too fraught. To likely to cause tangles. And I am not much for tangles. Tedious. Tiresome. Making me, Testy.

When I was 12, I used to ride my bike to the creative arts center, based out of an old, beautiful home, circa 1920, in my home town for a photography class and for the occasional tye-dying workshop. In the photography class, I learned how to develop film, how to alter negatives for different effects, how to play with light and the side of photography which is often forgotten -- processing. Alot happens in that hermetic, basement environment. Things grow in the dark. Images, colours, light. Too much or too little of one or the other and it changes everything.

The red light is glowing in my little darkroom, and I am fiddling with the canister of film, rolling precious celloid exposed to secret slants of light round and round. In preparation. The images embedded, out-of-sight, will be called out and defined, for others to see and perceive. I wonder, in the obscurity of this imposed night, of what will emerge when the lights of daytime and industry are switched back on. What will they see?

Kickin'

Some of you have been wondering if I am still alive and kicking....well, here's the proof!

It's been a summer of fun days on the rock, as well as hiking, backpacking, fishing, riding, birdwatching, whatever it takes it get outdoors. I figured I would try out the new photo feature on the website and throw up a pic from one of this summer's climbs. That's Cynthia at the bottom belaying me. I wish I could look more stylish and cool like they do in all the climbing mags, but I happen to like my brain a whole lot and prefer to keep it intact with the bucket on my head (just in case you didn't recognise me!)

Climbing is such a focused activity for me, allowing absolutely no other thought besides -- where's my next hold and, deeper down, that intuitive sense of -- thrill. I have been wondering lately if I have kept myself too busy this summer with activity as a means of distancing myself from things I don't want to ponder. As I've circled around that question any number of times, the consistent answer I seem to be getting from my insides is that NO, the activity hasn't been an escapist activity, but a functional one. Let me explain.

One of America's greatest female mountaineers says that because of the prolonged periods of focus she experiences on her climbs, she is more able and more creative as a scientist. Her greatest scientific insights, she says, have always come shortly after returning from one of her expeditions, during which, there is precious little time to think about anything beyond the immediate task. My theory is that when the mind is forced to cut out all static -- particularly when your physical survival is dependent upon this -- the soul-bear stirs and stretches and smells the air. Hibernation, in its season, has almost passed, and it is time to awake from a winter of necessary rest into a summer of eating and reproducing. (Sounds like a good time to me!)

So that's what my soul has been doing -- eating and reproducing ;-) It has been in a state of expansion and growth. Imperceptible movements to those who look on, but I know, that within me there is some serious frolicking going on. That bear is about to break down the house! And when she's done, there will be some provocative reorganisation that will have happened.

Thus, returning to the question I posed to myself above about activity's role in either avoidance or growth, I am casting my vote for the Yea side. I've ranted about how too many people glorify over-activity in our culture (I still believe that), but when there is a beckoning to the Spirit of God to be present in the midst of what is not avoidance, but focused occupation, the Soul can live, rattle around, and remember what the smell of blueberries is like, and grow -- something that I really do think pleases God to no end.

for john

I know it's been since April. I know. I know. But sometimes the deep don't wanna creep out to the pages of a public place and show its face. I've had a lot on my mind.

Tonight I just want to remember. To remember a dear childhood friend of mine who died this past week. I can't believe that at 43 he has flown away and is gone.

John was the older brother of a friend of mine from church. She was 3 years older than I, and we met when I was 5 and she 8. That made John, the older brother, really old. All of about 9. He was the spark behind many a scheme, dirt clod fight, fort, and army game. In the housing development where my friends lived when I first met them, we played in the dug-out earth of all the houses going up around them, leaping into the foundation pits and clawing our way out again. John was always the one with the most daring-do, the bravado, and on many occasion taunted his sister for her caution, which either produced angry action or tears on her part.

When my friends decided to move house at some point, they moved into my neighbourhood. A mere 5 blocks away. Glory. Sleepovers ensued and Legos and torturing their pet cats, and once we got older, nighttime adventures.

Catching a few hours of sleep in a blanket fort we had thrown together in John's room, we three would awake to the sound of the alarm which we had set for a 3am-ish time. A very cool time to be awake when you are 10. The commander had a plan and his minions waited in the wings for their orders.

-TP house of schoolmate X, Y, Z
-Run across main street only wearing underwear
-Climb into rich neighbour's yard. Spell his name out in clothes pins on his backyard walk.
-Continue on to -- of course -- Winchells. Buy donuts.
-Stop at 7-11. Buy milk.
-Walk home, eating donuts, celebrating a successful evening.

Who else, I now wonder, could have gotten me to run across 14th Avenue, in the middle of the night, in my underwear? The things my parents never knew!

Adventures were followed by duties and because John had a paper route 7 days a week, his sister and I were also commandeered into helping with that. Our nighttime glory was shortlived as we would have to return home, fold a 150 Tribunes, pack up the bikes and set out for morning delivery.

I was the little tagalong. Appropriately named Radar by John's parents. I just wanted to be on the action, and John had that magnetic, charismatic personality that drew me in nodding 'yes' to whatever he might suggest. Where he led, I would follow.

When we got to be teenagers, we would all board Ski Bus together at 6am in our hometown and set out for a day on the slopes. Little sister and Radar followed Big Bro along, hoping only that we weren't being led to our deaths. He was an incredible daredevil. So much so, that his parents wouldn't let him get his driving license until he was 17 or 18, which nearly killed him for wanting. When he did finally manage to convince his parents he was ready for the adult world of driving, I saw him, more than once, driving their gorgeous, apricot-coloured 57 Chevy like he was prepping for Indy. Speed, risk, flight, adventure. They all seemed to speak to him.

It was no surprise then that when it came time to choose a career path, he decided to be an engineer. Of rockets. Harnessing all that brain power that whirred in his busy head, he built the object of his fascination, something which so characterized how I saw him when I was that tripping-along-behind little kid: a force blasting beyond the ordinary.

As such, I find it odd that he should die, on an ordinary day, after a game of softball, his heart bursting in such a way that he had probably died by the time he even fell to the ground. Right there on a field, in a parking lot, on his way home...somewhere common....returning to his routine, his evening, his wife. I hate thinking of it.

Rather, I like remembering him, seated next to his dad in the small Cessna that they took out to practice their flying, each of them with a headset on, and John's dad telling him to take over the rudder. From my backseat perspective, all I remember was the roller coaster, the air pockets, the fun he seemed to have being the pilot of an acrobatic aircraft, and that Oreos was not a good choice of food to eat before flying in a small plane. Messy. Very messy.

Right now, I am thankful for these moments which reflected, looking back on things now as an adult, essence-- the true self in motion. I am grateful to have beheld you, John, and will grieve the day you took up wings of a dove and flew away to be at rest.

ni idea

Sitting here at my desk, after a long day, nursing a Heineken (my fave summer beer since it seems to be nearly summer already -- until the next snow storm, that is). My dinner is eaten, groceries put away -- dishes not done, however, -- and wishing. Wishing that life were sometimes easier. Pollyannas step aside, sometimes life just sucks. Purely sucks.

I hate sin. I hate mental illness. I hate disease. I hate having to work through crap. I hate having weaknesses. I hate sore feet. I admit it. I feel overwhelmed in the crapness of it all. I want to bury my head in a cryogenic freezer and not surface for another 100 or more years until a time when it's "all better."

Of course, I know this panacea doesn't ever materialize. I got it right there in the Book. Don't get any better. Not till you make it all the way up to St Teresa de Avila's or San Juan's place. (They have a sign out front, you can't miss it.) Now there, there, all is well (guess I gotta include St Julian of Norwich, too in that case). For now I get to kill time drinking beer, making myself a salmon dinner, writing a blaaahg out into lah lah land hoping a few friends will hear me, and dreaming about doing the Colorado Trail this summer. Is there anything in between the sublime and the, well, I am not going to call eating salmon or drinking beer ridiculous or banal, but, you know what I mean....? Bliss or ....? I don't know how to fill that in.

I am tired of things being a slog, hard. I am tired of seeing people I love suffer things like MS and mental illness. I am heartbroken that my nephews have no father who can show them how to be good men in this world....that they have to go it on their own. I am tired of being single. Tired of men who are well past the age of oughting to know who can't get their shit together and make a decision about how to take a wife. (I guess I better start referring them to Shakespeare for life direction: see Taming of the Shrew. Decide to marry. Then, do so. -- of course there was a bit of coercion that had to go take place in this particular example :-) ) But hey, this is MY blog, so I can say whatever I want!

Okay, so you get the punto. I am struggling. I need to see a way through all this -- somehow.

Got any ideas?

as it happens

Do you like chaos theory? If so, watch Happenstance (with Audrey Tautou of Amelie -- in French with English subtitles). If you don't like intuitive, non-action packed films that don't explain themselves entirely, don't watch it. If you like things that are abstract, that ask the viewer to make possible connections in the film's plotline, minimal but meaningful dialogue -- go for it. I found myself laughing through most of the film (which is a comedy) and was practically rolling around, gripping my sides in one scene where the main character gets locked out of her apartment and her Tarot card reading neighbour offers to have her in for a cup of tea while she waits for her roomate to arrive with the key.

I haven't blogged much lately. You may have noticed. I find it hard to get here more often, especially when life feels like a slog. And it does lately. I am tired. I took three days off (in a row! lovely miracle!) and all I want to do is what I describe to my roomate as "draw in"...for weeks. Months.

Quiet is something I crave. Not just an external quiet, but the inner one, where voices die out and I can hear my own heartbeat, where I can hear God breathing, present with me. How do I find this in my circumstance as it is just now? I must find out or even my own heartbeat and its sound will die out -- or be drowned out by the violence of Noise and Busyness -- two things we seem to enshrine here in the US.

Maybe that's what happens when I don't get to this space more often: the sound of my inner life is distant and rings dull, and I feel it hasn't any meaning for anyone else....why put it into a public forum, I ask? But I know this is not true. I read the thoughts and experiences of others I know who write frequently on their blogs, and I love sharing in their lives. Mind you, I tend to read blogs where others are looking for insight, attempting the "examined life" via their everyday experience.

Am not certain what I am trying to say except: I want to find a way to reclaim creativity in times of duress, so that I do not "go fah fah away" from my Me-self that needs the creative process on a daily basis. Pain and doubt tend to paralyse and yet I think they are given as a means to something greater....something to tap into, that if held tenderly, can lead me to insight and joy and meaning.

Guess I don't know what else to say besides that today. I showed up today because I still have hope that I am one of the chief agents in this reclamation project....and that my words are perhaps the toes in the water to get me there.

ya basta...ENOUGH already!

Some of you have encouraged me to try blogging more often, getting stuff out there in a more shoot-from-the-hip style. Some of you that I read do that yourselves, and I am always amazed at what that spiritual discipline yields: profound insights, witty observations, wry, sideways looks at what's going on around you. In amongst the quotidian and mundane, of course.

I could really use an order of that banal stuff right now. I am sick of DEEP MEANING. (At least for the next hour or so.) I continue the waiting game with jobs. FYI for those of you waiting along with me about that one job I felt I was possibly going to get: after six weeks of deliberating, their "committee" decided on someone else. Fine. Glad I don't have to work with that kind of indecision on a daily basis, but way to drag it out, guys! Have they forgotten the torture of being on the other side, of being the one waiting for the decision?

I have noticed that the trigger of a lot of the DEEP MEANING that I seem flooded with at this time in my life is waiting. Have I mentioned how much I hate, despise, am fed up with, scream, shout and spit at WAITING? Well, I have reached the colmo ..... the apex....the height of it, and it's making me want to do strange things like chew my fingers off or pull out my eyelashes.

Job, relationship (yes, of the male/female variety), future, church....(fill in a litany of stress/anxiety causing items)....I feel I am in waiting hell. Do any of these parts of life go in a straightforward manner for anyone? Honestly, I don't want to compare, but sometimes I hear the cheery stories of friends who did things like apply for jobs that they then GOT, and relationships that got started because one person liked the other and vice versa and they then DATED, and well.... you get the picture.

My wits' end is that I have waited A LOT and I want STRAIGHTFORWARD. Give me something boring, God, today, like a timely call on a resume, or a phonecall from a guy I have been seeing (even an email would be just fine, Lord), or....blahdy, blah. My rant could go on.

So here I am today, shooting from the mouth instead of the hip because, though I am not powerless in these circumstances, there are just some things you CANNOT CONTROL. Perhaps, deep down, I do not like this fact. Perhaps, I have issues.

Ponder....

Ponder...

Perhaps, I have circled back to the top of the loop where, Enter Stage Right, here comes DEEP MEANING again.

Jesus in a dish drainer

I don’t know how many times I have started this blog in my head…lots of ideas floating around…different things I have been mulling over. Tonight, I write because I MUST! I’ve realized that having a housemate for the last few months (who happens to be in the midst of a personal crisis) has been a distraction that usually is good and a blessing, but sometimes keeps me from my inner work….the place where I really live life out of. I have realized that for me to live, I must dwell in a creative “space”. God, who is the author of creativity, is with me there, speaks to my heart via my intuition, feelings, impressions, and through the natural beauty around me. Every time I see a bird of prey perched alongside the road on my way to work, I feel as if it is God telling me He is with me. He hasn’t forgotten. He hears my prayers. He knows my struggle for being in a harried, hassled world. My most alive me evolves out of the creative space that I am meant to occupy. “A place prepared for me,” if you will.

How do I get there when the needs around me are great? When friends are in distress, when life’s demands shout me out of bed? My heart suffers when I cannot find a place to dwell. I get angry and frustrated, blocked. In my writing, I am travelling a newly trodden path that takes me back there: to the place I can dwell. That is why I am here. In the doing of this – writing – I am journeying to being. A place where I am at peace with myself and others, where I have had my say and I have been heard by God and people alike, and it is good.

Down the block from where I live, I passed a crèche scene that was still up in someone’s yard, well after Christmas. Kitschy figurines of the nativity company are huddled around the centerpiece of the scene: Baby Jesus.

Little Baby Jesus.

In a plastic dish drainer.

Sometimes I ponder the utter humanity of Christ, how he so humbly arrived into this world of demands, pain, misunderstanding, beauty, and joy, and I wonder, “How did he do it?” God Incarnate, the Living Word, enters the human milieu on the rungs of a white, plastic dish drainer. How did he maintain the place inside where he dwelt? The place where glory abides? We offered him little but grief, and yet he was so alive, and creative, and so intent on becoming the fullness, in human flesh, of what he was meant to be.

I wanna be like that and find that place where glory dwells, and I behold it, and I live in it. And it lives in me.

How about you?