Home

My fingers touch the keys and instantly I am connected to self, to soul, to that part of my being that has remained silent for nearly a year.  I have fasted from writing, journaling, and blogging.
I used to say that I write to process what I'm feeling. It follows, then, that my abstinence from writing may also have been an escape from feeling. It therefore is not coincidental that my return to a writing  practice coincides with my return home.

As my odyssey continued for nearly three years, I became stubbornly determined to make my way back home - fiercely fighting to hold on tight to my dream - refusing to let go.
I don't know yet whether that fight will have been worth the cost of my labor.
I just know that I have been home sick for a very long time.

The other day, I was getting on to the freeway and I saw a homeless man in his makeshift campsite underneath the overpass.  He was clearly visible, isolated on a desolate island of concrete and rock, surrounded by speeding cars and exhaust fumes. I found myself wondering what it was that drew him to that particular place. He was laying on a sleeping bag. Next to him was a grocery cart filled with stuff. He was so alone and yet so public.

I felt ashamed and guilty.

I have never in my life slept under a freeway overpass.
Hardship comes in a variety of forms.
My yearning for home has been with me constantly and now that I am almost there, I am questioning what it all has meant.

 My shame and guilt swelled within me as I passed the homeless man under the freeway.  All of a sudden, I was faced with an existential crisis. All I could think of was what the philosopher and theologian,  Paul Tillich referred to as "Ground of Being."
 I began to weep.

 Has this sojourn been a spiritual exile disguised in the physical notion of home?  The mystery of our very existence dwells within the invisible walls of our human psyche.  Isn't the home for which we yearn  really our union with the Divine?

That homeless man forced me to look at something far deeper in my experience.
Home is a physical place but it is also a mental and spiritual place.
The essence of home is the "Ground of Being. "

My fast has provided an empty dwelling where my spiritual self may now take root.
At home,
I am.

A Breath Taking Lesson

I felt like what I'd written my brother had felt like that morning it had taken me four hours to get him out of his condo to take him to the doctor. Step. Stop. Rest. Like the oxygen had been vacuumed out of me. I slumped against the tile in the shower. Sheer will power had gotten me there from my bed. I'd pulled myself up knowing something was wrong. When one's body wants attention, it has plenty of ways of demanding it. Not being able to breathe is a pretty clear message. I had to get to the doctor.
Chills, aches, and a rumbling cough that came from deep within the cavern of my body told me this was not just a cold. I wondered if I had Swine flu. I figured bronchitis. I couldn't drive.
My house keeper, Silvia, was busily mopping the floor when a stood at the top of my stairs and choked out her name. "Silvia, can you please drive me to the doctor?"
It is a bit of blur to me now. She did drive me. Foggily, I presented my medical card and driver's license at the counter. When they took me back to the examining room, I couldn't sit up. I lay on the metal table, lethargic, without an ounce of energy, my head resting on a pillow covered in scratchy paper.
A chest xray confirmed, bacterial pneumonia.
"Wow," I thought. "Wow."
No wonder I felt like I remember my brother feeling before being admitted to the hospital for breathing treatments. He had pneumonia.
My oxygen level was low. The prescriptions kept coming. Inhaler. Antibiotics. Ibuprofin. Then the zinger. Off work for a week.
"What!?!"
A week off work??? It's not possible. I teach five classes. My freshmen are getting ready to start their final scenes. My sophomores are getting ready to perform scenes from The Crucible. My seniors are preparing Blithe Spirit. How could I possibly miss a week of school?
She hands me a note. "Doctor's orders."
"Wow," I thought. "Wow."

I guess I over did it.
I guess I ignored the signs of fatigue.
I guess I still haven't learned that lesson. You know the one. Balance.
Just ask my husband. He's had to live with me for twenty -nine years as of today, our anniversary.
He says that my overly developed sense of responsibility, conscientiousness, and work ethic is in my DNA.

I know better.
It was modeled for me. Expected of me. Forced upon me. Sung to me. In many cases in my life, I had no choice. This is learned behavior. I've had lots of practice.

You see, I was born out of grief – a replacement for two brothers – one dead. The other gay. Both secrets. I filled the void . Where ever there was a void, I filled it. I was the pleaser. The fixer. My father used to sing this little rhyme to me, “Always do a little more than what people expect you to do. Always do a little more and you’ll be happy too.”
He forgot to tell me when more was enough.
What could have been enough to replace a buried child, save a marriage, a family business, and a brother with AIDS?
When I was growing up, my parents fought.
After one terrificly ugly fight they told me that I was the reason they stayed married.
Wow.
That's a lot of power for a child to wield.
And a lot of responsibility.

I remember several years ago, when I was getting my Masters, the question was posed, "What lie have you have believed about yourself that has impacted the choices you have made?"

I remember the question piercing me. Its ramifications far reaching. It was a simple lie.
It's my responsibility.
If it is my responsibility, then, no one else can do it.
Always do a little more than what people expect you to do. Dangerous words.

I accused my brother of denial when he had AIDS. I've written volumes on how denial can kill.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.

I must face my own denial.

I'm not drowning, I'm swimming.

I must learn when enough is enough.

The reckoning or the wrecked.

My choice.

Stephen Sondheim wrote,

"Careful the things you say. Children will listen. Careful the path you take. Children will see and learn. Children will look to you for which way to turn to learn what to be. Careful before you say, listen to me. Children will listen."

Wise words for teachers.
And a lot of responsibility.

Kairos

I've just returned from a Kairos retreat with a group of forty-seven students. Kairos means "in God's time." It is the opposite of Chronos which refers to sequential time. Surrendering to a belief that there is such a thing as God's time creates a completely different perspective on one's life.

Perspective is something that cannot be hurried. One simply cannot gain perspective without time. It is one of the gifts of a long life. Perspective helps us to make sense of the events in our lives. It helps us to derive meaning, to connect the dots, to see the continuum.

Perspective gives us a lens through which to take stock of the choices in our lives. Choices that define who we are and what matters to us. Choices that we make out of opportunity, or the lack there of. Choices made out of pain, fear, obedience, self preservation or self loathing. Choices made from a desire for acceptance, a yearning for change or a need for control.

There are consequences for every choice we make. It is perspective that allows us to reconcile ourselves with the consequences. Perspective gives us clarity.

It is clarity I gained this week. Clarity allows for forgiveness, understanding, and purpose.

One of the ways we gain clarity is through the telling of our story. Our shared stories help us to see that we are not alone. That our pain, though unique to our particular journey, is not unique. It is part of the experience of being human.
And when we share our stories, we help others to gain perspective.

A perspective that there is a purpose to every single thing that occurs in our messy, complicated, complex, confusing lives. Everything. As Rilke says,

"Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist:in understanding as in creating. In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernably silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything."

Jean Pierre Medaille, SJ, wrote in his Maxims of Perfection in 1657

"Never go ahead of grace
through imprudent eagerness
but await its moment in peace
and when it comes to you,
follow it with great gentleness and courage.
Once you have obeyed,
take care
lest complacency
rob you of the fruit of your obedience."

In order to live like this, we have to trust that as the medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich says,

"All will be well. All will be well. All manner of things will be well."

Trust. Even if we don't live to see the purpose in the event. Even if we don't gain perspective. In God's time, it all has meaning.
I am grateful to have been reminded of this. I feel reconnected with a renewed sense of purpose. Because of the clarity I have gained, I can embrace the "is-ness" of my life. I trust in Kairos.

No One is Alone

Twenty-eight years ago my life shattered when I was twenty-two years old. My cousin, Jimmy, told me later that "everyone's life shatters." No one prepared me for this. Maybe that is because no one really can. The good news is that twenty-eight years later, I'm put back together. Certainly not the same person I was then but I did pick up the pieces. Mental health is a continuum. Depression, anxiety, and mood disorders are often triggered by events over which we have no control. Part of the picking up of one's self often includes some very dark, difficult passages - "dark nights of the soul" as they are often referred to. One of the books I read during that time, was called When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd. This book helped me to understand that during a depression, transformation is taking place. Kidd uses the metaphor of the caterpillar and the cocoon. One cannot rush the process of becoming a butterfly. The cocoon cannot be opened prematurely. She likens a depression to being in a cocoon. I think looking at these dark times in our lives through a spiritual context can be helpful. We are where we need to be - always. I can only speak for myself of course, but it has been my experience that everything works to the good. Even the hardest things we face in life - the most unimaginable pain we might experience - contains gift. But sometimes, we feel very alone. It's important to remember that we need not be. Humbling as it may be, it is important to seek help when we need it. Ask. The Beatles said it best, "I get by with a little help from my friends." Other books that have been helpful to me include Henri Nouwen's, CS Lewis' A Grief Observed. As the song from my favorite musical, Into the Woods says, "No one is alone." It's important to remember that.

A Little Poem

You can only become what you are
by allowing yourself the time
to find who you were
from the beginning
but lost
because
you got so busy
that you forgot
to take time
to recognize the person
you forgot
you are.

The Veil

I suppose we are always haunted by our past in some way. Buried deep within us are the consequences of our choices and the risks not taken. The words not said. The thoughts unexpressed. I have been present at the bedside of a dying person two times in my life witnessing the last breath of my brother and my mother. I missed Daddy's. My father dropped dead at sixty-four, jogging to the office one morning. They said he was dead before he hit the floor. He’d made it to 608 East Broadway and was flat on his back inside the doorway. With each death I have thought to myself, “well there it was.” There was their life with all its experiences, failings, accomplishments, relationships, loves, joys and losses. I don’t know what comes after we take our last breath, but I believe there is something more. I was shown this early one January morning at highway marker 41 just across the Oregon boarder. The road was icy. As we made the turn around a bend, the car skated across the lanes out of control down an embankment. I was in the passenger seat and as we began to roll, my friend, who was driving said, “I’m so sorry, Amy.” And we rolled. One. Two. Three. Four times. And I waited, thinking, “Well there it was. My life.” And I felt no fear. Only a knowing – not a thought, not a feeling. A knowing. It was, “Oh…I see. We just move from one dimension to the next.” And I waited to die. The car came to a stop on its side. All the windows were out. Glass was everywhere. I hung by my seatbelt, somewhat suspended over my friend. I checked my teeth. They were still there. I checked for blood. There was none. I checked my friend. He was brushing the glass from his face. We were both alive and in one piece. After carefully extracting ourselves from the car – through one of the broken windows, my friend hiked up to the street to flag someone for help. It was freezing. I gathered some of our things from the car. A trucker stopped. I got into the cab and drove back with him to a gas station – about twenty miles from highway marker 41. As we came to a stop, numbly, I asked him, “what is your name?” And he said, “Bob Lees.” I gasped. Nearly hysterical, I cried out, “Oh my God. You are an angel.” You see, my brother’s name was Bob and my father’s name was Lee.” To this day, I believe that we survived this accident because my brother and father protected us. And they sent Bob Lees so that I would know. I've never done anything with this "knowing". But today, I decided to put it out there - as it may bring comfort because there is so little we can really ever do....

Absolution

(An excerpt from Amy's memoir ARIAS )

Her breath was barely audible. It had been three days since they began the morphine. During those hours, praying by the bedside of my dying mother, I sat as she seemed to greet invisible visitors. With an “other-worldly” gaze, she stretched out her arm, reaching to someone, would gasp and smile – sometimes exclaiming in surprise, “hiiiiiiiiiii”.

Mother had secrets. She had been married once before Daddy and had successfully kept it from me until one, hot, deserty afternoon I interviewed her about her life for a grandmother remembers book and she stumbled over the details of her wedding day. “Where were you married?” I asked. “Richmond….Roanoke….Richmond….uhhh.”

“You don’t remember where you were married?” I asked. And then with a sheepish look like a naughty child, she confessed her sin - that she had been married once before to a man named Ed Smith. A big, Catholic church wedding in Cincinnati, Ohio and Daddy had been the best man. She admitted that she’d done it intentionally. She’d always wanted Lee and eventually got him. Ran off with him, two years later, with the blessing of her mother. She divorced in Reno and then, Lee and Elsie, married in a courthouse, in Richmond as it turned out.

Mother’s white, freckled skin, paper thin and marked by bruises and the battering of old age had always been rough and scaly. Ireland would have been a better climate with its mint green hills and misty, moist rain than the hot, yellow sun of California.

She loved feeding the birds and as I sat listening to the gentle purring of her last numbered breaths, I saw my mother on the front porch on Resh Place in a floral house coat, tossing stale bread into the air for the crows, whom she considered “pets”. Mother and the birds. Her yard filled with the music of birds chirping in the lush bushes of her yard - it is why I sang “Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins at her funeral.

Mother, five feet two and three quarters at her tallest, now lay in bed, a tiny, diminutive frame less than ninety pounds, her body used up – the last of life squeezed out of it – wife, mother, homemaker, businesswoman, child – we’d reversed roles some time ago as the dementia stole her reason. She sometimes called me “Mom”.

Longing to exorcise the demons of her soul, the guilt of having broken Catholic dogma, obediently staying outside the church, denying herself Communion because of the sin of divorce, I called upon the priest to administer the Sacrament of the Sick. With the ritualistic oils, sign of the cross and crucifix, not unlike the ring of garlic used to fend off evil vampires, with the absolution and forgiveness of her sins and the promise of life ever-lasting, my mother died.

ALB June 2009