Distracted

This late morning I attempt to pray in the face of my own fragmentation, overwhelmed with starting points, distractions seize my thinking with ideas more interesting than the monotony of today’s tasks.  The guilt of yesterday’s undoneness threatens today’s confidence, and I worry again that the end of this day will be like yesterday with deadlines missed and lunch dates forgotten of embarrassing messes and bruised feelings.

For a change today, I pray to the Great Creator of great ideas, that seem to be fogging the windshield of my to-do list.  Instead I ask for a Divine Distraction to interrupt my status quo of busy avoidance and unproductive workaholism.  I’m no longer satisfied with my patterns of life, of missing the miracles from yesterday while loading the laundry I’ll later forget to put in the dryer. Yesterday while I busily looked past the tears on your face, my inattentive schedule forgot those clean clothes like I did our friendship.

I’m once again reminded this morning rewashing my mildew-scented laundry how my life battle is fought not between the great poles of good and evil but in the daily, momentary choices between good and better.

Back to my prayer this late morning almost slipping into lunchtime…I look to the Great Father of Best Things and beg for a divine distraction from myself.

Square

People often say that when you serve abroad, it changes your life. That wasn't entirely true for me. I was 28 years old the first time I ventured out of the country. I was a single mom in the throws of one of the most difficult chapters of my life when I received that phone call asking me to go to China. With every reason to stay home and sort through the mess around me, I said maybe, which of course meant yes. 

I couldn't say no. It wasn't that I was brave or had great faith or anything admirable, it was beyond my control. Destiny was calling me, pulling me out of the ordinariness. I had stuffed myself into an unnatural shape for far too long. I belonged somewhere else. I was meant to go. It didn't matter where at the time, I just knew I had to do it. 

I was a square peg forcing myself into this round hole of my surroundings, surviving on shallow breaths. My sharp edges blistered over and over refusing to callous and conform to its setting, never getting use to its confines. And so that phone call was like a a rope ladder being thrown down into that round hole of my life, giving me a chance to climb out and breath, to stretch my square frame in the open space of the world.

Yes, it hurt, and it reopened old wounds climbing out, but it didn't matter because I was free to take my own shape for the first time as I ventured to the other side of the world. No, I didn't come home from that trip a changed person. I came home from that trip bandaged and bruised. Satisfied this time because I would never force myself back in to that hole 

Cliff Jumping

Whenever faced with a choice between the safe path and the one less certain, I remember the day when I was fifteen years old, standing on the cliff, looking down 30 feet below me, surveying the possible consequences. The cliff was jagged and ominous, but the water cool and inviting below. I can feel my heart racing as I recall that moment, with the hot sun warming my tender exposed shoulders.

It was mostly safe. Our two guides, both college students, knew the Boundary waters of Minnesota were deep enough to keep us from breaking our necks, but there was just two problems, this sharp rock about five feet below the edge of the cliff and then there was my fear of heights. Normally, I would need someone to shame me into this jump or physically push me over the edge, but that jutting rock below demanded that I take a running leap or face a clumsy and inevitably bloody fall in the middle of the national forests of Minnesota, nearly twenty miles of canoing away from any hospital. 

But, I couldn't go home having missed this opportunity. The sheer fear of tripping as I planned my running start terrified and exhilarated me. I watched with envy as one of the boys, a year older than me, took the plunge first and survived, screaming in delight all the way down. I remember then waiting those long seconds for him to pop up out of the water to find out if it was all worth it. The grin on his face confirmed my fear: it was definitely worth it. 

I couldn't be the last no matter how afraid I was. Our guide showed me the path again, where I had to start my run, when I needed to jump, how to point my toes, when to breath out just before hitting the water. I listened to all of that intently, but I had to make up my mind, determine if my body would actually cooperate with those words, chickening out would be brutal. I stood at the edge of the cliff examining the distance, watching as he swam back to the shore to jump again. The sun reflected off the water in my eyes as I looked past my toes onto that sharp rock and then again at the cool clear water below.

I think of that moment often, of the long seconds it took for me to hit the water, the excruciating thrill of the free fall, the abrupt stinging impact of the water and its surprising depth, the light reaching down showing me the way to the surface and on to the shore so I could do it all over again.

Resilience

Two years ago, I was invited to a Kenyan refugee camp in Uganda as a writer, to interview Kenyans who had fled the post-election violence in their own country in the hopes of bringing their stories back to the US. There was no clear plan for how or what we would do with these stories, just an open window in the midst of an overwhelming need, or at least we thought.

We had grand ideas...a book, a documentary, a multimedia website project, presentations in our community and others around the US. Unfortunately, most of those plans didn't come to fruition at least not as we planned them.

I wrote a few blogs, shared pictures and stories with friends, but that trip has haunted me as the mound of video tapes with hours of footage began to accumulate dust in a drawer of my desk. For two years I thought I failed to make a difference on that trip as the potential opportunities never materialized, and I lost contact with the people I met on those two days in Tororo, Uganda.

This morning I read an article about the survivors of the genocide in Rwanda and it reminded me of that trip where I felt so important, so needed only to return with little results to show for my "valiant effort." 

The title of the article contained the word, resilience. That word reminded me of why we went on that trip & why I return again and again to eastern Africa. It reminded me of the infectious joy of being alive that challenges me to make more of each moment of my life, to resist the temptation to feel pity for myself when I'm disappointed.

For days after I returned I watched the videos, logged the footage, and reeled over what could be done with the notes, the footage, the pictures, the stories that could possibly make a difference in the lives of the Kenyans who were suffering. Over and over that word, resilience, came to mind as I watched the footage of the women and children dancing in church, of the men playing volleyball & inviting our group to join them in a game, and most of all of the young widow who had carried her three young children for three days hiding from those who sought to kill them until she reached the camp.

They taught me a new meaning of that word. I only wish you had been there with me to see and hear how beautiful the word resilience can be on the faces of giggling children, in the eyes of a heroic single mother, in the fire of an impassioned pastor, and in the hands of a woman defiantly determined to find her children.

And I realized that I needed to go there more than they needed me to be there.

Out of Tune

There it sits in my half-wall-paper stripped dining room collecting dust and clutter, unused, out of tune, and now out of style--a roadblock between moving forward and being stuck in the limbo of the past. My grandmother's piano represents more to me than it should, I know, and for the first time in my life I want to destroy her.

Most of us I imagine know what it feels like to be out of place, out of the ordinary, uncomfortable in your surroundings,  lonely in a crowded room.  Some of us have been neglected and overlooked.  Lack of maintenance hurts the animate and inanimate alike. The wounds leave scars, deep, and coarse that can stifle our voice, weakening our ability to sing the music of our souls.

At the age of five, I fell in love with my grandmother's piano.  Waiting three years to take lessons, I studied my mother's hands moving on the keys, learned to memorize the simple tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and studied "Heart and Soul" from my grandmother.  I had just recently given up the dream of being a famous singer and began to sink my hopes into her beautiful keys.  Three years later, a harsh piano teacher couldn't even corrupt my affection.  Although I again dreamed of becoming a famous pianist, the fame was only secondary to the playing, for the playing soothed my solitude.

Sadly, circumstances took her from me a few years later, leaving a hole my clarinet nor any other instrument could not fill.  To play the clarinet was an uphill struggle full of demerits and disappointments--band instructors glaring down with disapproving eyes, peers giggling at failures while competitors vied for higher seats.

So I gave up music altogether.  It was too painful. Silently crying for her, I imagined her sitting abandoned at my grandmother's house.  Years later we were reunited, but lack of use and care had broken down her keys, and those remaining sang woefully out of tune.  I wanted to play her again, but her damaged voice broke my heart.  I was just a teenager, faced with the cost of repairing the relationship, so I walked away.

Adulthood and parenting turned my heart to her again.  Living in a small apartment with no room for her, I vowed to get her back and make her new again.

Four years ago, we moved into this house. I brought her here, but I have failed her again.  I stare at her sitting neglected in my dining room taking up precious space that I need to put a buffet table, faced with the sad reality that she will never fit in here.  Letting her go is almost unbearable, and yet keeping her here is suffocating.

Bread

I hate to cook, but I love making bread.

I rarely have time or patience, but on special occasions, I'll do it.  At first I resist it: the mess, the kneading, the waiting, but once I start the process, it centers me, connects me to something sacred.

The worst part is the measuring.  I all too often resist the measuring in my life because all I want to do is skip this step and jump into the beauty that comes after.  And now I wonder how much I miss this way, but today, my family has insisted, so I stand at my kitchen covered in flour and salt, listening to the yeast bubble as it comes alive and devours the sugar.

Kneading the bread in my hands, I imagine myself a sculpture or a potter, and in someway I invoke the spirit of their craft, molding my bread into loaves.  This mundane job every holiday is also mystical. It is the ancient tradition of making something grow out of the coarse and colorless and in doing so I feel the power of creation and sense a deep connection to the Earth, to humanity, and to God.

The aroma of baking bread is like no other scent.  It fills my house, and my family sighs in anticipation of the first warm slice smothered in melted butter.  But for me, my joy is already complete, and this Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for the time to make bread.

Growing Up

When I was a child, I thought I was something special, not in the way most children think they're special because their parents dote over them.  Instead, my "specialness" was more alienating than self-esteem building.  I felt like a foreigner, an alien in my own hometown, growing up for the most part in Appalachia, surrounded by a close-knit family and the rolling hills of a small southern Ohio valley town.

Like many kids, I wanted to be famous.  At first it was a famous singer, then a famous actress, which was followed by a series of disappointments as I discovered many ordinary, non-famous people around me that could sing much better than I and were much more beautiful than me.

I remember the crushing disappointment in fourth grade when I tried out for the part of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  It was undoubtedly a turning point in my life.  The fact that I didn't get the part was one thing.  Surely I would have gotten the part if I had been in the fifth grade because everyone knows that fifth graders by nature get priority over fourth graders, but the crushing blow came when I overheard my dad tell someone that she (not me of course) could really sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which of course implied in my mind that she could  sing better than I.

So I turned to other means of fame and "specialness."  For the rest of my fourth grade year, I was to be an astronaut after watching the movie Space Camp.  This troubled my mother, I remember, not to mention the fact that I was terrible in some key things like math, science, and especially anything athletic( I could barely jump rope successfully).

I was inspired then horrified later that year as I watched Christa McAuliffe board the Challenger space shuttle live from my classroom, never to return home.  And I remember Joey, the boy sitting next to me on the floor of my classroom wailing in tears as we watched her funeral (also live).   Joey, who was normally obnoxiously insensitive, was unconsolable and had to be carried out of the room to keep the rest of us from hysterics.