Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

Tonight as I looked for my current book under the bed, I found Eden Jae’s little pink shoe that I purged the van searching for a few days ago. That is how it always goes, isn’t it? Let go of looking and you will mostly likely find what you are searching for while looking for your next lost item. It is my lazy, yet proven, advice to the children when they misplace something valuable.

This summer Eden stopped taking naps altogether, which has pushed back our afternoon “book club” to the evening after she goes to bed. Tonight was the third time we made our tea after dinner and read by lamplight. Atticus played with keva blocks on the floor, Solomon wedged himself into the couch so only his face peeked out, and Ben softly played his familiar well worn songs on the guitar while I read folk tales, poetry, stories about Jesus, and our newest read aloud. If this sounds like an excerpt out of a Louise May Alcott book, that is very much my goal. Mind you, I am describing 1 out of 24 hours of our day, so please don’t go thinking it is all this way. However, for this last inhale before the candles of our consciousness are blown out for the night, it is all together precious.

I did not set out to have children to be happy. In fact, for a good long while I wasn’t sure the two were compatible. And so, somewhere around Atticus’ sixth birthday, I let my endeavor for happiness go in search of something I deemed more valuable, which is my children’s well being.

Five or so years later into that quest, as we circled around subjects ranging from the capital of Norway to Mary pouring her perfume over Jesus’ feet, I was keenly aware that while they may not recall these tidbits by morning, I can’t imagine that I will ever lose the cellular happiness these evenings together with them bring me.

A letter from eighty year old me

I am in the throes of winter. I am also in the middle of my Artist’s Way program at Francis House of Prayer, based on The Artist’s Way book by Julia Cameron. Ideally, winter is the perfect time to light a candle and go through a book. But, children. Today we skipped church and I did my Artist’s Way exercises while the kids blasted Irish music and did a jig in the living room. It is winter with three young children.

I was tasked to write a letter from my eighty year old self. I was surprised at the words already there, what I needed to hear like a reservoir of wisdom pooling inside of me. Now it’s the doing that is trickier.

Here is my letter:

Dear you,

Nurture your contemplative soul. Be patient with the seasons of your life. They won’t last forever. Pursue the connection with movement, your body, and nature that you feel. Be gentle with yourself and your children as they grow. Give them time; Do not force them. Respect the flow and unfolding of life within them. Do not invest significant time in social media. There is not a lot of life in it for you. Stay close to the person of Jesus. He is Life Itself. In His presence you flourish. Hold onto your career though it would be so easy to let it decay. Take your hands that are covering your eyes away and LOOK at opportunity in the face. Choose one thing to learn more about and commit yourself to it. Then the next. Knowledge and confidence will come slowly, but it will be established by the time you are my age if you keep at it. Same deal with the piano.

See your husband as someone to love, not simply a co-creator and co-laborer in family life. Create space to include him in your investments and allow him to develop himself separately from you.

Cherish, pursue, and foster your core relationships. Be open to new ones.

Do not plan for loss and suffering, but do not be surprised if they happen. Accept whatever comes as God’s path for you.

Keep your life simple and spacious. Fill it with real things that bring life: Cooking, being at home, relationships, your children, music, outside, movement, the Church, learning.

Strive to do a few things well. Your things. You are a wife, mother, mystic. You are a gifted counselor. Stay in your lane and you will be grounded and expand all at once. Your small life will feel big.

Oh, and retire to the country if you can.

Love,

me

Let us be silent that we may hear the whisper of God (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

It seems to me that all my life God has been bent on my healing. The trail behind me is littered with people, places, and Earth that have nurtured me. Why else would I have stumbled upon this magical place called Francis House of Prayer and its matriarch sister Marcy. She has become a mother, sister and even friend to me; Francis House a second home. If I were better with my camera I would be able to show you how the animals surrounding the house are downright animate with their own aliveness. But since most of the time I had not hit the button when I thought I had or the button simply, unexplainably stopped working, I will show you in words.

There were what must have been a thousand starlings gabbing in the tree tops, apparently on coffee hour. When I stopped to eavesdrop (they weren’t being quiet about it), they flew away all at once, huddled together in a great dark cloud that blocked the sun for a moment or two. They moved as one in zig zag lines away from me. Apparently I wasn’t invited.

Later I came to a family of deer in a meadow the color of their fur who seemed to feel the same way about my presence, though this time I was very innocent and unaware of their presence until all at once they were there, bounding away six feet at a time. All I could see in the semi-darkness was twenty white lines bobbing up and down like bike reflectors in the back. These were white tailed deer.

There were the dozens of stately horses running, munching, laying, rolling (I didn’t know they did that), startling, protecting, gazing, and glistening in the afternoon sun and amber twilight.

Then there was autumn itself, golden and glowing. Once, there was a sudden, great gust of wind that blew the yellow oak leaves off their branches in a flurry of golden glitter like confetti, or fairy dust, falling from the sky. Earth herself was having a party and this time I was standing in the middle.

Lastly but perhaps most precious, there was the silence. It was full and pregnant, like a quivering water droplet ready to fall from its own weight. The weight of glory, God’s very own voice of Love, held in silence.

It is no wonder that I am saved by this place every time I come, by a God Who let me discover it, and what is more, beckons me return over and over. I dare say He’s after my very soul.

Fuel for The Fire of My Imagination

I gather comfort knowing that when I leave the woods
the life that makes it whisper and dance when I am there
goes on.
At home, I remember a certain log or pond or leaf
and I guess what it might be doing right now
Perhaps an ant is hauling a crumb of fallen bread over the log
as I am heaving this pile of laundry over a pile of more laundry.
I picture that the raindrops keeping us inside,
running circles around the couch,
are landing on water,
Creating hundreds of tiny circles across the not expecting surface.
Today I walked into the woods and watched raindrops collect on a single leaf.     I studied the details of the leaf, its veins and the pattern of its jagged edges,      its shade of green and the way it bends under the rain,
and left,
my imagination well stocked for the next rainy day.

New Year Reflections

It is 6:45 pm on the Eve of another decade. People are huddled around the ticking clock and looming ball, preparing to make merry. I’m sure somewhere someone out there is in a roaring 20’s outfit to commemorate the new decade. Many parents are with their kids eating otherwise forbidden snacks, because tonight is special.

I, on the other hand, am in bed in my pajamas crying over a poem. Blame it on the flu but there’s no place I’d rather be.  The flu has bent and broken my will this week. Old Mother Nature has blown me over and I’ve spent most of this week like a turtle on its back, my underbelly exposed.

The soft flesh of my underbelly always seems to have to do with longing, jealously, anger, and despair. This week it played out like a slow drama how invested I am in raising these three gifts of ours. This is as it should be and has been years in the making. My heart is fully turned towards my four closest people. And yet, family life is the deepest journey I know, filled with a million endings, letting go’s, and path turns when Love is the goal.

This week held little and big changes in my own heart. The little change is that this week we had planned for Ben to be home and for the five of us to celebrate, lounge, and see people that we don’t typically see. These carefully crafted, much anticipated plans were replaced with Ben cold sweating in the bed for a full day and a half, Solomon coughing until he threw up…on the iPad, Jahniah returning to infant sleep, and Atticus doing blurry, road runner circles around us. The big changes came in realizing that some of the dreams that I place on my children and family to do and be are mine to own. I am not sure how I will do that since family life seems all that I can hold in my two arms, lap, neck squeeze, and head balance. There comes the letting go I suppose (don’t worry, I won’t let go of the children).

What I do know is that my prayer for myself this year is that I will allow these big and little sorrows act like a long marinade to the places in my heart that are still tight and tough. I want to soften and show this softness to my family and the world in their big and little sorrows too. I want to use this year to emerge an inch more compassionate than I have been before. In 2020, I want to hold this poem close to my chest, remembering it through the twists, turns, and dead ends of this year. I want to learn to be kind to myself too.

The Kindness poem was written by a woman after she was robbed of all of her money and identification on a bus in Colombia. She and her newly wed husband were on their honeymoon, which ended on the day it began. One person was killed in their sight. After the tragedy they were talking to an older Colombian gentleman and he looked into their eyes with great sadness and sincerity and simply said “I am so sorry”. After this the woman was given this poem. She calls herself more the scribe than the author. I believe it because hearing it was an other worldly experience for me. Perhaps it is that I know firsthand the warm sincerity of Colombian natives, or that this poem rings with the perfect pitch of Truth and inner experience.  I think both.

KINDNESS

Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.