Overdue Update

I find it hard to believe it's been over two months since I posted here. Time seems to be flying in a way that I have trouble processing.

Today, the girls are home from school -- the second day of a stuffy cold -- but they are outside in the mildest weather of the year playing with a neighbor. I should be making them stay in and away from other kids, especially given the very dramatic ways they both arose today. I've been there, as a kid, not feeling my best and wanting to stay home. The air will be good for them, a little bit of sweat too.

And yes, they're going back to school tomorrow.

I have nearly finished The Sign of Jonas, and started the Kathleen Norris book Acedia & Me, but both are currently collecting dust as I once again return to my textbook. The lymphatic system reigns.

I spent the good part of December finishing up a nursing school application and some financial aid stuff. There were three applications in full. One school told me my GREs were too old, and so I'd have to retake them to be considered. I can't type here what I said to that bit of info. Another school has already said no to me, and I'm waiting for my third to tell me what my plans will entail this fall.

I might just have a really clean house, and time to fill with computer work. I've been trying to settle into the possibility that nursing school is not in the cards this fall, because I don't want to get my hopes up.

I've been working rather hard for over 2 years fulfilling these prerequisites, so it stings a bit to encounter a roadblock to my self-imposed schedule.

This was my plan! To be in school full-time this fall! It was going to be perfect, with both the kids in school full-time, and me too!

(Sigh.)

I'm not sure what this all means.

Though I'm not sure about all that 'everything happens for a reason' stuff, it's a bit heartening to think that my way has been stymied for something better. At least, that's what will take me through the disappointment. I'll find out in March.

There is a single bright side to my failure to gain nursing school entry. I will take the summer off from classes. No Microbiology Monday-Thursday for 12 weeks, because there'd be no need to try to stuff it in. I could take it in the Fall and regroup, and try to figure out what's next. There are a few more school possibilities for future applications, but I'd really have to weigh time requirements/benefits.

I'm just kind of spilling here, and thinking out loud.

It just kind of sucks to put in the time and be told no.

The Body

I feel slightly guilty about abandoning Thomas Merton. I have yet to finish Sign of Jonas, though I am halfway through.

It's not his fault. I could laze about in his paragraphs for hours on end. It's just that I've had to put him aside in favor of a recently acquired part-time job and -- of course, ever-present -- my Anatomy & Physiology text.

I love the body. It's gruesome and magical, frightening and miraculous. I'm probably the most exhausted I've been in a while, having issues with sleeping and anxiety, and the feeling of always having something pressing to do. But I don't find myself so tired that I can't work up excitement over what makes us...us.

The kids have all these questions. They hear things in school about God making us, our bodies and minds, as if from waving a magic wand, and they look to me for confirmation. Which I give, in some vague way that leaves me unsettled and dissatisfied. Not Adam and Eve, and all that, as comfortingly simple as it all sounds. I stumble and stammer, mostly because I don't even begin to know what I believe, much less be able to explain it in some coherent way.

My text is like a bible of the body, and it's impossible not to see the intricate soulfulness of our creation, however it all came to be.

From the continued contraction of the striated muscle of the heart, to the ability of cells to effectively rid our bodies of toxins, to the nerve impulses that all work together to maintain homeostasis. To maintain. To be effective. For our bodies to work.

It's not that I don't see the hand of God in it all. I do. I just don't feel comfortable trying to elucidate on how. I wish I could tell my girls that with some kind of eloquence, especially when they look at me with their big eyes, wanting to be right. Yes, God made us. End of story. Sort of. Because that story is long and varied with twists and turns.

I've brought up the general concept of evolution with them, how we can trace our ancestors back, but that's about it. I think they'd find the fact of Australopithecus Afarensis a bit suspect. I'll leave that to their future science teachers.

I wonder what Merton would think of it all. He writes little about the human body, except for his relatively poor health and the way illness spread through the monastery like a fire through parched woods. I wonder what he thought of creation and evolution, or where he found the intersection of science and faith, if at all.

I do know he'd believe, no matter our source, that we weren't made for ourselves alone.

This Country is Giving Me a Nervous Breakdown

Hi Jesus,

Boy.

Am I pissed off or what?

You know who I'm mad at?

Well, America. Pretty much ALL of America.

I'm tired of living amongst a wishy-washy populace, who can vote one year for sweeping change, and then pretty much vote to fund none of it two years later. People who swallow the lie that their taxes have gone up, when in fact they've gone down. People who are misinformed, incurious, hateful and racist.


I'm tired of the tea party, which I pretty much believe to be a sham. A complete sham. Masquerading as a populist movement, when they throw their entire support to a party that's just as much about big government as the other: it's just a big government with different priorities, and you can bet your butt I don't think their priorities are sound. Not one bit.

My husband told me yesterday that he heard BP is already turning a profit. Only here can a corporation responsible for the death of millions of creatures and miles and miles and miles of coastlines, not to mention entire industries and livelihoods, turn the page that quickly.

I understand that people are hurting. I understand that people want change quicker than it's being dispensed. But turning to the party that actually sought to block the continuation of unemployment benefits? That's the answer? A party that calls not allowing insurance companies to deny people coverage because they're ill socialism?

Once I saw someone driving a truck that had two bumper stickers on it. One read I'm pro-life and I vote. The other said Why should I pay for your health insurance?

And it's a sight I will carry with me, pretty much FOREVER. Because in it lies the juxtaposition that so many people seem to carry as a philosophy, and it tears at my heart. I say to that guy in the pick-up truck, 'You can't be both.' You can't place yourself into a tent that's labeled pro-life (pro-life!) if you have no interest in seeing any of your tax dollars go to keep a mother who gives birth to her child insured, able to go to prenatal appointments so her baby is healthy, and able to give birth and then bring her child in for well visits.

Ah, whatever. I can pretty much tell you he doesn't give a shit. And he's probably more than a little bit misogynistic.

I'm feeling crummy today, Jesus. I'm not so certain that the Democrats walk your path either, so don't mistake my grumblings for that kind of pride.

I ask you to help turn my general bitchiness, anger and sadness into something constructive. Help me to do your work, whether or not I feel our government is helping or hindering. Help me to show compassion for all, even those with whom I disagree virulently. Help me to not want to throw rotten tomatoes at John Boehner's head. The same goes for Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.

With love,

Kelly

My Own Gethsemani

I'm reading The Sign of Jonas right now. Merton has let me into his journal, and I get to see life in Gethsemani.

This is an old book, maybe around since the 60s, and the jacket is frayed along the edges. The front and back inside covers have a black and white photograph of Merton walking through what I presume to be the Kentucky woods. His back is sort of diagonally to the camera, his right foot raised in mid-stride. Have you ever wanted to enter a picture?

Yes, it's like that.

Wait! Wait for me! That's my feeling when I see it.

Sometimes I wonder if the restlessness I feel is actually a good thing. If the mild and vague sense of dissatisfaction is merely a sign of things to come. That life on earth can only get so good, and it's what comes after that is the true kick-ass part.

Please don't take vague dissatisfaction the wrong way. I'm mostly happy, mostly content, able to experience and witness and store away these lovely moments, generally with family and friends. But I don't know...there is this undercurrent, always an undercurrent, of wanting and needing more.

And I'm not sure if the undercurrent is God, or a sign from God, or the lingering dysthymia that never completely leaves me alone. What's funny is that I crave contemplation, aloneness -- or, at least, I think I do -- but the whole truth is that I wouldn't know what to do with myself there.

I'm not a still person. Sometimes I have to force myself to stop during those moments when the kids are taking their sweet time, and usually it's because they've noticed something, taken note of something in their surroundings that really requires stop and looking. All this is a good thing, but I get far ahead and have to double back, and I have to pull in that ingrained need to keep moving.

I wouldn't know what to do with still and silent. I wonder if that is something that can be learned. But then again, young children and a vocation for nursing aren't exactly leading me in that general direction, either. My life isn't quite chaos, but it isn't hand signals in dim light by the altar, either.

In the book, Merton writes about wondering if he's in the right place with the Trappists, or if he'd have been better suited for the Carthusians. Apparently, the Cistercians weren't silent enough. (And they're monks! Using sign language!)

Of course, Merton stays. He's chosen his particular version of stillness, and decided that that's exactly where God wants him. I have to believe that this is where God wants me, in the slight insanity of family life with my husband and children, moving among throngs of students, reading and writing, and yes, praying. It's a different form of contemplation, for sure. But every bit as valid and needed.

At least, that's what I tell myself as I put Lillian in time-out for the 80th time in an afternoon.

******

Do you know what I just reread on page 35? "The simplest and most effective way to sanctity is to disappear into the background of ordinary everyday routine."

I think I'm being told to go finish the dishes.

Crossfire of Heaven and Hell

This morning, I put a new pair of socks on Lillian's feet.

"Wow, these are soooooo soft," I told her, as she thrust her feet up in my face.

"Oooooh," she said back. "Are these Hannah's?"

"No," I told her. "They belong to your piggies, and your piggies alone."

She smiled and turned her head sideways, burying it in the couch cushion. This was a moment to absorb and keep and hold. Socks. Strange.

It's been a weird morning, punctuated by news stories that wound and weird dreams and news of upheaval. I took my migraine medication with my Italian roast, but my neck remains stiff and unwieldy.

I took Lillian to school and one of her classmates told me she was going camping this weekend. Everyone in her class was invited because they were 'her family.'

"When are you coming to pick me up?" I asked her.

"In one minute," she said.

"I'd better start packing then. I'll bring the marshmallows." The kids giggled and looked at me, expecting me to continue. Another moment. Gold among the gray.

I really want to go to church this morning. Masses are too early for me to make, but I know a room that's open always and filled with candles and maybe I can sneak into the back pew, if the church door is open there. I need to say 'thank you' and I need to say 'I'm sad, horribly sad.'

And I need to kneel there among the still flames cupped by glass and ask to be steadied. And I need to ask, 'what can I do, Lord, with my sadness, with my anger?'

I don't know what the reply will be.

******

The title of this post comes out of the lyrics to a song by The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers' new solo single "Crossfire." Just saying.

Thoughts

Merton before dawn.
A single light, rare quiet.
I try to make the

body feel what it
doesn't. The brain, register.
Something's amiss. I

reach for it, attempt
to lasso and pull the word
of God. Last night, me

and Judah, Ben-Hur
on the television, Christ
dying and lepers

healed. Judah crushes
his mother and sister to
him, their skin clean, whole.

I cry, always with
the quake, bloody puddles that
drip from the cross, light

flashing across the
wounded sky. Esther gasps, sees,
touches faces and

hands. Judah echoes
Christ: "I felt his voice take the
sword out of my hand."

When Lillian was a baby, I tried to bargain with God.

It was, I suppose, a version of prayer, called in by the desperation of a bedraggled and insanely weary mother.

On a mild November day, I had put my infant daughter in her stroller and taken her for a walk. Fully anticipating her normal routine of screeching after being placed ANYWHERE, I was pleasantly surprised when she feel asleep.

As I went around the block and all over my little neighborhood, bumping along the sidewalk, crunching the fallen leaves, I asked God if he could relieve me a bit, maybe have Lillian take to a bottle; or maybe not breastfeed 50 times a day; or maybe sleep longer that 45-minute stretches at night; or maybe entertain being put in a swing, carseat, stroller; or maybe allow her own father to hold her.

I walked around all day carrying her, her head nestled between my neck and shoulder, and I pretty much ignored the 2-year old I already had by necessity. No one else could pick her up. Her screams signaled that she was actively being wounded, not being held by the father who helped create her.

Things....they were not going well, and I needed a bit of assistance.

It turns out the particular answer to that prayer was no. Or, at least, that's how I heard it. Lillian continued to nurse very frequently, continued to require constant holding (by me only, of course), and continued to have the sleep patterns of someone addicted to speed.

Eventually I just gave up, taking things minute by minute if I needed to.

Somehow we got through, and perhaps that's where I'm wrong about my prayer. Perhaps it's in the strength I still don't think I possessed back then. Perhaps it's in our survival. Perhaps it's in the fact that she did turn a corner...even if it was 6 months later.

(Also, she turned into this....that's a hard face to be irritated with!)

I've been thinking about prayer a lot. I've been thinking about my approach to it. Wondering how to make it more of a part of my life.

Not too long ago, I was trying to find someone a birthday present at the mall. I sat on a bench people watching for a bit, and watched a woman make a loop around me with a rosary dangling from her left hand. Her fingers, of course, at their particular spot on the beads. I watched her mouth move and no sound come out. I know someone was listening, though.

So...help me out. What do you do? Do you have a favorite prayer you say daily? Do you attend daily Mass? I'm not sure my schedule will ever allow that, but I wish that it would. Do you say the rosary? Download homilies to your iPod?

How do you actively weave prayer into the fabric of each day?