a semi-independence day...

every year, for as long as i can remember, my dad's neighborhood has thrown an epic Independence Day party! The views on patriotism range in our neighborhood and no one seems to have a particularly strong attachment to the idea of the holiday. What we all do have an attachment to is a) potlucks, b) community and c) danger/exploding things. Every Friday, the neighbors have a block party and July 4th is just an extended, more chaotic, and incredibly dangerous version of the usual block party.

It's also something that's very tied, in my mind, with my momma. I remember hanging out with her on the porch when we were little kids, how she'd help us decorate our bikes for the annual bike parade. She even insisted on going down to the Wall Party when she was incredibly pregnant with my brother. She left early because she went into labor - Colin was born on July 5th, but for the longest time, he really believed that people made a special flag and set off fireworks just because he was born. Which would be pretty cool, actually...

Anyways, this year was a little more conflicting - I expect to miss mom on her birthday or Mother's Day. I don't expect to miss her on otherwise-neutral days like the 4th of July. But I did, especially last night, since it was also the first time in 1 1/2 years that I've seen my ex-boyfriend. I don't really know what brought him to my neighborhood with his new girlfriend, and I probably won't ever really understand why he'd choose to come back to an area where we spent most every Independence Day. But the significance wasn't entirely lost on me - on this Independence Day, I wasn't really as independent as I'd thought I'd be by now. I still rely on a particular brand of advice regarding relationships that I'll never have again. My momma's ability to read me and offer pointed yet sensitive advice is totally missing. I didn't have anyone to lay it all out there for - why I was missing a person that I left, why I'd hoped we could be friends, what I want from any relationship I'll be in. Absolutely no one will ever give me advice like my momma. And absolutely no one will fit into my life in exactly the same way my ex did. And that's sad, and it's also good. I don't want anyone to replace my mom - if they could, it would negate the very real fact of her uniqueness. And I don't want a replica of my last relationship - I want something sort of similar but better-fitting.

And I started thinking about this notion of independence. It's a real American value and a huge part of our identity...weak people shrugging off the fetters of colonialism. But we know we didn't do it alone. Our ancestors "independence" came about because of a very real dependence, and eventual exploitation of American, African, Asian, and European "natives". But we still believe, somehow, that there will be a situation, or a person, or an age that will be truly free, truly independent. We still believe that dependence is in some way weak, and we judge everyone, even ourselves, for not being as free as we ought.

But today, July 5th, we had a different message from the Gospel readings. Stories about weak prophets who go into unfriendly lands and, betraying the American ideal of independence and freedom, fail. Or are not guaranteed success. Or are run out of their own towns. God's ways are truly not our ways. Because today we heard Paul speak of the "thorn in his side" which he prayed be taken away. And instead of being freed from it and able to speak strongly and masterfully, God told him " "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."

And then Paul sums up, in one line, the path I desire - the path that recognizes true independence as an impossibility for anyone but God, the path that holds up the downtrodden and frees the oppressed to live in community. Paul says "Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ;
for when I am weak, then I am strong."

So I will struggle to be independent of earthly things - jealousy, grief, anger, hostility. But I will never fool myself into thinking that I will be independent of the One Who Made Me or able to survive without human kindness, community, and a little bit of chaos. For when I am weak, I am indeed strong...

the unselfishness of selfishness (or vice versa)

yesterday, after 2 years at my job, I left. And it was all that could be implied by that statement - good, bad, hard, easy, conflicting...this job gave me the following things:

1. A Trip to Palestine [really, i could just stop here and the job would absolutely and totally have been worth it. but i shall continue]
2. Co-Workers Who Really, Actually Pray for You When Asked [this is equally invaluable, especially since, during my time on the job, I lost a relationship, my mother, and, occasionally, my sanity]
3. An Excuse to Visit Unknown Parts of My State [have now seen the inside of the church in Florence, OR, the Catholic retreat center in Gold Hill, OR and innumerable parish halls and church basements. Plus more yurts than in all my previous years of living. Trust me - a yurt will ALWAYS be better than a Motel 6 for business trips!]
4. More Money Than I've Ever Made [plus more stress than I've ever had]
5. The Most Amusing, and Polarizing, Boss in the History of Ever [ps, Portland - she really is awesome!]
6. An Excuse to Read Papal Encyclicals [and understand them. Sort of. Maybe. At the least the non-Latin parts.]
7. An Ability to Believe that I Am Not Alone in Finding Justice and Charity to Be a Key Component of Catholicism
8. The Best, and Longest, Email Exchange with a Co-Worker about Jesus, Dinosaurs, Transformers, and Life
9. A Sense of Purpose
10. A Renewed Belief in Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church, and the Goodness of People

It also gave me:

1. A Blogging Stalker
2. Heartbreaking Attacks on My Family Which I Was Unable to Prevent or Predict - if anyone ever asks where my deep-seated paranoia came from the past two years, this is why. And, clearly, it's going to take a long, long time to get over...
   
3. Lost Weekends and Evenings and Months Where I Rarely Even Saw Claire, and We Live Together
4. Nights Waking Up at 3am, Knowing I'd Forgotten Something
5. A Fear of Doing the Wrong Thing
6. A Fear of Doing the Right Thing in the Wrong Way
7. A Pretty Consistent Sense of Failure to Accomplish Anything
8. More Stress Than I've Ever Had [plus more money than I've ever made]
9. The Heartbreaking Realization That Maybe I Don't Have a Place in My Own Church - I vacillated back and forth between thinking that Justice Catholics were prevailing, to realizing they were being ostracized. And back again...
10. The Realization That, Much as I Love the Church, I Can Never Work for The Church - this is, like, the most heartbreaking thing about this job. Because I feel like I failed, I know my boss feels like she failed, and whatever I go on to do, it will always sort of frustrate me that I couldn't make it work.

One of the things I really never learned, though, and which I am paying for now, is an ability to do self-care. Which sounds weirdly like bragging, but totally isn't. When I look at the best activists/justice leaders/amazing people I met on the job, they all took great care of themselves so they could take care of other people. They knew that it was important to revive themselves every once in a while, to let go of all the cares that pile up on people who care for a living, and to find joy in the world. And I so admire that, and I believe in it, and I literally cannot do it!

Which I realized when I woke up on my first, real, do-nothing day of the vacation that I am, frankly, imposing on myself. I could have just started off right away planning for my transition to Chicago, packing, transferring lease information, etc. But I thought it would be important to just recover and heal. So I woke up an hour later than usual. And felt guilty. Even though the only thing I HAVE TO DO starts at 5:30pm. And it's a meeting, which isn't really vacation-y, but that's okay. Then, I had to literally fight the urge to clean our kitchen, which I don't want to do and which is incredibly stressful, but which just seemed like something that I needed to do right now.

So, instead, I went to Jim and Patty's and read Chesterton and hung with J Pix. And I kept thinking, "There must be SOMETHING I need to do right now." Because there always is. Except not today. And, that, I think, is my problem. I don't like to think of myself as a selfish person. But I do think that I have this need to be needed. And now, I'm the only who needs me. So, it turns out, I think, that learning to let go and not do stuff may be the most unselfish thing I can do.

But, my problem is, that my disordered thinking really has me believing that work and life should be hard. I don't really know when or how this happened, but time spent on myself always, always, always seems selfish to me. It doesn't when other people do - I applaud that! But the idea of spending my day reading and walking around and doing literally nothing seems appallingly indulgent and self-centered. This is going to be one of the biggest changes in attitude - thank God I've basically got a month in which I have nothing to do but learn to take care of myself and take charge of my own life.

Because I keep doing things for other people in this disordered way - showing up at work when I am technically done, volunteering time I don't have, meeting with everyone and their mother because I feel badly about not seeing everyone in the world ever before I leave, it won't be because I want to. It will because I want them to think I'm great and selfless and humble. Which is not selfless or humble and is definitely not great. I love people, for sure - I don't do well without a constant source of external stimulus and renting a cabin in the woods alone for a month always sounded like Hell to me. So, I'm not going to stop seeing people or being with people. But my intense focus on obligations and guilt has made me such an incredibly self-focused person, just in different ways.

So, I'm gonna take a break and read books and sing songs and cook good food and fight the urge to call myself selfish until such a time as rejoining the world can be a selfless act. But, I'm not gonna lie, today I probably will break down and do those dishes. I guess I'm still learning...

why does this exist?

umm, soo, blogging...seemed like a good idea...also, i like to copy Claire in everything she does.

i thought i'd mildly stun two birds with one stone, so this blog will be both a) a place for my recent attempts (again) at poetry writing and b) updates on my life in Chicago.

For those who don't keep up on my life (mainly because I'm pretty bad at keeping people up on me, due to my allergic reaction to talking about myself), I will be moving to Chicago in a little over a month. I'll be attending Loyola Chicago and doing a dual-degree program in Social Work and Social Justice. I'll also be living with a rad girl named Chrissy who I will meet for the first time in a week. And I'll get to spend time with all those people who I sort of forgot moved to the Midwest all these years ago, as well as new friends, and my super-rad cousin! So, that's MY next three years...

It's a little funny to be starting a blog, since a blog's been responsible for some of my most painful moments over the past 2 years (did you know my sister and I were harassed via blog by a rabidly conservative Catholic? We were. Good times.)

So, anyways! Welcome to here! Thanks for keeping up on my life! I hope your life's swell, too!

the small pieces of the large world...

so, i've been having issues with my little car beeper thing that cause me to dance around and around my car, moving my wrist in tiny circles, hoping to hit upon the sweet spot that will unlock my car without sounding an alarm. so, that's frustrating.

and i'm wrapping up my job, so i'm stressed about filing and looming deadlines, and building the appearance that i spent 2 years being even semi-competent at my job.

and i am looking at, and a little stressed about, the many, many dishes i haven't done from saturday's party and which, realistically, will remain undone for the last 1.5 hours of this Monday.

So, I spent my Monday is this dithering, distracted little haze.

And my very good friend spent today in a hospital with an incredibly sick parent. I told her I'd pray for her and I absolutely did. But only in between - in between cursing my car and sorting files and gossiping and just piling up splinters until they formed, in my mind, some sort of gushing, Monday wound.

I remember, when Mom was really sick, thinking "How do people do these normal things, like drive, or wash clothes without crying?" It seemed impossible. But that's what I did today - normal things while my good friend lived in that scary, sick land that I sort of remember, but differently.

I'm not a martyr - I don't think the solution was to put on my hairshirt and pop round the hospital for a round of self-flaggelation. But I read somewhere that to pray, to REALLY pray for people, we must stop, turn our hearts towards them and, however briefly, really feel our petitions as strongly as they must feel their prayer. So, however briefly, my friend's sick parent feels like mine too, so I can pray with all the strength that demands.

And it's that, not accurate filing or a finally unlocked car door, that finally eradicates the Monday blues...

i heart GK Chesterton

So, as I was feeling a little guilty about spending my Sunday doing mundane things like watering trees and washing sheets, I took a break to read Heretics by GK Chesterton. And this essay (a rebuttal to Rudyard Kipling's worldliness) made me feel so much better. Here are some excerpts from the essay "On Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small":

"The sense that everything is poetical is a thing solid and absolute; it is not a mere matter of phraseology or persuasion. It is not merely true. It is ascertainable...It is common enough that common things should be poetical; it is not so common that common names should be poetical. In most cases it is the name that is the obstacle...The word 'signal-box' is unpoetical. But the thing signal-box is not unpoetical; it is a place where men, in an agony of vigilance, light blood-red and sea-green fires to keep other men from death...The word 'pillar-box' is unpoetical. But the thing pillar-box is not unpoetical; it is the place to which friends and lovers commit their messages, conscious that when they have done so they are sacred, and not to be touched, not only by others, but even (religious touch!) by themselves...A signal-box is only called a signal-box. It is a house of life or death. A pillar-box is only called a pillar-box. It is a sanctuary of human words."

"There is no perfectly epicurean corner; there is no perfectly irresponsible place. Everywhere men have made the way for us with sweat and submission. We may fling ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine carelessness. But we are glad that the net-maker did not make the hammock in a fit of divine carelessness. We may jump upon a child's rocking-horse for a joke. But we are glad that the carpenter did not leave the legs unglued for a joke."

"The globe-trotter lives in a smaller world than the peasant. He is always breathing an air of locality. London is a place, to be compared to Chicago; Chicago is a place, to be compared to Timbuktu. But Timbuktu is not a place, since there, at least, live men who regard it as the universe, and breathe, not an air of locality, but the winds of the world. The man in the saloon-steamer has seen all the races of men, and he is thinking of the things that divide men - diet, dress, decorum, rings in the noses as in Africa or in the ears as in Europe, blue paint among the ancients, or red paint among the modern Britons. The man in the cabbage field has seen nothing at all; but he is thinking of the things that unite men - hunger and babies, and the beauty of women, and the promise or menace of the sky."

"The more dead and dry and dusty a thing, the more it travels about; dust is like this and the thistle-down and the High Commissioner in South Africa. Fertile things are somewhat heavier, like the heavy fruit trees on the pregnant mud of the Nile. In the heated idleness of youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication of that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss. We were inclined to ask, 'Who wants to gather moss, except silly old ladies?' But for all that we begin to perceive that the proverb is right. The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive."

"The man standing in his own kitchen-garden, with fairy-land opening at the gate, is the man with large ideas. His mind creates distance; the motorcar culture stupidly destroys it."

"And under all this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet...the real life of man goes on...totally uncomprehended, totally untouched. And it watches from its splendid parochialism, possibly with a smile of amusement, motorcar civilization going its triumphant way, outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing, roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to find the sun cockney and the stars suburban."

All this from a man writing before rampant telephone use, space travel and the internet. Motorcar civilization has become electronic civilization but it all still holds true...

the answer to my problems...

is found in today's Gospel reading. The log in my own eye is HUGE!

Gospel
Mt 7:1-5

Jesus said to his disciples:
"Stop judging, that you may not be judged.
For as you judge, so will you be judged,
and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother,
'Let me remove that splinter from your eye,'
while the wooden beam is in your eye?
You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter from your brother's eye."

everyone's hungry for something...

this talk about your struggles got me thinking about the math of our lives.
if you subtract alcohol or love or sweetness,
what do you add to even the score?
because everybody's hungry for something
& the scales have to balance somehow.

when i gave up writing, i got religion
& it worked out so perfectly
that the two became almost mutually exclusive-
i could have words
or i could have the Eternal Word.
but not both.
never both.

this is what fascinates me about people
but it doesn't make for polite conversation.
most people want to tell you their successes
or assumptions about current weather patterns.
they don't want some stranger to wander up and say
"excuse me.
i was wondering if you could tell me
about everything you've lost
& what crazy things you've done
to try to make balance where there is none."
Judging by all the blank stares,
this must not be part of
How to Win Friends and Influence People.

but i don't care,
because i find it truly amazing-
what we're capable of
when we struggle like hell to survive.

& because the only balance i can find
between writing and God
is making my little, busted up corner of the world
a prayer.
one that begins
"O God of the eternal equation,
help the alcoholics
& the swaggerers
& the hobos
& the haters
& the lovers
& everyone who hasn't found you yet.
help us find the sum of our parts,
and help us exceed it, even briefly.
help us all find words for you,
the Eternal Word.
Amen"