a wee post about babies...

lots of people i know are pregnant. which is rad. it's exciting to bring new life into the world (i presume) and it's amazing to watch women and men i knew in one phase of life seamlessly transition into another phase of life.

also, this week, i spent some quality time with my dear friend, who happens to be a nanny. after i left i realized how overjoyed i felt about that time. much of it is because i love my friend dearly, but a lot of it came from spending time with a baby. and a ball. i spent what could have been hours rolling a ball across a blanket. and each time Baby threw the ball, or held the ball, or even seemed to know where the ball was, we all got excited. fake-excited, sometimes, but sometimes genuinely enthusiastic.

it reminded me of this essay by G.K. Chesterton. i love this article for what is says about children and their role in our world. but mostly for what it reminds us about the adults in our lives.


Babies
by G.K. Chesterton

(from the essay "In Defence of Baby Worship" from THE DEFENDANT. 1903.)

The two facts which attract almost every normal person to children are, first, that they are very serious, and secondly, that they are in consequence very happy. . .

The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. As we walk the streets and see below us those delightful bulbous heads, three times too big for the body, which mark these human mushrooms, we ought always to remember that within every one of these heads there is a new universe, as new as it was on the seventh day of creation. In each of those orbs there is a new system of stars, new grass, new cities, a new sea.

. . . If we could see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. . . We may scale the heavens and find new stars innumerable, but there is still the new star we have not found - [the one] on which we were born. But the influence of children goes further than its first trifling effort of remaking heaven and earth. It forces us actually to remodel our conduct in accordance with this revloutionary theory of the marvellousness of all things. We do actually treat talking in children as marvellous, walking in children as marvellous, common intelligence in children as marvellous. . . [and] that attitude towards children is right. It is our attitude towards grown up people that is wrong. . .

Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect; [we reverence, love, fear and forgive them.] We bow to grown people, take off our hats to them, refrain from contradicting them flatly, but we do not appreciate them properly. . . If we treated all grown-up persons with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat [the limitations of an infant, accepting their blunders, delighted at all their faltering attempts, marveling at their small accomplishments], we should be in a far more wise and tolerant temper. . .

The essential rectitude of our view of children lies in the fact that we feel them and their ways to be supernatural while, for some mysterious reason, we do not feel oursleves or our own ways to be supernatural. The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to been through a microscope. I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small. . . we feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that [God] might feel. . .

But [it is] the humorous look of children [that] is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the cosmos together. . . [They] give us the most perfect hint of the humor that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.

physician, cure thyself...

[Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord."

Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, "Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing."

And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, "Isn't this the son of Joseph?" He said to them, "Surely you will quote me this proverb, 'Physician, cure yourself,' and say, 'Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.'" And he said, "Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place."
Luke 4:16-24


This section of Luke has come up twice in the past 24 hours, completely at random. One of the times it came up was during lectio divina with my Ignatian spiritual exercises group. I placed myself in this scene, and thought about how excited i would be for Jesus, this hometown hero, this miracle worker, to come back to us. and how disappointed and angry and hurt i'd be to hear that his message, his healing, his grace wasn't for me. or for me alone. we weren't the only chosen people. we weren't the heirs to David's legacy.

i also thought a lot about home, specifically and conceptually. my sister just came to visit and it was a beautiful and confusing collision of two worlds. i think part of what was so challenging was wanting to think of myself as a changed person - not a prophet, maybe a prophet-lite. but, my sister knows me. she's known me my whole life. and so that's not how i appear to her. it's not how i appear to myself, either. i find myself unable to articulate what i do here, what i love here, and why i might want to stay. i think it's one of the joys and curses of family - they have such a longevity of knowledge of you and can see the places where you're the same, even when you think you've changed.

it's interesting to think about the context of this passage, specifically. Jesus has just been tempted in the desert - he's been fasting, he's faced temptation, and then, after probably performing some miracles and pouring out some grace, he finds himself back in his hometown, with his people. and instead of tripping down memory lane with them, he gives them the vision of his ministry. and then he tells them it's not just a vision for them. and they get so mad, they try to kill them. apparently, those Nazarites aren't really the ticker-tape-parade sort. Regardless, it shows the depth of challenge to what Jesus said - people were ready for him to breeze into town and fix things. instead, he tells them the vision and then says "other people need this first. it will happen. but not yet. and not here." that gives me a little solace - maybe i'm meant to do good things, biggish things, far away from the people who love me. or maybe that's just me twisting the Gospel so i don't feel too badly about not knowing where i'm supposed to be...

But, on this journey toward Lent, it's good to remember that Jesus' ministry starts out amongst people who know him. And the specific vision he presented enraged them so much that they tried to kill him. That's the Jesus I believe in - the one whose love is so great, whose vision is so challenging, and whose grace is so costly that many people try to kill him, and some even (temporarily) succeed. That's the Jesus whose Resurrection I long for. That's the Jesus I want to follow, even into my own hometown...

a very belated semi-valentine's day poem

i wrote this right before valentine's and prevaricated about posting it. reflecting on relationships, and how i am in them, involves two sets of feelings. but, with some objective reflection from others, i decided that this poem is much more about me than about others, so i've decided to post it. also, because i might be a little proud of it...

"just biology"
2.13.10

outside our window
grew one of those epic, all-consuming trees,
casting shadows on our faces.

it was so much a part of our romantic landscape,
that it was easy to think that it grew
by virtue of our laughter,
the tears we shed,
and our long midnight sighs.

it was so easy to imagine that its photosynthesis ran,
somehow,
off the light of our love.

so, imagine my surprise when,
after so many tree-filled days, we split.
but the tree didn't die.
there were no cracks in the heartwood
to remember us by.

after all, trees know a little more than we do
about weathering storms
and surviving the seasons.
that's not a metaphor.
that's just biology.

and i'm glad that tree lives,
now impersonal
and a part of someone else's story-
lit by someone else's love,
surviving someone else's regret.

and we lived too,
even when i thought we wouldn't.
hearts kept beating.
feet kept moving.
mine led me half-way across the country,
to almost make the same mistakes again.

it must be how i'm wired -
loving comes just a little bit harder,
filled with a little more doubt
than seems necessary.
but, some people get good, easy hearts,
and some people get challenging hearts.
it all depends what you're born into
and what you survive.
that's not a metaphor.
that's just biology.

top 30 things i've learned thus far...

my lovely, lovely roommate threw me a surprise birthday party this week, which is a whole other post unto it's own (i cannot even comprehend how much i'm loved. it threatens to overwhelm me every time i really look at it...).

but, my sweet and blunt friend jake asked "after 30 years, what do you have to say for yourself?" i didn't really know what to say and kinda floundered around until i found a kurt vonnegut quote that fit the occasion. but in reflecting on it that night, i thought it'd be good (for myself, if not for others) to write down what i've learned thus far.

here, in no particular order, are things i've discovered over 30 years on this little blue marble filled with wonderful and tragic things...

1. pancakes for dinner always make a day feel special, even if it's just a tuesday.


2. never listen to someone whose main argument boils down to "the human condition is sinful and you should always expect the worst." it's sometimes true but it's a bad operating system.


3. i'd rather cry too much than too little.


4. if you live through a hurricane, it's okay to hold a remembrance for your stuff. just remember the people, too.


5. there's nothing you can't live through, except death. that's not as uplifting as it sounds.


6. people will break your heart in new and different ways. that's not as sad as it sounds.


7. the palestinian people deserve to be free in their homeland. i won't apologize for believing that.


8. no matter how you prepare them, i probably am not going to eat beets.


9. we live in a racist, sexist, classist society. i want to keep learning how i contribute to those systems and what i can do to end it.


10. politicians are only very, very rarely agents of change. i was wrong about ralph nader, but still think i was right about dennis kucinich.


11. love is a many-splendoured thing, with lots of pokey bits.


12. things which will always make me happy: john steinbeck's "the moon is down", the movie "yellow submarine", american dream pizza, my family, radical Catholicism, community education, poetry slams.


13. things which will always make me angry: oppression in all shapes and forms, that one time i saw white supremacists up close and didn't do enough, rampant consumerism, people who steal from nonprofits, aggressive drivers, shopping at IKEA, violence, badly-cooked vegetarian food.


14. the answer to your prayers is generally you.


15. few things are funnier than Kermit the Frog's angry face. see here for example.


16. i will always, always, always let my children dress themselves.


17. i'm afraid of getting arrested but am less and less willing to let that stand in the way


18. my future husband will love the revolution, my dad's sense of justice, my sister's plays, my brothers' senses of humor, and my mac and cheese. the fact that such a person might not exist is only a small set-back.


19. i can't conceptualize of a day when i don't think about my momma.


20. intentional community makes more sense to me than the nuclear family. not necessarily for everyone, but certainly for me.


21. i believe in the Trinity as fact. i understand this makes me crazy to some.


22. i believe that a faith full of proscriptions, rigidity, and hate doesn't leave room for Christ.


23. roadtrips are almost totally defined by their soundtracks.


24. there is no food that isn't better with hot sauce. even cake.


25. sometimes my low self-esteem really hurts people, which makes me feel worse, but is the best indicator that that dysfunction needs to change. now.


26. i don't trust anyone who loved their high school years unconditionally or who got along with a stranger as their freshman roommate. that's just unnatural.


27. do not pick your own nicknames. and if you do, don't choose Raven. or Kit-Kat. just take me word on that one.


28. finger-painting is basically always awesome.


29. people live in poverty because of choices i make, and we make. not because they're lazy or drunk or stupid. and, even if they were, we'd still have an intense moral obligation to give back what's been taken from them, in a monetary and spiritual sense.


30. i might be doing okay with this one little life, but only because people better than myself are helping and loving me and have been for 30 years. thank you.

i guess that's what i know...

grappling with jealousy...

i have everything the world could give a girl to make her happy but, every once in awhile, without meaning to, i get jealous. i get jealous of people with children, people with lovers, people without dead parents, people with actual self-esteem. and i can usually pray my way out, before i become too crazy. but when i can't - when all my coping mechanisms fail - i go back to this poem and, while it's not optimistic, it's brutally honest about this crazy, jealous condition...

September
By Jennifer Michael Hecht

Tonight there must be people who are getting what they want.
I let my oars fall into the water.
Good for them. Good for them, getting what they want.

The night is so still that I forget to breathe.
The dark air is getting colder. Birds are leaving.

Tonight there are people getting just what they need.

The air is so still that it seems to stop my heart.
I remember you in a black and white photograph
taken this time of some year. You were leaning against
a half-shed tree, standing in the leaves the tree had lost.

When I finally exhale it takes forever to be over.

Tonight, there are people who are so happy,
that they have forgotten to worry about tomorrow.

Somewhere, people have entirely forgotten about tomorrow.
My hand trails in the water.
I should not have dropped those oars. Such a soft wind.

January 25th, 1954

Tomorrow, my mother would have been 56. When she was alive, her birthday was spent as a brief pause in January and I always struggled with what to give her. I always found her difficult to shop for, and it was, honestly, usually a last-minute affair. Tonight, I prayed that, if it was possible, I could have all her birthdays to do over, to do right, to give her even a little of the love and care that she gave us. So I can be sure that she knew how much we loved her.

Since I can't do that, I figured for her birthday this year, I would give her two poems I wrote while she was alive but dying. I never read them to her and wouldn't have ever been brave enough to do so. But it seems like the thing to do. Happy early birthday, mama...

the final depot

In the end, it's just an ending,
it's just the end of a really beautiful tunnel
and the pulling up of all the inevitable train tracks.
there will be no detours, no stops between here and that great light.

There will be only one passenger left, and in her luggage she will have only love,
and pictures of children who have grown up wild. And it will be alternately too much and not enough
for where this train ride ends.

And we will stand, waving, on the platform until she can no longer be seen.
And we will continue to wave,
even after that, in case she can feel our hands from where she is.

And we will go home with the knowledge of a train, and a passenger, and the intractable pain that a one-way ticket causes. And we will carry engine whistles with us wherever we go.


******

a prayer for one heavenly and one earthly parent

to have been made, not a mistake and not a miracle, but some perfectly balanced in-between state - it's a constantly broken marvel, like some sort of carnival in a town that's sick of magic.

how could it have happened and so fast, this feeling that living is just the cracks of one broken heart and that love is just similar scarring between us?

i just want to focus on you before your gone. i want to love you like you're meant to be loved. i want to love you like you've loved us all along.

but loving those that are leaving feels both perpetual and inconstant. i will always be loving you, and from this point forward, you will always be leaving. even after your gone, i will remember the leaving more than anytime you were here.

i asked you one day, before any of this, what's it like to be one parent short? what's it like to live with a little less love than before? and your answer shows me now what i have to look forward to. it hurt like hell at first, you said. every day was raw and some were just unbelievable marathons of pain - christmas, his birthday, their anniversary. and then, some day long afterwards, it hurt just a little bit less. and then it became easier to remember his face, the way he danced with my mother, the way that he kept things together, and not just focus on the day it all came apart, the day we ceased to be a constellation and became just a set of stars apart. well, you didn't say that exactly. stars are really my father's thing, not yours. but it sounded something like that.

and i am trying to prepare for that day that our constellation will come apart, mother. i am trying to be a very good star. but the process of shining with grief is difficult and painful. and i focus more on my brokenness than anything else these days. it's not your fault - sickness (yours or mine) seems to exacerbate my inborn weaknesses and break me into big shards and little pieces, and it makes a mess that cannot be put together. i want to ask you to forgive it all - forgive my absence and my frustration, and most of all, my brokenness. that's the part that's so difficult to solve and so painful to live through.

forgive me, mother, my brokenness in sight of your brokenness. and Father, help me remember that this brokenness is not the sum of all my parts.
Amen.

the story of this decade...

yesterday i came across this article on forgoing New Year's resolutions in favor of writing the story you want to live out. I love Don Miller and this blog posting specifically captures the writing style, and theology, which make me adore him so.


given that I'm a New Year's baby, my general resolution is to turn a year older, which always happens, and thus I always fulfill my New Year's resolution. Sure, it's cheating, but it makes me feel virtuous, for all of 10 seconds, at least.

but this post got me thinking about what I want my story to be. Although I'm not really the writer of the family, I love a good plotline as much as the next person. How I'm living my life in Chicago is a reaction to the fact that I had some not-so-great subplots in my storylife before...while I've loved being home and seeing family here in PDX, I know I've temporarily given up the storyline I live in Chicago in favor of the old storyline I'd been living here. And, after 4 months away, some parts of it don't fit as well.

Bottom line: I want to write a better story than the one I've been living. I want ALL of us to write a better story - one where people are fed, injustices are addressed, safety nets exist for all of us, and we wake up one day to see that we've built a part of God's kingdom and we rejoice that we'll someday see all of it.

So, without further adieu, here are the stories I'll be writing this decade. I'd love to hear (here or in person) what yours might be.

Storyline #1 - Cat gets arrested: okay, so hear me out on this one. Recently, i've become part of many communities which make up one amazing community of support. These are people I highly respect, who are committed to putting their physical bodies on the line for a cause. I've always been a little too shy about that aspect of things. But when I went to the School of the Americas protest this year, I began to realize how much that fear had kept me from doing lots of things which would truly demonstrate my commitment to causes I believe in. Getting arrested is just the climactic scene - a visible sign that I've used this decade to become a braver, gentler warrior.

Storyline #2 - Cat starts a family: so, this one, of all the storylines i want to write, is the scariest, most embarrassing one. but i feel like i need to write it down, so i can remember (and people who love me best can hold me to) the idea that this decade is the decade i stop using people as a way to work out my own personal issues and i start looking for someone i can build a communal storyline with - one that includes kiddos and a simple life and a common commitment to building the kingdom of God. It will take time and that's okay (probably for the best, really) and I just need to remember the end scene - bringing my kiddos to the SOA, for example, or living in community with singles and families, where my kiddos feel loved and supported by more than just their parents. It's a more radical example of the comfort and safety and love I felt growing up and it's something I feel called to do with my life. But it scares the hell out of me and I have a ways to go (and a lot to be honest with myself about) before I get there. This storyline will probably be the one that causes me the most pain before the decade's through, which is okay, I guess.

Storyline #3 - Cat becomes a restorative justice mediator with juveniles: It is possible that this profession will change, but this is the decade where I finally commit to a vocation. I love wandering and cannot imagine that I will stay at the same place for most of this decade. But I'm pursuing an expensive degree (well, two of them, really) and it's probably time that I really think about how to use them. I've always been pulled towards issues of nonviolence and I've always loved working with teens. Using nonviolence tactics to work with teenagers in a way that directly challenges our current criminal justice system is beyond thrilling to me. To keep this plotline going, I will be researching conflict resolution trainings I can participate in while in Chicago, as well as more fully researching organizations nationally which do this work and scheduling informational interviews with them. I understand that this is probably the least-riveting plotline, but not every story can have explosions of the literal or figurative kind, i suppose...

Thanks for reading (or skipping to the end) of this somewhat self-aggrandizing post. I'd love to hear any feedback folks have on the article linked above, or on New Year's Resolutions in general. I like learning how people celebrate my birthday :)