high there

A year ago I felt as though I gave up my husband for Lent. I was at least a little hurt. I think already I could see where this was heading. I didn't want Tim to want what I perceived as unnecessary adornments to faith in the Orthodox ritualistic style.

This year, though, I'm seeing different. Doing different.

Learning, as I dip into Orthodox practices during the season they call Great Lent, that the idea here is to keep the process simple, my usual distractions at arm's length.

And so there is a fast from certain foods. Meat and dairy, oil and wine. Yummies we tend to use to adorn the basic grains, veggies, and fruits.

The Orthodox focus more, perhaps, on doing different than on giving up.

Which can be just as risky.

A priest with eyes that twinkle said to me the other day, "This can be a fun ride." I'm finding in my heart some agreement.

Another little ride I'm taking involves linking to a group called The High Calling. I found them thanks to Deb Colarossi. Her lovely blog Talk at the Table as often melts the heart as intrigues the mind. Even its URL, "forsaken for lent," carries artistry and a challenge to me to continue thinking. High calling. High church. Hm.

Then again, I feel a lot lately like a child crouched behind the lowliest shrub along a dusty path. Not really hiding. Sort of waiting. For the procession. For someone walking past, teaching a ragtag assortment of folks trying to grasp his message.

His eyes, I'm guessing, can look so sad. I'll bet they also gleam like universes.

hope for best, prayers for worst

My imagination often zooms ahead of reality when I ponder disastrous life scenarios. Yet I doubt I can summon mind pictures adequate to what's happening in parts of Japan. This morning I thought about people we've known from that country who've stayed in our home and tried partaking of our culture and language.

I wonder how Hiroe is doing. She was from Kakegawa in western Shizuoka Prefecture when she came to visit during August 2001. She brought us a set of cups we still use and a delicate paper balloon. She was seventeen, learning to drive, embarking on life in new ways. We took her to the coast and a Japanese restaurant, and she spoke in her own tongue with our daughter's good friend, Barbi.

She was barely back home when 9/11 happened in New York, and she emailed her concern for us. I wish I still had the means to get in touch with her.

A few summers later, Taichi visited for nearly a week. We drove him to Crater Lake and McKenzie Pass. He almost passed out from lack of foods he could eat, till I made sure to stock enough carrots, apples, and trail mix for him. He was quiet and polite and very interested in philosophy and theology. At our church, he pored over the hymnal, fascinated by "gospel songs."

He lived in or near Tokyo, and I imagine he's been through some stuff this past week. I wish everyone over there the best, especially our friend Barbi, who's now living near Hiroshima. She has posted on Facebook that she's fine, high above tsunami lines and in a sheltered area.

I know the Japanese people have prepared for these eventualities, better than we have in big-earthquake-overdue Oregon. And yet they are suffering. Because we never know. Because reality brings dark days.

May their beauty and culture survive. May the people find hope as they reach for help in this worst of moments.

intersecting subsets

I've been gazing at these flowers, absorbing their pedestrian beauty.

I use the term pedestrian in the sense of simple, accessible. The way I want life to be.

Life, however, is of course quite complex. These white mums, now a memory on my desktop, used to be real -- a sweet gift from my son's girlfriend, Kimi. Friday night I attended a benefit for Kimi's alternative high school. We squeezed inside a downtown pizza place, and the crowd's attire and hairstyles truly spoke "alternative." Tie-dyed shirts, long, flowing or dreadlocked hair. Peasant blouses. Though some dresses and outfits shone with classy pizazz. There always exist those whose style makes it all look easy.

Not me, in my Gloria Vanderbilts and shapeless top. But hey, I was buzzed with pride: I had parallel parked down the block without a hitch! In the rain, no less. Then I'd made it inside a crowded place where I knew only Kimi and James, until her family showed up. The sounds were huge. Good band. Kimi's teachers looking like high school freshman themselves played, singing, encouraging their students in all things creative.

I was hungry. Shouldn't have been, having nibbled snacks ahead of time, knowing there wouldn't be gluten-free pizza. I hadn't factored olfactory longings into my sparse eating-ahead plans. We waited in the pepperoni-olive-scented haze for the poetry students, including Kimi, to read their offerings.

One of the people I'm slightly acquainted with asked me where I work. To the beat of an Al Greene cover tune I answered, "Lane Pregnancy Support Center." Of course I had to repeat it louder. And then I hoped my inquirer wasn't offended. What with the news lately about pregnancy centers and Planned Parenthood and all. The latest controversy isn't something I think about, or even that we discuss much at work, but in that moment my awareness heightened of folks with more hip views than mine dominating the crowd. The person who had asked, if of differing political views or not, granted me grace and a vague smile.

There wasn't more to say until I reached to rub an irritated spot on the back of my head. Something with a definite, bulbous body was attached at that point, dining on me (and likely wishing for pizza in my blood). I reacted with hurky movements, fingers combing through hair. The creature -- likely a spider who'd lowered from a rafter above -- disappeared and was never seen. But I became a bit more of a tic, checking for it every so often, hoping my scalp didn't start to go numb or anything.

As time approached for Kimi's reading (which came off very nicely), I had more or less relaxed and was musing that some of these young folk around me may well have been toddlers or preschoolers at the park near our home many summers ago. There was a cool homeschooling group we ran into there, me with my C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy volume and my children playing at sand fantasies in the volleyball pit. I liked the moms and their relaxed goals and the teddy bear picnic they included us in beneath towering firs.

We were an intersecting subset. Our world views likely differed in many ways, but we all wanted to give our kids alternatives to the basic educational norm.

This past weekend Tim used intersecting subsets to describe where he sees the two of us in religion right now. We're still Christian, and yet we're identifying with more than one cultural set of believers.

Leave it to him to come up with a math term. Depend on me to continue combing through contrasting ideas and traditions. Like a tic, to some degree. But like I told Tim Sunday night, tired after Orthodox and Protestant services and ready for a more pedestrian evening in front of Funniest Home Videos and The Simpsons, I feel buzzed. Hopefully more humble, less proud than I tend to be in my comfort zone. Enjoying alternatives and interesting intersections.

the new

When our 21-year old, James, was one and learning to speak, enthusiasm drove him. I got a kick out of watching his whole body respond to a puppy's fur, water boiling, stereo music. Everywhere you looked, listened, touched, or smelled, life was interesting.

As we have been a wordy family, certain phrases got remembered and repeated long, I'm sure, past the date when James wished we would stop. One such exclamation of his was, "Da new!" He relished the opening of a jar or tub of something smooth. Fresh Skippy peanut butter was a favorite, as were margarines and yogurts. You couldn't beat that amazing, unblemished look. I knew the stuff we peered at had been processed, plunked, and formed, but for those moments before the knife sank in, thanks to James, I was wowed.

Right now the thought of slipping into a life of Orthodoxy is looking rather da-newish. Only, I'm the butter knife who will discover how the texture suits me as I go. Yesterday Tim and I talked to Father David in his office. We arrived a while before "6th Hour," which is a short service at noon. Father David said I should feel free to hang around St. John's as much as I want.

From a Jewish family, David was, years ago, training to be a rabbi when he converted to Christianity. Hints of his story spark my wordy instincts. I appreciate that he spoke a little more about himself yesterday, along with explaining reasons behind some Orthodox practices.

Sunday morning there will be a brief ceremony in which I'll be dubbed a catechumen, or, "a person undertaking instruction in religious beliefs, usually before Christian baptism."

In line with my household's fun-with-words penchant, this morning seeing Tim in the kitchen I bounced up to him, saying, "I'm going to become a cataclysmic!" which made him pause a moment.

His response: "That goes without saying."