9/27/2011

Soberly grateful; sorrowful joy

These days, as wavelengths pulse and one season bows to its cousin, my mind finds a groove, a theme.

I am grateful. Very grateful.

I wish to express thanks and know only barely on the surface whom to share with. How did this benefit come to me? These benefits, I should say; there are many. Centuries march down from the places whence my gratitude springs. Yet those places and people are mingling with me. Their legacies journey on within the church services and throughout the church writings, those more and less significant, each pointing to the One to whom we pray, as individuals, together.

Unless, of course, I'm imagining everything. As I venture into writing about this road fork, this new (old) Way I now travel, I am not necessarily being helpful.

People don't just dismiss me, as I'm used to regarding other sensitive topics. Some friends read my words these days and are traumatized. While I understand the feeling completely, I tend to expect it only within myself. My melodrama, my issues.

Easily I forget I'm not the center of universal meaning, with others rotating about, shooting their missiles or bouquets my direction. For forgetting this, for not remembering even that I'm laboring to see differently in reality, I am sorry.

A rather worse problem, though, is that some friends read my processings and are inspired.

To carry anybody anywhere in connection with apprehending the spiritual is too enormous a burden. Maybe it has become real important for me to have to begin understanding this concept. Not that I'm saying thousands of readers discover me and are captivated. There've probably not been five, more likely not one. But one would be too many, to get into a mood from what I've written and go join a particular congregation.

Someone I know once described seeking to understand God through the Scriptures as a life of sober joy. I have heard that the Orthodox journey involves a joy-bearing sorrow. I don't think it's a downer to recognize how constant must be my vigilance, my repentance. I think this is the reason God wishes and provides (hence my gratitude) for me to ever keep coming back to receive His nurture.

In this healing space I can rest, and I can spring into exploration. Some days I do a bit of both.

9/23/2011

scents of quiet

Scooping blue tortilla chips into my sandwich bag, I fumbled a couple. As they fractured near my shoe, I admitted to myself some apprehension. Soon my friend Kathy would arrive, and I would climb into her pickup, and we would go hiking in lovely scenery, as we often have before (see here, here, and here).

I knew we'd have fun; I just didn't know if our connection as friends would be the same.

All smiles, Kathy greeted me and drove us out to Finley Wildlife Preserve, between here and Corvallis. I was glad, when we made our first stop at a viewpoint, that I'd worn shorts. The day was livening. Scents of long grass and green shrubs mingled with dust from a machine out working.
She set up her scope. We were already zeroing in on the tricky conversation I had anticipated. Soon the birds were all but forgotten as we stood on the little nature deck sharing back and forth. A half hour or so later, I knew things were going to be okay.

It's weird to now be going to different churches. But it's not a real difference in our friendship. We're still both as serious about God as ever, needing study and practice of life surrounding Him even more than we needed final droughts of summer in golden air.

"I don't feel rejected by you," Kathy told me. I nearly wept, having feared the opposite.

This past spring, Kathy earned her master's degree in theological studies. I work as Director for a small nonprofit office. When we venture onto hiking trails, we are simply sisters of our season, relating on many levels. Munching snacky lunches, we assemble our stories. And sometimes, like the other day, weather and scenery bless us beyond expectation.




We get a little silly. Attempting poses, taking those paths less traveled upon which we might get lost in oaken forests.



More than once in the shadows, Kathy stopped me. Her look silenced us both. We needed to listen.

Ceasing movement causes, first, a feeling. Holding still is work. Then, wonderment blankets my legs (maybe they feel it quicker because they get real exercise). Sensation covers all my skin. It zings like noise of a billion tiny wings -- those insects unseen in the gloaming.

Sailing in the blue patch above treetops, a buzzard makes no sound. Creaks and chirps signal frog cities. A squirrel scrabbles like acorns down a trunk. Stellar jays jar the world, happy to emphasize.

We walked. We could have forever. The memories and speculations never would have ended.



But our trail of friendship needs its counterpart; it must take us into faith-struggle, into family-bearing, over new potential barriers and back together when we may.

9/13/2011

attack cat and snookums

I suppose I should import a boxer photo for this post, or maybe upload pictures of my abrased ankle, but, either way, they wouldn't quite capture my two stories, so I'll just launch into them.

1.

There were two boxers in our back yard. Not the type you see on TV in a ring wearing gloves, yelling, "Adrianne!" No. These were dogs.

At first, though, I thought I saw a deer. My son and I watched a video documentary in the living room last Wednesday or Thursday afternoon. Interruption happened with a yowl from our cat, Westley, causing us to look at the back deck, where at first glimpse it seemed Westley had repelled a small deer, a fawn sans spots. Only, it was too small. In fact it was a puppyish boxer, yelping and scared. Closer inspection of the yard showed a full-grown male boxer patrolling frantically. And the huge neighbor dogs -- invisible due to their places across wooden fences -- were up in arms (of course, they don't have arms; they do bellow with great hugeness, however, and I'm always glad they can't leap their respective enclosures). The boxers had somehow managed to pierce our fenced border. I didn't know what might happen next.

After repeated, indecisive openings/closings/openings of our sliding glass door I inhaled and stepped onto the deck. Grownup boxer had started marking around the yard, near the tomatoes, the grape plant, etc. I recalled my training days with our mostly Miniature Pinscher and said, gruffly, "NNno!"

You have to take initiative, act the alpha part, I remembered.

Mr. Boxer paused.

"Go home!" I commanded.

Mr. Boxer's look seemed to say, "Whaddayamean?"

I moved to the back corner, where two of the neighbors' fences almost meet. There is a section of unfinished cyclone covering the gap, and I supposed the dogs had dug in the soft dirt beneath it, though there wasn't a definite trough. No question about it when the little boxer (female, maybe) came and perched on its haunches looking sorrowfully as if to say, "Please, may I go home now?"

Uh, oh, here came Mr. Boxer. I had wished to avoid cornering him or acting as though I threatened his young friend. He approached between us, not threateningly, I thought. But I sure didn't try to pet him.

"You must go home!" I said, pointing. I repeated my Darth Vader imitation several more times.

Mr. Boxer started digging under that covered gap.

My tone changed to encouragement. "Good dog! Keep going, you can do it!" The little boxer trembled and watched. Mr. Boxer got stuck halfway, but persevered, and finally was in his own yard.

"Yay! Now, little one, go on."

The little one looked dubious. I tried to lift the cyclone patch. It isn't very flexible, and its metal points must jab awfully on one's back when one is trying to wriggle beneath it, which is why the little boxer hesitated, but at last the little dog worked and I lifted fencing and pushed rear, and the little boxer was through. Mr. Boxer greeted the youngster with a smile, I think.

Westley the cat had remained all this while on the deck, his fur fluffed and his gaze wary. You could just see him daring Mr. Boxer to approach. "Bring it," he seemed to say. When all was calm again, he remained on guard (though in more languid pose) the rest of the afternoon.

2.

Saturday evening I donned my bicycle helmet and followed Tim along the bike path. My first two-wheeled ride in longer than I admitted. All summer I've been saying I'll get out and about, and still I hadn't done it. Really had been a while, because there was a new little bridge and several nice benches along the path that hadn't been there last time I was.

Evening heat made the breeze merely cajole sweaty skin. There was open blacktop ahead, and a cushy bike seat beneath. It was great.

Then Tim hesitated. He wasn't sure which way to turn off the path to get to the church for Vigil. I was behind him. He decided one way, came back, and when he next turned toward a sidewalk, I turned, not thinking about the small patch of gravel we crossed until, whatdoyouknow, my bike and I had tipped over.

Tim continued on. "Hey!" I called. Bleh. Dusty, dusty. My husband at last looked back. "I think it's this way," he said.

"I fell down!"

There were parents and kids at a play structure, and I was sure they were being entertained.

I don't recall if Tim said anything more, but he waited for me to catch up. Then he rode on, and I followed, calling, "Yeah, just bleeding back here, don't worry."

My ankle wound was the size of a BB. Still, Tim's back riding away was small comfort.

Later, after I led the way home in moonlight in the cooler breeze of a world lit by river and riders' small headlights, I expressed to Tim my main problem at the accident scene.

"You're very competent at times like that," I said, "but your bedside manner is terrible." I explained that the script for next time we go riding and I overturn calls for him to drop his bike, gasp, shout, "Snookums!" and rush to my side, inquiring demonstratively if I will be okay. Then I can say I'm fine and go on with dignity.

3.

I'm not sure there's any connection between these recent stories. I am reminded there can be good reason our big old cat reacts bravely to certain stimuli. (I've no clue if a burglar would receive his full ire, but Westley might spit at him, at least, before stalking over to the couch to watch him nab things.)

I also appreciate my competent husband, who will always keep cool in a crisis, and who will never call me Snookums, and that is really fine, but he will smile when I dust myself off and explain things, and he's the one in the moonlight who follows me home.

9/08/2011

over summer

In late June in Colorado, landscape raised itself, a snowy rim against city, the cusp of a rock-realm carelessly straining space.

In early July at the local amphitheater, a curly-haired symphony conductor flourished in his sheer joy. The orchestra responded, each person and instrument a striking synergy. There were two vocalists. One, a diminutive man like a character in that TV show we like, lifted the music, held it aloft, cradled and lowered its tones. His and the woman singer's formal attire weren't out of place, in the near-rain in podunk Oregon. Their absolute skill commanded refinement.

In August along the highway as I drove to work, Queen Anne's Lace beneath the blue-gold sky held fine white faces. Whether or not a face like mine ever passed, they would continue their elegant struggle against dirt and the billows of wind.

September weeks allow burnished lawns and crumbled corn husks to raise a scent ripe for smoky horizons. I lift a rag, dripping, wring its chill as small ripples chant, and swipe the dusty roof of an icon.

Time's carriage is a mosaic of graces, each in its own place, unashamed.

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