an honest thing

The weekend before my surprising Thursday nearly two years ago, I sat on a cushioned pew with Tim and cheerfully sang alto to a few Protestant hymns, waiting to hear a half hour sermon that I could expect would be a brilliant exercise in sophisticated biblical exegesis. I was in my element, ready to ask questions after the message if I needed to, during the provided response time.

Tim sang beside me in full voice, as well. Our marriage had been through a lot of good and bad and yet had thankfully endured for thirty years (during our fourth year we even signed divorce papers, but those got burned rather than filed). Tim’s knee would touch mine as we listened to today’s message; I would playfully jab his rib if I saw him nodding off. This was Sunday afternoon, and Tim had stood through the Orthodox liturgy that morning. A man of energy, he enjoyed attending both churches. Because our Protestant group met at 4:30, he was able to worship with our daughter in the morning and with me through early evening.

For more than a decade this “unchurchy” Christian community had been my great joy. It suited the group when we were described by visitors as a glorified Bible study. Our project — guided by teachers who, though highly educated, were accessible individuals and sincerely credulous regarding God as mankind’s sovereign Lord — was to discover what the original writers of the Bible had been trying to say when they put down their words. What were these biblical authors meaning to express about our Creator’s activities in history? Our tools for finding answers included careful study of original languages (by those able to do that), as well as of literary contexts found within and historical settings related to the Bible. We also worked, to a great degree, to grasp the philosophies of Western Civilization and how these had shaped the understanding of the average 21st Century American Christian.

I found solace in this project, because I wanted to get to the center, the main thing, the only thing necessary, for true belief in God. My faith was a big, serious deal to me. I wanted to take in what was real about faith, about belief, as God intended it from the beginning, and to reject those ideas that were false about belief. When it came to following Jesus, Whom the Bible made a big deal of, I wanted to get it right.

Then came my eventful February 2011 Thursday. In shock over the experience I’ve attempted to describe that rocked me to the core, I now looked toward going with Tim to one of the most churchy looking churches I’d ever come into contact with. Before this, a few Sunday morning services and our daughter’s baptism comprised my entire Orthodox Christian experience. I knew there were services for special days, such as their commemorations of Christmas and Easter. Tim had attended these major happenings with our daughter, but I hadn’t been interested. They went on a long time, I knew, with a lot of standing involved. Vaguely I imagined everyone in a circle sharing impromptu expressions of love for Jesus, going on and on. Maybe the choir performed really long numbers. My ideas sprang from the experiences I’d had growing up. There was nothing much more I could guess that people might do for hours at a time in a church setting.

As I looked toward doing whatever it was they did at St. John’s, my sensations were not unlike those I felt one day during the rocky years of Tim’s and my marriage. That day some friends bought me a ticket to go skydiving. I wasn’t planning to bow out; I had said I would do this (both the skydive and the marriage). But I couldn’t analyze anything very closely and continue breathing and moving forward at the same time. I would learn what I would learn and I would deal with it as it came.

If this present situation meant my spiritual life was headed for disaster, well, so be it. I couldn’t prove I had been given a real message from the true God. I agreed with (though for the moment I didn’t remember where I’d read) C.S. Lewis’s thoughts from his book Surprised by Joy. Lewis believed experience is an honest thing.

From a life in which I had already jumped out of a plane and lived, started over in a destroyed marriage that survived, and traveled far into ideas I later had to admit I disagreed with, my assessments concurred with Lewis, who said, “You may take any number of wrong turnings, but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you.”

Clutching this principle and wearing an unaccustomed head scarf, I hastened alongside Tim into St. John’s church the following weekend to stand among the Orthodox Christians.

life of shock

During the winter of 2011, I worked an extra three hours each week at my job for a nonprofit pregnancy center. I was filling in Thursdays at their downtown Eugene location as a receptionist/sometimes counselor. Mostly the task involved waiting for clients to walk in, and so I read, checked emails, or jotted things in my writing notebook. A mid February notebook entry involved original words of wisdom I wished to express to others: “The life of faith is the life of surprise. It’s finding out the thing you always thought is something else. Wisdom is investing in the possibility of the different.” When I wrote those words I was thinking of anything but the Orthodox Christian church.

The next Thursday I awoke early. Not as early as Tim, whose movements I heard out in the living room as he laid the fire in our woodstove. I remained warm in bed as long as possible. Mornings are the time my mind is most alert, and a lot of ideas circle, sometimes landing and connecting with others.

It’s possible I won’t ever be able to express just what happened in my thoughts as I lay there that morning. Not because it’s at all vague to me. It’s simply that it was a moment that struck to my very center. I thought coherent thoughts; I recognized a deep ungratefulness in my response to an episode I’d had lately with, of all things, sore feet and sports shoes. My episode had worked out fine — after months of sore feet and aching legs, I’d been able to get the proper shoes and had been able to give away one pair of not-good for me shoes to someone who could use them — all had ended well. Yet a light (I’m only describing illumination of my thoughts, not a bulb coming on somewhere) shown directly on my ungratefulness due to the physical suffering I had experienced. Why, I wondered, did so many things have to come via pain? The pain made it seem (and this is the telling moment in my thinking) — it made me feel that having reached my good experience now was not worth it. As though something were wrong with reality.

Again I’ll say this is very difficult to express. It’s just that I knew, as soon as I thought my thought, that I was the one out of line with reality, rather than reality somehow being wrong for me. And I remembered that I really do want what reality wants (this is understood, by me, as I want what God wants). I want reality, I thought, whatever that might mean in the course of my existence.

The next nanosecond a thought appeared (“spoke”, whatever) inside my head, saying, “You need to seriously consider Orthodoxy.”

Just as fast, I replied, “Oh, no, I don’t.”

I was cut to the quick.

Elsewhere I've written (somewhat differently, in my writing cadence at that time, in the only way I could articulate it then) about this moment and what followed. I lay a short while longer, taking in what had just happened. A little scene played out for me of Tim on a steamship to Serbia and me waving goodbye from the dock and then sort of waking up to the fact that I couldn’t let him do this without me!

I got out of bed, went to Tim’s side by the woodstove, and asked if, were I to “set sail” into Orthodoxy with him, would he consider that a good or a bad thing. Without hesitation, bless him, Tim said that would be a very good thing. I burst into tears.

The unusual and amazing events of the day didn’t end there. There were little things, mostly, that were meaningful to me, such as conversations I had with both my mom and mother-in-law, running past them this news of my nascent decision, and receiving their wholehearted approval. Our Protestant born and bred parents all wished me and Tim well. I couldn’t believe it. My son, for whom the news meant I would likely break fellowship with our current non-Churchy church, also expressed understanding and support. (He had visited the St. John group several more times than I had, and he enjoyed the people.)

Somehow later on I made it to work. I began to recognize the numbness of being in shock. I got that, if I were only toying inside my thoughts with making this giant move in my faith, my experience would show me at some point that nothing really real had happened. There was always the possibility that I was having some kind of imaginary revelry, and I would snap out of it when I needed to.

Experience as a human being and a wannabe writer had delivered the message, plenty of times, that I can convince myself something I think ought to happen is truly happening (such as the best idea for a book since the Bible), when nothing of the sort is actually going on. In these circumstances there has always come a day (usually preceded by hints that it’s coming) when I surrender to the fact that I’ve tried to force something that was never meant to be.

My impression that morning -- my nudge, as I would come to call it -- had arrived, from my perspective, out of the blue. Yet that didn’t prove anything. I needed to let the next things, if there were to be next things, unfold in whatever form they might choose to. I couldn’t begin to imagine implications, actions, scenarios, and so on. Sitting behind the pregnancy center welcome desk, I could only crack open my writing notebook and jot bits of my morning. After doing so, I glanced at the previous entry, where I’d blithely scribbled, “The life of faith is the life of surprise. It’s finding out the thing you always thought is something else. Wisdom is investing in the possibility of the different.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

blessing house

Two years ago, I stood in my living room watching an Orthodox priest and his wife pray for us. My husband prayed with them, making the sign of the cross whenever they referenced “the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

I was resigned. Tim had recently told me he had decided to be baptized into the Church. I had exclaimed in dismay, “I thought this was a phase!” I had truly hoped so. But I had been wrong. Now, for the third year in a row, we were receiving the ritual known as a house blessing.

Our daughter had instigated it the first time. She lived with us for a while, having moved home due to one of those financial binds college graduates get into. In January of 2009 she asked if her priest could come bless our house, sprinkling water throughout as is the Orthodox Christian custom. Tim and I agreed, bemused to some degree. We had visited the church where our daughter became a catechumen, as they call someone exploring Orthodoxy. Her intent from the first had been to be baptized, and this was soon to take place. Why she considered her newfound community The Church, and why she felt strongly enough to go through a second baptism, we didn’t understand (she’d first been baptized as a child by her dad). Of course I can’t speak for Tim, but I know I didn’t get it. I also worried about the priest flinging water hither and yon, perhaps into back closets where mold likes to show its ugly, Western Oregon wetness self.

As it turned out, I enjoyed our first house blessing. We followed Fr. David from room to room, he and an accompanying acolyte chanting about Christ being baptized in the Jordan and how that event made the Trinity manifest, enlightening the world. No closets were opened and the sprinkling caused no water damage. Our daughter’s face radiated joy. That was what mattered.

The following January, Tim asked if we could invite Fr. David and his wife, called Popadija Esther, to come for dinner as well as the house blessing. Our daughter had moved away. I decided to be polite, knowing that the ceremony wouldn’t be long or bothersome. Somewhere during the past year Tim had entered his “phase” of interest in Orthodoxy.

So we spent an evening with the gracious couple, and I, ever nervous about playing hostess, was relieved it went well. Soon afterward, Tim bought an icon of Jesus. Our daughter gave us a small one of the Last Supper, which I hung in the kitchen. Then Tim, who had attended an Orthodox church history class, mentioned he was becoming a catechumen. “Fr. David said it’s the thing people who want to find out more tend to do.”

None of this changed my life, and I never planned that it would. I had asked our daughter many questions her first year in the Church; I had read a book by an author whose name I was familiar with, and that was it. I knew this denomination was not for me.

For one thing, I wasn’t sure I believed anymore in the Trinity. I wasn’t strongly thinking I didn’t, but I had reasons for my near-dismissal of it as doctrine or dogma or whatever it was. My history as a Christian hadn’t given me any good reasons to believe that Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit weren’t simply pieces of the narrative I believed God had been writing/telling throughout history. There were many other pieces, and, yes, the Gospel of the god/man Jesus was the most important piece for me to understand. But did that have to make Jesus, let alone the Holy Spirit, the same as God in some mysterious fashion? I no longer thought so.

If my loved ones wanted to go around performing quaint, ancient rituals designed to invoke the Trinity, that was their choice; I supported them. I considered this all quite unnecessary. By the time Tim came out, in January 2011, with his almost reluctant admission that he wanted to be baptized, I sighed and I exclaimed (hence, I’m sure, his reluctance to tell me). Yet I maintained I would endure it, as long as no one pushed me that direction. No one did. The night of our third house blessing I stood like stone as the waters were sprinkled. I knew exactly what I was doing. I was being my own person, who had studied and gained a pretty good understanding regarding Christianity. A little water and a few prayers I could manage to endure.

cold yet close comfort

Twice in the past week I have been at my parents' house and decided to walk west on the close path that crosses a wetland. Despite near freezing temperatures, I've been glad both times I bundled and trundled.

Friday there was late afternoon sunlight, playing with clouds and beckoning a feathered double date to the nibbly water bar.





Today beneath blankets of gray I found solace.












The gloom in our hearts came from swift loss. A dear uncle died last Wednesday. Though in recent months I have stood near the bodies of friends, this moment with Jim was closer to the soul. We who gathered around his nursing home bed were bidding farewell to a brother, a helper, a participant in so many memories. The stories will come. Oh, the stories.

Right now, though, in the words of Tolkien's Legolas, the grief is still too near.

Not that Uncle Jim would have brought to mind an elf, nor a wizard either, I guess. One cousin said he made her think of a Hulk Hogan cowboy.

Jim had a heart of gold. He wanted his family to come together. Many times, around his barbecue grill on the 4th of July, the family did.

I wish to write about that. For now, I will walk and be comforted.

such a little thing

I stepped out onto the deck one creaky cold morning last week, and there hung the moon above still pink clouds. I was excited, because of the new camera in my grasp, but I also felt the familiar thrill from simply seeing it. Our disc of reflected light. Our gift as night finally wanes. The hope of tomorrow's sun rising again.

Even if I knew nothing of science and tides, I would still sense that leap inside my soul, of discovery, of sameness, of the new, of this as a gift. It doesn't save me from all that surrounds -- doubts and fears, despondency and dread -- but it beckons me to come to know, to remember. Something is true. And it is humble, because even if no one saw it and thrilled deep inside, it would show itself anyway.

I pondered, as I sought to capture frosty aspects of my world that morning, that nature is innocent.





This understanding is part of my faith -- part of what I'm believing I see while hearing it in songs of nature and in the Eucharistic (thanksgiving-istic) movements I'm making.




Nature only participates in creation as it is supposed to; left to itself it is truly wild. Corruption is the context, due to the choices of humankind, that nature exists in. But nature is not vanquished. So far, anyway, the moon continues to shine into my context.



Though I don't think I have announced it here yet, I've been pondering another very small something, which also looms exceedingly large on my horizon. Last night I was talking with my daughter about it, asking her how she is feeling, as I always make sure to do these days. Victoria said she is having days of more energy now, though not always, and she rarely feels sick, though familiar foods can cause new reactions. She hasn't felt movement yet, but she can tell when she stoops to retrieve a tray or a package at work, there is a definite heaviness, a something.

In innocence her child grows, in dark and in secret. Yet I thrill deep inside imagining the day it will show itself.

traveling light

Late day beside the river. Berry vines are crimson, and birds' nests abandoned.



I'm clearing my head.

my recipe for celebration

The month just passed isn't a month I dread, but I'm never quite prepared for it, either. Every year as December approaches I know things will get crazy; I also know things will be fun. Plans for meals and parties at our home and the homes of others will fill our calendar -- we the geeky homebodies will become gadabouts.

The day or so after Thanksgiving, I always get the notion that this will be the year I'll write and send a Christmas letter. But when you birth both your children the week that begins December 20, you don't produce a Christmas letter. Even the year your daughter gets married, the year you really should, you know, conform to the tradition of getting out a holiday missive by post, you wake up December 19 and realize it just isn't going to happen. So you sigh, imagine a nebulous January mailing, and finish wrapping presents.

My son's birthday is the day each year when I begin to enjoy things. This time -- after being sick, having injured my shoulder, and having seen both of my parents through back surgeries 11 days apart (my brother and sister-in-law were here, helping immensely) -- was no exception. I've now gratefully experienced our family's twelve days of happy things. Last night marked the preparing of bonbons. These are chocolate peanut-buttery goodies that the aforementioned sister-in-law, Lynn, gave me the recipe for several years (10? 12?) ago. They have become the only "baking" I do for the holidays, probably because I don't get time or energy to make the first batch until just before a New Year's Eve party we attend with friends who used to work with Tim. How many years has that tradition gone on? Let's just say it started long before the kids were old enough to make their own plans for New Year's.

[caption id="attachment_6393" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Tim and me partying last night[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_6392" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Bonbons in process.[/caption]

In lieu of a Christmas letter, below is my recipe for bonbons, complete with the gluten-free and dairy-free alternatives I have found over the years. I also now strive to use organic powdered sugar, since it's often available. This year's semisweet chocolate chips came from my mom via Costco; they contain chocolate liquor, sugar, soy lecithin, and vanilla.

Peanut Butter Bonbons
3 cups powdered sugar
2 cups graham cracker crumbs (or 2 cups almond meal/almond flour)
1 cup butter (or 1 cup Earth Balance/Smart Balance)
2 tablespoons shortening (Earth Balance also makes this without hydrogenated oil)
1 cup peanut butter
2 cups (about 1 12 oz. package) semisweet or milk chocolate chips

In a large bowl, mix powdered sugar and cracker crumbs (or almond meal).
Heat butter and peanut butter over low heat until melted; stir into crumb mixture. Shape mixture into 1-inch balls. Refrigerate 1 hour.
Heat chocolate and shortening until smoothly melted.
Using tongs, dip balls into chocolate until coated. Refrigerate until firm.

Happy New Year!