5/31/2017

from the inferno to Alaska


In January my father-in-law decided to take us--Tim, me, and Tim's sister, Stephanie--on an Alaskan cruise. Dear LeRoy has been a widower since a year ago April, and he wanted to "spend our inheritance" on something he could enjoy with us. We agreed this was a good plan. The travel agency booked us to leave in May, on my birthday.

At that time my life was consumed with the upcoming trial of our priest. Dreaming about a trip to the northern land--backdrop to stories I read and reread in childhood, where I'd always wished to go--remained a bright window during dark months. I didn't always believe I would survive (emotionally, at least) the painful inferno of our church's situation, but of course I knew life would continue and May would arrive...

During the one week our priest spent in jail, I phoned James to update him. He gave me the news that he and Kimi were having marriage problems. My tattered heart sank in flames again.

Since then they've separated. We all miss her terribly, no one moreso than our son. They hit a rough patch of circumstances, a severe test for any couple, let alone one just past their first anniversary.

At some point James recognized he had to move back to Eugene. A friend had a room. Settling in, he asked his granddad what it would cost to join us on the cruise, now a month away. LeRoy called the travel agent and without blinking paid for another ticket. He even upgraded the five of us to staterooms on the verandah deck. Wowza.

The train carried us to Seattle. Above is our kind benefactor, eager to go.

My brother Richard and his beloved Manny hosted Tim, James, and me overnight before the ship left. I loved seeing the two of them, of course. But one of the best parts was spending time with their sweet pooch, Sammy.

The week before our journey's start, my throat began feeling sore. Despite determined attempts at denial I had to admit I'd gotten the virus that's been going around, complete with laryngitis. Cough drops lined my purse and every pocket, and I would live on the most medicine-y provisions for the week ahead. (It's possible Tim appreciated my reduced talkativeness.)

Feeling yucky matched the dreary weather as we embarked from Seattle on the MS Amsterdam. But from there things improved.

Nothing could thwart the great gift of this adventure.


















5/08/2017

ignorance

The All-Merciful Saviour Monastery on Vashon Island, WA.

One of the things I've noticed in Orthodox Christianity, that I've not found anywhere else, is the recognition of ignorance. Not the excusing of it for wrong actions, but an amazing acceptance and working with this integral aspect of being human.

My first months at our church, I braced myself for some form of Orthodox policing and the shaming which I assumed would have to follow my infractions. I wasn't afraid at that point, because I would have run out the door as soon as it happened. I wasn't invested there yet. What did scare me was the possibility of becoming invested, of incrementally coming to love the people there and so forth, and then finding myself shamed before the group in some fashion, and then not wanting to exit but having to, with all the well-known pain this entails.

I was fearing such things as always happen among broken, fallen people. Which I'm acquainted with, because I have participated. It's so easy. Simply nod my head when someone brings up the awful thing someone else did. But it never ends with the simple nod.

The awfullest aspect of this is that often the someone else who did wrong was acting, to some degree at least, in ignorance. Even when I can't sort it all out, I can be 99.9% sure this is reality. Most people are not monsters. Maybe nobody is.

But still there are categories of monstrous things people do. We call them monstrous because they hurt so much. Even (on a relatively small scale) if a person walks inside an unfamiliar church and ignorantly steps on the toes of sacred tradition and then is shamed by a person from the church who is ignorant of how much this hurts the other, a wrong has been committed, a heart has been broken. It happens.

The New Testament book of James was written by someone who noticed. He participated in church and saw rich, pretty people being honored for breezing into their gathering, while poor, ugly people were sidelined. "Here, sit at my feet and be quiet." Wow. Becoming educated about this problem is still a painful process. Which is one reason, I guess, why people back then read and reread James' letter and included it in Holy Scripture. The holy things were, in truth, always and only about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, for whom the Jews had been preparing in their synagogues and to whom the Christians were drawing near. The holy things were meant to be accessed by all who desired them. Even those ignorant as I was, stumbling in at age 50 with an incredibly hardened soul.


In Orthodox churches, room exists for those as ignorant as myself. Kindly space is made for many, many mistakes and for learning. This is the air we converts breathe. With the human element it is far from perfect. As has always been the case, there is a continual need for confession of and repenting from wrongful, ignorant actions on the part of everybody. I have been growing to love this risk of being corrected, of even the chance someone will shame me (though the latter hasn't happened). The awkward process is a part of the Story that binds us together. The one that truly deals with the stuff that is monstrous.
"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do."

5/03/2017

validation

Figlets have appeared on the back tree. Jewel-like camas and comfry blossoms open. Soft fennel stalks push skyward.

I am in pain every day, in sorrowful grief. This is for reasons I've shared and for some I haven't. This is the way life is.

 
I think we members of humankind (possibly of plantkind and animalkind as well) seek validation. Years ago I would talk with friends about this. My agendas roamed in search of the good word of somebody else. Or I wouldn't mind finding a narrative, a book, a movie, or even a painting that seemed to tell me, yes, it's okay you exist.

Some days I simply dreamed of hearing it in a loved one's voice. This surely would suffice. But the true voicing I sought of course couldn't be forced; it had come free. Impatiently, I sought to know I was valid by trying to build my own narrative structure. Often I became a slave to the endless task.


In recent times I've wondered. What if the shape of reality, the sane voice rising from soil well-composted and deep, has always been a structure existing? A vibrating trueness, though in ignorance I tilled and wept and left it bare.

I think perhaps it is only as I've recognized a future and a past that I have been able at times to tremblingly access being in the present. Actually fitting. I don't do it often, and I never "find" this without help. Help from above. From beyond. Yet as close as all the soft surgings past the back step, my clumsy toes pointing there, being drawn to it, to being real.


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