Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

It’s my birthday today, and I’m taking the day off of work, a day of reflection and retreat. The only thing I have scheduled is a massage this afternoon, my first in more than ten years. I have been looking forward to the day all weekend—but it started out, somewhat predictably, in not exactly the way I had hoped. Over the weekend, S and I had some good talks about how she needed to take more responsibility around the house, to take better care of herself, her animals, and her environment. I have realized that over the last year I’ve been depressed, and that many of my expectations of her, for that reason and others, went out the window. We have talked about how I want to turn that around this year, to find a way to keep our place neat and clean, to use our time wisely, to live more healthfully. To her credit, she was on board with these new year’s resolutions, overall, and she helped me give the house a thorough cleaning over the weekend and did all her chores last night. Mornings hav...

I think we got it right this year. We drove for two days toward Ohio, where my family is from, with a carload of gifts and our dog. We got a hotel (generously paid for my aunt C, who raised me, as an early birthday gift), so we had our own space to just be together and with our dog. This made every moment we were with family poignant instead of exhausting, I think. The slow drive back home was a slow reentry into our own time and space. We spent a lot of time holding my new nephew, and playing with my other nephew, now 6. We made a snowman and ate way too much and went to a couple museums on days when we needed to be alone together and laughed a lot with the extended family. And, of course, we sang. This is always the highlight of the holiday season for me, when we all gather together on new year’s and sing the traditional Greek carols. In the song, we invite St. Basil, and each other, to sit and eat, sit and drink, sit and tell each other our troubles. We sing about endings and beginn...