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

I usually hate lists of simplistic parenting tips, because they rarely go deep enough to be useful. But I’m realizing as I reflect, gratefully, on the last six years with my S, there are some important things I’ve learned that I think are generalize-able—that is, not necessarily specific to having a child with severe trauma and other special needs. But, I am also certain that I may not have learned these things, at least not as clearly, had my child been neurotypical and trauma-free, because I would have had less reason to be intentional, and to pay attention. I might have relied more on other people’s advice (which, incidentally, has always been pretty terrible and completely unrelated to what it means to parent my particular child) or parenting books (except for those that deal with children with trauma, even worse—and even some of those are pretty terrible). Let me add that I learned all of these things by making terrible mistakes, and figuring out what I could have done differe...

In the midst of a difficult time, when the political climate seems desolate, when the wind and snow and cold came much too early and already feel relentless, when people we love are dying or getting sick all around us, when the future is so uncertain for so many we care about, we made a tree trunk and branches out of grocery store paper bags and taped it to our wall. Gratitude tree. Every night, we each write one thing we're grateful for on a colored leaf and tape it to one of the branches. "Let's just skip to snowflakes," S said, but I wouldn't allow it--no winter or holiday decorations until after Thanksgiving, at least. Still, taping up those colored leaves in the midst of both the intense winter weather and the intense suffering around us feels either ridiculous or like a powerful act of resistance, depending on my mood. The leaf-message has to be specific--names rather than "family and friends," short narratives of moments cherished rather than ...

A couple nights ago, I had a massive meltdown about how much I missed writing. So write, T said. But how can I possibly fit writing into my life again? I need space, and time. I need time to breathe, to think, to be present with myself. I don't have time for that. We've started Healing House, now Petalouda House (a name I'll have to explain in another post sometime in the future). We've got two challenging full-time tenants (my daughter S and one other person, whom we'll call H), and a handful of part-timers who come and go, ranging in age from 10 to 25. It's what I always wanted. But, I can't do it if I've lost myself. And then, there's the job. Always new challenges. Always new projects, new ideas, new things that go right, and wrong. And then, there are the day in, day out stressors of continuing, still, to unpack, to make this space our own, to figure out how to pay the bills, keep the old house rented, keep planning for the future. ...

"We have a new everything," S announced to an acquaintance at the county fair today. "A new house, new yard, new garage, and my parents got married." That about sums up our lives over the last few months. We got married. It was beautiful and poignant and anything I would write here about it would not do it justice. I didn't actually expect to enjoy my wedding--but I did. Every minute of it. Even the days leading up to it, and the days after. Everybody wrote a message on a rock for us, and we spent the first day of our short honeymoon at a beautiful state park sitting on the floor of our cabin and reading each stone, taking the time to let the messages sink in. Funny and meaningful, spiritual and intellectual, silly and serious--beautiful, all. And then, we figured out a way to move into a new house and start our Healing Ranch dream--something we didn't think possible for at least five more years. But we took a risk, a big one, and contacted a couple ...

It was a whirlwind weekend--so many highs and lows. I got a text on Friday afternoon that S was having a flashback--the first in a very long time. She was lying down, weeping, out of her mind, had written down what she'd remembered. I canceled everything and rushed home. She was Ok in an hour. It was a bump in the road, I knew, not a catastrophe. But I didn't call T, and later, T and I had our biggest fight so far--she was upset she hadn't been included, and I was upset that she was thinking about this and not about S. We said mean things to each other, then said we were sorry, talked it out, made some plans for how to handle similar situations differently next time, remembered we were in love with each other. Too many days of not taking care of ourselves--two weeks of working nights for her, too many late nights trying to meet deadlines for me--finally had its toll. "You're not going to break up, are you?" S asked, tearfully. No, we both told her, again...

Whenever my cell phone's little window read "Home," I ignore it the first time, and the second. But if it rings a third time, I know that S isn't calling on a whim with a funny story or a minor complaint. Instead, something is really wrong. "The dog might have cancer," she announced dramatically, going on to describe a bump near his spine. "I doubt it," I said, clicking through another set of e-mails while simultaneously packing my bag for my next meeting. "I'm sure it's nothing. Let's let T look at it when she's done with night shifts, and we'll go from there." "She's a nurse, not a vet," S said. "And I don't want to wait." "Uh huh," I said, pulling a bag over my shoulder, checking my calendar again to make sure I was heading to the right meeting. And then she began to cry. "I'm really scared, Mama," she said, totally sincere. I felt a sense of panic. I h...

S found a letter I wrote to her a few months ago--three single spaced pages about how important it was to be present in the present moment, how that was the only way she would ever be able to heal and fill the hole she kept trying to fill with obsessive behaviors and a desire for more and more things. She asked me, randomly, to read it out loud to her, which I did. "What's changed, do you think, since I wrote you this?" I asked her, figuring that's where the conversation was going to go whether I asked the question or not. "I don't know," she said thoughtfully. We were sitting on the couch, late afternoon, and I was playing hooky from my last couple hours of work after working a near-all-nighter last night. "But I don't think it's possible for humans to stay totally present in the present moment. I mean, it might be possible for little white dogs," she said, pointing to ours, who was spread out across our laps, snoring, "but no...

In the Greek tradition, the woman who met Jesus at the well becomes St. Fotini. She was so deeply moved by Jesus' willingness to engage with her--a woman, a Samaritan, an adulterer--that she went on to preach Jesus' message throughout Samaria and the Middle East after his death. As a result, she and her family--sisters and son--endured several tortures. Over and over again, she convinced her persecutors to convert, continually angering Nero so that he would try yet another torture, worse than the last. Finally, after all of her sisters and her son had been killed, she saw a vision of Christ and died in prison. But most Christians don't know that part of the story. If they know the story at all, they likely memorized verse 13, out of context, in Sunday School: "“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal li...

Ever since I started my career 14 years ago--and even before that--I've been teaching my students how to write found poems from the words of elders in a local nursing home. The literally thousands of poems we've collected since the project began in 2000 range from the hilarious to the mundane to the profound. This week I've been visiting my students about midway through the project to check in on how they're interacting with the elders, and to get to know the elders themselves, several of whom are new to the project this year. I wish I could do it more often. I talked to a 100 year old woman about what it's like to turn 100 the day after her birthday, listened to two old-timers argue about why a certain woman had left her husband some 40 years earlier, described changes on campus to a woman who had worked as a secretary for 40 years--and the list goes on. Today, one of the men I was meeting for the first time said the most profound thing. He looked me in the e...

We had two warm-ish days in a row, and then another snow storm last night. Once again, I was awake at the crack of dawn tracking what schools were closed or two hours late, and getting in touch with students about their volunteer obligations. Then I forced myself to go to the gym. When I got there, I said to the college student at the front desk, "I can't imagine how people survived living here before this place existed." The gym was built about a year before I moved here. "I know what you mean," she said. This morning, 7:40, almost all the snow is melted. But I am tired--I woke with T, intending to do some of my spiritual practices after she went to work, and promptly fell back to sleep. Usually I'm at the gym by now. I already feel tired and overwhelmed by the day. But, I didn't write last night, and I honestly think that might be part of my feeling of overwhelm; only into the third week of Lent, this daily writing is becoming habit, part of what...

It's not good to be irresponsible, but sometimes it's necessary to be spontaneous. T had been working a string of nights and we'd hardly seen each other. After a long day at work, I rushed to get her for our pre-marriage appointment with our minister--by the time we got there, we were 30 minutes late. Our minister was unphased, offered us tea, took her time. We had a great session; some of the hard work we've been doing to get our finances and daily schedules in order were affirmed by the activities we did today. We hurried home for supper with S, who was off to a swim lesson right after supper. I was supposed to go back to work, and T was supposed to study for a training later in the week. Instead, we ended up on the couch, talking, lost track of time. We then realized we didn't have what we needed to finish our work or study. We headed off to get our laptops and study guides--but took a little detour at a newly renovated bar. We had an appetizer and some wine and ...

We are doing a Lenten study on the topic of forgiveness at church. I participated the first week, when we were talking about the parable of the prodigal son. The conversation was fairly routine, even a little boring, until one of the participants commented on the fact that the son seemed truly sorry. "Why does that matter?" asked T, who hadn't spoken at all up to this point. "Should we base our decision to forgive on whether the person is sorry or not?" This is one of the reasons I love her--she'll seem so quiet and reserved, but it's only because she's saving her words for when they matter. At this point, they mattered. I looked around the room. When I'd left the church a few years back, it was some of these same people who had hurt me so deeply I was sure I wouldn't be able to come back. I thought, too, about one of the couples there, whose son had recently made a re-appearance. About another woman at our church, not present, whose da...

There is also, of course, the question of what music to play during the ceremony. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think Tracy Chapman's "At This Point in my Life" would be the perfect walk-down-the-aisle song. "Done so many things wrong, I don't know if I can do right I've done so many things wrong, I don't know if I can do right" I feel as if T and I began this way; recounting or reliving mistakes from the past, trying to figure out what we needed to account for, and what we needed to forgive others for. The conversations we had the first summer we met, when we were "just" friends, focused on these topics--and since then, we've accumulated 1,001 more mistakes with each other. Relationships aren't easy. "At this point in my life I've done so many things wrong I don't know if I can do right If you put your trust in me I hope I won't let you down If you give me a chance I'll try" Ultimately, we both ha...

I am apparently totally out of practice at being alone. Even though I have insisted more times than I can count that I'm not getting enough time to myself--that I can't think or pray or be myself without more alone time--when I actually have it, I get a little frantic, or bored. T and I have negotiated together-as-two, together-with-friends, together-as-family, and alone, over and over and over, a constant dance, an ongoing conversation. This week, since Thursday, T has been working nights. I had Friday off, and no activities this weekend for work--spring break, even though I still needed to work, was calmer, slower paced, with a long weekend at the end. With T gone and S in bed, I could have literally done anything on Thursday night. But instead of just deciding to take the time to myself, I started trying to find someone to hang out with early in the day. No one was around, naturally. and even if anyone had been, it would have likely been at least a little bit awkward. It...

T and I discovered early on that we both love Pema Chodron's books. We have been reading from her work every day--or nearly every day--since we got together. Somehow, though, we never considered a reading from her book for the wedding. Yesterday we discovered one possibility--a chapter in her book Uncomfortable with Uncertainty called "Commitment." In the middle of this short teaching, Chodron writes, "In order to go deeper, there has to be a wholehearted commitment. You begin the warrior's journey when you choose one path and stick to it. Then you let it put you through your changes." There is no doubt that our relationship has changed both of us profoundly, in ways we expected, as well as in ways we never expected. We have felt raw pain and grief, as well as soaring joy, as well as hours and days of ordinariness that felt either restful or boring, depending on how we used them, how carefully we paid attention and stayed present. "Without a c...

In her poem "Goldenrod," Mary Oliver begins: "On roadsides, in fall fields, in rumpy bunches, saffron and orange and pale gold, in little towers, soft as mash, sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers, full of bees sand yellow beads and perfect flowerlets and orange butterflies." I love the phrase "rumpy bunches." That was the phrase that caused me to remember what goldenrod looked like. Hiking the prairie, the goldenrod are the yellow plants that seem to gather and bend together, old women, golden-headed instead of gray, whispering their secrets. They stink, and they are rugged and disheveled, but they are also beautiful in their own way. I loved the prairie from the moment I moved here, but I learned to love it more because of S, who was so in awe of living in the midst of so much open space when I first got her. She loved to walk with me, noticing plant and snake and bird, breathing in, in, in. Later, walking ...

How does someone who is as in love with words as I am even begin to consider what readings to use for my wedding? I've officiated more than a dozen weddings myself. I have suggestions at my fingertips anytime someone wants help choosing a reading. But trying to find readings that speak to us both on a deep level--well, it isn't that there aren't any. It's that there are so many, we don't know which to choose. And, in general, none of the ones we think of are actually love poems, or about love at all. I wrote the ceremony for S's adoption party, and I remember praying and asking for guidance, than opening books I loved at random. I actually chose my readings this way--I found words that spoke deeply about permanence and community, about spiritual love. I created rituals that drew from my own spiritual heritage and created a new ground for a spiritual heritage that would become ours. Why is it so much more difficult to find the right words for a wedding? ...

We are meeting regularly with our minister to prepare for our marriage. These meetings have been important for us; rather than catalysts for talking about important issues, they have provided us with a witness who can help us solidify the outcomes of conversations we've already had. Often she compliments us on how we already seem to have internalized some of the "lessons" we are supposed to be taking from our sessions. Sometimes we think she's right; sometimes we leave saying, "If only she could see us at our worst moments." The word "prepare" is a strange word. It has a sort of scary connotation--a sense of holding back in the present in order to get to something better in the future. Whether used by street preachers comically shouting, "Prepare the way for the Lord," or by a Greek Orthodox priest explaining to a Sunday School class the importance of fasting prior to communion, there is something almost scary about the word. Even in ...

Today an old friend who has been in prison for a couple years came for a visit with his daughters, whom we cared for on and off while he was away. We talked for the first time about what it was like on the inside. I like to believe I'm not naïve, that I don't turn away from what is most horrifying in the world--that one of my gifts is an ability to be with someone even in the midst of deep pain, to listen even when what I am hearing is hard to hear. But it was hard for me to stay present while he talked about being forced to choose between carrying a knife into a human cockfight or betraying the people who had his back. It was hard to learn that he had one afternoon called our pastor to tell her he had to go into a fight, no choice--and that whatever happened, he wanted his daughters to know he loved them. Hard to hear about his friend, who was given five more years (instead of five months) for roughing up a child molester--which he was told he had to do if he didn't want...

This week's Old Testament reading is from Joel, a book of the Bible I don't remember ever reading. I was struck by this phrase--"Rend your heart and not your garments"--because it reflects a constant tension between being attentive to ritual and being attentive to the "real world," as well as the tension between being a visible person who demonstrates how to do justice and live in love, and a person who prays in secret, whose relationship with God is personal. I would argue that all of these aspects of faith--ritual and real world action, visible acts of justice and a personal, inside-the-heart relationship with one's higher power--are equally important. Acts of justice, and inspiring others by making those acts visible, of course yields the most fruit in the world in the form of social change. But rending one's heart--and doing the rituals that one has learned or adopted, the equivalent of rending one's garments--are also necessary to en...

Yesterday it was warm enough, for only the second time all winter, for me to take off the scarf that is usually wrapped around my head, with only a rectangular-shaped opening to ensure that I can see. So when I got a text at 5:30 a.m. saying that the university was closed until 9 a.m. due to hazardous driving conditions, I thought it was a joke, or a mistake. But no. I rolled out of bed, checked the weather report and school/nonprofit closings, and proceeded to send e-mails to 47 volunteers to let them know they didn't have to report to their volunteer positions today. Later, as my car slid into a snowbank about three times taller than me, and later still, when I narrowly missed a pole in the middle of the parking lot, I realized this was definitely no joke. At Ash Wednesday service, our pastor read Isaiah 58:1-11, my favorite bible verses of all time. Here are verses 6-11: Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of ...

By mid-March, even our most fastidious neighbor has given up on shoveling. There is an inch of ice on every surface, like linoleum flooring that rarely gets washed, a little rough and slightly gray, still slippery but not quite as dangerous earlier in the season. When a new snowfall comes, like a couple nights ago, nobody bothers anymore even to clear their steps. Everybody walks gingerly and gets inside as soon as possible. Last night, a man who is definitely the church's one and only welcome wagon couldn't stand up to get to the front of the church for the ashes. Over and over, I watched people pause after being marked to tell the pastor, "Be sure you don't forget about H." After church, several people offered to help his wife get him to the car. He has always appeared perfectly healthy to me, although older. The first time I came to the church, literally a week after moving to town, when I was still living in a hotel room looking for a place to rent, I wand...