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

Every year until I was a teenager, my parents went to the New Year's Eve dance at our church, and my sister and I stayed home with Thea Koula. She is my mom's eldest sister, and the only one still alive at 93. What I didn't know then is that she'd been in a terribly abusive marriage. She had left that man even though everybody told her she shouldn't, that Greek girls didn't get divorced. What I didn't know is how hard it had been for her to raise her daughters on her own. I didn't know she stayed away from church functions because even so many years later she didn't want people talking about her, didn't really enjoy crowds or craziness, partly due to her personality but partly, I'm sure, due to her trauma as well. I learned all of this in college, when I interviewed her for a series of poems I wrote. What I knew was that Thea Koula took her time, looked me in the eye when I spoke, got on the floor to play with me, took a genuine interest ...

On New Year's Day St. Basili shows up with his love for the poor, toys for the children, and delicious sweet breads. He drops the breads--with coins baked inside--at doorsteps. He puts the toys in children's shoes and socks. We never see him, but in the traditional New Year's song, we invite St. Basili--and anyone who comes to our door--to Sit down to eat, sit down to drink, Sit down to tell us your troubles. Sit down to sing, and to be a part of our fellowship. I miss my family of origin more at New Year's than any other time of year if I'm not with them. I loved cutting the Basilopita, waiting to see who would get the coin and the good luck for the new year that came with it. I loved singing Christmas carols--and, of course, the Kalanta or New Year's carol--around a table, all of us raucous or weepy or a combination of both, depending on the year. I love especially how some of my cousin's voices have developed over the years--when I hear them sing ...

I got a train set for Christmas when I was five. It was a simple thing, one smallish circle, the train going round and round. Still, it captivated my attention for hours. I have no idea where the Train-around-the-Christmas-tree tradition comes from, but since then, I've longed to have one. Two years ago, on Christmas Eve after all the presents were chosen and wrapped, I impulsively ended up in the rather creepy basement of our local hardware store where ancient, dusty toys are displayed in wobbly, disorderly stacks. I found a Christmas train and bought it. Nobody was more excited about it on Christmas morning than me. This year, in one of the giant black trash bags of gifts that our foster son received, was an even bigger, better Christmas train. So, now we have two. And our foster son loves, loves, loves them both, to my great delight. He has set at least one of them up (and put it back in the box) every day. It's going to be hard for me, admittedly, to put them away whe...

The Greek stuffing we make at Christmas, Gemisi, is one of my favorite holiday dishes. It incorporates so many of my favorite things--chestnuts, pine nuts, walnuts, red wine, garlic, dill...and the list goes on. I love making it almost as much as I love eating it--carefully roasting and peeling the chestnuts; sauteing the mushrooms in butter, separate from the onions and garlic, sauted in olive oil; adding just the right amount of rice, chicken broth, herbs. The nuts and wine added at the end, just after the first taste test that renders the dish edible but not spectacular. My cousin Connie who raised me was an incredible cook and baker. This is her art, her careful nurturing of the food she will serve, her pure delight in feeding others. When I was a teenager and even into my 20s I thought this was so irritating--why couldn't she just be with us, why was cooking the perfect meal so important? But I've come to love the art of making a good meal, especially when I can use that...

The etymology of the word wait, as it turns out, in Old English, is wake. Ironic, since I am up at 1 a.m. awake when I ought to be sleeping, waiting for--what? For things I can't control that may or may not happen tomorrow. Which, quite honestly, is what we are always doing when we are waiting--trying to gain control. Unless we learn to surrender. Unless we wake up enough to wait wakefully--not full of worry, but full of an empty openness. The Germanic etymology: to stay put, guard, watch. We must be on guard as to our motivations, our mind and heart-spaces and what they tell us or don't tell us. We must be willing to look with true curiosity at our thoughts and feelings. Yes, after these many days of writing, this theme keeps reemerging, but my life has to remind me again and again because it's a lesson that is hard to learn. We can wait with worry or anxiety or excitement, or we can wait with true openness, true willingness to surrender to what is, rather th...

On Christmas Eve, I had a memory/dream as I was falling to sleep of my beloved Thea Katina, one of the family matriarchs. She died when I was in my early 20s, but up to that point, she had been one of a circle of women who cared for me after my mother died. She was fierce and judgmental--you did not want to get on her bad side. But she was also fiercely loving, holding us all like a mother hen, both protecting and pushing us to be the best people we could be. She also loved, loved, loved Christmas. Well, any holiday, really, but Christmas was her specialty. She was the best gift-buyer and gift-giver of anyone in the family. She always managed to get the perfect thing, usually something I hadn't asked for but loved more than anything else under the tree. We always had Christmas at her house, and the living room was always full of gifts and paper and craziness after supper. One year, I had come back to my cousin Connie's (my second mom's) apartment for the holidays and wa...

This year, Christmas Eve is also the fourth Sunday of Advent, so we will light the candle of love and the Christmas candle tonight. I have come to realize that if we wait, hopefully, for nothing in particular, what we realize we've been waiting for is love. Let us empty ourselves and simply wait. Let us find love. Love is the universe unfurling from one microscopic field of light. Love is everything that came after--stars and black holes and galaxies and planets and moons, the Earth, the water, the land, all living beings. Let us be with that awe tonight, as we celebrate one small chapter in that story. Love is how we Become. Love unfurls in us and through us. Love knows its own way, if we wait, listen, and trust.

Let us not worry about what we have to do, what else we have to care for. In these last days of Advent, and during the days of Christmas, let us be shepherds who delight in the good news. Let us wake up when we hear the angels singing.  Let us not stop to analyze the message, to wonder why we, of all people, are receiving it. Conversely, let us not grow proud, get stuck on being the first, best, chosen ones.  Let us leave our sheep behind, run toward the Light.  Let us kneel, take the baby into our arms, kiss his dark forehead, look into his tiny, almond-shaped, half-closed, still-blind eyes. Let us not worry about what to pray, but simply say, over and over, thank you, thank you, thank you. Let us simply spread joy. 

This is a busy time of year for everyone, but especially for people in academia (and K-12 education, too). For me, the holiday season always includes grading, comforting tearful, stressed out students, end-of-semester assessment, and trying cleaning my office and complete a to do list so when I show back up in my office on January 2 I am not quite so overwhelmed. There is also decorating, baking, shopping, and all the typical stuff people either enjoy or feel they have to do. (In my case, I actually enjoy all of these things except shopping, so I guess I'm luckier than most). After 22 days of writing these I realize that I have a theme that is about being present. I also realize I absolutely have nothing new to say about the innkeeper in the Christmas story. And yet, I'm going to say it anyway. He was so overwhelmed by the sudden influx of people showing up in Bethlehem for the census that he couldn't really see Mary and Joseph. He couldn't think through the possibl...

The season has become too bright, and on this, its longest night, I welcome darkness. Come in. Snuff out the Advent candles, the Christmas lights. Frost the windows until I cannot see the stars outside. I will turn off the Christmas music, hide the wrapping paper, the to do list, the candies and cookies. I long for you, Darkness, as I never have before. Today, during a sacred conversation, I asked,  What good did it do that I loved him in the end? What good did it do if it didn't stop him from doing the terrible things he has done? And the listener--a man I barely know who in that moment became a most unlikely midwife to my pain--handed the question back to me.  What would have happened if you hadn't tried? What will happen if you stop believing in the power of love? When I didn't answer, he added,  Who says this is the end of the story? And I said,  The story never ends. And he said,  You're right about that.  Tonight, Darkness, I ask myself,...

The cardinal is the Ohio state bird, but even so, they were a rare sight where I was growing up in Ohio. I loved discovering a cardinal in our yard, or in the grove of trees that separated our yard from our neighbor's. I always felt an inexplicable excitement when I spotted one. There was a pair living in that grove of trees one summer, and I would sometimes lie down on the ground in the shade, try to breathe as softly as possible, and watch them interact. The male had a loud, sudden song that was often answered by a softer, slightly less musical version by the female. This year the theme of our fireplace Christmas decorations is the cardinal. I hadn't realized how many cardinal decorations I've acquired over the years! Cardinals are still a rare sight where I live in west central Minnesota, but they are still visible at times even in the dead of winter--perhaps this is why they are associated with Christmas (along with their red color). Over the years I've acquir...

The funniest sight I have probably ever seen was this: once, in my father's village, in 2010, I saw a donkey pulling a Ford pickup up a mountain. Yes, really. And as I stood there with my daughter our friend Jessie, staring, the driver paused, stuck his head out the window, and asked which Manolis brother I belonged to. The donkey stopped when he (or she?) heard his owner's voice, and just kind of stood there, waiting for us to finish our conversation. When it was over, he moved on, nonchalantly pulling the pickup up the mountain. Donkeys are strong animals, and every donkey I've been around (all of them in Greece) seem to do whatever task they've been given  without the complaining that is typical of goats, sheep, or even (at times) horses. (My donkey experience is limited, but that's my impression, anyway). When I was about seven or eight I announced in Sunday school that I thought it was ridiculous that she and Joseph took that trip to Bethlehem on a donkey...

My daughter was always most joyful when she was grooming or riding a horse. Even though we live in a rural area, it hasn't always been easy to get horse lessons. I sometimes regret not biting the bullet and buying a horse for her--though really, that would have been a little insane, given that I know literally nothing about caring for horses. But she caught on quickly, and being with her mentor's horse Honey during her first year with me, even now, ranks among her most joyful memories. This season, I am trying to reclaim the things that make me most joyful, and encouraging others around me to do the same. I am asking my students in our last meeting what has made them most excited about school this last semester, what they're most excited about for next semester--and what they plan to do to care for themselves this break. So many of them work so hard, and end up sort of doing whatever comes up for fun, rather than really thinking about how they want to use their time. ...

My sister moved back to Ohio, where we are from, in the last few years after many years in California. This month she's been sending me boxes of my mother's belongings--old Mother's Day cards I made her with hilarious, original poems; jewelry boxes; giant vases that are admittedly kind of ugly but remind me of her. Yesterday I opened the best box of all: a box full of my old dollhouse furniture. I was obsessed with a little plastic dollhouse I had throughout my elementary years. I played with it far longer than most children play with dollhouses. I made up story after story about a family I called "The Pedakia," which means the little children. But after awhile Pedakia became their last name, and they had all kinds of emotionally charged conversations and adventures--all within the confines of their own home. When I became old enough to babysit and clean people's houses, I saved all my money to buy dollhouse furniture. By then I wasn't playing with...

I don't think I have slept in since we started Petalouda House. Probably an exaggeration, but close to true. If I want spiritual time and a work out, I have to be up by 5. One or the other, up by 6. By 6:30, there are things that need to start getting done. Today I slept in until 9 and my spouse took care of everything. Usually I am the one who deals with mornings both because of my wife's work hours and because I am more of a morning person. Sleeping in was probably the best Christmas present I could have received. SToday, a good night's sleep (and then some) feels the same as an hour of working out and an hour of meditation. So, nothing deep here today, folks. Be grateful for unexpected gifts. Get enough sleep. Take care of yourselves this season. Treat yourself gently. Peace.

Ever since I was born, my cousin Connie, who lived with us for most of my life and raised me after my mother died when I was 13, has given me a Christmas ornament. I don't have all 46 (most of the bulbs have broken), but I do have a gold angel holding a guitar from my third or fourth Christmas, and the most recent artist-made wire wreath from last year, and...I could go on.  I have great memories of making Christmas decorations with my mother--stringing popcorn and cranberries one year, pinning glittery decorations on styrofoam shapes another. I still have some of the ornaments we made. Our tree is a crazy mix of sentimental ornaments, mine and several my wife's grandmother gave her, some handmade from our childhood, carefully chosen gifts for my daughter, photos in cheesy Christmas-tree-shaped frames. I love carefully unwrapping each ornament and rediscovering it every year. When I was a kid, we usually got a free one at the end of the season, a couple days before Christ...

Mary spent the first three months of her pregnancy with Elizabeth. Why did she immediately leave when hearing the good but confusing news about her pregnancy? And, why did she travel so far away just to be with her older cousin? Did she know Elizabeth was also pregnant? What had their relationship been like before? And, if they were so close, why did Jesus and John the Baptist seem to be strangers meeting fro the first time in every account of Jesus' baptism? Sometimes I want to shake the writers and editors of the Gospels for how vague their stories are. So few people have names, and details are sketchy. This story in particular seems woefully incomplete. Artists from the Byzantine era on have added details to the story—most notably, an embrace between the women, a physical affirmation of the tremendous connection they now shared. The babies leaping in the women’s wombs. The women embracing, praising one another with words that are clearly not their own—inspired words...

In those months of silence,  In those months of silence, what did you learn, Zechariah? Perhaps to move from temple rules to trees. To notice the olive trees silvery leaves, the small, hard buds of green. And the grapes—the shade of their vines, the slow blooming of each sweet fruit. The way the dust rises and settles on a windy day, small ghost-angels whispering change, change. Perhaps you saw Elizabeth as if for the first time—how her hands lifted the bread from the oven, the roughness of her fingers, the satisfied smile when she sliced the loaf. How she combed her hair in the morning and pinned it up, one section at a time—instead of waiting impatiently, you watched now, couldn’t stop watching. You saw how she learned to pay the bills, count out the change for the market, do nearly everything you’d done before. At first you were worried, weren’t you, at how naturally she moved into new roles. You wondered how necessary you were. But your silence taught you to listen, ...

...and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.--Isaiah 2:4 Blessed are the peacekeepers, for they shall be called the children of God.—Matthew 5:9 Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.—Psalm 126:5 Let us weep. But we must not sit down while we weep, burying our face in our hands. We must not hunker down, pull it together, stop crying, go on. We must not build walls to protect ourselves and our children. We must not store up weapons to protect ourselves from the outside world. Let us instead walk out into the world, bearing the seed for sowing, our tears flowing, light and salt and water the ground needs to nurture the seed. We must not be worried about others seeing our tears. Grief is needed in this time.  So is hard work. Let us plant the seed out in the...

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other,” Mother Theresa wrote. A friend at church recently shared this quote in a short speech on the first Sunday of Advent, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. All semester my students and I have been reading essays by the great change makers of the last 100 years. Toward the end of the semester, our conversations have begun to focus in on reparations. What it would take for those who have been hurt by oppression to find healing, for those who have oppressed others to understand the impact of their actions and truly seek forgiveness and change? Sometimes that prospect seems hopeless. The semester will be over after the final presentations tomorrow, and we have no answers, of course. To be honest, I don’t always believe reparations are actually possible. Generational trauma runs so deep in our country. The political climate right now is exacerbating rather than healing that trauma. If we can’t ev...

This morning, ironically, as I try to write about peace, my foster son is up especially early, crawling all over me, asking question after question ranging from what my favorite Glitter Force character is to what time, exactly, we’re going to get our tree to when we can break into the treats on our counter that we spent all day making yesterday at my in-law’s house to whether or not I like Justin Bieber more than Bruce Springsteen (the answer, by the way, is no) to why, exactly, "The Little Drummer Boy" is my favorite carol.  In other words, constant chatter. Did I mention he’s also turned up the radio, and is singing along between questions? And then, just as I was thinking about how in the world I would be able to write a reflection on peace in such an environment, the sun began to light the sky, purply-pink, and he said, “Look, the sky is reminding us of Advent! It’s all purple and pink!” And we sat and watched the sky grow lighter, and he turned off the radio w...

She hadn’t been going to her classes or coming to work. In the midst of a busy semester, I noticed but hadn’t reached out—always another important item to cross off the to do list. When I saw her name on my calendar I was relieved. She’s coming, finally, to explain herself, I thought. I was prepared to talk to her about responsibility, follow through, graduation. When she told me, we sat in silence for awhile. I had at my fingertips a long list of resources that could help her, but somehow I also knew that wasn’t why she was coming to my office. “Are you disappointed in me?” she asked, tears welling up in her eyes. “Not at all,” I said, and left it at that. “The father is not in the picture, and I don’t want to have an abortion. That much I know. But nothing else yet, like if I want to keep it, or give it up.” She paused for a moment. “I know what I know because I spent a couple days doing nothing but listening. I’m not even sure what I was listening for.” “Keep ...

In 2015, my Advent meditation prompt was Advent as Midwife.  Each day was an hour of the process of labor. I imagined myself in the stable, helping with the birth. Day after day, I held her hand. Wiped the sweat off her face. Coached her through her pain. I held Joseph’s hand, telling him the pain was normal, he didn’t need to worry. I sent him out for water from the pump, for a blanket from the storage area in the shed beside the stables. These days of labor became so real that when the baby came on Christmas Eve, I wept along with the couple. I watched as they stared into his face, whispered about how long they would be able to stay there. And then, the next night, I left them. I sat outside, looking up at the stars, weeping because there was so little I could do now. Their lives were going to take their course. Jesus’ life was going to take its course. I knew the rest of the story, but they didn’t. As I lowered my eyes from the stars and prepared to go ins...

Christmas is hard for me, a friend confided. It’s all about babies, babies, babies!   She had always wanted a child, but circumstances had left her single into her 40s, and she’d never had the resources to adopt on her own. Another friend, in the same year, confessed to feeling inadequate every Christmas—she and her husband wanted children, but she couldn’t get pregnant. After years of waiting, they still hadn’t been chosen as an adoptive family. “Every year, I wish for my own Angel Gabriel,” she said. “All of those images of mother and baby looking deeply into each others’ eyes—I just can’t take it,” a third friend told me. Her mother, alive but unloving, doesn’t invite her to Christmas. A fourth friend: I always feel guilty about my post-partum depression around the holidays. In image after image, Mary, the perfect mother, holds her perfect son lovingly, even though she’s poor and giving birth as a homeless woman. Nothing more guilt-inducing than that. An...

But the actual baby, my stillborn brother: who might he have been? What about the two miscarriages before him? If my mother had lived, what would our relationship be like now? Why, why, why… What if, what if, what if… Quiet now, my yiayia (grandma) would say to me, rubbing Vicks on my chest in the middle of the night when I would cry out after hours of being awake for no reason, my mind racing. Quiet. In Greek, the word quiet is ee-see-hee-ahhh, and she would say it like a long, drawn out sigh, and I would finally go to sleep. Don’t be afraid, the angel Gabriel said to the Theotokos (Mother of God). Don’t be afraid. But how could Mary not have been? That command, so often given by angels in sacred texts across traditions, is not, it turns out, a command. It is a prophesy. We look back and think, wow, we were so afraid, but we got here anyway. Those fearful nights of my childhood, all of the “what will I do nows” I have experienced throughout my life...

Tuesday, December 5: Stillbirth, Part Two Sometimes my stillbirth dream (described in the last post) means something else altogether. It means there is something I need to bring to life. For some reason, I cannot do it. Perhaps it is a poem I am afraid to write. A story I am afraid to tell. Something I need to say to someone, or do for someone, that I’ve kept putting off. This takes longer. I end up full of deep grief because I can see the long, hard road behind me, the fires I’ve set and walked away from, the mistakes I can’t undo. Perhaps birth—stillbirth or not—is always about self-love. My body is not going to look the way I want it to look. My body is not going to do the things I want it to do. I will have sensations and urges I’ve never had before. Even after nine months, the baby may not be alive. Or OK. Or maybe he’ll be OK then, but not later. We let our minds imagine worst case scenarios, if we’ve lost loved ones in the past. Once, in a drea...

Monday, December 4: Stillbirth Sometimes I dream of stillbirth—my mother pushing, pushing, crying out in grief, the dead baby placed in her arms. When this dream comes, I know I have gone too long without silence. I know I need to sit or move or write my way to the Still, Small Voice that is In Us, With Us. I need to let my ancestors catch up to me. I need to let my losses catch up to me. I need to retell the story of my life, then wait for the new Next.   In contemplation or poetry, silence or song, movement or stillness, I take my would-have-been older brother into my arms. Slowly, I wash him, hold him, rock him, name him, bury him. My mother stands beside me, silent, fully present. When he is in the ground I can begin to see who he is right now. A friendship I must let go. A resident at Petalouda House who needs to move on, whom we cannot really help. A hope I had for my job that can’t happen. A dream I have held onto for much too long that is keeping me from c...

I love slowly shifting the autumn decorations in my home—focused on gratitude and harvest—to candles and pine. The Advent wreath comes out first. The Advent wreath was not part of the spiritual tradition in which I was raised, but I have embraced it wholeheartedly. The first candle, lit today, is the candle of hope. I have learned that waiting, when accompanied by hope, transforms not only the experience, but also the self. Usually waiting, at its best, is accompanied by optimism—but that optimism is focused on a specific outcome, and risks disappointment when the outcome does not materialize. Sometimes, waiting is accompanied by a guilt-ridden longing because the thing we’re waiting for is not something that will actually feed our souls. Optimism and longing are not bad in and of themselves. If anything, they are our common humanity, part of the fabric on which we stitch our stories. But if we can hold our optimism and longing in the light, we will be able to se...

Saturday, December 2: Flesh, Blood, and Paradox Forget the peaceful manger scene carefully arranged beneath the Christmas tree, or the tacky light up version in your neighbor’s yard. Forget also Black Friday and all that comes after, the rush in malls everywhere, the money spent and made out of this season. Think instead of the nine months of slow, unsteady, strange changes in a body. Think of the uterus, stretched to ten times its size before the baby is born. Think of the smelly, bloody mess, the careful washing, the small, sticky, wet body placed in the parents’ arms. Think of the cord cut, that last permanent physical connection between mother and child. Incarnation: God in the flesh, living among us, human and divine. God was always alive in all of God’s creations. The virgin birth, the manger scene, everything that happened after, whether you understand these events as historical or mythical--these didn’t change the fact that God is in us, with us, has been...

Friday, December 1: Wait My word for 2017 was “wait.” For the last two years I have been consciously opening myself to a new word for the year during the month of December. I resisted and resisted, but the word “wait” would not go away. I don’t like waiting. I’ve been called all my life to silence, to the practice of being present, to letting the words come, shape and reshape themselves as I nurture and hold them. But, I always feel torn between being and doing. The world has so much need, and I am here for such a short time. I have always wanted to DO something that would leave a lasting legacy, that would contribute to positive change in the world. Advent is the season of waiting, so it seems apt that I begin the Advent season with a promise to write each day, slowly weaving my way through what I have learned about waiting this year. I hope, in the process, to also find my 2018 word as well. We are a cyclical people, a people tethered to our Home through seasons an...