A Sestina for Charlie Redmon

Apologies to the Dads of the world who are not prepared for little kid-ness-- they do their best.  I have fudged some details to fit the poetic form.

Dad would never be home soon,

Grampa was better.

Dad's house had no dictionary

Though I found a pink kaleidoscope.

There was one potted plant 

And no ice cream.

Five o'clock, Grammy's house, no room for ice cream!

Dinner would be ready soon.

I'd have to plant

Myself next to the candy kaleidoscope,

Turning the pages of the decadence dictionary.

One of the few books Grampa had was a dictionary,

It was never the only dessert, ice cream.

I sat on the lawn and turned the kaleidoscope.

Grampa would ride the lawnmower soon.

Grass clipping became soil is a better

Word than dirt, but, he said "Weeds are not plants."

Under his grow light, seeds became plants.

Behind my desk, words grew to dictionaries.

Grammy and Grampa's world knew better.

Their freezer made a softer ice cream.

Cherries, apples, leaf piles, coming soon,

Points on the wheel of the season's kaleidoscope.

Stations of the cross in a protestant kaleidoscope,

Work in the dirt for a fruit-bearing plant,

Her almanac the birthdays, coming up soon,

His diary the high and low temperature dictionary.

When we were sick, or when snow fell like ice cream,

We could live there till things got better.

The pink tomatoes in stores?  Grampa's were better.

One slice revealed a bloody kaleidoscope

Pressing the cider, milling rock-salt ice cream

The autumn's crisp sweetness, the nectar of plants,

An apple tree leaves like the pages of dictionaries,

One was closed, one opening soon.

The ice cream that sweat turns tastes acres better,

I grew up so soon, the years like kaleidoscopes.

He planted his world, made stands for dictionaries.

Baby Steps

Well, friends, I guess when life is good, there is less to write about.  An interesting riddle, that.  Two hours after I posted the last bleak entry, I got a call from Kerry at the Waldorf School.

"Yes, we'll be talking about the aftercare jobs next week, we'll let you know soon about interviews but... Actually, I was hoping you would join us in the nursery.  I'll be needing a second assistant next year."

"Wow!" I replied.  Such a better job than aftercare.  And she wanted me specifically!  

I had substituted in this class two rainy Tuesdays in a row.  The first time, the moment I entered the room, little faces stared at me in wonder.  Someone they didn't usually see was in their space. You could feel the soft silence of the room, as if some other world had just touched earth, and landed tentatively on the taupe carpet.  All day I stared back, with equal wonder.  When a little scuffle happened, Kerry asked the child who had hit to give a gentle hand to the one she had hit. She showed the girl how to smooth the arm of the hurt child, in one moment correcting the harm done.  The action showed what kind of touch is best to give one's neighbors. Children slid down pieces of wood, carried dolls to and from the play kitchen.  A toddler who had not been walking long brought a metal cup-measure and spoon, showing me that he, like me, was making soup today. 

Ten years ago, when I worked in a mainstream daycare with the same age group (2 and 3 year olds), I only lasted five months.  Noise, running, screaming, and attacking were par for the course.  Upon every transgression, we instructed the children to say they were sorry, which they didn't necessarily feel, (even if they learned that if they said it, we would be satisfied). Sorry also did not make the other child, for whom words meant little, feel better.  There were lots of words, choices, bright colors, hard plastic objects, and every nice toy got destroyed quickly.  The rubber tyrannosaurus rex had weathered all the beating, and these children, whose socialization was only receiving lip service, would only survive if they became like him.  Scaly and sharp-toothed.  The parents of these children were educated and well intentioned.  One can hardly blame them for severely misunderstanding the needs of young children.  Our culture treats them like an underclass, perhaps spoiled and sentimentalized, but to be turned into adults as quickly as possible.

Kerry and her assistant, Roxanne, are part of a new program at the school, innovative and greatly in demand, as you can imagine.  They are extending Waldorf education to the care of the very young, something which in the past was (one hoped) left to at-home mothers, but is in many cases not possible now.

So I have been delighted about the way life will be, starting next September.  It doesn't hurt that I'll have some money too.  Writing a novel is quite a project.  If I'd known it would be as much work as it already has been, I never would have started.  And I believe at best it is only half- finished.  Today, I have had trouble entering into the work, so I've decided to write this instead.

Here are some haikus I wrote a few weeks ago.

Water flows along

Makes things dark, bright, shiny and

Laughs but never talks

And this one I wrote after a scent triggered a childhood memory:

Ants in peonies

Smell: lemon-honey-metal

Thick Kentucky June  

I hope I'll be able to keep writing, with all that working life will bring.  I will have to find a way. Perhaps the good gods will give me moments of insight, half-hours of writing time, and a sense of moving forward by baby steps.  One thing is sure, children, who can't help growing, will surround me.  Perhaps in their environs, adults, who must choose to learn, can pick up some hints.

Meeting

Dear readers,

Spring has sprung, flowers bloom, I am still wondering about various things.  I've had a cleansing fever though.  A week ago I just threw in the towel and said to my fatigue "Alright.  You win."  I went to bed.  For a week.  And burned up a lot of stuff.  Now I am contemplating returning to the living, but I've gotta tell you, it doesn't look good.  There's my train ticket to the writing conference to buy.  My lost driver's license to replace.  I've gotta pick a section from my novel to read at a gathering of people I've never met before on Saturday.  And no one is signed up for my free Creative Speech workshop at the co-op.  Free! I know it's the recession, but, uh... the workshop's free!  A lot depends on people coming to this workshop.  If they don't, then that means that money is not the issue.  That means it's me.  Or an example of me and the world not meeting.  And there is entirely too much of that happening already, spirit world.  Hey.  Give me a break.  

I am on the cusp of something big in my novel, and I keep not jumping it.  So maybe if everything else dies, I'll be forced to do so.  Boy these earthly obstacles courses are hard going.  I would like very much to know just what my standing is in the race.  You know, the racehorses get certain odds before they break out of the gate.  Of course, the odds never have much to do with how they do, and the favorite never wins.  So maybe knowing my odds would not be very helpful after all.

There are several things for which I am grateful.  One is that I learned at the Anthroposophia conference in April that Saul Bellow was an anthroposophist.  Wow.  A real American novelist who read and studied Rudolf Steiner's work.  Of course, he read and understood a whole lot more stuff, if you take Humboldt's Gift to heart.  Probably a hundred philosophical references in every chapter.  But it's still readable and very wacky stuff.  I am excited that there is at least one person drinking from that stream who succeeded in doing what I am trying to do, ie,  write a novel.  He wrote lots of them.

The other thing is that at this conference I met some amazing people.  Believe it or not, they wanted to hear what I had to say.  In fact, they hired me to speak the Foundation Stone Meditation.  But no, they didn't just literally want to hear me speak Steiner's words.  They wanted to hear what I had to say.  They asked me to help shape the conference.  They asked everyone who was there to do this.  The conference was about Meeting.  I guess meeting is the subject of this entry.  Meeting.  With regard to one's place of employment, the word meeting has become a dirty word.  Sorry honey, I'll be late tonight-- another wretched meeting.  From board rooms to faculty rooms, meeting is the one thing everyone hates.  Why?  Maybe because at a meeting, there is so little actual meeting.  I mean the meeting that happens when one hand hits another and we clap.  Isn't it awful when the hands don't quite meet?  No snappy, clappy sound.  Just silence and a silly-looking waving of hands in the air.

That is how I feel these days.  I put myself out there, hoping the other hand will meet mine, and we'll make a clapping sound.  But there is no answer.  Sure, I can get all philosophical about it, and ask myself "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"   That keeps me occupied for about a day.  But then I answer my question.  The sound of one hand clapping is Silence.  Words not heard.  Opportunity missed.  It sucks.

I'm waiting to hear back from the Waldorf School if I got the bottom rung aftercare job for which I am way overqualified.  This is the third job for which I have applied at this school.  I don't think anyone else has applied.  I'm wondering if they still will find a reason to not hire me.  Not that I take it personally.  Although there is one thing which might deter them from hiring me, they did take me on this year as a substitute and I've gone in many times.  They assured me that they want to get to know me, that's all.  There is a need for an aftercare teacher.  Actually a need.  And on my side, a wish to fill it.  But that "not meeting" just keeps happening with such infallibility that I really wonder...

Maybe what I need to do is go out there looking, not for what I want, but for what is wanted of me.  Maybe there is a hand out there, about to clap, just waiting for mine to meet it.  Or maybe there is something important in that silence.  I think that is actually it, but I hate it so much that I keep thinking there must be a way around it.  Silence.

That's what we observe in Quaker meetings.  It's interesting that in this silent period in life I have chosen to worship with silence lovers.  Part of me wants that silence.  Part of me insists.  I suppose that part of me wishes to say something which can only be spoken into silence.  Wishes to attune to what cannot be heard.

Dancing with Devils

"Start with a movement," Richard said, "And see where it leads you."  I had attended hundreds of 5 Rhythms classes, many taught by my husband, Richard.  But never before was I joined by a being clearly not myself, and clearly recognizable.  Usually I dance with my personal angels and devils.  And the other people in the room, of course.  But that Monday night in February, someone else appeared.

Oh, no, you're thinking.  She's writing about "beings".  Well, I have to write what comes out, folks.  It's your choice.  But if you stick this one out, I think it'll take us someplace at least as interesting as "the Sled", and probably deeper.  

I started moving my head around.  I moved my arms.  I slinked, really.  I stayed close to myself. I did not want to look straight ahead or even see anything.  I looked bizarre, like those scary creatures, the skekzis in the movie The Dark Crystal.  The ones that constantly humm.  MmmmmMMMMmm.   HUmmmmmmmm.  HmmMMMMM?  My whole body became a snake.  This doesn't usually happen to me.  I mean, I moved out of the way, and allowed this snakelike being to dance me.  Not because I felt overpowered by it, But because its weirdness captured my curiosity.  It energized my dance.

This invisible dance partner and I stayed together practically the whole class.  I recognized him. He plays second fiddle to a much scarier guy I'd learned about years ago in Waldorf Teacher Training.

C.S. Lewis said:

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils.  One is to disbelieve in their existence, the other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.  They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

In this blog entry, I will attempt to give a couple of devils a little, but not too much, limelight: Lucifer, who appeared to me that Monday in the form of a snake, and his buddy Ahriman.

Yes, the snake who just happened to be "hanging out" in the Garden of Eden when the first couple (and I don't mean Michelle and Barack) went out on their first limb.  "Taste this, Eve."  the snake said.  "Don't you ever wonder where God gets all his power?  Don't you wish you could mess with species and change the weather and tell everyone what to do?  I thought so.  Just take one bite.  That's all you need."  And she did, then Adam did, and the rest is, well... history.

I can't blame her.  I would have done it.  Even now, with the planet hemmorhaging and the police cars sirens wailing around the clock, I can dig the snake's message.  If I were offered the temptation to force hundreds of people to come to my creative speech workshops and make me rich and powerful, appearing on "Oprah", I'd give it some thought.  Power tastes good!   It takes a bigger leap of faith, however, not only to like the snake's message, but to accept it as part of our journey.

Have you ever been really hungry for a story, and gotten something else instead?  A spreadsheet, perhaps? A news "story" that turns out to be just a grocery list of facts?  Or one of those ghastly re-written fairy tales, where the princess doesn't need any help, thank you very much, she's a modern woman, and she's just hangin' out with her friend the wicked witch who is actually a pagan wise woman?  (don't get me wrong.  I like pagans and I love witches!)  And how about this scenario?  You pick your daughter up from school.

"How was your day at school, Chloe?"

"Fine."

Fine?  you think, That's all I get?  But what happened?

What I want to assert is that bad ain't bad.  A story without any bad in it is what's bad.  It's a lie. Of course, unless she's older than 10, Chloe probably isn't lying, she's just so inside the day she had that she can't remember what happened.

 

Just what makes a story a story?  And why do we need them so much?  Well, a story has a beginning (Adam and Eve again), a middle (that's us),  and an end (keep your fingers crossed that we make it to happily ever after!!!).   It also, to be a story, must have a BAD GUY.  Or at least a problem.  Otherwise, Adam and Even never become us never become the better people of the distant future.  We are going somewhere.  But we can't get there without the bad guys.  It's a pretty well kept secret that God wanted us to find that apple.  The snake's idea was actually God's idea (though the snake hates that): give them a taste of power.  It is the only way to learn how to use it.  Eventually.

So, Dorit Winter told us shiny-faced teacher trainees one fall night in San Francisco, evil has two faces.  I can't remember exactly what she said, so I'll paraphrase, building on my experiences of the intervening 10 years.

The one face of evil holds so much power that we do not even know he exists most of the time. Indeed, he prefers C.S. Lewis' first error, for us not to believe he exists.  He can do much more damage that way.  Through us, he builds highways, superhighways, internet and cell phone networks, and malls.  He tells us these things are there for our convenience.  To keep us "connected".  The recent film "The Matrix" captures the essence of Ahriman's work in metaphor ("Recent?"  says Ahriman.  "That movie's ancient history!  Get up to speed.").  Ahriman, by the way, is the Ancient Persian word for a particular spirit of darkness.   In the movie "The Matrix", everyone is actually just sitting still, plugged into a huge machine, and all that we think is happening is just a simulation, a 3-d virtual reality screen.  A few people escape and do move and live and act, and they try to free all the others.  Ahriman's job is to keep us so deluded by that screen, so busy earning money for the next generation of blackberries which is one nano-second faster than the one we have, that we forget what we came here to do.  We forget our humanity.  We forget about culture.  We forget that we have the power to live outside "the box".  He tells us: toe the line; fill in the blanks, that does not compute. Darth Vader comes to mind.  Ahriman loves it that I now spend about 4 hours of every day in front of a screen.  He wants us to believe that our temporary material existence is all we've got, and that what I call "me" is merely a result of the firing of neurons in my brain, pre-determined by genetics.

The other face of evil, ah, now there's a beauty.  Such a refreshing change from Ahriman.  Unlike Ahriman, Lucifer hates to be ignored.  He wants you to know he exists.  He wants a fan club.  "Ahriman, Ahriman, Ahriman.  That's all you anthroposophists ever talk about.  What about ME?"  Lucifer doesn't care about the latest blackberry.  He remembers the good old days.  He wants us to be artistes, or to have gurus.  In fact, he gave us one major endowment, without which we can never make it back to Eden.  

Art.

Like most donors, Lucifers attached some strings to his donation.  He blessed us with the great edifice of Art, but like many a wealthy philanthropist, wanted half of his donation to pay for a life-sized solid-gold portrait of himself in front of it.  His version of art often alienates and excludes, puts artists into a rarified, snooty league of their own.  He whispers into the ears of many a humanities professor to invent all those new words like the verb "to legitimate" and "to construct", which academics use to show they are smarter than normal people.   He wants to lift us off the earth, to say we are gods, that our shit don't stink.  People of a spiritual persuasion often fall prey to his temptations.  We think we don't need to eat.  We think we don't need money.  We go on new age retreats.  We think we can run away from the world and live in little mini-Edens where problems can't get in.  I lived in such a spiritual community for 2 years.  Boy, did that shit stink.  But thanks to our devils, problems got in.  They always do.  And thank God for them, because otherwise we would live in delusion forever.

That's why you, Lu, can count me in your fan club.  I want art to be for everyone, like the murals on the streets of Philadelphia, not just the operas that rich people go to on Saturday night.  But I owe it to Lucifer that we have any art at all.  Art is my life.  It shows us our truth, like the movie I mentioned earlier.  And art has to come out of an individual self, self-involved and crazy as our selves tend to be.   

While I'm at it, Ahriman, count me in your fan club too.  You gave us science.  Remember science?   It used to be a glorious, light filled pursuit which included wonder.  In spite of everything, in some high school chemistry classes, it still is (thanks, Mr. Runge).  Science allows us to stand outside of our subjectivity, to use our senses, to notice details.  These two faces of evil are also faces of good.  Bad ain't bad.  Bad makes a story.

My teacher Rudolf Steiner said that our souls are battlegrounds where Ahriman and Lucifer constantly duke it out.  No wonder we feel tired all the time.  Here is a familiar battle that they have within me.

A: Why don't you have a real job?  You know this novel is never going to pay the rent.  

L: I am an artist.  I don't need to eat.  I can live on light!  

A: Yeah, right.  Why don't you do technical writing or something.  Something real.

L: Only my inner voice is real.  To hell with everyone else.

etc, etc.

They could be duking it out to the end of time, if there weren't a third being, One who opens a space between them.  This third being is hard to pin down, to even describe, especially as His name now carries many distracting add-ons.  He weaves a way for us between heaven and earth, between light and darkness, levity and weight.  This being lives in movement. Perhaps that's why some call him "Lord of the Dance".  He gives us our true self, a drop from the ocean of God.  I call him Christ, source of our becoming.

In the school of Christ, the instructions are always different, according to the need of the moment.  Or maybe they are always the instructions Richard gave in his 5 Rhythms class:  

"Start with movement, and see where it leads you."  Start with a movement, continue with movement, and end with a movement; these are Christ's Alpha and Omega.

There is a screenplay writer who gives exact instructions for how to make a story spellbinding.  He writes that at the exact middle of a movie, your hero must fully commit to her goal.  Up to this point, she had the option of turning back, returning to life as it was before.  "But now your hero must burn her bridges behind her.  There is no turning back."  Conflict in a story appeals to us because it keeps us moving.  Resistance keeps us growing.  We like a story with problems because it shows us our continuing story of evolving.  Can you see how important our devils are to this process?  Not too important, fellas.  But important nonetheless.

Not too important, because ultimately Christ Trumps them both.  He brings all wars to a halt.  When we fall, he lifts us a little.  When we fly too high, he throws us a rope.  If we ask, he will show us our next dance step.  

And when I am really dancing, when there is no me or you, no up or down, no us and them, but a lively current of oneness, I know that the One who gives me my true self is dancing.  The only reason we dance with the devils is so that we move beyond them to know Him.

Return to Sender

About a week ago, I had the feeling I was losing my mind.  I had written dozens of e-mails which needed replies, but was only receiving two or three a day, usually from organizations; MoveOn.org, Esalen Institute, Amtrak, the Art Museum.  It's like I had ceased being a person, and had become only a recipient of mass mailings.  Only a handful of personal e-mails were reaching my inbox.  I felt stranded on a desert island.  It was enough to make my paranoia feel real.  Oh.  So it's true.  I've either dropped off the face of the earth, or else offended almost everyone I know.

It wasn't till yesterday that I started to put the pieces together.  On Sunday, Christine had called from California to ask if I had gotten her e-mail about speaking at a conference in April.  

"No, actually, I didn't get it."  I replied.  "Send it to my gmail account."  She did and this time it worked.  Later in the week, someone else said an email they had sent me had bounced back.  By yesterday, a handful of people had contacted me about their replies getting bounced.  What is going on?  I asked myself.  My partner, Richard, had the novel idea of calling the folks at my old college, where I have a so-called lifelong account.  It's that account which has been causing all the problems.  

"We've tried to contact you since November that the domain name was changing.  I guess your information was not updated, and we couldn't reach you.  Last Thursday the domain contract ended."  Ah.  That's just about when it all started going wrong.  

I had sent invitations to Richard's birthday party, desperately asking people to RSVP for the second time.  I had sent out a job application.  I had sent out a request to my Mom to talk about her helping us get a mortgage for a house we wanted to buy.  In short, myriad minor disasters ensued, due to the invisible wall the e-mail problem had built around the virtual me.  Most replies bounced off this wall and returned to sender.  

It made me realize how dependent I have become on e-mail, in practically every sphere of communication life. 

 

So, I thought I had solved the problem yesterday, when I sent a huge mass mailing to everyone I could think of who might need to know, that they should use my gmail account.  

It turns out, that message still had the defunct Smith address in the reply-to field!  AAAARRRRRGGGHHH.  

I learned this while walking to Kate's house to give her her weekly Creative Speech lesson.  I saw Kate walking toward me, away from her house, with a friend.  

"Uh, Hi, Kate.  Where are you going?"

She explained to me in her Downs Syndrome accent that she was going to get a manicure, and that her mother had e-mailed me about the change in schedule. 

"Oh."  I replied.  I had not torn down the wall.

So at last I came home.  I tried sending an e-mail to myself.  The reply-to field still showed the defunct address.  Livid, I called the woman at Smith to whom I had spoken to yesterday, asking her why she had failed to fix the problem.  

"It's got to be some setting on your g-mail account," she replied, "because there is no problem here."

Tears began to well up.  This had happened me before.  I call it bureaucratic ping pong.  It goes like this.

Department A: "That's not our problem.  You need to contact department B."

Me: "Hello, department B, I have a problem.... (explain, explain)"

Department B:  "Sorry, I'll need to transfer you to department A for that kind of problem."

How much longer would I be on my desert island, and how many phone calls to techies would I have to make before at last I'd begin to even survey the damage???

 

I took a deep breath and looked at the top of my screen.

I clicked on the gmail help button.  Who knows, I dared to hope, maybe it's a straightforward thing to fix.  I typed "reply to" in help box, pressing my lips together hopefully, wondering whether the computer would "understand".  There, in three steps, were instructions for fixing my problem.  Someone, some time, had put that Smith address in my reply-to box, God knows when or why.  Maybe it was even me.  But I fixed it my very own self.  Yay!

As for the other invisible wall, the one that I feel around me, even when my e-mail is working fine, that may take years to disassemble!

If you want to reach me, please use claire.mcconnell@gmail.com

And have a nice day!

A Poem

March Snow:

Late light,

White might

Stay.

Dust thou Art: Death, Dearth, and Discernment

The priest smudged ashes on my forehead, in the shape of a cross, saying, "Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return."  It sounds a little heavy to tell this to a seven year old.  But he told all the congregation, before and after me, the same, so I didn't take it personally.  It was Ash Wednesday in the 1980's at my Episcopal church.  Instead of lining up to receive the "body of Christ, the cup of salvation", as we did every Sunday, we had gotten out of school and lined up to hear a poetic equivalent of the child's rhyme

The worms crawl in

The worms crawl out

The worms play pinocle

On your snout.

I don't remember how my younger sister felt about it, but, being melancholic children, my older sister and I ate up the misery of Lent the way we ate communion.   It was food for our souls.  On Wednesday afternoons, we walked the two blocks from our downtown school to our downtown church for choir practice.  The wind blew old leaves from Autumn around.  Spring seemed a world away.  The cold grey weather knew no season.  In the choir house, we slouched in folding chairs, and practiced Lenten anthems:

O come and mourn with me awhile

While soldiers scoff and foes deride

Upon the cross he feels the pain

The Lord of life is crucified   

Last night I went to a Mardi Gras party with my fellow West Philly Quakers.  Tonight we'll celebrate Ash Wednesday too.  I've been blessed to find a group of seekers who, like me, look to the seasons for ways to God.  Most Quakers couldn't be bothered to notice these things.  They are too busy helping African children and creating world peace, and more power to them, I say.  (Of course, the other day, when a bunch of us stood protesting outside Colosimo's gun store in 18 degrees below zero weather [slight exaggeration], the season was pretty hard to ignore.)  But I and my companions find meaning in marking our journeys by the annual journeys that nature (God's world) takes.  Noticing the subtle changes in the earth brings me down to earth.  The seasons articulate a path for us, show us we are going somewhere, at nature's pace; slow and steady.

The primitive people we once were relied directly on nature for their sustenance.  The time of Lent, for subsistence farmers, was a time of scraping the barrel.  Last year's crops were gone or needed to be eaten before they spoiled in the warming weather.  This year's crops were not yet ready.   Eggs needed to be left alone to become hens for next year.  Without an awareness that this period was temporary, it would have felt like the end of the world; a little like our current recession, but happening every year.  It was important, in order to keep going, to think of the Easter to come.  It was a good time to strip life down to the basics, to think about what really matters.  If we remove the heavy-handed "Christian" imprint on the season, about guilt, punishment and sin, we find instead a healthy catharsis.  A fallow field.

As a modern child in Louisville, Ky, I found this season bleak.  Christmas was over (although our Christmas tree sometimes remained up well into February!).  Spring Break was a dream, Summer another planet.  We seldom got snow, so it was just grey, brown, and cold for weeks.  Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays offered short, secular reprieves from school.  Without lent, without an acknowledgement of that bleakness, it would have felt like the end of the world to me.  Children are indeed our connection to our primitive, subsistence past.  They show us how much we need ritual.

 Students of Rudolf Steiner work with a biographical map he gave.  In the context of this essay, we could say that a person's whole life is a macrocosm of a year.  We are born in summer, out of cosmic light and love and oneness.  We "fall" through Fall, growing colder and more awake, until we reach Winter, the low point of midlife.  Around my age, in the 30's, we stand at rock bottom.  We feel alone, stripped bare like the leafless trees.  Unlike the Spring nature gives us, we must, in our lives, create that upward swing to resurrection and new life, in our maturity.  Then we may live in the abundant warmth and wealth that is spirit, once more.  I have just been rereading The Human Life by George and Gisela O'Neill.  It seems that I am only at the beginning of this lenten period of life.  At times, it feels bleak.  I can no longer rest on my laurels.  For various reasons I must stand apart from all the communities to which I feel an affinity.  I hope that this isolation is temporary.  On the other hand, it's only in the absence of a community that I would ever find the focus to write a novel.  And that one thing, that I am doing (mostly) alone, is the one thing which seems to be working.  Perhaps out of this individual work, connection to community may one day grow.  

In the same way, I think our current economic crisis is what it took for us to wise up and elect a good man for president.  Unless we were uncomfortable, we would never have been shaken out of our complacency.

I'm glad that every year, Spring shows me what flowering looks like.  Without this constant reminder that the "winters of our discontent" are temporary. I would probably go jump off a bridge.  Even in February, buds appear at the tips of bare trees.  If you look at them once a week, you'll see that they are swelling.  

They will open, by and by.  And so will I.

So I will offer a mirror picture to the Episcopal priest's words.  Yes, we are dust.  Stardust.  In the words of Joni Mitchell

We are stardust 

We are golden

We are caught in the devil's bargain

And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

The Sled

It was my first real snow in Philadelphia.  Fat flakes scurried down the sky, all day and night, covering everything.  The next day, I followed my inner directive.  It said, "Buy a sled."

I got out of bed, skipped most of my usual morning routine, and got on the phone with K-mart, Target, even Walmart!  None of them had sleds.  At last, I tried Toys R Us.  "We've got three kinds left, honey."  The manager told me.  The store was in South Philly, an hour away by bus! As the hours passed, I slowly swerved away from the urgency of my inner directive.  Since I'm skipping all that time-consuming stuff I usually do in the morning, I told myself, I could get a lot done!  I may as well pay some bills...  As the morning wore on, the inner grown up slowly nudged aside the inner child. By the time I got to South Philly, I was starving for lunch.  Two blocks short of Toys R Us, I stopped into a diner and had a grilled cheese.

I paid the check, crossed the enormous parking lot and entered Toys R Us.  I looked around on every aisle.  I saw everything but sleds.  Finally, I asked the lone sales clerk in the front of the deserted store.  "We're all out." she replied.  What?  Of course!  The first real snow in two winters and a snow day.  Children had bought out the sleds since that morning.  It just hadn't occurred to me.  

"Do you think you'll order more?" I asked

"Probably not."  she answered.  Duh.  Not exactly a seller you can count on in this economy, in this climate.

 

I huffed out of the place, exasperated.  The Universe was supposed to reward you for making effort on behalf of your inner child.  I felt unreasonably let down.  And embarrassed.  How would I ever get over it?  And how would I explain such a frivolous disappointment at the Quaker friends meeting at our house that night?  We'd be praying for things like world peace, a healthy environment,  a better world.  But then I thought, why not be upset?  In a better world, I wouldn't have to truck all over town to buy a simple toy.  A hollowed out thing you could sit in and slide down a snowy hill.  In a better world, this thing would not have to be fashioned from petroleum mined in Iraq, manufactured in China, shipped to the United States, and trucked thousands of mile to a store near me.  In a better world, I or my neighbor, or at least a neighborhood blacksmith, would know how to make one.  They did in Winter Holiday, by Arthur Ransom, the Swallows and Amazons book from 1920's England which my husband and I had just finished.

I thought back to my two years teaching in the Frozen North.  Snow came early and often.  I had forked out over a hundred dollars of my own money to buy a bunch of plastic sleds for my class.  I'd carefully written "Ms. McConnell" in magic marker on every one of the dozen red or purple crafts.  Every recess, twice a day, they'd get geared up in snowpants, gloves, boots, hats and coats, like little multicolored eskimos, and carry the sleds to the little slope outside the school.  Children from other classes begged to borrow these sleds.  No other teacher had placed fun number one on their list of priorities for her class's education.  You see, I had to.  I wasn't having any fun myself.  The best I could do was to offer it to them.  I worked long hours preparing to teach.  I denied myself meals and adequate rest, and any personal recreation.  I remember one weekend, taking one of the sleds to my Mom's house in nearby Massachusetts.  "It's my last chance to have fun for six weeks."  I had said, insisting we head for the slopes.  

At the end of the second year, I left the class in a hurry, in distress, and had left behind most of the nice things I had bought for the class with my own money.  That is a story for another day.  Walking away from Toys R Us, I cursed my foolishness.  Why hadn't I even bothered to take one sled with me.  For my own enjoyment?  At that time in my life, my own enjoyment did not even make the long list, much less the short one.  It was a castle in the air. Something I'd get around to in retirement.

Six years and one major disaster later, I have changed.  I have learned that if I make time for my own fun, I am different.  Rather than running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to fix everyone else, and failing; rather than carrying a grumpy irritable undercurrent with me most of the time, full of resentment when anyone asks for anything; rather, if I make time for my own fun, I am the "Ms. Nice Guy" I always wanted to be.  I genuinely have more to give.  I get interested in what other people are doing, in things that have nothing to do with my agenda.  I am no longer a workaholic.

The day after the sled disappointment, I went into the Waldorf School to substitute in the Kindergarten.  I spent the day as I once had, before the job up north, kneading bread dough and cheerfully engaging in domestic work for children to imitate.  It was great.  They were so sweet and played together so well.  I remembered watching my class make up games with elaborate rules and resulting in amazing improvements to their social skills.  More than ever, I admired play.  I headed home for the day, exhausted, like a tube of toothpaste all squeezed out. I felt pleasant and satisfied.  To an extent.  But the white slopes loomed, untasted.  

As I walked toward the door,  I turned around to look at a bulletin board with flyers.  There, next to the board, leaning against the wall, was a pile of plastic sleds.  There was no one around, inside or out.  I picked one up, took it outside, and walked to the top of a slope.  My heart was pounding.  I sat down in the sled, grabbed the rope, and scootched off the flat place.  "Wheeeeeeee," I screamed, as trees flew past me.  The world sped by, and I was free.  

Yes, I do believe the Universe answers our prayers.  Not always the way we want, and not always right away.  But on the train home, I found my exhaustion replaced by a sense of peace.