Tag Archives: acceptance

Unexpected Favorite Things

Posted on by under Iconic Place

“…but don’t you think the gazebo looks a little bit small?” The voice of our Austrian tour guide settled comfortably at the top of the treble clef. Saccharine as Salzburg’s famous Mozartkugel, this woman might as well have been a recording playing from an MP3 player hanging from a lanyard around our necks.IMG_5017

“How could they do the sixteen-going-on-seventeen dance here?” She jutted her head forward, the rest of her body remarkably stiff.

At this point in the tour, I could see where her query was going. Similar rhetorical questions had lead to the revelations that the front of the Von Trapp family home was a different property than the back of the house, that we couldn’t get to the exact spot where the opening had been filmed, and that the free place to stay in the downtown was in fact the city’s prison.

While the Alps were, well, the Alps, just about everything else from the movie was a jumbled amalgamation of buildings, Hollywood soundstages, and private properties that we whizzed past on the tour bus.

When Josh and John Mark had invited me on their European adventure, the Sound of Music Tour had been my one stipulation, my “must-see.” I promised to trek with them to stare at the outside of houses Dietrich Bonhoeffer had lived in and to check out the East Berlin Wall Gallery despite frigid winds, but this was my stipulation—to finally embark on my musical theatre pilgrimage.

I don’t know what I thought would happen on the Sound of Music Tour. That someone would hand me an outfit made out of draperies and teach me how to sing? That I’d share in an oddly steamy Austrian folk dance with Christopher Plummer? Or perhaps that I might stomp around downtown Salzburg with a guitar case wearing a dress that “the poor didn’t want” whilst asserting my self confidence in song. If you don’t know the moments in the movie to which I am referencing, you’re missing out.

Instead, at every turn, I was discovering that my childhood favorite movie was cobbled together from scraps of Austria and the Twentieth Century Fox Studio in Los Angeles. IMG_5026

I laughed nervously with my travel companions hoping for the transformative experience to start at any moment, so that the boys would think the tour was “worth it.”

Worth it.

It was the rubric I applied all along our trip to Europe, a notion I’d picked up in a frugal home where each dollar spent on vacation was squeezed like a wet rag till every last drop had been extricated. It was in the way my mom read every placard at the museum and it accompanied the anxious hum in the back of our minds; we may never get to come back to this place. So we’d hover a little longer, trying to stare hard enough at our surroundings to render them meaningful and worth it…

It wasn’t just Salzburg and the tour bus piping Julie Andrews and the Von Trapp Family Singers through its speakers, it was the Holocaust museum in Berlin, and Prague, with its corridors of gift shops filled with sundry items branded with their city’s name. At each stop, I longed to feel different and romantic, and at each stop I found myself tired, or introverted, or hungry, or craving a Diet Coke.

I found myself to be the same self I was in Chicago, except disillusioned that inhaling the European air hadn’t transformed me. In Europe, as in Chicago, real life was much more embodied and much less ethereal than it was in my daydreams. The hard things about being me, about being an adult, my depression and anxiety, and even the prickly hairs that sprouted from my chin, remained.

The Sound of Music tour guide continued with her characteristic refrain, dismantling the magical world created in the film. “How could they do the sixteen-going-on-seventeen dance in such a small gazebo? Hmmmmm? That’s because they didn’t. They built a larger one in Hollywood…”

We couldn’t even go inside the gazebo, because an elderly guest had recently broken her leg trying to dance on the benches as Liesel and Ralph do in the movie. Our passion for the film was a liability to the touring company at each step, as we were reminded to keep everything at an arm’s reach.

The tour ended in the town with the church where Maria and the Captain got married. The interior of the church had been painted pink. Pink. I took an obligatory picture in the aisle of the cathedral, wanting to stomp out of the building like a grumpy toddler. I had been promised magic and instead found altered buildings and relics beyond reach.

As she was wrapping up the tour, the guide suggested we try some “crisp apple strudel,” which was sold at several shops in town for the consumption of parents who had dragged their kids on the tour and retired couples who had watched the movie premiere in theatres. At the peak of my frustration and need for air, we took our strudel “to-go,” a phrase hardly ever uttered in Europe, and went out to explore the town.

I tried to check-in with the boys to see if they resented the fifty dollars spent on the tickets, trying to distract them with impressions of the tour guide and her underwhelming introductions at every stop. Josh and John Mark felt the disappointment of the tour, but it seemed they were able to brush it off, laugh it off… 

As we walked with our noisy plastic to-go boxes chasing the strudel around the base of the containers with plastic forks, we came upon the shore of a lake tucked in the mountains. It looked like something out of Middle-Earth. Long docks stretched their arms into the water and fog rested and pooled around rooftops painted with snow drifts. IMG_5089

It was a view similar to one in the movie, but begging to be examined on its own merits for its mountains, spiky pine trees, water smoothed as if with a frosting knife, and dissolving horizon, where the water seemed to fall off the edge of the earth in an interstellar waterfall as it disappeared from our eyesight.  

Maria Von Trapp, The Grand Canyon, or the Eiffel Tower may draw us to a certain place, but the experience we have there must transcend what could be reduced to a postcard. My experience of the “Sound of Music Tour,” once let loose of my expectations, expanded to more than I could have anticipated.

The tour was posing on the steps where Do-Re-Me had been filmed, but also the hostel we trekked to in the dark along steep gravel paths that seemed more like landscaping than legitimate passageways. It was feeling pretty in my vintage dress cinched in at the waist as we snapped hundreds of pictures at the mystical docks. It was the strudel in crinkling plastic containers, and even the monotone tour guide who disappointed my expectations at every turn.

The tour was a means to an unexpected end, as each stop begged to speak for itself and show us why it is special, the hills not so much alive with the sound of music, but asleep under blankets of snow.

IMG_5064

 

Meredith-bio-YAH-1024x327

Other People’s Dirty Dishes

Posted on by under Mess & Place

The stack of plates next to the sink had bits of dried cheese and other unidentifiable foodstuff stuck to them. A frying pan and a couple of saucepans were soaking in dirty dishwater in the sink, along with handfuls of cutlery. Unwashed drinking glasses were colonizing next to the dirty plates. I had just recovered a couple more from the living room where they had been abandoned, water rings left behind on the garage-sale end tables.

The house was quiet. The students who weren’t still sleeping in their bedrooms were scattered across campus, attending class or studying in the library.

And I was annoyed.

***

Nearly a quarter century ago, I spent four years living in community with college students. When I accepted a campus ministry position as a co-director of a co-ed discipleship house in Erie, Pennsylvania, I had idealized notions of what that would look like. These ideals were founded on my own experience a few years earlier, when I spent the summer between my junior and senior years of college living in Ocean City, New Jersey, in a co-ed house with fifteen other Christian college students and four campus ministers.

We shared a house and we shared meals. By day, we worked in souvenir shops and pizza parlors, or we cleaned hotel rooms or mowed lawns. In the evenings, we took turns leading Bible studies and learning from teachers who visited each week to help us grow in our faith and our leadership abilities. All of this while living a couple blocks from the beach.

We laughed and learned and flirted and grew in our relationships with one another and with the God we were getting to know better. For two months, we experienced the very best parts of living in community. And then we tearfully said goodbye and returned to our families and our different college campuses.

When we parted ways, we were barely out of the honeymoon stage.

***

Two years into being a campus minister and a “house mother”—at age 24—the honeymoon was definitely over.

I was now one of the adults, living with students who had varying motives for living in this house. For some, it was an opportunity to live with other Christian students and to grow in faith and learn how to share that faith with their peers. For some, it was an inexpensive alternative to the university’s residence halls or campus-owned apartments. And for others, it was a combination of the two.

Dirty dishes were the tip of the iceberg. There were so many more issues below the surface.

We were a motley crew. Protestants and Catholics and agnostics. Republicans and Democrats and independents. Young women and men transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, and two campus ministry “house parents” who did not have much of an age advantage but were trying to help these students to ask good questions and figure out who they were and who they were becoming.

This was no two-month adventure at the Jersey shore with relatively like-minded people. This was nine months of classes and midterms and finals and debates about whether the TV should be tuned to CNN (the general preference of the international students) or MTV (the rest of the students) or shouldn’t be turned on at all (the house directors).

dirty-dishes-resized-600This was a minimum two-semester commitment to weekly house dinners and meetings on Sunday evenings, followed by living life together the rest of the week.

It was difficult for some of us to resist the temptation to keep an hour-by-hour mental tally of who cleaned up after themselves and who did not.

For much of my time in that house, I disregarded the importance of the mundane, day-to-day, messy business of living life together. My focus was on house dinners and Bible studies and philosophical conversations. These were important. But my passive-aggressive response to dirty dishes and TV channel disagreements contributed to the mess—and dismissed real opportunities for growth and identity formation.

I wish someone had shared with me back then that the secret to a healthy community living environment is being willing to put up with each other’s messes.

Or better yet, to pitch in and help clean them up.

***

Amy YAH bio

While We’re Renting

Posted on by under Finding Place

IMG_1415

Old houses have a way of making themselves dirty, they crumble pieces of rusty radiators and cracking tile grout. My husband and I rent a place like this. In beams of sunlight, I can track fuzzy dust trails intertwined with all kinds of hairs and particles from disintegrating flooring. Clumps cling to the baseboards and slip under doorways, blown by invisible air currents.

After living here for well over a year, certain quirks get my particular attention. I can get quite distracted by the kitchen flooring, a 1980s white linoleum that turns mop heads and rags black, even on the tenth scrub. The dirt captured by its textured surface has been sealed in by grease and time, yielding just enough to fool me into thinking I’ve made progress by attacking it on hands and knees.

Under the cabinets, the edge of the linoleum curls up, a page of history begging to be turned. Splattered, brown grime creeps up in the crevice between the base of the cabinets and the well-worn flooring. This inevitably sends me into panic, a deep heaving, sweaty fear of mold and the other things that lurk in nooks and crannies.

We have made small improvements on the house, ones that seem appropriate for those only leasing the property. There’s the shower; I cried the first time I used it. We worked for hours with an X-ACTO knife to remove the floral grips someone had stuck on the floor of the tub now outlined with black and dark shades of green. Drew squirted a squiggly line of caulk over the deep crack between the tub and shower wall.

IMG_2120We tackled the back porch in the spring, removing the calico of welcome mats and rugs covering the floor and stapling down a single sheet of indoor/outdoor carpeting. We’ve replaced the light fixture in the bathroom, painted a yellow stripe around the wall in the dining room, and hung some heavy shelves on the plaster walls. And yet, sometimes even our elbow grease seems too much to give to this place that isn’t ours. The landlord seems determined to run his property into the ground, which is working because some of the house is literally sinking.

I tire of the sense that I live a collapsible life, the kind I’ve lived since leaving for college. My existence feels cobbled together from Swedish-named IKEA parts, propped up picture frames, and other signs that I will leave each room without a trace.

We will be renting for a long time. Financial experts have advised some millennials to never buy at all, offering online calculators and formulas to figure out if owning property makes sense in their financial bracket and geographical location.

But, I was raised to want land. I’m a midwestern girl, descended from European immigrants clamoring for a new start and middle American farmers who didn’t have running water, but owned a homestead and a clump of pear trees. The residue of my ancestors’ dreams still course through my veins, and before we go to bed each night, I speak of a future home like a promised land: “When we own a house someday…”

And now a baby is entering into this equation, and I’m more lost than ever. In the early days of sickness and fatigue, I’d lie in bed unable to tend to the everyday messes of dishes and dirty clothes. I watched shows on television where families knocked down walls and pried up carpet floors, installing subway tile backsplashes and farm basin sinks.

I’d walk into our kitchen holding my breath to avoid the odor of the rotting vegetables going to waste from our CSA due to the preferences of my nausea-riddled stomach. I couldn’t even take care of this place, it’s crumbs growing greater than its charms. I resisted planning the nursery. I resisted the stacks of paper and piles of former teaching supplies. I refused to make this home.

But a few weeks ago, a dear professor passed away at forty two, reminding me that we are all renters on this earth, exiles planting gardens and pouring cement foundations for temporary shelters. The night after Dr. Foster died, I moved closer to Drew in our bed, suddenly feeling like this might be our last moment on earth.IMG_1556

I realized how much I’ve held myself back from the places I’ve rented, refusing to be wasteful with transient things. But perhaps, in doing so, I’ve been truly wasteful, letting days and years slip through my fingers.

I lay my palm across Drew’s chest and in his sleep, he lays his palm over mine. I feel his inhale and exhale of breath. Home is here, this bed could be anywhere.

Why do I worry about the peeling linoleum or whether it’s worth it to paint the walls grey? Moving is in the future, now we are here, now I’m feeling Drew’s heartbeat and hearing the faint beginnings of his snoring. Part of me wants to stay up all night, feeling life in my love, but my pregnant body grows tired of my left side.

I pry my hand from his sleepy grip and turn over, now listening for the rise and fall of my own breathing. As I drift off to sleep, time seems such a fleeting thing, and I resolve to make this our home, even if it feels like we’re squatters.

Let’s dig a hole in the back yard, I think,  and lose our security deposit because we danced so much on the floors they’ve bowed under the weight of our living and breathing. Let’s carve our names in the closet and leave the baby’s height etched into a doorway. Let someone else paint over our memories, let them last for a second as we throw the dust of this life as confetti.

 

***

Meredith bio YAH

Finding Hope in the Depths of a Woodpile

Posted on by under Finding Place

After “The Move,” we found our way to a small doublewide trailer in the shallow hills of central Pennsylvania, only a few miles from where I had grown up. When we moved in, small patches of ice and snow still resided in the shadows. The forest that stretched up the hill away from the house was bone-bare and brown. The birds were just beginning to find their way through the thaw.

It was the opposite of the neighborhood we had left. It was not glitzy or fashionable. We were not surrounded by cars and people. When we drove down the gravel driveway, slowing for the deeper potholes, we were not in awe of the material success of those around us.IMG_0078

But it was beautiful. And peaceful. We found healing there on quiet afternoons as Maile made supper and the kids’ voices ricocheted back at us through the valley. Lines of geese stretched across the sky and slipped through the dusk, circling, then dropping into neighboring fields.

Everyone, everything, it seemed, was returning home.

* * * * *

The first spring there, we decided we were farmers. We planted a massive garden in the back yard, turning over the deep green grass, exposing rich, brown earth. Anything could grow in that soil. Even hope.

The second spring, having conquered the gardening aspect of life, we turned to raising chickens. We bought them at a local feed store and took them home in a cardboard box with perforated holes in it. So they could breathe. We promptly settled them in large plastic container in the kitchen, and, with the help of a heat lamp and a small feeding system, managed to get them alive through spring.

I don’t know exactly when it was that the chickens started laying eggs, but they did, and we enjoyed them. The kids brought back four brown eggs a day to the house, holding each like a small miracle. By the time fall arrived, they were free range chickens and we lost track of where they were laying their eggs.

We searched the bushes, the woods, the underside of our doublewide. No luck. Leaves blew in sporadic gusts down the hill. We wondered if they had stopped laying because of the cold. We wondered if animals were getting to the eggs before we could. We kept looking.

* * * * *

When we had to leave our home in Virginia, it felt like all the good things had gone missing. Our church, our friends, our future: all of it up and evaporated in the time it took to drive 200 miles north. And for a little while we stopped believing good things could last. We stopped looking for them.

A quick internet search had taken us to that doublewide. My father happened to know the owner. We didn’t recognize it at the time, but being able to move into that quiet space was the first hint of goodness returning.

* * * * *

One day my daughter Abra, three or four years old at the time, came running inside, shouting to anyone who would listen. She hopped up and down and in each of her hands she held an egg.

“Where did you find those?” I asked.IMG_0068

We followed her outside and through the yard to a woodpile the landlord had made from the branches of a fallen tree. Abra climbed back behind the wood and pointed.

There, in a small bowl-shaped space in the depths of the woodpile, lay at least two dozen eggs. It was cold, so they hadn’t gone bad. We used a tongs to reach in and take out each little miracle, one by one.

* * * * *

As the months passed, I found work. We settled into a routine and made new friends. We found a church to call home. The things we had lost in Virginia would not be replaced, but there were good things to be found, even in that new place.

It can sometimes be hard to believe there is still good in the world. It can be so hard to find, especially after The Move or The Diagnosis or The Divorce. But it’s still there. We might not be ready to discover it right away, but the world will thaw, and the good will appear in the most unlikely of places.

We only lived in the doublewide for two years. If you ask any of our children which of our many locations has been their favorite house, each one will tell you that one was it. It’s where we landed in our hurt. It’s where we healed as a family. It’s where we started to find goodness in what had at first seemed a terrible gift.

* * *

shawn bio YAH

90 Miles

Posted on by under Guest, Memory & Place

I have the full lips of a good Cuban woman, wide hips that twitch at the sound of a Latin beat. I am red hot passionate, with an eyes-flashing, arms-waving temper. The sea is the only place I feel blood-rushing peace.

Yes, Cuba is inside me, whether I like it or not.

We flew through the skies one late July night. Surrounded by lightning and carried by turbulence, our entire California family landed in Miami well past bedtime. It was a journey of cultural homecoming for some in our group, and a first exposure for the rest of us. There in our two-star motel with its questionable swimming pool and a not-great view of the beach, I first understood just how wide are the borders of Cuban familia. We welcomed a parade of relatives, long ago friends, and friends of friends–categories that might as well cease to exist at the table a Cuban abuelita. Familia is familia. Everyone’s in.

Two weeks of all-day swimsuits and every morning breakfasts at IHOP are a blur in my memory now. I was only nine-years-old and not sure what to make of this place so different than my white-bred, dry-heat California hometown.

One half of a morning stands out in importance and recollection, however. After travelling to Key West, we found ourselves staring into the leaves of the southernmost tree. When a black cat darted from behind a bush, my cousin joked, “There goes the southernmost cat.” Just ahead of us stood a chain-linked fence, with the wide waters of the Atlantic splashing on the rocks below.

Attached near the top of the fence, a sign reads: 90 Miles to Cuba90 Miles

This is what we came to see, and so we stood silent for a moment. My dad slung his arm around his sister’s shoulders and she smiled through her tears. Thirty-ish years back and ninety miles south–that’s how far away their minds traveled in those few minutes. As children and with no notice, they left their island home with their parents, abandoning memories, dear friends, all the treasures of their childhood.

While the grown-ups reminisced in choked-up Espanol, my cousins and I, along with my little brother and sister, ran wild in a game of tag, hopping on and off large rocks that topped the cliff we were gathered on. Laughing and running, we blinked our eyes at the Florida sun with our feet pounding the ground of freedom that has always spread beneath us.

When I was sure no one was looking, I strained my eyes out over the forever expanse of water, searching for a piece of driftwood or the black ridges of a tire, signs of a refugee almost to shore. These were the stories I’d grown up with, stories of desperation and hope. Sometimes they made it. Sometimes they were picked up by the Coast Guard. Sometimes they sank.

Standing at the edge of our country, I felt like I was at the edge of something else, but as I was only a little girl, I couldn’t put my finger on what it was exactly.  I was overwhelmed. The gratitude I was supposed to feel, the imaginings of a childhood built with the brick and mortar of communism, language barriers so steep I feared I’d never break them apart, the constant volume and prattle of all these people who shared my blood, or at least a piece of my history, it was just too much.

Frankly, these Cubans of mine were too much.

We shared a gene pool, but we didn’t fit together easily. So when my dad walked out the door a few years after our Florida trip, filing for divorce and affirming all the discord I’d sensed, I erased them, mi familia, and Cuba itself from my very identity. 90 miles was too far to go.

But roots pull and roots dig.

All grown up now, I see it all with gentler eyes. As a wife and mother, I look at my babies and my husband and I see the dark eyes of my Abuelita. I wonder at the cost of her sacrifices, I wonder what it does to a woman to leave the way she did, to gather her children and pray that a far away land will be the answer she’s hoping for. I think of my dad’s childhood memories, and then I dream of sugar cane fields and a baseball soaring high above them, the exultant cries of a passel of Cuban boys.

I wince when I think of guns, suitcases, desperation and my dad as a skinny boy with enormous ears standing with his big sister decked in a white dress, helpless. I lose my breath when I think of my freedom-loving Papi in a cell all those times, his dream of a free Cuba still breathing, but losing color.

My heart edges close to what it all means, and sometimes that’s as far as it can go. But every now and then I stand in that place long enough to see the big picture–the mistakes, the desperate shots in the dark, the guts and the fear, the stubborn hope.

I know now that the edge I felt all those years ago was the edge of loss and anger, language barriers and picking sides. It was the sharp shatter of family, connection. It was me, trying to keep hearts safe and the coming realization that I can’t.

As I turn my gentler eyes on this this cast of characters in a complicated and sometimes devastating tale of a fully Cuban, fully American family, it is so clear that we all have scars of place and relationship. These Cubans of mine, and me. And if they are mine, and they indisputably are, then I am theirs and their Cuba lives inside me too. 90 miles is closer than I ever could have imagined.

Maybe in learning to make peace with a memory, I’ve learned to love a place and a people that I can’t escape. And the truth is, I don’t want to escape it or them anymore. What I want is to  step beyond that chain link fence, to slice through the self-imposed invisible line between here and there. I want my heart to cross the Atlantic and finally say, “Estoy aqui y te amo.”

I’m here and I love you.

* * * * *

profileBio: Sarah Torna Roberts is a writer who lives in California with her husband and four sons. She blogs at www.sarahtornaroberts.com where she digs around her in her memories, records her present, and is constantly holding her faith up to the light. She snacks at 2 AM with great regularity, is highly suspicious of anyone who doesn’t love baseball (Go Giants!), and would happily live in a tent by the sea.

 

90 Miles.jpg is a photo by Kay Gaensler, available for public use.

 

Good to Be Home?

Posted on by under Travel & Place

It’s always the same, coming home from a vacation–that last block before our house.

We drive up the hill, and turn under a canopy of locust trees. On our left, there’s the big rhododendron bush, the vacant duplex with the colorful window frames, two red brick rentals, and grass. On the right, there’s trash tucked into the undergrowth, and sometimes a neighborhood deer, nosing through a discarded fast food bag.

“Boo!” I might say to the deer. And if the leftovers aren’t that fascinating, the deer might even look up. City deer are never afraid; I could yell, “We’ve been away! For weeks. We were really far away. Didn’t you miss us?”

And if deer could roll their big doe eyes, she just might. But instead we drive on, pulling up in front of our house.

Home! Finally, we’re home. But how can coming home feel so familiar and so surreal, all at the same time?

* * * * *

Several years ago we made the adventurous (or foolish) decision to drive to New Orleans with a three and a five year old. There and back again, with overnights at a friends’ house in Charlotte and a cabin in the northeastern Alabama woods, it was about thirty-five hours of driving.

And after thirty-five hours of the Veggie-Tales CD, let me tell you, we were ready to come home. But as we drove that familiar last block (no deer that night), waved to our neighbors, and greeted our black cat, something wasn’t quite right.

It was as if we had never left. But we had. After two weeks and two thousand miles, our eyes were now accustomed to new sights and unfamiliar places. I felt uneasy in the old and familiar.

Strange.

But there wasn’t much time for reflection. Instead, there were tasks–get the girls in bed, empty the cooler, take off the bikes. Home quickly became a to-do list. Our room was the aftermath of our two-weeks-previous packing tornado. The girls room was worse. A Goodwill trip, perhaps a dumpster, was in order. I suddenly became nostalgic about living out of suitcases.

It was home. It was really overwhelming.

5861512547_e3e80f63b3_oTime had passed, things had changed, but the same skirt that I had rejected while packing was still sitting on my bed. I regarded it as a foreign object–the North Carolina mountains seemed nearer. Was it only a week ago that I biked the streets of New Orleans? And that lovely cabin in Alabama… I could almost smell the pine trees. Were all of these places and moments just postcards and photographs now?

I threw the skirt off the bed and lay down.

* * * * *

The next morning I had some coffee in the backyard. The chickens were doing their chicken-y things in the run, the kids were swinging under the magnolia tree,  and the sun was shining through everything green.

It was good to be home.

Eventually I slowed down enough to remember one of my favorite quotes. From G.K. Chesterton. The words rippled through my head as I sipped from my warm mug, stilling me.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us. 

Ah… here was a key. I took another sip.

The thing about coming home is that it is work. Good work. But it is not only the work of unpacking, laundry and trying to find the darn cellphone charger. It’s not just returning to my email inbox, catching up at the office, or purging excess stuff. Coming home is also the work of figuring out what my experiences of far-away places will mean in my close-to-home places.

Coming home is allowing myself to be different than I was, and giving the left-inside things room to grow. And as I sat there, under the same magnolia tree, surrounded by the same neighbors and the same city deer, gearing up to clean my room, I sighed and smiled.

“There’d better be some new things in there,” I thought, laying a hand on my breastbone as if I might feel something move. “Two thousand miles is a long was to go for some postcards.”

 

Postcard picture by Else-Marla Tennessen 

Naked Among Friends

Posted on by under Guest, Travel & Place

The day of the trip was gorgeous, sunny and warm. I arrived at the shoreline nervous and hopeful, wanting to make a good impression. Sarah had invited me to the lake, and Sarah would understand how I felt. She was a female pastor, like I was. We both knew what a struggle it was to feel out of place in a profession that tends to be mostly male and mostly older. I didn’t get invited to golf games or men’s retreats, and so I wanted to make the most of this day–connecting with colleagues while inner tubing and water skiing.

16810235579_4f640d352a_oAfter setting up lawn chairs and drink coolers around a barbeque pit, Sarah asked if I’d like to try jet skiing. I’d never ridden a jet ski before, but watching people zipping around the lake inspired an unusual confidence to try something new.

I watched as Sarah took the jet ski out onto the lake, the handlebars parallel to the footstand as she floated on top of it. Then, as she picked up speed; she came up to her knees. Finally, after going even faster and taking the handlebars up to a perfect 90 degree angle against the footstand, she happily stood tall on the tiny machine cruising along the top of the water.

It looked easy, as hard things often do when done by an expert. When she handed the jet ski over to me, I made my first attempt, revving the engine too soon and losing control before I got the chance to raise to my knees. I tried again, same result. Over and over I held the handlebars, floating on the surface, coming close but always losing my grip and letting go before I could stand up.

Without fail, as soon as the the handlebars slipped out of my fingers, the jet ski would begin to circle, zipping around and around in the cool black water like an eager puppy hoping I would play its favorite game, waiting for me to regain control. Frustrated and embarrassed that everyone on the shore was watching me get schooled by this tiny plastic machine, I tried to keep smiling as I adjusted my swimsuit and climbed back on, sure that I had it in the bag this time, only to feel the jet ski power away from my tired hands again.

On my ninth attempt, I felt it. I was going to get up this time. I had the handles firmly gripped and as the motor began to pick up speed, I was ready. And then – whoosh – the force of the motor blew back into the water and took the bottom of my black tankini with it.

I was naked from the waist down.

I motored forward, trying to slow the machine as I bobbed behind it, holding the handlebars horizontal on the water. Each second put me farther away from my now missing bathing suit. Even if I could have stood up, I didn’t want to show off my exposed lower half to everyone enjoying their afternoon at the lake. As it was, the force of the motor was pushing that most buoyant body part to the surface, effectively mooning every passing boat.

Not knowing what else to do, I decided to cruise into the cove where our group was eating lunch. I thought if I explained the situation while staying a little way out from the shore, I could ask someone to throw me a towel and possibly save myself the humiliation of this new group of friends and fellow ministers seeing my backside.

I held steady in the water at the edge of the cove.

“You guys,” I yelled. “The jet ski blew off my bathing suit bottoms. Can someone throw me a towel?”

After a few moments of confused looks from the shore, I yelled again, hoping someone would take pity on me.

A guy in his lawn chair stood up and yelled back, “Um, we don’t know you.”

I looked again and realized that indeed, this was a different cove and a different group of people than I had come with. I waved and began to motor away, my rear end floating to the surface as the strangers on the shore began to cheer.

I found our friends two coves down. I tried yelling for help but before I could even begin my story, they applauded, laughing, and threw me a towel, telling me that they’d heard me yelling to the strangers down the lake.

The camaraderie the rest of that afternoon was rich, the ice having been clearly broken by my lake-wide display. Instead of being embarrassed or feeling alienated by my escapade, I felt the welcome and affection that comes with shared experience. I lost my bottoms and with them my nerves, finding instead a place among friends.

* * * * *

100_1050“Naked Among Friends” was written by Lindsey Smallwood (far left). Lindsey loves being near the water and usually manages to stay fully clothed. A former pastor and teacher, she now lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and two young sons where you’ll often find her chatting at the park, walking by the creek or writing on the couch. You can read more on her blog Songbird and a Nerd or find her on Facebook.

Pelican photo by Lars Plougmann

 

Having Whiteness

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

My first clue should have been the way the Assistant Principal immediately recognized me. She turned around from her seat in the first row and smiled, “I just have to tell you about what Juliet said.” My oldest daughter is in pre-k at the local elementary school. We were there for the Christmas extravaganza.

For a split second I was surprised that she knew who I was. I am at work the whole time Juliet is at school. It could have been I was sitting next to my husband, who is around more often. It could have been because my daughter mentioned me recently. Yes, it could have been these things. But more likely it was because my child is the only white kid in  her pre-k class. I’m one of three white moms in the entire school.

The  assistant principal started shaking her head jovially, “That Juliet, I was in her class to observe her teacher and she said to me, ‘I am SO CUTE.’ So I told her, ‘I am so cute too!’ And then she looked at me and said, ‘AND! I am WHITE!’ So I told her, ‘Well I am cute and brown!’”

I chuckled with the woman at the audacity of my oldest. But inside I was cringing a little. My daughter had recently began talking about her whiteness with me. A few weeks earlier, in the kitchen baking cookies Juliet had noticed the flour I had spilled on the counter. “Hey mom, that flour is white.” “Yes, yes it is.” “And us too,” she continued. “Hmm?” I responded, not wanting to lead the conversation.” “Mom, we are white.”

This was not news to me. I know I am white, and I know my kids are white. We live in a predominantly black neighborhood, and for a period of time my husband and I were both teaching at schools that were almost exclusively black. For a white woman, I have spent a lot of time thinking about race. But there, in the kitchen with the spilled flour, I had no idea where we were going with this conversation, so before I handed my four year old a copy of Why Do All the Black Kids Sit Together in the Cafeteria, I thought I would ask her what she already knew.

As casually as possible I asked her, “What do you think that means?” She sighed, exasperated at the question. She pushed her sleeve up and pointed at her arm. “Like this mom” she then pointed at my arm. “You got this too.”

Indeed I did have this, have whiteness. I was still trying to figure out exactly what to tell Juliet about our white skin when it was mentioned in my kitchen. Though I don’t want her to be ashamed of her race, it is a historical fact that white people have often been the oppressor. The basic understanding I tried to give her of Martin Luther King brought that to the forefront pretty quickly. I also did not want to feed her exclusively stories about white people as the freedom giver. I spent my first three years as a teacher unlearning that story myself. I had tried to find some age appropriate books about whiteness and found only books published by the KKK. I couldn’t be the only one dealing with this, could I?

I was pondering all of this again when the lights dimmed and the curtains came up on the elementary school Christmas extravaganza. I sat awestruck and delighted as each group performed. But I was also, often, a little confused. While I recognized the words and music to most of the classic Christmas songs, I was not familiar with any of the versions. My daughter danced to Santa Claus is coming to town sung by The Jackson Five, not Bing Crosby like I am used to. When the beat dropped on the hip hop version of the Sugar Plumb Fairies, the whole audience erupted. I too was delighted, but the explosion of cheers freaked me out a little. I just didn’t know that was a thing you did at a kids’ assembly.

The unfamiliarity of the whole thing, coupled with the conversation I had before the show began, left me feeling alone and confused in an environment I had anticipated being familiar. The cues I knew from my own experiences were missing, and the ones in their place I had difficulty understanding. It was a little lonely, being the only white parents in the room.185965286_38af90fa7b_z (1)

After the show I collected Juliet from behind the stage. I told her what a good job she did, just like every other mom there. She introduced me to all the other kids by name (or just asked them when she forgot). She started each introduction with, “This is my friend….” She hugged her friends goodbye so much I had to bribe her with ice cream to get her out of there. We thanked the teachers and she walked backward out the door, waving and smiling. She loves it at her school, and she really loved that night.

Juliet knows she is white, but she also knows she belongs. I was reminded of the truth that was, even if it didn’t quite feel like it: We weren’t alone; we were welcomed.

* * * * *

AbbyAbby lives and loves in the city of Atlanta. She swears a lot more than you would think for a public school teacher and mother of two under three. She can’t help that she loves all words. She believes in champagne for celebrating everyday life, laughing until her stomach hurts and telling the truth, even when it is hard, maybe especially then. You can find her blogging at accidentaldevotional and tweeting at @accidentaldevo. Abby loves all kinds of Girl Scout cookies and literally burning lies in her backyard fire pit.

Bing Ice Cream photo by Richard Lemarchand.

Rotating Places, Rotating Faces

Posted on by under Guest, Role & Place

Sometimes I wonder if I live as if I am a prism.

I distort the light within me through my many different facets.  My many different faces.  And it is my roles and my places that determine these faces.

At work, I am confident, focused, and confronting.  I solve problems.  I complete things.  And, I am undistracted in my pursuit of success.  My face is one of determination.

At home, I battle distraction.  The typical things of a home filled with children – and internet connections – vie for my attention.  I am less sure in this space.  The tasks that I manage to complete just start over and over again – laundry, meals, school drop-offs, homework.  At home, I try to make love my ambition, not productivity.  But it is a struggle.  My face is one of striving.

prism

At my writing desk, I am neither here nor there.  I am in Kairos, that other-than state that transports me into an openness that can only be explained by God.  In Kairos, the immensity of Him and the tiny molecule of me intersect in a way that makes sense.   My face is one of receiving.

At church, I am unmasked.  I am at rest in the company of imperfection.  I am enough.  I filter, I question, I doubt.  I accept that I am incomplete.  I pursue connection.  My face is one of seeking. 

And so this is the orbit of life:

Rotating roles,

Rotating places,

Rotating faces.

But is this the revolution that God intended? 

I wonder if the revolution He desired is one that transforms me from a prism into a window.   Because, for His light to shine through me, don’t I need to be transparent and fragile, not rock solid and rotating?  

I think I want to be a window.

window

But in transparency and fragility, I am vulnerable.  It is easier and more comfortable to play my roles and change my faces.  Rotation is protection.  Vulnerability is risky; it is complicated and messy.  Vulnerability is letting others see all of my faces, even the ones I don’t want to see.

Yet it is in this vulnerability that others see not only me, but themselves.

So I think I want to be a window, still enough to have one face, transparent enough to let His light shine through, fragile enough to let others see through me to themselves.

Determined, striving, receiving, seeking. 

If I am a window, I am all of these faces, and more, at once, in every role and in every place. 

If I am a window, I am one face.  One face that stays rotated to God, letting His undistorted light shine through.

Yes.  I want to be a window.

*   *   *   *   *

H1“Rotating Places, Rotating Faces” was written by Holly Pennington. Holly has rotated faces through roles such as a physical therapist, health care executive, mother, writer, and entrepreneur.  Her rotating places include Ohio, North Carolina, Florida and Colorado.  She is pursuing a window kind of life in Washington state, despite the rain and fog.  She blogs about faithfully merging “dreadlocks” and “goldilocks” selves at www.dreadlocksandgoldilocks.com.  She can be found on Twitter (@dreadsandgoldi) and Facebook at dreadlocksandgoldilocks.

Home Church

Posted on by under Guest, Home & Place

The reasons we chose the church weren’t particularly flattering. It was close, under five minutes from our house if traffic was favorable. They had a pretty thin looking praise team, so if they’d have us, we would both be able to play. The pastor seemed nice and the sermons didn’t strain my liberal sensitivities too hard. And it was relatively anonymous, so we didn’t feel the scarlet A’s branding us every time we entered the sanctuary.

We were married now, but that hadn’t always been the case. We had attended church together for five years, but in the before days, we had been married to other people, and lots of people in the church community of our town knew it.

countrychurchIn my previous life, when I had changed churches, I always knew immediately when I found my new church home. In those instances, there was a simple feeling of belonging. Even if it hadn’t made sense to me why I felt that way, I could tell when a new congregation was home.

But I didn’t have that feeling here.

I told my husband I’d probably feel more at home when I started serving in the congregation. I told him that when I was giving something of myself to the church, I would get that feeling of belonging. It wouldn’t just be the church that I went to, but it would become my church.

We never wanted our past to come to the surface and catch the leadership of the church unawares, so we had lunch with the pastors, one of us gripping the leg of the other who was telling their part of the story, trying to send strength to each other through leg compressions. Grace was extended, and we were invited to join the team of musicians. We had our first rehearsal with the team. We played our first Sunday, almost a year to the day from the last time we had played together, and it was a joy-filled experience. Everything was coming together in the best possible way.

And still the feeling of “home” evaded me.

I didn’t know what was wrong with me. What was holding me back from experiencing that sense of belonging in this place where we had been shown so much grace and love? Why couldn’t I feel at home when I was being embraced by those I worshiped with each week?

I turned these questions over in my mind and realized that the only thing holding me back was me. I didn’t feel at home because I wasn’t allowing myself to feel at home.

In my mind, I heard the voices that had told me I wasn’t welcome in church any more. Heard the voices that told me that I was a distraction. Heard the voices that told me that I didn’t belong.

Instead of seeing the ways we were being accepted, I kept expecting rejection. I waited for the shame I felt to be reflected back in the words or actions of others. I listened to the voices in my head instead of the voices of those right in front of me.

I wanted to feel at home, so I made a different choice.

When the voices in my head started telling me that I didn’t belong, I started looking for the ways that my church was helping me to belong. I thought about parking lot conversations after services. I thought about late night dinners at Burger King. I thought about hugs offered when we explained why the baby dedication service was too painful for us to attend. I thought of all of the ways that the church I was attending was becoming my church.

And it finally felt like home.

 *   *   *   *   *

424033_10151308414006236_662319879_n (1)“Home Church” was written by Alise Chaffins. Alise is a wife, a mother, an eater of soup, and a lover of Oxford commas. You can generally find her sitting behind a keyboard of some kind: playing or teaching the piano, writing at her laptop, or texting her friends a random movie quote. Alise lives in West Virginia and blogs at knittingsoul.com