Tag Archives: cabin

The Inner Room

Posted on by under Secret Places

I am at the front of the room, facilitating conversation with the ten teenage girls who signed up for the seminar. I don’t have any experience with youth ministry but I was willing. In a small country parish, that is enough.

I recognize a few of the faces in front of me, members of faithful families who have “regular” pews.  I’m not sure why the others are here. Perhaps someone convinced them to come or they were so desperate to get out of the house during the summer weeks that they showed up. Their faces are a blend of emerging confidence and awkward child-likeness. They are lovely and quirky, innocent and fear-filled.

On brown paper, written in my fanciest handwriting, is our theme: You Were Made to SOAR! The themes are bulleted below: Sacraments, Silence, Service and Renewal, Relationship, Real Joy.  At the moment, I’m setting the stage to talk on the topic of silence.

“Some describe silence as going into your inner room. A place inside where you are safe and calm and you can talk to God — even if everything on the outside is crazy.”

We flip to Matthew’s Gospel and read about going to your inner room. I talk about the holy witness of people who were imprisoned and couldn’t “do” anything to serve God that we still recognize as saints. Their eyes indicate engagement; the ever-so-slight creases on their foreheads show it’s not quite clicking yet.  

I hesitate for a moment and glance downward around the bland classroom, a little unsure about sharing something vulnerable. When I was their age, I always felt like I was on the outside from my peers. The little girl in me is still afraid: Were they going to judge me? To ridicule something precious?  

“For example, when I am trying to get serious about silence, I envision a cozy cabin in my mind.”  I glance up to see if it will be okay to continue with the illustration. Seems so.8a4c4b877410e253d9c7e52aaa7afd74

“I roll up the thick carpet on the floor to reveal a trapdoor. With a candle in my hand, I open the door and descend into the dark cavern below. It’s a cool, safe space –no spiders!– and when I am ready, I blow out the candle.That’s my inner room.”

From the looks on their faces, I *think* the concept has clicked now. It’s okay to transition to the next step.

We walk over to the church, and I prep them, “I am going to play two songs and then, we are going to sit in silence for three minutes. It might feel like a long time but I’d like you to think about YOUR inner room.” My nervous energy hasn’t dissipated. Something in me wants their approval, wants them to think I am cool. I push the arrow button on my outdated technology and the songs fill the space, a musical repetition of the phase: ”Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.”  

When it’s time for us to be silent, the seconds creep by, and the creak of the pews is a telltale sign of the girls shifting uncomfortably in their seats. When I glance around the open space, there is a definite awkwardness lingering in the air; a couple of the girls are giggling into their hands. I’m tempted to cut it short but keeping my eyes focused on the rounded edge of the pew in front of me, I push forward with the plan.

The time of silence blessedly comes to an end and when we walk back to the hall, the girls fall into small groups to chitchat. I trail behind and try to come up with a backup plan to fill time if needed.          

As we settle back into the session, I pose the question, “Would anyone like to share about their inner room?” My voice is upbeat and confident but my spirit fears that awkward silence will again fill the space. A moment passes.

But then, they begin.

“I was at the ocean, the noise of the water blocked out all the other noise.”

“I thought about the couch in my house…I knew my family was nearby but I was alone.”

“I thought about crawling inside the tabernacle in the church.”

“I imagined myself in bubble that was filled with love.”

My heart rejoices at their responses. “Thank you, Lord”, I shoot a silent prayer.

One brave girl pushes back. “I don’t get it. I don’t know what everyone is talking about.”  The blue streak in her long hair is apparent as her fingers seek out split ends.

I affirm her willingness to speak the truth of her experience and try to say it another way.  “You know that voice in your head that can be really mean, that tells you all sorts of nasty things about yourself?!? I am trying to suggest that there is a place inside of you where even that voice is quiet.  And that’s the place that you talk to God.”

Her eyes shift slightly and a flicker of impact is momentarily revealed. She continues to push back but now, it is for the sake of rebelling. “Yah well, I don’t get it.”

“That’s okay. Stay open to the idea and maybe some day it will make sense.”  

We push on to the rest of the day’s content, talking about how a sacramental worldview and silence help you to understand how you are to serve. Service is a theme the girls connect with easily and the conversation flows naturally. The tension I have been holding in my shoulders begins to release.

At the close, we gather around a candle and I invite everyone to share their prayer intentions out loud.  Their voices ring out in the silence as we make our requests known to God. I am troubled by the magnitude of what they carry.

“For my mom who is fighting for her life with cancer.”  

“For my friend who has to leave her foster home.”  

“For my cousin who is in jail.”    

That night, I open the door of my secret place, the rustic cabin of my mind.  The floorboards creak as I walk to the center of the space.  Lowering to my hands and knees, I roll the thick carpet and raising, stash it in the corner.  My fingers grasp the metal handle of the square door to reveal a wooden staircase and raising it, I descend, bringing the glow of a candle into the space momentarily. 

In the silence of my inner room, I recall each of their faces.  I sit on the cool of the floor in the dark chamber and I pray.

mary bio YAH

 

I Went to the Woods

Posted on by under Money & Place

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Put in a category for laundry money.”

“Done.”

“Ok, put in a category for candy!”

Dan looks at me sidewise. “Ok, done.” He types for a moment and voila, there it is, a category for candy.

“Just kidding,” I say.

“I know,” he says, already deleting it.

We nod at each other–the nod of agreement where we’re both saying ok, we are doing a budget. Not just any budget, but a balls-to-the-wall zero-based budget where every single dollar, cent, and haypenny needs accounting for. In other words, goodbye gum, nice lotion, and comic books–basically all stuff I buy on a whim. There’s no “Whim” category and if there was it wouldn’t be big enough. Hence our need for a budget.

We recently bought a monthly subscription to “You Need a Budget” or YNAB for short. And we’ll be taking Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class starting this week. It’s our second time through.

You see, we’ve both got a little history with debt. Student loans, credit cards, mortgages: we are like most others in our age group in the present day. We have carried some debt of one form or another since we were eighteen.

Five years ago I lived in a cabin in the woods. It wasn’t strictly a cabin but it was in the woods near a lake. I’d been reading Walden and when the cabin fell into my lap, I said yes without hesitation. With Thoreau-ian enthusiasm for living deliberately, to “drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms,” I signed the lease. I wanted and needed to write alone. I was done with roommates (I thought) and their aggressive pint-sized dogs and the ensuing drama. Little did I realize that I had plenty of drama inside. A lot of it had to do with money. Not very Thoreau-like, I’m afraid.

cabin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I lived there a month and then calmed down a bit. I was lonely and a little stressed out. Especially when I saw the second month’s rent looming ahead. My paycheck, doled out weekly, couldn’t come fast enough.

“How have I already spent my paycheck before it’s in the bank?” I wondered one Wednesday afternoon. I counted out grocery money and rent and saw to my dismay that there was no way I’d be able to meet my friends for sushi that Friday night as planned.

I went anyway.

I paid my rent. Then to my surprise, my student loan was due the second week, which I’d forgotten about. I stood in the doorway of my cabin in the woods and surveyed my domain–my prohibitively expensive domain.

“What have I done?” I murmured. What would Thoreau have done? Here I was, slap up against my reality. I could not pay my rent and be a social animal, buying expensive lotion, candy, and comic books. I had already pulled out my credit card, dusty from disuse, to pay for fun extras. I wanted a Thoreau-ian existence of deliberate living, but what a cost. My mind went frantically between ideas of self-imposed isolation or doing as I liked and racking up debt.

In the end, I opened up a second checking account and divided my rent in quarters for each of the four paychecks in the month. It was the only way I knew how to insure the total amount. I was justifiably horrified at my credit card statements and chopped up my card the third month of cabin life and tried to live slim thereafter.

I couldn’t go to every concert or sushi date available. I stayed home and read, or walked down to the lake, or invited my friends over. I went on a few sushi dates of course, and sweated through the ensuing weeks til my rent was due. I soon learned I was not like Thoreau. Deliberate living was hard and I wanted and needed friends to soften it. My cabin became a retreat of sorts. My friends and I sat on the floor around the fireplace, talking and drinking cheap wine. I got very little writing done but it hardly mattered. At the time, nothing tasted so good as wine and friends around the fire.

I’m still a renter. I will be for a while yet. With the help of zero-budgeting and YNAB, Dan and I are (literally)  paying for our past debts, incurred both out of necessity and fun. But, we can pay our rent. The rest is hard work and sacrifice.

Elena bio YAH

The Creek Less Traveled

Posted on by under Memory & Place

There were many bodies of water to enjoy and explore at my grandparents’ cabin—it was Northern Michigan, after all, where bodies of water are as common as fields of corn where I live now, in Central Illinois.

The small, inland lakes had their appealing features: sandy shores for digging, floating rafts to dive from, and glass-like surfaces that perfectly mirrored the evening sky until the canoe you paddled broke through the stillness.

But of the many tempting bodies of water, it was the creek that enticed me most. The creek had something the lakes didn’t: It had mystery, a destination.

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We called it simply The Creek, but on a detailed-enough map it has a proper name: Canada Creek. It probably winds for miles, but our encounters with the creek took place in the far upper-east corner of Michigan’s lower peninsula—right where the cuticle of your index finger would settle in the mitten-shaped map.

As elementary-aged kids, my older brother and I were allowed to walk together down a curving sand road until it became a one-lane bridge at the creek. The road was rarely traveled, like all the roads in the area—we were somewhere in the midst of 20 square miles of woods and water known as Canada Creek Ranch (only a fourth of which was dotted with a few hundred cabins).

At the creek, my brother and I stood on the bridge for a while, tossing stones into the water to hear them plink and plunk their varying notes. Then we slid and scrambled down the gravely bank to the creek’s shore, where we inevitably ditched our canvas sneakers and sweaty socks to wade in the cold, clear spring water. It was sandy and shallow by the bridge; I liked to stand very still, hoping a dragonfly might land on me, while the tadpoles investigated my toes.

But how long could a kid stand still in a creek? After all, the creek had places to go and things to show us.

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PICT0023I’m guessing that we schemed and planned our first creek walk when I was about seven, sitting around Grandma’s breakfast table, pancakes piled high and studded with wild blueberries we had picked the day before. I’m sure my brother and I were persuasive in our desire to follow the creek. Not only did it beg to be further explored, but the creek held potential for so many stories. The grownups were apparently just as intrigued, because a new summer tradition was born (one that continued into our teen years, as seen in the photo): The Creek Walk.

On Creek Walk day my brother and I set out as adventurers, eager to play the characters in our favorite books—to live out their stories, or more likely a compilation of their stories. Laura Ingalls, Davey Crockett, Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea each took a turn being embodied by us as we forged the stream.

Sometimes we talked through our stories as we walked, staying in character as we navigated over or under a fallen tree. At other moments I broke from character to yelp as I slipped on a rock and nearly went under, or to complain when my brother, leading the way, fooled us with his favorite trick: gradually bending his knees then walking on them until the water was up to his neck, which suggested it would be well over my head. (A few times he wasn’t joking, and it actually was that deep.)

And then there were spells when all of us were quiet, amazed by just how quiet the world could be, save for the swish of our legs displacing the water as we walked, and the song of a Goldfinch from somewhere above. Now that I think of it, I don’t recall ever encountering another person on our many creek walks.

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After three or so hours of pressing on, the heat and deer flies became more bothersome, as did the ache in our legs and the rumble in our stomachs. Grandma began searching for a place to exit the creek—an opening in the tangle of brush where the bank wasn’t too steep and we could make our way from the creek’s winding world into the woods.

How Grandma had any idea where we were, I’ll never know. But she had hiked and skied those acres for years, and could confidently point us in the direction of Little Joe, one of the remote lakes on Canada Creek Ranch. We followed deer paths or forged our own way in the direction she pointed, motivated by what we knew we would find at our destination: Grandpa, firing up the grill for hotdogs. Each year on Creek Walk day he put the cooler Grandma had prepared into the car and drove the two-track roads through the woods to meet us at Little Joe’s lone picnic table.

After our feast, we all packed into Grandpa’s car, soggy and worn, to drive back to the cabin. The hotdogs and the lift home were luxuries Sacajawea never had, but by that point I was ready to be a modern-day little girl again, tucked into bed where more creek adventures could be spun in my dreams.