Waking to Words

T.V. would have me believe that families of my generation ate breakfast together, mother at the griddle and father behind the newspaper.  My father worked swing and graveyard shifts, my mother kept his hours.  I woke to an alarm, fixed my instant oatmeal and read the jokes on the empty packet while standing over the sink eating.  If my younger sister joined me, I don’t remember.  When I ate communal breakfasts it was with my best friend Katy who lived across the street.  We kept the cereal and milk on the table, reading the packaging, learning to pronounce words like thiamine and riboflavin.  She was an only child and could convince her mother to buy Lucky Charms and Pop Tarts and other breakfast treats my mother refused.  We were thrilled when her mother agreed to buy a box of Super Sugar Crisp––which we weren’t even sure we liked––on the condition that we ate all of it before we tore up the box.  Pressed into the paperboard was a real record, a 45-rpm of the Archie’s Sugar, Sugar with a circle of dotted lines just waiting for Katy’s scissors.  We read every inch of that box that weekend as we worked our way through the cereal.

I’ve eaten breakfast––and lunch since I left school and office for motherhood, pastoring, and writing––by myself most days of my life, but I haven’t been alone.  I’ve always had words in front of me.  Reading a book while eating requires using the edge of the plate and clean utensils as book weights, and I worry about a splat of yogurt or drip of orange juice staining a page, especially on a library book.  I’m not picky about content when it comes to read-eating, but I prefer magazines because they’re easy to keep flat on the tabletop, and smaller than a newspaper.  When I was young, I read what my parents left open, my father’s Herald Examiner, my mother Women’s Day and Family Circle, her copies of People when I was in college.  When I was a young mother the only books I could finish were children’s books I read to my babies, but I could work through an issue of Parenting and the Auto club magazine in a month.  Now I read the Sierra Club magazine, Real Simple, Sunset, Mental Floss, my husband’s Family Handyman, the free weekly paper, and two devotionals Alive Now and Weavings. 

When I became a Christian in my mid-20’s I thought I was supposed to wake at five each morning and read the Bible while the house was quiet and the world had yet to make its evil mark on me.  I was supposed to begin each day with ammunition for the battle, like the woman who wrote the book I borrowed from the library about being a Good Christian Wife.  But, I’m not a morning person, and the only dark force I was fighting was the alarm clock on a winter morning that was literally dark.  I couldn’t imagine read-eating the Bible.  It didn’t tuck well under the edge of a plate, the pages were so thin that a spill would saturate an entire Gospel, and it seemed sacrilegious to read scripture while eating toaster waffles.  Maybe if I’d been raised with the Bible on the table and learned words like Leviticus and Deuteronomy while eating Captain Crunch, my morning habit might be different.

I still wake up to Words and not The Word, and I’m not sure if I simply have a forty-five year habit or a spiritual discipline.  Either way, there is something that feeds my hunger when I read about wine tasting in Livermore, efforts to curb mountaintop removal coal mining, tips for repairing leaky gutters, and rhyming poems about Jesus while I eat peanut butter on gluten-free toast.  Wearing my bathrobe, I make tea, sit on a barstool, spread a magazine on the counter before me and connect with humanity.  Our pedestrian needs and desires––where to get a good pizza and how to patch a flat tire––mix with more profound––a dozen two paragraph reflections on the phrase Light of the World.  When I want humor, I read the poorly phrased police blotter in the local paper and allow my fork to hover over the print, daring my syrup to drip.  Sometimes, when I’m finished with breakfast, I push my plate aside and flip through the articles on makeup and fashion, which I have no real interest in, but will read about if I want to procrastinate.

Every morning I taste a variety of writers and styles and purposes while I sip my orange juice.  Every day I glimpse another worldview––the foodie, the carpenter, the conservationist, the fashionista––and enter it vicariously through print.  I could say my reading is educational, that it’s good for me, that there’s something holy about reading and connecting with the spectrum of the human family.  Actually, I am saying that.  But I’m also going to say something else about my read-eating and reading in general, something that the early morning Bible reader in all her stoicism doesn’t want to let on.  Maybe she doesn’t approve, but I don’t care––waking up to words is fun. 

Embodying the Body

I had minor surgery last week, an elective procedure to relieve excess and increasingly painful menstruation.  I had reached my limit in coping with this problem that plagued me for decades.  Thinking about what I’ve done afterward, I realize that for most of my life I’ve treated my body as a troublemaker, a problem causer.  I swallow handfuls of vitamins and herbs each day to stave off symptoms, to make up for deficiencies and lack, treating my body as something that has failed me. 

I had an expectation of perfection.  Not that I’d be thin and tan and blonde and wrinkle free forever, but that my kidneys, digestive and reproductive systems, my thyroid and adrenal glands and hormones would function with one hundred percent accuracy, doing all the things they’re supposed to do without error.  I expected my body to operate in textbook fashion.  When it didn’t I took up acupuncture and chiropractic, donned support hose, cooked vile tasting Chinese herbs and drank the brew, gave up wheat and gluten, eggs, soy, most dairy and half a dozen other foods, and added enzymes and herbal remedies to my diet. 

I have learned to accommodate and live with my chronic conditions, but I have not learned to accept and love them, just as I have not learned to accept and love all the aspects of my personality.  I judge my feelings and behaviors that are fearful, angry, clingy.  I view them as cause for shame instead of extending compassion.  In theory, I know that being human means making mistakes and built-in imperfection, but somehow I expect more of myself.  Struggling to be good enough/perfect, it’s not difficult to understand why I have viewed my body mainly as something to manage, if not control.  I want it to conform to my expectations.  Impossible expectations.

I’d like to be able to let go of perfection and appreciate my body for all the ways it contributes to my wellbeing.  I’d like to thank it for holding up for nearly fifty years, despite my neglect. I’d like to honor the ways my body communicates to me—warnings of danger, feelings of safety, the ways it tries to get my attention, and protect me—even if I don’t listen well, even when I pop ibuprofen and tell it to shut up.  I confess that I have been removed from my body’s messages and its wisdom.  I have not paid attention.  I have not acted with respect.

I’d like to repent and move toward an attitude of gratefulness and thanksgiving.  Without my body, there is no me.  My body is not inconvenient.  My body does not interfere with me carrying out my plans and intentions.  Exactly the opposite.  My body is the only vehicle and conduit my mind and spirit have for self-expression.  It is only through the body that I live.  The body makes me human.  Incarnate.  And like all humans, I am imperfect.  My body is imperfect.  I pray that I can learn to live differently––To accept my body and love it exactly the way it is.  In doing so my physical issues won’t magically disappear, but acceptance seems the next necessary step to continue my journey toward wholeness.  Toward God.

Showered with Blessing

At a baby shower earlier this Spring we played common party games––cutting yarn at absurd lengths we thought matched the mother-to-be’s belly circumference and surrendering diaper pins to the observant who caught us saying the forbidden word baby.  We oohed and aahed at the sweet onesies, snuggly pants and flowered socks the new baby girl would wear and practical necessities—blankets, stroller, bathtub, the new mother received.  At was all very nice, welcome and predictable.  But before the festivities ended, the mother-to-be’s mother, who was one of our hostesses, took the celebration in a different direction.  She asked the guests to gather in a circle surrounding the guest of honor and to offer her a blessing, a prayer for the upcoming birth, and the journey of becoming a family.  

We pulled our chairs around our pregnant friend on the floor and told her how much she meant to us.  Some of us, her mother’s age, told her it had been such a joy to watch her grow up, to celebrate the confident woman she had become—a labor and delivery nurse––and the gifts she was offering to the world.  Her peers laughed at the challenges they’d been through together and how they admired her determination.  One young mother, who left her children at home to attend the shower, told her to make time for herself and her marriage in all the demands that would soon fill her life.  Other mothers with grown children said that although some days with a baby seemed interminable, they looked back fondly on that special time with an infant, and wished her the ability to appreciate motherhood in the sleep-deprived moments.  Some spoke of quiet time nursing their babies in the middle of the night, how precious it was to hold the sweet and holy being entrusted to them, and of how sometimes, especially when there were older siblings, this was the only time they had alone with the new baby.  Many of us cried.  All of us were moved.  How often do we sit in a circle and tell someone what she means to us?  And how often do we reflect on what our lives as friends and mothers have meant to us and speak the truth of our hearts with no other agenda than to bless another?

 This kind of vulnerability and honesty could feel awkward, especially at a party, and being the center of such intense focus could be embarrassing.  The mother-to-be handled all this with such grace, and much of that comes from her mother, a single-mom for many years, with an incredible faith in God and reliance on the Holy Spirit for provision.  This mother had to be strong, and she had to be vulnerable, relying on God and allowing herself to ask for and receive help from those who held her and her children in their hearts.  She knows the power of blessing, and she called upon us to bestow that gift upon her daughter.

In that circle we offered our prayers for a safe labor and delivery.  But our offering and our tender words encompassed each woman in the room, no matter where she was on life’s journey, whether she was a mother or not.  We blessed the mother-to-be and we blessed one another with our honesty and our words of thanksgiving.    It was a moment of prayerful joy.  It was worship.  It was the best kind of party.

Squirrel Savior

Our cats were acting suspicious yesterday evening, sniffing around the trunk of a coast live oak in the backyard.  My husband heard what he thought was a blue jay.  I ran outside, shooed the cats away, circled the tree, and there on it’s back, paws frozen in air, looking dead was a small squirrel.  Thinking we would need to either bury it or put it in our trashcan, and remembering all the stern warnings I’d heard never to touch a wild animal, I sent my husband to the shed for a shovel.  He returned and as he lowered the shovel toward the ground the squirrel stirred and let out a pitiful squawk.  Kevin gently turned the squirrel upright, but it was too stunned to move.  I got the cat carrier from the garage and Kevin guided the little thing inside.

We tried to contact Native Animal Rescue, which was closed, so we did what we do best.  Internet research.  We switched out the towels in the carrier for t-shirts so the squirrel wouldn’t catch a toenail and risk further injury, and got close enough to see his face was bleeding and he was infested with fleas.  We put a towel over the crate, a heating pad underneath, shut the door to my office and let the squirrel rest in the warm room until my husband finished our taxes.  Before we went to bed we mixed up a rehydration solution and my husband administered it through a dropper while I held the squirrel in the bundled t-shirt.  The little thing didn’t move, but did drink some and his mouth was bloody. 

I fretted all evening about the squirrel.  I wanted to save him, but despite reading rescue instructions we didn’t know how to assess the squirrel’s injuries or conduct the skin pinch test to see if he was dehydrated.  We thought his mother was still in the oak tree and wondered if we could get all the cats indoors, put him under the tree and stand guard until she carried him to safety.  Instead, we left him inside, safe, but unsure if we were doing the right thing. 

The squirrel was still alive at six a.m. when my husband woke up and attempted to give it more fluids.  The squirrel was also quite vocal, that blue-jay squawk again, he wanted something—his mother, the outdoors, away from these invasive humans.  I began making phone calls at 8 a.m. when Native Animal Rescue reopened, and after an hour and a half, calls with three different women, and answering their questions to determine what was best for the little squirrel, found one willing to assess him and keep him until the baby squirrel specialist got home from work this afternoon.

When I delivered the squirrel to Vicki’s home, she reached in the cat carrier, scruffed him with one hand and scooped him into her palm in a fluid motion.  She looked at his wounds and said they weren’t from my cats (quite a relief) but associated with the fall.  This squirrel is about five weeks old.  His body is quite small, but baby squirrels are top heavy and often land on their heads.  Bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth is common.  She said he looked quite dehydrated—and most likely something had happened to his mother.  When their mothers disappear, the squirrels sometimes leave the nest looking for food and fall.  I spotted the nest this morning, a good twenty-feet up, and I saw another squirrel out on a branch and watched it return to the nest.  Most likely it’s a sibling.  I don’t know how many other babies are in the nest.  If their mother doesn’t return, I may find more on the ground (dead or alive) or they will die in the tree.

I think about Annie Dillard who wrote Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a book I read for my MFA program and one of our Art & Faith studies.  I think about Annie stalking muskrats and insects and watching decay and reporting on death, and I wonder what would’ve happened if her tomcat had brought in a half-dead mouse and left it in her bed one night.  Would she have sat there, notebook in hand, recording its blood loss, and labored breathing and timing how long it took to die?  Or, would she have stepped back from her observer status and done something?  Try to save it, or even try to kill it—quickly, “humanely”?

It’s not lost on me that my squirrel rescue project began on Palm Sunday.  I retired from pastoral ministry at the end of June and bowed to the recognition around Christmas that my spiritual journey has lead me out of my local church and familiar context.  In the past four months I’ve been waiting for what is supposed to come next.  It hasn’t arrived yet.  But the squirrel did and I recognize my desire to save, to do something.  I see how too often in the course of my personal life and ministry I have wanted to save those I care for from pain. 

I’ve wanted to do it, whatever it is, right, and right away.  I couldn’t bear to think of this squirrel suffering, and it seems proper and reasonable to seek the help of people with experience and training.  I don’t think they or I are in danger of fostering codependent squirrels, of doing for them what they and God need to do.  But when it comes to humans, the situations are much more complicated.  I think, that like this wounded squirrel, there are times when each of us needs intervention and saving.  And, I’m also becoming aware that sometimes that saving really does need to come from God alone, and not from humans acting on God’s behalf. 

And so I am changing my usual patterns.  I am praying for my long-time church and its members from a distance instead of wrapped in its midst.  Coming from a home that broke and broke again, I’ve been desperate for belonging and terrified of being alone most of my life, and would gladly bear anyone’s pain just to stay in relationship.  I’m learning to trust that healing is possible, and experiencing in my own life something I preached often––that God can work in and through you and me without any conditions, restrictions or requirements.  Giving my life to a church isn’t the same as giving myself to God, and Jesus will drive that message home each day on this journey through Holy Week.

I can’t save a squirrel or myself no matter how carefully I follow website instructions or church doctrine. I can stand on that dusty road waving palms expecting Jesus to do everything I want and end up disappointed.

I desire the squirrel’s healing and also recognize its future is out of my control.  I pray for myself, and this wounded world in need of healing salve, in need of saving that we can’t make happen, that is only given us through grace.  I walk through this week, already knowing the outcome, and waiting to live it out.