Category Archives: observation

Reminders

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I had my work space all set up in a cozy nook on the second floor. The window offered a lovely view of the street, which becomes a mountain view once the leaves fall off the trees across the street. That spot also gets the best light in the house, and is the one place that is perfect for growing plants. But that spot isn’t big enough to provide a work space and a growing space. So I packed up my work table and bookcases and moved them into a spare bedroom.

It was a journey of thirty-five feet, but it took four hours and a bit of rearranging to get the space in good order (I snapped this picture about halfway through the process). With such a short distance to travel, I was surprised at how dislocated everything got. It took me almost as long to relocate everything in the new work space as it did to set it up in the first space.

In the grand scheme of things, this little move up a hallway doesn’t amount to much. In the present, this little move doesn’t feel as little as I thought it would. This dislocation and relocation are small tremors that barely affect my life, not full-on quakes that throw everything into chaos, and I should not confuse the two. Perhaps one of the gifts of this mini-move is a chance to put such things in proper perspective.

The work space is all set now; the table is in front of the window, so I get a lovely view of the side yard. I have yet to set up the plant space. I’m sure that will involve some dislocation and relocation as well…

Upkeep

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With two cats, two humans, a couple of plants, and workers in to finish this and that project, the floors require a lot of cleaning. It takes at least an hour a week to run the vacuum over all the upstairs and downstairs floors; it’s up to almost three hours when I wet-mop afterward. Throw in bathroom cleaning, laundry, dishes, dusting, and neatening and it’s an eight hour commitment every week to keep things in decent shape. Those eight hours of work aren’t making any noticeable difference: their effectiveness is only noticed in their absence. When there are no clean towels or dishes the value of such upkeep becomes visible. That upkeep is a necessary part of a life well and fully lived.

The older I get, the more I think daily prayer is the spiritual equivalent of keeping the house clean and in order. It doesn’t seem to get me very far and rarely produces obvious results, but things go quickly downhill in its absence. I need it to live a meaningful, full life. Over time, daily prayer has changed my spirit’s home, deeply and incrementally. I doubt I’d ever be at home in the world and in my own skin without it.

How about you?

The Eighty/Twenty Rule

Odds & Ends

Light bulbs, curtain rings, shelf liner, a couple of cleaners, and some paper bags – a bunch of stuff that didn’t make it into the more organized boxes. It took me a good two hours to pull them out of the box and put them in their proper places. Once this box was empty, I moved onto another full of thrown together things. It took another couple of hours.

A friend of mine who was a professional mover said that eighty percent of the packing and unpacking takes about twenty percent of the time; it’s the last twenty percent, the catch-all boxes and thrown together piles, that takes eighty percent of the moving time. That small percent of odds and ends consumes so much time and effort. Is it worth all that effort for these few things? Hard to say. I don’t think my life would have suffered much if I’d just thrown these items away.

Sometimes it seems like the same eighty/twenty rule applies to people – the high maintenance few taking a lot more time and effort than the lower maintenance many. Unlike items in a box, it’s clear that they are worth every effort – the lost, the fragile, and the difficult are treasures that we cannot discount or discard without incalculable loss to our inner and outer lives.

He told them this parable. “Which of you, if you had a hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn’t leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that was lost, until he found it? Luke 15:3-4

Moving Home

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In the past twenty-two months, I’ve called four houses home: the place my husband and I raised our two sons in Massachusetts, a rectory built for the previous priest, a rental with a view and good neighbors, and the newly renovated original rectory. I still have boxes to unpack in this new space, and there is a list of things left undone that need attention. I’m still figuring out what life here will look like – and how these changes in location and configuration have reconfigured both my inner and outer lives…

If you’ve the inclination, feel free to unpack a few boxes with me – and a few of your own as well…

Philadelphia Row Houses by Colin Fredrickson

Means and Ends

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A Prayer For World Peace

It boils down to this: are other creatures merely means to whatever ends we seek, or are living creatures here for reasons beyond our own? If I hold with the latter, I’ll pay the extra couple of bucks for the humanely raised meat and eggs on my plate. I’ll use my money to buy make-up that didn’t harm animals, and I’ll be willing to pay higher taxes to have oversight of animal treatment in medical research.

Those are my ethical reasons. But it’s the wonder of all the cats and dogs I’ve known that is the real reason…

Taylor
Magic

Wounded

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We pray for the victims of violence and war; for those wounded in body and for those wounded in mind.

John called his wife and the pastor of his church a couple of minutes beforehand because he didn’t want one of his twin sons to find his body in the garage – he didn’t leave enough time for Linda and David to prevent it.

John couldn’t find a way to talk about the war that left his heart, mind, and soul in a dark room with no way out but a bullet. 

John left behind a family and circle of friends that loved him, and a bunch of us in the congregational church choir who loved his wife and eight year old sons. 

At twenty-one years old, I couldn’t imagine how anyone could be so isolated and so grief-stricken that death seemed the best gift he could give himself and those he loved. 

War and violence claimed him, caged him, and spilled into the lives of those he wouldn’t for the world want to hurt. 

But hurt us he did.

I hope we learned enough from John’s death to find other ways out of dark places.

Jane Goodall's Prayer

No Choice

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Every child deserves to be welcomed into the world with joy. Each baby should have the basics – safety, food, clothing, shelter, engagement – provided without fuss or resentment. No child should have to offer his or her body for the use and gain of others, and no one should have to choose between death and committing murder.

Violence or violation? No child should have to choose. No adult should, either.

Vocation

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We pray to the Great Spiritual Power in which we live and move and have our being. We pray that we may at all times keep our minds open to new ideas and shun dogma; that we may become ever more filled with generosity of spirit and true compassion and love for all life; that we may strive to heal the hurts that we have inflicted on nature and control our greed for material things, knowing that our actions are harming our natural world and the future of our children; that we may value each and every human being for who he is, for who she is, reaching to the spirit that is within, knowing the power of each individual to change the world.

I’ve been lucky enough to have mentors who provided guidance without insisting that I take up a particular profession or remain in their particular discipline. I had a grandfather who let me learn boy’s skills, and a father who didn’t value me less because I was a daughter. Math, languages, science, home economics – it was all encouraged if I wanted to pursue it.

Many of my friends weren’t so lucky; if they questioned the direction chosen for them, there were serious consequences. Perhaps they weren’t wished a lesser life, but they were encouraged to be who they were not rather than who they were.

In the here and now, here’s hoping we mean what we pray…

Valued

From Jane Goodall’s A Prayer For World Peace, Hong Kong: Minedition, 2015

Love, Honor, Cherish

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For better, for worse

In sickness and in health

Forsaking all others

I think the vows are a pair of tickets to a music festival: the main attractions you know going in, but the rest of the acts are a mystery. Some of it will be amazing, some surprising, some disappointing. But, at the end of the day, it’s the person you came with that makes all the difference.

A World of Common Things

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Pets. Untensils. Fruit. Clothes. These are the things that we touch and see and hear and taste and smell every day. Pablo Neruda wrote a whole book of odes to them: spoons, an onion, the cat, and a pair of socks. He celebrates how much they have added to his life, and how he loves them for that.

I love this collection of poems because it is clear how much he sees common things as life-enhancing objects of wonder. Not because they can make him happy in more than a fleeting sense, but because they offer a chance to express gratitude for life in a tangible way – deep, inner joy brought into words through a cat, an orange, French fries. Here’s the end of the first poem – Ode to Things:

O irrevocable

river

of things:

no one can say

that I loved

only

fish,

or the plants of the jungle and the field,

that I loved

only

those things that leap and climb, desire, and survive.

It’s not true:

many things conspired

to tell me the whole story.

Not only did they touch me,

or my hand touched them:

they were

so close

that they were a part

of my being,

they were so alive with me

that they lived half my life

and will die half my death.

Pablo Neruda (Ken Krabbenhoft, translation), Odes to Common Things, Ode to Things; New York: Bullfinch Press, 2010, p.17