One Match, One Good Friend

This weekend, I tossed at least 11 documented toxins into the atmosphere.  Two, toluene and benzene, are known carcinogens.  I sent a few pounds of petroleum product into flames, and  not for heat, light, transportation, or toward any other material end.  My reasons were purely selfish and wholly healing.  Well, at least it was another step on the healing path.

Nearly sixteen years ago, I lit that thick pillar of white paraffin in a church from the flame of a candle my mother lit just minutes earlier.  My soon-to-be husband lit the same pillar with me, from the light his mother set into being.  We made our vows to each other, kissed, signed on the designated lines, and started the journey of our marriage.  We intended to light the wedding candle on our anniversary each year, but I don’t recall if that ever happened.  By default of being the only white candle in the house, it served as our Christmas candle for many years, our light in the middle of our advent wreath, lit at Christmas dinner to celebrate the birth of Jesus.  We must have burned it a few other times, given the inch or so depth to the wick from the candle rim, but it remained largely intact. 

Since our divorce last winter, I felt somewhat taunted by that candle, that symbol of unity and covenant.  I’d long removed my ring, tucking it away somewhere hidden from my daily routine.  Wedding pictures came down when an addition went up some five years ago, and they never found their way back to the walls.   And while the house is filled with reminders from the intervening years, it was that candle that bothered me.  It just stood for too much to throw away or send to the local Salvation Army Thrift Shop.  I could have turned it over to my ex-husband, but I was fairly certain it would find its way to a landfill, and that’s as close to immortality that an object can get.

So I took a thoroughly modern and rather practical path to a solution.  I posted my quandary on Facebook.  The replies flew in.  I was advised to continue to use it as any other candle, melt it down and make new candles, chop it into a million pieces, turn it into a fire starter, keep it for my kids, and (one of my favorites) burn it upside down.  I offered it to a friend who replied that she’d never had a wedding candle, but her husband vetoed that idea, either not caring for the karma from a possibly defective religious symbol of unity and love or just understanding my need to rid myself of the thing in a more ritualistic manner.  One friend’s suggestion won out:  one bottle of wine, one match, and one close friend. 

So this weekend, on my first trip away from my children in 10 years, I did just that.  In the hills of southeastern Michigan,  after a fine dinner including a glass of wine, a dear friend silently took one match and lit an old copy of the New York Times and a bit of kindling in our fire ring.  Propping the eight inch pillar on a log that topped the kindling, he set the paper to flame.  As paper then kindling caught, flames reached the candle, which soon slipped from its perch, tumbling into the fire.  As it blackened, deformed, and shrunk, I squatted just outside the fire ring and wept. 

Once most of the burning was done, I moved up to a bench, dried my eyes, and thanked my match-bearing companion.  To be with someone cleansing their heart of pain is an act of bravery and compassion.  The remaining evening and following day held more silence than usually occurs in my presence.  A melancholy fell upon me, and while the candle burning wasn’t in the front of my thoughts, the dissolution of my marriage was.  I wonder if some point, I’ll be able to look back without a lump in my throat, not at missing my ex-husband and the rather awful marriage we had our last few years and not yearning for the better although quite human marriage we had for years earlier.  Those feelings are long past.   Now, my tears arise at concern over the wounds to my children’s hearts,  my sorrow about the frailty of human relationships, and my resistance to change.   And the tears pass.   I know  my children are better off living without boiling anger in their midst.  I’ve learned much about honoring that frailty, and I better understand that strength in a relationship takes two committed to bending, listening, and opening to change.  And I’ve learned to welcome change, although it’s  sometimes painful, since it opens doors to love, new life, and growth.

One match, one good friend, one candle burned, energy and matter returned to the universe.  And life moves on.

A special thanks to D., my one good match-lighting friend.

Mental Clutter

I’m fighting clutter.  Some is the usual clutter associated with intensely living in our home.  With three of us here all day almost every day, there is quite a bit of living going on here, and two of the members of the household contribute more to the clutter than the other.  I name no names, but I’m (generally) innocent.   We’re all here, 24/5.5, and we’re all often busy with projects.  Projects require specific materials and a certain amount of room, and, at least for my children, a large amount of droppings and trails.

Basically I’m fine with project-related clutter.  It reflects their current passions, whether it be polymer clay at the kitchen table and a living room floor full of my younger’s Pearl Harbor re-enactment, Sculpy-style, or my older’s tools spread from the back door down to his workshop while his latest woodworking project takes shape.  While the clutter builds, I have happy, occupied children who are learning new skills and not in front of a computer or TV screen.  Besides, most homeschooling families live with a fair amount of clutter given the relative amount of time at home pursuing knowledge and other fun stuff.

I often clear the clutter (straighten the stacks was my father’s term when I was growing up) in order to think:  too much stuff around is just too much visual stimulation for me.  Just clearing a single room can increase my concentration ability and soothe my soul.  But it’s not the material clutter I’m feeling most acutely lately.  It’s the mental clutter.

There is the usual mental clutter:  appointments to keep, bills to pay, household to-do lists growing daily, and all that.  I’ve joked that we homeschool because I’d never be able to keep track with all the due-dates and paperwork associated with school, but I’ve heard plenty of school-sending parents breathe a sigh of relief that they’re not planning lessons and teaching their progeny.  Either way, it’s more on the mind.  Such is the nature of life with kids.

Those details, however, rarely wake me at 3 in the morning.  That distinction falls to my more personal mental noise.  I’m an Enneagram Type I, for those incorporating that system of personality typing into their lives.  Basically, I’m a perfectionist who spends way too much mental energy on listening to/arguing with my inner mental critic who judges my every thought and deed (and often finds me lacking).  When I’m well grounded (and that’s a growing percent of the time), I’m not only happier and more peaceful but less mentally cluttered.  As I quiet the critic, I wake less at night, bark at my children less, dissect the latest moral wrong of my ex (Hey, that mental critic can do a job on perceived wrongs from others, too.), and live more deeply.  Good stuff.

But for the past week or two, the clutter is loud and terribly distracting.  I’m grouchy and preoccupied with thoughts and feelings of enormous range.  Life is shifting, as life is wont to do, and I’m reverting to type.   As they say, knowing the problem is half the battle, although at this point, I often feel it’s the easy half.  Doing the inner work, taking the time to simply be and find my grounded self challenges me.  Not doing the work is great fodder for that voice that tells me all I’m doing wrong, however, so there’s much to be gained from taking some time to simply be. 

So I’m off to do just that.  As I sit, my mind will fly around, and I’ll quietly bring it back, without judgement and with patience.  Practice, they say, not to reach a goal but practice just to practice.  And if the clutter clears in the process, all the better. 

(For an excellent introduction to the Enneagram, Helen Palmer’s books are a great place to start.  For locals who want to discover more with real live people or anyone who wants a thorough overview of the purpose of understanding type, check out Inner Enneagram.)

Sharing Friendship, Sharing Religion

The piece  “The ‘it’ Church”  in the Spring 2010 UU World  led me to think about a dear friend and neighbor.  The article, by Peter Morales,  UUA president, focuses on the role of having ‘religion’ in a church versus the not having it, his description of friendship brought my thoughts away from my church and closer to home to my neighbor and friend.

I’m blessed with a number of friends I can call on when in tears of sorrow or joy.  Without these people, I’m not sure how I’d have weathered a failing marriage and subsequent divorce.  Most of those friends developed from my La Leche League leadership, church, and homeschooling.  With most, I share similar political and religious values.  Our lawn signs (Democrats)and radio station (NPR) are the same.  We can discuss politics, social issues, and spiritual issues without contention (not too much, anyway).

And then there’s my dear neighbor friend.  We share quite a bit in common.  We  homeschool our kids, and our children are friends.  We borrow needed ingredients from each other, care for each other’s pets and flowers when the other leaves town, and watch each other’s children on occasion. We count on each other as an ear for concerns and joys.  I can cry in her presence without shame and with assurance of support.  However, our politics and religious affiliation differ greatly.  Once, when borrowing a conservative Catholic publication from her to read an article on breastfeeding, her husband declared the magazine might burst into flames upon reaching my property.  I laughed, and the article survived the trip to our liberal, Unitarian Universalist home without so much as a scorch mark.  He and I exchange similar friendly barbs, often about media choices and the like.

But his wife and I don’t go there.  Not, I believe, because of fear of conflict.   As many of my friends can attest, I’m often a fan of informal debate.  While I can’t speak for her, I know I avoid those topics because they don’t enhance our friendship or our understanding of each other.  Beyond the names of our respective religious affiliations, beneath the different politics, we share the same religion, at least according the Peter Morales’ description.

Religion, our religion, is what we truly care about, what we want to preserve, embrace, and create.    . . . when we ask one another what we truly love, what we truly value, what we care about more than anything else in life, something amazing happens. We don’t argue. We listen. We connect. We discover that we love and want the same things. We care about one another.  We want honesty, depth, and intimacy in our relationships.  We want enduring friendships. We also discover that we realize that we are all in this life together. We want to help heal the world. We want compassion, understanding, and justice to guide our actions and our governments. We want to work together, hand in hand, to build a world beyond exploitation and violence.   (Morales )

We share love for our children and families along with a desire to preserve our children’s hearts and spirits, allowing them time to be young.  We believe in holding our small ones close, meeting their needs day and night, respecting the voice they bring to our families.  We share values of kindness, love, and peace in our lives.   While we call it by different names and nurture it in different ways, we share a belief in a force greater than ourselves, something that calls us to go beyond our immediate desires and concerns.    Morales says, ‘”Religion is much more about what we love than about what we think”  (Morales).   I like that definition and its emphasis on the heart rather than the head (and I’m a thinker to the end), and as a seeker of connection, I appreciate it’s focus on our shared loves. 

I shared the Morales piece with my friend, along with a rather awkward bit about what I felt we shared and why I appreciated her in my life.  In part, this post is a somewhat more elegant statement to her.  It’s also an invitation to broaden your definition of religion and connect to one another.  As always, feedback and thoughts are appreciated.

Source:

Morales, Peter. “The ‘it’ Church.”  UU World. N. p., 15  Feb. 2010.  Web.

Perspective, Connection, and Peace

A friend and fellow blogger’s recent post on  perspective and context spurred this post.  In summary (although I urge you to read for yourself — he’s a writer with appreciable talent and a sense of humor that brings me to tears), one’s perspective on an event is critical to one’s interpretation of the event.

Obvious, really.  We’re all limited by our perspective, our point of view.  On a practical front, this means I can only see in one direction at a time.  My children run from the other room, both screaming about the other.  Someone hit (or kicked, pushed, licked, touched, or just looked at) someone else.  Their stories differ, my peaceful nap/writing time/shower ends, and I simply didn’t see what happened.  I can’t be the judge and jury from whom they each yearn to curry favor.  I simply didn’t have the physical perspective on the event to judge the facts of the event.

But neither do they.  They’re limited by line of sight as well.  And even if we could employ instant reply at home (and thank goodness we can’t), perspective would still cloud the larger issue:  intent.  Even when I’ve seen the wrong or perceived wrong, I’m still largely blinded to intent.  I’m grateful to say I can’t read minds, theirs or anyone else’s. I can, since they’re my children and we’re together 24/5.5, I am often able to hypothesize intent.  My older’s rarely guilty of inflicting pain maliciously, but he is accident-prone, bumping into his volatile brother, hitting a bit too hard with the duct tape sword, and generally taking up more space than one would think his 65 pounds could manage.  My younger, on the other hand, is likely to strike his gentle sibling in anger even if he just suspects his older brother is considering an undesirable act.  Knowing these tendencies doesn’t allow me to know what happened, but it can help me facilitate a discussion about intent.

Intent.  Reading people challenges all of us more than we often realize, and we’re quite limited in our capacity to guess the intent of another.  Some, like my younger, assume intent to harm (or scare, humiliate, fold, mutilate, or spindle) in any touch or look, or at least any from his sibling.  As I’ve learned more about the depth of his difficulty reading nonverbal communication and appreciated the extent to which he fails to see the point of view of others, I’m learning to interpret the world for him.  His awareness of the same increases as he grows, offering more chances for a bit of metacognition about his relationship struggles.  Although I doubt intuiting intent will ever be natural for him, I’m hopeful he can learn the skills needed to navigate the social world.

Certainly perspective spreads beyond what we see or otherwise sensed.  The heart of perspective is our ego, all that is the I within.  Centered in one’s ego (and we are almost always centered there), it’s easy to create the misconception that one understands all the intent around us.  While few adults would state the world revolves around them, our perceptions of others are borne from our own understanding of ourselves.  As a Caucasian, 40-year-old, divorced, middle-class, homeschooling, Unitarian Universalist, suburban-dwelling, liberal, scientific-minded, living in the Midwest United States (I could go on), I see the world a certain way.  As a fairly self-aware individual, I can, to some extent, see where the holes in my understanding of others could occur.  As committed to compassion and peace, I strive to appreciate intent (or at least understand the context) of the actions and words of those outside of my immediate understanding.

I rely heavily on connection to understand the acts and words of others.  When meeting another woman who also had children, my mother relied on the connection of motherhood.  I’ve found this bond quite helpful when trying to think and act compassionately about others, but the most profound sense of this bond came during nights in 2001, watching footage of the bombings of Afghanistan.  While nursing my younger, I felt intimately connected with mothers half a world away geographically and worlds away socially and economically.  We’d given birth, worried about our children, rooted for them in their struggles, and anguished in the face of their pain.  We’d shared our bodies for nine months and often our milk for months and years beyond that time.  We’d loved deeply.

So while I know some of those children grow to be violent and dangerous, many also grow to be scientists, plumbers, pacifists, clergy, doctors, teachers, moms, and dads.  All are people, another connection point.  Like myself, those a world away (or simply a neighborhood or street away) have experienced pleasure and pain, they yearn to have enough to eat, clean water to drink, a safe place to live.  Given those assurances, they long for understanding from others.  They’re human, just like I am, and therefore they deserve my compassion and my attempt to see their perspective.

Perspective and context.  We share some perspective with all of humanity, even if only that of the foibles of the human ego.  Appreciating context fosters compassionate consideration for others despite our differences in perspective.  Seeing the evil acts of one who comes from a society, community, or family that is deeply impoverished, without hope, and without personal power gives context to the wrongs.  Not that we should disregard all wrongs as products  of poor upbringing or impoverished circumstances, but we should see the role one’s life circumstances plays on outcome.  The changes we make in the world should address these circumstances rather than simply punish the outcome.

But back to daily life.  The guy who crept up on my bumper this morning?  Perhaps he’s stressed about a job interview, racing to find a sick child, or simply a bit too egoic to be on the road now.  The mom on the playground who chews out my child for a wrong he didn’t commit?  Perhaps she saw the situation from a different physical and mental perspective.  Was she bullied as a child, is she beaten at home, or is she just needing less coffee in the morning?  Who knows.  As long as I remember my perspective isn’t hers, and that my compassion can extend to her even when she grumps at my child, I’m creating a more peaceful world and teaching my kids how to do the same.

Alone

I’m alone more now than I’ve been in years.  Two evenings a week, my boys head off to their father’s home, and I receive silence not known to me prior to my separation and solidified by my divorce.  Generally, I like it.  Some of the evenings fill with a meeting a church, dinner with a friend, book club, or the like, but I’m somewhat stingy with these peaceful spots in my otherwise child-filled life.

Initially, the time overwhelmed me with its openness.  I carefully planned how to spend the time and often critiqued my use of these hours during and after the fact.  I had certain expectations, varying from week to week.  Read particular books, clean or sort part of the house, organize paperwork, meditate, complete CME credits, run errands, and so on.  I was constantly disappointed in my time use, chiding myself for wasting this precious time alone.

For more than half of the last two years, I’ve felt quite ambiguous about that time, hoping (wishing, praying) for a time when that quiet didn’t exist.  Not because I didn’t appreciate the solitude, but because I wanted my marriage to succeed. Married with children, the time alone may be rare, but at least I’d, well, be married.  And, oh, I wanted to remain married.

But I’m not.  And that’s for the best, given the circumstances.  I’ve grown to accept my single status and, in the process, luxuriate in every minute of those evenings (and part of a day) that I set the agenda for me.  As much as I love homeschooling and parenting my boys, 24/7 with no other parent in the house wears me out.  Those breaks give me a chance to regroup and center.

And the longer I’ve had these times to myself, the more I’ve loosened the reigns on my time.  I still walk into each free time with expectations of myself, but the critical voice judging my use of time is quieting, albeit slowly.  Blogging’s helped. I still set goals for these times, and I still fall short of those.  But blogging is always one of those goals of my alone time, and it’s one of my favorite parts of those quiet hours.  Sometimes writing helps me sort my thoughts or see progress I’ve made as an individual and as a mom.  It’s a creative process demanding truth and thought.  It’s pleasure, and it works better without an interruption every two minutes.

So I’m alone, writing away, and content.  The file cabinet remains a disaster, dust piles up on the lamp to my right, and I’m fairly certain something in the dryer needs folding.   Ah well.  I’m alone, writing, and loving it.

Zen and the Litter Box

This morning, I met peace over the litter box.  My younger son, a floor above me, was 15 minutes into a rant about damage to a Nerf sword, and I was working hard to keep my cool.  Not everyone may choose scooping cat poop during these events, but I’ve yet to find ways to consistently keep my cool during these loud, protracted tantrums, so I gave it a go.  It worked.

My younger’s tantrum verge on the legendary.  They’re long, loud, aggressive, and sudden.  Eight and a half years of these beauties should have inoculated me against their effects on my heart, but time hasn’t helped.  (Okay, they were nonverbal for the first year, but at what age does protracted unexplained screaming morph from colic to tantrum?)  He’s inconsolable, angry, and out of control during the events, and they generally just have to run out of fuel on their own.  On my best days, I can keep my cool for the duration, keeping my voice even and expressing what I imagine his feelings are (he doesn’t use those confusing feeling words often) while he interrogates me relentlessly, looking for the answer he wants and erupting more when I don’t give in.

Until today, ear plugs have been my best defense. I can hold my temper better when my ear drums aren’t threatening to explode.  While I wish a hug and open ear helped him, these tactics only fan the flames.  Answering a few questions to assure his understanding then refusing to continue the conversation seems the best tact.  So I often move around the house, cooking, cleaning, and tending to simple tasks while I wait out the storm.

Today, I headed toward the litter box.  With six kittens in my charge, there is no shortage of poop to scoop. Once by the basement box, I search through the sand with my blue scoop.  His voice fades a bit with the distance, and I sift through the box for telltale clumps.  It’s oddly soothing, and soon my mind is only on those stinky lumps of clay.  Too soon, the job ends.  After reluctantly setting down my scoop and tossing my findings, I return to the tantrum still in play.  It’s easier now to weather the storm.  His raging continues for another 20 minutes or so,  but my storm is past, thanks to the litterbox.

Dragons are About

I have dragons on the brain. Specifically, I’m imagining a scarlet-backed, small-winged beast about 4 feet tall. He’s a bit grumpy at times, but we’ve been living together for awhile now, and I’m gradually learning the art of sharing my life with him.

A recent sermon by Alex Riegel, Feeding the Purple Dragon, crystallized my process of coming to terms with my separation from my husband of 15 years and upcoming divorce. To briefly summarize the 30 minute sermon, dragons are those people, events, and situations we face that, if ignored, grow larger and more troublesome. We often do just that, pushing the issue away from our minds in an attempt to avoid pain and conflict within our selves or with the dragon itself. Or we try to slay the dragon, but this is a rather messy and ineffective way to go through life. The radical alternative? Learn to accept the presence of the dragon: learn its habits, its feeding needs, and live accordingly.

The divorce process itself is one of my dragons. He’s not my ex-husband-to-be. He’s divorce and all it’s layered meanings to me. My first head-on encounter occurred when the papers arrived. Sword in hand, I railed against him, but he joined my household anyway. Dealing with the legal end of this process, face-to-face or from my home, can leave me in a cold sweat. Impatient claw clicks grow louder as the Judgement of Divorce statement sent from my lawyer sits in my inbox, needing comments and revisions from me. Once I look at him head on, read the papers, fill in the necessary blanks, and send them off, he retreats, returning to his spot in the house.

At points, my sadness about this divorce overwhelms me, tears flow and sobbing leaves me exhausted. Following my honest acceptance of my feelings about this life change, he actually shrinks a bit. When fear of the future floods my system, he feeds heartily, growing more threatening as my anxiety deepens. Only when I can face his gaping maw, brimming forth with smoke and oppressive heat, does he back away, having seen the strength I possess. He requires honest acknowledgement and forward motion to maintain an even temperment.

My dragon’s not leaving. Divorce is forever with me and my children. Living with it peacefully, repecting it’s reality and responding honestly without excessive anxiety is the choice I’ve made. I’ve layed down my sword and face my newest resident accordingly.

Holy Days

It’s the International Day of Peace, one of the only, well, created days that I can get into. Except I forgot it this year. I saw it on the calendar when scheduling an appointment for my younger a few weeks back. It was announced from the pulpit in church yesterday, along with Eid-al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, and Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, both actual Holy Days. The real schmeal.

Since becoming a Universalist Unitarian, I feel a bit like a woman without a Holy Day. Our church mentions all the big ones and many I’d never heard of before attending UUCF. Since our congregation’s focus has been on the six sources from which we draw our living tradition, I’ve added Holi, Budda’s birthday, and Darwin’s birthday to my awareness. Since so many of these are announced at services, along with the more familiar Easter and Christmas, perhaps I’m a woman of many Holy Days.

But I’m not. Those Holy days are not mine. Not as truly holy. My boys and I celebrate Christmas with songs, a tree, and gifts. We talk about the birth of Jesus and the message of love Jesus brought to the world. At Easter, we discuss rebirth and celebrate life, but I know for both we’re somewhat co-opting the days, celebrating them in a way that works for us because they’re big deals in this country. We celebrate Hanukkah with my mother, a Reformed Jew, the lights of Hanukkah next to the advent candles we still use to mark the coming of Christmas. The boys know the stories of these Holy Days and many others, and while we fall prey to American Holiday Greed disease, I try to balance it with plenty of homemade giving and time with loved ones.

Still, I have my doubts. These aren’t my Holy Days, and I’m loathe to misappropriate customs and practices from religions not my own, but I feel a bit short of Holy Days as a Unitarian Universalist. Perhaps this explains my draw to the International Day of Peace. I’m not taking it from anybody, it’s celebrated around the world, and it’s in concert with my UU belief system. Not a bad Holy Day, in my opinion. I wish I hadn’t forgotten this year.

Peace be.

War and Peace

My younger son is a war fanatic. For the past two and a half years, not so coincidentally starting when we began our study of history, he’s obsessed over the wars throughout recorded time. His first true passion was the ancient Romans, specifically in the Punic Wars. I knew nothing of the Punic Wars before our year of ancient history, on of many blanks in my shoddy history education, while he was well versed in the years of that conflict at age 5. I can see the appeal of Hannibal crossing the Alps with a herd of elephants, but this wasn’t but a small part of the interest to him.

So why does he love to read about, talk about, act out, and discuss war? I believe the answer is three-fold: weapons,conflict, and power. Those parts of history enrapt him, and war embodies all three.

Weapons. While I’m a pacifist by nurture and nature, I can see why a small child would delight in weapons. The catapult and trebuchet are pretty fascinating machines, but even the spear in all its simplicity captivates my son. Longbows, crossbows, swords, maces, cannons, guns, and bombs hold endless delight to him, in structure and use. All allow one to reach beyond the self with greater force than can be created by a small human body alone.

Conflict. My younger lives in conflict with his world. He’s still quite convinced that he is indeed the center of the universe (aren’t well all, really?) and dares anyone to oppose. He creates conflict with his brother when bored, hungry, or fatigued; holds firmly to his view of the world in spite of evidence that contradicts his view; and can’t stand his own human imperfections, preferring to blame personal shortfalls on the wrongs of others. He’s been at conflict with the world and himself since soon after birth.

Power. Nothing like being the youngest in the family with a streak of perfection to create a quest for power. Feeling powerless clashes with each person’s ego, and while some of us either gain perspective then peace regarding our place in the universe or learn to struggle less overtly, meeting this powerless feeling head-on suits my younger’s mindset right now. Warring with the world and his own fallible human nature, he searches out weapons with which to settle the conflicts resulting from his feelings of powerlessness.

Weapons, conflict, and power. Whether our weapons be words or wealth, our conflict internal or external, or our power quest overt or subtle, we all share the elements of war. As I watch my younger reach for his duct tape sword or home-made armor, I know I’m seeing him play with struggles we all face and know he’s relating to history and the world as works best for him now. I also have faith he’ll move beyond this obsession and can see progress in this area as he notices patterns through our studies that brought nations to war and the patterns of his own behavior that bring him into conflict with others. I have faith that we all can grow right along with him.