Enough already!

It seems like the Christmas season this year has lasted for weeks and weeks already. Oh, that's right! Decorations started going up in the stores before Halloween. So yes, we're two months into Merry Jolly Happy. Gotta tell you, folks, my Merry Jolly Happy has just about given out. I'm not totally humbug yet, though. Got the shopping done, got the gift bags to schlep the gifts into, expect to enjoy church Christmas Eve and family on Christmas Day. Already had the Christmas luncheons and parties, check. Now I have two days to make my house look like someone other than two pack rats and two very furry dogs live here. Along about this time is when I feel the overwhelming need for a nap. For about four days. To any family or friends who might happen to read this, I love you dearly. Just don't expect Ms. Merry Jolly Happy in a perfect home. "I yam what I yam" and this crazy lady is going down for a nap. Zzzzzz.......

"Waiting for the Child" Time

I wrote this for a collection of Advent meditations for our church:

I have come to realize that there are many kinds of time, and they move at different speeds. There is “childhood time,” in which it seems one will never grow up to do the adventurous and entertaining things a child dreams of, but is told, “You’re too young to do that yet.” There is “school time,” when a lecture can seem to take three hours instead of one, and one’s life is measured by bells and homework. There is “waiting at the doctor’s office time” when one becomes seriously convinced that either you will expire right there in the waiting room, or two hours of sitting effects a miraculous cure and you decide you didn’t need to be there after all. There is “chronic illness” time, in which you must watch a loved one slowly deteriorate over a span of years, or watch the changes come over yourself. There is “too little time” when a list of errands must be accomplished in a too crowded schedule. There is “quiet time” when the noise and bustle of daily life can be shut up and away, and your soul can take a breath in peace. There is “hospital time” when you have no control over what happens to you next or when. There is also “hospital time” when you sit with a loved one and lose track of the hours and days of the outside world. There is “Boy Scout time” when delivering a son to the beginning point of a trip, you sit in the car and wait until everyone arrives, mills about, finally packs, and finally departs. My father inculcated in us “airport time” in which you deliver the traveler to the airport, but you cannot leave until you see the plane actually leave. There is “football practice time”, or “music lesson time”, or “wrestling match tournament time” when you learn to take books or small craft projects in the car to while away the time until someone else is through with your child. There is especially “waiting in line time.” I have made peace with that one by realizing that whichever line I stand in will immediately slow down or develop problems which will only follow me if I move to another line. There is “worried mother” time when you doze all night over a sick child, starting up to see if a fever has gone down, or if it’s time for more medicine. Everyone can provide a list of “times” when the hours of your life are not under your own control. Yours probably differ in some degree from mine. On any given day, trying to live with different kinds of time feels like trying to shift gears with no clutch.
Any woman who has borne a child, however, knows that “waiting for the birth” time. It puts you slightly out of sync with the rest of the world, for so much of your focus is turned inward. Can I carry this child to term? What will this child be like? Will he or she be healthy? Will I be able to give this child what he or she needs? And for first time mothers, “How will I get through this process of giving birth? It will inevitably happen, it can’t be put off!”
Mary had the visitation of Gabriel to tell her what was going to happen. What was her “waiting for the child” time like? Was she scared, elated, worried, awed? Undoubtedly. She was human. A human first time mother, knowing that the child within her was of God. Did Gabriel’s words give her strength? Did the child within her give her strength? Or was she living in “God’s time,” waiting for events to unfold as God wished?
And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord;
be it done to me according to thy word.
And the angel departed from her.
Luke 1:38

Teacher Dreams (ret.)

I gave up teaching eight years ago, but it hasn't given me up yet. I had another one of those dreams last night that teachers the world over would instantly recognize. These always wake me up feeling that I've narrowly escaped something dreadful. My classroom this time (which for some reason I felt was in California?!) was an old fashioned one, with wooden floors and and many tall windows, wood tables and chairs. It was about as wide as an old classroom, but probably the length of my house. I think there was a shoe store for the kids in the far end. There were wooden cabinets all up one side, but they were all full of stuff. It was a high school, attached to an elementary and middle school, and my room, which I reached late, after asking for directions many times, was on third floor west. Once you closed the door, you couldn't hear anything from the outside. Upon arriving, I instantly had to start my class (about thirty) on the first part of a standardized test, with rigid no talking, read the directions exactly as given, give only this amount of time rules. Which I did. Then there was an announcement to hold off on giving the next part of the test, no explanation given, keep your kids quiet, leave the answer sheets on their desks, etc. Which made absolutely no sense. We stayed in that room for hours, with no explanation from on high, and just keeping my kids in their seats was like nailing jello to a tree. The kids weren't malicious, they just looked puzzled when I told them to go back to a seat, stay out of the hall, stop talking, etc. They would obligingly head towards doing that, then when I wasn't looking, go back and do whatever they wanted. My frustration level kept rising exponentially. Then I noticed there were dark clouds outside, and I stepped into the hall and heard the storm drill bell. I thought, "we can't leave standardized testing!" but obediently tried to herd my kids out to sit in the hall. I felt like a hyperactive border collie trying to make oblivious sheep move. When we finally got back from that, of course there was then a fire drill. Since I was new at the job, I didn't know where I was supposed to take them, other than outside, so I started barking again, figuring downstairs and out would be a good direction. Apparently I didn't pick the right place, because we walked out through lines of elementary school children (did I mention I had high school kids?) on one side and the athletic classes on the other. We passed a glassed in pool area, and it was raining outside. Somehow we magically were back in the classroom, and it was almost time for the last bell to ring. As in real life, my kids all wanted to be out in the hall, ready to run as soon as the bell rang, so I was back in border collie mode, and some of them kept escaping. I finally quit going after strays, and held on to the ones I still had in the room. The last bell finally rang, and I went around trying to rescue the test forms to turn in and stormed up to the office to find out why we had been put through such a useless and tortuous day. The first administrator I came to looked shame-faced but only shrugged his shoulders and I never did find out why the day was wasted, what school I was in, or who had talked me into stepping into a school again at all.
I do get to see some very unusual classrooms, although I feel like my throat should be sore from all the screaming. Someday I'll tell you about the classroom that has huge aquariums with very complicated ecosystems and bizarre fish.
If you know what these dreams mean, or why I keep having them, don't tell me. I probably don't want to know.

Echoes in the night......

Scouting activities have been a large part of my family's life, as our sons grew up and their father took on various roles within the scouting organization. I have sewn on countless patches and merit badges, dropped boys off at camp and waited for them to come home from trips, worried about them in cold or rainy weather and felt a deep and enduring pride in their achievements. This weekend the scouts are having their camporee amongst the Indian mounds in Moundville. My husband went there straight from work, and my younger son drove home from college to attend. For convoluted vehicular logistical reasons, I drove him down to Moundville to drop him off. If you have visited the park in daytime, with few people there, you may have felt what I feel - the presence of a vanished people whose reverence for the place is almost palpable. It's hard to get that feeling when the park is crowded and noisy and bright. Tonight, it was already dark by the time we got there. We were driving very slowly around the mounds, watching for stray young boys in the road, and looking for familiar campsites. We finally found the one my son was looking for, and I waited in the car for him to find his friends and come back for his gear. I sat in the dark, and saw the glow of campsites set up, listened to boys running and playing and calling to each other, watched groups of boys and their leaders walking by in groups and singly, heading for the big campfire around the next bend. It aroused a curious blend of feelings - close your eyes and imagine these people are the original inhabitants, readying for a celebration, letting the young ones burn off some energy in their running and chasing games. The night air is crisp and cool, the moon is bright, the laughter of Indian children was surely the same as ours - a magical night when time loops upon itself to catch all the echoes of youth, to save and savor and add to the riches of memory.

Turn the question around -

I came across the material below in an article posted on The Geranium Farm website. It has really intrigued me, and I need to think about it some more, so I'm storing the stuff I really want to think about here so I can find it easily. What really catches me is "We are not human beings whose goal is a spiritual experience, some euphoric panacea. Rather are we spiritual beings whose vocation is a human experience,that is, to awaken our spirits and become ourselves, and to assume the stewardship for which we are created." In an earlier post (The Island Keeps Washing Away) I said that I desperately want to believe in a spiritual life after death, in which we find out why we had to go through the experience of a human life - what are we supposed to learn? I have to think about this some more - I think a part of the answer is in here.


"

This piece is by the Rev. Lane Denson, featured in the "A Few Good Writers" section of http://www.geraniumfarm.org/. Lane is so gifted that these bons mots come regularly - and occasionally I fall behind in posting them. This one is simply entitled Addiction - a single word that encompasses a life turn around, a new outlook, a new way of behaving, a necessary way to learn responsibility. Thank you Lane, for your work and genius on behalf of those dealing with addiction and those who have not yet admitted that their life has become unmanageable!

We are not human beings whose goal is a spiritual experience, some euphoric panacea. Rather are we spiritual beings whose vocation is a human experience, that is, to awaken our spirits and become ourselves, and to assume the stewardship for which we are created.

May's definition of addiction as any compulsive, habitual behavior that limits the freedom of human spirit or desire strikes at the heart of what it means to be human, which is to be free to choose: to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with all of creation and with the awesome mystery of why we are here in this life at all. The practice of addiction compromises that freedom. I've never met a human being who doesn't want that freedom by whatever name, and I've never met a practicing addict who has it.

Once again, perhaps few practicing addicts have ever considered the possibility that we are not human beings whose vocation is to a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings whose vocation is to a human experience, and that this is what is meant by the twelfth step's assurance of a "spiritual awakening" as both the goal and the evidence of recovery. The test of that renewed spirit reveals a release and return to precisely what addiction has enslaved -- the ability to live an enhanced life, a heightened capacity for the truth about oneself, to love and accept love, and to experience the courage to be together with a sense of one's own humor and that of others, as well. We speak of "recovering" but don't often name what it is we're in the process of recovering. It should be clear by now that it is our humanity, our human being, that's what."

The Island Keeps Washing Away

When I was in college, I used to escape reality by reading the Travis McGee books by John McDonald. Travis could do anything, understood everything, and always destroyed the bad guys who were cheating the good guys. He also had a gloomy opinion of the future of humankind, deploring the human population explosion, strip malls, the god of materialism and the blindness to reality of the world in general. He figured that one day, in one of the big cities, a critical mass of people will be pushed one step too far, and will turn on each other like animals, red of tooth and claw. Kind of like going postal, but on a bigger scale. End of civilization.
One of the concepts I remember best was when he was mourning the loss of a friend. He mentally pictured all of us standing on an island that was gradually washing away on one end, and getter longer on the other. New lives were on the growing end and ending lives were on the part that was continually washing away. If you happened to be on the part that washed away, all the rest of us could do was watch the current carry you away under the water. Travis could be very gloomy. He was right about the people we lose, though. Even if we see the sand washing away beneath their feet, we can't reach out and save them from the inevitability of death. We can't keep the sand from washing away ourselves or anyone else.
I desperately want to believe in a spiritual life after death, when we are rejoined with the Creator of the universe, and find out what we were supposed to learn by going though all the ups and downs of a human life. I believe, Lord. Lord, help my unbelief.
Goodbye Deb. I still can't believe you are gone.

Where was the balancing point?

I just got back from the fourteenth century. I listened, consecutively, to Ken Follet's "The Pillars of the Earth" and "World Without End." They seem to be fairly logical presentations of life in those times. There were no safety nets for anyone, it seems. If you were a serf tied to the land, your fortunes depended on your lord. If you were a lord, your fortunes depended on your king. And how kings came to their positions seems to have been a mixture of politics as nasty as today's, who your family was connected with, and what promises you made to whom. The focus of both books of course was on the priory of Kingsbridge, with its monastery, building the cathedral, adding the nunnery and the hospital. The time spread is over two hundred years. In today's terms, I can see all those events taking place in ten or twenty years. The community religious life fascinates me - perhaps because it winnows out the distractions of family life and social activities and concentrates solely on God. Convent and monastery life was not perfect of course, people are people, and in those days you didn't always wind up as a nun or monk because you had a calling for it - you may have been an extra son or an unmarried daughter or widow with nowhere else to go.
I'll never know who my ancestors of the fourteenth century were - over seven hundred years, everyone with an British background, or European background for that matter, will have many ancestors in common. What impresses me is that all of us alive today are descendants of people who survived backbreaking work, poor nutrition and abysmal medical help, long enough at least to reproduce. Of course they lived shorter lives, but think of a world that was not crowded with people, where so much was still undiscovered, where the land could be so beautiful and unspoiled.
I know it is romanticism to wish for a time in which life was not beset with the noise and static of bad news 24/7, people everywhere, and a lot of them nasty, and a bewildering array of things that must be done. I know the life of long ago was much more tenuous and security fragile or nonexistent. Still......
Where did we pass that point of balance where life is safer and longer for many, versus the time when all the world could be God's garden, even though you might be a serf with a short and painful life.
When did we pass that balance point, and did anyone even notice?

I'm being haunted by an altar call.......

As preface, I should say that I was brought up in the Baptist church, and my mother believed strongly that we should be there whenever the doors were open. I have some good memories of friends and teachers there, and some not so good memories of the attempts to make everyone an evangelist. As in walking the neighborhood and knocking on doors of people you don't know and asking anyone who answers if they have been saved. That was the ideal. I never did that. I always felt guilty about getting out of doing that. It felt like a sin to get out of that, and I figured I was going to hell.
It took a looooong time to realize several things: Doing that kind of thing is not my nature. It never has been. It never will be. My therapist says that's okay, so there! This particular haunting, or perhaps I should say flashback, takes me back to Sunday evening services. We always went to Training Union on Sunday evenings at 6. Thinking back on this now after forty years, I really can't remember what we did at training union. Sit and talk? At Sunday School we had a new study booklet every quarter and we definitely did lessons, but Sunday night must have been more laid back. Then at 7 we had the worship service - some hymns, a sermon, and the invitation hymn. (translate as altar call). The most frequently used hymn for this was "Just As I Am." We would go through all the verses of this at least three times while we were exhorted from the pulpit to remember that the Lord will come when we least expect it, you don't want to die with your sins on your soul, and everyone kept their eyes on the hymnal cause if you looked up the preacher might catch your eye and start exhorting in your direction - sometimes this led to a segue into singing "Oh Why Not Tonight."
Okay. It's been a long time since I lived and thought that way. I joined the Episcopal church when I married, and over the years I have found much comfort and strength there. This morning, we joined the other communicants at the rail and were waiting our turn for communion. The organist (a lovely and talented woman) is the first in line so she can go back and play softly till the choir gets back and they sing during the rest of communion. All was normal until she started to improvise on the song they were going to sing. The hair on the back of my neck stood up - I caught my breath - it was JUST AS I AM! No, no, I told myself, you are not sixteen years old, you are not back in Inglenook, you're not going to have to pin a red ribbon to your blouse when you go to school tomorrow so you can witness to anyone who asks you why you have a red ribbon on your blouse, Jesus loves you anyway and he knows you do the best you can, etc., etc., etc. Whew! Relief! It's only a song, right?
I've been hearing snatches of that song all afternoon. Phrases drift through my head and I realize "waiting not to rid my soul of one dark blot" is from THAT song.
I'm being haunted by an altar call.
Just thought I'd let you know.
That's all.

What am I doing?

Has been a day of getting little things done and ignoring the big list of things that I can feel circling over my head like a buzzard. I made a list of all the big things, thinking that I could chip away at them a little at the time. Ha! I have them listed on a Notepad page that I never close (thunderstorms and power outages excepted) and I change the date at the top every day, just to keep it current, you know. I'm on top of things. Yes.
You may have wondered why I called this blog 'Maker'. It is because I have rarely found a craft that I did not want to learn. I have been through cross stitch, crochet, guitar, scrapbooking, card making, origami, macrame, making beaded jewelry, crocheting with beads, making rosaries, making a beaded windchime, playing the piano, machine embroidery, decorative painting, pen and ink drawing, sewing has been with me all my life, and I am currently obsessed with knitting. In other words, I would rather be making something with my hands than doing anything else. (which introduces the sad story of the state of my dwelling, but we'll save that for another day. Maybe never.)
Anyway, if you are now thinking that this blog post is wandering all over creation, you now have an accurate picture of where my brain has been today. I shall now resume work on either my baby beehive hat for the Pumpkin Patch sale, or the blue socks I started last night, or the scarf with the intriguing cable pattern that is about one fourth finished. Tomorrow I shall try again to be decisive and competent about all that other stuff.

It's so hot......

I have to bribe my huskies to get off the AC vents. I have to trick them into going outdoors to contribute to the environment. They sleep all day and have play time after the sun goes down. That's how hot it is. I grew up with no air conditioning, and taught school until 1988 in non-air conditioned classrooms, but I gotta tell you - I can't do it anymore. Just getting out in the heat to run errands is enough to give me a sinking spell that can only be remedied by an hour on the sofa in front of a fan (which I have to move from husky duty to human duty). Come, autumn breezes, come!
I still haven't found my camera, I know it is lurking somewhere in my house, so I haven't been able to take any pictures to put up here yet. I finished knitting a washcloth with a moon and stars motif and as soon as I finish my 'almost done' pumpkin patch hat, I'm going to knit a washcloth with a butterfly design. Doing small projects seems to alleviate the anxiety that my yarn stash is getting out of control and will someday blow the windows out of the house. Perhaps I can knit the next house.

Different perspectives can warp your mind.....

This has been a weird weekend and I've inflicted it on myself. Audible had a sale on books and I got "The Shack" and "Mennonite in a Little Black Dress". The Shack is about one man's search for spiritual resuscitation after his little daughter is murdered by a serial killer. There's a lot of other stuff, but essentially (spoiler alert) he believes he spends four days with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit (under other names), while the option is given for people to believe he spent four days in a coma after being hit by a drunk driver, and all the long spiritual guidance conversations were a hallucination. It expresses a very personal type of relationship with God, and doesn't quite sneer at ritual and liturgy, but comes close. Made going to church this morning a thoughtful process, as we went through the ritual and liturgy that I find so reassuring. The other book is about a woman who was brought up in a strict Mennonite home, goes on to college and associate professorship and marriage to man who has bipolar syndrome but doesn't take the meds. After 15 years of marriage, he leaves her for a man he met on Gay.com, and in the same week she also is hit by a drunk driver, suffering major injuries and in short, going home to live with her parents for a while. This produces many anecdotal stories of the limitations she felt were etched in her psyche, and contrasting anecdotes of the world she lived in with her atheist husband. I haven't quite finished this book, but it sounds like she's coming around to valuing parts of both worlds. Listening to both of them, one after another, is head-twisting. As I said, I've done it to myself. Time to take the meds and go to bed.

Again, it's after midnight on a Saturday night. This week I've made a hat for the Pumpkin Patch, finished a pair of socks, made another washcloth, worked a little on a new scarf. Red Hats met on Thursday at Longhorn's. It is so comfortable to meet with a group of women whose only purpose is to enjoy a meal and each other's company, catch up on children and grandchildren, with no competition or status games whatsoever. I love my Red Hat ladies.
We went to orientation for transfer students at JSU on Tuesday. Everything I have seen at the school looks good - I'm so glad Matt chose this school - I think it's going to give him a lot of good opportunities.
David is going to the Scout Jamboree next week to be on staff, so I've been sewing scout patches on shirts and hemming pants.
I'm going to have to start doing the computer work for ASTRA next week, and might as well go ahead and set up the next newsletter for church. We're going electronic in September! No more copying and folding and labeling and sorting and delivering to the post office. Should save us about four hours plus postage costs. Kathy and I are really looking forward to this.
I'm still addicted to the Wool Watcher at Jimmy Beans Wool, but I'm trying to resist buying more yarn. So many ideas zipping around my head for things to make, but frequently they zip right out my ear before I can really get the plan down. ADD in middle age - who knew?

Hi, Bye, More Later....

Perhaps I should have named this blog Procrastinator, as it is 12:47 am and I still have to pack up stuff for a church event tomorrow afternoon. However, I was lured into creating a blog because a friend of mine created one today that was so cool I had to try it myself. Now that I have done so (I think) I shall leave you to wait in great anticipation for me to come back with fascinating info and scintillating prose. Perhaps even a picture or two. TTFN.