Paying Respects

I was at a human funeral today.  For the last few years I haven't seen much of the woman, an older woman of great-grandma status, but still a vigorous woman.  The kind of places I would tend to see her would be at funerals, weddings, and picnics.  Her death was sudden, and I realized how little I've processed it, because I caught myself almost wondering why she wasn't at the service, herself!

Tonight, my Dad told me a true story about a non-human funeral he saw once.

He was outside, and saw a line of ants on the porch.  What is this line of ants? he wondered.  He bent down and saw two ants standing by a dead ant.  And one by one, every ant in the long line came to the dead ant, touched it with their feelers, then moved on.  When the line of ants ended, the first two ants picked up the dead ant and followed the line.  

I think that is just awesome.  But it messes with your mind to watch animals like that, because you start wondering if they think.  And if they think and are sentient, then it's really horrible that we put so much effort into killing them.  Yet if we don't, they encroach upon our indoors world... it's easier to believe they are just little organic machines.  

But I had a dream once that for some reason I had to kill a mouse with my bare hands, and then in my bare hands it became a small child, because some evil person had created an illusion that it was just a mouse.  So when I woke up I was freaked out.  People like Hitler convinced a lot of people that certain kinds of people were not really people, and therefore okay and appropriate to kill en masse.  Insanity can lead people to believe they have a good reason to kill someone.   I know those are extreme situations to call to mind.  Why should I worry about "what if Hitler happened again?" or "what if I became deranged and thought my neighbor was a dangerous grizzly bear?"  That's a bit far-fetched, you know.  But I like to theorize.  How could I protect myself?

I'm not a tree hugger, and I do like to get my protein  & iron the convenient meat way, but I think a balanced respect for all living things is good.  I'd prefer to think of ants as organic machines, but I'm not going to use that as a reason to kill them gratuitously.  And knowing ants sometimes hold funerals for their dead, will always make me a bit sorry when I have to kill them.

So killing ants would be easier if I was ignorant.  It's easier to kill something you don't respect or know anything about.  Hating varmint raccoons would be easier if I never saw a rescued baby coon suckling on a baby pacifier.

Is that how life can be kept simple, then... choosing to be ignorant?  Disregarding lives that are not relevant to ours, because our souls are too finite, our bodies too limited, to love more than a little?  Because we are so limited, we just are.  I cannot go on a campaign to protect every ant in my neighborhood, I'm sorry.  For one thing, that would involve hurting other life.

I'm pushing this to the point of exhaustion--on purpose; to say how thinking about these things is tiring, and then I realize how I'm longing for a perfect Eden, for perfect harmony with God, with people, and with all of creation.  Such a thing is impossible in life right now, but longing for the perfection takes the edge off my sorrow that, so often, my life depends on the death of others. Innocent others.

out of darkness

About a month ago, I saw a kid at Walmart I remembered from high school.  I saw him in passing, and the recognition startled me.  He was still small, but had more of a man's build.  He'd grown his hair out.  Still looked rather sullen, but perhaps more alive than I remembered him.  He looked capable of having fun, at least, even if that "fun" probably wasn't healthy fun.  If I could've remembered his name just then, I would've unashamedly said right to him, "Hey, are you so-and-so?"  But I couldn't remember, so I walked on.  A minute later I remembered the name with a flash, and said it a couple times to my friend with me.  I told her that this kid was one I had chosen for my group of freshmen.  I was an upper-classman leader of a "frontline" group.  And for some reason, I chose this kid.  I didn't know him, but I talked to my younger sister about him.  She didn't like him, as I recall, or at least agreed with general sentiment that he was strange and not very friendly, or whatnot.  So what, I picked him.  I wanted to be an affirmative force in his life, even if he didn't admit that my affirmation meant anything.  He was one of those people that just tore at my heart as someone who desperately needed to know unconditional love.  So, come fall, he was in my group.  For all he knew it was a random assignment.

I was not successful that year in my dream of reaching out to him. I was not settled enough in who I was to have any authority over that group of kids, and the other kids didn't like him.  I wanted too much for them to like me.  And he was inward enough that he wasn't anywhere close to trusting me.  Very little eye contact.  Once or twice I got him talking, and when he talked it was angry and dark.

Seeing the kid at Walmart, then, brought up a curious stream of emotions.  If I could do it over, would I treat the kids, especially him, any differently? Would I be more aggressive at interacting with him? Would I be more aggressive at showing him that, for no good reason, I really, deeply, cared what happened to him?

So I say, I was relieved to see him alive and well and reasonably sure of himself there at Walmart, although I didn't get a chance to talk to him.

***

Yesterday I was at a lunch cookout.  Seated under a canopy on a hot, breezy day, sipping sweet tea, pulling apart deliciously burnt chicken with my fingers, I asked a neighbor who some people at the cookout were.  Girls  said a last name--and I said, "Oh, any relation to so-and-so?"  (Ready to say that by-the-way-I'd-seen-him-at-Walmart).

"No," they said.  A younger sister of mine said the names were spelled differently, and then she said, "anyway, that so-and-so committed suicide a couple of years ago."

My heart plummeted.  "He-did?  I was just going to tell E that I saw him at Walmart the other day.  He did? Are you sure?"

It was generally verified by descriptions of who he was, that yes, we were talking about the same guy.

***

In the evening, everyone at the cookout got together to sing praise to God for a while, and then three young adults shared their testimonies of how they came to know Christ.  

At some point during the singing, I got to thinking about the kid who committed suicide, and grief rose up in me.  I hung my head and let myself feel it, regardless of whether people around me hoped I was reaching some kind of spiritual milemarker.  No, in fact, I was grieving a death that happened two years ago to a very troubled, lonely kid.  I grieve it as I write this.

The reason I was even at this meeting was because one of the young men had messaged me on facebook to specifically invite me--if I wasn't already planning on it--because he was going to be sharing his story.  I was touched--I didn't even know he was an unashamed Christian. But he's always been special to me; it was like a hug that he wanted me there.

So after the singing, the pastor gave a short encouraging sermon to young people in general.  Then, one by one, the young people shared their hearts.  My friend went last--describing first how he was as a kid.  I'd seen him as a kid, and it was interesting to hear him remembering it from his angle.  I'd seen his insecurities, his annoyingness, his desperation to be accepted, and his violent temper.  I'd seen him grow up, too, and start showing care to other people.  I was--relieved--to see him coming safely out the other side of his teenage years, and able to talk about it, to look back and face who he was.

He talked about being a very hypocritical, self-reliant guy.  This, I had turned sort of a blind eye to, because in a strange way, I prefer to look people in the eye and trust them--dare them to hurt me--and take them seriously.  I assume everyone's a bit tangled inside, anyway!  Everyone's got mess to deal with!   Few people, if any, are capable of 100% genuine behavior; neither are they capable of 100% false behavior.   

What everyone is capable of is 100% human behavior--curiously painful, beautiful behavior--the living, writhing mass of goodness, and evil, and personality, and external environments.  God loves every one of us, and enables us to love every other.  And He opens our eyes so we can be more lucid in our struggles.  And when we realize that awareness isn't enough to fix us, we chase after Him-- He redeems us, changes us: slow but surely.

****

My friend shared how a couple of people specifically impacted him.  The reminder of people's impact on others struck my emotions deeply.  The contrast between his direction and the kid who resorted to suicide, again brought tears to my eyes.  Was the high school kid's home environment just too miry for him to pull through? Was he tormented by spiritual evil?  Did he ever feel a tug from God and just chose against it? 

It's not for me to know.   I grieve untimely death, and I celebrate redemption.  I trust my Father in heaven, even when I don't see where life is going.

dust in the wind

Blankness.

Is another way of saying too much and too little to express.  Too much background story to explain the impact of one day.  Too much immediacy to even think about, or analyze today.  I am a habitual analyzer, but not once today did I stop and ponder what I was experiencing.  And now, it feels good not to figure out if there was any meaning.

People, I love'm.

There's this very extraverted kid.  He's thirteen, and I remember well when he was born.  In fact, I remember well when his older siblings were born.  But he rattles away about when he was little, and I realize that "when he was little" was fairly close to when he was born, I mean, the difference of just a couple years.  I forget that people are self aware so soon after they're born.  Many people are self-aware before they are two.  If I could play my earliest memories as a movie, it's like a screen with flickering images--sensations becoming expectations--the near-people becoming Mom, Dad, siblings.  But after a bit of the flickering, it comes into focus and there I am, me.  Ignorant, fresh, certain, self-centered.

So by the time I graduated from college, any kids born my freshman year have become self-aware, they have learned to talk, and they are probably already learning to write, and as far as they are concerned, they've been around a good long time.  As far as they are concerned, their birthday is never going to come, but when it does, a whole new world of possibilities will open up and magic will happen.  And as far as they concerned, birthdays will always be just that special.

By now, any kids born when I graduated college a year ago are practically walking; they are surely crawling around and getting into things and driving their mothers mad, but then smiling charmingly for the camera with a smile that will follow them through life.

What do I have to say for the last year?  Well--okay--I'm young, still experiencing a lot of dynamics to slow time down.  Lots of moves, job changes, world travelling.  But I can't say I'm waiting breathlessly for my birthday, either.  When I turn 24 I'll be ... 24, and?

Some girls my age have been married for a couple years.  They got married, had a baby, and will keep having babies for the next fifteen or twenty years.  Now they're a family with a couple toddlers.  Now they're  a family with a helpful little girl and more toddlers.  Now they're a family with preteens down through toddlers.  Now their eldest is learning to drive, down through toddlers.  Now there is uncertainty, will there be more?  Perhaps there will be toddler nieces and nephews now.

It's just weird that I'm old enough to witness that dynamic now, to see people my big brother's age, with preteens running around playing softball and already getting some idea of who they'll be as adults.  Some of the girls with smudgy eyes too soon, already worried if they're lovable.

All this reminds me never to "worry" about benchmarks I haven't reached in life.  I'll be an old lady before I know it, so I want to maximize every minute starting now instead of rushing to the next minute.  And then gently let go of each minute as it passes.

I sat with a soon-to-leave friend once in the park, listening to Coldplay, knowing we would never again have a blissful, carefree moment like that.  We sat there trying to hang onto the minutes, instead of just "being".  As if we could somehow experience the time so fully as to make up for any past wishes for such carefree moments, and future nostalgia for the moment-gone-by.  It gave me a curiously bittersweet, unsatisfactory feeling.  I'm glad we tried it, but I'd be more for letting the minutes move on by, now.  Even dare the minutes to hasten by.

shortcut fail

There he was, trying to roll under the chain link fence that divided the two tennis courts.  It took a second, then I saw why he was pinned down like so.  There was a tennis ball that belonged to him, just out of reach.  Rather than run out of his court and into mine, he thought he'd just roll under that loose chain link.

But a ten-year-old boy already has massive amounts of dignity, so I kept a very straight face and said, "Is this what you're after?" and brought him the ball.  Disengaged several corners of his clothing from the talons of the chain link, as his sister scolded at him not to do that again.  

Kids can be so charmingly oblivious to "what will work" and maybe that's why they have so many adventures.

To A Place Unexpected

After catching up with a friend in town, I swung the car around into its old spot on the island.  Nobody was home tonight, so I let myself in with my key from the combination vault.  Upstairs, I glanced around my old room wryly.  Not a thing of mine lying around.  My bed, stripped of its comforts.  Not my bed.  

Last Saturday I had cleared my few wall decorations from the room.  Those consisted of a George MacDonald poem at the head of my bed, some painted wooden fans from Spain at the foot, and some concert tickets & posters on my door.  In other words, as I told my pun-loving roommate, "I took the fans off the wall, and the fan paraphernalia off the door, haha."  But I forgot one thing until tonight.  On the inward side of the door hung my sign from last Christmas-- "To a Place Unexpected"--made for a fan video for Downhere's song, "How Many Kings." The old yellowish paper matched the door beautifully.  Sad, because now I wanted it for my new house.  The tape rasped gently as I pulled the paper away.

Then, with an odd pang, I stopped and pressed it back to the wood.  It matched the door so well.  It belonged there. It belongs to my memory of the room.  It's mysterious and nice-looking, so maybe other renters will let it stay, too.  If I leave that one piece of me there, I might not forget the journey I travelled during my stay there.

I'm Sorry For How I Refused Their Help

A couple gentlemen offered to help me carry heavy things last week, and I responded as if I thought they were saying I was weak.  They weren't saying that all--my strength was evident--they were simply being nice and wanting to use their cool carts they'd acquired for carrying heavy things.  Nothing wrong with that at all, and I could've so easily obliged. 

 They probably don't remember the passing moment, certainly not with any bad feelings.  But I consider it a sad moment I want to avoid repeating.

Here's why I care about nothings like this.  In fact, it's not the single nothing I care about, it's an accumulation of many nothings.  I believe our nothings add up to a huge influence in our culture.  Over time, to be sure, but strongly.  Like a glacier's movement.  Or like piling dust.

Dust.  Collects from seemingly nowhere.  As if our castaway shadows gradually accumulate, from Nothing into Something.  

Robert Fulghum wrote about dust in All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten (An obnoxious title for a good book).  Dust is "particles of wool, cotton, and paper, bug chunks , food, plants, tree leaves, ash, microscopic spores of fungi and single-celled animals, and a lot of unidentifiable odds and ends, mostly natural and organic.  But that's just the miscellaneous list.  The majority of Stuff comes from just two sources: people--exfoliated skin and hair; and meteorites--disintegrated as they hit the earth's atmosphere . . . So, in other words, what's behind my bed and bookcase and dresser are mostly me and stardust."

I believe each one of us influences culture like our dust that keeps accumulating in unreachable places.   Just as surely as we leave dust trails, we also leave a mark in culture in tiny, but very real, ways.

This is why I'm sorry for how I refused their help.   My actual words were, "No thanks... I'm good... I'm the emancipated woman, har har."  That was in fact a copout to save explaining that it was too much trouble to stop, and I was already almost to my destination, so why bother, but thanks anyway.  It would've been better to be honest, if I'm going to take my dust particles of influence seriously.  Sure, I'm very very grateful for my rights and freedoms.  Very much so.  But I'm also very very grateful for the fundamental differences between man and woman, in this case, physical strength.

The extreme "emancipated woman" doesn't need men.  Doesn't need their help, their strength, their brains, their ability to creatively solve problems, any of that.  And I've seen a scary cultural trend where men are responding like, "Okay, fine, if you want so badly to do it on your own, we're not going to stop you.  We never said it was FUN to take the brunt of things."  To respond to an offer of help, "No thanks, I'm emancipated," pretty much says, "how dare you notice that I am female?"

Well, I want guys to know they are needed, they are awesome, they are smart (I'm almost certain guys are quicker at picking up languages, and that's kind of annoying, but hey, whatever.); they are strong, they are valuable.  I want guys to know that when they do gentlemanly things, I'm grateful and I remember.

That's why I'm sorry I said what I said.  I don't want to help a cultural glacier go the wrong way.

side note...

Women want friendship with men--fair audience-- respect--recognition, appreciation, interaction.  I don't think I'm the only one who has tried to gain those by mimicking how men earn respect from each other.  And hey, there's nothing wrong with being a woman who is strong and independent.  It's just that asserting strength and independence in a context that conflicts with a guy's strength and independence probably isn't exactly going to impress him.

Not on my own

I looked for freedom of speech

I looked for an open window.

I looked for the best way to get what I wanted.

I looked for the other side.

I looked for a better viewpoint.

I looked for a bigger venue.

I looked for the day I could be 

everything I never wanted.

I swam in a river of doubt.

I scowled and kicked at dirt.

My lists said I was dying for

love in perfect community.

It's easier to live like a kite

tethered but free to roam.

It's easier to run from a fight

than show my still-am.

I'd cry over the worst-case

but I remembered my truth.

Many things I am not.

Many ways I will fail.

Many days I'll ignore the grace

that lifts me out of grief.

But today I heard a thought,

anonymous comfort whatever may come:

The story isn't over.

the skies began to clear

There was a church sanctuary within walking distance.  It was open during the day, and had high ceilings, the pews, the indirect lighting, the hushed carpet, and even the right smell.  It had a grand piano, and almost nobody in the building.  I'll always treasure the afternoons spent there last fall. I would try the front door, then the back. If I was able to get in, I would flick on a couple lights, make no haste up the aisle.  Gently pull back the worn cloth covering the piano; raise the lid slightly.  

I dreamed afresh in that oasis.