I sit silently in the peaceful sunlit sanctuary. It is Sunday morning, and I've come early to place a bouquet of flowers in the church for the Sunday service. Nobody else has arrived yet. It is the first time I've been alone in this space since I joined the Presbyterian church. I slip off my Birkenstocks, cross my legs half-lotus style, and settle down on the padded pew, relaxing in the solitude. I've brought a book with me today, in anticipation of having a few quiet moments alone before the service. I'm reading Thich Nhat Hahn's "Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers". I open my book and begin reading. A passage from the page I'm reading speaks to me.
Thich Nhat Hahn writes that our ancestors are alive within us and they have never died. They are still in us. He says that we need only to come back to ourselves by practicing mindful breathing to touch them.
I thought of a synchronous event that happened just the day before. During my weekend errands, I had stopped by Lily's Alteration Shop to have a new blouse hemmed. While I stood on a platform in the shop waiting for the little Chinese seamstress to pin up my hem, I caught a glimpse of my face in the full length mirror. Just for a moment I saw myself as a part of a clan, a beloved drop of the sacred pool of my family. I noticed my fair creamy Scots-Irish skin with bronze undertones, freckled from the Florida sun. I saw my maternal grandmother Sadie's small nose and my mother Iris' copper hair. I saw the people from whom I came reflected back at me in the mirror. I smiled to them. I felt disconnected from my mother's family for much of my childhood and well into my adult years. I realize now that whether or not I knew those people well or was close to them, I still belong to them and have always been a part of their tribe.
I take a deep breath and in my mind's eye, I visualize my mother and her mother, as I've seen them so many times in our family photos, and I feel just a little less detached from them than I have in the past. Although they are strangers and ghosts to me in many ways, I realize that they lived their lives the best way they could, and they would have been more connected to me if only they could have found a way. I know that there will always be times when I feel insecure, frightened, and alone, but I am part of a spiritual community of people where I am valued and loved. I open my eyes and gaze around the sanctuary as the members of our beloved community begin to gather for today's service, and I smile to this tribe as well.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Dear Mama
Dear Mama,
I wish I could show you this photograph. It’s a snapshot of me with Elizabeth Lynne, the daughter of your cousin Helen, and your nephew Greg, the son of your older brother Orin. This picture of the three of us was taken at a college basketball game in Orlando a couple of months ago.
I’d love for you to see this photo, just to let you know that the three of us are doing okay. We're middle-aged now. We were just little kids the last time you saw us, back in the 1960s. I’d like to believe that you would be proud of the three of us. I wonder if you ever thought about a time in the future when the kids in your family would be all grown up, and how our lives might be.
After I lost you when I was four years old, I lost most of your family, too. I was cut off from them for many years. I felt a bit like a grape on a vine plucked from a cluster, tossed on the ground, and left to wither alone. It wasn’t until I was almost forty that your kinfolk came trickling back into my life, one by one, and I started going back to Pikeville to visit after more than three decades.
I can’t remember much about my relationship with you. My memories of you are like wispy glimpses or blips on a screen, almost subliminal. My family photographs of you bring to mind so many questions that will never be answered. I remember your silk kimono and the lovely fragrance of your Persian Wood talcum powder. I recall curling up with you for afternoon naps in our house on St. Regis Drive, and playing in the backyard while you pinned linens on the clothesline on sunny days. I remember riding with you in your Chevrolet to pick up Carolyn in the afternoons at the elementary school. You drove with the window rolled down, smoking Winston cigarettes. You used to take me grocery shopping with you at the Jitney Jungle. When I've heard cousin Martha's voice on the phone, it sounds so much like yours. In her photographs, she resembles you, too.
I have a few belongings you left behind. They are my most beloved treasures. Your possessions help me feel a little closer to you. Your handwritten letters to my grandparents, the little satin ring pillow from your wedding, your Pikeville High School class ring, and a couple of your watercolor paintings are among those precious things. I have your Towle Candlelight silver flatware and your Early American dining room chairs. I also have a few pieces of your Poppy Trail china. To the best of my knowledge, I have everything that is left in the world of your personal effects.
I need to tell you that it is difficult for me to understand how you could ever leave me. I know your health was frail and married life didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to be. Maybe motherhood wasn’t so great for you either. Your departure wounded me in a way that can never quite be healed. Sometimes I am still a motherless child adrift in the world without the anchor of a mother’s unconditional love. I never learned some of the things that a girl needs her mother to teach her, like how to cook and clean, for instance. As odd as it may seem, I'm just now learning how to mop floors and dust, after having depended on housekeepers for many years. Now that I'm nearing retirement and a cleaning service is less affordable, I'm having to figure out, for the first time in my life, how to keep the house clean. And let's don't even talk about my lack of culinary skills!
Your firstborn, my big sister Carolyn, passed away in 2007. Cousin Jeff left the following year, in 2008. Cousin Diane died last year, in 2010. Aunt Ruth and Aunt Lois are also gone, as well as several of the others you loved. I keep in touch with Janey, Greg, David, and Jennifer, as well as Edgar and Reed. Charles lived until 2005. Immediately after his funeral, I drove across town to your grave to tell you that he had died. I kissed your tombstone and told you that I love you.
I hope you're in a good place. Sometimes I wonder sometimes if you can see me. I wonder if I would have made different decisions about my life if you had lived. There was a time when I had a mother, but it seems so long ago and far away, like a fairy tale about an enchanted life. I do not know what it would have been like to grow up with you. I am a continuation of you. I try to live my life as best I can and make positive contributions to the world. I promise I'll stay in relationship with your people, my people. I hope this is comforting to you. And I hope more than anything that someday, somehow, and somewhere in the universe, I will get to see you again.
I wish I could show you this photograph. It’s a snapshot of me with Elizabeth Lynne, the daughter of your cousin Helen, and your nephew Greg, the son of your older brother Orin. This picture of the three of us was taken at a college basketball game in Orlando a couple of months ago.
I’d love for you to see this photo, just to let you know that the three of us are doing okay. We're middle-aged now. We were just little kids the last time you saw us, back in the 1960s. I’d like to believe that you would be proud of the three of us. I wonder if you ever thought about a time in the future when the kids in your family would be all grown up, and how our lives might be.
After I lost you when I was four years old, I lost most of your family, too. I was cut off from them for many years. I felt a bit like a grape on a vine plucked from a cluster, tossed on the ground, and left to wither alone. It wasn’t until I was almost forty that your kinfolk came trickling back into my life, one by one, and I started going back to Pikeville to visit after more than three decades.
I can’t remember much about my relationship with you. My memories of you are like wispy glimpses or blips on a screen, almost subliminal. My family photographs of you bring to mind so many questions that will never be answered. I remember your silk kimono and the lovely fragrance of your Persian Wood talcum powder. I recall curling up with you for afternoon naps in our house on St. Regis Drive, and playing in the backyard while you pinned linens on the clothesline on sunny days. I remember riding with you in your Chevrolet to pick up Carolyn in the afternoons at the elementary school. You drove with the window rolled down, smoking Winston cigarettes. You used to take me grocery shopping with you at the Jitney Jungle. When I've heard cousin Martha's voice on the phone, it sounds so much like yours. In her photographs, she resembles you, too.
I have a few belongings you left behind. They are my most beloved treasures. Your possessions help me feel a little closer to you. Your handwritten letters to my grandparents, the little satin ring pillow from your wedding, your Pikeville High School class ring, and a couple of your watercolor paintings are among those precious things. I have your Towle Candlelight silver flatware and your Early American dining room chairs. I also have a few pieces of your Poppy Trail china. To the best of my knowledge, I have everything that is left in the world of your personal effects.
I need to tell you that it is difficult for me to understand how you could ever leave me. I know your health was frail and married life didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to be. Maybe motherhood wasn’t so great for you either. Your departure wounded me in a way that can never quite be healed. Sometimes I am still a motherless child adrift in the world without the anchor of a mother’s unconditional love. I never learned some of the things that a girl needs her mother to teach her, like how to cook and clean, for instance. As odd as it may seem, I'm just now learning how to mop floors and dust, after having depended on housekeepers for many years. Now that I'm nearing retirement and a cleaning service is less affordable, I'm having to figure out, for the first time in my life, how to keep the house clean. And let's don't even talk about my lack of culinary skills!
Your firstborn, my big sister Carolyn, passed away in 2007. Cousin Jeff left the following year, in 2008. Cousin Diane died last year, in 2010. Aunt Ruth and Aunt Lois are also gone, as well as several of the others you loved. I keep in touch with Janey, Greg, David, and Jennifer, as well as Edgar and Reed. Charles lived until 2005. Immediately after his funeral, I drove across town to your grave to tell you that he had died. I kissed your tombstone and told you that I love you.
I hope you're in a good place. Sometimes I wonder sometimes if you can see me. I wonder if I would have made different decisions about my life if you had lived. There was a time when I had a mother, but it seems so long ago and far away, like a fairy tale about an enchanted life. I do not know what it would have been like to grow up with you. I am a continuation of you. I try to live my life as best I can and make positive contributions to the world. I promise I'll stay in relationship with your people, my people. I hope this is comforting to you. And I hope more than anything that someday, somehow, and somewhere in the universe, I will get to see you again.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Roads
I look around at the countryside as I steer my silver Toyota along the winding county roads on my late afternoon commute home from work. I want to really look, with intention, seeing it all, taking in the familiar landmarks. I have been driving these roads most of my adult life while earning a living providing a health ministry of sorts to prisoners. Soon I will no longer be driving this route, as I've made a decision to transfer to another practice site. I don't think these rural roads will ever be a regular part of my work life again.
Along the route, I notice the humble country church that advertises "Free Clothes" for poor folks on its small marquee sign every year before Christmas and Easter. I cross the ancient concrete bridge over the New River, on the border between Bradford and Union counties. I see the rustic wooden A-frame house, nestled in the woods, that I used to covet in my younger years. The almost-stately red brick farmhouse, with its rooftop spire and surrounding rolling acerage catches my eye, reminding me of a Kentucky thoroughbred horse farm. I see the old Florida cracker house, with its peeling exterior paint and rusty tin roof, on the main drag in the little town of Brooker. I glance over at the replica of a green and yellow John Deere tractor in the fenced backyard of a day care center where children are playing. It makes me smile.
I think about how much my world has changed since I first began making this daily drive. I started traveling these roads before the internet, and before I learned yoga, watercolor painting, and how to grow bamboo. It was before I had ever owned a home, before I made some not-so-great decisions that I'd rather not recall, and before I discovered delights such as Lindor white truffles and Kendall Jackson chardonnay. It was before Maui, Cancun, and Montreal. It was before I met and married my beloved Jack. It was before I discovered, embraced, and later rejected the Unitarian Universalist faith. It was before I learned to practice meditation and before I lost my sister. It was before several fur children came along, spent their lives with me, and then left - Happy, Goldie, Blondie, Pixie, Lily, and Paco. It was before dental crowns, graying hair, achy joints, and melanoma. It was before Starbucks, cell phones, and hybrid cars.
When I began traveling these roads, my future seemed full of possibilities, vast and limitless. More than twenty years later, now that I am in my fifties, I realize now that my life will not go on forever, and I will someday become part of eternity and go where ever my grandmother, my mother, and my other post-incarnate loved ones have gone. There's a line in one of my favorite Goddess chants that goes "We all come from the Goddess, and to her we shall return, like drops of rain flowing to the ocean." I am a drop of water in the sea of life. I realize now that I am not separate from anything or anyone. I exist only as part of the whole, even though I have not felt that way for a large portion of my life. I have often felt like I am a space alien and I do not fit in or belong here. Feeling like an outsider has sometimes created painful difficulties and divides in my relationships and my work over the years.
In my mind's eye I see my younger self just beginning her career when she first started traveling these roads. She was about thirty, with a lot of ambition and an advanced college degree. She was newly-divorced, angry, and intense. My mature self wants to give her a hug. I want to enfold her gently in my arms and tell her that she is good and she is loved. I want to let her know that she belongs and she is not alone in this world. I want to assure my younger self that she will find the love of her life, that she will earn a good living, and that she will discover ways to make her life meaningful. I wish I could tell her that although there will be difficult times, she is strong enough to cope with anything that life may bring. I want to tell her to take it easy, breathe deeply, and trust the universe and the process of life. I see her as though I am watching an actor on a movie screen, or like an out-of-body experience where I am hovering somewhere in the atmosphere near her. I cannot make eye contact with her or see her face to face.
I hope that someday there will be an elder self, who has seen her career through to completion and no longer travels down any roads to work. I think my older self will see my young and middle-aged selves in her mind's eye and wish that she could give them both a hug and tell them that everything will turn out all right. Maiden, mother, and crone are the parts of the sacred Triple Goddess as well as three stages in a woman's life. Maybe in my crone wisdom years, I'll find a way to view my younger selves face to face, seeing my parents, grandparents, and all of our ancestors in their eyes, with deep awareness that we are all timeless beings with no birth and no death, always flowing to and from the ocean, and traveling together along the winding roads of the universe.
Along the route, I notice the humble country church that advertises "Free Clothes" for poor folks on its small marquee sign every year before Christmas and Easter. I cross the ancient concrete bridge over the New River, on the border between Bradford and Union counties. I see the rustic wooden A-frame house, nestled in the woods, that I used to covet in my younger years. The almost-stately red brick farmhouse, with its rooftop spire and surrounding rolling acerage catches my eye, reminding me of a Kentucky thoroughbred horse farm. I see the old Florida cracker house, with its peeling exterior paint and rusty tin roof, on the main drag in the little town of Brooker. I glance over at the replica of a green and yellow John Deere tractor in the fenced backyard of a day care center where children are playing. It makes me smile.
I think about how much my world has changed since I first began making this daily drive. I started traveling these roads before the internet, and before I learned yoga, watercolor painting, and how to grow bamboo. It was before I had ever owned a home, before I made some not-so-great decisions that I'd rather not recall, and before I discovered delights such as Lindor white truffles and Kendall Jackson chardonnay. It was before Maui, Cancun, and Montreal. It was before I met and married my beloved Jack. It was before I discovered, embraced, and later rejected the Unitarian Universalist faith. It was before I learned to practice meditation and before I lost my sister. It was before several fur children came along, spent their lives with me, and then left - Happy, Goldie, Blondie, Pixie, Lily, and Paco. It was before dental crowns, graying hair, achy joints, and melanoma. It was before Starbucks, cell phones, and hybrid cars.
When I began traveling these roads, my future seemed full of possibilities, vast and limitless. More than twenty years later, now that I am in my fifties, I realize now that my life will not go on forever, and I will someday become part of eternity and go where ever my grandmother, my mother, and my other post-incarnate loved ones have gone. There's a line in one of my favorite Goddess chants that goes "We all come from the Goddess, and to her we shall return, like drops of rain flowing to the ocean." I am a drop of water in the sea of life. I realize now that I am not separate from anything or anyone. I exist only as part of the whole, even though I have not felt that way for a large portion of my life. I have often felt like I am a space alien and I do not fit in or belong here. Feeling like an outsider has sometimes created painful difficulties and divides in my relationships and my work over the years.
In my mind's eye I see my younger self just beginning her career when she first started traveling these roads. She was about thirty, with a lot of ambition and an advanced college degree. She was newly-divorced, angry, and intense. My mature self wants to give her a hug. I want to enfold her gently in my arms and tell her that she is good and she is loved. I want to let her know that she belongs and she is not alone in this world. I want to assure my younger self that she will find the love of her life, that she will earn a good living, and that she will discover ways to make her life meaningful. I wish I could tell her that although there will be difficult times, she is strong enough to cope with anything that life may bring. I want to tell her to take it easy, breathe deeply, and trust the universe and the process of life. I see her as though I am watching an actor on a movie screen, or like an out-of-body experience where I am hovering somewhere in the atmosphere near her. I cannot make eye contact with her or see her face to face.
I hope that someday there will be an elder self, who has seen her career through to completion and no longer travels down any roads to work. I think my older self will see my young and middle-aged selves in her mind's eye and wish that she could give them both a hug and tell them that everything will turn out all right. Maiden, mother, and crone are the parts of the sacred Triple Goddess as well as three stages in a woman's life. Maybe in my crone wisdom years, I'll find a way to view my younger selves face to face, seeing my parents, grandparents, and all of our ancestors in their eyes, with deep awareness that we are all timeless beings with no birth and no death, always flowing to and from the ocean, and traveling together along the winding roads of the universe.
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