onehouse

Pause.

It's hot up here today and I have small throbbing in my temples from thinking about all the things I should be getting into order. I am also mulling what "exploring the contemplative life" now means to me. It used to have much more of a basis in christian traditions but that seems to be fading into the background in a way that is difficult to articulate. I have found that when a thing needs to be expressed, it comes in the proper time - perhaps through someone else's writing, an experience, or a conversation. I'll continue to wait for that time.

I've decided to listen, to really pay attention and to work on being mindful this summer. For a few days a week, I am looking after my Tiny Niece and it is an excellent opportunity to pay attention to very small things. I focus on a daily rhythm , on things located close to the ground - ants, tide pools, pebbles, and curious puppies - and things out the window - construction trucks, bikes, birds, and of course, more puppies. I have never noticed so many puppies in my life.

I have the advantage of not being a parent - someone who needs to get phone calls and shopping and errands done while looking after a child - so it can be a bit easier for me to focus. It's been a relief after too much time spent multi-tasking which is an illusion of efficiency that never became real.

My books are all in Calgary so I've been reading what is under my nose and to truly be mindful, I must take care of a few boxes of paper that followed me onto the island. Little by little I unbuild my nest instead of "petit a petit l'oiseau fait son nid". Maybe it's the same thing.

Things that happened.

 

        1.                                                      2.

      3.                                                      4.

Kind of tiny but a little too busy to fix it so it remains tiny.

Room with a view.

George Emerson: My father says that there is only one perfect view, that of the sky over our heads.

I'm staring out the window at Mount Douglas in my new home in Victoria, BC. I have 1100 square feet plus storage on the second floor of a Victorian style home built in the 1980's. The little Onehouse in Calgary was rather dim and down right dark in my office, something I didn't mind too much given my sensitive eyes and all day computer work. This place is filled with light and I leave the windows open 24/7 to the sounds of neighborhood and birds. I'll send some view pictures later.

The last few weeks has been a a good time for to suspend blogging - too many pieces of paper and mashed up memories. I threw away, gave away, and recycled bags and bags of things. I owe Long Pauses a post on which books stayed and which ones left but I'm on an old borrowed computer until my internet comes next week so in the meantime I'll leave you with God Texting the 10 commandments.

Sometimes I hear them...

Still here. Reading, thinking, centering, getting rid of things. Surprisingly this is the only poem that really stuck with me from all the poems emailed during American National Poetry Month.

sorrows
by Lucille Clifton

 

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful   who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls   clicking

their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching

as i whispered into my own
cupped hands   enough   not me again

but who can distinguish
one human voice

amid such choruses
of desire

How I believe in God: Roger Ebert

I am very fond of Roger Ebert's writing. Some folks may only know him as the thumbs up or thumbs down guy that used to give snippet reviews on television. This is not the whole story. Ebert has been a tireless promoter of film as an art form and has somehow managed to keep his admiration while being neck deep in media conglomerates that produce things with the words "dude" and "car" in the title.

This week Ebert posted an essay called How I believe in God, the story of his childhood in Catholic school to his present day beliefs.

I've spent hours and hours in churches all over the world. I sit in them not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe. I am aware of the generations there before me. The reassurance of tradition. At a midnight mass on Christmas Eve at the village church in Tring in the Chilterns, I felt unalloyed elevation. My favorite service is Evensong. I subscribe to Annie Dilliard, who says that in an unfamiliar area, she seeks out the church of the oldest established religion she can find, because it has the most experience in not bring struck by lightning.

I have no interest in megachurches with jocular millionaire pastors. I think what happens in them is socio-political, not spiritual. I believe the Prosperity Gospel tries to pass through the eye of the needle. I have no patience for churches that evangelize aggressively. No interest in being instructed in what I must do to be saved. I prefer vertical prayer, directed upward toward heaven, rather than horizontal prayer, directed sideways toward me. I believe a worthy church must grow through attraction, not promotion. I am wary of zealotry; even as a child I was suspicious of those who, as I sometimes heard, were "more Catholic than the Pope." If we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must regard their beliefs with the same respect that our own deserve.

The comments on the essay are good to. There are a few folks who feel they have to ascribe labels and sermons and bring out pet peeves but for the most part  many of the readers weigh in thoughtfully with Ebert giving short responses.

Tradition (repost)

It's almost time to call my mom and say in my very poor Romanian:

Cristos a inviat!(Christ is risen.)

To which she will answer:

Adevarat a inviat! (He is risen indeed.)

Lent 8: Leaving Buildings

and finding others:

eyebrows, rainbows
these doorways and passages

the arcades
under which
we always

wait
for each other

Ulrikka S. Gernes & Linda Orloff
Amnesia
Brondum 1995

Lent 7: Before words

“We began before words, and we will end beyond them. It sometimes seems to me that our days are poisoned with too many words. Words said and not meant. Words said and meant. Words divorced from feeling. Wounding words. Words that conceal. Words that reduce. Dead words. If only words were a kind of fluid that collects in the ears, if only they turned into the visible chemical equivalent of their true value, an acid, or something curative – then we might be more careful. Words do collect in us anyway. They collect in the blood, in the soul, and either transform or poison people’s lives. Bitter or thoughtless words poured into the ears of the young have blighted many lives in advance. We all know people whose unhappy lives twist on a set of words uttered to them on a certain unforgotten day at school, in childhood, or at university.

 

We seem to think that words aren’t things. A bump on the head may pass away, but a cutting remark grows with the mind. But then it is possible that we know all too well the awesome power of words – which is why we use them with such deadly and accurate cruelty.

 

We are all wounded inside in some way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from one another. Healing in words, and healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures. Like friendship, which someone described as the shortest distance between two people.

 

Yes, the highest things are beyond words.”

Ben Okri

Lent 6: Performance Art

A few weeks ago I started to read Acedia and Me by Kathleen Norris. I had to read in a hurry as there was a wait list for it at the library, an encouraging sign in what is one of North America's busiest library systems.

I think books come to you at a moment in time. They can wait on the shelf for a few years and be right for you one month but maybe not in another.

It's not the moment for Acedia and Me. I think I need to be in a more settled place, fewer boxes around the ears and a couple of decades of belongings and business sorted into piles. I did appreciate an illustration that she uses at the beginning of the book. 

One of the best stories I know is found in The Institutes by John Cassian, a monk who was born in the fourth century. Cassian speaks of Abba Paul, who, like many desert monks, wove baskets as he prayed, and subsisted on food from his garden and a few date palms. Unlike monks who lived closer to cities and could sell their baskets there, Paul:

 "could not do any other work to support himself because his dwelling was separated from towns and from habitable land by a seven days' journey through the desert . . . and transportation cost more than he could get for the work that he did. He used to collect palm fronds and always exact a day's labor from himself just as if this were his means of support. And when his cave was filled with a whole year's work, he would burn up what he had so carefully toiled over each year.

 Does Abba Paul epitomize the dutiful monk who recognizes that the prayers he recites during his labors are of more value than anything he can make? Or is he the patron saint of performance art, methodically destroying the baskets he has woven to demonstrate that the process of making them is more important than the product? Paul's daily labors may have been designed to foster humility, but the annual burning had another, greater purpose. Cassian notes that it aided the monk in "purging his heart, firming his thoughts, persevering in his cell, and conquering and driving out acedia."

I don't know about driving out acedia (lack of care) but I do like the idea of taking a match to my labors every once in a while. It's been hard for me to take a look at some life experiences and think "What a complete waste of time." Others try to convince me that these things have shaped me. They may help with making choices in the future. They may be compost for further growth. This could be true for some things but it does help to note that other things (and most notably religious things) had absolutely no value except to take up large swaths of time.

This doesn't make me feel bad. In fact, it helps me not take my life so seriously. Experiences don't always have to count or be tallied up in some kind of revenues and expenses worksheet for a "better me". I don't need to live like an accountant. I can walk softly and carry a big box of matches. 

Lent 5: Skywriting.

"If I wanted to make a theological statement I would have hired a skywriter."

-Annie Dillard

I thought I might blog more about things that are now different along this road. The view from here is quite lovely. There's still snow on the mountains. This tree stump is rather comfortable and the lunch is very good today. But then I decided that Annie has the right idea even if she said it over 30 years ago. So I'll just keep moving along and highlighting the view from time to time.

Lent 4: Leap

A one ton boulder

falls from the mountain

and lands on the highway

near Horseshoe Bay.

For no reason.

It was its day to fall-

to take the plunge

and land with a crash

disturbing the sleep

of highway workers and

police officers and the 

dreaming state of drivers

who slammed on their 

brakes with an "Oh shit!"

and then, "Jesus..."

No seismic activity 

to shift rock from

cliff to ground

like so many pounds 

lost in the shimmy and sweat 

of a morning jog.

Just a leap

and a new place to land.

Lent 3: Repost: Obsession

From March 2006, so long time coming.

To be too conscious is an illness. A real thorough going illness.
-Dostoevsky

You can't heal your own sick mind with your own sick mind.
- Anne Lamott

I was joking with a friend last night about giving up God for Lent this year. Sort of joking. There are times when I just let go of all my little rituals to make sure that there is still a river beneath me and I am not in a leaky boat of my own making. I used to try really hard at religion and life and work, nearly squeezing the life's blood out of my own self and, in turn, those around me. I have seen in myself and in others that what we so quickly describe as meaning and passion can turn out to be obsession and sickness.

Detachment cures much of this. Not apathy. Not lack of care. But healthy detachment even to those things we think are good or we swear are bringing us so much joy and happiness. I am reminded of Cynthia's Bourgeault's reflection on the Psalms:

How does one become perfect (which in the language of Christ's time meant whole, truly and fully alive)? Not by theologies or theories, but by an actual spiritual practice that teaches you "how to get from here to there." This is the missing link people are really hungering for, and it's the wisdom the Benedictine tradition still has to offer. Embedded in the time-honored Benedictine motto of Ora et Labora--"prayer and work"--is a balanced path to conscious selfhood...

A conscious selfhood that is whole, true and fully alive. When I am overly conscious and overly conscientious (especially about my place in the world "Is this about me? No. Well then I've lost interest." Seinfeld) I become fragmented, false, and sick. So sometimes it is good just to give up for a little while, float along and enjoy the view. If God disappears because my tiny little mind stopped paying attention, well, it would be good to face that now rather than later.

let all go-the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things-let all go
dear
       so comes love

ee cummings

Lent 2: Fear Not.

And so Lent seems as good a time as any to talk about losing my religion. I won't be going into great detail here as some is just for me and some is just for a few good friends. I lost my attachment to North American evangelicalism long ago but this next step is a little farther away from many of the things I grew up with and now have grown out of. Of course, you risk people calling you names which is curious to me. Why should leaving something be personally offensive to folks? I am not sure. It seems like so many have decided that this about their personal identity that if someone leaves certain things behind they decide to take personal offense. It becomes incredibly insulting to them as if their whole life and their whole choices are under indictment rather than someone saying, "I have chosen these ways over here and I wish you well with your life over there." 

My friends and I often talk about how we feel so much better about what we have left. We watch the "oh you are leaving this and this is all-of-the-world" sorrow in some folk's eyes but we feel that sorrow in reverse. You should see this big wide world that is beyond the eye of the needle. Enjoy. Explore. Fear not. 

2009: Ashes to Alvin

I read this article every Ash Wednesday.

Ashes to Alvin by Anne Lamott

My father's ashes have poured through my fingers like sand. So have my friend Pammy's. I poured their ashes off sailboats out on San Francisco Bay. I poured my father's into the water near Angel Island, late at night, but I was very drunk. And I tossed a handful of Pammy's into the water way out past the Golden Gate Bridge during the day, with her husband and family, when I had been sober several years. And the second time I was able to see, because it was daytime and I was sober, the deeply contradictory nature of ashes, that they are both so heavy and so light.

They're impossible to let go of entirely. They stick to things, to your fingers, your sweater. I licked my friend's ashes off my hand, to taste them, to taste her, to taste what was left after all that was clean and alive had been consumed, burnt away. They tasted metallic, and they blew every which way. We tried to strew them off the side of a boat, romantically, with seals barking from the rocks on shore, under a true blue sky, but they would not cooperate. They rarely will. It's frustrating if you are hoping to have a happy ending, or at least a little closure, a movie moment when you toss them into the air and they flutter and disperse. But they don't. They cling, they haunt. They get in your hair, in your eyes, in your clothes.

Pocket sized.

Instructions

Give up the world; give up self; finally, give up God.
Find god in rhododendrons and rocks,
passers-by, your cat.
Pare your beliefs, your absolutes.
Make it simple; make it clean.
No carry-on luggage allowed.
Examine all you have
with a loving and critical eye, then
throw away some more.
Repeat. Repeat.
Keep this and only this:
what your heart beats loudly for
what feels heavy and full in your gut.
There will only be one or two
things you will keep,
and they will fit lightly
in your pocket.

-Sheri Hostetler, A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry

(Thanks to A.)

So yes...

I am still here and so glad that I didn't attempt to do the last few months online. There can be a temptation to think that any thought needs to be a public thought or a written one or even an overly processed one but sometimes when you are overly analytical you end up with the equivalent of Velveeta cheese - a dyed orange lump of something that should be good food but really is another entity altogether. I thought I might restart Onehouse on February 1 but didn't and so I reboot now, in the middle of changing locations both physically - a move off the prairies to the west coast - and mentally - a more direct change from the influences of my faith background to many somethings more attuned to listening and paying attention.

There will be a bit, only a tiny bit, of this later. I sent this to a friend the other day. I liked it as sometimes we think we know many things about one another from these few electric bits on the page. We know in part...

February 5, 1860

Coming home last night in the twilight, I recognized a neighbor a dozen rods off by his walk or carriage, though it was so dark that I could not see a single feature of his person. Indeed, his person was all covered up excepting his face and hands, and I could not possibly have distinguished these at this distance from another man's. Nor was it owing to any peculiarity in his dress, for I should have known him though he had had on a perfectly new suit. It was because the man within the clothes moved them in a peculiar manner that I knew him thus at once at a distance and in the twilight. He made a certain figure in any clothes he might wear, and moved in it in a peculiar manner. Indeed, we have a very intimate knowledge of one another; we see through thick and thin; spirit meets spirit. A man hangs out innumerable signs by which we may know him.

From Thoreau's Journal. This blog is good for your daily bit of Thoreau.

January 5: 100 Pushups begins.

Ned Flanders: Hi-didilyho, shookin-boots!
Homer: Aaah! Flanders?!? That suit's a little revealing isn't it?
Ned Flanders: Well, it allows for maximum mobility, feels like I'm wearing nothing at all!
Homer: Daah! Quit it! Must wash eyes! Stupid sexy Flanders!

There's a bunch of folks on twitter who have decided to start the 100 Pushups challenge.

Everyone is at different levels. Some have done this before and are doing it again. Some are modifying the regime and joining in the schedule anyway.

As someone with a chronic pain condition, I am supposed to avoid high impact exercise and stick with things like Tai Chi, yoga, and walking. But I find that the benefits of light weights and things like pushups make a huge difference to battling the many mental lows that can come with chronic pain conditions. I know others will be doing it for their own reasons. 

 The fun of it will be talking about it on twitter together, the pain of it will be the actual pushups, and the beauty of it will be clearer heads, sculpted biceps, and more power behind the snow shovel. And there should be uniforms. We like the idea of uniforms. (Maybe not skin tight Flander-y uniforms...)

So if you are so inclined, join us or follow us on twitter. This is the list of folks and their general geographic locations so far. And rather than use hashtags (this annoying little thing - # - before a word), I think we'll just use "100 Pushups" or "100PU" in our twitters and we can do a Twitter search to see who is on board.

This is the list of folks and their general geographic locations so far. If you email/direct message/leave something in the comments, I'll update the list. And if you're not on twitter, email me and we'll keep you updated on the fun right here.   Whoo and hoo!

Elle_Ann - Vancouver, BC

Glowsheep - Calgary, AB

JenLemen - Silver Spring, Maryland

MagpieGirl - Copenhagen, Denmark via Seattle

msla - Vancouver, BC (the "s" stands for super...)

Onehouse - Calgary, AB

Patl - North Bend, WA

WendyCooper - Saskatoon, SK

New Year's Day: Following circles

Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the Earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our teepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children. Black Elk, "Black Elk Speaks"

New Year's Eve: This floating world

Year’s end, all corners of this floating world, swept. - Basho

Let it go.

Someone posted a poem that reminded me of this and so I re-post:

let it go-the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise-let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go-the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers-you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go-the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things-let all go
dear
so comes love

ee cummings