One of my favorite poems:
Something is there that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbours.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something is there that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbours.’
– Robert Frost
Coming from a non-liturgical religious upbringing, I didn’t even know about lent until well into my adult years. As my whole life was lived in self sacrifice, I didn’t feel the need to dedicate one particular season to it, and once I started to heal from this self-flagellating outlook, I could not really practice sacrifice in any sort of healthy, spiritually beneficial way. This is the first year I chose to give lent a whirl, looking for the kind of focus that would be a meaningful blessing to my soul. For lent I decided to give up hurry and haste.
SLOW DOWN!
Driving was my first focus. I have stopped trying to make yellow lights, I leave earlier for work, and I look for things along the road I have missed in the past in my rush to get somewhere… to actually find pleasure in the trip itself. I have started to work on tasks at a more deliberate, even slow, pace. I have given myself the right to accomplish things on a calmer schedule, or even to leave them undone… to walk thoughtfully, absorbing the moment rather than focusing on the goal, destination, or end product. It requires a good deal of trust to depend less on myself, my efforts, and allow God to cover for me. Giving myself permission to rest is a vital spiritual exercise, one of the oldest life principles in the book, the intentional counterpart to creative work (as the Genesis story of beginnings recounts). My guess is that work is neither creative nor blessed (to ourselves as well as others) if it does not arise from a rested heart. Life isn’t waiting for me at the destination. Life is what happens while getting there.
This morning NPR interviewed a man with catalepsy, a cousin of narcolepsy. During REM sleep, our bodies release a certain chemical which tells all our muscles to relax (so we don’t literally act out our dreams). Unfortunately for a few folks, this chemical is released while they are awake, causing all their muscles to let go and thus paralyzing them. The release mechanism for this chemical is the person’s emotional response, and for the man on NPR (Walter?), it was especially triggered by his pleasurable emotions: excitement, happiness, love. 
You can imagine the impact this would make on relationships, especially family relationships. With his wife, think of not only sex, but kissing, holding hands, talking about the children… engaging in any emotional connection. Walter described collapsing at a grandchild’s birthday party and on phonecalls with his children. He spent the whole time at his daughter’s wedding propped up like a bag of potatoes against the wall. Not just happy events themselves, but simply looking at photos of happy events can paralyze him. There is no cure, but he takes a medication which slows the attacks, so it now comes on at a pace which he can recognize and respond to.
On the radio he spoke slowly and with no inflection in his voice, trying to speak of emotional things while blocking out the natural emotions. His speech became slower, with more pauses, he remarked that his eyelids were feeling heavy, and then the NPR interviewer told the audience that Walter had to go lie down because he was slipping into paralysis. The show host went on to describe how Walter could only function in life by avoiding happy occasions, turning himself more and more into an unemotional machine. For Walter, happiness is not a good thing nor is connecting with others emotionally. Such a heavy burden to bear through life.
My struggles in life are much smaller than his, but his experiences had an echo in my own. Those things that once gave me pleasure in the first half of my life–whether great or moderate, exciting or fulfilling–are beyond my reach now. I am always tired, so tired that doing something enjoyable feels like a burden rather than blessing. When I have emotional energy I get great pleasure in so many things–reading, writing, conversing, celebrating, creating. Those are mostly a dim memory now, and I only eke out small, brief pleasures. The more taxed I am, the less ability I have to experience the good.
For the last few weeks, my heart is starting to recover from its latest downspike. The telltale sign of my recovery is that imagining the joys of life feels good rather than painful. Merely the thought of blogging, for instance, has been lead to my heart, but imagining it these days feels more like a little red balloon… even if I still have little energy for actually doing it.
As we have been struggling financially for a while, I decided to save money this winter by installing a wood burning stove in our basement. I found a 55 gallon barrel, scavenged cinder blocks and ductwork from ditches and dumpsites, and with a $50 kit converted the barrel into a stove. I mortared the blocks together with clay from my yard and ran the ducts into our heating system. It is utilitarian, stuck in our basement with our washer/dryer, fusebox, unfinished ceiling and walls, and storage units, so I let it be an uncouth affair. It has served us well with free wood which is always available in these forested hills.
Nature's Ballet
As I build each fire and stoke it through the day, I have gradually spent more and more time just watching the flames. In my boyhood, the hearth was a spot of peace and calm. It was simply for our pleasure, so we lit it only when we had leisure time and a desire to sit in quietness. Childhood emotional memories are deep rooted, and I find that sitting by the fire now is healing, soothing. At first I sat leaning against a paving stone on the cement floor, but I eventually dragged a recliner into this storage room, and here I sit, listening to the steaming, popping, and crackling and watching the orange dancing glow, art in motion.
I’d like to ask my readers, what was peaceful and calming for you as a child? Would you share it with us?
About 10 years ago my oldest sister Mardi gave me a peace plant from her home. For the first couple of years it had several blooms, but with my haphazard watering and giving it sunlight, it soon stopped blossoming. When it drooped, I would water it… if I were around and noticed. I think it has more roots than dirt since I have never repotted it, not wanting it to get bigger. A less hardy plant would have just given up (as many of mine have!), but this one persevered. It put out nice green leaves, usually with brown shriveled tips from over-watering or under-watering (I still can’t tell the difference).
After 8 long years of barrenness!
This winter, Kimberly brought home an even more pathetic small peace plant. She had left it in the care of a colleague while she was out of town, and he had forgotten to water it. The leaves were mostly curled brown and crumbling to the touch. We cut off all the dead leaves which made it look less scorched, but more pathetic, and started to water it. And here in the middle of winter and struggle, we have been delighted with both plants deciding to bloom! The flower on my plant lasted a whole month before I burnt it with incorrect watering of some sort. Kimberly’s flower is just starting.
On good days, I think of it as a parable of our lives, a promise of what is to come, a hoped for sweetness and beauty from a long gestation of suffering and pain. I wish for you, friends, a glimpse of this beauty which is developing in you as well.
first glimmer of life and beauty
This is the last post of a defunct blog called “Rising to Grace” by Aditi:
Tomorrow I Plan to Make Better Mistakes
When I started this blog almost two years ago in the orange –amber days of fall, I didn’t really have an agenda – all I had was words. And I had this sense – of looking, searching – of trying to find grace. So for those of you who’ve wondered what the title is all about – this is it. Most literally, it is a biblical term that means divine love and protection… but for me it is that place where “everything’s ok.” We live in a world that is fraught with disillusionment, heartbreak, and pain, and through it all, grace knows that no matter what – it’s ok. Typically, we humans tend to fall from grace because of our stupidity and silliness, but I believe that through all our mistakes and failures – we actually find it. As we go through life and stumble and fall, we rise to grace.
“Grace is that force that infuses our lives, that keeps letting us off the hook. It is unearned and gratuitous love; the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you; grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there. “
These aren’t my words but something that I read in this book – Plan B… “Everything feels crazy,” writes Lamott, adding, “But on small patches of earth all over, I can see just as much messy grace as ever…’It meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.’”
The thing is that in life things don’t always work out the way you plan. But there’s grace. Grace that lets us know that even if things aren’t working exactly according to plan – it will still be OK. Because if Plan A isn’t working out, there is a Plan B. And Plan B doesn’t really require that much planning – all it asks is that we just show up. That we make ourselves get up in the morning and breathe.
So that’s what I am going to do. Breathe. There’s been so much of grace in my life. I had been looking for it – only to find that I had it all along.
And that’s why I feel it’s time. And even though like the characters in my stories, I am still looking and searching – I have a feeling that we all will be ok.
I have not visited my own site since I last posted. When I sink too far down, I just work each day on breathing. Sickness of soul has many comparisons with physical illness, and in both cases healing requires rest, the kind of rest and as much of it as a soul and body need. Most of my life I put my body and soul on strict rations, telling them what they needed and giving only that. I now realize my body and soul are a good bit smarter than my brain in knowing what they lack. I now see my brain is called to support those needs and not contradict and fight them. What I need, I need. There is no shame in needing.
THE TOUCH OF GENTLE HANDS
It is true that being “needy” is considered socially ugly in America. Some of this springs from a reaction to manipulators, folks who take advantage of others’ sympathy–and as a healthy boundary this caution may be good–but I suspect much of it springs from a sense of prideful independence… at least I know how powerfully this has worked in my life. And the natural partner to pride is shame (recognized or not), so I have also been ashamed for my need of others, as well as fearful of their resentment in helping me. I have discovered that the more I try to deny my needs, the more I close off grace from my life. Openly acknowledged need is the entry point for grace, though such vulnerability must be exercised with wisdom since letting down the defenses not only allows for more personal healing and deepened relationship, but may also open the way for much harsher wounding, depending on the response of the one we trust. I thank God often for my trustworthy wife.
Kimberly and I (and Mazie, our sweet dog) were able to spend a week at the beach between Christmas and New Year’s thanks to a very cheap hotel and a generous Christmas present from Berly’s dad. The weather was perfect and it was a wonderful time to relax. There was a delightful (and free) art museum in town, and when we visited I saw this inspiring drawing by Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy.
I feel so very tired, weary of life, confused about how to respond in a healthy, soul-affirming way. I’ve tried ineffectively to look for the root of my current depression so that I could apply grace to the wound, but it eludes me. It seems that all I can do is learn to accept my condition with patience.
DROWNING IN EXCESS
We pray for those among us, and in the world around us, who are burdened not by too little but by too much:
Those who have so much power that they have grown indifferent to the rights and claims of others, and are fast becoming what they do not wish to be;
Those who have so much health that they cannot understand the sick or reckon adequately with their own mortality;
Those who have so much wealth that they prize possessions more than people, and worry into the night about losing what they have;
Those who have so much knowledge that they have grown proud and self-sufficient and lost the common touch;
Those who have so much virtue that they cannot see their sins or appreciate thy grace;
Those who have so much leisure that they move like driftwood on the surface of existence, lacking any cause greater than themselves.
–Ernest T Campbell
My apple trees will never get across
Janathan Grace Reflections 