The comfort of Mary

Not having grown up Catholic, I'm not as attuned to Mary as I might be. But I remember a dear friend telling me that when her 16-year-old son committed suicide while vacationing with their family in Italy, she drew enormous comfort from all the Mary images that surrounded her as they struggled through their last few days in that country.

Tonight I am thinking of a line from the Prayers of the People that we say every Sunday at Grace: we pray "for all those who worry, and wait, and long for peace." And I think of Karen, Gregg and David, reliving this last week of Katie's life together a year after their loss. I think of Colleen, who was able to come out for a visit today for the first time this summer, and who faces another round of chemo next week.

I listen to my cat, crying unhappily because our other cat, Sophie, had an asthma attack this evening, and my husband had to take her to the emergency room. I watch my dog, waiting by the door for Chris and Sophie to return from the vet, and for my daughter to return from her day in Seattle. And I think of all those who wait; of all those who watch their loved ones' pain; of all those who long for the peace of relief, of closure; of all those whose prayers are still lifted up in hope.

And, looking through all the madonna images I collected on my own trips to Italy, I am drawn to this one, to Mary, Queen of Peace; the Mary who, knowing what she now knows, having lost the child she held so dear, comforts and shelters, who pulls the soothing cloak of darkness over all who lift their hearts in prayer and longing, that they may find rest.

As day fades into deepest night, and the vigil of memory begins, I realize it is the words of my favorite service that are playing in my head, that beautiful prayer from the Compline service in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer:

"Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love's sake. Amen."

Striving for perfection

Yesterday my daughter chose to spend her day off (from the camp where she works on Orcas Island) riding the ferry to Anacortes to meet me and one of her friends for a girls' day out.

So I rose early, picked up her friend, and drove north to meet the ferry. We spent the early part of the day at a discount mall, had a late lunch at a little Greek/Italian restaurant in Mount Vernon, and then spent the rest of the afternoon at the Mount Vernon Value Village, a charity-based second-hand store which has provided entertainment for me and the girls since we arrived in Seattle almost 20 years ago.

We had a blast, didn't spend a lot of money, bought some styrofoam wig heads for an as-yet-undefined future art project, bought goofy gifts for numerous friends, and enjoyed ourselves enormously. Ali's friend (I'll call her Haley) and I put Ali on the 6:50 ferry and began the long (hour and a half) drive home to the Edmonds ferry, and along the way we talked a lot about self-image.

And Haley, who is a tall, statuesque young woman with a vibrant personality, endless and spectacular legs, a great singing voice and stage presence, a lovely face, great hair, brains, passion and humor talked about her insecurities: her fat stomach (it isn't), her large nose (it fits her face beautifully and gives her character), her jealousy of my daughter's ability to wear bizarre clothes and pull it off.

And I, still in the throes of this play, find myself wishing I had Haley's powerful voice (mine is weak, which is particularly problematic when I am in a duet with a grade school principal whose voice can stop a third-grader on the far side of a gym). And I, looking at the photos of the play that are being loaded onto the group's website, mourn my appearance and wish I had Haley's slim figure, lovely legs and coltish grace.

This morning my friend Karen blogged about perfectionism. Clearly she is not alone in dealing with the perfectionist bug: Each of us, including Haley, is holding somewhere within us an image of what we SHOULD be, and each of us struggles with the voices in our heads that remind us that we don't measure up. Each of us, like the angel in the picture, fiddles with our clothes and appearance and secretly longs for that impractical and unattainable goal while failing to appreciate all the fine things we are and have.

The good news is that all three of us also understand that those voices are not necessarily speaking truth, and each of us, for a variety of reasons having to do largely with the difficult things we have encountered in our lives, have learned the folly of listening to those voices. There is another, deeper voice in each of us that breathes acceptance and love, that calls us to set aside these petty concerns, that inspires us to gratitude and service.

At the end of her blog, Karen concludes: "I am broken; I am not perfect. But perhaps I can be a safer person for myself and others, if I am more accepting of that fact, more humble, loving and open, and less perfect."

She's absolutely right. And her willingness to admit the struggle, to bare her own wrestling with the issue, and to speak openly of the unconditional divine Love that accepts and loves us as we are, inspires the rest of us to do the same. The more successfully we begin to overpower those perfectionist voices, and the better we are at loving and accepting ourselves, the more we can begin to create a safe space in which those around us may come to do the same.

Deep Water Joy

This morning I was cleaning out some old files and came across a promising image. I decided to play with it a while, shifting colors, adding layers, and this was the result.

What's fun about this is the combination: the blue brushes of a carwash, dragging across my windshield; grasses in a meadow, and a rock with cattails on the edge of a junkyard -- Nothing all that interesting to begin with.

Maybe it's a reminder of the immense creativity of God. Surely if I can transform three mundane images into something this deep and rich, God can "work through all things for good."

Train Wreck Riders

There are several bunkers on our little island, left over from World War II; this one sits in Blakely harbor, on a bit of land that divides the beach there from the saltwater lagoon behind it. It's covered in graffiti, some bits of which I've shown here before; the graffiti changes all the time as the kids explore their creativity on this wide open canvas.

There's a fruit tree growing up out of the cement inside the bunker, and this madrona curls around the southwest corner of the building, its graceful branches echoing the curls of the graffiti, though it's no longer clear which came first.

And I love this tiny little graffiti etched here, barely bigger than a madrona leaf: it has life and energy, and I feel -- as I always do -- a bit guilty photographing it; it's really someone else's art, not mine, that placed this little bit of charm in this odd little spot.

But today I feel I've been a bit of a train wreck rider myself. I'd planned to go to the San Juans to visit my daughter today, but when I woke I realized that the stomach flu that consumed my weekend hadn't quite left my system yet. This change in plans necessitated a number of different phone calls; the one to my daughter was particularly difficult as she had been counting on my visit.

But we've worked out an alternative -- assuming that two more days will restore my health more fully -- and, to her credit, she called back to set it up and apologized for being so distraught in the earlier call.

I'm still feeling rather dizzy, so I've been mostly laying low, watching old reruns of Monarch of the Glen, washing and ironing my costume, sewing back on the buttons that came off in the dryer. And it's rather lovely, actually, to step off the track for a bit, to lose myself in someone else's stories, to nap in the middle of the day and plan for an early bedtime.

And what felt, this morning, like a major train wreck, now seems like one of those accidents meant to happen, a chance for long conversations with good friends, a chance to spend more time with my other daughter, who is only here another week or two; a chance to pace myself more wisely, to listen to what my body is telling me, and slow down.

Maybe that's what train wreck riders do: they don't go anywhere, and find there's a lot of life to sing about right there on the tracks where they landed.

Seeking our shadows

From recent discussions with some of my actor friends, including Dan Niven, who is portraying Bottom in this picture, I have come to realize that many of us find it easier to portray characters who are less like ourselves, or, conversely, that the more different a character is from the actor who portrays it, the more successful the portrayal is likely to be.

Which means, I think, that from now on I will approach the roles I play with a conscious effort to seek out that aspect of the character which is most opposite my own personality. In thinking about this, I am reminded of an exercise I had to do a couple of years ago in a workshop given by the folks at Washington Courage and Renewal, a wonderful organization which helps people in the teaching profession.

The purpose of the exercise was to get us more comfortable with our shadows, and it went something like this:

1. List three positive qualities about yourself
2. List their opposites.
3. List three things you are trying to become.
4. List their opposites.
5. Look at the six opposites -- which are, essentially, your shadow self -- and find positive qualities about each of them.

I'm not quite certain where we were officially supposed to take all that -- it's been almost two years since I took this workshop -- but when I look at my notes I see, and remember, that this process was a great revelation for me: I learned that the aspects of my personality which most shame or embarrass me actually have value -- particularly in connecting me with the rest of humanity.

Which may explain why, when I am acting, finding the aspect of my character that is least like myself can make her so much more readily accessible -- and believable -- for my audience. I suspect it also makes it easier to PLAY the role: we get to tap into that unexpressed part of ourselves, which wells up in joyful response at the opportunity to be seen.

My reading this morning took me to a passage written by Ken Wilber about dealing with our shadows. He says:

"As you begin to explore your opposites, your shadow, your projections...you will start to see that most battles between you and other people are really battles between you and your projected opposites... with the shadow projected onto other people, we hate these people as we once hated the shadow...To take back your projections is simply to tear down a boundary, to include as yourself things you thought were foreign, to make room in yourself for an understanding and acceptance of all your various potentials."

Which, I think, explains why portraying our characters as opposites makes them so successful: we are tearing down our imagined internal boundaries between "us" and "other," and providing an opportunity for integration.

I'm thinking that might be part of the value of theater, not just for the actor but for the audience as well -- that it allows us to see that there might be something loveable in traits that would normally be distasteful to us.

But of course, it also explains why acting takes so much courage: to be really good at it, we have to walk into those places in our psyches that we find most difficult, and not only face them, but allow them to show through us to a larger audience -- which may often include the family and friends from whom we try hardest to mask those qualities.

PS: to read more of what Ken Wilber has to say about shadow (it's really interesting, and very accessibly written) follow this link:

http://www.kenwilber.com/editor/nbshadow.pdf

Good old buoys

In my reading about Christophany this morning, I am learning that in a world where individualism is a primary assumption, the things we encounter are either "me" or "not me;" we become like little castles, completely separate from one another.

And in such cases intimacy becomes, for one party or the other, a potential loss of identity. If there can only be me or not me, one party must be subsumed in the other, and the attempt to connect becomes more of an invasion than an engagement.

But the author then suggests another way of seeing; that we are all part of a net, all connected by the same threads but each a unique knot. I was immediately reminded of this image, taken many years ago when I lived in Friday Harbor.

This net was just dumped in a pile on one of the docks used by the fishing boats that anchored there. The way the threads were sort of greenish, and glinted in the sun, made me see that the buoys (which were actually yellow, white and orange) looked very much like easter eggs, so I used my (then very elementary) knowledge of PhotoShop to delicately add a bit of pink and lavender.

I don't know whether the author of Christophany will stay with his knots-in-a-net theory, or if he will pick that one apart as well and come up with some other analogy. But I'm thinking it would be more fun to be the buoys that keep the net of being afloat; each of us buoyant with life and love; each of us a gift and a surprise, appreciated and anticipated like the pleasures of an easter basket on a sunny spring morning; all of us working together for a common goal.

But then, I always was a dreamer!

Stealing time

It seems to me that the whole point of the industrial revolution was the development of "labor-saving devices."

At the factory level that meant that one machine could do the work of many laborers; on the home level it meant that time-consuming tasks like washing laundry and doing dishes could be done by a machine, freeing up the household labor for other, more important tasks.

So when did we cross over into the realm where those so-called labor-saving devices consumed more time than they freed up? This sign, at the Washington State Ferry Terminal in Seattle is advertising Wi-Fi: oh, goody; riding on the ferry, watching the waves roll by, sitting outside with your face to the sun and listening to the cry of the gulls, need no longer be a complete waste of time.

Now you can spend that time on your computer, checking email, surfing the internet, blogging, playing bridge or poker, shopping; all activities presumably having more value than just enjoying the ride, chatting with fellow travelers, meditating or napping.

Ah, but I am too critical. Perhaps it just means that those who are under considerable job stress have the option of reducing that stress; that those whose work days are relentlessly circumscribed by the challenge of commuting back and forth to a small island can leave home half an hour later and still begin to work, or leave work half an hour earlier and still continue to work, thus giving them more time at home with their families.

How quick we are to leap to conclusions like this, to assume -- which, as my daughter says, "makes an ass of U and Me." The fact is that we are really only capable of observing and understanding ourselves, and even that is the work of a lifetime. It is even more difficult to understand the motivations of others, but few of us make that effort; it is far easier to judge than to comprehend -- a human tendency that was probably initially designed as a protective device but which now contributes to that feeling of isolation that plagues so many of us.

As I watch communities under stress it seems clear that this tendency to judge other people's actions splits us apart at least as effectively as do the actions themselves. And yet the effort to take the time to listen and comprehend, to reach a compromise, to agree to "let bygones be bygones" -- the work of truth and reconciliation -- is regarded by much of society with contempt and suspicion, the time-wasting of liberal do-gooders.

So does that mean it is time that is the culprit; time that keeps us from being better neighbors, or better parents, or better friends; time that keeps us from doing a better job at whatever it is we are tackling in the moment; time that keeps us rushing from task to task, never quite giving anything the attention it deserves? Surely that is what this sign suggests.

But I rather suspect it is not time that is the problem but rather the choices we make on how to spend our time. And, interestingly enough, those choices we make in one moment influence, in turn, the choices that we make in the next. What I choose to watch or read influences my actions, which then have repercussions of their own... it's a cycle, one which I am often only able to break by keeping to-do lists to remind myself of my priorities, so that I don't drift too far away from the goals I set for myself.

But ultimately I find that the most effective way to break the cycle is to stop, once a day, to remove myself and re-evaluate. And, interestingly enough, when I stop and pay attention, time is no longer the enemy, or something that runs away with me, or a precious jewel to be stolen or hoarded. It becomes, for those few moments, absolutely infinite, limitless, totally freeing; a deep well of joy, love and insight from which to drink.

And, having done so, I am refreshed, and ready once again for the journey.