Is this it?

End of pregnancy. So much waiting.

Is it time? Is it not?

Big enough to bump into things with the belly.

How much longer? When are you due?

Cramping on and off. Discharge. Nesting.

How big is that baby anyway? What does your midwife think?

Well…we don’t really have a midwife here. Actually, we are on a road trip.

A road trip?! When your baby is due? Are you crazy?!

Crazy. Yes. This whole pregnancy has been a little that way.

My husband had to do a trip and I wanted to come along. Actually wanted isn’t quite it. I got tired of the gossip and the questions back home.

So we started out. On the donkey. At least he didn’t have a breakdown. I might have had a couple, but I swore Joe to secrecy.

Traffic was a mess. And I had to stop and pee every little bit. It was slow going for sure.

Don’t get me wrong. There were moments of sweetness. The stars for one. Seriously! This one was up there just for me I think.

I really thought the baby was coming at the last rest stop. The sign said you can’t stay more than 8 hours, but at that point I could have been good with a barn.

Which is sort of funny, looking back. After we did the government forms in triplicate, which was the point, you guessed it. Nothing but “no vacancy” signs.

I was starting to get that Crazy of pregnancy, I am now going to tip over the edge feeling.

I have to get off this beast! I would rock a little, then stop and away. At that point, I lost all sense of time.

At the height of the surge, I would do a little squat. Joe was getting nervous. He would try to talk to me, just as things got intense. I waved him away.

Finally, he walked off, probably looking for the Midwives. He came back, palpably relieved. “Come on Mar…”

We followed a path barely visible by starlight. A rough shed was around back, dry and warm. It smelled like, well…

I was just grateful. I moaned and swayed, an ageless singsong chant without words. I’ll never forget this cow looking at me with her big eyes.

Then the song changed. A lower, open vowel, with a grunt at the peak. The barn cat circled nearer.

Joe locked eyes with me, dancing with me in slow figure eights. There was so much pressure, but a bit of a longer break between now.

And then. It felt like the power of my mother and my grandmother guided me into a squat. I could feel a deep sense of “yes”. There was no going back.

I felt down there, and something warm and wet and “other” met my fingers. My eyes came open, and I saw tears in Joe’s eyes.

And then, with a primal roar, I surrendered. It wasn’t a poetic “be it done to me as you say”. It was raw.

But time stood still. I was outside of time. It felt like, looking back, that the veil between what is seen and what shimmers just beyond got really thin.

I pulled the baby up to my chest, crying and laughing all at the same time. “Oh baby, baby, baby. I thought you would never come!”

I nuzzled the conehead, smelling the musty sweetness. Joe wrapped me and the baby in long cloths.

Finally we looked. It’s a boy! The name was chosen before I even knew I was pregnant. “Oh, Jesus. You are finally here!” He looked up at me with those old soul eyes.

The reverie was broken with another surge. I came up into a squat again, and Joseph grabbed a milking bucket from the stall next door.

The placenta slid in, followed by a trickle, the cord still attached to the baby.

I leaned back, utterly done. I felt so much love coursing through me. My son was nuzzling now, crawling up my belly as if he knew just what to do.

I looked down, watching him nurse. Joseph curled up behind me, whispering in my ear as we gazed at this creature.

So much wondering. What would the days ahead bring? I felt so inadequate to parent this wise soul. I know Joe did too.

But for tonight, it was enough. Enough to just be.

Welcome, baby. Welcome. Welcome to this world.

The Lenten Writings: when they are not…

Whatever happens, says our model, happens to God also and not just to us. The body of God, shaped by the Christic paradigm, is also the cosmic Christ—the loving, compassionate God on the side of those who suffer, especially the vulnerable and excluded. All are included, not only in their liberation and healing, but also in their defeat and despair. Even as the life-giving breath extends to all bodies in the universe, so also does the liberating, healing, andsuffering love of God. The resurrected Christ is the cosmic Christ, the Christ freed from the body of Jesus of Nazareth, to be present in and to all bodies. The New Testament appearance stories attest to the continuing empowerment of the Christic paradigm in the world: the liberating, inclusive love of God for all is alive in and through the entire cosmos. We are not alone as we attempt to practice the ministry of inclusion, for the power of God is incarnate throughout the world, erupting now and then where the vulnerable are liberated and healed, as well as where they are not. (Theologian Sally McFague, quoted in Daily Meditation email from Richard Rohr 03/07/2019)

These words are radical, some would say they border on heresy. I would challenge you to not place that label too quickly; but rather, to dare to take the words into your place of knowing.

The very presence of God, of the Divine, is the essence of faith. It is what makes a person truly human. It is as I look into the eyes of another and DARE to see Another that I understand my own humanity.

It is in that bold gaze that I can see another as my brother. It is in that gaze that I can truly see myself. I see my gay brother as me, I see my bi friend as me, I see my trans friend as me. I see my hermana de Guatemala as me, I see my hermano de Mexico as me, I see the man on the corner with battered sign “I will not steal” as me.

It is not because I am holy that I can say this. (FYI- I am not). It is because I know deeply my own story. And in that story there is goodness and harm, courage and violence. As I do the hard work of entering my own narrative, I have the right to hold space to listen to a midnight recounting of childhood trauma. It is as I sit with suffering that does not end, I have the right to sit with a person in labor and say “Yes, you can do this.”

In this place, understanding that the very power of God is incarnate, there are no borders, no barriers. There is only the very essence of the Divine.

And it is present…

When there is healing and hope…

And

When

There

Is

Not.

The Lenten Writings: the beginning of the end

Christ has no body now, but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ looks compassion into the world.
Yours are the feet
with which Christ walks to do good.
Yours are the hands
with which Christ blesses the world.

Theresa of Avila

Lent.

The beginning of the end.

The end of the beginning.

As you enter the Lenten season, would you journey with me?

Today I turned off facebook, printed some Praying in Color Lenten templates, and prepared my heart.

Lent is new too me, a recovering Baptist. I was introduced in the Mystic Activists. I was first marked by ashes from a prison parish priest. It was a singular experience.

Except for the obvious dunking ritual, Baptist’s shy away from externals. There is goodness in that; as faith is a very personal deal. How I encounter the Mystery may take a lifetime to unfold, and may not look very churchy.

But I think humans need ritual. It grounds me, it reminds me of the rhythms of the year, and it gives me pause. In this busy space called life, it is good to pause.

Enter Ash Wednesday.

Small mercy

“The Lord repented, not because the people are innocent, but because they are small. His judgment is never final. There is always a dimension of God’s pervading affection where compassion prevails over justice, where mercy is a perpetual possibility.”

 

Abraham Heschel

The Prophets

In the middle of the grey, cold rainy weekend the sun broke through. The cedar tree in our little yard sparkled in the light. The drops glistened from branches in the sudden brightness.

My daughter, with her artist’s eye, and her deep instincts, went straight outside. She cane back in with images that were breathtaking. The beauty stopped me, and I found myself taking long, deep breaths.

It wasn’t just the angle of the shot that called o my spirit. It was the noticing. I could have kept going through the tasks of the weekend, briefly glancing up as the light changed. But she called me to stop, to look, to really see.

Mercy is a perpetual possibility…

epiphany: A trail of crumbs

Waiting

“I have fallen in love many a time in the fall of the year. I mean those times when body and soul are revived and, in the keen clear air of autumn after a hot exhausting summer, I feel new strength to see, to ‘know’ clearly, and to love, to look upon my neighbor and to love. Almost to be taken out of myself. I do not mean being in love with a particular person. I mean that quality of in-loveness that may brush like a sweet fragrance, a sound faintly heard, a sense of the beauty of one particular human being, or even one aspect of life. It may be an intuition of immortality, of the glory of God, of his presence in the world. But it is almost impossible to put into words. The point is that it is general rather than particular, though it may come as a reminder, this flash of understanding, of recognition, with the reading of a particular book, or hearing some strain of music.

“It is tied up in some way also with the sense of hope, and an understanding of hope. How can we live without it, as a supernatural virtue, ‘hoping against hope,’ during this dark period of violence and suffering through the world?

“I am bold in trying to express the inexpressible, to write of happiness, even of joy that comes, regardless of age, color, or condition of servitude, to us all. Regardless of failures, regardless even of the sufferings of others. If we did not have this hope, this joy, this love, how could we help others? How could we have the strength to hold on to them, to hold them up when they are drowning in sorrow, suffocating in blackness, almost letting go of life, life which we know with a sure knowledge is precious, which is something to hold to, be grateful for, to reverence.” The Reckless Way of Love, Notes on Following Jesus, by Dorothy Day.

I am in a season of waiting. Midwifery Grad school application out of my hands, last home midwifery birth logged in the national data base, phone off at night. I watch the world around me settle in for the long wait. The rains chase the last leaves down. The fog whispers of mysteries unknown. It is out of my hands.

My hands…these hands which doctor after doctor said would never catch a baby again. I told one specialist that my job is to hold the space, it is the mama’s to receive their babies. They gave me all they knew, these specialists. Words, so many words, statistics, prognosis, bathed in fear. Finally, I knew it was time. Time to settle into the work of healing. Healers are a rare breed. They speak in terms of listening, of knowing, of trusting. These are not the “faith” healers of my childhood, quick to lay on hands, with long and pious prayers. Those asked about private sins, insinuating that rheumatoid in a child must come from something more. They closed their eyes to the sin right in front of them, never daring to look into the eyes of that child, to wonder…

And so I sought out healers that listen for the old ways. They place needles and ask for wisdom. They extend their hands, for light and love to flow into tissues that have lost their message center. Three years now, nearly, since that driver ran a stop sign and sent us airborne; since the doctor said, “you will never practice midwifery again…”

Today, I wait again. The application packet out of my hands into liminal space, the space between. We are here in the old forest, and my senses awaken to memories, those of a child whose nights were full of terror, in the pacific northwest. The ancient trees hold their knowing, just as they did so many years ago.

There are others who wait tonight, in makeshift tents of plastic tarps. Their journey full of trauma, both in the leaving and the coming, and the in between. No country willing to receive them. Even a caravan could not magnify their voices enough to stir compassion. It is out of their hands.

Advent is a season of waiting. It is a season thick with silence. Four hundred years of it, broken only by one voice to one woman. And now she is waiting, enlarged by the secret. Eyes look, voices whisper, judgments pass from ear to ear. Even the government seems to be against her. Who wants to join a caravan on a long road, full of dust and bandits? Especially when a baby is coming.

Yes.

A baby is coming.

And in the middle of that dark night, hope stirred.

Perhaps it still stirs, even today.

The Advent Writings: Christmas night

All the stories start with Christmas morning. But what about the night?

I am a birthkeeper. I enter those spaces in the hours before and after birth, with reverence.

I know to keep the lights dim. A baby is new to the world. Eyes used to womb light, rosy in tone, are unsure about bright lights. The time is now, these hours of imprinting on mom’s face and dad’s voice.

Voices are low and singsong. Baby’s ears have heard these familiar sounds through the abdominal cushion. The startle reflex comes too easily, limbs out, eyes wide, head arched. We fold the arms and legs into the familiar, swaddling the wee one.

Smells are important too. The salty smell of amniotic fluid lingers on the skin. Vernix rubbed into soften, the new baby smell that Johnson & Johnson can never replicate. The baby follows the unique smell of the mother, able to pick out that one mom from a roomful by 24 hours of age.

Smells draw, and instincts follow, leading the baby to latch onto the breast. The golden milk, packed with goodness, drips out bit by bit. All this baby needs is here, unique for the gestational age, the perfect balance of protein and fat laced with sweetness.

And touch. Not the myriad of painful ways a baby encounters the world today. But gentle touch, reassuring this new one that the world is a safe space.

Was it like this, that holy night more than two millennia ago? One undisturbed birth, interrupted only by some sheep herders accustomed to dark and lonely quiet spaces.

It matters how we are born. It matters how we welcome new humans. And this more than a baby, welcomed as a caravan stopped for a government rule, deserved no less.

Oh Holy Night after.

The Advent Writings: holy ground

…tonight I took off my shoes….

Sitting by the tree, I was studying herbs. Latin names swirled with the lights as I reached into my memory bank for their common English counterparts. Spanish names danced through, adding color and spice. Classes, and mechanisms of action, layered with properties and contraindications. The course goes back to old Materia Medica material, looking at ancient patterns of use. This rivaled my long ago nursing school pharmacology class! Where in the world did the notion of herbalists as some sort of back woods witch come from?!

The course also invites a stretch, exploring intuition and delving into story. To be a healer, a person must be a student of their own story. You cannot go where you have not gone yourself.

We watched “The Nativity” this weekend. It is a beautiful rendition of what might have been, woven with the well known threads of the story in the ancient texts. It gives permission for my imagination to wonder. As this young man ran through the town, wouldn’t someone have whispered the name of a local healer; a midwife or an herbalist? Where were the wise women? Perhaps not, as birth in its raw and natural state is most often powerful and safe. But there have always been those who honed their gifts. And in a small town, like an inner city Neighborhood, those women are called. I have gone to a woman’s house, unknown to me, with herbs to soothe or a simple syrup to calm. I have held a woman’s hand, gazing deep into her eyes and swaying in the ancient dance; and later learned her name when words returned. Who came alongside in this holy night, in space set apart by the raw power coursing through her body?

The movie also touches on the scandal. Whispers, eyes averted, the presence of absence. These things happen in small towns. My story was hushed, silence protected at all costs. Conservative circles share similarity with small towns.

The old songbook says that the rocks themselves will cry out…. I know that is true. Our very cells, scientists now know, carry cellular memory. Trauma, in particular, imprints in a bath of catecholamines embedded in sensory markers. Until the time is right, and the story births…

After the flight in the night, the refugee years in another country, they returned. Did the whispers begin anew? Small towns have long memories. Particularly around a scandal….

In the glow of the tree, as the firelight danced, conversation flowed with another young man. Teenagers need silent spaces to talk. Then another teen came and plopped down, wanting to share her writing. I looked down, and caught the outline of my Danskos kicked off under the tree. Maybe for a reason….

Perhaps this too, was holy ground. A space, set apart on a Monday, for the herbs and the wondering, teenage talks and the smell of pine.

The Advent Writings: this time next year

It must have been the onions.

As the knife sliced through the onions, dicing them for the soup and the latkes, tears came to my eyes. Hot and unbidden, they stung and stayed. I busied myself with the task at hand. We were celebrating the second Sunday of Advent, decorating the Christmas tree, and mixing in the end of Chanukah. We are a blended family, after all, Midwestern roots blend with Bolivian traditions, Mexican tamales, German sausage….and latkes. We honor all of our family story.

I reminded myself to breathe, and really noticed The song playing in the background.

I leaned over the counter, crying into the onions.

Last year at this time, we had just told the extended family we were moving. The awareness lent sharp colors to all the celebrations. The children played, trading a few comments about Oregon mixed with “Dude, no way…”. For the grownups, especially, there were more layers to Thanksgiving and Christmas. The awareness of coming loss makes the moments especially sweet.

And so we post pictures of the hunt in the forest for the tree, and latkes, and our giant lights for the festival of Light. And facebook people say “wow, it seems like you guys are doing really good.” Or in a phone call “you sound so chipper…”.

Yes. Yes and….And I am crying over onions.

One phrase began to swirl in my heart, shimmering there.

Let the spirit go with you.

Yes. Yes and…

There is grief.

And there is Spirit.

And my heart is big enough for both.

“May the new year be blessed with good tidings
‘Til the next time I see you again
If we must say goodbye
Let the spirit go with you
And we’ll love and we’ll laugh In the time that we had
‘Til the season comes ’round again.”

Song by Amy Grant. Songwriters: John Barlow Jarvis / Randy Goodrum

‘Til The Season Comes ‘Round Again lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

The Advent Writings: watching the star

Last night I watched a star. Round and amazingly bright, it did a dance with the evergreen that tried to hide its brilliance.

I watched the star for hours.

I am sick, 3rd in the family to succumb to a viral throat morphed into bronchitis… miserable combo. Any mom of littles knows, coughing is worse at night. So finally I gave up on sleep and sat by the fire, watching the star.

photo: The star at sunrise

There were some smart fellows that did that some years back. Most people thought they were crazy. You see, they loved to get up in the night and look at the heavens. (That’s an old fashioned word for the sky). Then, get this…they made an international, once in a lifetime trip not because it got a five star rating; but because of a star.

A star.

This star, it seemed, was unusual. It moved. All stars move, in a seasonal pattern. And the stars in the Southern Hemisphere are a whole different sky. I don’t know quite where they lived, in the East. But these smart folks knew this one was doing its own dance. They couldn’t figure it out.

And they followed it.

Okay. I am identifying with this part of the story more this year. I am following a dream; or more accurately, a disruption. I didn’t invite it, and I tried to make it go away. Instead of diminishing, it got bigger, welling up in the most unwelcome places. Wise women around me began to affirm that this was not my imagination. The star, in fact, was moving.

And so we came. The star went north, where the air is clear (cloudy actually) and the stars bright. The whole group of us. And now we wait, for a sign. (An acceptance to grad school actually. It’s like a long pregnancy…September to May).

And when they came…they worshiped.

This is so often quoted it can get cliché. But really, take the churchy voice out and think about it. What do you do when you have no idea what you are doing? How do you respond when you come close to Mystery?

You fall on your face.

And maybe that is worship.

Late at night, coughing my socks up, and watching a star.

My epiphany.

The Advent Writings: of biscuits and home

My mom loved making biscuits. It was the 70s, the era of shortcuts: Bisquik and Pillsbury crescent rolls. From a young age, I did the biscuits. I loved popping the roll of refrigerated dough, scaring my little brother with the “bang”. Mom taught me to tuck things into the rolls; cinnamon sugar and raisins or a pat of parkay. Then we would put 2 in a muffin tin for pull aparts, or roll then pencil thin for skinny breadsticks. Sometimes, we had pigs in a blanket, with tiny “smokies” If there was extra time we would roll out the bisquik dough, patting it and cutting circles with a drinking glass. I loved those biscuits.

Mom was hard to predict. Her choices to stay numb at any cost meant I was always left guessing. Often, quite early on, I was in charge of dinner. Dad often had guests over, from the Bible college or church. The joke was we would find out in Sunday’s church bulletin. Or the secretary to the president (Dad) learned to call and double check that mom knew. My mom would rush off to the grocery store, and leave me in charge of the baking for 50. I would gather the neighbor kids, put 1 or 2 in charge of each recipe, and supervise. “…stir that one a little more” or “add the chocolate chips now, and then you can lick the bowl after.”

Growing up in AZ, baking is a seasonal affair: October to April. Then came the curve ball, as 9 years ago my body asked that I go gluten free/dairy and egg free. (This may be linked to the food patterns described above from the 70s?!).

I stopped baking. I ate store bought gf bread which needs to be charred to a Melba toast texture to be palatable. It was a base for toppings, nothing more. Finally, my mother in law had compassion, working with a gf bread recipe from a bakery in OR until it was just perfect. Every other week she made me bread.

Then my daughter developed food allergies, adding rice and sesame and chia to the mix of taboos. (Side note here, all gluten free bread found in a grocery store contains rice). For awhile, all of my experiments failed. I stopped baking.

But, in this new season in the Pacific Northwest, I am trying out baking again. Crackers and biscuits, scones and muffins. More fails mean more patience is required. The rules have changed, as the ingredients have shifted. I am starting to catch on, and having more yummy successes.

Untangling trauma takes time and hard work. But as the process of redemption unfolds, there are glimmers of good in the mix. One of those nuggets from mom is my love for baking. For those who choose to enter the hard work of story, and pursue the healing that happens, there is much to release. But this is something I choose to keep of my mother’s legacy.

As I co-create generational change, with the help of God, I bake. In Mom’s honor, we had biscuits tonight for Advent. With jam. Not Smucker’s grape jelly, but Oregon marionberry jam.

And it was very good.