Vinnie's Pages

To Fireworks and Freedom

I choose to celebrate July 4^th because I know I didn’t get here on my own. I was born into a situation that makes me one of the world’s richest and most free human beings. My parents were born into it, too, even my grandparents, although they didn’t feel so rich and free, given what the Great Depression put them through. Still, they were free enough to travel from Kansas to Illinois to California in search of work back then. That’s a freedom of sorts.

 

My great-grandparents, as far as I know, were born on American soil. On both sides of the family, the tree has lost branches—missing fathers, parents who left their small children with a family in Kansas and continued on in their covered wagon, never to return. I have no idea who my distant relatives might be.

 

I do know that my father’s great-grandparents came over from England in the late 1800s. I’m reasonably sure that no one on either side of the family was part of any European aristocracy—or if they were, they lost their money before any of it could trickle down to us descendants. Some of our people fought in the Civil War alongside Ulysses S. Grant, but, to my knowledge, no one fought in the Revolutionary War.

 

Yet here I am. My forebears landed here whenever they landed here, and they worked hard and bought property and reared children. A great-grandfather died of coal-mine-related illness, and a grandfather was partially crippled by polio. My father held a blue-collar job until diabetes took him at age fifty-seven. The women were stronger, as women often are, and my history is filled with widows old and wise.

 

But we’re here, in America. Both grandmas worked in ammunitions factories at one time. During war-time, the women filled the factories, and they worked hard, but they could earn a living while their men were away at war. Today our young men and women go off to war; they do this of their own will, are not forced into service by government decree. The rest of us are free to look for our livelihoods and to take care of our families as best we can.

 

But we are here, in America. We suffer from illness and crime and poverty and injustice. But I can say whatever I like about those who hold office. I can criticize the government—I can even start an e-mail campaign to have someone impeached, for heaven’s sake! I can do this, because I was born in the United States of America.

 

I can scheme and plan and come up with any number of perfectly legal ways to attend college or grad school, to purchase a home or a car, to start my own business.

 

And I can read about what is happening out in the world—through newspapers, alternative magazines, the Internet. I can pick up a phone and call someone in another country. I can keep my money in a bank and get to it when I need it.

 

Anyone who knows me at all will tell you just how much I criticize government in this country and just how little I trust corporate America. There’s a hell of a lot that’s wrong here, and I will screech about it until things get better.

 

But I will never forget that I am here, in the United States of America. I can speak and dream and learn and work. If I get into trouble, I can also get attorneys to help me. If I am in danger, most likely some form of law enforcement will show up and protect me or an ambulance will transport me to safety and help. If I’m down on my luck, any number of charitable organizations will help me find food and shelter. And I can walk into a church somewhere and find another human being who will pray with me. We don’t have to whisper our prayers, either. We can stand out on the street and pray them right out loud if we want.

 

I hate war, I really do. I know that this country had a very bloody birth and that people all over this planet at this very moment are fighting other bloody battles. Some of those people are trying to get the freedom I experienced before I was old enough to walk or talk. They were not born into it, and for some of them freedom is a dream they will die with.

 

I hope that in this next century we will finally learn that warfare is obsolete and that people will be freed not through bloodshed but through community and collaboration. I hope that the national anthem for the next country set free won’t have anything in it about bombs bursting in air.

 

But I must celebrate July 4^th because—however the freedom was accomplished—it was mine on the day I arrived in this world. This freedom shaped my family and my small hometown in Kansas. This freedom has shaped me, and I am a richer, better person for having known it this half-century I have lived.

Say Yes to Your Gift

Maybe you want to write. In fact, you long to be a writer. You have lots of talent and even more inspiration. But until you say yes to your gift, your longing will go unfulfilled.

 

Saying yes to your gift means that you own it. Drop the false modesty, okay? If you have a way with words, you probably can’t take much credit for it—it came to you through heredity, background, and the resources of your particular life. So it’s not being egotistical or vain to admit that you have this gift.

 

Saying yes to your gift means that now you will take responsibility for its development. Having a way with words isn’t good enough unless you’re a flat-out genius--and even a genius values learning and improving. Writing is a craft, and your gift needs to be developed. You need to learn the craft and practice it. This is your job. If you don’t develop your craft, then your gift will be wasted because it will never be truly fruitful in the world.

 

Saying yes to your gift means that you will make more room for it in your life. Maybe you have a house full of children and a spouse who is only partially employed. You have to work for a living. So you can’t afford a week-long workshop/retreat to help your gift. You can’t even give this gift an hour or two per day. But you can give it something. Maybe it’s late at night or early in the morning; maybe it’s a portion of your Saturday—a portion that ordinarily would go to housework. So give up your need to have an immaculate house. Or give up some television. Do what you can.

 

Saying yes to your gift means that you deem it an important part of your life. This is something you will learn to nurture and respect. This gift will teach you things, will give you comfort sometimes, will make you wiser. We’re not talking about a hobby to help you pass the time. This is a characteristic of your very soul, and the Good Lord gave you this gift in order to accomplish some wonder in life.

 

Saying yes will cost you—but that’s for another blog post. For now, consider your gift(s). What do you think of them, really? And will you give them more than a passing excitement? Will you say yes?

Girls, Girls, Girls

Thanks to one of my stepsons, I am grandma to girls, and one of them is a teenager now. Since she was small, she has spent time every summer here in Chicago with Jim and me. For almost as long as she’s been doing this, we’ve been friends and neighbors with a family whose daughter was close to the age of our granddaughter. They hit it off so well that we schedule our granddaughter’s visit so that the girls can spend that week together.  Which means that for nearly a decade Jim and I have hosted these two girls during the summer. They are now good friends, and I suspect that our granddaughter longs for Chicago more to see her friend than to see us old people. But we don’t mind. I never had children, and both my sisters had sons. Now that my nephew is father to a baby girl, the family is quite delirious. There’s something about a girl that makes us especially giddy. They’re sort of magical, and they bring us gifts.

 

What are the gifts of girl-ness?

 

Movement. I’m talkin’ ‘bout those girly moves, the kind that happen only at a certain time of life. There’s the sway of hips that have recently found their contours. There’s the quirky ballet of arms and legs that only yesterday were little-girl arms and legs but now have grown long and strong and more graceful by the day.

Atmosphere. A small child will express intense happiness or displeasure without much nuance. But watching a young girl’s face is like contemplating the ocean. So many shades of emotion, so many meanings in the eyes—and all of it changes constantly, wave upon glittering, thunderous wave.

Language. They talk, they whisper, they sing, they chant, they yell, they screech. Girls play with words and with the sounds of their own voices. Communication is never-ending and it’s nearly always important. Also, girls know the lyrics (and the moves) to every song they like, and they like a LOT of songs.

Laughter. They laugh at everything and everybody, especially at adults who are angry about something. I was happy to learn that my grumpiness provided them with so much free entertainment and the excuse to giggle and snort and cackle. And shriek. Girls laugh because laughing is fun. If there’s no reason to laugh, they look at each other intently until someone breaks, and then the cackling starts all over again.

Morality. Yes, I wrote that word on purpose. Young girls are making up their minds about a lot of things. They want a philosophical system that serves them well. They have no problem with good/bad and right/wrong as long as they agree with the categories. They have OPINIONS about what kinds of guys are jerks or about what clothes look good on a person. They have closets full of stories about friends, parents, siblings, teachers, or celebrities who have really screwed up. Although girls often don’t have the wisdom that life experience brings, generally they are equipped with good bullshit detectors and aren’t afraid to use them.

Romance. Young girls soon learn what it means to be infatuated, to feel all crazy because boys are around. They are forever on the lookout for “hot guys,” and any activity or conversation can be disrupted on the instant when such a person walks by. To girls, dreaming of love is an art form. Note of caution: don’t try to talk them down from this. Disgruntled, love-burned grown-ups should just keep quiet and let the girls revel in the imagined loves and lives that may seem completely implausible to the rest of us.

Energy. Did I tell you we spent a week with girls? I am grateful that they are old enough now to put themselves to bed—if they make it to bed at all. I’m grateful that they can turn on the oven and bake their own pizza rolls or chocolate chip cookies at midnight if they want. The old man and me, we just say goodnight and go to bed, knowing that we’ll have plenty of time for a leisurely coffee in the morning, because although girls have loads of energy, they sleep late after watching two or three movies in a row and talking about everything that’s important.

 

Young girls can be the most astounding people on earth. Not only do they have great energy, but they also possess the wherewithal to believe that all sorts of things are possible. In Days of Deepening Friendship I mention this in a segment about Mary of Nazareth and her visit from the angel Gabriel.

 “I think the Lord chose a young girl for this mission because a girl in the fervor of adolescence is able to harbor dreams and goals that border on the absurd. A girl just coming into her womanhood is open enough and feisty enough to stand there and talk to an angel, even question the information (“So, how will this happen if I’ve never had sex??”). And a young woman who is convinced that divine love has called upon her help—well, she just can’t be stopped. She’s stubborn and resilient and more optimistic than people who have become sensible and set in their ways. Mary’s story is a reminder of how miraculous the teenage years can be. We become distracted by the mood swings and silences and fits of rebellion and questionable friends, but we forget how a girl’s soul can open up and how willing she can become when she understands that God is truly interested in her life, her choices, and her future.”

 

So let’s celebrate our girls. Let’s take them shopping and listen to their music and be seduced by their laughter. Let’s not be so fretful and grumpy; this time is short and we don’t want to miss the wonder of beauty waking up and of singular worldviews forming. If we want them to become extraordinary women, then we must love the girls they are now. We must learn to enjoy their loudness and their disorganization, their drama and their dreams.

 

Copyright  © 2009 Vinita Hampton Wright

Give Yourself Permission

I have led numerous writers’ workshops and retreats over the past several years, and one issue surfaces consistently. Many people are waiting for someone to give them permission to write. Something prevents their free engagement in the simple act of putting words together.

 

My answer to this simple: Give yourself permission to write. And while you’re at it, give yourself permission to—

 

• write just because you want to. No glorious purpose is necessary. No practical purpose, either.
• write whatever you want to write. Write about your kids or pets. Write poetry. Write a screenplay. Write your grandfather’s life story. Write a sloppy romance. Write a memoir.
• write without expectations. You don’t need to accomplish anything. And, unless you are in fact a trained and persistent writer, you’re wise to write without expectation of getting published—because professional writing is a craft and it usually takes much experience and hard work.
• write freely and wastefully. Any artistic endeavor involves waste. You’ll write stuff and delete it. You may write entire scenes and stories and pitch them later. You’ll probably go off in the wrong direction and have to start all over. If you can’t waste time, energy, and paper/computer memory, then please, don’t write.
• call yourself a writer—or not. Because we’ve overly romanticized writers, then often when you identify yourself as such, people think you’re being pretentious. I’ve been a writer for years, but when a new acquaintance asks what I do, I defer to my other identity and say I’m an editor. That’s easier and less painful than enduring the awkward silence or the, “I see . . .” or having to answer the next ten questions, such as, “Really, what have you published?” or, if you have published, then, “Have I seen that in Borders?” Like me, you may want to call yourself a writer privately and to a few trusted friends and leave it at that.
• embrace the gifts you have. You may have a talent for writing, but the talent won’t develop by itself. At some point you have to own up to being talented and get on with it.
• make writing a bigger priority. If this is a gift, or a desire, or just the thing you need to do now, then honor this urge and make space and time for writing. Do it without apology.
• write without explaining it to anyone. People either get artistic urges or they don’t. Please don’t waste energy on the people who don’t get you. And to those who do, be gracious and appreciative.
• write in obscurity. The celebrity culture we live in pressures us to be outstanding and famous in all we do. You don’t have to make a name for yourself or win any awards.
• write badly. If you can’t allow yourself to write badly, you’ll never get any better at it. This gets in the way of so many people who might otherwise develop their gifts. Even good writers do bad writing. Sometimes we write pages and pages of mediocrity in order to arrive at that one paragraph of miraculous beauty.
• write yourself. You may as well give yourself permission to write yourself, because you’ll end up writing yourself anyway. Your particular mixture of history, neuroses, nagging personal issues, and so on, will pop up in your work all the time. You have to let that happen. You can always edit out what’s useless to the work itself. But one thing art forces you to do is to face yourself.
• enjoy the act for itself alone. We were created to take joy in creating. When you finish a poem, rejoice and be happy. Don’t worry about its quality—that’s not the point for now. Take joy in the fact that you have engaged in something you love.

 

Copyright © Vinita Hampton Wright, 2009

Don't Wait to Start

The writing life does not hunt you down, hit you over the head, drag you to a writing cave, and compel you into a life of feverish creativity. The writing life does not grow out of longing, passivity, or whining. It begins when you begin—simple as that. On the day you put words on a page or a computer screen, your writing life has become present-tense. So please, stop waiting around.

 

·         Don’t wait until you have plenty of time, because you probably never will.

·         Don’t wait until you are well prepared, because no one is well prepared to write. The writing itself prepares you to keep writing. Being proficient at grammar, punctuation, spelling, and so forth will prepare you to construct language, but only writing prepares you to write.

·         Don’t wait until your relationships are healthier and less disruptive; where do you expect to get your characters anyway?

·         Don’t wait until you feel certain that you have the gifts of a writer. Our certainty of such gifts is not an accurate indicator. Some people who are quite gifted do not recognize it. And some people who are very certain they are gifted are in fact delusional about their abilities.

·         Don’t wait until you feel inspired. Inspiration can be a stimulating way to get started, but the practice of writing will generate its own inspiration—and will be much more dependable.

·         Don’t wait until you are assured of some reward, whether money, recognition, or satisfaction. The writing life must be its own reward, simply because other rewards come and go and often aren’t there at all.

·         Don’t wait until your life isn’t so chaotic. What do you expect to write about, anyway?

·         Don’t wait until you have the perfect place in which to write; the writing life will make itself at home anywhere if you give it permission to be at home in you.

·         Don’t wait until you have the bestseller-of-an-idea. Aiming to write a bestseller is not the same as living the writing life. No one has the formula for a bestseller, although lots of people will claim to have that very secret. When you put pressure on yourself to write a bestseller, that can pretty much paralyze what could have been a decent writing life.

·         Don’t wait until others see the value in what you’re trying to do. Support is a great gift but often we have to start—and persevere—without it.

·         Don’t wait until your deep personal issues are worked out—what do you expect to write about anyway?

·         Don’t wait until the world asks to hear from you. The world won’t even know you are gifted and articulate until you embrace the writing life.

·         Don’t wait until you are more courageous and confident. Those qualities will develop as you own your gift and follow where it leads.

 

So, close this page now and get started.

 Vinita Hampton Wright © 2009

Religiosity and the Half-Empty/Full Glass

My theory: faith sees the glass half-full; religion* sees the glass half-empty.

 

Faith says, “You are a marvelous creation of God, made in the Divine image.”

Religion says, “You are a sinner who is incapable of anything good.”

 

Faith says, “Your story begins with creation.”

Religion says, “Your story begins with the Fall.”

 

Faith says, “Of course you have made bad decisions, but grace continues to move through your life.

Religion says, “Of course you have made bad decisions; this is why you’re in such a mess and must suffer the consequences.”

 

Faith says, “God waits for you to respond to divine love.”

Religion says, “God waits for you to be ashamed of your sins and to decide you will change.”

 

Faith says, “Trust God to work through your deepest desires and your best judgments because they grow out of who you are as a child of God.”

Religion says, “Don’t trust yourself at all, but rely only on the authority of God’s Word, or the Church, or those charged with leading you.”

 

Faith says, “God saved you because God loves you and eternally desires your company.”

Religion says, “God saved you because you were a miserable failure and needed saving.”

 

Faith says, “You are continuously being created by God, becoming more of who God dreamed you to be.”

Religion says, “You are continuously in need of help and repair, spiraling down into sinful patterns unless God helps you correct them.”

 

I could go on and on. And the tricky part is, there’s some truth in either viewpoint. But I think the general culture of Christian religion trains us in the half-empty attitude. We are more likely to see ourselves as worthless sinners than as God’s children. We are more likely to focus on what is not right than on what is good and moving forward. We are more likely to assume that God is irritated with us most of the time because we are screwing up most of the time—than we are to see God as the one who’s on our side, greatly pleased with our every little effort. Usually we walk through life dreading the moment when that divine disapproval will descend upon us. It’s really tiring to be in trouble all the time.

 

There is danger in de-emphasizing our need for help and our tendency to be selfish, foolish, and all the rest. Any person who is reflective at all recognizes how easily our God-given drives and desires swerve out of balance. There is good reason the saints and other spiritual heroes have practiced regular prayer, meditation, charitable works, and involvement in community; we need habits of soul to counteract our tendency to live out of fear and grasping, both of which lead to what we call sin, an old-fashioned word that we must not discard simply because it’s old-fashioned.

 

But I am so weary of watching people trudge through their lives feeling like sinners rather than like God’s beloved. It changes the way we do everything. It burdens us unnecessarily. It moves us to expect God to act like anything but a loving parent, teacher, friend. And we will never be at our best when, at gut level, we approach the Divine in the same way we would approach a vindictive authority figure.

 

My goal is to be not so much religious as faith-filled. I believe that faith-filled is what leads to faith-ful. Whenever the fear and dread and blanket guilt drift in, my faith looks for the closest exit.

 

*By “religion” I mean religious culture. Obviously, I’m using these terms loosely and I’m generalizing in order to make a point. Please, no angry responses unpacking the theological definitions of faith and religion.

Staring Our Way to Recognition

Have you ever seen something that you could not identify as anything familiar, and so all you could do was stare at it in a rather stupid way? When I was a teenager I once saw an apparition while walking at night on a country road. It looked as if someone in a white robe was floating above the soybean field. My friend and I could only look and look and try to make something in our brains connect with what our eyes were seeing. I was not one to see ghosts or other mysterious phenomena, and I didn’t know whether to be terrified or fascinated. Then a car went past us, and the changing angle of the headlights revealed our apparition to be a diamond-shaped sign posted in the field. It was a relief to be able to give a name to what we saw.

 

I’m guessing that the disciples who saw the risen Jesus stared stupidly for awhile. In a very short time they had to reconcile newly revealed truth with all their experience up to that point. And when you think of all the other people of the Bible who were given visions, the pattern is clear: at first they did not know what they were seeing. In addition to being really frightened, they were confused and speechless.

 

I think this is the typical pattern of human behavior when God becomes visible. The love or glory or wisdom that we see does not compute. We don’t even have a name for the sensation or experience. All we can do is stare. Sometimes we stare for days or weeks or months, as holy love plays out right in front of us. Surely it can’t be true! There must be another explanation for what is happening—a fluke of good luck, or a misinterpretation of the facts. It couldn’t be as simple as God reaching into our lives and touching our souls, making us alive and joyful and unafraid.

 

But I’ve learned something about staring. After awhile, the patterns do emerge, and things begin to make sense. And so you name the vision: grace, or peace, or understanding. Then, as the months and years go by, those gifts reappear, again and again. You come to understand that what at first was a strange apparition is actually your very reality. God is here, right in your life, working wonders.

 

So don’t be ashamed to stand there and stare with a clueless expression on your face—it’s all part of reconciling the revelation we call Good News with our quite limited experience and vocabulary. Stare until you recognize that what you are beholding is holy love—looking right back at you.

 

Your exercise for the week, should you choose to try it, comes in two parts.

 

First, identify “sightings” that have not come clear for you. They could be:

• Passages or stories from the Bible that are hard to understand
• People in your life whose presence is a mystery to you—the kind of people about whom you say, “Why do I have to work with this person?” or “Why in the world is this person in my family?” or “What am I supposed to do with this friendship?”
• Situations that have you dumbfounded, about which you say, “What could possibly be the purpose in this?”

 

Now choose one of those sightings and just stare at it this week. Look at it patiently and closely. And as you look, pray: “God, if your love or wisdom or comfort or instruction exists here, please help me see. Help me recognize how you are here.”

For the Childless Woman on Mother's Day

I will not be attending church this Sunday, because it’s Mother’s Day, and I choose not to be present at that inevitable moment when all the mothers of the congregation are recognized. I have nothing against mothers; this is about my life. At many churches, there comes a point in the service where the pastor says, “I’d like all you mothers to stand” and everyone applauds as women of all ages rise and smile. In some congregations, prizes are given for those with the most children, those who are oldest, those who are the most recent mothers, and so forth. I don’t think we do anything like this at my church, but there is always the Mother’s Day Brunch after the service, and during the meal kids from the youth group scatter throughout the crowd and hand a carnation to every woman. At that point I must decide whether to be pissy about it and refuse to take the flower, or to be gracious and carry around the bloom while feeling completely fraudulent in doing so.

 

For this reason, I don’t attend church on Mother’s Day. I was able to stand up one year, long ago, in another church, the one and only time I was pregnant. But I lost that baby just a couple of weeks later. Today I am past the age of childbearing, and I am happy with my life. I accept it as a gift from God, and I do practice gratitude and recognize the many graces of my days. But I would have preferred motherhood, and so this single boycotted day of the year is my simple protest against the imperfection of life.

 

Enough of my story. This article is for you, the woman who is childless. I have decided what I would say if I were the pastor on Mother’s Day. I would ask the mothers to stand, because they deserve applause, by all means. But after they were seated, I would ask all those women to stand who were not mothers. And I would say something like this:

 

Some of you are not mothers by choice. You have determined what the wisest course is for you personally. Maybe the reasons are medical. Or maybe they have to do with the demands of your personal mission—whether that’s a career to which you are called or a ministry that would be hard on a family.

 

Some of you are not mothers simply because your life took a certain path that did not include motherhood. You have done what seemed right, made the decisions that were consistent with who you are and what you love. Maybe you never married or arrived at a situation that you considered healthy for the nurturing of children. Maybe major life events removed you from the motherhood track.

 

Some of you are not mothers because of severe damage in your life or in the life of your family. That damage could be abuse, debilitating depression, addiction, or other illness, or a condition of soul that has required most of your time and energy for the sake of healing and restoration. All of this got in the way of what to most people is an ordinary life that includes partnership and childrearing.

 

Some of you are not mothers despite every effort you could make. You have tried for months or years to become pregnant or to finalize an adoption, and yet those plans have been thwarted at every turn, through no fault of your own. The only people who could possibly understand how desperate and abandoned you feel are those who have experienced this situation themselves.

 

Whatever your reason for being childless, please know this: you are indeed a source of life to the world. You possess the ability to nurture others, and if you free yourself to do so, you will be amazed at how fertile you actually are.

 

There is no substitute for physical motherhood. And for one who longs to have children in her house, nothing else will do. Don’t ever deny the grief of that. Don’t minimize this burden of emptiness. Don’t repress your desire to give birth. That very desire is a unique and particular energy of womanhood, for those who have children and those who have not.

 

At a personal retreat I made more than a year ago, I was surprised to receive an image of myself as pregnant with God. Wasn’t that privilege reserved for Mary, the mother of Jesus? But no, the Incarnation changed everything. Divine life merged with human life, and now every person has the ability to birth God, to bring the divine to life in her life.

Do you understand that you are always pregnant? That constantly life is churning and growing within you? Your specific character, history, situation, and giftedness form God in a way unlike any other expression or manifestation. God waits to reside in the womb that is your life. Holy love and grace ripen inside you and, when the time is right, will be born and flourish in this lonely, needy world.

 

This is spiritual talk, I know, and it provides little comfort when your physical body aches to grow a child. If you are in the center of such desolation, my words probably won’t touch you at all. But read them anyway. And then read them again. There’s a principle here that each of us must learn sooner or later. We are not defined by, or confined to, the obvious physical situation. As we live our visible lives, we exist in our eternal lives, and the characteristics of the eternal will ultimately overwhelm and transform the visible.

 

So, as best you can this Mother’s Day, allow your desire for giving life to beat wildly and without shame. When words come to the surface—words of pain, anxiety, anger, anticipation, longing, joy—share them somehow, with someone. If you stay silent, the world will suffer for it. If you hide your life because it wasn’t the one you’d hoped for, the human family will miss you, and grieve.

 

Copyright 2009 Vinita Hampton Wright

Spring Is Dangerous

By choosing this title I’ve invited an unnecessarily long discussion about what truly can be classified as spring. Clearly when a Chicagoan says the word, she means something different from what someone in San Francisco, Minneapolis, or Miami would mean. So I’ll simplify and say that by spring I mean the definite end of whatever winter is for you. My spring comes sometime in April, whereas yours may occur during another month entirely, but wherever you are, Spring (capital letter totally intentional) is the meteorological sigh of relief.

 

It is also a waking-up time. Think of a flabby bear shaking dust from his coat and snorting grumpily as he breaches the rim of his cave and the fresh air hits him full in the face. I definitely have a day or two like that. I’m grumpy not from hunger but from heavy-clothing fatigue. One morning I step out of the house on my usual walk to the train, and the air has changed. Even if the wind is chilly, the edge has gone, and I can actually smell dirt—the livening-up earth that begins to grow warm and to shift as the worms struggle through it.

 

The birds know that winter is leaving, because long before dawn they are singing like little lunatics who see the sun when there is none. They trill and chirp across the streets and backyards, sending news of eggs about to hatch, locations of good nest materials and the best meals, upcoming family reunions, bar mitzvahs and what-have-you. Darkness and wind do not hamper their enthusiasm; the muddy streets fill with noisy cheer.

 

When the damp gusts no longer press with cold, I venture out of my defensive posture, loosening a scarf and breathing deeply for the first time in weeks. It is not painful to inhale—no fit of coughing, no aching lungs. No icy draft scrapes my face like a sandy towel. After a day or two I’m confident enough to peel off layers of clothing with the urgency of someone escaping a muddy shirt or itchy pantyhose. Freedom! How easy it is to love a world in which I can bare my arms, ankles, and throat.

 

As the senses awaken, so does hope. If the cold can leave so quickly and effortlessly, then perhaps so can other factors that weary and worry me. Maybe the money will stretch further this month. Maybe I will sleep better. Maybe my writing will improve. Maybe my better self will gather energy and live in such a way that I become happier being me.

 

The mystics have always said that every movement within has its counterpart without, and vice-versa. So a change in weather—a complete shift of season—fills me with the conviction that my interior life can genuinely change. This sort of hope comes suddenly, with the first fragrant sips of lighter air. And this is dangerous.

 

It is dangerous because hope is always risky. Hope teases me loose in the same way the late April wind frees my hair from a jacket collar—the movement is instantaneous, reckless, and trembling toward possibility. You cannot hope in safety, not really. Just as a spring morning compels my feet out into the day, hope moves me, against common sense, into a field spacious enough for grand, shimmering dreams. In that place and moment, I know how wonderful life could be. Not only do I know what life could be, but I begin to want a deeper one, a life more expansive and satisfying than the one I now have, a life as unreasonable and luxurious as a long row of crabapple trees fully in bloom.

 

Spring is dangerous because it seduces me to desire. During this season more than any other, my loves and whims, my wants and schemes, follow grumpy bear out of his cave. Everything feels more possible when the days turn gentle. And once those tones of young green burst into the landscape—all the lilies and peonies, daffodils, oak leaves and mulberry leaves, lettuce, oregano, and wild onion—well, desire becomes delirium. I might just fall in love with five different people on the same day. I might imagine a novel so artful and heartbreaking that I will ruin the next ten years of my life trying to write it. Dear Jesus, how desire can undo us completely, can manifest inside us like floods of adrenalin or visions of the desert mothers.

 

This is why spring is dangerous. The whole natural world—breezes to blackbirds, shine of sun to blanket of bluebells—comes at me in a lovely tumble of song, texture, taste, color, and wind. Who can hold up against this all-out campaign of joy? How can the heart then stay in winter?

 

I believe that this surge of desire is responsible for the many romances of spring. And even when you have no romance, if you will allow the season’s process to move you, you can feel yourself greening and growing, getting beautiful, and looking forward. You might just envision yourself loved and loving. You might take a chance and say hello to someone new and not disappear into layers of wool before that person can respond in kind.

 

It is a perilous thing to desire a good life, even more so to open your soul wide enough for goodness to come in, for hope to make itself at home, for desire to set up her studio and start throwing paint all over the room, for the little birds to perch on your best furniture and chirp their enigmatic songs of praise. We develop some comfort in the winter rooms, wrapped in sweaters with our doors shut tight against just about everything. Unlike the bear, we do not fast at all, but fill up on whatever gives us comfort and a passing sort of calm. If we’re not careful, when winter leaves we won’t emerge hungry for what is wonderful but will waddle out, already full of anxieties and hurts, fearful of the new light and the spongy ground. Vivid colors make us nervous, and the bird chants are merely nerve-wracking. Spring puts us on alert. It does not feel like hope but pricks our nostrils like the pungent threat of change.

 

Well, let the spring days come. May their breezes toss me end over end, if that’s what it takes to jar the door and slip its latch. May wild desires move through me like a recurring ache until I get into motion and turn winter flab into muscle. May I trip over mossy roots or stumble while looking up at clouds and sparrows—any jolt or turn that will elicit some deep, healthy breaths.

 

For anyone who reads this: I sincerely hope that Spring overcomes you, that it unhinges and undresses you. Be brave and listen to one bird sing, and not for a few seconds but for three entire minutes. After that, with all your soul you will desire the next note, and the next. And after that, it will be impossible to stop listening. 

 

Living Easter

I’m really glad for the elaborate liturgies of Holy Week. After forty days of Lent, I am programmed for introspection, facing my sin, unraveling my emotional life and my motives, and stripping down the interior rooms to reveal the truth about my history, my present, my desires, and my fears. If a person attends to such a process even sporadically over that many weeks, she approaches Easter somewhat worked-over. She may feel better for having been cleansed and sorted, but her life’s palette is not sunshiny—it’s more a work of muted, cool colors, the kind that wash over the world before spring green has broken through.

 

So the long march from Palm Sunday through Maundy-Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday serves to walk me out of that introspective, heart-rending world. One story at a time, one sacred reading at a time, one prayer and response at a time, I made my way out of my Lenten cave. During our Easter Vigil, we went from individually held candles to full lighting in the sanctuary. Suddenly, color—Easter lilies and hyacinths and various other bright blooms stationed all about. Suddenly, sound—a trumpeter and choir, shouts of “Alleluia!” and hymns charged with glory and grandeur. Suddenly, me in a fancy blouse and shiny earrings, dressed bravely enough to be visible to all. Yes, I needed the pilgrimage of Holy Week to arrive at this bountiful moment.

It helps to have company for transformative events; the more witnesses the better, I think. This is why I still go to church; I really believe that Christianity is a communal faith and that my life shapes up better when I allow contact with other lives. I think of the women going to Jesus’ tomb that morning, making their way in the half-light, still afraid of the Romans and of some of their Jewish brothers, walking quickly in a cluster, hunched against the chill of the morning and the grief that was their whole existence at that point. Not only could a woman not travel alone safely, given the culture and the times, but these women needed one another’s company. For all they knew, the whole thing was over—Jesus of Nazareth was dead and buried, not the messiah they’d hoped for, not the one who would liberate them from oppression in the world. But regardless of the theology, Jesus had been their friend, had brought healing and forgiveness into their lives, and they would face the grim morning, the ruthless guards, the cold and brutalized body, just for love. But they had to do it together.

 

It was just as right that they encountered, together, the great surprise—that together they saw angels, spoke to gardeners, saw the bare slab upon which the body had rested. I certainly would want to behold a miracle with someone at my side, another person to affirm that, yes; this was real and not a hallucination. No, I wasn’t crazy from grief. I consider myself an honest person, but I don’t always trust myself to perceive clearly events that are immensely horrible or immensely wonderful. I know how easily my memory can garble what someone said. I know how quickly light or darkness can trick my eyes.

 

A person needs company when walking the road to Emmaus or when beholding a risen friend on the beach. Because although it’s tough to live Lent, to enter that dark and dangerous space and work out our honesty and our faith, I think it’s even tougher to live Easter. Easter is really too much to believe. It is news that’s too good; it is truth that’s too overwhelming. By myself I can’t maintain that kind of faith or that kind of life. It’s much easier to stay in Lent, to see myself as broken, unworthy, inconsistent, and imperfect. That’s not necessarily a happy way to be, but it’s much more familiar and for that reason much more comfortable than Easter living.

 

Easter living requires that I relinquish my vision of myself. I will always see how I am not good enough or enlightened enough or something enough. Or, I will see that I’m just fine the way I am, thank you, and I don’t need any kind of crazy, spiritual overhaul. It’s difficult to see what lies between those two extremes: a person made in God’s image who is constantly becoming more of who she truly is. A person in process and completely loved and accepted at every stage of that process.

 

Easter living requires that I hope rather than despair. I must live in the tension of seeing the world as it is and yet envisioning and working toward the world as it should be. Easter living will compel me to live out a worldview that values life, that forgives, and that can wait and watch as transformation does its work in myself and in others.

 

Easter living requires that I truly live my life. I enter it every day with purpose, knowing who I am and Whose I am. I expect grace at every turn, I look for Divine evidence everywhere. I act as if I am Divine Love in a given situation, doing as Jesus would do, as God is already doing, and as the Holy Spirit is moving me to do.

 

Easter living is usually at odds with how most of us live. We fear, we avoid, we resent, we regress, we react—because life is hard and we must brace ourselves. When we live Easter, we acknowledge that life is hard, but navigating its tangled paths is less about getting braced and more about receiving grace.

 

Do feel free to attempt this at home—live Easter wherever you are! But don’t attempt it alone. Find some company. It may be a church nearby that you visit from time to time. It may be a friend online with whom you can talk about this wild life of faith. It may be the memoir, poetry, film, or song that speaks to you and helps you know you are not alone. It may even be a saint or two, from ancient times or from your own family, a deceased yet present person who does care for you and your journey.

 

It was good that you dwelled in Lent and did the work that needed to be done. But now . . . welcome to Easter! Grab it with your whole self, and don’t be ashamed to sing and shout. Alleluia!