Writing "Space"

Thanks to Jennifer Fulwiler over at Conversion Diary for providing the inspiration for the post - a picture of my writing space.

First, although you may be astounded by the beauty and organization before you, please rest assured that this is in no way staged. This is actually what my space looked like right after I posted the piece of wisdom and insight immediately following this. Yes, that is really a half-eaten pickle and wad of wrappers in the upper left hand corner, all handed to me by my considerate children while I immersed myself in the art of writing. I am also supposed to be creating a shopping list this morning instead of blogging, as evidenced by the circular on the left and half-finished scribbles about food on the right that I abandoned when I decided writing would be more fun. And also the fact that one of my children had a pickle for a snack this morning. You can also see that I physically shoved my coffee cup away from me to avoid drinking any more and tempted myself with a glass of water. And don't forget the dirty breakfast dishes I still haven't tended to.

I count it as the progress that can only come from motherhood that I'm at all able to write in this state (although the quality of the writing could be debated). In college, before I could put pen to paper everything had to be meticulously clean and organized or, I told myself, I couldn't concentrate. Now, I could clean for an eternity and never find time to write, so I've learned to let this particular requirement go. Obviously.

Yoga Class

"And breeeeeeeathe.....open your body to the iiiiiinfinite....."

My yoga instructor has a bad case of Yoga Teacher Voice. She seems like a very nice lady, but every time she drones her instructions in her flat, drawn-out, modulated-down voice, I wonder if she speaks this way in other areas of her life.

Job interviews? Dates?

"Sooooo, teeeeel meeee.....what do you doooooo?"

In spite of this, I'm enjoying the class. I used to practice yoga more often when I was pregnant both times and a bit afterward, but slowly running began to take more of my time. It's been interesting to return to it now with all the miles under my belt after so long a break. In some ways I'm stronger, in some ways my body yields more easily, and in other ways I'm more tense and inflexible.

This particular practice is more flow-based, so we are moving through poses as the instructor gives us direction. Downward Dog into some sort of twist, into a standing pose, into Tree Pose. I'm finding it much more enjoyable and less static than holding Warrior for interminable minutes, and the breathing comes easier.

As the instructor tells us to "let our bodies be our teacher," I find my mind wandering over to Pope Benedict's criticism of yoga, that it can devolve into a "cult of the body." At the time I heard it, I thought it was kind of an eye-roller. After all, I was exercising, not worshipping. It's easy to look at the old dude observing all the young whipper-snappers doing this devil-worshipping yoga and think it's rather silly. But his words were underlying a larger truth, one that my mind groped towards as my body moved from pose to pose.

Anything can become an idol, a religion, if we allow it to stop there and not travel through it to God. Bodies, after all, are valuable teachers. But they ultimately are designed to point to the Teacher Himself. It also highlights that almost anything that is good and beneficial, if not ordained toward God, can become detrimental. G.K. Chesterton wrote that "the modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad." We love, but without a full understanding that love is sacrifice as well. We hope, but without looking closely at what we are building our hope upon.

Taking care of ourselves is good. We are told that our bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit. But they are icons, not idols. Icons provide a roadmap for God, a tangible way to experience Him in a way our limited human-ness can understand. Idols cause us to exploit our limited human-ness and make things into gods. In our innate desire to search out God, we make gods instead of search for one.

So, I get what Benny XVI was saying. He looks at the world and sees people stopping at the body instead of going through it, and calls us on it. It has gotten me thinking, especially during Lent, about all the things I am tempted to see as an end rather than a means. When I am busy and parenting and stressed it's easy to get caught up in the utilitarian nature of the things I am doing, just getting from point A to point B without making a mess.

But everything, every day, can be examined and found to point to God in some small way, even the messes. And part of what I am called to do is find those ways.

And avoid developing Yoga Instructor Voice. Definitely that, too.

Yellow belt

I am a proud mama this weekend. Yesterday was Sam's advancement test in karate from white to yellow belt. He's been salivating over this moment for months, although we had our ups and downs getting here.

Sam begged us to take karate. We finally relented in September and said we'd give it a try, and he was so excited. His dojo is structured so that each child gets an individual or small-group lesson once a week, and can come to as many classes as they'd like in addition. Every Thursday after school Sam would change into his gi and off we would go to his lesson, and every Saturday Mark would take him to his big group lesson.

We ran into trouble about 4 weeks in, when the newness started to wear off and his white belt, which would eventually hold 3 black stripes signifying advancement, remained bare.

"I don't want to go to karate today! I want to quit!" came the whine from underneath a pile of pillows on the couch. "Karate is boring!"

"I understand you don't want to go and you want to quit," I said. "But we made a promise to Sensei that we would be there this afternoon, so we have to go today. We can talk about this more when we get home if you'd like."

His attitude would always have improved after class, but we still had a rough few weeks. One time, I actually had to carry him in to the dojo while he clung to my neck. We were both obviously pretty frustrated with each other. His Sensei saw and came over, with an expression that said he knew exactly what was going on.

"Let me talk to Sam," he said.

I left the waiting room and wandered outside with Caroline, knowing I wouldn't be helping if I was standing there. I watched through the glass as Sensei got down on Sam's level and talked to him and I saw Sam nod a few times, then smile and follow him into the open gym area for class. Afterward, Sensai came and talked to me, told me that it was normal for kids to go through phases like that, and that it was important to just keep coming back.

Things got better from there, but we still had some ups and downs. Sam was sent to sit in a corner a few times during class when he was disruptive or not listening, but Sensai always took the time to talk to Sam afterward about how studying karate takes focus and he knew he could do it. He told me privately that Sam's penchant for falling down on purpose or blowing random raspberries was something he remembered doing as a kid when he felt like his energy was all cooped up, and he knew what he was going through. I observed many times when Sensei would give Sam positive reinforcement in front of the group, such as praising him for his tenacity or focus during a particular exercise, or noting how hard he was working at something. I saw Sam's attitude towards karate change as he gained the stripes on his belt, and eventually the invitation to the yellow belt test.

We weren't allowed to attend the test itself, but Mark was able to come at the very end and observe the way the kids were given their belts. As the parents entered, all the kids sat quietly meditating, kneeling on the ground with their eyes closed while their parents snapped pictures. The three senseis at the dojo walked around and quietly placed each child's new belt and certificate in front of them, telling them that when they opened their eyes they would find out if they passed.

When Sam finally opened his eyes, Mark said that his face told it all - shock, joy, surprise, pride all mixed together. You can see it written all over him in the picture Mark took of him holding his certificate and belt with the senseis. Afterward, Sam told Mark that part of the test was that they were each asked what they learned from their studies so far. Sam's answer was that earning a yellow belt takes a lot of focus.

So yeah, I'm pretty proud. And, as I told Sam, not just of the accomplishment but of the fact that he worked so hard, stuck with it when it wasn't as fun, and kept coming back. I'm also really heartened to see the relationship between Sam and his sensei, especially as we get ready to send him off to kindergarten and years of adult authority figures who are not us.

But most importantly, I see that Sam is proud of himself. He was able to articulate at the test what his particular challenge was, and voice that he overcame it. I see that he is proud not just of the belt, but in all of the work that went into earning it.

And I also reflect on what Mark and I do to show and reinforce those values. That we value working hard over trophies. That when everything seems overwhelming, sometimes just showing up when you promised to is enough for now and the rest will come later.

I know we'll have lots of ups and downs in our future, over karate and over other things. He'll want to quit, he'll get frustrated and sad when he doesn't make progress, doesn't win, or feels like all the work is in vain. But I hope we can help him understand all these things, put them in perspective and remind him that working hard for something takes time, and is ultimately its own reward.

Natural Consequences

I may possibly be willing to whisper under my breath that Caroline is finally potty trained. I whisper because if I dare to speak out loud, the Gods of Bodily Evacuation will surely smite me with a #2 in the middle of Target. So, we'll speak softly about this.

Caroline was so very different from Sam on this count. With Sam, he basically woke up one day and decided he was done with diapers. Ok, maybe it wasn't quite that smooth, but there was no doubt that he drove the bus on that one. Did I mention he was a few months past his second birthday? I will definitely say that there are good points about having a stubborn kid.

Caroline, however, approached the entire venture with suspicion and fear. I knew that she knew when she had to go, and she would even tell me when she was about to go but would insist on going in her diaper (thanks for telling me, kid?), turning her nose up entirely at the idea of sitting on the potty.

I kept expecting that she'd let me know when she was ready, like Sam did. But the thing about Caroline is that sometimes she needs a little push out of the nest, and I have to know when to give it.

I made up my mind about three weeks ago on a Wednesday morning. We'd run out of diapers and I was frankly too lazy to go out to the store and get some with both kids, and I couldn't find any of our diaper covers for the cloth ones that would fit her. So I took a deep breath, set up the potty and some strategically placed towels, and decided she'd bare-bottom it for the morning.

Maybe I need to interject here that there are two things I struggle with in parenting (and life) more than most, it seems - messes and natural consequences. And it hardly seems fair how often those two things seem to go together. Allow your kids to play with play-doh and they don't clean it up, and the play-doh is dried out and no more play-doh. At least, that's the way it should go. What usually happens is that my sanity is slowly chipped away at by the sticky floor, the unavailability of my kitchen table and the general clutter, so I either make the kids clean it up or do it myself.

I hang my head in shame. I always said I'd be a stickler for letting my kids experience natural consequences, but it is so, so much harder in practice than it is in theory. And in looking back, it's hardly surprising. I've never been good myself about connecting my actions to their consequences. It's so much easier to eat that fourth cookie and then feign surprise when the number on the scale doesn't move, or kick yourself for delaying and staying up late writing that term paper, even when it's exactly what you did last time and the time before, or run on that injury, instead of exercising a little patience and temperance, and make it worse. I am terrible at that stuff. And I'm probably not the only one. It often seems that our entire world is not really all that concerned with natural consequences, either. No matter what you did to lead to the jam you're in, there's a quick fix for it, often at a price. Entire industries are built upon our inability to pay attention to and learn from natural consequences.

So, with the entire world and all my self-worth riding on it (I kid!) I resolved to at least give this a whole-hearted try for a few days in relation to Caroline's potty training. And it was messy, and time-consuming, and required me to constantly be on alert in a way that slowly fried my brain over the course of the day. There were all the pee-soaked clothes and, inevitably, the urine-filled boots and shoes. Each short errand or run to the store felt like some sort of human waste Russian Roulette.

But you know what? She learned. When she had an accident, I said, "Oops! That's ok. Let's clean it up together." And we did. When she was bare bottomed on the second day and asked me for a diaper so she could poop, I shrugged and said, "Sorry! No diapers available!" and let her make a decision about what she was going to do with that information (she eventually went on her little potty). When we were out and about and she balked at the large, scary public toilet, I said, "Well, this is the only potty available right now, so you let me know what you want to do." At first she chose to hold it until we got home, but will now use almost any potty anywhere.

I'm very proud of both of us for sticking with it, even when it wasn't comfortable. Frankly, it was a daily (heck, hourly!) struggle to bite back "you don't want to have an accident, do you?" or just take her bodily and PUT her on the darn potty when I knew she had to go. And this was just one small part of parenting, one small cornered-off area of the vast expanse of decisions and consequences my kids make every day that I help them with. I had to remind myself that Caroline wasn't the only one making a behavior change, here.

But the whole experience got me thinking about how this relates to my faith life. I believe that part of we humans' relationship with God is very much based on this idea of natural consequences. We have pretty much as much rope as we want. Free will and all that stuff. God very much wants us to choose the path that leads to Him, but He gives us that choice. He doesn't make us, although I suppose if that's what He wanted He could have made us to do so. But he would have had robots instead of loving, amazing, smart, impulsive, demanding, questioning human beings. I have to think that there is some pleasure for God in who we are, since He made us in his image.

And I believe that we parents who believe in this God are called to reflect our relationship with Him in our relationship with our own children. Doing so allows them to know Him through us, and to grow in their own faith as they get older. So, with this in mind, perhaps the best thing I can do as a parent is just to say,

I'm here, and I love you. If you make a mess, I'm always here to help you clean it up. If you leave your play-doh out and it dries out and you are sad, I'll listen to you. If you don't do your homework and have to stay up late or get a bad grade, I'll bring you a snack. And I hope you learn from all of that. But if you don't, I'll be here the next time, and the time after that, as long as I'm alive. Because I know you. I know you so well. And I know you can learn, I always hope that you will.

Make no mistake, I'm sure I have some spleen-filled cleaning binges and frantic calls to teachers in my future along with "I told you so" escaping from my lips more often than not, but I hope and pray very hard that I can let go of the controls and let my kids experience the natural consequences of their actions. In the end, they will be far better and more lasting teachers than I.

Ash Wednesday

I'm hungry.

And not just because it's Ash Wednesday and I've been fasting. No. I feel like I woke up from hibernation ravenous, except my stomach is my soul. There's no other way to explain it. You know how when you've been sick with a long illness and you just sort of get used to it, and then suddenly you're well and you realized just how badly it sucked to be sick? Sort of like that.

I don't really think I was sick, necessarily. I think I got complacent. It can happen to any of us about anything, and without really thinking. We fall off the diet wagon, stop our good habits. Often, it's something sudden and jolting that makes us stop and look at our feet and realize we weren't really paying attention to the path. For me, I had sat on my spiritual laurels for too long. I had assumed that at one point in my life I had worked everything out in my head and my heart, so I was good. I didn't really need to keep practicing at it, keep searching. I was done. I could go on and just live life now.

Except faith isn't like that. Faith is endless.

I was reminded with some reading earlier this week that God, like all the things he is compared to - Love, Beauty, Truth - is completely unending. Totally infinite. And I realized that I had limited myself. I had told myself that what I had done was good enough, that where I was was fine. And it is fine. But there's more....so much more. I was barely scratching the surface of faith, and I thought it was a meal.

I spent a lot of time over the last month feeling disheartened and a little beat up over many things - the state of the world, my microscopic chance to make any lasting sort of change in it. I fell into what can best be described as a spiritual depression. Then, in the desperation of a convert, I reached out and felt a hand, and heard a voice.

It said, "Come with me. I want to show you something."

And I followed.

So now, I have book lists, and prayer lists, and things to write and look up, philosophers and theologians and saints. I'm sitting at a banquet, one that was always available to me. And the more I read and the more I pray, the more I see the beauty, and the truth, and the love that's there. Infinity.

I realize that to some this may sound extreme. After all, most of you know me already as a pretty devout Catholic. Not necessarily a good one, and I don't expect that will change much. But that's the wonderful thing about it that I found in these last few weeks. Conversion is a continual turning toward God, because there is always more turning to do. As C.S. Lewis writes in The Last Battle, there is always the call of Aslan the Lion, "Further up and further in!"

I plan to write a bit more about my faith journey here, especially as it intersects with the other areas of my life that I write about more often. In looking back at this blog, it becomes apparent that while I may have thought a lot about faith as a general principle, I didn't do a great job of exploring its daily application. I'm hoping that during this Lent I can work on changing that, both by walking the path more intentionally and by reflecting on it in my writing.

Here's to conversion. Further up and further in!

Nerves

Last month, Sam had the unique opportunity to do something not many five year olds do: he conducted a choir. As part of our fundraising auction for Choral Arts, we auction off the opportunity to conduct Choral Arts at our Christmas concert while we sing Silent Night. Mark bid on and won it, and we decided to see if Sam would be interested in doing it. He was beyond excited, and talked about it on and off for the last few months. We brought him to rehearsal the Wednesday before the concert so he could meet our conductor, Robert Bode, and have a go during practice. Seeing Robert, one of my mentors from college, carefully demonstrate a three-beat pattern while Sam observed and moved his arms the same way was a highlight of my year. Sam was deadly serious about the whole thing and took his duties to heart.

Afterward, Sam and I were standing next to Robert when Sam told me that he was starting to feel like he had a little stage fright. Robert smiled at him and said, "Oh, Sam, that's how you know it's going to be GOOD!"

Since then, Sam and I have had several conversations about nerves - why we get nervous before things, how our body responds, and what it means. One of the great joys about having a child, especially one around Sam's age, is answering questions like this and allowing myself to think about something a new way, or think about it for the first time. It got me thinking about why, after all these years, I still get nervous before performing.

I have such vivid memories of being a nervous performer as a child. My piano teacher always set the program for our piano recitals in order of ability - the most beginner students first, and the advanced ones at the end. For years, I'd request to be put at the very beginning. Getting it over with meant I could sit and enjoy listening to my friends instead of frantically reviewing my fingering on my thighs as I counted down the names left in the program before it was my turn. Of course, it got to the point where my teacher had to put me toward the end in order to be fair to everyone, and the powerful adrenaline cocktail I got myself worked into was almost unbearable. Why on earth was I so nervous, especially when I knew that as soon as I sat down at the familiar keys, everything would disappear and I would be just fine?

As I've mentioned before, I've always been pretty goal-oriented person, and that was the case as a child, too. I wanted so badly to do well, even though I wasn't really sure what that meant. At the time, it meant not making any mistakes, not forgetting my music, playing every note as written. If I could do that, then it was a successful performance and I could go home with my head held high.

I discovered singing when I was in high school. Suddenly, I had this strange, unwieldy instrument that didn't do what I told it when I just pressed a key. It shook when I was nervous, it was subject to any and every change in condition, it was frustratingly different and uncontrollable. It was so....human. And yet, it suddenly freed me. Somehow, facing an audience and exposing this to them was less nervewreaking than hiding behind the piano.

But of course, I still got nervous. I wrang my hands at recitals, waiting my turn, I hyperventilated before auditions for college and eventually grad school. I was still terrified of doing something wrong, of what people would think of me if I did. I have a vivid memory of singing on a group recital at Rice, just one aria. During the time I was singing, I had this strange, out-of-body experience, like I was observing myself sing from over my own shoulder. This recital was the debut of all of the new grad students to the entire music department and patrons, and I had worked myself up into such a lather over what it all meant that I managed to drive my own consciousness out of my body. What if I didn't really deserve to be here? What if I made a mistake? What if I forgot the aria? It was quite an experience, and one that would be repeated with varying levels of intensity throughout my grad school experience.

You know what all of this self talk had in common, though? ME. Me, me, me. It was all about me. How was I going to do? Would I make a mistake? Would I make a fool of myself? What would they all think of me?

Not surprisingly, I took a break from singing for a while. I was so burned out from all the pressure I was putting on myself. I needed to use other parts of my brain and being for a while. I did other things, I had a career for several years that had nothing to do with music, I sang here and there for fun but nothing really serious. I got married. Then, I slowly started to dip my toes into the water again. A piece at church here, an oratorio gig there. A few years ago, I did two things that really turned everything around for me: I started singing with Choral Arts, and I got a gig as a section leader at a church I love.

In Choral Arts and at my church job, I truly discovered the beauty of communal singing, and of singing meaningfully. It wasn't just about me anymore, it was about us. And even more importantly, once the pressure was off I really started to think about and feel another presence: THEM.

Suddenly, they were everywhere....the audience. Why had I never thought about them before? Well, I guess I had, but more in the "let's talk about you; what do YOU think of me?" sort of way. I was so scared of doing something wrong, I had forgotten to really think about who was listening and why. As I opened myself up more and more to the communal experience that is live music, I was more and more drawn into the beauty and partnership that exists there. A woman, listening to a Choral Arts Christmas concert, eyes closed and transported somewhere else by what we were doing. Singing "Come Unto Him" at Fatima's annual Messiah performance, and seeing a man with tears in his eyes nodding with recognition of the truth of the text. I myself am tearing up now picturing all of these people so clearly, and thinking about what that music gave them in that moment. The more I look, the more I see. People sharing, people united, people healed by music.

I still get nervous. But it's not for the old reasons. I'm recognizing now that it's because I have come to care deeply about what the audience will get out of the performance, making sure that I get out of the way so the music can use me and my colleagues as a conduit to something timeless and healing. There are so many people out in the world starving for beauty right now, and we musicians are an honored group to get to provide it in some small way.

So yeah, I still get nervous.

But, that's how I know it's going to be GOOD.

New Year

Sitting here in mid-January at the computer, I'm looking out at the snow and my un-updated blog and thinking about how I meant to write something here about the new year much sooner than I am. Ah, well. So it goes.

The new year is a great time to take stock, create goals, do some emotional and physical housekeeping, and see where we stand and where we'd like to be. We humans seem to have a need to press the restart button when we can, and this time of year is as good as any.

I've come to the realization in the last few years that I'm a pretty goal-oriented person. This obviously comes as a shock to many of you. Please try to not fall over. However, until recently, I don't think I realized how motivated I am by having a goal. It was just the way I lived my life, charging toward doing, achieving, accomplishing. And I'm proud of myself for doing a lot of the stuff I've done. It got me to and through college with a double major in four years, and through grad school. It got me active and running. However, for much of my life I focused on achieving without really asking myself exactly what I was going for or why it was important to accomplish it. I just did it because it was expected, or enjoyable at the time, or simply put in front of me. Check, check, check.

Living that way can become addicting, and eventually heartbreaking. One of the things I found as I got older is that at some point the accolades and prizes stop. Either you're competing against a self-selected few who are better than you, or you are engaged in something for which there really are no outward prizes. So, when the rewards stop, you must ask yourself....why continue?

The only answer must be that it satisfies in a way nothing else could. The prize is in the process, not the end result. I've found a few of those endeavors in my own life, and seen that the ones that don't meet that standard have gradually fallen away. I've learned and am still learning to just let them go, and to let go of guilt over them. That doesn't mean that these things I am still attempting are easy. In fact, some of them are quite difficult. But tackling something difficult and finding meaning in the process of achieving it? Blessed, worthy, some might say even necessary to our well-being.

So, with that in mind, my focus this coming year is to just be more present. Whatever I am doing or feeling or achieving, whomever I am with or not with, to focus on just being in the moment in the process, to enjoy it just for the sake of what or who it is, not what or who it was, or could be, or is going to be.

Difficult, but worth it.