Monastery Reflections: 11

Monastery Reflections from my time there last April

There's no entertainment here. So little things are delightful. While we stood silently behind our chairs before breakfast this morning, we saw rabbits outside on the hill. It was lovely! I could have watched for hours! And this happens every day - yesterday there was a sunset, the night before the moon was out. There's a tree, there's a bird, there's a ladybug on my blade of grass. How have I never seen any of this? 

Monastery Reflection: 10

Monastery reflections from my time there last April


 Prayer is five times a day. I only go to three. But I add up times, and it comes to the exact amount of church services that I've missed in the last full year of not attending church at all. God gets last laugh.

Monastery Reflections: 5

Monastery reflections from my time there last April.

What a charming little old kindly looking weathered priest, visiting for the weekend. He's simply lovely looking - round face, wrinkled eyes. But I think that I’m gotten too attached to silence. I’m irritated out of all reason when he laughs aloud to his lunch book - during our daily silent lunch (all meals are silent at the monastery - like pretty much everything else). Today after chapel, he walked behind me back to the cells, singing pleasantly some hymn or other. And I was supremely pissed. As I’m writing this, I hear him in the room next door, blowing his nose with a lot of gusto. 

Maybe acclimating back to society after a month here will be harder than I thought.

Monastery Reflections: 4

Monastery Reflections from last April


It's hard not to get the giggles in services sometimes. Examples:

- when the we pray to the "Adorable Holy Spirit." I know we're using the ancient sense of adorable. But... the image is stuck. I'm trapped with a cozy, cutesy third person of the Trinity.

- the old monk struggles with his hearing aid and everyone just plunges on through the Eucharist with abandon - "tick tick tick tick!" - his hand wiggling in his ear, it's whining and ticking at intervals, and Brother P. is rolling his great and mighty voice onward.

- Easter week we're inundated with guests unused to our diet at the monastery, and chapel is interrupted, intermittently, by airplanes overhead and the guest's stomachs growling. Loudly.

Monastery Reflections: 3

The monks look so different outside of chapel. In services Brother P. is majestic, with a deep, strong, mighty voice inside a beat up and lame body. The lines of his body are sharp and defined. He looks and sounds regal. When he's in the role of priest at services, he's so intentional: hands lifted, bread up, never a smile, chants faster and with more purpose than the other monks.

I bump into him outside the kitchen and didn't recognize him. He has little glasses that I didn't see before. I’m taller than him. He speaks really low and mutters, and I can’t understand him at all. He has a sad, needy sort of smile all the time that's asking for to me to smile back. In the chapel, he is Christ to us. At the kitchen, he’s the cook. He's wringing his hands, twitchy, can’t meet my eye. He's very pleasant, soft-spoken, looks a little lost and like he’s trying to remember something that he’s forgotten. 

Roles.

Monastery Reflections: 2

During the Eucharist we pass the peace. I am next to the ancient monk today, bent up double in his chair. I reach for his hand to shake it and he pulls me down, just beaming through all his wrinkles – then KISSES me, smack, smack, on each cheek. 

“Christ is in our midst,” 

“He is and always will be.” 

I hold on to how old and silky smooth and thin his cheek felt for the rest of Eucharist. Christ is in our midst.

Monastery Reflections: 1

I found all my writing from the monastery, and I'm going to post a few thoughts a day for the Christmas season to get these out. They're pretty short. Hopefully they give a taste of my time there.

“You don’t mind the silent work?” Brother A inquires.

I am still finding the silence really restful.

“Good. The usual procedure, is to talk, only when necessary for work, and as briefly as possible.” Brother A's voice falls every few words, and draws out the last word – “as briefly as possiblllllllle.”

When he leaves me at the hen coup to get supplies, I indulge in a little breaking of the Lesser Silence to have a chat with the hens. “Heyo, little ladies,” I cluck, “How’s it goin’? Ready for dinner?” I feel a little bit guilty and I keep an eye out for Brother A.

It turns out that the urge to chat to hens in irresistible. “Hey hey hye, biddies,” he murmurs, “time for dinner! Time for walkies!” Then, sheepishly, “I always let them ouuuuut, give them a chaaaaaance, to stretch their winnnnnnnngs!”

I’m not sure if this talk is strictly necessary for work. (Maybe just necessary for sanity?)

winter

it's snowing, just a little bit, at the job site. when i'm sawing wood, i can't tell if it's sawdust or snowflakes that are blowing all around everywhere. it's freezing cold. i'm wearing seven layers (count them - long underwear, t-shirt, plaid cotton, plaid flannel, wooly sweater, plaid lined jacket, windbreaker) but it's so windy and so freeking damp that you just feel chilled all the time.

---

noisy day. steve is running the circular saw; t is whamming at the nail gun; there's a dirt bike flying by on the road; dogs somewhere are barking. the truck radio is running christmas tunes (it's not really christmas until you sing along to the christmas shoes!) and that makes it totally ok that... it's just started to rain.

--- 

there's a thick frost on everything this morning. it's 23 degrees (eight layer day) but it's a bright blue sky and very sharp cold - not the awful lingering damp that seeps into your gloves and socks. everything is glittering. i want to shake all the trees on the hills because i think that they'd tinkle like bells. even when the sun hits everything, it melts really slowly. when it does start to melt, you can hear the water start to move everywhere, little trickles at a time. we have the studs up for the walls of our new house, and the sun is melting the frost in stripes across the floor.

---

christmas is coming!

coffee shop at christmas

nobody is in the coffee shop yet this morning. it smells delightfully like pine trees and coffee and weed. the guys behind the counter are swapping stories about finals preparation. the christmas music is slow and jazzy and i am cuddled up on a squishy leather couch pretending to write another Statement of Intent but really soaking in a warm bubble bath of smells and sounds and tastes.

i love coffee shops and i love christmas and if only it was snowing!

dear jesus,

they should have an AA equivalent for spiritual things.

love, me


dear you,

they do, hon. we call it church.

even more love, jesus

Guttering and Baseboarding

Why do some days seem so long and others so short?

Today went by soooo slooooowly! We got a lot done, but it just seemed to really drag. T and I started to go all crazy at 3ish (highlight: T telling me "lean on her!" and then when I did... dropping me, and herself. Quote: "That wasn't leaning! That was your whole weight!")

There was another day, too, that was even worse. We all wanted to eat lunch at 10am, and by 2pm, it felt like we had been in Mrs. Sandra L's kitchen for at least a week. When you're so disconnected from time that the morning of the same day seems like it happened at least three days ago, it's a bad day.

But today wasn't really a bad day. We put up gutters around the whole house, just in time for it to start raining, and for us to get to see if they worked (they mostly did. More leaks than were anticipated.). We ate at DQ for lunch, which was a super exciting adventure (also hard to tone ourselves down for going out in public - we laugh a whole heck of a lot at work, and when we get around people, we have to remember to Get Normal for them). And then we put in baseboard everywhere. Kitchen, living room, hallways, bedroom - and I got to caulk a lot of things. I'm covered in white goo still. So we got a lot done, and felt productive, but - oh my, we were putting up gutters and putting down baseboard for a long, long, long time. A couple years, at least.

Ode to Kentucky Mud: A Journal

We're building a new house! I'm super duper excited. This is what I wanted to do in Kentucky - learn to build houses. So here is how we lay a foundation in Kentucky.

Monday: We ripped up the old foundation with a backhoe, then dug out the new one. I got to use the little thingy that checks if you're level, and use my thumb to tell Steve, on the backhoe, whether the hole should go deeper or stay put. So we hacked out the footer and went home, tired and happy.

Thursday: We got to the footer and the sides had sort of collapsed. So we dug out the collapsed dirt, which wasn't much, and then put in the rebar - long round metal pipe-things that you put in a pair all around the inside of the footer. We also put in rebar stakes in every corner, and spent a lot of time hammering them down, pulling them up, and then doing it again, trying to get every single one exactly level with every other one. We got sort of muddy, but enjoyed ourselves. Next up - call the inspectors, get inspected, then pour the concrete!

Monday: The inspector couldn't come before Friday, and it rained over the whole weekend. The footer has a foot of water in one side, and the other side is filled with collapsed, fine Kentucky mud. This is less fun than the first time. It's heavy, caught up in the rebar we had planted so studiously. The mud is so deep and thick that it keeps pulling our boots off when we move. Spleltch, spleltch, spletlch. My neck hurts, T's back hurts, and Steve is still good humored (is he ever not good humored? A question) but has started complaining - good humoredly. Plus, the rebar is getting in the way, and the stakes are sinking deeper (all that careful measuring!) and it's just a mess. But it's DONE!

Tuesday: Inspector comes. He says that we need to "get the mud out of the footer." But we did that! We did it yesterday! Waaaah....

Wednesday: We dig more mud out of the footer. This is REALLY not fun. Also, I notice that the station that plays "Hits from the 60's, 70's, and 80's!" has never played a Simon and Garfunkle song! What's with that? Bigots! Small-minded Stones fans! Lennon-lovers!

Thursday:I wash my pair of jeans from yesterday twice, and they still crackle when I bend them. It looks like Kentucky mud is in this relationship for the long haul. (No comment on my boots. I think I'll have to toss them. Now accepting: Boot donations!)

Friday: Cement arrives. Cement truck gets stuck in the mud on the side of the hill. How many wheelbarrow loads does it take to fill half a house foundation? Seven hours worth.

Tuesday: Show up to level out the dirt around the outside of the footer, and guess what? The sides had collapsed into the cement foundation! Shocking! Guess what we did? Shoveled Kentucky mud out of the footer.

Wheeee!

fragility

"how do you keep from being preachy?" - rolling stone

"the key is not to contrive it - don't bring the same level of indignation to things you don't feel. as long as you keep it as honest as you can to your own feeling, then you hope it doesn't become a pure parlor trick" - jon stewart

it's hard to be loving towards people when you are very concerned with your own identity. in particular when you are keeping careful track of what offends you, so that you can be offended at the right time and show everyone how clever and deep you are. you can be offended about equal rights or discrimination or animal rights or logging or pot legislation or actually pretty much anything.

so then you are offended, and get to defend something, and feel really good about how indignant you are. but everyone sees that you aren't really indignant, and everyone knows you're just being self-righteous (or at least, everyone that matters).

the alternative sometimes feels like being not human. the alternative means only being indignant when you actually are indignant (i got this from jon stewart so it must be true), which means that you only get to be righteously angry when you actually feel angry, righteously, not just when you know you ought to feel angry because this is a righteous cause. so if you aren't a very nice person, or a very righteous person in general, nothing evil will make you indignant. but if you're also a smart person, this will make you veeeeery uncomfortable, because you'll realize holy crap evil doesn't make me angry i must be evil too. so rather than live honestly with your own emotions, you cue yourself up to be offended when you know you should be offended.

everyone (me) is very fragile it seems like. easily breakable, easily offended, easily induced into a coma of apoplectic indignation. this makes it very complicated to love people, because people that we're supposed to love end up saying things, accidently, that cause us to be offended, and then we chose our own identity (as a righteous condemnationer) over being nice to a nice person.

danny-from-l'abri said that "growing up" meant being more solid and less fragile. this is hard.

A Little Pentecostal Lovin'

Sometimes it seems like the curtain between spiritual reality and physical reality gets pulled back a little bit, and you're allowed to dance in the sunbeams before it falters down again. Last Sunday, before church, Jesus found me at BC&T, while I downed soy chai tea lattes and read old journals. Ideas that I'd been mulling over for months suddenly connected to each other, too quickly for me to record and leaving me chicken scratching concepts on napkins and making little triangular diagrams - "LOVE - TRUST - JESUS -> SPECIAL GRACE!" - which is like drawing a stick figure to try and express "Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss".

I bundle up and head out to my new Pentecostal church family. I bounce up to church so enthusiastically that I fell down a small set of stairs in my new heels (Lesson: Spiritual revelations should not be combined with high heels). I even make it through all of the hugging and introducing and the overwhelming touching of the South with grace and good spirits.

I have always pictured worship and prayer as a kind of dance. Dancing can communicate love without language being necessary; dancing also has this sameness of purpose and direction that seems to unify more than anything else. I read somewhere that "dancing is the music of the body;" I think that worship is the dancing of the soul. So through all this, I'm still, futily, trying to get my beautiful spiritual ideas down in triangular diagrams, when one of my absolute favorite songs starts to play. This is a song to dance to! (Metaphorically: I am a New Englander, still.) So I close up all my diagrams and stand up, super pumped about worship...

A hand on my back.

"Jesus told me to pray for you, sweetheart."

Eh?

"I felt, ever since we said hello this morning, that Jesus wants to tell you something!"

A kindly, grey-haired lady is kneeling next to me now.

"He feels your pain, baby, and I'm gonna pray that He re-leases you!"

Wha'? My pain? What pain? Jesus, are you telling this lady something about my unconscious pain that you aren't telling me?

"Jeeeesus, I pray for my sister! She's sad! She's suffering! She's empty! Her heart is broken and bleeding, Lord! It is broken! It is bleeding! May she know that YOU answer her prayers, that YOU hear her cry, that YOU will heal her brokenness! Re-lease her! Re-lease her! Jeeeeee-sus!"

So on, so forth. And then, that was that. Worship wrapped up, The lady gave me a weepy hug. I sort of patted her politely on the shoulder.

We don't do this in New England.

At first I was cranky. Interrupting worship, to me, is like interrupting a dance right in the middle. And not just any dance - it's like trying to tap out the groom on his wedding day: "I know you just got married, but I sure would like to dance with the bride... right - now!"

But the metaphor didn't help me stay cranky, because if Jesus is the groom here, then he knows that this isn't such a big deal, and I'm just overreacting. And then I had this picture of Jesus, in a tux, standing by the potted plants in the corner of the patio at the reception, watching my desperate face as I get sucked into a wild polka with a well intentioned Southern lady ("1 and 2 and! 1 and 2 and!") ... and he keeps catching my eye and grinning, because the sort of person that I give my whole life up to in a Divine Romance is also the sort of person that thinks that things like that are sort of silly, in a good, get-the-giggles kind of way. And knows that this nice lady doing the polka so vigorously really does mean well, and loves Jesus just as much as me - just in a different way. There'll be plenty of time to dance. But this sure has been a hoot, right, Laura?

Right.

Go, Dog, Go!

I am going to die by dog. I know it. It might be while I'm going running down Sand Lick Road, and one of the crazed, bloodthirsty coon dogs breaks the chain off its doghouse and rips to me little bitty shreds. It might be from a deadly virus that I pick up cuddling participants' dogs while they wash my face with their disease infested tongues. It might be from careening off a cliff trying to avoid a dog sitting - sitting! - in the middle of the road.

The long and short of it is, there are so many dogs in Kentucky. There are mean dogs chained to porches, hunting dogs chained to barns, big white snowy dogs at the dump, little half-starved beagle dogs at our storage barn, and adorable flea infested puppy-dogs at our volunteer house. There are dogs with the body of a Basset hound and the head of a German shepherd like a surreal mythological beast, and there are dogs with no front legs that walk upright on their back legs like a creepy dog-person. There are old dogs by the side of the road, and hungry dogs outside the tobacco drive-through, and tired dogs under rusty tractors, and lost dogs in fields, and mommy-dogs with unlimited supplies of puppies, and dogs that are lame, and dogs that smell funny. This post is just inches away from morphing into a children's book ("The red dog is in. The blue dog is out.")

Moral of the story: If you need a dog, please come to Kentucky and take some of our dogs away.
Moral of the story #2: Spay and neuter your dog. Please.

Elvis Resurrected!

Mrs. Mary J was my absolutist favorite participant. We were at her house working for about three weeks, and while we were there we blew insulation into her roof, replaced a huge picture window in her living room, and built an 8x10 porch with a roof for the back door. It was my favorite kind of work - fast-paced, interesting, pretty easy to figure out but sometimes pretty challenging to implement (I have a great memory of my coworker T lying on her back on the house roof, trying to screw things in under the overlap of the porch roof, while I stood on the ladder under her holding her feet up because if I didn't, she'd slide right off the metal roof that was totally covered in sawdust - and of course, both of us giggling and snorting up sawdust and coughing and commenting that "this would be a super interesting way to die!"). Leaving Mrs. Mary J's house was a little heartbreaking. Back to slow, boring jobs - back to grumpy participants - back to groups (oh BOY.)

I'd like to try and paint a picture of Mrs. Mary J, but I think that I'll probably fail. She was a short, stoutish lady with wispy grey hair and wee little spindly glasses. She rocked out Kentucky fashion better than anyone I've met here, with her denim skirt, baseball hat, and her husband's camo t-shirt. She made it look classy and practical. Probably the greatest thing about her was how often she said "well." Except she said it "way-uhl!" And she used it for everything. It could be a question, or a statement, an expression of shock, disapproval or pleasure, or just a filler word to let you know that she saw still listening, depending on her intonation.

Most of what made Mrs. Mary J so delightful was how  un-self-conscious she was, and how simply she saw the world and herself. Very trusting of all of us (sometimes I had to retract a joke that I made, because she widened her eyes and said "WAY-uhl!" and I knew that she thought it was true... oops), deeply genuine, super kind, really joyful, hospitable (let me tell you about her delicious venison that we got to eat for lunch several times!) and grateful for everything that happened to her house. She was like a kid on Christmas morning, every single day - "Wah-uhl, these here windows you'uns are puttin' in are like $500,000 dollar house windows!"

This is my favorite story about Mrs. Mary J. We're putting up gutters on the side of the house, and she comes out to tell us that there is a festival coming up soon that Elvis will be playing at. (Impersonators are sort of everywhere in Kentucky - Elvis and Michael Jackson were both in Berea a few weekends ago).

So she gives us the news of the festival, then wanders back inside and we keep up working. Ten minutes go by. Then - the door bangs open! Mrs. Mary J flies out of it! Her eyes are wide and her mouth is open!

"Way-uhl!" she gasps, "Elvis is dead!"

Oh my goodness me, the look on Steve's face.

What I'm really curious about is the first thing that went through her mind when she realized that Elvis is dead AND that Elvis was playing at the festival. Oh, lovely.

I really miss Mrs. Mary J.

grad school better be worth this

Here's what it looks like to write an essay for graduate school:

Google:
"How to write a personal statement"
"Yale statistics"
"Yale GRE scores"
"Notre Dame GRE scores"

open word document. read 11 pages of drafting. cut. paste. read opening paragraph. read it again.

Google:
"catchy opening statements graduate school"
"gradcafe.com MDiv personal statement"
"Boston College admissions"
"Boston Museum of Fine Arts"
"bus Boston-NH"
"Portsmouth NH shows"

bullet points: what makes me unique. why i am special. why you should accept me into your school and then give me 40,000 a year. 

... i like jesus. also i like ... philosophy... and ... the color... green ...

Google:
"why graduate school"
"WWOOFing in Italy"
"culinary schools"
"massage therapy"
"spas in lexington ky"

open a new word document. (entitled "Another Statement of Intent" in order to distinguish it from documents "Statement of Intent" and "New Statement of Intent") catchy opening statement: "i have been worrying over Truth since...".

Google:
"worrying definition"
"What the Bible Says About Worry"
     -> "What the Bible Says about Women in Ministry"
          -> Wikipedia: Famous Female Philosophers
               -> Simone de Beauvoir
                    >-existentialism
                        -> Monty Python
                             -> Fawlty Towers "The Germans'
Youtube: "fawlty towers the germans"


hahahahhaaaaaa ooooh nooooo. Open Another Statement of Intent. WRITE! SOMETHING! YOU ARE SPECIAL! YOU ARE UNIQUE! COMMUNICATE! COMMUNICATE!

"I want to get a Masters of Divinity because I love to write. It's easy for me, and I enjoy it. I can write for hours and hours at a time without noticing the outside world at all. In fact, sometimes I get lost in language to the extent that I forget to eat, or cease to notice people around me."

Google:
"do writers really like writing"
"Stephen King: 7 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer"

eat a muffin. make some coffee. stretch.

Blogger: New Post.

cheap thrills

so i went to get contacts this morning, and they're all adjusted to my astigmatism, which means that everything is weird. driving was a little wonky. i kept blinking really slowly and moving my head baaaack and fooooward. Things just seemed off.

things got weirder at the used bookstore, because i spent a lot of time thinking that i was in the large print, large bound section, and trying to find the real books that were a normal size. finally i put my hand up to the rows of books and was shocked that my hand was "large print."

i think that the lady behind the counter thought that i wasn't quite myself. wandering through the store, muttering to myself, tipping my head, holding my hand up to books, then pulling it back.... soooo sloooowly....

Flashback: Monastery Week 1

April 2011. The last week of Lent before Holy Week begins.

A monastery in the South of England. 

I've been here for a week and will be here for three more.

Today John cornered me after chapel.

“Are you doin’ all right?” I’m not so great at UK accents, but he’s either from Northern England or Scottland (later I’m confirmed that yes, he is from the north of England). “Because ah I keep seein’ you and hopin’ you’re doin’ all right.”

I hope I don’t like lost, confused, and overwhelmed. I am trying exude “peace,” but I guess that I’m not doing so well.

John follows me to the cells, keeping up conversation. The monastery is observing its daily “Greater Silence,” from 5pm at night until 9am tomorrow morning, and I know that I’m supposed to make a graceful and polite escape from any conversation, but it’s nice to hear a voice that isn’t chanting. Honestly, it’s nice to hear my own voice as well. Even in the Lesser Silence, from 9am-5pm, only necessary speaking is permitted.

John has been here since January – a long term visitor like Susan and that “tubby” guy who is identified by everyone, even Brother Peter, by his roundedness. It seemed rude at first, but I think that the nickname stems from simple amazement rather than meanness. Food here is healthy - but scarce.

“How about the food,” John asks, “how about 2 slices of bread for breakfast?” I’m fine with the food, but “there’s a village just 15 minutes away,” John whispers, “over the wire fence in that direction,” gesturing through the woods. I must look shocked, because he reassures me that “we all go out for food, even Susan!” Susan is a lovely middle-aged lady who has been here a year, and Brother Lewis tells me that they have “hopes” for her permanent residency.

“How about these hours!” he presses on. “God, I never get used to these hours! Have you been to vigils yet?” I set my alarm for 4:50 this morning, but shut it off and went back to sleep. “God! It’s not natural! Psalm after Psalm after Psalm! Seven Psalms or more! They say there’s something in the Bible about praying 6 times a day. But I tell you, I look at these old men, standing in the cold, hour after hour – times change!” He won’t stop shaking his head. He’s still whispering.

“If you need anything, you let me know. The password for the internet computer in the library is 'one great tradition.'” I really do look shocked now. “Oh, this whole place is rigged with wireless, too” he assures me. “They’ve got it everywhere. And if you need to get into the library after they lock it,” at night and early morning, “just ask Susan, she’s got a key”.

I feel vaguely like I’m hearing a teenager at a restrictive boarding school share his secrets. I guess if you’re here for six months, you could go stir crazy. Six days in for me, and the spoken word has already turned into a novelty. So why is John here? And for half a year? Questions.

Kentucky Driving

Kentucky road are like New England roads except younger and more confused. I feel like New England roads are curvy in a much more peaceful, old sort of way. I guess that I get the vibe that NH curves make sense.   They seem more gracious to the average driver. Kentucky curves never made it out of adolescence. They just JERK and LEAP and go BACKFORTHBACKBACKFORTH like they just can't. make. up. their. MIND! "I wanna go RIGHT nonono LEFT OH! NO! I MADE A MISTAKE RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT!!!" The roads are incredibly hysterical. Also, all speed limits are 55mph, so the roads demand that you careen across them, while they screech at you to GO RIGHT MORE RIGHT MORE MORE MORE WATCH THE RAVEEEEEN!

And also there are a lot of stray dogs in Kentucky and they have their cool kid parties right in the middle of blind curves on the edge of mountains. Yeah.

Besides this, the people that drive on Kentucky roads (trans: Kentucky drivers) also do the darndest things. Last week, T and I got all jammed up behind the funniest motorcade. It's pretty normal to get stuck behind someone who has been intimidated by the berserk highways and is plugging along at 25mpg, but the line was getting super long and we were going super slow. Finally we see that there are some cop cars, with their lights flashing, somewhere near the front of the line. How exciting! Something really thrilling must be going on!

As the road straightens out, we see that there are four cop cars, and they're surrounding a school bus driving at about 15mph. Now speculation is really running high. My bet was that some kid pulled a knife on the bus, and was holding the bus driver hostage until Jackson County succumbed to his demands. Why else would there be four police cars trailing along with this bus?

Well, we finally we see what's going on. The full-size school bus, well covered by its police escort, was empty and being towed.

By a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

This place is really weird sometimes. Awesome, amazing, funny, fabulous... but really, really weird.

Green Wool Coat

I found a winter coat that I really wanted a few weekends ago. It was a beautiful dark green wool coat, and it fit perfectly. When I tried it on, I felt like Audrey Hepburn, and I should have moved to New York and worn cute vintage heels and had a real job doing something that required showering before work instead of after work, and wearing purple eye shadow, and also getting a paycheck.

Unfortunately, a paycheck was exactly what I needed to afford the coat, which, despite being ON SALE 50% OFF! rang in at $119.99. The little green coat was not to be. Neither was the little blue dress for contra dancing, or the previously mentioned vintage heels.

I'm mopy that I can't be super wealthy, and buy delicious fresh produce every day, and look fabulous, and have a new car that doesn't shake, rattle, and roll over 50mph. I'm really, legitimately frustrated that I can't just apply to graduate schools like Yale or Boston College and know that all I have to worry about is whether I'm smart enough, not whether I'm rich enough. I'm pouty that I can't just be a Harvard-type Zooey Deschanel vegan living in a gorgeous in-town loft, a walk away from an ocean somewhere.

So here's my pep talk that I give myself when those particular voices in my head get really loud.

You, Laura, live in Jackson county, the 33rd poorest county in the United States. You work in Owsley county, the poorest county in the entirety of the United States. (By annual median household income). The state of Kentucky contains 29 of the top 100 poorest counties, trailed by Mississippi at 13 and Texas at 10. Fully a third of the poorest counties in the country are in your state.

Last week you put flooring into a house that had holes in the bedroom floor and snakes in the walls and one wall that was a foot lower than the other one because the wood had rotted out.

You put a wheelchair ramp on a house with no doors inside, with a sheet hung between the toilet and the living room.

You have walked around dog poo on a living room rug.

You dismantled a front porch and discovered the seven full trash bags stuffed underneath.

You've jammed yourself into a 8 inch gap to drill on porch railings while an able-bodied homeowner watched and provided commentary, and you've nailed on siding next to a well-dressed, high heeled homeowner, who wielded a hammer better than you (even with her manicured nails) before she ran off to work for the day.

You've met Mrs. L, who keeps hinting at all the other work we could be doing; and you've met Mrs. Mary J, who feeds us and bandaids us and takes pictures of us.

You worked for Mrs. H, who called the office every day to see when we would come back and "finish up what we started here." And you've worked for people like Mrs. Julia D.

Mrs. D's house had burned down a month ago, and her husband and her had built the new one, by themselves, in 24 days. When they ran out of insurance money, they were short a porch, siding, and insulation under the house. CAP was there for three week with church groups, working next to Mr. and Mrs. D. when they weren't at their jobs. The house was decorated completely from Goodwill and yard sales, but was still color-coordinated and shiny-new looking. She made us baked beans and mac 'n cheese for lunch, and when she found out that you were living with 9 other people on a budget, she sent all the leftovers home with you. Oh, and she also taught you how to make little flowers for cakes out of frosting.

You have seen some poverty and despair, and some poverty and ingratitude, but mostly - mostly - you have seen poverty and thankfulness, and toughness, and generosity.

So, Ms. Zooey Deschanel wannabe. What do you really want the world to hand over to you? Who do you really want to be at the far end of life?

I'd rather eat Mrs. D.'s baked beans and climb roofs in ratty jeans than eat organic and wear Audrey Hepburn coats to an office job. I'd rather be like Mrs. D. than Audrey Hepburn, anyway.

Sometimes I just forget.

Bloodstopping

I cut my knee last week at work, and Mrs. Mary J, our participant, loaded me up with sympathy, bandaids, and some Appalachian advice to stop the bleeding: recite Ezekiel 16:6.

Some Wikipedia background on this:

Bloodstopping refers to an American folk practice once common in the Ozarks and the Appalachians, Canadian lumbercamps and the northern woods of the United States. It was believed that certain persons, known as bloodstoppers, could halt bleeding in humans and animals by supernatural means. The most common method was to walk east and recite Ezekiel 16:6, a Bible passage which reads

“

And when I passed by thee, and saw thee wallowing in thy blood, I said unto thee: In thy blood, live; yea, I said unto thee: In thy blood, live;

”

For the interested, here's some more stuff about healing from North Carolina's Appalachian hills, and some information on handling in Appalachia from National Geographic. Haven't been to a handling church, yet, but would like to visit one before I leave. It's so strange to be just two days drive South from my home state, but to be in such a completely different culture. I flew 3000 miles to get to England, and the culture there seemed closer to New England life and times than it does down here.

To quote Sweet Home Alabama, "you should need a passport to come down here!"

Otheriness

Mrs. Mary J needed insulation blown into her roof last week.

Something happened while I was standing there on the ladder, peering into the attic, holding up the plastic tube, while my co-volunteer shoving insulation into the air blower on the ground and Steve bumped around in the roof, blowing lint and whatever else they make this dirty, gray, blowing insulation with. Something funny was going on in that roof.

Something holy.

The attic had a vent across from me, and the sunlight crossed through the dust, the beams, Steve's bent over body, leaving streaks across everything as if wet paintbrush had taken a swipe at them. The lines of the attic and the lines of light were this ridiculously beautiful geometric cross, like it had all been planned out from long ago that here, now, there would be sunlight, and dust, and the roof, exactly like it was in that minute. The dust and lint and bits of paper filled up all the light beams, and the light looked thick and heavy, and I wanted to reach out and pick it up, except it looked so heavy that I didn't think that I would be strong enough if I tried.

At the monastery in England, the incense would cloud up around the skylight and the beam of light would take on the same illusion of weight and tangibility. Everything seemed more deeply real and everything seemed to cross over from where it belonged - the light had weight, the noise of the bells sounded three dimensional, the smell of the incense was tactile.

I think of holiness as a word to describe the other. Tom Wright says that it is wherever the "thin partition between spheres becomes transparent." "We are called to live at the overlap of heaven and earth," he says, "where God's future comes rushing into the present." Where light and smell and music all dig deeper into our senses until each one encompasses the other. This is holiness, or magic, or the weight of glory.

I'm glad that there is holiness under an attic roof in Kentucky with your ears full of lint, just as much as at a monastery in Europe.

 thanks to Tamara for the picture

Strictly Vegan

Two months ago a vegan moved into my community house. A panic attack hit the house (most particularly, hit our gourmet chef in residence, who was halfway through making his sauted apple/pork loin dinner). Discussion ensued! (what exactly does she mean by "no animal byproducts"? Forget animal byproducts - what's a byproduct???) Questions surfaced! ("so can she eat eggs?") And I decided to go on a Vegan Adventure! Since we'd have to be shopping for vegan food anyway, and cooking a separate meal for dinner, it seemed the perfect time to experiment. I've been vegetarian on and off for the last three or four years, and this seemed a natural next step. I decided to take a month and be strictly vegan and see what happened.

Here's what I learned.
  
The fewer the options, the better the fun.
For serious. When all the main roads are shut down for construction, you get to learn and love the twisty, windy back roads. (Who knew that chick peas were the most versatile bean on earth?!) 

Food is on my team now.
When I walk into the kitchen, I feel like I'm going on an adventure with food, not against it. Food wants me to succeed and wants me to be healthy and wants me to party with it. I feel very connected to my food now, and with it, the world and the earth.

Everything fun revolves around food.
Eating differently from your community is like being a leper. Getting ice cream with friends? Out. Eating Erin's birthday cake? Out. And if you do join the community, it won't make it better, because if you join but don't partake - people are sad that you can't eat with them, and sad that they cooked something that you couldn't eat, and talk about it a lot, and you end up feeling crummy that you've made them feel crummy. This reason alone is enough to make me want to drift back towards omnivorism.

There is no substitute for spinach and feta omelets.
This speaks for itself. 

People have opinions about food.
Strong opinions. Almost every day, I get to decide if I'm going to have a strong opinion back, or just chillax, let them have their opinion, and quietly go my way, doing what I believe is healthy and right. Sometimes it's too exhausting to put up a fight ("Yeah, you're right, I don't get enough protein. Or B-12. Or iron. Or Omega-3's. Yeah, I'm wasting away. One foot in the grave, the other in the 5K."). Sometimes it's too exhausting not to. ("YOUR BODY IS JAMMED WITH PROCESSED CRAP AND CHEMICALLY ALTERED ANIMALS AND YOU'RE ASKING ME IF I GET ENOUGH PROTEIN?  IS THIS A SICK JOKE?") I think (hope?) I'm finding a gracious balance of the two. It's sort of the same balance I've had to find with Christianity ("whaddaya mean, Christians don't have any fun???") 

Metamucil producers must be engaged in a world-wide coverup of veganism.
It's the only theory that makes sense!!! 

Everything comes from somewhere.
I had never thought about this very much before. When I started looking at ingredients on the back of cereal boxes, I started seeing objects as a collection of their parts - a collection of parts that compiled somewhere (China?) by someone (a child?) out of something (an animal?). My desk was made somewhere. My shoes, my lightbulbs, my yogurt, my car - everything was touched by so many people before it got to me. Who are those people? Where do they live? How were they treated? Everything I'm touching right now has a story - from my computer to to my chocolate bar. The Amish say that "one must accept all personal moral and spiritual liability of all harms done at any distance in space or time to anyone by one's own choices". I don't know if I can do that. But eating vegan, and thinking about where my stuff comes from, is a start. 

My body needs to be treated kindly.
 For me, it comes down to loving my body, living in it entirely, and treating it gently - it's been through a lot, and it's done its best for me in some tight spots. C.S. Lewis said that "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." My body isn't an inseparable "me," but something that "me" has charge over. (Philosophically, this idea has some huge holes, but they're all really boring holes, so I won't take the trouble to patch them up here.) I want to encourage it, coax it to be good, reward it when it succeeds, be understanding when it fails. All in all, having a body is like having a puppy - a lot of patience, flexibility, and kindness are necessary when dealing with its very unruly ways. My soul has been charged with taking care of my silly body, and I need to be kind to it and treat it with compassion, and veganism helps me be more aware of my body, the types of food that I eat, and what my body needs in order to thrive. Poor body. It really does try.

So. My one month trial of eating vegan ended two weeks ago.  There were definitely some cons. I'm not sure how long I can live in community and be a pre-hibernating bear, eating berries and nuts while cheesecake is being passed around. But I also don't know how long I can live with myself with questions like "where did this come from?" and "what is this doing to my body?" So for now -  

the vegan adventure continues! Long live plant life! Long live tofurkey! Long live Ghirardelli chocolate bars! Viva La Veg!

Rainy Day

I got behind in posting some of these, so the next batch of posts are a bit old.

It rained today in Kentucky.

I've been here since May, and today was the first "Rainy Day" we've had. Apparently it takes a hurricane's sideswipe [Lee's]  to get some all out rainy days. It does rains here, but usually loud and demanding and short cloudbursts - "GET OFF THE ROOF, SHE'S ROLLING IN!" - that take you from blue sky with white clouds to purple sky with green lightening in under 3 minutes. From the time that we first spot the darkness rolling in, sometimes there's barely time to get all the power tools under a porch. There are some days that we wait out the cloudburst sitting in the truck ("Is she passing?"..."Maybe.".... "Is it lightening up?".... "Could be"...."Could you scootch your leg over a bit?".... "Sorry."....). There are some days that it's gone from sunny to hurricane back to sunny in under half an hour.

It started raining Sunday night, and rained all Labor Day, and when I woke up this morning, I got to listen to rain on our metal roof for awhile before rolling out of bed. Three months of sweltering, humid, sun-blasting work days had conditioned me so effectively that I am now unable to make common-sense clothing decisions, and I deeply regretted my choice of shorts for every minute of our freezing cold, soaking wet afternoon.

Well, maybe just chilly and damp.

So we did what we do on rainy days in Kentucky - which is actually the same as what we do on sunny days in Kentucky - which is build us some houses! We did a (mostly) inside job today - ripping up old flooring in a kitchen and putting down some new stuff. There was some water damage on the kitchen floor, so our plan was to rip up the first layer and put down some linoleum. We ripped off the first layer - imitation wood - and found that the plastic tiles underneath were destroyed, too. So we ripped up the plastic tiles, and found that the plywood underneath the plastic tiles was rotten, too. So we ripped up the plywood and found out that the 2X6 supporting beams under the whole house were rotten as well...

So we spent a rainy, Kentucky day in a wee little broken down kitchen, ripping up floors for what seemed like all eternity. Ogres are not the only thing like onions.

Kentucky

For the first time today, I loved Kentucky.

I was up on the roof, 95 degrees out, wearing my cutoff t-shirt and a 10pb tool belt. Sweat was beading up and rolling into my eyes, and I could feel my arms getting a sunburn. I'm crawling around on all fours, holding an electric drill in one hand and a fistful of screws in the other, dropping twice as many screws as I get into the roof. My fingers are having trouble with the screws - the tin roof is so hot from the sun that I'm wearing super bulky leather gloves to keep from burning myself. My sneakers are damp and slipping, just a bit, on the metal.

And I stand up, and just look. Old cracked sheds on the property and across the street. A lame beagle trotting unevenly, aiming for the shade of a cluster of old trees. Chickens running loose across the one lane dirt road. A tractor in the back yard, just finished digging up the lawn for the garden. Hazy, light gray-blue sky that's thick and muggy. Cicadas and grasshoppers buzzing and buzzing and buzzing, mixing with the noise of air conditioners.

Just over the edge of the trees, I can see the hills - the pseudo-mountains of Kentucky, like moss-covered, mellow boulders just gently breaking the surface of the world, going on and on as if there is no world but this world, no country but this country, nothing but Kentucky hills forever and for always. And right then, on top of the roof, I knew that I was where I supposed to be, when I was supposed to be there, and that I love Kentucky and I love her people and I love her land.

This is good country.

Groups

A discarded article I wrote up for a CAP publication. It was a little too negative towards the group people for 'em. I thought I'd share it here.


I had a lot of expectations coming to the Christian Appalachian Project. They were all good, hopeful expectations that propelled me with lots of joy and excitement down to Kentucky. I expected that I would learn how to do useful things like install windows; I expected that I would learn how to interact gracefully and lovingly with a houseful of diverse people; and I expected that I would have meaningful relationships with the people that I’d serve in Kentucky.

The problem with expectations is that it’s hard to gracefully accept it when they aren’t fulfilled. I assumed that most of my time in Housing would be helping and loving the participants that CAP serves. I assumed that when Jesus said to “love my neighbor,” that my neighbors would be the rural residents of Appalachia. My expectations about who God was calling me to love were so clear that they might as well have been in Technicolor.

Most of all, I assumed that I knew the answer to the question “who is your neighbor?” I was wrong

I landed in Kentucky and in the CAP Housing program just about bounding out of my skin with excitement. I wanted to learn how to build things, and here I was, in Kentucky, 2,000 miles from my home state of NH, building things! Every day was (and still is) a small adventure. I love learning how to use caulk, power saws, and crowbars, and I love stepping back at the end of the day and seeing that I made something. Going home exhausted, sweaty, dirty, and sometimes bloody, brings with it the peace and satisfaction of a good days work. There have definitely been bad days. But even when I’m frustrated and confused and tired and it’s 113 degrees, I’ve still put up siding for a family that just had a burn out, or built a wheelchair ramp for a chair bound man with cancer. What I’m doing matters, in a physical way, to the people that I serve. If my Housing experience was limited to this kind of day, then there would be only beautiful days.

But having meaningful, sweaty experiences isn’t the only thing that happens on the Housing crew. Approximately every other week, five to fifteen well intentioned, pleasant high schoolers, parents, pastors, and teachers flood the jobsites. They are armed with cameras and brand new shiny tool belts. For one week, the Christian Appalachian project is the home of their church, youth group, or college mission trip. Like all people on missions trips, they are eager to help, eager to learn, and eager to make new friends. It is an awful lot of eagerness to encounter at 7:30am.

Helping to lead groups was unexpected, and quite frankly, at first completely unwelcome. I’m not much of a teacher, and it’s even harder when I don’t feel like I have a strong grasp of the material. Instead of spending my time on roofs, cutting timber, and caulking windows, I spend most days helping pleasant Sunday School teachers hold a drill, or teaching a 15 year old how to cut siding… all while praying fervently that I’m doing it right in the first place. Worse than groups without experience are groups with experience – and I get to feel all my insecurities and pride and fear well up as the kindly, slightly bossy Southern carpenter corrects my grip on a drill or tells me off for cutting porch railings “the wrong way.”

I retreated into a hole of judgment and complaining, overwhelmed by a lack of knowledge (when teaching) and a lack of humility (when being taught). I was frustrated that I wasn’t spending more time connecting with the participants, and frustrated that my emotional energy was going towards church groups instead of towards people who “really needed it.” I was particularly frustrated that my work in Housing wasn’t living up to my expectations. I came to Kentucky to love people, I told God in a wave of self-pity, not to herd wealthy high schoolers around on their first Mission Trip. Why am I here at all, God? And God said,

“To love your neighbor as yourself.”

And I said, “But who is my neighbor?”

The command and the question always seem to go together, even right at the original parable. Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, and we fling back in his face “who is my neighbor, anyway? Who exactly am I supposed to love? That condescending friend of my parents who questions my career choices? My micromanaging boss? The girl who undercut my relationship with my best friend? Are those my neighbors?” And Jesus’ answer is always – your neighbor is the person you least expect. Your neighbor is the one who confounds expectations.

My expectations coming into CAP lead me to try and contain my love, to ration it out to people who needed it, and to only use it when necessary. Love that is contained, though, just isn’t love. You don’t run out of love. The more you give, the more you have. Loving is a capacity, not a possession. When I love the people that comes in these groups, I expand my capacity for love, and when I refuse to act in love towards them, it becomes harder and harder for me to love anyone. But when I start to open up to the people that come down to spend their summer vacation or work holiday building homes in rural Kentucky, I start to see something that I didn’t before. They didn’t have to give this week to service, but they did. They come with joyful hearts and just as many expectations as I did, and what they learn in Jackson County for the four days they spend here may go with them for the rest of their lives. Because of my work with these groups, they will have an experience of Christ through the participants and my fellow volunteers. Not only can I help them experience Appalachia and CAP, but they begin to teach me about grace as I learn from faith background different from my own, and humility as I learn how to graciously accept opinions from a passé of experienced carpenters.

Who is my neighbor? It turns out that my neighbor is right next to me, trying to dig a 23 inch post hole with a pickaxe. It turns out my neighbor is behind me, telling me that I’m using the level incorrectly. It turns out that my neighbors are the lades who sits in the shade with their cameras all day and the fourteen year olds who compete for distance in hammer throwing competitions.

My neighbors are all around me. By the grace of God, this year at CAP my soul will be expanded and I will grow in humility, patience, and compassion as I continue to discover, against all expectations, who my neighbor is, and to discover how God is calling me to love them.

Three Years of Manna Hunting

I found the first half of this poem saved from 2008. I wrote the second verse this morning.

My manna dries up overnight - I collect it
relentlessly, stuffing worn canvas bags
until my back and hands and legs are raw
from the desert sun. And then in my tent,
I finally rest and let the flaky bread
melt on my thirsty tongue. And I sleep
satisfied.
The sun rises over cold
sand and my empty stomach murmurs. I
riffle through my bag
fingers scraping canvas
nothin’ but net.

---

Years and years
feeling sweat gather
in the crooks of my elbows
and watching blisters turn to
pus turn to flapping
skin turn to armor.
Years and years of
sleeping hungry, waking up
hungry gnawing sticks and sucking
stones and choking on dust
Years and years
collecting.
Every day, every
morning grasping only
cloth.
Years and years of only
canvas as the sun rises.

Years and years,
and still
the manna won't last.

but my legs are getting stronger.