Fathomless Mystery

I am old enough to know that the grass is always greener. I can appreciate when people say, "Enjoy this time in your life, you'll never have this much freedom again." I can dig that, I really, really can. And, for the most part, I enjoy life as a person who happens to be single. But tonight was one of those times when I thought how nice, how comforting, how convenient it would be to have a parter with whom to share life. With whom to share random moments of weirdness. My sweet buddy, Sullivan, wanted to go out. I let him out and after a few minutes, I heard whining at the door, presumably because he wanted re-entrance. I opened the door and looked down and saw a squirrel. A freshly killed cute little critter. Sully looked at me as if to say, "Look what I did! Aren't you proud?" My first thought was, "Yes, I'm a strong woman and can do anything I set my mind to, but can't someone else do THIS for me?" The squirrel is not buried, but will be tomorrow morning. May he rest in peace after his battle with my sweet canine who meant no harm, I'm sure.

I'm about to go to Lansing, Michigan for my first cousin's funeral. He was 49 years old, and had devoted much of his life to assembly line work at GM. He had a sad first marriage, but two beautiful daughters were the serendipitous blessing from that otherwise chaotic union. He loved his girls. He then met the love of his life and had 5 good years with her.....until last Saturday. He was scuba diving, enjoying life, when he could no longer breathe. The autopsy showed he was a heart attack waiting to happen; blockages too many to count. He rode his motorcyle to Macinaw Island where he met his brother and his nephews to spend a Saturday afternoon out in nature. This is my mother's favorite nephew and everyone knows it; she named one of her sons after him (Danny). I'm headed to the funeral, not because I was particularly close to him, but because my mom loved him and he loved my mom. I loved him, too, because of his sweet spirit and willingness to shed tears over the simplest things. We all loved him. You can wonder and say it's not fair, but like my brother Greg said, "It's not about being fair." This really had nothing to do with fairness. But I keep coming back to this question, "Why THOSE two girls to not have a father?" I don't understand. It was just too soon.

I am reading one of my favorite Southern authors, Anne Rivers Siddons. This was the first paragraph of chapter five: "People who live beside moving water have been given the gift of living light, and even if they never come to recognize it as such, any other light, no matter how clear or brilliant, is pale and static to them, leaving them with a sense of loss, of vulnerability, as if they have suddenly found themselves without clothes. 'I have to be near the water,' they will say. 'I can't live away from the ocean'...or the river or the creek, or whatever water throws back to them the sun, or the boiling storm clouds, or the pearl of moving fog, or the wash of sunset. But what most of them are really saying, without knowing it, is, 'I can't live without that light that dances with me. I wear it like a living skin. Without it I am incomplete." Amen and amen.

Well. Here I am. Summer camps are over, Family Ministry Week is done and I finally feel like I will get my life back. I have felt at best frazzled since mid-May. I think I'm at a crossroads. Although work is difficult, so much is up to me. Getting plugged in (or at least attempting to) and using the resources available to me. Here is my plan: 1- read more classics 2- start therapy (first session is this Tuesday) 3- participate in a clergy group (starts in September) 4- join the Columbia outdoor club (haven't done it yet) 5- have two families over to my house for dinner per month (haven't started this yet) 6- learn how to change a tire (something makes me feel more powerful if I know how to do this 7- meet my brother in Vegas (wegas) 8- write more 9- dance more (seriously) 10- yoga. So there it is.

This is a question posed in Barbara Brown Taylor's new Book Leaving Church. Any thoughts on this?

Okay, so most of you know I love my dog. But this picture makes me really smile. I thought I was the only one who noticed how disproportional his tongue is to the rest of his body. Agreed?

Two posts in one day??

I wanted to share this. This has meant a lot to me today. A Buechner a day keeps the blues away!

Mystery

There are mysteries you can solve by taking thought. For instance, a murder mystery whose mysteriousness must be dispelled in order for the truth to be known.
There are other mysteries that do not conceal a truth to think your way to, but whose truth is itself the mystery. The mystery of your self, for example. The more you try to fathom it, the more fathomless it is revealed to be. No matter how much of your self you are able to objectify and examine, the quintessential, living part of your self will always elude you, that is, the part that is conducting the examination. Thus you do not solve the mystery, you live the mystery. And you do that not by fully knowing yourself, but by fully being yourself.
To say that God is a mystery is to say that you can never nail him down. Even on Christ the nails proved ultimately ineffective.

--Frederick Buechner

Once again, it's been a long time. I'm settling in to Columbia life, as hot as it is. Good thing Waco prepared me for such hellacious temperatures.

Nothing has prepared me for the all-encompassing work called 'ministry.' I have been swallowed up before by my job. Working with foster kids was no walk in the park. But it seems like ministry gets into all parts of you, where nothing remains sacred, nothing is 'yours.' I try to construct boundaries, not walls, and it seems like there is no in between time to even have that distinction. Such is the life of a new minister.

My friend used this analogy yesterday when talking about doing the work of grief. She said that there was a time in her life when she felt as though she were walking around a dark house that she had never been in, feeling her way around for the corners and doors, with no sense of what was coming next. What a great description.

Here I am. Loving the simple fact that I am alive, but groping in the dark for some sort of familiarity. I do love my life, but it isn't what I thought it would be. But whose is? Someone has taught me recently how to take one day at a time, treasuring what it brings to you and how can listen to what it has to teach.

I'm trying my best. But honestly, I feel at this point I could learn best by sitting at the beach. Maybe I'll do that. In three days.....and counting.