where my feet are

here's a post from this time last year. funny to be in a similar place in my head. but wherever I may be, here I am.

I held a hummingbird in my hands today.  I was volunteering at jamin's school, hippie woo woo school we call it, where children run amuck and talk about catching "peace fever" and use feeling words with each other like tiny psychiatrists ("how did you feel when she pushed you?" teachers prompt gently).  we were playing in the gym, children running freely, chasing tennis balls and each other, girls playing "baby" with each other and boys making siren noises.  the gym has big sliding doors on all sides; it houses the gymnastics equipment for a girls sleepover camp all summer, then transforms into a romper room in the fall for these free-spirited sprites.  the room itself is chilly on these autumn mornings, and I stood huddled near one of the doors in a triangle of sun while I watched the carefully orchestrated free-for-all.

when we'd first come in for playtime there was a dead hummingbird in the middle of the floor.  nights now are too cold for tiny cold-blooded creatures, especially those who should have headed south a week or so ago.  it made me feel guilty that our feeder at home is still hanging up, inticing the flutter of wings with free, easy-to-find nectar, tricking the birds into thinking flowers still might be blooming so there might be reason to stay.  I (and 17 children) watched as a teacher gently swept the bird into a dustpan and take her out of the gym to be handled later in the day.  children were quick to settle back into activity with far less questioning than I'd anticipated.

later during playtime another hummingbird appeared on the floor.  a teacher called me over and pointed it out.

"there must be a nest in the rafters," she said.  "I just saw it fall straight down with a plop.  but this one is still alive, I'm pretty sure."

it was indeed.  "do you want me to pick it up?" I asked, unsure of what parent volunteers were actually expected to do in situations like these.  

"whatever you feel comfortable with," was all the help I got in figuring it out.

so I did.  I picked up a hummingbird, those mysterious animals that buzz like big insects, the only birds capable of backwards flight.  we'd watched the flit around our feeders all summer, jamin and cora annoucing their simetaneous arrivals and depatures from the breakfast table every morning: "hummingbird! it flew away."  holding this one in my hand felt nothing like I'd expected (not that I'd ever thought much about what holding a hummingbird would feel like).  this tiny body felt more like a marshmallow than an animal, and those wings that were always just a blur before were still enough to make me nervous.

somewhere this week I read the reminder that "your ministry is where your feet are."  I need reminders like this every so often, especially when I get bogged down with being still, with not being able to do enough to save the world, with being boring in my (not so very) old age.  last week I started three new parenting classes, an overwhelming mix of people insistent that they don't need any help with their parenting, a family with kids so out of control we cannot provide them with childcare, and even one family that required a report to dss.  weeks like that make me hug my own kids extra hard, give an extra shout out of thanks for all the support systems I have.  weeks like that also remind me that my ministry is where my feet are, in more ways than one.  there is need right here, right where I already live, and of course that is part of my ministry where my feet are, in a very literal sense.  but more than that, there will alway be need, there will always be families who need a boost, kids who need to feel safe, people who need to find their tribe.  and since my feet will always be wherever it is I am, that is another way to minister where my feet are.  ministry will just follow wherever I happen to be just because that is the way it works.  compassionate hearts find needs to fill even when they don't really want to.

so today my ministry was to a hummingbird.  I carried that little marshmallow body outside to a warm picnic bench and no sooner had I placed it down gently than the whir of wings started and off flew my little friend.  that is the kind of results I am most fond of: immediate and highly visible.  there is power in that reminder, power that every little bit helps, power in being in the right place at the right time with a willingness to listen to what needs to be done.

we can stay here and I can teach parenting classes.  I can quit my job and homeschool my children.  we can move to hawaii and work in a group home.  we can join an organic farm in vermont and raise children and garlic and potatoes.  it is all ministry.  it is all exactly right.  we will keep listening and loving and learning and that will all be exactly enough.  wherever our feet may be.

seven year plunge

here's this week's soundtrack.  now go rent "benny and joon" to enjoy the original in all it's glory.

my very dearest rico suave,

I can remember when seven years seemed like a long time away.

I can remember, before the adventures at summer camp, before the WWOOFing and the splat. before redbud springs, before the mudflower csa. before zero gravity, before we had our hearts broken by the foster care system (over and over and over). before brevard, even. before families together and a home birth in montford. before the long trek to canada and home again. before iggy. before the HEAP. before new dawn midwifery. before weaverville and candler and black mountain.  before whitewater cove, before professional parenting, even before the halloween parties at oak park. I can remember when seven years seemed like a lot of time to fill.

but, my, have we filled it. I can't count the number of kids we've had in and out of our homes. I can barely count the number of homes we've had. I have watched you parent kids who never had a dad of their own, and I have watched you learn to be a dad to our own kids. I have seen you make a garden out of an empty lot, I've seen you grow vegetables from old tires, tree stumps, and even in the canadian tundra. I have watched you make meals, really delicious ones at that, from a pantry I was sure was empty. you've led me on backpacking trips, cross-country trips, and grocery store trips (it can be an intimidating place!). we've made friends and grown community and learned over and over that not everyone sees life quite the same way we do.

and, man I love how you see life. I love that you are so good with money. I love that you're willing to live on next-to-nothing so that we can raise our kids together. I love that you find creative ways to keep us debt-free and never wanting for much. I love that you are willing to take on whatever adventure we manage to dream up, that you are willing to indulge my wanderlust. I love that you are willing to remind me just how important home is, too, and even where it is when I need that reminder. I love that you love our kids. I love that you love other people. I love that the way you love is so different than mine, because I learn so much that way. I love the way our story goes, all the different pieces and places and players. I love hearing you tell it to people who have no idea how crazy we really are. I love how proud you are of the life we are living.

and how proud you are of me. I wish I could see me through your eyes all the time. thank you for pushing me (or pulling me) into what you know I can do, what I should do, what I want to do. I am a better person because I am married to you. thank you for spending so much of your time, so much of your life with me. I love your perspective, your patience, your persistence. you provide balance to our relationship and to our family. to our community. to my life.

seven years ago you asked me to take the plunge with you. seven years ago we decided we could do life better together than we could apart. seven years ago we started living the story we'll be proud to tell our kids one day. as we celebrate our seventh plunge, I could not be happier with the life we have created, with the adventure we are living. I love you all the way, pinto. and I wanna keep on plunging every day of our lives.

yours for the ups and downs and all the in-betweens,

slick

ps- you are soooooooo hott. for real.

the long way home

every blogpost needs a sound track. and we all need a little more tom waits in our lives. if you can't handle tom, feel free to cue up the norah jones cover as you read along. we're just more of a tom waits kind of family around here, whatever that means.

camp is over. the last of the staff is leaving tomorrow. jamin and cora keep asking me when are we going to do arts and crafts and why don't I push them on the swings like their counselor does. they spend most of their time playing camp, "teaching" me songs I couldn't get out of my head all summer because there was always some group somewhere singing them at the tops of their lungs. thankfully the dining hall is still serving meals for retreat groups or jamin might really go into shock.




this isn't home. quinipet, for all its wonders and beachfront property, ain't got nothin' on redbud springs. and people from long island don't even know what bluegrass music really is. and we have a lot of living left to do in brevard. but once we figured out where home really is, we knew we could take the long way to get there.

so I am taking a year's leave of absence from the family place. that's the only real decision that we've made. as far as short term plans, we're leaving here for new hampshire next week to visit some redbud family and celebrate our seventh anniversary as a happily married couple. eric flies home for a wedding in brevard, then makes the trip back up with our very best friend allyson. we're here on shelter island until the end of september. we need this time.

we are walking on the beach every night after supper. we're watching as many sunsets as we can. we are posing for pictures in front of yachts far bigger than our house. we are homeschooling and staying in the flow and listening so hard it hurts sometimes. we need this time, this pace, this rhythm. at least for right now.

I don't really know what we are doing beyond that, and that feels pretty okay right now. I am learning what we are good at, how to balance that between the four of us. how to hold hands and jump, how to appreciate the view from here. and now that we know where it is, it feels good to take the long way home.

project 137

so I am doing this...thing.

there is this blogger lady that I love named patti digh. she is fabulous. I read her book "life is a verb" this spring as we were prepping to come to new york, and it got me all centered and happy and inspired about our trip. so I started following her blog and that makes me pretty happy and inspired, too. I ended up using lots of quotes and themes and thoughts from her work in my devotionals with the staff this summer.

so she leads these projects, kind of like an online class, but really more an experiment in community and inspiration with lots of writing reflections. right up my alley. and it just so happened that this particular project starts today, the last day of camp. the first day of the rest of my life. what a time to be intentional, to be inspired, to be focused, to be surrounded by folks doing the same hard thinking and soul searching that I like best.

here's a link to project 137. and here is my first photo assignment. the assignment was to take a photo of myself that expresses the love I feel for myself. so here I am, plunging right on in.

what I hope you learned at camp this summer

part of my job this summer is leading staff devotionals once a week. at the beginning of the summer, I wasn't sure exactly how this would go, if people would show up, if I had anything relevant to say. so eric helped me make a brag-worthy snack spread every week, and I would rush through bedtime routine with the kids to make it up to the welcome center on time. the snacks certainly helped, and word of mouth soon had people asking me to lead the same devotional twice on thursdays so counselors could come during their breaks. this week was the last week of overnight camp and what I thought would be my last devotional. it turned out to be a doozy. here's what we talked about, after a meditation from hermann hesse and a couple minutes of silence...

To a Leaf Wilting

Every blossom wants to become fruit.
Every morning turns into evening without regret.
Nothing on earth is eternal except change, except taking leave.

The most splendid summer yearns to fade into fall.
Oh, autumn leaf, be still and yielding when the wind wants to seize you.

Do not resist, be a player in the game.
Surrender to the change in motion.
Let yourself be broken, seized, and blown to the next home.


~Hermann Hesse


five things I hope you learned at camp this summer:

1- you are totally fabulous.

maybe you reached a goal for yourself this summer. maybe you tried something new. maybe you did something you never thought you'd do, and it turned out okay. maybe you met someone who taught you big things about yourself. maybe you realized you're really good at something you'd never bothered to try before. whatever it is, I hope you know how totally fabulous you really are. that you can do big things, small things, important things, and silly things, and you can do all those things even better than you thought.

2- your life is pretty stinkin' great.

I hope this summer taught you more about your life, mostly how great it really is. you are living an incredible story, and this summer is just one part of it. I hope this summer helped you realize something amazing about your future, helped you decide what direction to go next. or maybe this summer helped you put together the pieces of your past so that your future makes more sense. or maybe you just have good stories to tell about the adventures you had or the people you met while you were here. whatever it is, I hope you know how how great your life really is.

3- god is bigger than you thought.

being in a beautiful place like quinipet surrounded by passionate, loving people should give you a pretty big idea of god's nature. I hope you saw god in those around you this summer. I hope you learned how god's love is big enough for all of us, from the devout to the doubtful and everyone in between.  I hope you saw how god is always working on the bigger picture, even when we disagree with the means god might use to get there.

4- make this place your home.  wherever you are, make it these things:

 H-happy.  frederick buechner says, "the place where god calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." god wants you to be happy.  sometimes that means making the best of where you are, and sometimes it means getting the heck out of where you are into something better. learn to know the difference. learn to find your happy.
 O-open. be open to being yourself. to whatever is next. to allowing those around you to speak their truth. open your heart, open your mind. create space where others feel safe to open up as well.
 M-meaningful. use your home-space to find out what matters most to you. tune in. whether it is perfecting your chocolate chip cookie recipe so you can feed the masses a little bit of happiness or taking off to africa to fight for women's right to health care, find the meaning in your life.  then do what matters. make sure home is where you can rest up to do good work.
 E-engergize. be sure you have a place where you can rest, recharge your batteries. space that is sacred enough to fill your metaphorical cup. space to take a break, but also space that gets you pumped up, fired up, revved up to do big things. listen to mozart, then listen to macklemore. then do what you need to do to energize yourself to take on the world.

5-say yes. to whatever it is god calls you to, to whatever adventure is dropped in your lap, to each and every chance you have to love on those around you. say yes.

(i started at 2:42 for time and political correctness's sake, but you should really watch the whole thing.)

wherever you are, what ever summer adventure you have had, I hope this all proves true for you as well.

ghosts of myself

I'm pretty sure this place is haunted.

when I was a camper in middle-of-nowhere georgia growing up, we told ourselves all sorts of stories to convince ourselves that camp was magical. there was a certain hill behind the tabernacle that we were sure we could fly off of if we got a fast enough running start. there was a lake monster, of course, and if the wampajaw didn't get you when you fell out of your canoe the leeches would. I didn't need stories to know that camp was magical, though. the suspension of reality for an entire week was magical enough.

being back at camp at a place where I was never a camper, only a counselor, is haunting in a very different way. I knew that coming back to a place I haven't been in ten years would bring up a lot of ghosts.  I was counting on phantasmic encounters of things I'd long tried to erase from my head, visions of people I'd long forgotten, memories of a time in life that was hard to muddle through.  I wasn't prepared for those ghosts I keep bumping into to be ghosts of myself.

last weekend friends from my first time here at camp came to visit. these are the sort of friends everyone hopes to have in their lives, the kind of cliche "pick up where you left off" people that know things about you that you have long since forgotten. what amazes me about these sort of friends (and this crew in particular) is that no matter how long it has been or how cloudy my memory of my time with them, they know the essence of me better than I could ever describe it myself. that part of me that hasn't changed as I've moved all over the place and married someone I didn't even know when I knew these friends. they know me in a way that doesn't change after having children or going through life's wringer.  they see me through eyes that not only ignore my well-earned gray hairs, but also my broken ideas of who I thought I was or even who I think I am. there is no "think" with these folks, just heart connection. and catch up time is not a timeline of events, but rather a swim out to the dock where we confess the big stuff (the heartbreaks, the disappointments, the silly remembrances), while lying on our backs and letting the sun dry our skin.

seeing my ghost-self and seeing myself through the eyes of those who loved me best ten years ago makes it so very clear to me that my life is a magical beautiful blessed adventure. it shows me that I'm doing more than fine, that I'm better off now than I ever dreamed of all those years ago. that all the brokenness, all the wondering, all the uncertainty and leaps of faith and therapy and wandering, all of that makes being my present self all the sweeter.





so now when I see that ghost-like girl out of the corner of my eye, I remind her that it doesn't last forever. that the not-knowing is sometimes just part of the adventure. that she is doing better than she thinks she is. and I thank her for muddling through, for doing the best she knows how, for reminding me just how far we've come.




if I have to be plagued by ghosts, I can't think of a more beautiful way for it to happen.

month 60

tribe love, from all corners of the world

jamin,

when I think about it in months, it doesn't seem that long.  I guess because I can remember month one (sort of, through the haze of your newness) and I remember month 25 when you finally started getting some hair.  sixty months just seem like little tick marks of victories, a nice tempo for you becoming yourself a little bit at a time.  but five whole years?  that is where I get a little wobbly-feeling.  I remember things about being five.  that means we are doing things now that you will tell your family about later.  we are living stories you will tell to someone you are falling in love with, to your own children as you try to entertain them on long trips, to your therapist as you reflect on how amazing your childhood really was.

pirate shirt, pirate puzzle, pirate face.

and what a story we are living.  watching you this summer has been by far the best part of this adventure for me.  I can hardly believe I was so worried about you in the months before we left brevard, so concerned that living far away might be too much for you, that you might find camp overwhelming, that getting you plugged into daycamp would be a daily challenge.  you love life here.  you love day camp: the silly songs, your enthusiastic counselors, your new friends.  you love camp life: you beg to eat every meal in the dining hall, you wish we had campfires every night, you think the skits the kids do every friday are hilarious.  you have fully embraced this entire experience with a sense of adventure I didn't know you had.  it has been an important lesson for me to learn, and I am working hard not to box you in or shelter you too much, but instead to follow your lead in a lot of ways and assume you'll be just fine. I think it is a lesson I'll be learning your whole life, so I am glad I am getting good practice in now.

five is a pretty great age, I think.  you can do a good bit on your own, but you still really like holding hands.  you are old enough that we can snuggle and read chapter books (books I've been waiting my whole life to share with you) for an hour at a time, easy.  learning is something you find exciting and entertaining, a trait that makes me feel much more settled about home schooling.  you love "homework books" and have no trouble completing an entire workbook in a single session.  we made some sight word cards together and I find you practicing them on your own sometimes.  when we are walking together or riding in the car you'll say "somebody give me some numbers!" which is an open invitation to quiz you on some addition or subtraction.  you get them right fairly consistently, even when cora strings four or five numbers together.  it is cute to watch you concentrating on however you see numbers in your head.  I often wonder what the number line looks like to you inside your noggin.

we celebrated your birthday at your pace, which was pretty fantastic.  you woke and let papa and me snuggle you and tell you the story of the day you were born.  you love that story and your favorite part is when papa says "if we're having a baby today, I'd better go mow the grass!"  we piled all your packages and cards around you, and then we could barely see you under them all.  your tribe comes correct, something I hope holds true for your entire life.  you are surrounded by people who love and value almost as much as we do, people that are not afraid to show that love when we need it most.  after  you opened all your loot, we sent papa and cora out to fetch bagels while you and I read and colored and played pirates at home.  we had mac and cheese for lunch, then met a new daycamp friend at the tuck shop for ice cream.  we headed over to lauren and ralph's for a cookout.  you were so excited to have a hotdog.  we could tell after about two bites that it was not as wonderful as you had envisioned, so you struggled through a few more bites, then left the rest for papa.  we fed you cherry pie to keep you going while we waited for the shelter island fireworks display.  it was hazy and almost rainy, but not everyone gets fireworks on his birthday.  you made it about ten minutes into the show before saying, "I'm tired.  let's go home."  you were asleep within six minutes.

cora took this one.

you are loved.  you are treasured and enjoyed.  you are part of a wonderful story, an adventure story at that, and I hope all of that is what sticks when you look back on being five.  keep surprising me, j-mo.  you are my best thing.

love one hundred and eighty million,

mama