Ashegon Lake

Our theme for this week: Kinship

This is a picture of the most beautiful place in the world.

I know what you're thinking. This is hardly picturesque. The water is grey-black and what's with that old raft? This may be many things, but it is certainly not beautiful.

It is a photograph taken from the screened in porch of my family's cabin in Northern Wisconsin. That's my Gran on the dock along with my younger brother. Grandma built the cabin with my grandfather 50 years ago. It's the place where my brothers, cousins, and I all passed our summers.

I had, overwhelmingly, a really beautiful childhood complete with brothers with whom I could fight, a big shaggy dog, and a lovely big backyard with a fort and a tree to climb. But summers at the lake were perfect. We swam, played cards and ate ice cream with our great aunt, had campfires, told ghost stories, hiked and most importantly, learned to fish.

My entire family fishes, including my 86 year old grandmother. It's one of the few enjoyments that we all share (that and a love for Jarts) and can do very amicably as a family. It's something I do very rarely now that I live in Minnesota, but every year I meet my folks at the cabin for a weekend during their vacation. Pa and I usually head out at least once to go fishing together and it is a moment I cherish every year. It's a moment to remember and offer a small prayer of gratitude for my life and keep those memories and relationships as part of my present.

***

Ashegon Lake

The sun has already gone behind the ring of trees

surrounding the lake when Dad fires up the motor

on Grandma's old boat. I run down the three concrete steps,

step off the dock and into the boat beside him,

careful not to spill the worms we dug out of the earth earlier.

My hands are dirty, like his, as are my jeans and old shoes.

I drop a cooler full of PBR and a bucket behind us and off we go.

When we get to the beaver dam, I'll dangle my feet in the water.

He'll cast and have a fish before I'm finished untangling my line

and cussing the slipperiness of the worms.

We'll talk, a little, He'll tell me how he met Mom, ask about work.

But mainly, we'll drink our beer, fish for smallmouth and panfish,

anticipating the crackle and pop they'll make

filleted and frying in a pan of hot oil

Hiatus

Sorry for the unannounced break in posting folks. For the past two weeks, I've been hidden in the library taking my comprehensive exam for my M.A. in theology. All the hard work paid off, and I passed with honors yesterday afternoon. Lauren has been providing some much needed mental, spiritual, and emotional support during this time period, so we've both been otherwise occupied. Regular posting will resume this weekend with the theme: kinship.

Heartbeat of Christ

One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved, was reclining at Jesus’ side. So Simon Peter nodded to him to find out whom he meant. He leaned back against Jesus’ chest and said to him, “Master, who is it?”

(John 13:23-25)

A few facts: I am terrified of flying. The thought of being on a plane shortens my breath, causes me to clench my fists, induces a mild panic. Nor am I medically inclined. I have not studied medicine and I tend to avoid the doctor’s office. Nor do I consider myself a missionary Christian. Sure, other people find it necessary and important to go to other countries and minister, but that type of ministry is not for me.

Imagine my surprise, then, when family friends invited me on a medical mission trip to the Dominican Republic during my senior year of college. After a bit of hesitation (a plane!), I agreed to go. Being in the Dominican was, as all mission trips are reported to be, a life-changing experience. Every day our team of doctors, nurses, and random folks invited by family friends traveled to a different batey (the villages where the sugar-cane workers and their families live) in order to see villagers and attempt, in some small way, to heal.

During the first few days of our trip my job was to hand out gifts—toothbrushes, little toys, soap, T-shirts—to the people who were leaving our makeshift clinic. On the third day we arrived in a batey that was worse than any of the others we had visited. Whereas other bateyes were mostly clean, children were clothed, and houses were at least somewhat substantial, this batey was littered with trash, children ran around naked and shoeless, and homes were inadequate at best.

On this day I was given the opportunity to sit with one of the doctors while he saw patients. They described their symptoms—back pain, difficulty urinating, itchy eyes—and he prescribed what remedies he could. One of the women who came to Dr. Ron brought her toddler with her. Mother and child were both healthy; this mom simply wanted a check-up. Dr. Ron went through the normal routine: listened to the two-year-old’s heart, looked at her eyes, examined her ears, checked her reflexes.

After the examination he took his stethoscope from around his neck, placed the earpieces in the mother’s ears and allowed her to listen to her daughter’s heart.

The woman’s eyes filled with wonder, mine with tears. She had not heard her daughter’s heartbeat before and here it was, this life moving and flowing in the daughter she had birthed about two years before.

As I watched this interaction, I could not help but think of my cousin Rachel who was about the same age as this little girl. My aunt and uncle had heard Rachel’s heartbeat when she was in utero; I had thought it common for parents to hear the heartbeat of their children before they are born, and, indeed, in America it is. For this woman, though, it was gift, pure and simple.

Heartbeats are intimate. They are life, existence, reality. With them, we begin; without them, we cease. This interaction between mother and child contains the essence of my time in the Dominican.

In one of my theology classes, prior to my trip to the Dominican, the professor related a quote of one of his mentors: “Keep in mind,” he said, “that the most important action in the universe is the heartbeat of Christ.” As he explained it, this was a cosmological phenomenon—the beauty of right relationship, the attentiveness we are called to have to Christ present in our world. But as I watched this mother listen to her child’s heart, it occurred to me that there too was the heartbeat of Christ.

Possibility

This week's theme: Bread

I was accused a few weeks ago of not being very spontaneous. The conversation actually began based on my own admission of being a very difficult person to date. The person who made the accusation agreed, mainly because my standards are preposterously high (somewhere out there is my Mr. Darcy) and because, apparently, I am lacking in spontaneity.

At first I was offended by these remarks, particularly as we had begun our friendship rather recently. More importantly, having a Benedictine whose life is based on the recurring rhythms of work and prayer tell you that you're not spontaneous enough is a bit like having a reality TV star tell you that you're a narcissist. Yet, since that conversation I've been more attentive to the value I place on routine. I was shocked to discover that I am defined by my routines. Some of them make sense. I follow a prescribed pattern before I go to bed every night because I suffer from insomnia and the routine helps me fall asleep. I am in the library four nights a week because I'm worried about passing comps. But other routines (the way my morning starts, my exact time for eating lunch every day, the time at which I take my walk) are just patterns. They have no significance aside from the fact that I do these things at these times every day. This in itself is not a bad thing. However, the fact that when the routine is changed I become terribly angry is deeply problematic.

I am not spontaneous.

This lack of spontaneity has nothing to do with this week's theme of bread. Rather, it was my reflections on making bread (which is not something one does spontaneously) and sharing bread that brought me to think of this conversation. My deepest apologies to Lauren, but I've admirably circumvented the theme for this week.

I'm not sold on the poem's title and would happily take suggestions

***

Possibility

Tomorrow morning, you'll wake early,

pack a basket full of fruit and wine,

cold-press coffee and bread we baked together.

You'll put this in the backseat of the car,

along with the quilt your mother made us

and the copy of Lady Chatterly's Lover

you've been reading to me before I fall asleep.

You'll wake me when you're finished

and hand me the phone so I can call in sick.

We'll spend the entire day taking long walks and later,

lying on the quilt reading aloud to one another,

perhaps even letting the novel inspire us to reenact a scene or two.

Exhausted, we'll return home. Each already reveling in memories of the afternoon.

Although, it is possible that when you come to wake me

I'll remember my calendar full of appointments, the printer deadline

that must be met, the phone calls that have to be returned,

and that it's absolutely necessary that you return that bike lock to the store.

Forgiveness

During Minnesota winters the world becomes hard. The earth is shrouded in snow; the lakes are covered in a pall of ice. There is a crispness to the light, a biting edge to the wind. Death and desolation appear to be the only realities.

Such hardness characterizes my brokenness. I spent my undergraduate career in a little town in Kansas, where winter is mild in comparison to Minnesota. The temperature generally remains above zero; snow comes and then melts within a few days; it is not safe to walk on lakes that appear to be frozen.

But this isn’t a story of comparative winters.

It’s a story of forgiveness.

When I went to college I expected an atmosphere of academic openness where ideas would be sown, tended, reaped, and sown again. In some places they were. Where I need them to be—in the realm of theology—they weren’t.

My introductory theology class was taught by one of the most celebrated professors on campus. Students loved him, respected him, and admired him. I expected to feel the same way. Until I arrived at the first class meeting.

Professor Thomas lectured passionately. He commanded the room, his voice as authoritative and definite as church doctrine itself. His eyes flared with excitement. The lesson: Adam and Eve, of course. And with that came original sin and, therefore, purgatory. My hand went up. Professor Thomas stopped short, looked at me, and asked if I had something to say.

“Yes, Professor,” I began.

“Please wait until after class or come see me during office hours.” And then he proceeded with the lecture.

The next class period, another question, the same response.

After that I dropped the class. In order to do so I had to contact Professor Thomas so he could sign my drop slip. When I went to see him he asked why I was getting out of his class.

“I’ve been raised to ask questions,” I replied. “I don’t doubt my religion, but I certainly need to question it. You won’t let me do that.”

“Really?” he asked, baffled.

But Professor Thomas wasn’t the only one who discouraged questions. The student body was equally dismissive of theological conversation. They took in Professor Thomas’s certainty about church teaching and let it define them. They defended themselves with the Catechism, prayed for an end to abortion and the beginning of the Iraq war, and scorned religious women who did not wear the traditional habit.

I did not fit in. And I didn’t want to. I read Joan Chittister’s books openly, talked about women’s ordination and homosexuality in the church, wrote about interreligious dialogue, refused to attend liturgies on campus, preferring to worship at the women’s community across town. I stopped saying the Creed during Mass, the foundational statement of who we as Catholic Christians are. I was no longer sure I believed any of it: the virgin birth; the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church; the one baptism. My questioning had been cause for people to say I wasn’t a true Catholic, that I didn’t really believe. So rather than profess faith I would stand silently and listen to others proclaim the faith that was taken from me, that I had allowed to be taken from me.

It was not until I moved to Minnesota that I realized how much I had allowed my religion to be tainted by woundedness. My anger at the lack of compassion of my peers made me shut down. My frustration about Professor Thomas’s celebrity and his unwillingness, as I experienced it, to entertain alternate interpretations of what it means to be Catholic hardened me. I came to graduate school to study theology uncertain of why I had chosen this field other than that, as a sophomore in high school, I had said that I wanted to be a religion teacher. I stayed Catholic out of stubbornness, not necessarily out of faith.

It was here that the ice began to melt. Questions were met, not with scorn or certainty, but with questions. As a woman, my experiences were validated and appreciated. Respectful debate among students and faculty was accepted and encouraged. I found home.

Sometimes I wish to see Professor Thomas again, to see if we could perhaps converse, both out of love, about this church we call home. Sometimes the thought of running into him again turns my stomach.

As winter comes and goes, the lakes freeze and thaw, so too my own forgiveness.

For My Mother

This week's theme: Gratitude.

Did you know that phrase "spittin' image" means more than doppleganger?

Spittin' image is a good Southern phrase and it means that you are the "spirit and image" of another person. It means that you not only look like the other person, but you also embody a part of the other person's personality.

I am the spittin' image of my mother.

For a long time, I wasn't proud of the fact that we resembled one another so closely. I hated my curly hair and short legs; that I loved bluegrass and country music; that I am eternally disposed to keep on the sunny side (about ten years ago I equated sadness with depth); that I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Our relationship from the time I was eleven until the time I was seventeen was awful, and we both admit it. I was a terrible teenager--smart, but incapable of applying myself to subjects I didn't like (everything aside from English classes); grouchy; uncomfortable in my own skin; and obstinate as all get-out. To this day, I'm still not sure how she found the grace to put up with my many and varied mood swings, or how she managed to know that drawing a flower in marker on my lunch bag every morning was something that would get through to me and remind me that she loved me.

The older I get, the more grateful I am that I so closely resemble Mother Prosen. We have the same sense of humor; the same choices in food and smells; the same habits for dealing with stress; the same taste in old movies; the same laugh. Moreover, I am grateful that I still get to have my mother in my life as a close friend.

I often worry that I don't tell her how important she is, or how grateful I am that she didn't give up on me when it would have been so easy.

I love you, Mom.

***

For My Mother

My mother brings me warm ginger ale,
takes another blanket from the cedar chest,
heats me chicken soup and adds saltines.
She gets The Philadelphia Story from Blockbuster
and checks to make sure my cell phone is charged.
"Call me at work if you need anything." she says,
kissing my forehead goodbye.
I am twenty-four. Fiercely independent
and living hundreds of miles away for years now.
Today, however, I am on her couch,
sick with the flu during my yearly visit,
and so weak I can't stand without her arm.
Drifting to sleep, I worry about the day
when I will do this for her. The blankets and broth.
The Philadelphia Story and ginger ale.
The pharmacy visits and late night temperature readings.
That day will come too soon. For now,
I'm happy to sleep on her couch. Eat her soup.
Let her love me.

Peaceful

This week's theme: Forgiveness

I struggle with insomnia and have for most of my life. When I say I struggle with insomnia, I don't mean that I have occasional sleepless nights. I mean that there is at least one and more often three or four nights a week that I don't sleep more than three hours. It's not because I've napped during the day, exercised too late or too little, or had caffeine after 3:00 PM. I've managed to teach myself to avoid all of these things in my quest for better sleep. I am simply sleepless. When I do manage to sleep, I sleepwalk all over the house or have dreams from which I wake unable to differentiate between what was going on in my dream world and what is happening in reality.

All of these make it difficult for me to share a bed or a room with someone. This is to say nothing of the nightmares I have; the talking I do in my sleep; the fact that I steal all of the covers; don't like to be touched unexpectedly; and when I'm particularly exhausted, sleep with my mouth open and drool all over everything. I think its better when someone stays over to have one of us sleep on the futon, despite the fact that my room is warmer and my bed more comfortable. I'm unwilling to keep them awake all night or show the kind of vulnerability that it takes to drool all over yourself while unconscious and trust that the other person won't wake up, see you, and find you repugnant.

I hope that someday I'll get to the point where I'm comfortable and happy to share my sleep and my vulnerability with someone. For the time being, I'll keep extra blankets and pillows on the futon.

***

Peaceful

I don't love lying awake and watching you sleep. Forgive me, but I don't even love sleeping next to you. Your mouth is almost always open and you drool all over everything--your hand tucked under your cheek, the book you brought to bed with you, my pillow, your pillow. You steal all the blankets and then kick them to the floor in the middle of the night. Then there's the insomnia. The tossing and turning until 4:00 in the goddamn morning. I have to go to bed hours before you to get half a night's sleep. There's the talking and crying out in your sleep. Sometimes your legs move like a dog dreaming of chasing a car. There are those night though, usually Fridays, where you come to bed early and fall asleep immediately. Mouth closed, blankets shared, utterly silent and still all night. In the morning, after I've slipped downstairs to get coffee and the paper, I'll return to find you curled on my side of the bed, only half awake. "How'd you sleep?" I'll ask handing you your coffee and the Arts section. "How can it possibly matter," you'll reply, reaching instead for my scruffy face. "When I get to wake up to this?'