Borderline

When life changes and the family dynamics suffer a seismic shift, it’s time to reframe the future.  I’m still adjusting to a universe in which my parents’ generation has disintegrated. As the stars fall around me and the galaxy rearranges itself above my head, I will draw new borders for my life. Then, I will cross them.

My new borders will feature places that comfort and inspire me.  I pull out an atlas and search for a favorite city.  It could be as close as San Francisco or as far away as Paris. It does have to be accessible – a place I can tuck up in for cultural feasting.  

I think I’ll start my western border at the Pacific coastline and look for a signature beach town to call my own. When my soul needs soothing, I need to rest my eyes on the horizon and fill my ears with Poseidon’s throaty roar.

My western border will extend from the Puget Sound to San Diego. From there I will draw a line through the Sonoran Desert to Santa Fe and then wiggle my pencil over to pick up Chicago and the Upper Michigan Peninsula before I scurry back to the Pacific Coast.

Like a proud spider contemplating her intricate web, I will hang out in my corner of the Sierras. When I spot something juicy in another corner of my world, I’ll scuttle over and check it out.

New holidays are in order.   We’ll downsize old favorites like Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. We’ll celebrate Columbus Day with a trip to an unexplored mecca and Valentine’s Day with a romantic adventure. No dutiful recycling on Earth Day for us, we will choose a day to dub Big Sky day and celebrate it in the air.  

Our seasons won’t be related to the weather but to our mode of transportation – Wings, Wheels, Waterways and Wanderings. Our seasons are not consecutive they are whimsical, like the weather, and when we run out of money – the ice floe, baby; new vistas.

Cheap thrills

I get it.  I get that internet addiction – flirting, sexting, virtual hook-ups – is as much about the thrill of pursuit as it is about sex. Life is stressful and people need their distractions. In the grand scheme it’s trivial, people say.

I listen to the responses to Representative Weiner’s predicament.  An eye-winking press cites a long history of this type of behavior in men who have otherwise been judged as good leaders.

Outraged supporters go a step further to say that if people would just ignore You Tube and all the issues that get us off track, the country would be better off. They believe that issues like the state of marriage and family take us off track when we should be worried about the economy and the environment.   He is doing a good job for his constituents, they say. What he does in the privacy of his own gymnasium is his own business.

But is not private, it is a public display of a complete lack of integrity. Integrity is the steadfast adherence to a moral or ethical code. What belief system or code of behavior does this sneaking around serve?

We have been served well by good men whose public and private lives have survived intense scrutiny. John Adams comes to mind.  We have possibly been served well by scoundrels who have owned up to a long list of bad behavior, but at least they have owned it.  There is some integrity in their "this is me, take it or leave it." stance.  It is consistent. 

There is no integrity in a man who demurs, deflects and defies his party when they ask him to step aside. "I know your deeds, that you are neither hot nor cold," God says in Revelations 3:15,16. "I wish you were either one or the other. So because you are lukewarm -- neither hot nor cold -- I am about to spit you out of my mouth." that is a perfect definition of a man who lacks integrity.

This one man is not my real concern, but the numbers of men who are amusing themselves in this way.  How many marriages break because a husband or wife so distances themselves behind the closed door of internet addiction that they destroy the fragile bonds of intimacy?

Marriage is sustained by meaningful conversation, shoulder-to-shoulder labor and mutual joy. Good government is sustained by meaningful dialog, shoulder-to-shoulder labor and mutual respect.

Internet addiction is not a recreational pastime. By its very nature it consumes large amounts of time and attention and encourages deception. That is time and attention stolen from wives and children. I can’t think that the electorate, whom  offending politicians are sworn to serve, benefit from inconstancy and corruption.

Circling Facebook

Fool’s give you reasons. Wise men never try. I wanted to post this on my facebook page today but decided it is more appropriate to be enigmatic on a blog. And, it’s a nice lead-in to a discussion about facebook, which I promised two new acquaintances I would do on my blog.

I met these delightful women at a reception at the top of the Transamerica Building in San Francisco. After exploring our various connections – we’re all passionate about what we do – pharmacology, hedge fund management and writing; we all love cities on the water – San Francisco, Seattle and Stockholm; and we’re all mystified by where facebook is taking interpersonal communications. In particular, one woman posed this question. Why are so many people willing to broadcast their personal information?

I opened a facebook account for two reasons.  I wanted to understand social media and I wanted to understand my kids. My son and daughter-in-law use facebook to keep track of each other, sometimes when they are sitting in the same room.  I see the discussions they have about myriad mundane issues – clogged sinks, who will do the dinner dishes, who’s tired and headed for bed; facebook has been criticized for banality but it’s the pedestrian nature of their conversation that delights me. I have access to the information that the tomato vines survived the hornworms and the surf was good on Saturday morning. I see that all is right in their world.  

It is interesting to contemplate that the song, There must be 50 ways to leave your lover, was written before the advent of social media, so now, counting email and twitter, we can add at least three more ways to that list. If we open a discussion about what is happening in our lives to the full spectrum of our personal network, is that a good thing or a bad thing?  It tests the waters of who is interested enough to comment and indeed, they may have valuable feedback. (That’s how I found a mechanic when my car developed a new rattle and my husband was out of town.)

Facebook seems to serve many functions, from back-fence gossip to the venting or validation of emotions. Being a writer, I can understand the value of wanting to edit your words before you place them in the public arena. You can’t take back what you’ve blurted out at the height of emotion. You can wordsmith a tweet or delete an ill-chosen posting before it’s done too much damage. So maybe there is some element of control at work here that might be missing in a face to face encounter.

A good test of appropriateness remains what I learned in Journalism 101.  Play it as a headline. If you have any question about words you feel led to share/ actions you feel compelled to take, write it out in your mind as a newspaper headline.  Hornworms attack early vines, stir debate over pesticides seems acceptable. French banking magnate jailed for attacking maid in hotel room – I just shake my head. Morality aside, if he’d taken 10 seconds to write that headline before he dropped his towel, he might have made a better decision.

The Meanest Mom

This is for my daughter, who works so hard to keep it all together.

My mom is the meanest mom for blocks

she makes me sort and fold my socks
my mom is the meanest mom, oh man!
I must feed the cat and clean out her pan
make my bed, make my lunch, pick up my messes
why she’s so awful, I only have guesses.

Other kids’ mothers for sure aren’t that way

they do their work and let their kids play
my mom says someday I will be older
and have a burden I’ll need to shoulder
I’ll need to do my part, says she
somehow she thinks she’s helping me!

Today I struggled down the stairs

with a  trash can full of old parts and spares
of pieces of toys I hide under my bed
that make my mommy just shake her head
then I put the can back where it used to be
and my mommy, she turned and smiled at me.

The tired in her eyes just sparkled away

I felt a good feeling that lasted all day
maybe my mom is not really that mean
maybe she needs me to help her keep clean
the house we all live in and mess up each day
so she can have time to go out and play. 

The Four Spiritual Questions

I've given a lot of thought to how to boil down the Christian message to the essentials in a way that people who struggle with their identity can grasp.  I know my readers are shy about responding, but any feedback would be appreciated.  

1.      Who am I? 
It depends on who you ask. I like the explanation Jesus gives us.  You are a sinner.  That’s who you are. You are God’s child, and a sinner.

2.      What do I about that?
Jesus is clear and direct in his answer when he says I am the way, the truth and the life.   After that, the fun begins. We each work out our salvation – the full implication of what it means to be a sinner saved by grace – with fear and trembling. Fear in the sense of the respect we give to the message and its giver; trembling in full appreciation of the joy we receive when we travel that path.

3.      What if I don’t like the answer?
You are free to choose another answer, but remember -- not making a choice is a choice. You live on the Devil’s playground and you can play there until Kingdom come or you can join the family of God and then the question – who am I? – becomes irrelevant. The question becomes, who are You, God?

4.      How do I join God’s family?
Allow God to work in you to will and to act according to His good purpose. God is love. If you spend your life being genuine, loving your wife/husband/neighbor/brother as yourself, holding fast to what is good, being patient and kind, bearing, believing, hoping and enduring, your reward is love. You become love. That’s who you are in Christ Jesus because he first loved you. Apart from Him you don’t have the genuine fruits of love. Take your eyes off Him and you lose the power to love perfectly.

Don't get even, get mad!

Today I paced around my house with a hammer in my hand looking for a head to bash. My husband scuttled downstairs and stayed there. The painter working in the upstairs bathroom stayed out of sight.  I won’t say whose head I wanted to bash, but it wasn’t one of those two heads. 

I wanted to crack open this head with a sharp clean blow and peer inside, then reach for a box of brains and dump them in,  followed by a healthy measure of common sense and compassion. While I’m at it, I might like to do some rewiring.

Getting so riled up pretty much ruined my whole day, because from outrage it’s not too much of a jump to get in God’s face and rail at Him – do something!

At our book study tonight we talked about whether living life fully requires us to fully experience our feelings, both good and bad.  There is a latency in the way I experience feelings, a built in time delay. It can be hours or days before it hits me that...I...am...angry!!! First, I analyze a situation. Then I look for a label to paste on the offending behavior so it will make sense to me. Then I look to God for an answer, but He seems to have a built in latency in His response as well. Meanwhile, I am full of this feeling that must needs expression.

As the book we are studying is about giving thanks for everyday blessings, I will now give thanks for animation. Visualizing committing murderous mayhem on a cartoon head is a cathartic release for my pent-up frustration with everything that is wrong with world that just happens to find it’s fullness in this one individual. It’s an “aha” moment to realize that the hours my children spent watching a fat beaked black duck bop a wiseacre rabbit (or the other way around, I forget) were more productive than I realized and may actually have kept them out the penitentiary.

Of course, the place I need to get to is prayer for a soul who is in distress and causing distress. While I am cracking an imaginary head, the Christ who breaks His heart to heal ours (one thousand gifts by Ann Voskamp, p. 40) breaks a real heart.

I, too, am heartbroken.

Springtime in the Mountains

Driving on our mountain road I saw an amorous vulture hovering upright near the top of a tree. He opened his wings like a theatre curtain and bared his intentions to some little vixen hiding in the pines. The sunlight glanced off his great  glossy wings spread in horaltic stance and he expressed his ardor in a slow, seductive, “come hither” movement.

The doe that settled in at the end of the front porch breezeway grew a big belly and disappeared. She’ll be back with twin or triplets – it’s been a good year for these foragers. Her man came by one evening, walked right up the front porch stairs and eyed us through the screen door.

Old Man Winter is not giving up without a fight this year. My sunflowers that have just settled into their pot and wiggled their roots down into the dirt are in for a nasty surprise. Tomorrow the Old Man plans to hurl everything he has left in his arsenal at pretty Spring – thunder, lightening, fierce wind and snow.

The oak trees shake the pollen from their leafy crowns like long haired dogs rising from creek beds to rattle their bones and let the water fly. The detritus coats our eyes and makes us itch and weep.  It cakes all we possess with scummy, soggy gold muck.

The birds don’t gather on the deck off our bedroom to fight for space in the fountain like they used to. They lost their home in the last big storm – the mighty live oak tree that nested so many of them pulled itself out of the ground and crashed to the forest floor, groaning in protest as it went. It left behind a fan club of smaller trees blinking in unfamiliar sunlight -- new real estate to be explored by the jays and finches, hummingbirds and sparrows.

We’ve set the table a bit early for Spring, who wanders into our mountains on her own timetable. We’ll be glad to see her when she finally arrives.