Mari’s Blog

During Henry’s spring break, he and I went on a trip to California during which I signed a contract to publish A Course of Love in one single, combined volume. I’m really excited about it.

I know…it probably seems a little funny that I haven’t mentioned it before now. What kind of excitement is that, right? Well, for one thing, we’re going to launch a new website/blog and for another, with a Fall 2014 publication date, I’ve been pretty busy. We’ve checked and double-checked the manuscripts (Word files and originals) and a new cover has been designed, and everything but The Dialogues has even been typeset already. But there’s sort of this feeling, I guess, of it not being quite yet the time to introduce the folks making all of this happen or the new publication itself. It’s still a “preparatory” time.

As part of my preparation I started cleaning my sun room office. There’s a certain energy to new projects—at least for me. My deadly time is at the end. When I’m done—I’m done and I rarely look back. That’s why things like my file drawer are a mess and why I went down in the basement for an empty box, intent on filling it with the drawer’s contents and delivering all that paper into the hands of the recycler. I took everything out of that file drawer … but … by the time I was through reading and sorting, I only had about three pieces of paper in my hand for the waste basket and I started reading one of those.

My “find” of the day is this sheet of paper full of my handwriting, written in pencil on the back of page showing visual images of rotator cuff rehabilitation exercises, which tells me just how much I used that list and about how long ago it was that I wrote across its back (nearly four years)!

It’s a “find” because when you’re talking a new publication you’re asked questions like, “What is the essence of this Course of Love?” You feel like you ought to be able to easily answer such questions. And yet, if you’ve ever tried to describe A Course of Love to someone who hasn’t heard of it, you might have run into this same problem. What do you say? It speaks to the heart?

I seemed to be asking myself the same “What is it?” question when I jotted these notes four years ago. I thought I’d share them with you. (I’ll share more details on the new publishing venture soon.)

This Course begins with prayer—felt like prayer, came from prayer—the answer to prayer.

What does it draw us to?

Interior transformation and exterior manifestation
Expanding vision
Deepening compassion
Listening to God and the promptings of our hearts and listening to people and the cries of their hearts.

Prayer or being with God in deep and receptive relationship—sometimes active/sometimes in silence
Union with Christ and our brothers and sisters

Solidarity with others on the journey – whatever their way.

Heart energy – the love – grows our commitment and respect for the rights of people – for justice, generosity, caring

Way of great humility and ordinary leadership – of becoming mature human beings

Intimacy, fellowship, autonomy, community, dialogue, realness, authenticity

Creativity, spaciousness – out of the feeling of stuckness, being trapped in our lives

More movement than leaps. A best of times/worst of times feel.

I’d be very unlikely to say much of the same thing or use many of the same words now, but they’re all good, original words, the kind that come when you’re at ease and not in need of them for any particular reason. The kind that come from that heart place from which A Course of Love would have all of our offerings arise, the place of no effort and very little “thinking”.

My new grandson Jack was baptized on Sunday and regardless of how lovely it was (and it was lovely), I’m afraid I’ll remember it as the baptism during which my slip was showing.

My daughter Mia, Jack’s mom, wanted a certain “look” for the baptism. She wanted family pictures afterward. She didn’t want any black. She was remembering the baptism of my only other grandchild, Henry, which happened on Easter 2007. She remembered the white shirt my husband Donny wore, and asked me to get it ready for him (knowing he hasn’t exactly been out buying new dress shirts). She knew I’d worn a white suit and frowned at the gray pants, white shirt and black jacket I’d originally intended.

I got out Donny’s old white shirt and my old white suit. Neither of us were going to wear those, if for different reasons. We found another acceptable shirt for him and I bought a dress. A pink dress. A hot-pink sleeveless dress that somehow looked great on me. It had this sassy, sort of flouncy skirt and, even though I was pretty sure I’d return it, it was so cheap on sale that I thought later, ‘Even if I don’t wear it for the baptism, when will I ever again find a dress that fits me like this?’ It was something about the fit.

I eventually decided to pair the pink dress with a white linen, three-quarter sleeve blazer that got passed on to me from my other daughter, Angela, and that I realized was what she’d worn for Henry’s big event. Sounded great. But I’ve never had the kind of legs that can go without hose and it being early April with snow still on the ground here in Minnesota, my legs are so white as to make the hose an absolute necessity. I had to go buy a pair—that’s how long it has been since I’ve worn a dress. I’m not kidding. I didn’t even know where to look for them in my local Target.

Unfortunately, after getting ready, the dress was clinging to the hose and I had to hunt down a slip. Now, I’m quite certain I haven’t worn a slip since my job at the University of Minnesota, but I still had one. It was black, but the dress wasn’t sheer or anything, so I thought it would be fine.

What I hadn’t accounted for was that I’m thinner than I was in my U of M days. As I carried the gifts to the altar in my pink dress, my black slip—well—slipped and slipped until it was hanging well beneath the edge of my dress. I realized it about then and hitched it up as well as I could when I got back to my pew and thought it would stay that way for some odd reason. That’s how I came to have pictures taken with my slip showing. One of my friends told me her husband said “It’s a good look.” My sister said, “I thought at first it was part of the dress. Black and pink go together.” My mom was strangely silent.

My sister, me, and baby Jack. This was the only size picture that would show the whole of my dress (and the wandering slip).

That was yesterday. I’ve been wondering since then if it was a sign…like who am I kidding? What am I doing wearing a dress again? When I got home and put on my black sweat pants and my gray turtleneck (it had cooled down from a stunningly beautiful, sunny, high-50’s afternoon), I caught site of myself in the mirror and shook my head. Now I looked “like me” and comfortable, and I thought of my friends who had come in their slacks, looking like “themselves”, and my counter-part, Jack’s other grandma, who looked very nice in a simple but decorative white shirt worn with, I’m pretty sure, a pair of jeans.

Was it one of those moments that say, “Just be who you are, be who you are, be who you are?” I actually think it was, even though I intend to wear the dress again—at least when it’s 80 degrees and humid and I need something that looks nice—but maybe not only then. I bought the dress not only for Mia’s desire to have a certain kind of picture, but because it pleased me. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since something hot-pink, or with a flouncy skirt did that. I felt light and sprightly in it (especially after I took off the slip). I have that side too and I may want to honor it on occasion.

The baptismal reading was from the Gospel of John (11:1-43) that speaks of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It’s the one that has the famous three word sentence, the shortest in the New Testament, the one that says, “And Jesus wept.”

Sitting next to me was my mom, whose brother Lewis just died, and two rows back, my friend Susan whose mother passed three weeks ago. And being held in the pew before me was the not-quite five-month-old Jack being ceremoniously initiated into new life. It all made a lovely sort of cyclical sense.

Lazarus (and Baptism for that matter) are a sign of what Jesus would do for all humanity—have us resurrect in life. I could go on and on talking about that, but I’ll end as I began with a pink dress and a slip-sliding slip, noting that if we’re resurrected “within” life we will still be wearing clothes.

Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb. He was bound hand and foot by his burial cloth. Jesus said, “Loose him; let him go.” New life is like that. Like being unbound. The liberation of being loosed of bounds means I quit pigeon-holing myself—even into thinking I’m too liberated to ever stick myself in a dress again, or too old (or mature or spiritual…or what have you) to flounce, or to laugh…at myself.

Ah…a moment’s silence. It happened while I was back in the cabin’s corner plugging in the phone to charge. Turning from that chore, it was suddenly there. The hush. It’s still relatively quiet. Furnace is off.

Donny must leave early today and of course…I forgot the phone. Two trips now over the ice, so he can call me in when he’s ready. Grateful for Dad’s cane. Realizing what we do to preserve ourselves…naturally, without thought almost. Realizing the sky is different going out than going in, north and south, the direction in which I move. Realizing a few minutes bring change: first time out a brief hint of clouds and nothing else to be seen. Second time the clouds have passed. Stars are peeping like chicks.

The morning birds have not arrived. It is a little past six and solidly dark at the mid-point of earth and sky that I watch. The fence is visible only with an adjustment of the eyes, having blended in with the morning’s night sky. I watch it anyway. I watch the stillness. I watch the fence become visible.

I am witness to the fence. I am audience to the woods. And they to me.

Where is your center? In the silence? In the dance? Carving wood? Cooking? In the presence of a child? Where you are without distractions? Isn’t that it?

For some of life, distractions become the show. The whole show. There is nothing else.
Distractions are life’s commercials.

What am I still distracted by? What am I distracted from?

The show is now forming over the fence, two pale blue lines appearing beneath the dark sky taking on the hue of blue.

(I have been absent for a while. Blogs are at times distractions and, at other times, not.)