writing – Page 6 – Another Adventure

The Potter and the Clay

I went running yesterday, which I hardly do anymore, and as I moved my legs forward and up, I realized that I’m not as hopeless as I think I am.

Let me explain: I’ve roller-coasted up and down various levels of physical athleticism…meaning, I am not an athlete, nor do I intend to be, but I love to move. When I get stressed out or when I am in school (the two of which are synonymous) I pour all my energy into worrying and simply have none left to spend on exercise.

Sound familiar?

It seems so simple now when you say it like that…

Anyway, I finally went running yesterday, because I got fed up with worrying. So I stepped outside, took a breath and bolted, though more like an old dog than a jack-rabbit.

Now, before you start asking yourself about the most recently advertised health benefits of long-distance running versus apparent risks, or the newest work-out fad, let me just say that I do not run for “fitness” in the glitzy athletic club shiny medal high end sneaker sense of the world…I run, at least, I know I must run, for spiritual solidity.

How does this work? Good question. Maybe it’s not so much a spiritual thing as it is a unifying in which my body and my spirit think and work together to achieve one common goal: simply moving faster, going higher, breathing longer.

And then I started thinking. I was amazed that, even after months of not running, I could still do so! This seems obvious in retrospect, because of course if I can walk, I can run. But when you don’t do something long enough, you can quite easily forget that you have any potential at all.

As I realized that my legs hadn’t given up on me, that my muscles are still buried somewhere deep in my flesh, I thought about the Potter and the clay: “Will the pot say to the potter, you did not make me?” No. Will the pot wiggle and squirm and try to reinvent itself every time it notices and fixates upon a crack or a chink? If that pot is me, then yes, it certainly will. This is how I started out yesterday when I decided to run. I thought I would wipe my slate totally clean and begin “new,” as if I could erase twenty two years of living just by putting one foot in front of the other.

So I put one foot in front of the other…and another, and another, and another, and then I wasn’t running from anything, or running towards anything, or erasing or embracing anything at all. I was just caught in a space in the air, with my feet somehow down on the earth.

Thoughts on a Friday

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about women; not simply women in relation to men, but women as women with agency, uniqueness and life. The gender studies department at my (very liberal) tiny college would be proud..

I watched an incredible movie the other day that sparked this new obsession, called Adoption, and filmed in Hungary. It centers on one forty-three year old worker’s desire for a child: a beautiful outpouring of our human capacity for love and nurturing affection. I was touched and inspired by her strength, her perseverance her ability to always maintain her composure and never shy away from her own deep desires. Yet the counterbalance of this woman’s sophisticated character is Anna, a seventeen year old foster child who is difficult, moody, and obviously hurt…she is abandoned. In my own freakish dreams about motherhood, I can’t help but to blur the lines between infants and adolescents. In other words, I think about children only as babies and not as beings who grow up and become independent. Disclaimer: I know I’m much too young to be thinking about this, but if you think about it, the first time most girls play with the idea of motherhood is in their own childhoods. I was driving home this afternoon and saw a mother, holding a toddler, holding a baby doll. Three generations in one fell swoop. I half expected the doll to have a smaller doll to hold.

I remember having a great talk with my mom, quite recently, about all the wonderful things she did to ensure healthy, smart, active babies, while pregnant and while we were young. Things like home births, homeopathy, Waldorf-style education, blueberry picking, et cetera et cetera. 🙂 I’m very grateful for that! Truly, I think my parents did a top notch job of developing my little self. I just think somewhere along the line things went askew. I think LIFE happened, and they weren’t prepared for it because there’s only so much you can read and prep for before you throw yourself into the water and pray to God you can swim.

How much can you ever prepare for life? Isn’t that part of the adventure? Is it selfish to throw caution to the wind? Or is it liberating?

I think both. But slowly growing, I am beginning to see the value in responsibility. Granted, I have virtually NO responsibilities right now, so it’s very easy to say that, but even things as simple as making sure I get home in enough time to sleep and eat so that I don’t CRASH and feel miserable for the next five days is a very underrated yet very important accomplishment! It’s easy to overlook that; especially when you’re in a foreign country, or you are having fun with someone and don’t want to come down. But we all eventually do and have to practice landing with even footing.

I’m still working on that.

I found this quote on a wonderful blog that I follow (from the book Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore–not the Irish one–apparently there are two poets named Moore):

If we were to observe the soul in the family by honoring its stories and by not running away from its shadow, then we might not feel so inescapably determined by family influences….

Honoring its stories…what a grand idea! Every family is a microcosm of joy and pain and indelibly unique experiences, so how can we not celebrate them? Even the memories we hate are part of us. Just like bruises and scars, we wear them on our hearts, in our eyes, on the tips of our fingers, on the breaths from our noses and lips. We wear our families, for better and for worse. I suppose escapism then can only take a person so far, because we cannot ever escape our own skins!!

We assume we are ineluctably who we are because of the family in which we grew up. What if we thought of the family less as the determining influence by which we are formed and more the raw material from which we can make a life.

Raw material. Eyes, nose mouth, lips, tongue, teeth, throat, heart, guts, lungs, body and bones and brain and speech and ears to hear and eyes to see and hands to hold. Hands to hold. Babies to make, books to carry, bread to bake. Shall the clay pot deny the hands that fashioned it and say “you did not make me?”

How can we fashion ourselves without first molding to the warm touch of the Potter who made us?

Two extraordinary women. (From St. Silouhan’s Chapel at the Toronto Mission in Canada)

Jerusalem

I would really love to post all my pictures from Jerusalem, call out some tourist places, and call it a day.
But that wouldn’t be accurate.
Jerusalem is….Jerusalem. It’s always been Jerusalem, and that word still carries so much weight.

Here, here is our challenge: to love all our brothers; even, and especially, those who hate us. Israel is so paradoxical because in the midst of the “promised land” there is still so much hate. I’ve been here almost a month now (wow) and it’s becoming horribly apparent to me from every angle that I am not enough in myself for the hatred that infiltrates us all and is magnified here in such a small and tense arena. My first real realization of this was Jerusalem–nothing epitomizes this conflict as Jerusalem. There I was, in the holiest of holy lands, where martyrs and saints and kings have walked, and you would think that everyone belonged to a “gang” because that’s really all it felt like–like the Jets and the Sharks ready to shiv each other over control of the corner soda stand. It’s astonishing how like children adults can be. And it’s shameful because we should know better. We should be creating a better world for our children, not training them in the combat.

When walking Friday night to the Western Wall, I saw a religious Jew and Muslim boy and his mother cross paths (about six inches away from each other at most, because the streets are so incredibly narrow..the ancient, cobblestone streets of Jerusalem, that cry out with every step). As naturally as breathing, the boy jumped around and started laughing at the Jewish boy on his way to pray. (Just for the record, the boy’s immitation of dancing was a horribly staunch depiction of men’s Shabbat dancing. It is powerful and majestic…a sight to behold.) The boy’s mother did nothing, but complacently walked on.

I was shocked. Of course this goes both ways, and I am not educated enough to give facts or statistics on such conflicts, but in my lowly opinion facts and statistics are like crutches to an injured man: he can get around well enough but he cannot walk upright. They demean the issues of humanity and civility down to figures and pieces of paper and ink. And the fact of the matter is that when human life and peace is on the line, facts and statistics are meaningless. For God’s sake, we’re all the same people.

I know that for many who live here and have grown up here–Israelis and Palestinians alike– that such blatant hatred has become a way of life and one must develop thick skin. You really do when you live in a place that people want to wipe off the map. But to me, the fact that this type of perpetual whitewashing–talk of a nation or a country “free of” another group of people–is precisely the problem, not the solution. I thank God that I’m still in shock, because it means that I’m not immune to it.

This country is so beautiful. It’s so rich in ancient history and biblical tradition. It’s a wonderful place to be, but it’s also difficult and very exhausting, from a personal level, too: when I strike up a conversation with someone and I see their eyes immediately dart down to my cross, up, and down and back up again, I can’t help but stop my train of thought and wonder what just happened. Who cares? The fact of the matter is that many people do care quite a lot about another man’s faith. I’ve also gotten this: “Are you Jewish?” “No.” “Then why are you in Israel?” And this: “Are you Jewish?” “No.” “Christian?” “Yes.” “Oh, Jesus.” “…”

What about him?

Maybe if we weren’t all so concerned with names and titles we could realize that we all drink the same water and breathe the same air and that that creates symbiosis among us, whether or not we want it or even like it. As my mom would say, “tough.”

Pen and Palette: The Spirit of Truth

Pen and Palette: The Spirit of Truth: The difference, I think, is that when we ask the Holy Spirit’s help, our own spirit quits warring with Him so much.

Beautiful words from someone I admire very much. If you’re not reading her blog regularly, you should. It’s good soul nourishment 🙂