It is one of those nights. I forgot the realities of my age for a moment and drank a cup of hot tea before bed (English Breakfast), with caffeine, and am paying the price for my comforting ritual. So, here I am at 1:45 in the morning, unable to sleep and mulling over various and sundries. One of my mulling points is how much time I have spent waiting.
When I was a child, I was waiting to grow older, not grow up, just older. I wanted to be old enough to go to school, old enough to wear lipstick, old enough to drive a car, old enough to leave my parent’s home. Then I was "grown up" and I was once again waiting... waiting to get married, waiting for Tim to come home from Viet Nam, waiting for the grief to ease, waiting for a new life to take shape, married again and waiting for babies to be born, waiting for teeth to come in and potty training to happen, waiting at soccer games and dance performances and piano recitals, a lady-in-waiting. While I was waiting, life happened and it was good and hard and wonderful and funny and sad. Everything I was waiting for, came to me.
There is an old invitational hymn, Why Do You Wait, that floated through my cloudy mind as I lay pondering my particular waiting game. "Why do you wait, dear brother, Oh why do you tarry so long? Your Savior is waiting to give you a place in his sanctified throng. Why not? Why not? Why not come to him now?" I did come and yet I waited still.
My waiting, however, has not been a passive state, lying abed like Snow White waiting for the Prince to come kiss me awake. It has been a quiet, expectant, hopeful way of living that knows there is more to come, more than I can see or touch or smell or taste or hear. All the mile posts that have whizzed by as I was living were not all I was waiting for. I was and am still, waiting for God to come.
God has come many times to me in my life. In the frozen silence of grief and loss, God’s voice whispered in my ear, "Wait for me". I waited and there God was in the arms and faces and voices of those who loved me. In the frenetic fun family times when children were young and silence was rarely available, God spoke to me in my children’s voices affirming the joy of creation and the wonder of life. And now in the quiet of my sixties, I hear and see and taste and smell and feel God all around me. My waiting is rich with possibilities and promise. Like the Psalmist of old,
"I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman waits for the morning."
Advent is coming and I am waiting once again... waiting for incarnation and a baby boy to be born who will be named Jesus... waiting for hope, love, joy and peace... waiting for God to show up.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
my thankful list....
I am thankful for the gift of life in this world and the world to come. The package of life is never neatly wrapped and topped with a bow but in spite of its messy exterior (or maybe because of it), the present of existence is a wonderful jack-in-the-box experience. How could I not be grateful for a life that has such joy... grandchildren, children,a loving husband, Sabbath Rest Farm with cows and a horse, sunrises through my bedroom window, the laughter of friends gathered around the Thanksgiving table, candlelight in the twilight darkness, the ability to make a fool of myself in forty eleven different ways and have fun while doing it, Grady Nutt’s phrase,"friends who are family and family who are friends", a reasonably healthy body and a somewhat sound mind, good food full of flavor, the sound of Aidan’s giggles and chuckles and belly laughs as we played his favorite game, Roar, in the store yesterday, peaceful night times in our farmhouse living room watching the fire light play, the smell of damp winter earth covered with the crop of autumn leaves, friends whose differences from me help me see the wonderful wholeness of life (Republicans and New Jersey people and conservative Baptists can make great friends), clean water from a well that is full, home sweet home in a part of the world that feeds my soul every time I look out and see the beautiful rounded outlines of the mountains that surround my place on this planet Earth.
I am thankful for the sorrows of my life. They have taught me how to be grateful for all of life. Loss and grief have rounded the sharp edges of my soul. I am a testament to the power of transformation through the purifying process of painful deaths... deaths of loved ones, deaths of dreams, deaths of self perception, the death of innocence that is ignorance disguised, death of my religious home place... little deaths and earth shaking deaths... all a part of my life and a counter balance to the "joy, joy, joy, joy, joy" mode of my American culture. If one can have courage, take heart and just wait, there is much to be gained in experiencing loss. Great sorrow often weighs one down, making movement of any kind very difficult. In the stillness of sorrow lies the gift of new life, new ways of being, new depths to be sounded, and new heights to be flown when the tears on our butterfly wings dry. How can I keep from singing when even griefs and sorrows hold the promises of life to come?
I am thankful for all the beauty in my life. I am surrounded by green mountains, rocky rivers and streams, deer and wild turkeys, hopping toads and brightly colored salamanders, Carolina blue skies and grey snow days, soaring hawks and circling buzzards, graceful evergreens and tree skeletons, emeralds of rye grass and blueberry bush rubies. The wonderful shine of polished friendships with those near and far lights my heart and soul, and keeps me warm during the dark, cold winters. The purity of Gabe’s voice singing in worship Sunday, the joy of singing a fast and furious Shaker song in choir, watching Serena draw an interpretation of star light, matting collages and pictures created in our Art Extravaganza Sunday, rejoicing in the variety of creative gifts of beauty that are a connection to the Creator... these beautiful reflections of souls find a home in my heart and I am grateful. This is a beautiful world filled with beautiful creations.
I am thankful for the abiding presence of the One Who Loves in my life. From earliest memories I have always been aware of and grateful for the gift of God’s presence in my life. The assurance of being loved when I am most unlovable, being loved "just because" has sustained me when I could not love myself. The everlasting Love, the Love that knows no end, Love that will not let me go, Love that calls forth Love from me and pushes me to share and see the Love in others... the first Bible verse I learned as a child and do truly believe... God is Love... when all else fails, this blessed assurance remains. I am loved. I am called to be a lover. "Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us , a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."Ephesians 5:1-2 Today I will walk surrounded by Love, bathed in Light, remembering to whom I belong and live as a beloved child, grateful beyond measure for this most amazing gift of life.
I am thankful for the sorrows of my life. They have taught me how to be grateful for all of life. Loss and grief have rounded the sharp edges of my soul. I am a testament to the power of transformation through the purifying process of painful deaths... deaths of loved ones, deaths of dreams, deaths of self perception, the death of innocence that is ignorance disguised, death of my religious home place... little deaths and earth shaking deaths... all a part of my life and a counter balance to the "joy, joy, joy, joy, joy" mode of my American culture. If one can have courage, take heart and just wait, there is much to be gained in experiencing loss. Great sorrow often weighs one down, making movement of any kind very difficult. In the stillness of sorrow lies the gift of new life, new ways of being, new depths to be sounded, and new heights to be flown when the tears on our butterfly wings dry. How can I keep from singing when even griefs and sorrows hold the promises of life to come?
I am thankful for all the beauty in my life. I am surrounded by green mountains, rocky rivers and streams, deer and wild turkeys, hopping toads and brightly colored salamanders, Carolina blue skies and grey snow days, soaring hawks and circling buzzards, graceful evergreens and tree skeletons, emeralds of rye grass and blueberry bush rubies. The wonderful shine of polished friendships with those near and far lights my heart and soul, and keeps me warm during the dark, cold winters. The purity of Gabe’s voice singing in worship Sunday, the joy of singing a fast and furious Shaker song in choir, watching Serena draw an interpretation of star light, matting collages and pictures created in our Art Extravaganza Sunday, rejoicing in the variety of creative gifts of beauty that are a connection to the Creator... these beautiful reflections of souls find a home in my heart and I am grateful. This is a beautiful world filled with beautiful creations.
I am thankful for the abiding presence of the One Who Loves in my life. From earliest memories I have always been aware of and grateful for the gift of God’s presence in my life. The assurance of being loved when I am most unlovable, being loved "just because" has sustained me when I could not love myself. The everlasting Love, the Love that knows no end, Love that will not let me go, Love that calls forth Love from me and pushes me to share and see the Love in others... the first Bible verse I learned as a child and do truly believe... God is Love... when all else fails, this blessed assurance remains. I am loved. I am called to be a lover. "Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us , a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."Ephesians 5:1-2 Today I will walk surrounded by Love, bathed in Light, remembering to whom I belong and live as a beloved child, grateful beyond measure for this most amazing gift of life.
Monday, November 19, 2007
and your name shall be... wonderful?
Names were special when I was growing up. At church, adults were addressed as Brother Calhoun or Sister Calhoun until the friendship was firmly established. Then you became Sister Shirley or Brother Tommy. Children were not allowed to address adults by their first name alone. If they had a special relationship to you, you might call them Mr. Howard or Miss Jeanette but only with permission. Public boundaries for relationship were clear for children and adults alike. As a child I discounted these etiquette rules. I saw them as artificial and unnecessary. I have changed my mind.
Perhaps it is the sales calls I get on the phone where I am addressed as "Peggy" by someone who does not know me, will never know me and doesn’t want to know me even if I buy something... or it could be the doctor who calls me by my first name while I still don’t know theirs... or it could be I am just tired of feeling like I have no protection from a world of people who presume they know me and feel free to use my first name as a sign of a non-existent relationship. My, I sound grumpy, and old. Children, all children, are exempt from this rule for me, however. They can call me anything they want to and I will love it. No prefixes are needed and my first name will do just fine. Kids are all about relationship and have no special axes to grind beyond loving.
Our individual names have meaning. Some of that meaning may come because of a definition attached to the name word. Margaret means "a pearl". In my family that name is given to the oldest daughter. So my Aunt Peg (Margaret), me (Peggy), and my oldest daughter (Megan) all share a version of the same name. In some families names are handed down from generation to generation. Year after year, John David or Mary Elizabeth or Mary Samuel or Stuart Alvin is passed on to the next generation of children providing a context and a connection to the past from which they have sprung. Sometimes the past is too heavy a connection to bear. It feels oppressive or artificial, not really a reflection of the person who carries the name.
None of our names, I suspect, feel like the real "us" until we have lived with them for awhile. For those who never feel settled in their names, legal name change is an option. For some women who marry and take the name of their partner, we have another name shift to accommodate. We leave the name of our birth and add a new name to our list, creating a new name history. The visible sign of names’ importance is the custom of creating hyphenated last names that incorporate both last names. At some invisible point in our lives, we grow to fit our names or we let our names begin to fit us.
I remember trying out different names as a child. I wondered what I would look like as a "Mary Jane" or a "Taffy" or a "Margaret". What would I become if I were named Katherine or Mary Samuel (one of my cousins) ? Would I live up to that name differently than the name "Peggy"? I’ll never know who or what I might have become if I had been named Mary Catherine or Maria Irene.
It has been an adventure figuring out who "Peggy Joyce Calhoun Cole Hester" was and who she could be. Peggy is not a very dignified name and I am not a very dignified person. On any given day you might see me in overalls with hay in my hair, or kneeling down in front of the communion table in my Sunday best taping up the bright green table cloth with no thought for my posterior view presented to the congregation, or sliding down the home made slip and slide at the Fourth of July party at the farm, or falling gracefully off Junie B. Jones as the saddle slipped to one side. I am a person with a clear sense of my place in this world partly because of all the family stories my Grandma told me, but no illusions about my importance in the grand scheme of things. So the name Peggy suits me just fine, thank you. It is down to earth, non-threatening, easy to say, playful and it suits me.
The Bible pays attention to names. All those lists of "begats" and stories of name changes... Simon to Peter and Jacob to Israel... names are of great importance in the Bible. New names come with a change in purpose or a new self definition. Sometimes they come in struggle with unknown angels and sometimes they are given to us by others. But in Isaiah 62 a phrase in verse two gives me another source for a new name. "...and you shall be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord will give..." I wonder what new name God will call me? Maybe I have already been given that name and didn’t hear God call me by my new name. What a soul loss that would be, to have been given a new name by God and missed it because I wasn’t listening. I am going to start watching for the clues to my new name, listening for the sound of God’s voice in my daily rounds calling me by name, calling me to a new name adventure, a new holy place with a name to match my calling. I do hope it isn’t something too dignified or righteous or heaven forbid, something I have to live up to.
Perhaps it is the sales calls I get on the phone where I am addressed as "Peggy" by someone who does not know me, will never know me and doesn’t want to know me even if I buy something... or it could be the doctor who calls me by my first name while I still don’t know theirs... or it could be I am just tired of feeling like I have no protection from a world of people who presume they know me and feel free to use my first name as a sign of a non-existent relationship. My, I sound grumpy, and old. Children, all children, are exempt from this rule for me, however. They can call me anything they want to and I will love it. No prefixes are needed and my first name will do just fine. Kids are all about relationship and have no special axes to grind beyond loving.
Our individual names have meaning. Some of that meaning may come because of a definition attached to the name word. Margaret means "a pearl". In my family that name is given to the oldest daughter. So my Aunt Peg (Margaret), me (Peggy), and my oldest daughter (Megan) all share a version of the same name. In some families names are handed down from generation to generation. Year after year, John David or Mary Elizabeth or Mary Samuel or Stuart Alvin is passed on to the next generation of children providing a context and a connection to the past from which they have sprung. Sometimes the past is too heavy a connection to bear. It feels oppressive or artificial, not really a reflection of the person who carries the name.
None of our names, I suspect, feel like the real "us" until we have lived with them for awhile. For those who never feel settled in their names, legal name change is an option. For some women who marry and take the name of their partner, we have another name shift to accommodate. We leave the name of our birth and add a new name to our list, creating a new name history. The visible sign of names’ importance is the custom of creating hyphenated last names that incorporate both last names. At some invisible point in our lives, we grow to fit our names or we let our names begin to fit us.
I remember trying out different names as a child. I wondered what I would look like as a "Mary Jane" or a "Taffy" or a "Margaret". What would I become if I were named Katherine or Mary Samuel (one of my cousins) ? Would I live up to that name differently than the name "Peggy"? I’ll never know who or what I might have become if I had been named Mary Catherine or Maria Irene.
It has been an adventure figuring out who "Peggy Joyce Calhoun Cole Hester" was and who she could be. Peggy is not a very dignified name and I am not a very dignified person. On any given day you might see me in overalls with hay in my hair, or kneeling down in front of the communion table in my Sunday best taping up the bright green table cloth with no thought for my posterior view presented to the congregation, or sliding down the home made slip and slide at the Fourth of July party at the farm, or falling gracefully off Junie B. Jones as the saddle slipped to one side. I am a person with a clear sense of my place in this world partly because of all the family stories my Grandma told me, but no illusions about my importance in the grand scheme of things. So the name Peggy suits me just fine, thank you. It is down to earth, non-threatening, easy to say, playful and it suits me.
The Bible pays attention to names. All those lists of "begats" and stories of name changes... Simon to Peter and Jacob to Israel... names are of great importance in the Bible. New names come with a change in purpose or a new self definition. Sometimes they come in struggle with unknown angels and sometimes they are given to us by others. But in Isaiah 62 a phrase in verse two gives me another source for a new name. "...and you shall be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord will give..." I wonder what new name God will call me? Maybe I have already been given that name and didn’t hear God call me by my new name. What a soul loss that would be, to have been given a new name by God and missed it because I wasn’t listening. I am going to start watching for the clues to my new name, listening for the sound of God’s voice in my daily rounds calling me by name, calling me to a new name adventure, a new holy place with a name to match my calling. I do hope it isn’t something too dignified or righteous or heaven forbid, something I have to live up to.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Neurofeedback and me... it is all in my head
The first glimmer of understanding my ADD’ness came in the midst of a major crisis. By the grace of God (and Michael’s connections), I found myself working with a therapist who used neurofeedback as well as talk therapy. Jill was wonderful. Native to the mountains, ADD herself, funny and gifted, she walked with me as I began to see and understand the way my brain works. Her premature death set me adrift and I used medicine, Ritalin, for two years to cope and maintain. Medicine was a temporary fix for me. It worked but killed some of my creative edge that is a necessary part of who I want to be. Neurofeedback, however, gave me some tools for feeling my brain work (doesn’t that sound strange), seeing the patterns in my brain work, exercises accompanied by visuals that satisfied my need for creativity. I now have some sense that I can appreciate and affirm the peculiar structure of my brain without having to always measure myself against others and come up short. My new therapist, Terry, took one look at my brain patterns when she first hooked me up and I felt so much better to hear her say, "No wonder you have so much trouble living in the world. You have busy brain and slow brain (my words, not the technical description) working at the same time against the middle. Most people have only one out of whack. You have two!" What grace that was... to hear it is all in my head and it is different.
Our sessions are simple. We talk some and check in... see what is happening in my world as she hooks up the bells and whistles. When I am connected to the computer, the games begin. I seem to be wired just right for neurofeedback. Many people try it and some it helps, and some it doesn’t. It began helping me the first week. My sleep, often interrupted in the night and fitful, changed and I began to feel rested in the morning. My "fight or flight response" which is strong and often out of control began to moderate. Tasks and chores and lists are still a growing edge but it feels more "doable" now. I have moved from living life always feeling overwhelmed to only feeling overwhelmed now and then. There is a faint glimmer of hope that I might be able to actually finish some of those myriad unfinished projects I have stored around the house.
Years of living with ADD can put a dent in your soul. All around you are orderly people, not all of them Presbyterians (a little clergy humor), who seem to float on the duck pond of life with nary a ripple. They appear to live calm, competent, complete lives with very little of the confusion and careening that characterizes my life. Life for regular people maintains a balance on a broad plain with occasional dips into gullies of suffering but the plain is always there. For me, life has been lived on a narrow path bordered on either side with steep drop offs. Tumbles result in long falls to the bottom and the climb up is long and hard.
I think I love the book of Psalms because I find in it whatever I need at any given moment in my days and nights. If I am feeling afraid and scared to death... Psalms 27:1; sunk in depression... Psalms 13; needing the reassurance that God is present in my life... Psalms 139; full of thanksgiving... Psalms 100 and 138; full of joy and laughter... pick one that starts with the word "Praise". This book, full of ancient songs, full of life and longing and death and despair, speaks to my soul always without fail if I can just make myself sit still and read. It is a book written for people with ADD... no apparent organizational chart or topics neatly arranged... but everything that is needed is there if one has eyes to see and ears to hear.
My verse for today...Psalms 17:8 "Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings..." Today I will be the ADD apple in God’s eye. I give thanks for all things dappled, striped, crooked and out of whack, all things and people who are tilting towards Tildy, all of us perfect apples in God’s eyes. Amen.
Our sessions are simple. We talk some and check in... see what is happening in my world as she hooks up the bells and whistles. When I am connected to the computer, the games begin. I seem to be wired just right for neurofeedback. Many people try it and some it helps, and some it doesn’t. It began helping me the first week. My sleep, often interrupted in the night and fitful, changed and I began to feel rested in the morning. My "fight or flight response" which is strong and often out of control began to moderate. Tasks and chores and lists are still a growing edge but it feels more "doable" now. I have moved from living life always feeling overwhelmed to only feeling overwhelmed now and then. There is a faint glimmer of hope that I might be able to actually finish some of those myriad unfinished projects I have stored around the house.
Years of living with ADD can put a dent in your soul. All around you are orderly people, not all of them Presbyterians (a little clergy humor), who seem to float on the duck pond of life with nary a ripple. They appear to live calm, competent, complete lives with very little of the confusion and careening that characterizes my life. Life for regular people maintains a balance on a broad plain with occasional dips into gullies of suffering but the plain is always there. For me, life has been lived on a narrow path bordered on either side with steep drop offs. Tumbles result in long falls to the bottom and the climb up is long and hard.
I think I love the book of Psalms because I find in it whatever I need at any given moment in my days and nights. If I am feeling afraid and scared to death... Psalms 27:1; sunk in depression... Psalms 13; needing the reassurance that God is present in my life... Psalms 139; full of thanksgiving... Psalms 100 and 138; full of joy and laughter... pick one that starts with the word "Praise". This book, full of ancient songs, full of life and longing and death and despair, speaks to my soul always without fail if I can just make myself sit still and read. It is a book written for people with ADD... no apparent organizational chart or topics neatly arranged... but everything that is needed is there if one has eyes to see and ears to hear.
My verse for today...Psalms 17:8 "Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings..." Today I will be the ADD apple in God’s eye. I give thanks for all things dappled, striped, crooked and out of whack, all things and people who are tilting towards Tildy, all of us perfect apples in God’s eyes. Amen.
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