Dear Teresa of Avila

Today's darkness may be no different
than 1515 Spain. Perhaps there and then
as here and now wisdom revolves
around the round dial of kitchen tables
in houses churning
with children's voices, the high rise
and fall of hope-
filled voices proclaiming
turns of tides
dangling the question of which ebb
or which flow to anticipate
or whether something else entirely awaits our turning:
a strange luminous rhythm unknown
even to

history. We mourn the loss
of time-built systems, come undone
through a collective dark night
of the soul, wait to hear the finality
of the dead collector's
expectant voice
outside calling, or the screech
of tires halting across
the pavement of time signaling the final

Stop. A divine telegram,
we desire, the certainty
of notification we want for,
we feel entitled
to absolute knowledge
no devil posseses our minds. What angel
visits us? Which mystic bears
the true mark? Or do we turn blind eyes,
switch the lamp off, stand
calcified in our

beliefs, heart hardened, a false imagined
God the object of our unrequited love? We crumble
in the face of it, card houses
tumbling, fumbling
across thin pages of prophecy
where arrows point the crooked
fingers of blame
West
then East
now South, then back
upon ourselves until
True North remains the
one
safe
place
to go toward.

Writing from My Mess

There are several things I like about my new office. It's tucked away in a corner, for one, and it has a window, a high up one, which is glass block, so there's light but not distraction of the outside. My chair is beside the furnace, and I like that idea of being in the belly of the house where there is heat. It speaks of being at the source. I think of a womb, the creative center, a place of energy and creation.

But you know what my favorite part is? The laundry is here.

My office is right next to the washer and dryer and the masses of clothes and towels and bedding that six human beings can make dirty as they live and breathe and learn each day. There is evidence of life happening and I am able to make it clean. The work of motherhood and the work of writing can occur simultaneously.

Writing is like doing laundry: I start with a mess, let it churn in the waters of emotion, heat it with spirit, air it through in the mind, fold it and place it and baskets and return it to the people to whom it belongs: everyone, everywhere.

To be present to my family, to serve them, while also being present to all souls in all of eternity, now that is something to sit and stare at cinderblock walls and be amazed and grateful. A basement corner is the perfect place to sit and be filled with wonder.

Today I am in wonder at the words of other writers talking about the writing life. Here are some useful (OK, maybe they are not all useful, but certainly interesting) things I found laying around the basement.

As a nod to this being a room of my own, I checked out some of Virginia Wolff's literary classic, A Room of One's Own. I suppose if I didn't own time-saving devices like the washer and dryer humming along behind me, I may not have time to browse the internet and read inspiring words from women writers from the past.

Well, let's just say I'm starting at the bottom (the basement, if you will) with wide-eyed enthusiasm, small expectations, and a pile of gratitude that rivals our family's mound of laundry.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. -Virginia Woolf


When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

And another beloved (to me) pariah, Annie Dillard....

Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand - that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us. ― Annie Dillard

Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. ― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. ― Annie Dillard

And another loved writer, also an Annie...

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are. ― Anne Lamott

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship. ― Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions On Writing And Life

“I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up. Bird By Bird: Some Instructions On Writing And Life

“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.” ― Anne Lamott

“Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived...Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation... Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend. What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here. - Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions On Writing And Life


Dirt. Clutter. Mess. I'm surrounded by it here in my basement office, in my life blessed with so many loved ones. Something tells me I must be in the right place. Thank the Good Lord for that. Amen.

Praying The Magnificat Got Me Into Trouble

I've been pregnant for awhile. Four years, actually, but not with a baby--with a book. I conceived of it while I was pregnant with Josie, one day during a love affair with God. I was in my basement, going through the pile of laundry looking for a clean uniform shirt for my oldest, in complete submission to the task at hand, when the idea struck me.

I remember feeling afraid, and I wrote about the experience in this poem. The idea came so quickly and took root in me, a seed falling on fertile ground, determined to grow without my willing it to. Conception happens like that, without your willing it, an occurence dependent on the ripening of conditions and serendipitous moments that many parents desiring a child and unable to obtain pregnancy will say feels like an act of magic. We scrutinize every aspect, determined to find the slight of hand behind it, that we might re-create the act when circumstances fit our liking.

We can't. And knowing that helps me to accept what I have been carrying, a life which grows larger and heavier as time passes. It was unwanted in my mind, at the time it happened, inconvenient. It has continued to grow in me, becoming a large protuding thing that impinges on my daily life since the tiny cluster of cells that formed the first three chapters I read to my writing group at Women Writing for (a) Change back in 2007. But in spite of my lack of cooperation, it forms. Like a baby in the womb of a mother who is either unaware or ignoring the situation, still cells divide, ears form, hands grasp.

I remember at the end of all of my pregnancies, when the baby had gotten large in my womb and my belly protuded so far in front of me it seemed I bumped into everything. My body had outgrown me and I struggled to accomodate the mass of it. Everyday tasks became overwhelming, days escaped with little accomplished. "I'm ready," I would say to anyone who asked when the baby would be coming. "You look ready," many would say back to me.

The time has come for the birth to happen. So much of this work has been done in me over the last four years without my awareness that I feel like those last trimesters of pregnancy, no longer able to accomodate it. Word by word, I have to do the labor of writing, to push the mass of it out into the world, to separate from it. Deciding to make it my will to give birth to a book is not an easy decision, but it has begun to feel like that is the only option.

When Shad and I were driving to the hospital when I was in labor with Eli, our third, I said to him, "Can you just keep driving past the hospital to the airport? I think I'd rather go to Florida than give birth right now. This is not what I want to be doing."

At that point, I knew birth would be painful. After I had Julia, our second, an 8 lb. 10 oz. baby, I said, "I never want to do that again." I didn't. Pain formed the memory of it, her head rocking, rocking, rocking across my pelvic bone as I gathered the strength for those last long hard pushes, to push past the stuckness of her body in the birth canal and finally see the life that was in the making, the beauty I had not been able to see with my eyes.

Of course I couldn't go on vacation instead of giving birth when it was Eli's time to be seen, to emerge into the world. And I can't escape what is happening to me now. I'm still afraid; there could be a stillbirth, the whole process coming to nothing but grief.

I'm telling you this to let you know where I am, when I am not here. I've written several times recently on how much I have been encouraged to write here at Feeding My Hungry because of the words and support of so many of you. Truly in my heart I am grateful for that. But I have come to realize that what I am doing here is, in a way, prostituting myself, selling myself for the lesser service. The creative energy that I give out here needs to be put to a greater purpose.

I'll be back to check in, I expect. There is always rest granted between the hard work of contractions. Pray for me, that fear stays far away and I have the strength I need.

Naming Julia, Woman-to-Be

A bit belated on this one, but my sweet second child, Julia, turned 12 last week on November 5. Yes, that November 5th, the same one where her Papa turned 40. Last week was his turn for a lot of attention on his milestone year, and this week we're giving her what's due.

Julia, a beauteous beauty of a girl soon turning towards woman, pulled me deeper into the waters of motherhood with her birth, my first waterbirth. She arrived quietly in the darkness of night in a freestanding birth center in Cincinnati, Midwives Care, in 1999. Shad, my midwife Loma, and birth attendent Gayle, witnessed her arrival, pushed out into Gayle's waiting hands. 8 lbs. 10 oz. I pushed her out, and afterward felt so strong, like I could pull up trees.

I was inspired to name her Julia by two strong and interesting women: John Lennon's mother Julia and the song he wrote about her, "Julia", as well as Julia Butterfly Hill. Hill lived in a 180-foot-tall, roughly 1500-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days between December 10, 1997 and December 18, 1999. Hill lived in the tree, affectionately known as "Luna" to prevent loggers of the Pacific Lumber Company from cutting it down.

At the beginning of my pregnancy with Julia, while living in Maine, I was friends with a woman (also pregnant at the time) who had gone to California and hiked,while newly pregnant, far out into the Redwood forest and up a long hill to the place where Julia Butterfly sat in that monstrous ancient tree. My friend, Gayle (different Gayle than the birth attendant), simply felt a strong desire to see the tree-sitting woman. Her story inspired me: women saving life, giving life, connecting with one another and the strong desires in our hearts to see greatness.

In my daughter Julia, I see greatness. Although right now she is most concerned with me teaching her how to shave her legs, maybe someday she will appreciate that I wrote her a poem, too. Approach the gates to strong womanhood, my sweet comfort.

Julia

Ocean child Bohemian

Woman he loved

her loved her

calm loved her Julia

Butterfly living

on branches in the big Redwood

forest standing

for the lives

of trees living

in them is of them. She walks

the big hill

upward she walks

then climbs

climbs

climbs the climb

is long for her but someday

she arrives

at the top of it.

Tree-sitter

Julia lives

in clouds

reaches

for sky.

What is Left to Say

One in the a.m.

At the end of the day
poems
are all I can

remember.

Mornings I am a novel
needing resolution, a plot
moving forward
in

suspense.

Afternoons all but chop away
the excess, pare down the bones
to short story
squeezed
in the pages between
beginning phrases
of lunchtime and
conclusion of

nap.

Evenings are a tight sentence, well-edited.

Night balances light
and dark
elements in the story, shadows
casting across
pages. Lines
and curves
of letters
writing the conflict
of black
on white,
they

fall.

Words, they fall

away.

At the end of the day

a poem.

Seeds Handed Down

In Memory of Richard "Chet" Augustein, November 25, 1941-May 25, 2011

The other day I was washing dishes and a gust of wind blew a jar of seeds off the windowsill: moonflower seeds, seeds Julia had collected from a moonflower plant that had been a school science project, seeds we had forgotten to plant. They scattered across the sink and counter, tiny brown specks of potential life.

Most of the seeds I was able to save, and I'm grateful for the second chance to see them grow. They are like the smallest of treasure chests, a buried opportunity for unsuspected beauty, a humble invitation to spill the magnificent contents across landscapes. But more than the hope for next summer's flowers, the seeds' fluttering across my vision reminded me of a past needing to be spoken, of words waiting to be released.

The moonflower seeds remind me of the things I have held in my heart since the death of a beloved figure in our lives last Spring, the much-mourned passing of Mr. A. He was the originator of the moonflower; it was Julia's project at the beginning of 5th grade, one of many projects that made up his hands-on science curriculum. Mr. A was that kind of teacher, the kind who makes learning become something alive and growing, the kind of teacher you want for your child every year of her education.

Last year, Mr. A's last year of teaching, I was blessed with the opportunity to teach a monthly art enrichment class to the 5th graders in his classroom. The months-long project was about photography-- not my forte-- and Elissa Whittenburg, the program coordinator, encouraged me to do it anyway, since the curriculum was all laid out and WE NEED PEOPLE.

As it turned out, I needed the program. I didn't know that until after it was over, of course, but that much became evident one day in May, at the very end of May, just before the school year itself passed away.

It was hot that day, and with the school lacking air conditioning, the substitute teacher had the lights turned off so the classroom felt peaceful to me, although I was a little nervous because this was the class where I had to help the children assemble the photography project. Assemble, meaning something requiring attention to detail, meaning something crafty in nature. Projects of this kind send me dangerously close to a panic attack.

But when I walked in after lunch and recess, the class was reciting a decade of the rosary together and I joined in, soothed by the repitition of words in prayer with the students. Faith, I was reminded at that moment, was another thing Mr. A deeply valued, the thing that inspired his love and curiousity for all of God's creation. And here I was, holding in my hands the envelope of photos the students had taken a month before on the one day when Mr. A, and not the substitute, had been present for the monthly art enrichment class. On the other days, his battle with cancer had made him unable to teach.

Standing there in the doorway to Mr. A's classroom, it gave me goose pimply skin as the beginnings of understanding started connecting in my mind: the photos the 5th graders had taken were of the their hands. How appropriate that felt in that moment, in light of my knowledge that cancer would most likely take the life of this beloved teacher soon, that we would be assembling a photographic reminder--pictures of the actual hands of his last class--which would forever memorialize a man who fully embraced hands-on teaching with his students.

Struck with the larger-than-lifeness of this craft project before me, a reverence for the work, for the Divine working through me and the students, I overcame my craft-anxiety and the framed photos came together easily. Here is a photo of the completed project:

















In the middle frame is a picture drawn by two students who were absent the day we took the photos. They chose a theme for the project and wrote it on the picture: The Future is in Our Hands.

Indeed. And indeed, again. And more goose pimples. Heartwaves and joyful tears. Mr. A left this earth to rest in the loving hands of his Creator that afternoon, as the students and I created this work of art, a tribute to a man who passed a love of God and love of learning and love of life to thousands of students throughout his long teaching career. The future is in their hands, and the legacy of Mr. A gives me reason to hope.


Dance, dance, wherever you may be
I am the lord of the dance, said he
And I lead you all, wherever you may be
And I lead you all in the dance, said he.

~from Lord of the Dance, sung as the recessional song at Mr. A's funeral mass, St. Margaret of York Catholic Church.

Other People Say it Better

In the face of writer's block, the best I can do right now is to steal something inspirational and share it. I'm takin' this one from my friend Alison at her blog, Aliblog, where she wrote this post about her favorite current song, All My Favorite People Are Broken by Over The Rhine. Thanks, Alison, it was just what I needed to hear today, in words my heart my wants to express.

Orphaned believers, skeptical dreamers, step forward. You can stay right here. You don't have to go.