happy hour with coworkers usually goes like this

Happy hour with coworkers usually goes like this: We sip our first drinks, share anecdotes about our co-workers and dating lives, laugh. I stop after one, they keep going, and halfway through the second drink and throughout the third, words become a little more harsh and stories of boyfriends a little more raw.

Here is how it went last night: The coworker sitting next to me shares about her live-in boyfriend. She is considering leaving him, and by her description, for good reasons. She draws a picture for us of what life is like with him with a story about him bailing on a dinner in West Hollywood with friends, and later, with a text he just sent her. Eventually my sadness and shock show on my face, perhaps read as naiveté. And maybe it is true that these women have more experience in certain areas of life. But what I am really wondering about is why women would let men treat them like this, and what is so bad about being alone that these women seem to be avoiding it with a relationship that’s not really a relationship, and (I am trying to resist this one) are all men like this? I think of what to say to her that has more substance than the trite feminist sentiment, girl, you deserve so much more. But that’s what’s true. She is beautiful and smart and funny and engaging and she is a child of the living God.

Happy hour with coworkers usually goes like this: I come away with the headache that whiskey always gives me and feeling overfull from the greasy food and wondering how so many people think this is life.

***

Today my sister will give her blood to understand her genes. Specifically, she will find out whether certain mutations that are believed to have caused disease in our dad’s sisters are present in her, and as a result, put her at risk for the same sickness. This has been a conversation my sisters and I have been having for at least a few years now. Do we get tested? What will we do with the information? Better to live not knowing than to live with the information? Which is better, the fear of the unknown, or the fear of the little-bit-more known? What do we do with the possibility of death?

When I woke up this morning, I texted my sister to let her know that I’m praying for her. We exchanged messages back and forth, and what I began thinking about as we texted and as I prayed is the force of life. I’m not talking about life like, these daily happenings all combined make up my life. I’m talking about the breath of God sort of life, the light that appeared when He spoke into darkness and chaos. I think about what that first man and woman might have experienced of life before things like tiredness and depression and disease and un-forgiveness entered the picture. Did they wake up and need coffee? I’m guessing not.

***

One definition of life: the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death. But what kind of change? I want to ask.

***

I drive to work this morning, drinking my coffee. The sun is in my eyes, but I try to be thankful for it all the same. Life is buzzing all around, in the traffic of people heading to work and school, in the sun climbing the sky and the leaves still clinging to trees. I go over our happy hour conversation even as I mean to be praying for my sister. I am a little embarrassed that I showed my shock and disappointment at my coworkers stories. But then I think about how much I want to know what true life is, that kind of change that’s the process of being made new each day, and how I want to be a bearer of it in the lives of others, and I’m no longer ashamed but glad. And I keep driving into the sun, that never-dying bearer of such bright day light.

***

(photo: morning light)

feeding along the way

In my last post I wrote about my love/hate relationship with professional travel. This time it was all love, and I’m so grateful. This particular conference felt like it was a stepping stone along the path of some of the new things that are happening during this season (that transition/transformation I wrote about a little while back). These kinds of experiences are true grace, a breeze at your back, a gentle nudge to continue in the same direction.

So, a list of highlights, if you’re interested…

City of Bridges // Running in new cities is always a highlight, especially when that city has some water running through it. Pittsburgh has lots of it – three rivers, with more than 400 bridges crossing them at various points. (Did you know it’s the American city with the most bridges? I didn’t.) The first morning I left my hotel just as the sky was beginning to brighten and followed a haphazard loop over all three rivers, stopping for lots of photos. The second morning, I crossed the Rachel Carson Bridge (so cool there's a bridge named after this author) and ran along the Three Rivers Heritage Trail, a concrete path bordered by green overgrowth and yellow wild flowers, with a river just beyond. It was pure Pennsylvania and made my heart so happy. (I didn’t realize how much Pittsburgh would feel like home…)

Medicine, mission, mercy // Remember those uninspiring keynotes I referenced? Not at this conference. The second morning was my favorite. Dr. Jim Withers shared his story of providing medical care to Pittsburgh’s homeless folks for decades and helping to create Street Medicine programs at medical schools around the world. The concept of mobile medical care that creates access and cultivates justice has become my heart, especially since traveling to Kenya. It was such an honor to hear him share his stories, and with such humility and passion.

The life of an artist // I made a few friends, one of whom works at the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh. Over dinner, I mentioned that I might visit the Andy Warhol Museum after the conference. The next morning, she found me to tell me she’d arranged for my free entry. Later that day (which was also after I’d given my presentation), I wandered the city, found some coffee, and made my way over. Warhol’s art is funky and fun, and observing the trajectory of an artist’s life is incredibly inspiring. My favorite part was the display of contents from his time capsule from the year 1984. His collection of all kinds of random paraphernalia reminded me that inspiration can come from anywhere, and being an avid collector of it can keep creativity fresh.

“Something you said…” // After I presented on the last morning of the conference, several people came up to talk to me afterwards. One woman introduced herself, then started her comments on my presentation with this phrase. It stuck with me because this year has in some ways been one of strengthening my voice. My dream is to hear this over and over – that the things I say have impact, stir something in people, inspire change and vision. Years ago I often found myself afraid to speak, and when I first started this job I wasn’t thinking I’d one day be one who teaches and encourages others, especially by the room-full. It’s one of those dreams I never thought to dream, but the One who knows our truest, deepest desires knows how to bring those about, and how to keep directing our hearts beyond those things to eternity.

I could write more – of really good coffee and chatting with the same barista each day, of great food, of an inspiring session on diversity that was a helpful way to process some of the violence erupting on the streets of cities across our country, of a man who passed me on the street and told me I looked like Taylor Swift (ok, his sanity was questionable but I’m thinking this was one of his lucid moments?). There was just so much. 

There’s a verse in Isaiah that speaks of the people of God feeding along the way and finding provision in places they thought barren -- reminders of God’s goodness and restoration as they make their way to their true home, the City of God. And it’s these seemingly little or mundane things that I think Isaiah might be referring to. They aren’t the thing to shoot for, but they signal to us that God knows our truest desires and has put eternity in our hearts. They bring joy, but what’s better is that they keep us along the path to the One who holds our hearts and is the ultimate thing (relationship/beauty/wonder) we yearn for.

***

(photo: fort duquesne bridge at the beginning of morning run)

literary, lately: june edition

Unlike fiction, nonfiction is not a genre. It's a headache. An explanation for why The Sixth Extinction was number one on a list of the top 100 books of English-language nonfiction (chronological, working backwards), this piece also forced me to look up the word vituperative and made me feel, once again, hopelessly under-read -- a feeling I am trying to make a joyful one (so many books to read, yay!).

In the end, the trials of their relationship are worth bearing, because Frog and Toad are most content when they're together. Loved reading more about these beloved stories, though the speculation that they were actually gay lovers felt disappointing and maybe unnecessary. These days, friendship is so easily confused for romance or cheapened by sex. I think the boundary lines of friendship are incredibly sheltering, not restrictive.

One day you will hear a physicist say we are all made from the bodies of dead stars, and it will feel as if you've known it all along. A powerhouse of a story, and short, which is good because you might hold your breath the whole way through.

Like the first man / I was cut so deep by heaven's knife. One of my favorite stories, in song form.

No words, just these photos. Kenya, I'm coming for you.

***
(photo: writing, the view from above)

some thoughts on friendship

Friendship is something I’ve been wanting to write more about. I feel like I have a lot to say, and I’m trying to find the right stories to say those things. From a very young age, I have recognized that friendships with girls have been an important part of my life, maybe the most important part. I haven’t had many long-term dating relationships, which means that, as a woman in her thirties, most of my years and memories have been spent with friends. In that sense it’s been my collection of girlfriends that have shown me how to love, care, listen, open up, forgive, laugh.

This collection of friendships has grown and shifted over the years. Women move within my circle with their jobs and marriages and places of residence. One or two whom I thought I had lost forever slip back in and it’s like they were never not there. A few I’ve chosen to move ever so slightly away from, and as I get older and wiser, I am able to do this with more generosity of heart — recognizing that neither of us is at fault for the way our friendship took an unexpected turn. It’s that relationships are breathing things unto themselves, and much like with a child, you will always be finding new rhythms for them, and sometimes you must let them go. It is a miracle when they come back to you, whole.

Some of the experiences I want to write about are those painful ones. Parting ways with girlfriends can be as painful as romantic breakups, in part because they are often less talked about. The rhythm of a romance gone sour is a familiar one, and we know the language of comfort or villainizing the new love in the other person’s life or however it is we learn to cope. But how do you explain the strange shifts in needs and desire and love that happens between friends? Because it is there. I still mourn the loss of a particularly meaningful friendship in which I knew I needed to create some space in order to grow in the direction I felt led. I wasn’t convinced this would be a permanent separation, and yet as we pulled away from each other, I realized it was mutual, not one sided, and that there were very deep and real ways in which she was feeling hurt and not seen, too.

I experienced a tremendous amount of loss in our break. The thing about friends is that there is always something about them that surprises you, and in that is such a gift of delight that nobody else can give you. This friend surprised me in the beauty she saw in unlikely places, in me even. To me, our friendship itself, her choice of me, was unlikely (and yet I think she felt exactly the same way about me). I remember sitting in therapy a year or two after we had parted ways, still mourning something about that experience because there was no friend in my life who filled the same place — who understood my desire to write, who was a companion to me in what she laughed at and they things she loved to eat and how she explored the city.

Last weekend, I hosted a brunch for my birthday and invited all of my women friends and their daughters. There was something about life this year that had me feeling like I needed to celebrate with my girls. Leading up to the day, one friend asked if she could lead a time of listening prayer. When the time came, I sat on the floor, around me a circle of some of my closest and dearest friends, at this place and moment in time. After listening - to their own hearts, but even more, to God - each spoke words of affirmation and hope and love. I continue to hold the memory of that time as so precious, recognizing that my friendships with each of these women is a gift that may not always be mine, but knowing they will all remain with me in some form for years to come.

if i could pack the sun

To avoid using a cliche, I won't tell you that my Dad is a man of few words. My guess is that that wouldn't even be true, that there are plenty of words that make him. Maybe they are all jumbled up inside like a box of rusted nails, sharp and mostly unused, or maybe they slip away just as soon as they form in his head. Ashes, heavy and dumb.

He clears his throat before he speaks, as if the act requires effort, preparation.

When, at 24, I told him I was moving to Los Angeles, the words must have gotten stuck somewhere inside as he turned the page of his paper that covered the lower half of his face. I waited, but not long, and then joined the rest of the family in the dining room. A few weeks later, I asked him out to breakfast, my way communicating that I wanted to hear his opinion about my move, even if I wasn't following it. We ate omelets at Perkins, and he told me that the last time he'd flown on an airplane was when he was younger than me, living in Virginia and working his first job. I hadn't known any of this. Later, we stopped at a plant nursery and, in silence, picked out flowers for my mother and him to plant around the house.

After I lived in LA for a few years, my dad finally got himself an email address (even a Facebook account!) and here is how I receive his words now: typed in one-sentence paragraphs, concise, sometimes poetic. Once, when I was getting ready to fly east for a family vacation at the beach, he told me to "pack the sun," which struck me as the most beautiful thing he could say, as if I could carry something capable of warming and spinning a whole solar system. Of course, he just wanted good weather to grace the unpredictable New Jersey August days.

Maybe he didn't realize that if I could give find a way to give him a light that would never fade, blue skies for days and that momentary glow in the heart at seeing the most beautiful sunrise over inexhaustible water that somehow stops just where you stand - if I could pack the sun and give it to him, I would. I am still searching for ways to tell him this.

the breath, the Spirit, the beginning

There is always something happening, even it if is only the breath.
                                                                                                            -Alicia Jo Rabins

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering...

                                                                                                            -Genesis 1:2

Writing hasn't come easily the past few weeks. Ideas that feel promising when I think of them on my drive to work fall flat when I sit in front of a computer to type them out. I hold down the delete button to eat my words back up. I can tell you it has something to do with working through some hard-wired shame, which makes words feel too small and throws everything into chaos, something like that "without form," that darkness that existed before the light did.

Speaking of chaos, there's a lot of it right now. And I'm not just talking about politics and race and the things we all see posted all over Facebook. There are broken marriages, there is cancer, there are interrupted dreams and unanswered prayers. The other day, my dad's car slipped on ice, and now his body is sore muscles and painful bruises. I didn't hear about it until my mom texted me three days after it happened. I didn't know what to text back.

Sometimes writing feels like this, like groping around in the dark for the right words to counter deep fears and uneasy hurts. But then I've heard some writers talk about how, after periods of long silence, certain stories flowed right out of them. They weren't easy stories, but the words had germinated inside for months or years, who knows how. When it was time, out they came, ordered and beautiful and full of the stuff that pierces darkness and covers over shame. A whole universe, it seems, formed of words.

The past few months, I feel as if I'm being taken back to a beginning, learning where words come from and how to use them. In the beginning was the Word... and through Him all things were made. I go back and forth about how explicitly I want my faith to show through my writing. I've been timid because of the way Christian artists get labeled as sentimental, derivative, not as quality. Words like Jesus and the cross are somehow too definitive and carry too much baggage. Better to be vaguely spiritual, to use words like faith or spirit (with a lowercase "s"). But when I think about using words, it is God's Word that I want to fill my heart first, to show me how to speak them in way that brings light, that opens up darkness. Without him was not anything made that was made.

Spirit of God, hover. Be the Word that is in the beginning.

seeing

1. Over the river, through the woods

On Christmas night, I drove from my sister’s house in northern Jersey to my parents’ along the edge of Pennsylvania. My nephew Andrew begged to come along instead of waiting until the morning to drive with the rest of his family. The night was dark and damp. The first leg of the journey was a straight shot on highway, rain pouring onto us only occasionally. When we reached the end of New Jersey, we drove through a small town lit up by holiday lights, then turned onto a tiny bridge to cross the Delaware river.

The rest of the drive would take us on winding roads through Pennsylvania countryside until we arrived at my childhood home. Andrew sat so quiet and still behind me that I wondered if he was still awake. Night felt like a heavy blanket around us that Christmas lights and approaching cars poked tiny holes into. At one point, I saw a deer along the side of the road, so still and peaceful in its gaze that later I wondered if I’d imagined him.

A few days later, I would make the same drive back, only in daylight this time. I saw everything I hadn’t known was there by night. Small brick ranch houses with cars parked in their driveways, wide open fields that stretched into the distance, small silos on farms that stored what had grown over the summer. Trees that seemed to show their age in the midwinter, naked of leaves. It was everything I might have guessed was there. My childhood made me familiar with these surroundings. And yet, I was seeing it all new.

2. Glasses

I was the last to wake up that first morning at my parents house. I shuffled down the stairs in my baggy pants and hooded sweatshirt, hood up, covering my messy hair. I wore my glasses, as I usually do after I wake, waiting to put in my contacts until I cleaned myself up later. My mom and dad and Andrew watched tv and talked in the den while I brewed coffee. It trickled and spat slowly into the pot, and I tried to keep myself from cursing the old, neglected machine.

When I joined my family with my mug of coffee, my dad asked me about my glasses. “Do you wear those for show?” I had bought the new pair over the past year, since the last time I’d seen my dad. He seemed to be completely earnest.

I had to remind him that I’ve needed glasses since third grade. “I just normally have my contacts in,” I said, self-consciously pushing my glasses further up my nose.

It made me laugh to myself and, later, text a friend: “I think my dad thinks I’m a hipster.”

I wondered, as I so often do, how my dad sees me.

3. An exercise in seeing

Later that day, my sisters and their families arrived to celebrate Christmas. I had my family each pick the name of another out of a hat. A little while after, we sat in a haphazard circle, nearly outgrowing my parents’ den. Each held their slip of paper with a name on it. Kids exercised patience and stole glances at the gifts waiting for them under the tree. But first, we would each share one reason we’re grateful for the person named on our slip of paper. It was an exercise in seeing. My mom expressed how thankful she was to Tim for being such a good husband and father to her daughter and grandchildren. Tayte had picked his mom, whom he said he was glad to have read to him. Andrew announced to everyone that he likes me because I’m “fun, and full of happiness.” I told my dad how much it means to me that he wants to talk about my trips to Kenya and asks me lots of questions about my time there.

As each one shared, some with more words than others, I looked first at the person speaking, then at the person being spoken about. The words help me to pay attention. Living so far away, I sometimes forget to really see them.

even after all the evidence is gone

Some days, I think about giving up on writing. It wouldn't be that hard to do, I think. Instead of my writing group every other Monday, I will clean my apartment or start watching a tv show on Netflix. Or I will spend the time going through that top shelf on my bookcase where I keep all my writing books. Bird by Bird and The Writing Life and On Writing. And the poetry books that inspired me, the Jane Kenyon and Mary Oliver. I will box them up and take them to Goodwill and display framed photos of my family in their place. Or I will go through the stacks of magazines on my coffee table. The Poets and Writers and the Creative Nonfictions and the tablets of handwritten practice, they will go into recycling. I will rip pages from my journal where I took notes on writing or scribbled ideas for essays. I will take the nametags from conferences hanging on the mirror in my bedroom and put them in the trash. I will go through the word documents on my computer and drag all those essays I've written into the recycle bin, along with pdfs of essays I've loved and saved in case I ever teach a course. I will go through my blog reader and take off all those writing blogs. I will unsubscribe from emails that encourage writing or invite me to writing conferences. I will unfriend all my writing friends on Facebook. I will learn to look disinterested when my coworkers and creative friends begin to talk to me about writing, and I will delete their emails that recommend links to essays and articles before even opening them. I will untrain my mind to wonder about word choice and sentence structure and idea development when I read books.

But then that one tiny thing will remain, the thing I don't know how to rid my life of, and I will wonder how a husband leaves the wife of his youth or how a mother releases her baby into the hands of another because isn't there still that softly beating rhythm in her heart that marks time, that pumps blood, that sustains life only because that other being is now a part of it? How do you forget that internal pressure that made you desire and hope and live for the other? Even after all the evidence is gone, something inside still remembers.

tell me who i am

1. Tell me who I am
When I was young, I thought I was adopted. I realize this is not unusual. Others have their stories of assumed outsider status. There must be something deep in our psyche (or spirit) that tries to convince us we don't belong. But there are signs we do, or at least there were for me. I was tall like my dad, with the facial bone structure of my mom. Then, I looked almost identical to my sister 18 month older than me, and now when I hear her on the phone, I hear my own voice talking back to me. Our smiles, our cheeks, they are all the same. And though I don't remember birth, my mother does. She knows I came out of her.

Adoption is not the most horrible story to make up about yourself. Though the implication is, "I am the one who is not like the others," the story could also be about being sought out, acceptance and love. Not left alone without a family, not ultimately separated from all others, you are now part of a family that is trying to convince you that you are one of their own. Why not just believe them?

During those years when I wanted to belong just as much as I wanted to break apart, I just needed my family to keep telling me who I was.

2. Nature of a hunch
At a writing conference I attended a few weeks ago, I noticed a theme of the "hunch." One writer used it when telling the story of her Polish family, and how she felt in her gut that their story of immigration had deeper, more traumatic roots. This leading depended not on words but clues she subconsciously gathered and stored somewhere inside. Eventually, her hunch led her to keep pressing until she confirmed what she had already come to assume: her family was Jewish, and her grandmother had left the country to escape the genocide during World War II.

Another writer spoke about how he didn't talk until he was relatively old, 4 or 5 even. There are things he learned with his body that he couldn't (or didn't need to) put words to. Much of what he feels is pre-verbal, or extra-verbal. It is knowing outside of words that define.

A hunch is like a kick from inside the womb of a pregnant woman. It helps you know you carry something living, though you don't know yet who or what it will be.

3. Brave is something else
A track olympian has told us that, "for all intents and purposes," he is a woman. He is following what his gut is telling him about his true self. Following that hunch, if you will. And people are proclaiming this as brave. I can't help but think that brave is something else. I admit that I have little personal experience with transgender issues. I have never wanted to be any gender but female. But I have felt myself trying to be someone I know now that I'm not. I think we all feel, to some extent, that we are stuck in bodies that don't express all of who we are. I am tall but I often feel average, and wish my height reflected how I'd like to be seen.

I wonder if being brave means knowing which hunches are really whatever it is that tells us we don't belong, and choosing instead to listen to the voices that tell us who we really are. The living things, inside us and around us.

the courage to speak softly

The story goes that I, the youngest of three girls, didn’t start talking until I was 2 ½ years old. I understood what people were saying, and often responded in my own way — with nods or shaking my head or simply doing what people told me to — but I didn’t speak. This doesn’t surprise most people because I’m still usually quiet (unless you give me some alcohol or coffee, then I can be quite entertaining). Usually I’m more comfortable listening, and I could spend days alone. I’ve [mostly] learned to embrace that I’m an introvert.

But I do worry sometimes about balance. Some of the things I love most and feel called to are writing, reading and prayer, and these are mostly solitary activities. And yet I live in a house with four other people and have a high value for friendships and social outings, though admittedly sometimes I confuse my value for these things with the need for them to validate me. Sometimes my housemates (all introverts, too!) are ready to play a game or just sit around and chat, and I make the difficult decision to be by myself. It can be hard to wonder what I’m missing out on, or if I’m being completely antisocial.

The other day I came across this youtube talk about introversion. You might have heard this argument before (I have) — that extroverts, though they often get the spotlight in the public sphere, aren’t superior to introverts. In fact, introverts have something unique to offer our society, especially today when it seems like overstimulation rules and we’ve made busyness a sign of our worth. Into this crazyness introverts speak (or don’t speak, but live), reminding us that to be alone and to be quiet are productive in a profound way that we understand only when we can experience it.

When fellow introverts like Susan Cain abandon their natural tendency to be quiet and speak into the conversation, I feel validated and recognized. I don’t want to sound like a member of another disenfranchised group of people (who in reality have a lot to be thankful for), but let me say for the record that being an introvert is hard sometimes. Or rather, being an introvert around people who want me to speak is hard. As is being an introvert around people who like to hear themselves speak, or who rush to talk because they’re uncomfortable with silence — because then, when I do want to say something, it’s difficult to get a word in.

What was new about this talk was the historical perspective — that people used to work alone much more often, and there was more time and space for solitude in the way life was set up. I can’t help but think of what we miss out on when we fill our lives to the brim with people, tv and computers. Some of these activities may even masquerade as introverted time, and yet there’s something precious about not stimulating ourselves. I also like how Ms. Cain includes the notion of modesty into her definition of introversion. I don’t think she’s saying that all introverts are humble (and that extroverts aren’t), but rather that introverts usually have a difficult time tooting their own horn or enjoying the public recognition of their efforts. (Introverts, do you find this to be true, or are we extrapolating too much on this one?) And I love the argument for moving away from group work. Just because. (Working in groups is so stressful!)

And of course I love her closing exhortation: Have the courage to speak softly. 

So here’s my question for you all: What do you love about being an introvert (or extrovert)? I’d love to hear. Personally, I love the chance to people watch, and that I make observations or hear things that others often miss or forget.