dinner alone with annie dillard {part 2}

And who wouldn't want to learn about writing from Annie Dillard?

In other words: what I gleaned about writing from the book Holy the Firm—and then put into a book report for my summer writing class.

Read the beginning here.

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Write in the Voice that Works for You (Syntax Can Go by the Wayside)
I get the sense reading Holy the Firm that I’m reading Annie Dillard’s journal.  She’s writing in spurts; she’s writing in half-sentences and quarter-sentences, and she’s writing, at times, like she’s praying.

Holy the Firm has the feel of Virginia Woolf’s or James Joyce’s best stream of consciousness:  there is the feeling that these thoughts are tumbling out of Annie Dillard’s brain, and this propels you to keep reading, to keep going, to tumble with her until she ends up making a beautifully profound point.  And you feel that the only way you could’ve gotten there is through her breaking-all-the-rules syntax.

Now, normally, I’m all for rules, but in a book as personal, reflective, and spiritual as Holy the Firm, breaking the “rules of good writing” is perfectly appropriate. It gives it a raw quality that is part of what drew me in so deeply in that Argentinean restaurant in Houston:  who cares about steak when there are words like this to read?

For outside it is bright.  The surface of things outside the drops has fused.  Christ himself and the others, and the brown warm wind, and hair, sky, the beach, the shattered water—all this has fused.  It is the one glare of holiness; it is bare and unspeakable.  There is no speech nor language; there is nothing, no one thing, nor motion, nor time.  There is only this everything.  There is only this, and its bright and multiple noise. (pp 67-68)

Or what about this?

Hoopla!  All that I see arches, and light arches around it.  The air churns out forces and lashes the marveling land.  A hundred times through the fields and along the deep roads I’ve cried Holy.  I see a hundred insects moving across the air, rising and falling.  Chipped notes of birdsong descend from the trees, tuneful and broken; the notes pile about me like leaves.  Why do these molded clouds make themselves overhead innocently changing, trailing their flat blue shadows up and down everything, and passing, and gone?  Ladies and gentlemen!  You are given insects, and birdsong, and a replenishing series of clouds. The air is buoyant and wholly transparent, scoured by grasses. (pp 72-73)

Following these phrases can be dizzying, but by letting the thoughts twirl, Annie Dillard invites us in.

I have so much underlined in Holy the Firm—words and phrases that stuck out to me—but as I went back to find examples of her free-flowing, unstructured voice, I discovered that often to get to the root of why I underlined a word or phrase, I had to read back a few paragraphs.  I had to start the journey again to remember why the ending place was so significant, and I like feeling that I’m along for a wordy adventure with a writer.

The Routine of Writing
I don’t have specific excerpts from Holy the Firm for this lesson; it’s more a lesson from Annie Dillard’s life.  I have yet to read her book The Writing Life, but from her works that I have read, I know that she is a routine writer:  she writes whether she feels like it or not.

Getting across your message—those nebulous thoughts in your head—is not always an easy task.  In fact, it rarely is, and the writing advice that seems the most useful and most mundane is:  write every day.  Be in the practice of writing—even when you despise every word coming out of you.  You sometimes have to write ugliness to get to the prettiness underneath; you sometimes need to start down one path to realize that the story you need to tell is actually a path taking off from that first one.

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard talks about taking the same walk every day—to the point that she is so in tune with nature and the changing world around her that it almost seems like an extension of her.

This is how, in part, we should see writing:  as something we do every day so that we can feel more connected to the world around us.  Annie Dillard teaches me this, just in the way she writes.  It’s as if she’s saying:  pay attention to the world, and you will have things to say.

In Short, I Wish I Were Friends with Annie Dillard
I felt like, in a way, I had dinner with Annie Dillard in Houston.  Reading Holy the Firm while sitting at my table for one—fending off the waiter who asked if I’d like to stay after close and open up a bottle of Malbec with him—I forgot that I was in a strange city.  I forgot that I’d been gone from home for five days.  I forgot that my head was spinning from all the meetings I’d gone to.

I was in Annie Dillard’s world—seeing the moth, smelling the air on Puget Sound, looking for God in the small things.  And that, for me, is good writing:  when it takes you away from where you are, and when you close the book, you start to see the world around you in a new light.

in the air this morning

In the air this morning was that warm lushness.

That lusciousness.

That divine breath.

That promise of rain later on—gentle rain, not the bitter, biting rain that drives you inside, away from reminders of your own discomfort.

In the air this morning was that light touch {a glancing sensation akin to fingers ghosting over the skin} that feels very much like God has surrounded you.

Has enveloped you.

Has sighed around you.

In the air this morning was the memory of God breathing life into every little thing.

Even into me.

lord, thou art fulness {a poem, not by me}

I seem to be titling a lot of posts like that: a poem, not by me.

But just the other day, I was talking to a very good friend I haven't talked to in a very long time, and she said, "Kamiah, I've been writing so much poetry."

I got a little jealous.

Where are my poems? Why can't I hear the beginnings of poems in my head, as I can at other times when I'm feeling very poetical?

{It's much like hearing the beginning of a song you used to know well. That's how I describe it when a poem starts to form.}

I didn't say that, though; instead, I was mature, or the semblance of maturity, and said, "Oh, how lovely! What do you think is bringing about all this poetry now?"

Because we all know—all us writers know—that writing can come and go, and poetry especially seems to be tied to circumstances of season or what you're reading or how tuned in you are to the small, quiet moments of your day.

If you're in a rushing-rushing-pushing season, it can be harder to see the possibility of poetry in your life, and aha! Maybe that's where my poetry has gone: to the threshing floor of increased productivity and having Too Much to Do.

But that's not where my friend is right now. She told me, "I think all this poetry is coming from how overwhelmed I am with God's unconditional love right now."

This friend of mine has this way of saying things like that that bring me to a halt. Quickly. She says these things not in an overly religious or spiritualized way—not in a way that makes you think she's saying it just because it sounds like a pretty good evangelical thing to say.

She's saying it because she's tuned in to the small, quiet voice of God in her day, and since it'd been so long since I'd talked to her, I'd forgotten how much I love that about her—this way she has of reminding me of the beauty of God's character and his love, all with a few little words.

She's overwhelmed with God's unconditional love right now, and that's coming out in poetry.

To fill my mind and heart with more poetry and more God, I turned to Christina Rossetti right after I hung up the phone. I opened my little book of her poems to a page with this on it:

Lord, Thou Art Fulness

Lord, Thou art fulness, I am emptiness:
Yet hear my heart speak in its speechlessness
Extolling Thine unuttered loveliness.

And it had this on the same page:

I Cannot Plead

O Lord, I cannot plead my love of Thee:
I plead Thy love of me;—
The shallow conduit hails the unfathomed sea.

With those two little poems and that one long conversation, I was overwhelmed by the possibilities the Lord gives us in a day. Maybe eventually that will become a poem, but for right now, all I can say is: O Lord, thank you.

i don't give a fig: lessons from the fig tree

The summer after I graduated from college, I was in a waiting room. Not a physical one—I mean this metaphorically.

That fall, I was going to Rouen, France, for a school year to be a language assistant in a French high school.

In between graduation and France, I was an editorial intern at InterVarsity Press—living in the suburbs of Chicago and trying to decide if marking up copy was indeed what I did want to do with the rest of my life.

I was plagued with all those typical post-college questions:

• How do I know which job is right for me?
• Was British literature, French, and linguistics really the smartest thing for me to study?
• When will I feel like a real grown-up?

Questions like that can make you impatient and nervous, and when I look back on the me of eight years ago, that's what I see: someone who was scared about making a wrong choice. I was petrified that one false step and I'd be off the path to success and happiness and the house with a white picket fence and summer vacations.

What I couldn't see then—but I can see now—is that life isn't so black and white.

Life isn't a "one path cut through the dark forest" kind of thing. It's not a fairy tale story where if you wander from the path, you'll be lost forever among the wolves and wolves in sheep's clothing.

It's a journey, yes, and there are different paths to take and you do sometimes find yourself in a dark forest. But as you grow older, you begin to trust that there will be a sunny meadow somewhere on the other side of that dark forest, even if you have to take five different paths to get there.

Okay, so all these deep life thoughts were precipitated by re-discovering something that I wrote when I was in that metaphorical waiting room. It was this thing on the fig tree that I wrote for the online version of Relevant magazine, and re-reading it, I crashed right into my petrified self.

In it, I'm writing about what it means to see growth in your life. How do you know that you're doing all right? How do you know that you're on the right path, even if you can't see any signs that are saying: This is the way; walk in it?

I was worried about those things, but I was trying not to let it show. My 30-year-old self can see all that clearly in this piece, although I'm sure that in eight years or so, I'll look back on stuff I've written here and say: Oh my dear little Kamiah, CALM DOWN. Also, don't try to talk like you have it all figured out.

I'm posting this today for two reasons:

1. To make it easy on myself in eight years or so when I'm looking back on my writing and trying to find proof that I have actually matured since college.
2. Because today, the Monday of Holy Week, is the day that Jesus cursed the fig tree. So timely!

And now, a note from my 22-year-old self trying to sound mature:

I don’t know much about fig trees. As a girl from Iowa, there hasn’t been much need to ever learn about them. For one, I’m not even sure if they grow in Iowa, and why should I care anyway? It’s not like I live on a farm or vineyard or wherever fig trees are really grown.

Here’s the extent of my knowledge of fig trees or fig-related things:

• Some people say, “I don’t give a fig.” However this is an expression I’ve never used, and I don’t think I will until I’m 74.
• It’s not a cookie; it’s fruit and cake. That’s the Fig Newton slogan, but I always thought those were old lady snacks. Just give me an Oreo.
• Jesus cursed a fig tree in Mark 11:12-14.

That’s really the full range of my fig tree facts, and as you can see, it’s limited to the negative and the elderly. I found out recently however, that I can actually learn a lot from the fig tree.

In order to fully appreciate the fig tree lesson, you must know that they take three years to grow enough to start producing fruit. Until then, fig trees seem rather useless—especially to the untrained and impatient.

If you don’t see the fig tree with the right frame of mind, then you won’t see the necessary maturing process. You’ll see only apparent idleness and disappointment.

Look at the vineyard owner in Luke 13:6-9. He had a fig tree planted, imagining the massive number of fruit it would produce to sell at a reasonable price.

He was a good businessman perhaps, but he was no green thumb. He didn’t understand the fig tree’s process: “For three years now, I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?” (7).

The hired hand who did work at the vineyard knew better and knew that the tree would bear fruit soon enough. He calmed his master down without belittling him: “Leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit, fine! If not, cut it down” (9).

Think of it this way: you’re the vineyard owner, in charge of your life (that’d be the fig tree), but certainly not entirely capable or even sure of yourself. You feel like you’re doing what you’re “supposed to,” but you’re not seeing the tangible results. You’re still struggling with that one sin (for me, it’s spiritual complacency, pride, and comparison...ok, that’s several sins).

You just want to get over it, get past it, mature away from it—but the sin keeps attacking in different, surprising ways.

You want to scream, “But I’m doing everything I know how! I’m reading the Bible, I’m praying, I’m honestly seeking you, God! So why isn’t it doing any good? What’s the point if I’m just going to keep re-learning these same dumb lessons?”

You’re the vineyard owner, unsure of why it’s taking so long to become who you want to be inside—that ideal, shining Christian that can’t ever seem to be reconciled to who you actually are.

Enter the hired hand, the guy really doing all the work around here, the guy who really knows what’s going on. The hired hand—aka, God—gives you the gentle reminder (sometimes, of course, it’s not so gentle) that growth and maturity take time.

They also take a little work—his work on you. He has to dig around you, tearing away everything that refuses to bring glory to him.

Then you can learn to be dependent on him alone. He has to fertilize the soil around you so that instead of just passively accepting lessons, you’re ingesting them and using them to help you grow.

Yeah, it’s a combination of work: yours and God’s. Then the fruit comes, but not until after patience, endurance, and dependence develop.

And keep in mind that a fig tree doesn’t bear fruit all the time. There are rest periods, there are droughts, there is blooming without fruit (never good—that’s like in Mark 11:12-14 when Jesus cursed the fig tree). However, through all that, the fig tree is still a fig tree doing what it can to fulfill its purpose—to bear fruit.

As a Christian, you have to bear fruit for God. That’s why he digs around you, fertilizes the soil, prunes you—so that you’ll work for him and reflect his glory.

You have to trust that the fruit will come in his time (an easy thing to say and a hard thing to practice with honesty), so don’t torture yourself feeling worthless for God because you never seem to grow past the same temptations and disappointments. You are growing, but generally it’s a long, growing process like the fig tree’s.

Before bearing the fruit that God wants you to, you have to work on responding to his care.

Who knew that fig trees offered such reassurance?

lenten chocolat

It is the beginning of Lent, and I find that I approach every Lent with a deeper appreciation, a deeper stirring of anticipation, a deeper longing for this time of abiding in the Lord.

In the weeks leading up to this, I can feel my soul turning, opening up, desiring. I want to be pared down. To be pruned. To be grafted closer to the one who pares, prunes, and grafts.

It is not—it cannot be—a guilt-driven longing for repentance, healing, growth.

A guilt-driven longing says:

Why do I fail? Why do I drift? Why do I pull away? Why do I need Lent every year to remind me to stick close? Why am I so unaffected the other 10ish months of the year?

A guilt-driven longing also says:

I will marshal {or perhaps even martial? Such an emphasis on war} my forces; I will bring my conflicting desires in line. I will defeat this. This apathy, fear of honesty, two-facedness, emotional stunting. I will show you, Lord, my love and commitment.

I. I. I. I. I.

{But think of this I: I must become less so that he can become greater.}

Lent is not for punishment as proof.

Lent is not for sacrifice as proof.

I think of the representation of Lent and religiosity in Chocolat, a story that asks: What does love look like? What does it mean to love and serve others—and God?

The Comte, the mayor of the small French village where everyone knows their role {and that they must be seen at church}, views Lent as discipline and deprivation. His Lenten fast is strict and absolute: he has his housekeeper bring him a croissant every night, even though he refuses to touch it. There is such good butter in that flaky pastry, and the Comte confronts it as proof of his strength in the onslaught of temptation. {Just like our Lord and Savior, who fought temptation in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights.}

But there is no joy more hollow than the joy of self-satisfaction. The Comte's Lent is about proving something—his righteousness?—to himself and others. His proof comes in adhering to rules; the Lord must love him more because he is so exacting. See? See his obedience? See how much he must love God? See?

The Comte relies on rules to bring order to his world, and it is possible to see where he's coming from: After all, the Lord wants us to be obedient. He tells us we must share in his suffering. Does it not make sense to use the Lenten fast as a pre-ordained—a God-given—practice of obedience and suffering?

Yes and no.

The blend of answers lies in this: What's your motivation for entering into Lent? Is it Lent as proof—or Lent as a way to grow closer to the Lord?

The Comte in Chocolat doesn't want to know more about the Lord; he wants to show more of himself. To him, loving God means following rules. {And therefore, he equates loving others as imposing rules and making sure they follow. Good thing he's the mayor.}

He overlooks the joy of relationship for the regulation of will.

This is, I admit, a facile interpretation, a reductionist view of Lent and even of Chocolat. It ignores all kinds of gray areas, such as: What about the power of physical deprivation—fasting, you know—to bring about spiritual transformation? What if someone, by strictly following the rules because they aren't sure how else to relate to God—what if the rules lead them to a deeper appreciation of God the Father?

And in Chocolat, what of this gray area? Vianne, the wandering chocolate maker who appears in the village and opens a chocolate shop just in time for Lent, wants true, lasting relationships. While operating on an openness to love, she also craves order. She wants the structure that belonging somewhere can bring, but with belonging and structure come rules and expectations—those very things she fears will drag her down and bind her. However, rules and expectations help us, to some degree, know how to relate to one another—the very thing she loves.

Somewhere between the Comte's masochistic adherence to rules at the cost of relationships and Vianne's paradoxical fear of and longing for entanglement lies the truth: We need order and others, and there is much to celebrate in both of those.

The same truth can, in a way, be applied to Lent: its order {the regularity in the liturgical calendar, the prescribed season of simplifying your life, the march toward the resurrection} holds in it great celebration because it reminds us of our relationship to the Lord and the call we have to live in him.

And it's for that reason—Lent as reminder of the joy of life in the Lord—that I anticipate this time, regardless of what I give up or don't give up and regardless of who knows what I gave up or didn't give up. Lent is a time to celebrate as you lean closer to the Lord and the church.

very bad poems by me

Once upon a time, in Rouen, France, some 90 miles from Paris, there lived a small girl in a large high school.

You'll have to forgive me for a bit of silliness; I just re-watched Sabrina {the Audrey Hepburn one} on Friday night, and I've always loved that beginning line: "Once upon a time, on the north shore of Long Island, some thirty miles from New York, there lived a small girl on a large estate."

I've also always felt a kinship to Sabrina Fairchild—she who heads off to France and discovers there that she has strength she didn't know she had. She discovers that there is a grace to every day, and she finds that she is worth knowing.

If you have to go somewhere to find yourself, France is an excellent choice.

Sabrina learned that; I learned that. She spent two years learning how to cook, and I spent nine months trying to teach English to high school students {and living in the boarding school}, but the end result was the same: we came home and life hasn't been the same since.

As she says, France "is for changing your outlook! For throwing open the windows and letting in...letting in la vie en rose."

But before you can get to this changed outlook—before you can start seeing the world through rose-colored glasses—you have to do a lot of pondering, walking next to the Seine, drinking very strong coffee, getting lost on cobblestone streets, and writing.

And for me, writing came in the form of very bad poetry. I don't know if Sabrina had to do this; if she did, it was smartly left on the cutting room floor because it's painful enough to live through yourself. We don't need to see Audrey Hepburn writing overly emotional and trying-to-be-deep poetry, although if anyone could make it look enticing, she could.

I recently re-discovered my writing notebooks from when I lived in Rouen. There, I spent hours in Le Bistrot des Carmes, hunched over my notebook and looking for all the world like I was five minutes from taking up smoking as I scribbled and sighed.

At some point in the year, I decided to write a poem a day, and here is a tip for anyone going through their own early 20s discovery period: DO NOT allow yourself to write a poem a day.

Or maybe do.

More than other forms of writing, poetry is prone to people trying too hard.

If you want to take on the world or if you think you have the world figured out, it is very easy to be tempted to write a poem.

If you're feeling like no one understands you, there is no better way to express yourself than in an attempt at iambic pentameter.

Poetry might be so appealing because we have the mistaken idea that it's supposed to be obtuse. The more complicated and symbolic, the better—right? The more you can confuse with your comparisons of love to moss {or whatever tack you want to take}, the deeper you are.

This idea of appearing deep and thoughtful is especially appealing to those just out of college, and if you allow yourself to write a poem a day at a stage when you're trying to figure out life, it will lead to much laughter years later when you re-discover the poems.

By that point, you will have figured out that you can't entirely figure out life, and you'll be both grateful and embarrassed for this record you have left of when you were too full of yourself and your own ideas.

That's how I felt when I found these poems: simultaneously grateful and embarrassed. My time in France—the hours in cafes and wondering the streets—made me who I am today.

But in these poems, I can easily encounter who I was then as I was putting on the rose-colored glasses and learning to let in la vie en rose.

For Your Amusement and Because These Poems Shouldn't Just Languish in My Journal: A Sampling of the France Poems

2 December 2004
{Note: None of these have titles, just dates. Because who can bother with a title when there are deep things to convey in short lines?}

Arrow clouds
Squeezing to a point
Skinny triangle of reflected heat
Burning orange

From where I sit,
cross-legged in the garden, my breath floating like smoke,
The clouds become the way

They are pointing to a choice:
hidden path of dead, known leaves
leading arrow of lively light

I choose to follow the sun
West, towards the eternity of tomorrow.

Analysis by a 30-year-old: What? What choice are you talking about, 23-year-old Kamiah? And what's with the mixed imagery of a clouds making an arrow—but then you're talking about dead leaves? Are the arrow clouds pointing to leaves? Are you referencing that the leaves are the same color as the orange clouds? Are the sun and the leaves the same thing?

I know exactly where you were sitting when you wrote this poem: in the hidden garden on top of the wall that was, in medieval times, Rouen's protection. I can even see the orange sky and the sun flaring off the cathedral spire. But even knowing the image you were looking at, I have no idea why you wanted to follow the clouds {or the sun?} away from the leaves.

11 December 2004
Time passes and where does it go?
Waste and spend, spend and waste.
A minute saved is a minute earned.
Waste not, want not.

Time passes and what it been worth it?
Inside, I hear a nagging voice
a voice like teeth on fancy silver
each tine a stab of guilt
for what I do not know.

But I do know this:
I waste away
but feel the need to prove justify explain conquer.

And then the voice changes
and it's calling out in the wilderness of my soul,
"Prepare ye the way of self-recrimination!"

Analysis by a 30-year-old: Okay, so maybe you were feeling useless when you were in France. You worked 12 hours a week and spent the rest of your time either running, drinking coffee, or, apparently, writing bad poetry. I get that you were questioning what you were doing with your life—with your time.

But wow, cut yourself some slack, little girl! Just because you're having trouble filling a few hours does not mean that you're a failure. You can tell that voice like teeth on fancy silver to go wander around the wilderness, shouting until it makes itself hoarse. It's not worth listening to.

Also, way to work in paraphrases of Benjamin Franklin and Isaiah into the same short poem.

8 December 2004

And oh it's wonderful!
Does everyone feel this—
this bursting cheer, growing surprise, smiling inside?
Does everyone feel—
and oh it's wonderful?

It doesn't seem fair to feel all—all—all

Analysis by a 30-year-old: Um, you do realize that you're stealing from Katherine Mansfield, right? Re-read "The Garden Party" if you're unsure.

Although I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I also congratulate you on writing a rather chipper poem on your birthday, as opposed to one of those guilt-ridden, image-laden confusions.

11 November 2004

Why I'm here depends on so little:
the Eiffel Tower sparkling at 10:00 on a crisp fall night.

But you must understand that
before you can know how I can be here,
content
and
discontent.

But here for a reason.

Analysis by a 30-year-old: Inspired by William Carlos Williams, eh? "So much depends on a red wheelbarrow" and all that.

But I appreciate your attempt to convey that even when you're in this place of beauty and wonder, this place that you've dreamed about, it can be hard. It can be the hardest thing you've ever done, and even as you're amazed that you get to see the Eiffel Tower so much that it becomes commonplace, you're aware that your life is feeling very much the opposite of commonplace.

a word from compline

I do so love words, which may be part of the reason I resonate so deeply with liturgy. When you don't know what else to say to God, it is a comfort to be able to turn to these words that people have been praying for hundreds of years.

And there is something to the communal voice, to saying the same thing as everyone around you.

Some mumble, some enunciate, some whisper.

But there are all the voices around you, and you can feel the words swelling and building. I have more to say about the liturgy, but right now, words are feeling a bit inadequate and all I want to say is: At my small group the other night—after we ate Christmas cookies and shared Christmas stories—we did compline, which is an evening prayer service.

It's a hushed service that makes you think of wearing footie pajamas and having hot milk before bed. You half-expect the children's prayer "Now I lay me down to sleep" to be in there, complete with that line about "if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

{I used to prayer that every night, and I always tacked on: "God bless Mommy, Daddy, and the whole wide world. Amen." Didn't see the need to list my sister and brothers by name; they were covered by the whole wide world comment, of course.}

After doing compline, I always want to crawl directly into bed, which I couldn't do the other night because I was not at my own home and that would be awkward.

This prayer especially stuck with me during Tuesday night's compline, and I wanted to share them with you {along with, apparently, a blabbering-on about liturgy and footie pajamas}:

Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

baby jesus is naughty

I don't remember how I broke baby Jesus.

Most likely, I was playing with him. There was a lack of toys at Grandma and Grandpa Walker's house, and my options were: wooden blocks or paper for drawing/hat making/confetti making.

Baby Jesus, as I called the statue when I was a 3ish-year-old, was always out in the living room, looking a lot like a little porcelain doll and therefore a lot like a toy. He wasn't actually Jesus as a baby—more Jesus as an angelic-looking toddler, which may be why my grandma kept him out when I was over: to give me an example of a good little child.

I may have been only 3, but I'd already provided my family with enough stories of "the time Kamiah showed off her strong will and intense personality" to last a lifetime. Certainly enough to last my lifetime, seeing as these stories are still brought up at many a family gathering:

• The time Kamiah screamed every five minutes for no apparent reason on a several hour car ride—aka, the time the family wanted to attach me to the roof of the car
• The time Kamiah threw a temper tantrum at a soccer match at the 1984 Olympics because her dad wouldn't buy her—little 2-year-old her—a king-size Snickers bar all for herself
• The time(s) Kamiah screamed without stopping for a breath—and then passed out, only to wake up a few minutes later the picture of contrition, a cuddly little thing who rivaled Beth from Little Women for sweetness

Most of these stories end with the summary: "My gosh..."

{This usually said in the very Iowan accent of "My gaish"}

"My gosh, she was a little hellion."

As a 3-year-old, I already had a bit too much of the hell-raiser in me, so my grandma probably encouraged me to play with baby Jesus; perhaps his general heavenly character would rub off on me.

Or maybe I'd want to start imitating his sweetly innocent face—smiling as if he had never thought he deserved a candy bar that was bigger than his head—and then for once in my life, I'd have my mouth shut and I wouldn't be screaming.

So I was playing with baby Jesus. Given my obsession with cheerleading and gymnastics at that time, I was probably making him do triple back flips with a double twist. This meant I was throwing him in the air and then hoping my chubby little fingers would catch him, iffy hand-eye coordination notwithstanding.

Or maybe I was making him be the top of the pyramid during the cheerleaders' big halftime routine. Maybe his teammates were St. Francis of Assisi and the Holy Mother, and they, I'm sorry to say, let him down, not supporting baby Jesus well enough while he gave a big "GO, TEAM!"

Down down down our Lord and Savior tumbled because his cheerleading squad didn't have very good spotters, people positioned to catch Jesus, should he ever fall. Peter was probably his spotter, but it maybe would've been smart to make Mary the spotter, seeing as she did stay at the foot of the cross until they lowered his body. She totally would've caught baby Jesus the cheerleader who took a tumble from the top of the pyramid.

Regardless of how it happened, I broke baby Jesus. His head came right off, and my grandma walked into the living room to see me standing there with his body in one hand and his head in another.

I looked up at her and then hid baby Jesus' head and body behind my back. If she couldn't see him, then he didn't exist, right?

"Kamiah! You broke baby Jesus! You are a very naughty girl!" My grandmother stood with her hands on her hips, the time-honored posture for angry grandmothers. A finger-wagging may have also been involved.

I glared right back at her and snapped, "Baby Jesus is broke; baby Jesus is naughty!"

At that, I'm sure my very, very Catholic grandmother crossed herself and started going through the rosary in an attempt to make God forget what her next-door-to-a-heathen granddaughter had just said.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, and I'm sorry that girl is being raised Pentecostal and not Catholic and that she just said your son is naughty after she decapitated him.
Blessed art thou among women, and if you forgive her, I promise I'll try to make her become Catholic, especially in about 20 years when she starts to attend an Anglican church.
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, who, just for the record, I don't think is naughty.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, but mostly for that little hellion who just killed your son.

Amen.

and a good time was had by all

With absolutely no context clues, I bet this picture makes very little sense.

Has she run out of things to say and will now start posting pictures of her looking at her watch? Is that supposed to be some sort of commentary on time passing and not knowing what to do with it?

No.

No, I have not run out of things to say. And I hope I would never make a bizarre commentary like that. It sounds sad and post-modern.

That's my time for the Air Force Half-marathon this past weekend.

I have some more thoughts about my time running, including:

• how I didn't make my goal time but how that's okay
• how my mind wandered while running
• how it's ironic that my last blog post was titled "slow down. you move too fast," but I spent a chunk of Saturday saying, "Swing those arms. Turn over those legs. Move a little bit faster."
• how Mary Tyler Moore, Jesus, and my grandpa helped me push on at one point

But first I need to collect my thoughts from the 13.1-mile route where I dropped them.

Jesus was hiding {part 2}

This is Part 2 of a story about my recent trip to France. You might want to read Part 1 first—just a friendly suggestion.

-----

I could see Aude's confusion, and so I blathered on.

And panicked. I blathered and panicked, which is never a good combination, especially when you're trying to speak in your second language, one that involves four different pronunciations of the letter “u” and you've just crossed the Atlantic. Never panic when your body isn't sure what time it is.

But I couldn't stop the panic. In France, I’m so rarely given the opportunity to talk about my faith. Oh, I’ve had plenty of debates on religion; the French love a good intellectual debate, and when they learn I’m a Christian—and one who goes to church every week at that—they ooh la la in excitement.

A live Christian, right in front of them! I’m treated as a rarity, as a scientific specimen to examine and cross-examine.

At various points during my life in France, I’ve been asked:

• How do you explain the Crusades?
• Why does America have the song “God Bless America”?
• Why did the Spanish Inquisition happen?
• Was 9/11 part of God’s plan?
• Why are there so many denominations?

But jamais—never—have I been asked to share the story of Jesus’ crucifixion while standing in front of a hand-carved altar in a church from the 17th Century.

My French education prepared me to recite details of various Louis’ and revolutions. It prepared me to order un pain au chocolat, and I’m very well-versed in how to ask for the bill at a café. I can read the newspaper Le Monde and sing along with French songs on NRJ, the pop radio station.

But none of my vocabulary drills involved the words sacrifice, sanctification, Pharisees, or resurrection. I was not given a conversation model to explain why Jesus had to die to a 15-year-old girl who comes from a country with a long history of being hurt by and then distrusting the capital C Church.

I did what I most always do in these I-haven’t-prepared-for-this situations: I panicked and blathered.

how did judas betray jesus? {part 1}

The three of us stood in front of the altar in the church at Villequerie. Aude, 15 now, tall, and no longer as likely to jump on me for a piggyback ride as she did when she was 9, looked at her mother, who looked at me. Aude had just asked, “How did Judas betray Jesus?”

The altar at the little church had a wooden relief of the Last Supper, Jesus in the middle with his 12 disciples around him. The conversation had started out easily enough: Laurence had explained to Aude who the disciples were.

As she did that, I tried very hard to focus on standing up.

Not that I didn't want to hear about the disciples—and in particular what Lau had to say about them—but I had just flown into France that morning; my jet-lagged mind, while content to be with Aude and Laurence again, was prone to breaks from reality, from what was going on around me.

I had landed at 7:30 and promptly stepped into a mass of French police carrying machine guns. Someone had left a bag unattended in between doors 5 and 6 of Terminal 2A at Charles de Gaulle airport, and instead of getting une expresso, as I had been planning since approximately 4 minutes into my flight, I was told to evacuate immediately. Told by a man in a beret and with the biggest gun I had ever seen that close.

The day had become a timezone-deprived mess: up at 4am, which was really 11am in France—must start thinking in French time again and maybe that'll help me start thinking in French again—to catch a flight to Boston so that I could catch a flight to France so that I could step off the plane and do a dance with a machine gun.

And from there, it was a bus into Paris,

a train to Rouen,

a hug and kiss for Aude, who'd met me at the train station.

Lunch—cantaloupe with prosciutto, tomatoes with sea salt, bread, and a salad—in the garden,

a drive down the Seine past fields of hay bales {has life become a Monet painting?},

and then there I found myself thinking about staying upright when Laurence turned to me.

“Yes, how did Judas betray Jesus?”

My English-speaking brain came up with a quick answer: Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss, and thank the Lord, my French-speaking brain could translate that. Somewhat.

what she taught me {a poem}

My grandma turned 80 this year, and we're having a big party this weekend for her. Big as in actual invitations were sent out. Big as in it's being held at my dad's hunting club, not at someone's house.

My aunt asked me to write a poem for the occasion, which I'm counting as my first commission. Next stop: being asked to write a poem to commemorate a presidential inauguration, just like Maya Angelou. {I am not calling myself the next Maya Angelou, something that's impossible for many reasons.}

But this poem was hard to write.

Poems, for me, usually squiggle out relatively easily, once I get the idea or image.

With this one, though, I could hear the tone I was going for in my head, but I couldn't get the words to match that.

I think this is because I kept imagining myself reading this at the party and how everyone would ooh and ahhh and cry a little and I would be called the Poet Laureate of Iowa. And then my grandma would say I'd always been her favorite.

I know this is wrong and a bloated image of myself, but sometimes, you just can't help yourself: Your brain tumbles ahead to some theoretical triumph and you think about what you'll say and how you'll react.

Then you remember you haven't yet done anything practical to deserve that triumph. And that you shouldn't do things based on how everyone will be impressed with you {that, actually, is something my grandma taught me}.

Once I stopped imagining the party and my starring role in it {I'm not turning 80, after all}, the poem started to come a little easier.

But I'm still open to feedback here. The party isn't until Saturday, which leaves plenty of time for revisions, should you have any suggestions on...actually no, I won't tell you. If I tell you the sections I'm worried about, that will pre-dispose you.

May as well not try to predict your reaction—and instead, just let you read.

------

What She Taught Me
for Grandma Callahan


I pull the tater tot casserole out of the oven,
wipe my hands on a pink gingham apron.

Something in my movement,
in a certain slope of the shoulders,
reminds me of her,
and I wonder:
did she pass down her gestures,
as well as her brown hair,
in the family DNA?

As the beginning of an answer,
I see her in the kitchen at the old high school,
pulling a casserole out of the oven.

Just down the hall,
tables of quilts
birdhouses
handpainted “Welcome to Our Home” signs
fill the gymnasium
for the Annual Craft Fair

and
there
she
is

rhinestone Jesus pin on her sweater,
smiling at everyone
everyone who passes through the cafeteria.

In this one quick glance,
I can see everything
everything she passed down to me.

She taught me
to be involved:
an Annual Craft Fair doesn't organize itself.

She taught me
to serve the community:
do unto others, whether they need food or time.

She taught me
to love God:
you can do that by loving whoever He puts around you.

I learned to:
be willing
be prepared

to work hard

to laugh.

She passed down to me
how to make this life delicious

and

how to make this delicious tater tot casserole
that I have just pulled out of the oven.

i am no icarus {a poem}

My shadow leads me, but only when I run
away from the sun.
I do not think that is symbolic—
turning away from the light and all that.

On an early morning run, I go west
for practical reasons:
The rising sun hurts my eyes.
I do not like to squint.

My shadow leads me,
down the road, the path,
the way.

Show me the way I should go, O Lord,
for I have put my trust in you.

Not in this dark shadow, this darkened light,
this darkness stretching
before me.

with God on our side

Because I'm an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of person, I didn't hear President Obama's speech about Osama bin Laden live.

Instead, I found out at 5:30 this morning when I took little pug out for a walk. The Chicago Tribune was waiting for me on my doorstep, just as it always is but of course the headline was 10 times the size it always is.

U.S Kills Bin Laden

I read the paper on my walk, pausing occasionally to say, "Oh my, Miss Daisy, the world isn't the same as it was yesterday."

It's a touch of crazy, I know, to talk out loud to your dog, especially about world affairs, but as I looked at the rising sun and the bed of daffodils by the library—things that feel new and promising every day—I wanted to...

I wanted to recognize that no, the world isn't the same as it was last night when I went to bed.

There is a man who was here yesterday and who is no longer here today. And he was a bad man, responsible for many deaths.

His death, though, doesn't heal all the pain from those deaths, nor does it justify them, nor does it extinguish evil.

The world isn't the same as it was yesterday, but Osama bin Laden's death isn't total victory in the wars we're in now, nor is it the total triumph of good over evil.

It is death, and as I looked at the pictures in the Tribune of people chanting "USA" and singing "The Star-spangled Banner" outside the White House, I did feel a wellspring of patriotism.

And when I saw the pictures of New York City firefighters in Times Square, the marquee above them announcing bin Laden's death, I almost cried.

But I couldn't bring myself to rejoice in his death, and the rest of today, I've been thinking of this Bob Dylan song—"With God on Our Side." {You can see Joan Baez singing it here, or down below, I put in the lyrics.}

It addresses that belief that we will beat whatever we're fighting because we have God on our side. We are the chosen nation, the Christian nation. God must approve of what we're doing, and he'll show it by making us powerful and victorious and right.

But that's a messy argument when you factor in people, actual people. When people get involved—and we're all a mix of good and evil, of sin and redemption—it's harder to be able to claim God's approval so confidently.

At least it is for me.

Yes, I believe that we should seek the will of God. And I believe that we should work every day to love him more by loving those around us more.

But I don't believe that we should rejoice in someone else's downfall—as natural as that is for us humans.

This rule applied in elementary school—when we all learned that it is not right to laud a good grade over someone who didn't do so well, even if they deserve it because they rubbed it in your face when they did better on a test.

You don't get to feel smarter just because someone else did worse.

And you don't get to feel more righteous just because an evil person, your enemy, even, died.

This isn't a chastisement of the celebrations, nor is it a callous take on what was a very successful, very hard-earned mission.

It's more me working through the maelstrom of emotions that swelled up this morning on the walk with little pug. Osama bin Laden is dead, and I'm thankful for that.

And now, Lord have mercy on the state we humans find ourselves in.

With God on Our Side
Bob Dylan

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

The Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns on their hands
And God on their side.

The First World War, boys
It came and it went
The reason for fighting
I never did get
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.

good friday

Yes, I am aware that Good Friday was last week, and it's not like I'm trying to live again Jesus' crucifixion.

But this poem—I like this poem. It was printed in the bulletin {or to be fancy, Order of Service} for the Good Friday service last week, and I have been re-reading it throughout this week.

As I mentioned on Palm Sunday, I enjoy—probably not the correct word here—Holy Week because it helps guide me through emotions. You wouldn't think I would need help with emotions about the death and resurrection; it seems like there should be plenty in there to cling to.

But it can all become so rote, so known, so accepted. After all, I celebrate his death and resurrection every week, and as someone raised in the church, I can easily, I must admit, gloss over the shocking details that form the heart of faith.

Sometimes, I stand in front of the cross and think the very same thing as Christina Rossetti in this poem: "Am I a stone... / that I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross... / And yet not weep?"

Good Friday
Christina Rossetti

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon--
I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

hosanna, hey-sanna, sanna, sanna-ho

At Palm Sunday, I always want to sing this:
Hosanna, hey, sanna, sanna sanna ho
Sanna, hey, sanna, hosanna
Hey, JC, JC, you're all right by me
Sanna hosanna, hey superstar!

But seeing as it's from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar, I don't think it'd be the most worshipful beginning to Holy Week.

It's catchy, though, and that's why, as I watched the procession go past today, I wanted to belt it out as I waved my palm branch.

It includes that rather accessible way of praising Jesus: Hey, Jesus, you're all right.

It's like saying casually to him, "Oh, hey, Jesus, you're pretty cool, you know. Nice, friendly, good listener, really a giver. Yeah, you're all right."

And while all that's true, of course, it's not enough for me—not enough recognition of his kingship and how he is the Lord and how he was there when God created light and flowers.

But I must confess, that "Oh, hey, Jesus" is more how I live my life and my faith.

I say every week at church that I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light.

I profess my faith in that way on a Sunday, but come a normal Wednesday afternoon, Jesus is in the back of my mind.

We mostly have a casual relationship, Jesus and I, one where I usually think of him as a really good friend who does stuff for me when I ask and who also listens to me when I have something to process.

Oh, and he died for my sins and loves me despite my sins.

Although I'm well-aware of his sovereignty and although I often pause to marvel at his creation {oh, how a tiny bud on a tree can make me praise him for his goodness}, I don't take time every day to marvel at his kingship.

So that's why I like Palm Sunday. That's why I like Holy Week.

It is time to worship him for his sacrifice and kingship.

Sometimes, I need help being guided through emotions. Any emotions, not just faith-related ones—I'm not a natural crier, so if I need to cry, I will watch Rudy, which has the peculiar effect of making me cry every time I watch plucky Rudy run onto the field to play for Notre Dame. I don't understand this, but I will take what emotional release I can.

Holy Week guides me through the emotions of recognizing what Jesus has done for me and then worshiping him for that. It starts with the joy of Palm Sunday—and it's not hard for me to get swept up in joy when the procession goes past, banners flying, kids dancing, everyone singing about the King of Glory.

I like to say Palm Sunday is a pep rally for Jesus, the kick-off to Holy Week. That may seem a bit glib, especially coming after this "I need to recognize his kingship" talk, but it's true.

The whole point of pep rallies are to get you fired up, and Palm Sunday does that. It lets me dance with joy, wave a palm branch with abandon, sing hosanna to the Son of David.

It gives me the words to praise him, a deep praise welling up from knowing what will happen in just a few days, when we remember his crucifixion.

Hey JC, JC, you're more than all right by me: you're the King of Glory for me.