Dear Madeleine,

Dear Madeleine,

Can we talk about Meg?

Meg of Wrinkles in Time and Winds in the Door and Swiftly Tilting Planets.

Meg who travels through time and space.

Meg who put you on the map after all those rejection slips.

She is a completely relatable female protagonist. 

Deeply flawed and also incredibly brilliant…  Brilliant by stealth.

A closeted math genius.

Math of all things!

She is consumed with 

Knowing her flaws 

But can’t accept her own brilliance

And there is her Mom.

Not just brilliant but accomplished.

Not just brilliant and accomplished. 

But beautiful.

Meg grows in her shadow.

She grows protecting Charles Wallace who isn’t just brilliant 

But is also a genius.

She sees and delights in his brilliance

And sees how vulnerable he is 

In spite of it.

She grows in the shadow of geniuses

But we know… and part of her secretly knows… that she too, is a genius

Even flawed….

She the flawed, brilliant young lady is our plucky protagonist…. She takes us along for the ride

And we are mesmerized by her power.

Even in the shadows she stands triumphant and compelling.

But vulnerably so….

Then she grows up.

The story isn’t about her anymore. 

The last time the story was about her was when she was pregnant with Polyhymnia 

(great name by the way).

Then she is erased mostly.

Her definitions are boiled down to her attachments to other people.

She is…  Poly’s mother.

Dr. Calvin O’Keefe’s wife.

Who helps Calvin pro-bono with *his* world-changing research.

She is not just IN the shadow of her husband and children

She is completely overshadowed by them.

Nearly blotted out.

A footnote… only seen in connection with the importance of others.

My best friend Becca says–how wonderful.

Both choices were validated in your writing:

The woman who pursued her education and vocation

And the woman who could have, but nurtured her family.

But the thing is.

I want more time with Meg.

We lose not only her on the adventurous pages of the novels,

But also the glimpse into her inner life.

When did the overshadowing take her over?

When the kids were born?

Did she too feel the paradox of being simultaneously newly defined

and also erased

by the word “Mother?”

Did she invite it?

Did she resent it?

Would she say, “She would do it all over again?”

Would she say this–and mean it–but still feel a pang of regret?

Becca used the words, “Wasted potential.”

We both chafe against those words. We fear them. 

Because… did we waste ours?

Why did we lose the continued vibrance of Meg’s internal dialogue?

She was still wholly Meg, right?

Or did you see her as diminished and that is why you defined her 

only in relation to other people?

Oh Meg, I want another novel.

A novel where the woman who is mother, who is wife,

who is Charles’ protector and champion,

who was the assistant to the brilliant Dr. O’Keefe….

I want to see the Meg

who finally Steps out of the shadows and into her own radiance.

I want to see her be a protagonist again.

Brilliant. Genius. And wholly herself.

Even vulnerably so.

Enough all her own

Not just the other side of a relationship to another’s brilliance.

Not diminished. Not erased.

But a woman who casts her own light

and stands in the shadow of no one.

13 Years

I don’t know what it is that I survived exactly 

13 years ago today.

A tumor? Cancer? Surgery? Trauma?

I know only that when I think of it, or tell people about it I think, “I’m still here.”

I know people who care about me, upon thinking of it also tell me “I’m so glad you’re still here.”

I know my biggest fear 13 years ago, whether by cancer or surgery, was whether or not I would still be here….

3 Babies. 

31 years old.

A lot more I wanted to see, and be, and live, and love.

I hadn’t experienced life with no children in diapers.

I hadn’t homeschooled my kids.

I hadn’t learned to drive solo cross country and love it.

I hadn’t seen the Redwoods or Yosemite or Yellowstone.

I hadn’t gone to Montana with Her War Her Voice.

I hadn’t worked for Her War Her Voice or Courage beyond or led retreats for the military community.  I didn’t even know I had that in me. I hadn’t seen Bouldercest, Virginia or Sonoita, Arizona. I hadn’t had my heart cracked open by Caregivers and Gold Star Spouse and surviving family members.

I had barely begun to grapple with the reality of being a family impacted by war.

I hadn’t seen an aircraft carrier even though my husband spent huge chunks of time on them.

I hadn’t met friends and mentors that would expand my heart.

I hadn’t jumped into the Reformed Church or jumped out of Evangelicalism as a whole.

I hadn’t become an Episcopalian or had to grapple with my fear of scary Bishop Hats.

I hadn’t started asking if I even am a Christian anymore or how far exactly that word can stretch–and how far I’d want it to.

I hadn’t walked my kid into Hell and back out again in an IOP for OCD. I didn’t even understand what OCD was, really.

I hadn’t been introduced to Rory on their terms. They hadn’t shared with me the full truth of who they are.

I hadn’t been part of PFLAG or even imagined the joy and support I’d find in that community.

I hadn’t experience a global pandemic, or a Trump presidency.

I hadn’t heard of or volunteered for or worked for SPiN Cafe. I didn’t yet pour coffee or meet the folks who would each be my “favorite” in some capacity.

I didn’t know that Alaine would love tools and Shakespeare.

I hadn’t entered my 2nd decade of marriage… I was still 2 years away from finishing my first.

I hadn’t started a daily meditation practice or tried the hippy dippy woo that surprises me as I delight in discovering it.

I didn’t know that God smells like Frankincense and like burning sage.

I hadn’t seen the home we live in. I didn’t yet know that fairies live in our backyard. I hadn’t met the neighborhood kids that would become kids I loved as much as my own. I didn’t know about summertime sledding or Popeberries or about how across the street neighbors can take care of each other just by remaining in the same orbit for years at a time.

I hadn’t sold a gazillion Girl Scout Cookies or frozen my butt off at booth sales… or tasted the fruit of that labor as a chaperone to Washington D.C. with my oldest–a joyful week I will never forget.

I hadn’t yet met our dog, Curly, or been rejected by any of our cats. I didn’t even know I liked pet rats.

I hadn’t loved a good chunk of the trees I’ve gotten to love. 

I hadn’t gotten to parent older kids, or school kids, or teenagers.

I hadn’t had really GOOD therapy. I hadn’t even begun to heal… to be fair, I also hadn’t yet tasted all the things I would need to heal from.

I hadn’t learned how to live in my body. To inhabit it and explore it and truly be at home in it…..

I don’t know what I survived 13 years ago. Was it just a surgery? Cancer? A traumatic experience 3000 miles away from home and a diagnosis rare enough to be incredibly unsettling?

I don’t know what I survived.

But I know I am still here. And I am so grateful to have done all I have done.

An Introduction

Dear Val who started this blog,

I’ve been reading your posts this weekend. I haven’t stepped back into this space for a long, long time for many reasons, but maybe one of the biggest is that it takes courage. It takes courage to go back and look at who you were in previous parts of your life. I have been historically so very hard on past versions of myself. I have been intolerant of the things she didn’t know she didn’t know and embarrassed of her mis-steps and mistakes. Maybe this is the first time in a long time that I have had enough self-compassion to even begin to come back and read those words form the earnest person you were so long ago. (Don’t worry I am still earnest.)

What I find as I read about you is how much I am rooting for you. I am exhausted for you reading about the antics of your kids. I want to come in and baby sit and let you take a shower and a nap. I want to take your face in my hands and tell you that you are doing such an amazing job and that you are NOT FAILING in all the ways that you truly believed that you were failing.

I’m not sure if you’d met me as I am now back then, that you’d like me. Or that you’d even want to have a friendship with me. But just the same… let me introduce myself.

You were a Mom of Littles, I am now a Mom of Bigs. I have 3 kids. 2 Girls and a kiddo who is Non-Binary. They are, all 3, extraordinary. They have taught us so much. They have been through some stuff and come through to the other side.

You were a committed mostly evangelical Christian. I am… not. I don’t know exactly what I am these days. Don’t worry–I still deeply believe. The faith that I have is sturdier than it’s been in decades. And it is also more unnamable. It is something I would have looked down my nose on back when you were writing. It would have even probably made me nervous. I’m a little witchy, but really not very. I’m a little New-agey, but don’t talk to me about crystals. I meditate. I can’t figure out what name to call the entity we used to call God. God, G-d, They, the divine, Spirit, The Divine Whatever. I go to an Episcopal Church, but even that language doesn’t quite fit these days. The emphasis on sin and repentance rings hollow for me. I can speak of the world and of individual lives in terms of wholeness and brokenness and survival. I am on some sort of a spiritual journey at present that involves therapy and teachers and some crazy hippy dippy woo shit that would completely freak you out. And it is so deeply good. I feel so deeply held by whatever the Goodness underneath it all is.

You were a Stay at Home Mom and then a Homeschooler. I work a crazy job that doesn’t pay me what I’m worth and…. well I don’t know what to call the kind of education my kids are getting at this point, but hopefully it’s getting the job done. Being a Mother is still immensely important to me and yet I chafe at it being such a key part of my identity. I spent some time trying to make work a huge part of my identity too. I think I saw that in Mom (yes, I will still write about her plenty, I’m sure), and wanted it for myself. And yet… every time I do that I crash. Hard. I am worth more than I am making right now, and for now, that’s ok. But it might not be in a few months or a couple of years.

You were really immersed in the life and culture of being a Military Spouse and I… try not to think about it much. We are still here. Still navigating the rough waters of being a Navy Family. It is clearer now more than ever that War and Deployments and this crazy upside down lifestyle took a toll on all of us. I’m fairly certain I have Complex PTSD, or at least significant trauma, and the kids all do too. That’s to say nothing of Husband (since we called him that then, we can call him that now). I will do my best to leave his stories as his. But our story as a family is one we are perhaps on the edges of healing from.

I am content. Happy even. Though I ride the waves of ups and downs. This last year was one of the hardest of my life–as hard or harder as the year that Mom died. This time we had support though. Derek, one of my teachers right now, tells me “The waves are not going to stop coming, Val. They are not going to stop coming.” And I tell him, “I know, Derek. Believe me I know and I have known for a while.” And he says, “But do you know that you don’t have to keep riding on the surface of them all? There is something deeper. And until you can root yourself into the deeper you are going to keep getting smacked by those waves.” And I take that in and believe him and try to find the deeper.

I was deep then, and scared of it. I am deeper now, and more probably more scared.

I bow to you, kiddo. You were going through so much and you didn’t know that it was as much as it was. You didn’t know the challenges that your kids would face, or that your family would face, or that you would face. You didn’t know the half of what it means that marriage is hard, and parenting isn’t for sissies. But you were in the thick of parenting challenging but exquisite littles. You didn’t know that what you were living through wasn’t something to be apologetic for struggling with, but was actual trauma that wound manifest in your muscles and tissues. You didn’t know so much of what you didn’t know.

There’s a lot more to be said. And maybe I will say it here. Or maybe I won’t. But for now, for today, I want to introduce myself. You’re back there doing one helluva job and I am so proud of you. Here I am building on that good work you did, finally finding ways to heal, and believe that we are worth so much. Maybe even worth the risk of audaciously writing about even the most mundane parts of our thoughts and days.

Love,

Me

Hello? Is This Thing On?

No one blogs anymore, which is part of the reason I feel like dipping my toe in this space again. Can I write here in a way that used to be really therapeutic, but also in a way that won’t garner much attention? Not only is the Internet and Public Sharing Space different than it was 15 years ago, it’s brutal. Some of my favorite content creators have shared just this weekend about death threats and terrible threats against their families coming from the content they have put out. We all know this.

(Part of the reason I think Content has shifted so much is because “We all know this,” about so many of the things).

I’ve spent a huge chunk of the weekend reading through this blog and remembering who I was… Who I was in the beginning of my marriage. Who I was at the beginning of parenting my kids. Who I thought I was as part of the Military Spouse Community.

Reading my words here I am kind of scandalized by my audacity. I wrote with such conviction about so much mundanity. And I am fascinated that those are the entries I am most drawn to to read right now. Yes, please remind me about the sleepless nights my kids inflicted on me… Please tell me more about the insecurities and wonderments I felt about being a fledgling adult. Please give me the blow by blow of how I felt emotionally as the Navy yanked our family’s chain in the very commonplace ways that the military does. I would say I wrote about it all unapologetically, but I apologized plenty.

But I also feel pulled to come back here because I don’t feel like the girl who wrote this blog in the beginning all those years ago would recognize the woman standing here now. I think in some ways she might be scared of her.

Why did I stop writing? How did we collectively stop the phenomenon of blogging? I am fascinated by the second question. The first is a little closer to my chest, but worth considering also. I stopped writing because a lot of the stories that I had to tell stopped being all mine or mine in a way that I could uncomplicatedly write about them with a clear conscience. I never had the chops to be a Mommy Blogger, but I blogged as a mom plenty and as my kids got older telling their stories was telling their secrets.

And yet I find myself missing that quality of audaciously believing that things I had to say about the every day goings on of my life were worth not just writing about, but also someone else reading about.

So here I am typing into the void maybe more than I ever way back then… And wanting to introduce my current self to the girl who used to blog here.

Just a Wednesday

To be a parent in the year 2023 in the US is to get a text from your husband in the middle of your workday saying, “We just got word that there are two schools in town on lockdown and there are conflicting messages, but there could be an active shooter.”  It is to watch social media, and texts, and emails from the school all day for any word of updates about whether or not it was really a shooter.  It’s to hear they think that it’s just a hoax, but the buildings are still in lockdown.  It’s to realize that your kid is NOT at one of the buildings in question, but is in the district and not knowing if they are in lockdown or not, but knowing that she has such high anxiety that lockdown drills–which they have had to do since kindergarten–cause her full blown panic attacks.  It’s texting her the words, “Are you ok.  I love you.  Please text me as soon as you see this.”  It’s realizing that if they were at one of the other school buildings you could be sending the same words but under very different circumstances.  

It is sending a text to one of your dearest friends who has a child at the high school in lock down just to say I love you and I am here while you wait.  It is knowing she is a pediatrician and has treated half of the kids who are hiding under tables and in back rooms trying to stay quiet.

It’s to come home at the end of the day and feel so grateful that your kids came home alive and you get to hug them.  It looks like knowing that other parents haven’t been so lucky on other days at other schools.  

That’s what being a parent in the US in 2023 looks like.  It looks like terror.  It looks like not feeling safe to send your babies to the place that they should be the safest.  And it looks like your country, your fellow citizens, your politicians… not being able to give a damn enough or to figure out how to work together enough to even begin to find a solution.  

This is what it is to be a parent in 2023.  It’s also terrifying to be a child, or a teacher, a paraeducator, or an administrator.

It shouldn’t be this way in the country that we say is the greatest in the world, the freest in the world.  This doesn’t feel like freedom.  It feels like terror.

This is “just a Wednesday,” in a small town in the United States these days.  There were lockdowns other places today.  There was a mass shooting at University of Michigan this past weekend.  I attended an Active Shooting Training at my church last year and have been urged to attend another for the organization I volunteer with.  I spoke at a work meeting yesterday about how I learned to Run or Hide or Fight because we were thinking about how to be prepared for a potential shooting there too.

It’s all so commonplace.  Just a Wednesday.  

Just a Wednesday in the United States in 2023.

Still Dancing

I’m watching the sunset and up much later than my old 41-year old self can stand tonight.  I find myself fighting the idea of going to sleep.

17 years ago after a long day of sitting vigil next to my too-young-to be-dying mother… after my husband slipped in having flown off the aircraft carrier to be there with me… after sitting with my Dad, her best friend Sara, with 3 month-old Rory, in different combinations throughout the day…  

17 years ago tonight I slipped into bed with my mother alive and in the world

And woke up without her in it.

I can’t help but wonder if I am delaying sleep in some sort of desperate effort to change the outcome of waking up 17 years ago tomorrow.

I asked my dear friend, Melissa, who is a death doula, why is this day such a thing?  Still?  I wondered, Am I just creating my own suffering?  

She said, “If you look and consider  what you are comprised of—it is earth and dust and universe and stardust. At a cellular level.

So when our loved ones return, that DNA that we share will always call you to them. To G-d. To home….  

Our ancestors want and delight in dancing with us. So she is calling you to remember.

That dance is a sacred ceremony.”

So here I am, 17 years later… Still marveling at the feel of a cool breeze on my face and shoulders on a summer evening, still pulling up the songs we used to sing together badly in the car, still missing her.

And again this year, something in my body remembers and takes up the steps of the dance.

Homeschool Mom? Yes, I have a Career

I was in a meeting yesterday where a homeschool mom was asked by a team of people who care about education, “Why will you have time to take on this new position?”

(I am not going to go into details of the meeting or the position because there are other pieces ancillary to that that will cause my point to get lost).

That person answered, “I will have plenty of time because I don’t have a job. I am just a homeschool Mom.”

I can tell you from experience that teaching my kids at home is different than teaching in a classroom. I have taught in the classroom as well. It is categorically different because it requires different kinds of teaching methods. It is “easier” in some ways because there are fewer students (though I am friends with amazing homeschool families with large families too!). But those few students may be yours for the entirety of their school career. In some ways there is more ease in teaching my 3 kids. In other ways, it was a cleaner delineation of career to be in the classroom.

There is planning, and scheduling. There is grading and mentoring. I don’t get to specialize in a content area or a grade level… Writing, Science, Phonics, Math–all levels of them? I have to make sure I know those subjects well enough to teach them, or that I can sustainably outsource them to people (so there is some coordination and logistics as well). I also have to balance the relationship to my kids as Mom with the relationship to my kids as teacher.

Do you know how much tutors are paid an hour? A low-end price is often $40 an hour. Do you know how many hours of unpaid labor I do a week?

I have struggled through waves of invalidation year after year after year about not having a “career.” It was only recently that I realized I HAVE one. Not in a patronizing, “Moms are so important and what you do is hard!” kind of way (we are and that is true… but this goes a little deeper than that). If my youngest is schooled at home in some capacity until she graduates, I will have worked as a homeschool educator for 17 years. That is a pretty decent span of time for one job position. That is a career.

So what is my point here?

1) Friends who homeschool? Don’t invalidate yourselves. This is real work. This is every bit of a job or even a career as any other calling. And please, please, please don’t invalidate yourselves (and by extension the rest of us) in a room full of professional educators who already misunderstand so much of what we do.

2) Hey society: This is another part of largely women-led labor that is unseen and uncompensated. Please don’t assume that because our work is at home (and after COVID so many people should know from experience that work at home is still WORK), that it isn’t “real work,” or a “real job.”

I choose to take the weight of my children’s education onto my shoulders. It was a cognizant choice in a sea of GOOD choices. I am a huge fan of the school district we are in. I teach my kids because year after year, we have collaboratively decided that some version of that has been the best choice for our family. But just because that is a CHOSEN weight makes it no less a weight. *I* am getting my kids to the finish line of education. That weight is HEAVY so many days.

I have a career. It is a good and rich one. It requires an understanding of children, and education, and all of the school content areas. It takes discipline and stamina. And I am proud of it.

I wish more people could be too.

Tatters or Nets

posted this initially in response to a post by Dr. Craig A. Boyd, one of the professors who challenged me and my way of thinking in college. His post was about why people are leaving Religion/Religious Institutions/Communities of Faith.

Dear Craig,

In 2003, I graduated from the institution you alluded to in your Facebook post, and was not entirely sure how to describe my faith at the end of that college experience.  I remember feeling that my faith had been deconstructed (did I think to use that term then?  I don’t remember).  I was frustrated that it hadn’t been put back together.  Articles came out in the School Newspaper at the end of my senior year about other students who were saying similar things.  Sadness was expressed over these editorials… Clucking sounds were made….  Criticism was leveled at you and your colleagues.

For myself, after leaving college, I remember saying I felt  like I was in a faith free fall, and I felt angry and scared about that. I felt that I did not know how to pray….  My time in scripture–the “Devotions,” of my earlier years had gotten significantly dicier now that I could more robustly think about and consider what I was reading.  Don’t worry, I blamed the CCM majors for obliterating my sense of worship, so you were off the hook for that one

Still, I strangely always really loved the classes that I blamed for deconstructing my faith. 😉   I was only able to take one class with you during my 4 years at that school, but it left an indelible mark and I think of it nearly every day.  It was a required religion credit for Freshmen.  I remember you being the first person to point out to me that there are two creation stories and one doesn’t square with the other.  I remember you taking questions from those who, like me, were raised in the standard late 90s American Evangelicalism with Christian Music stations, Christian Rock Concerts, Christian T-shirts, and Bumper Stickers (but they are witnessing tools!) and more “Christian” inanimate objects than you could shake a stick at.  I remember members of my class trying to take on the faith leader at the mosque we visited as part of the course and seeing him elegantly put them in their places with scripture he knew much better than us Freshman–no matter how zealous we thought ourselves to be.  I remember, getting a kick out of all of it, and finding that there was something immensely freeing about being flipped on my head.  In short, I remember learning a lot.

An embarrassing confession:  I was part of a prayer group praying to participate in spiritual warfare against demonic forces and “false doctrine” that we were allegedly being taught there….  I mean….  We might have named you by name a time or two, I can’t remember….  Strangely, I didn’t find this to be at odds with how deeply my mind and heart were enriched by your classes, and the classes and chapels led by your religion department colleagues.  I guess it was a confusing time?

All of the ways I was enriched and affirmed were clear to me and yet I felt in the first years after college that my faith had crumbled.  Then a few years went by, and a few more, and a few more…  My faith and my understanding of it became stretched.  The narratives I had been given about people I was told to hold in suspicion were repeatedly challenged.  My gay friends…. were also sometimes Christians?  And…  They were happy and in committed healthy relationships?!  My friends who were people of color shared with me that instances of racism happened to them every day….  They weren’t rare exceptions to some “post racial” ideal world?!  Friends I made who followed other faith traditions seemed to be as at peace and in tune with the creator, and as enriched with their relationship with that entity as I was….  How could these things be so?!  

As my perspectives shifted and the narratives I had grown up with were increasingly challenged, I found that the faith that I thought had been obliterated was actually…..  Stretching pretty, darned well.  I found that I had templates for challenging my own preconceived thoughts–templates I had learned from you and your colleagues in the religion department.  I had a more well-rounded view of scripture and Biblical Scholarship.  And maybe most importantly, I still had the curiosity and the interest to want to keep learning and digging into what it meant to be a person of faith despite the stories that were changing and the things that were shifting.

That faith I thought had been obliterated with holes poked into it had actually been woven into a net that was able to catch me as my faith matured, and as my understanding of people, and society, and morality evolved.

Fast forward to now…. and my faith feels tattered again.  It seems as though I am not alone in that as today you posted on Facebook some of your own story–which overlaps the genesis of my initial perceived faith-unraveling.  You expressed some of the reasons you left the institution you spoke of in your post and I spoke up above, and some of the reasons you have left “bodies of faith” writ large. In your words:  

    “I left because of. . .

– the insidious “spirituality” that justified a kind of perverse license to do anything immoral “in the name of Jesus.”

-the so-called “leaders,” who demanded absolute submission from all who were “under their authority.”

-those who hallucinated heresies and were hell-bent on exposing them.

-those for whom fear completely dominated every facet of their lives.

-the racism of so-called ministers who have the gall to call well-respected African-American women scholars “uppity” while simultaneously denying their own racism.

-those who think that anyone who dares to disagree with the “Republican Platform” (and now, Mr. Trump’s views on anything) are “deceived by Satan.”

The rampant Dunning-Kruger Effect, thinly claiming to be “spirituality” and which often had nothing to do with the genuine nature and teachings of Christ, led me “elsewhere.” I probably should have left earlier.”

I find that again you are teaching me, or that perhaps we are students in a similar class these days.  I can’t pinpoint how to even name what faith I may still hold onto….  But I certainly didn’t lose it because of you or your colleagues in the religion department you headed.  In fact, that same net that I found woven together during my time at college, continues to stretch.  It may have stretched beyond a faith that can be named or categorized neatly in a way that stacks up in the face of the forces at war in American Christendom today….  But it has stretched to allow me to continue to fall into my own and others’ humanity….  Into compassion…  into inclusion… into continuing to demand intellectual honesty of myself and others.

I am grateful to you, Craig, for being someone I held partially responsible for “tearing my faith,” so long ago.  I’m not sure whether or not I can call myself a “Christian,” but my soul is intact….  My spirit feels more whole than it did in those early days when I thought I knew something about the Bible or God or prayer.  If I had remained in the Evangelical tradition I was raised in….  I am certain I could not say the same.  

I heard ironic grief in what you posted today….  I heard the irony that you were accused for so long of destroying the faith of those you mentored when you were really weaving and casting nets the whole time.  I hear the grief of so much of what passes as the Christian faith in this country has eroded into Christian nationalism and white supremacy.  

I share that grief.  I find myself still “deconstructing” almost daily from those things that I thought I had to believe.  I find myself wanting to “come apart and be separate” from so much of the American Church itself.  I find myself bewildered and grieved by Trumpism, frightened by Christian nationalism and the way it imperils our country, and consistently worried for the most marginalized in our society who somehow are not protected by those who profess Christ, but are targeted by them.

I thought you were part of tearing my faith down, but instead you were weaving and casting a net for me and those who learned alongside me.  I am proud to stand with you, holding that net, hoping that it’s generous stretch will catch us all up into a faith that expands and includes and lifts up

Val

Snowmageddon Sunday

Happy Snowmagedoan 2021.  Which of course comes on top of Happy 11th (eleventieth?) month of COVID restrictions.

This is hard, for everyone.  Don’t let anyone tell you that living in this abnormal sort of world isn’t rightfully hard.  It is.  We are all under strain right now.  The snow which, for almost all of us, has been a welcome novelty at the very least, is also a complication.

Today I am thinking about homelessness.  I am thinking about what it is to be a person who is trying to survive when you don’t have reliable housing, or reliable income, or reliable meals.

Our community recently opened a Drop-in Center for folks during the day. (SPIN Cafe, does good work.  Please support them!)  It’s open Monday through Friday, and located in–but not run–our church during the daytime hours.  

But, Today is Sunday.  My husband and I went to shovel sidewalks at our church knowing that tomorrow people would need to get in for the Drop-In center.

There was a gentleman who came hoping that the Drop-in center was open.  It wasn’t.  He understood, but he had walked a long way.  He made himself content on a bench outside the door.  And it pretty well broke Andrew and I both.

So. It’s Sunday.  It’s Snowmageddon.  It’s a Pandemic.  The library is closed due to the weather.  Restaurants and Coffee-Shops don’t have indoor seating because of COVID.  The Drop-In Center wasn’t open.  The Haven (the floating emergency shelter on the island) doesn’t open until 6 p.m. tonight.  There was nowhere for this gentleman to go.  

There is a foot of snow on the ground and people in this town are cold…  And there is nowhere to go.

When things are hard for me….  I am finding over and over again, that they are exponentially harder for those who are unhoused.  The things that are a barrier and a frustration for me, become an even greater barrier for a person who has no home to operate out of.  

They have….

No place to take a shower.

No place to wash their hands.

No place to wash clothes.

No place to snuggle under a blanket and take for granted there is enough money to pay the electricity bill from running the heater so much more during the day.

No place to stretch out their legs or to lay down.

No place to get a cup of coffee.  

No place to sit for very long without worrying someone will complain that you are loitering or lingering.

No place to make soup to warm your belly at the end of the day. 

There is no place to just be.

COVID restrictions have been hard.  I miss eating in a restaurant or meeting a friend for coffee.  I miss going shopping and not worrying about how many people are in a store.  I feel disconnected from people and that gets lonely.  Every. Single. Things seems to take an extra level of thinking and planning and that gets exhausting.

For people experiencing homelessness it has made just being, just living so much harder.  There aren’t places to get warm.  There aren’t places to just exist.  There aren’t places to fill out job applications, or to look for resources.  What is a frustration to me is a barrier to stability, or to warmth, or to a full belly, or to dignity for them.

I am grateful that our community is developing more places for people to just be. I am so grateful for SPIN cafe and the work they do and the dignity they bring.  I am grateful they keep looking for ways to provide things like lunches, and showers, and a place to just BE during the week.  I am grateful for the Haven providing places to sleep at night.  I am grateful for Ryan’s House and their drop-in center for youth and young adults. We can never meet all the needs, but each Something that we do…  Each Someplace that is made open….  Makes it that much easier.  

I firmly believe that saves lives.

Still there will be Snowmageddon Sundays.  There will be cold midnights.  There will be circumstances which make the places doing a lot of good not the best fit for people.  

I don’t have a pretty bow to wrap this up with.  I am just seeing it, sitting with it, and inviting others to see and sit with it too.

A Snowmageddon Sunday in the middle of a Pandemic is many things to many people.  For me, today, I guess it is a chance to reflect on how hard life continues to be, and how much work there is to be done to ease the burden for so many people in our communities.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

“Let’s acknowledge that Pence’s attitude of patronizing non-chalance was really triggering for many of us, like physically painful to watch.

We shouldn’t feel this way when leaders speak, but too often, we do. Abuse and gaslighting are everywhere. Take care today.”

I saw these words from Kaitlin Curtice today.
Last week people talked about how Trump’s behaviour was triggering–particularly for abuse survivors. So it might seem surprising to hear the same words after Pence’s debate performance.
After all, wasn’t Pence more “civil?” The debate was quieter. There wasn’t yelling. His tone of voice was measured. Doesn’t that mean he showed restraint and dignity?
No.
Trump and Pence are two sides of the same coin. People are responding–particularly women and people of color–are responding in visceral bodily ways to both of them for that reason. They are both abusive. They are both harmful.
Trump represents the loud, violent abusive man. The one who slams doors. The one who brags about groping women and exploits them both in the groping and in the telling about it. The one who leaves bruises [I am not accusing Trump of physical abuse here–I am saying that his physicality and loudness in the word brings a portrait to mind]. He is who we have been trained to think of when we hear the word, “Abusive.”
Pence is the flipside. Pence represents the abusive man who says the same emotionally abusive and toxic things to women and people in his life that the other, louder abusive man does but he does it in a measured, quiet way that makes it all sound so…. reasonable.
He is the one who makes you feel crazy because after all, he isn’t acting crazy, but his words and actions…. absolutely cut you down just the same. So, you reason… It must just be you. It must be that you are over-sensitive. He is a “Good Christian man” after all. He says so. Other people say so. And he doesn’t raise his voice.
His weaponry is that cool, caluculated tone. That is where and how he does his damage. It is harder to put your finger on, so it leaves you feeling crazy and questioning the things you know to be true.
This abusive portrait is the one who is so often in the church. He is the one who makes people say in snide tones behind their hands, after the nasty divorce happens and a woman is trying to find her feet, “Well, you know, there are two sides to every story. I am sure she played her part.” They can say the right words. They can even dress them up with scripture. They can use the right tone. They can put a note of sympathetic softness in the words they say.
While saying words that crush, and hurt, and destroy. While doing things that crush, hurt, and destroy.
People had visceral reactions to both men…. because they both remind of us of abusive portraits of people we have encountered in our own lives.
We need to pay attention to our reactions. And to the way we explain away our reactions or other people’s reactions.
They tell us a lot about the society that we live in, and the behavior that we continue to allow to be shown by the men in it.