For what it's worth...

This one is about Tish B’Av, in a manner of speaking.

In my mind’s eye, the picture is so clear, except for what I’m wearing, which is strange, because I remember pretty much everything else about that day, including what I put on after I walked out of Caroline’s bedroom, across the hall to my room, and dressed in a pair of jeans, a red checked blouse, and a pair of running shoes. What I remember first about that day was that when the alarm went off, the guys on the radio sounded all wrong, but it was the height of ragweed season, and I’d just spent the whole day before out in the country with a busload full of teenagers, playing meet and greet for my fancy new job, so I hit snooze, and rolled back over to catch forty more winks before I had to get up and be a real grown up. And then the phone started ringing…right in the middle of one of those half-waking dreams that seem real enough to reach out and touch. And since the phone was right outside my room, and no one else was up, I abandoned the dream, and jumped up to grab the handset.

Celeste was on the other line, and she was talking so fast, and not making any sense, at all, and I was still half-to-three-quarters-asleep…all I really processed was that I needed to go turn on the television, LIKE RIGHT NOW, RACHEL. Caroline had a tv in her room, and I could hear her moving around, because the phone had roused her, as well. I stuck my head in, and told her that Celeste had called, and just said we had to turn on the tv, LIKE RIGHT NOW, CAROLINE. And so we did.

If I live a thousand years, I don’t know that I will ever see anything like what we saw. We turned the tv on just in time to see the first tower come down, and shroud Manhattan in debris and fear. What a strange thing to witness. I remember thinking that I totally understood the phrase “I didn’t believe my own eyes.” What in the holy hell had just happened?

I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe, like I could hear every blood cell in my whole body rushing through my ears, and that my head was definitely about to explode. I remember being afraid that if I ever did get that full breath into my lungs, I would scream a scream that I would never be able to stop screaming, unless Caroline slapped me. I remember standing at the foot of her bed, covered with her green quilt (that Mrs. Marcel made for her, and quilted with bunny shapes), the two of us there in our pajamas, clasping hands like two little girls lost in the woods. I remember thinking that whatever happened, it must have been bad and was probably on purpose, and that things would never, ever, ever be the same. I remember thinking that this didn’t look like an accident, and that the other tower didn’t look so steady, and before we could get ourselves sorted out, and decide what to do next, we watched the second tower fall. I remember thinking a thousand thoughts a second, but the only one that could get enough traction was the one that screamed “OH MY GOD!” at top volume.

I went downstairs, called my office, and was told I needed to make haste in getting into the office. I grabbed my cell phone (the one I had just purchased the day before, two days after I opened up my very first bank account ALL BY MYSELF) and drove away from the apartment I shared with Caroline, and our other roommate, wondering the whole time if more planes were going to crash into more buildings before I made it to work. I think we all sat in front of the tv, all day long. I was so absorbed, I almost forgot I had a staff meeting. Wall to wall news, no commercials, nothing on the radio but news, no one on the phone but people making sure I wasn’t still working in DC, anymore…it was the strangest day of my life…stranger than any day I’ve had since, as well.

I was 22, almost 23. I was the age my mother was when she met my father. I was almost as old as my father was when I was born. Yet, I was, in so many instances, still very much a child on September 11, 2001. I am not the first person to say that day changed my life, irrevocably. The world was changed, and that much is for certain. The changes wrought inside of me would most likely have been wrought regardless of terrorist attacks or the PATRIOT Act, or anything else to do with those days and weeks immediately following that day. I know only what I know in hindsight, and that sometimes is not even as clear as we would all like to say it is. I can tell you that at almost-33, the last decade makes much more sense to me (personally, politically, theologically, globally, etc. ad nauseam) in reverse. Funny how that works, sometimes.

I know that for me, in some very real and concrete ways, September 11^th was the end of my childhood, I watched something I perceived to be invincible fall before my very disbelieving eyes—in concrete and steel, in flesh and blood, through the magic of television, in screaming technicolor. Once a person has seen that happen (over, and over and over…), she can no longer really be called a child, or at least can no longer be called an innocent. That event is the beginning of what I understood to be my very own, and very personal Babylonian Captivity. And yes, I mean that…on lots of levels.

Babylon is a real place, as real as it ever was, but it’s not confined to a particular geographical region or political stripe or socio-economic status. Babylon is the broken, barren, scary, hard place we all end up, whether we want to or not. Babylon is the desert of the real, in Matrix-speak…to live there is to understand the CS Lewis analogy of always Winter and Never Christmas. To learn to live in Babylon, without a Temple, without a home, as an alien, and as chattel is to make peace with the constant war between our desires for ourselves and God’s intention for us…but not just to make peace. That’s not enough.

Surviving Babylon is about utter and complete, total and unconditional surrender. For me, coming to terms with Babylon means physically and spiritually laying down on the floor of the deepest darkest part of myself, and admitting to God that I make a real pig’s ear out of my life, that I cannot create and sustain joy out of my own devices, that I am unable to fix all the broken and jagged edges of who I am, in this life. It’s a hard road, in either direction, whether we are staggering and stumbling into Babylon, or at a dead run, sprinting toward Zion.

Any way you slice it, regardless of what terms you come to, in Babylon there are days when joy seems so far off the path, it must surely live in a different country. There are days when the only music playing is a dirge or something loud, jangly, and obnoxious. But some days, when the wind blows just right, and a sudden stillness descends, the sounds of the story of God—songs of creation, praise, thanks, blessings, and love come wafting through, and nothing seems irreconcilable…like a mix tape from God, to speed us on our journey back to The Land of Milk and Honey.

One of my favorite things to do in high school was to make mixtapes. I would spend hours creating the perfect tape for a roadtrip, a party, a boyfriend, a friend who needed a pick-me up. I loved sitting for hours on my bed with a yellow legal pad and all my tapes, cds, and albums on the bed around me, figuring out just what to all to put together to say something good, hopeful, full of love. I-tunes has undeniably made this a dying art form, and no one has tape players, anymore. But I still find myself making cds and mailing them to people, and I still refer to them as mix tapes, just like how one of my professors in school always referred to Istanbul as Constantinople. Mix tapes are my love letter of choice.

This is a love letter, so you know that you are not alone, and that you can do this. It’s tough out there, and we’ve got to stick together. We have to remind each other that Jesus is real, and really loves us. We have to remind each other to be nice, and to share. We have to remember that the monsters under our bed, in our closets, in the middle of the living room can’t have the last word. So, this is my mix tape for all the people who live and work in Babylon, along-side me, for the people who remind me that I am a real person, that God has a plan, that nothing but the steadfast love of Jesus can fix a broken and dying world.

Turn it up, loud.

mil besos,

rmg

absolutely, yes...this is the exact right song...

Heartless Bastards // Into the Open by adhappy

...like magic...

I have never liked my hands. I have been trying to make peace with them since I was a little girl. The longer I’m in Babylon, the more I realize my hands are probably the best tool I have for living here. I look at my hands and I think about the generations of grandmothers behind me, and I imagine the millions of chores they did by hand, how work-worn they must have looked, as they were brushing hair back from fevered foreheads, replacing buttons, darning socks, picking cotton, swatting flies and small children, clasping hands with their husbands around dinner tables or fires, managing horses and wagons, weeding kitchen gardens… lighting Sabbath candles, or sage bundles, or funeral pyres.

Those women understood that their hands meant something powerful, and that wasn’t just about cracking pecans or wringing chicken’s necks. They understood that hands can sink or save you in Babylon. They understood that we can either use our hands to build more walls around this place, or we can glove up and start tearing the old walls down, and go back to where we belong.

I know that's an especially silly thing for a woman to say that she doesn’t like her hands: it’s so painfully and indulgently self-aware, a typical whine of an early 21st century Western female. I mean, Nora Ephron (who I happen to think is a fantastic writer, and who has won many of my hard earned greenbacks in exchange for her work) wrote a book called I Feel Bad About My Neck. She’s the lady that wrote the films “Sleepless in Seattle”, “When Harry Met Sally”, and “Julie and Julia”, which are three of my all-time favorite go-to PMS emergency movies. I like her, I am not angry with her. I’m just saying, I understand the whine, and I am whining, too.

I mostly hate how my hands look. Sometimes, I can’t even stand to look at the speedometer when I’m driving, because all I see are these huge hams, with the long fingers, looking like they ought to be peeling mountains of potatoes in some industrial kitchen, socked way way way way in the back of where the people with the pretty hands hang out, trying on rings and smoking cigarettes and getting manicures with the polish that won’t chip for two weeks GUARANTEED. There are days when I look at my hands, and try to be uncritical, but all I can see are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and I am afraid that I will be put there to do the weeding, and I’ll never get my feet on the ground, ever again.

My mothers, my grandmothers, my aunts, my god-mothers, my friends...all of them have beautiful hands. Even the men in my life have lovely hands, down to a person. They are the first thing I notice about a person, even before I look at his or her face. For the longest time, every time I looked at my hands, I was disappointed in them, disappointed in myself. My hands were a reflection of what I felt about my whole self...so close to being good, but not actually good, at all. I looked at them and all I could see were the improvements that needed to be made, the things that had slipped through them, the things they had broken that could not be mended, or lost and couldn't be found. My pinkies will always look like they were both slammed in a car door, even though I was born with them that way. My palms will always be ten degrees hotter than the rest of my body, and most likely will always be a tiny bit damp. There is no amount of weight I can lose, water or otherwise that will ever make my knuckles smaller. There’s just not a lot I can do about my hands.

But I am not my hands, anymore than I am my hair or my teeth or my kidneys. My hands are just a part of who I am, and no one besides me really gives a shit about them. Unless of course, I’m trying to deliver a baby or check a prostate, neither of which I have tried to do, nor would try to do, as I am not a medical professional. But I bet if I did do either of those things, the person to whom I was doing them would notice and probably bitch about how huge my mitts really are.

I used to get in so much trouble when I was little for being messy, for losing things, for not keeping track of things, for going too fast and messing things up, for not putting things away. I track it all back to my hands, which always seemed bigger than the entire whole rest of my body, in sum total. I have made every effort to put away that messy child, to get all the Barbie wash-off nail polish off her ragged cuticles, to keep her from biting her nails, from flicking her hair over her shoulder compulsively. She still peeks out from time to time, and rolls her eyes when I make my bed in the mornings. She also has a real problem with the weekly dusting, almost ritualized in its pattern every Saturday. I sometimes give her the finger, just to watch her look insulted, and then I go scrub the toilet…without gloves.

I am not one of those people who can just have fun...it makes me feel guilty, and nervous that the bottom is about to fall out. That is part and parcel of living here, but not being from here, in the Babylonian sense. I know, I know, I’m supposed to trust God, my fellow humans, etc. Who doesn't have fun, right? Here's another thing: I can only let myself have fun and enjoy something if I feel like I’m learning something, making sense of questions in my head and heart, doing something that is Important and Impactful, because there is a part of me that has a hard time having fun for the sake of having fun. No, seriously. I know, it's fucking sick to do that to myself, and it’s even less fun to watch, as a by-stander. This is why (ok, it's one of the reasons why) I see a therapist regularly.

Anyway, I usually extend the "there is nothing more fun than learning" principle into my work life, as well. And that is how I ended up with my hands (the hands I cannot make myself learn to like or love) full of mysterious red dirt inside a very small church in an even smaller town in a remote part of New Mexico.

I am fascinated by miracles...not just healings, although they are the show-stoppers. I love the stories that go with miracles. Like my friend Dreyton says, “Miracles are like magic, but they aren’t magic.” Stories about mundane things, ordinary people, everyday heartbreak that seems to collide with extraordinary grace, mercy, angels, and (like Aeschylus said to Agamemnon) the awful grace of God. I had been fascinated by miracle shrines like Lourdes, Fatima, and Chimayo for years before I ever thought about visiting one of the sites. But I found myself organizing a trip for some of Church Children centered around Chimayo…and the Santa Fe ski area. There is nothing like a road-trip around Babylon to provide one with all sorts of teachable moments with the Church Children. I planned a fun trip, but we were also BY GOD GOING TO LEARN SOMETHING VALUABLE AND ADD TO OUR CHRISTIAN FORMATION. Lest we all forget, there is nothing more fun than learning.

So I took the children skiing. And I took them to the Loreto Chapel in downtown Santa Fe. We lit prayer votives, we read the story of the miracle of the carpenter who showed up to help the nuns at that church. I threatened the boys with their very lives for trying to sneak under the velvet rope and climb the stairs. We prayed. We shopped. We ate obscene amounts of food, junk and otherwise. We haggled with street vendors and had late night ice cream on the plaza. We went on a ghost tour.

The kids liked the skiing. They tolerated the ghost tour. They begged to sleep in and rent movies on the hotel tv’s. They made me wonder if I really wanted children of my own, one day. They fought learning tooth and nail, and they let me know that I was a Mean Lady for not just letting them have their ski trip, just a plain old ordinary ski trip, just like all the Methodists, and Baptists, and Presbyterians got to take, every Spring Break. They moaned and groaned the day I told them we weren't going up the mountain, we were going around it. They were not happy. At all.

We talked about miracles the day we went to Chimayo, for a long time. I told them the story of Chimayo, which you can read someplace else, if you like, and you should because it’s worth reading. They seemed sort of underwhelmed, but were willing to go along with me, because all the snacks were in my hotel room, and they hated to be hungry worse than they hated my little classroom moments. We talked about whether we believed in miracles, what constituted a miracle, why miracles do or don't happen depending on the situation, etc. They were smart kids, and had really amazing and incredible thoughts on miracles, grace, mercy, and what kind of people of faith they wanted to be.

Getting them to engage was really difficult, mostly because I was speaking what amounted to a foreign language to them, and we traveling at a snail’s pace, miraculously speaking. Once we got to the church, we debussed and stretched our legs, and tentatively explored this new place. The children began to grow quiet, preparing themselves to be still and do some thinking and praying (I hoped). I was very proud of them. It was funny to watch how we meandered all over the property, circling in closer and closer until we were all ready to go in, together. God, I get all mushy just thinking about it, right now.

We ended up inside this impossibly little worship-space (a building that seemed much too tiny to have had such power and force emanate from its walls) wandering through the maze of liturgical furniture, saying our prayers, thinking our thoughts, not really whispering or talking or anything, but being quiet and thoughtful. And all of a sudden, we were in a different room, filing in front of this little hole in the ground, full of the most beautiful red dirt I had ever seen. Redder than the dirt in the back yard where my father grew up, redder than any dirt I had ever imagined could exist. It looked like some color mediums my grandmother used to mix her china paints, when I was little. It looked like magic.

I realized that people around me were reaching for little boxes or baggies they had brought, to take some of the dirt home with them. I hadn’t even thought about that, nor had I included that in the Church Children’s list of Things To Pack, and for a split second, I felt really bad about that, and then I just stopped thinking, altogether.

The dirt is supposedly the vehicle of miraculous healings that have taken place at Chimayo...healings, pregnancies, relief from chronic pain--every possible bad thing I could imagine wanting to pray away was written in letters or photographed in pictures that were taped in layer after layer on the wall. The walls of the little room with the little hole were also decorated with crutches, wheelchair parts, pictures of babies: symbols and signs that Something had happened, and that was Something unexplainable, and un-doable, on our own. Something like magic happened to all those people. And they were never, ever the same, ever again.

I remember feeling this overwhelming compulsion to put my hands in the dirt and rub it across my palms, through my fingers, up to my wrists, like I was washing my hands. So that's what I did, running a double hand full over my hands like it was water from the rock, and in a way, I suppose it was. I was in the desert, real and other wise. Babylon has always been a study in extremes and opposites, and so this made sense to me, in a side-ways kind of way. I knew that I had to hurry, because there were other people being herded through the sanctuary and into the room with the dirt well in the floor.

I stood, hovering above that well, all of 25 years old, feeling the weight of Babylon without the words to know that’s what it was, with two handfuls of red dirt, staring blankly at a pair of hands that really no longer looked like mine, and frankly no longer looked detestable to me. Time seemed to stand still. The room seemed to go quiet and dimmer, somehow. Something had happened, and it wasn’t magic, but it was like magic. I can’t sit here and tell you that I’m entirely sure what happened, exactly, because I don’t have those kinds of words. I can tell you that I felt like the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree had been turned on inside of me, and I was reasonably sure for a split second that I was going to explode, but in the holiest and most excellent way imaginable (yes, even better than that other Very Special Feeling we sometimes have that usually involves being naked with another person and also feels like ALL the lights have been turned on inside of us). And I can tell you that nothing--not a pen, glass, phone, i-pod, battery, fork, coffee cup, Book of Common Prayer, dirty diaper, washcloth, sewing needle, lighter, nothing-- has felt the same in my hands, since that day.

I’m sure in real time, I “washed my hands”’, and then brushed the excess dirt off them in a few seconds. In my memory, it seems like it took hours. I remember putting my palms up to my face, and breathing in the earthy aroma of that glorious red dirt, and smelling the ten thousand smells that make up what something really smells like, and they were all perfect.

I was honestly tempted to lick my hands, but since I was in the presence of impressionable Church Children, and a member of the clergy (who would not have minded in the least if I had, in fact, licked my hands), I restrained myself, but only barely. We promptly and politely exited the little room with the little hole, and allowed the next herd of pilgrims to take our place. I kept looking at my palms, and they were glittering...there was quartz in the dirt...it looked like God’s version of craft glitter, and was going to be even harder to get off, and those flecks honestly never came out of the jeans I’d wiped my hands on that day…not even three years after I had wiped them. It was like magic.

Nothing has been the same since. NOTHING.

In Babylon, I try to be about the business of tearing down the walls, knowing full well that I will never be finished. (And sometimes, on days when I manage to bring down a course or two of bricks, it feels like I’m helping to do something that is like magic, but is really a miracle.) Tearing down those walls is the only way I’ll ever be able to see which direction home lays, the colors of the sunrises or sunsets, who is coming or leaving, where in the sky the moon rises. Tearing down those walls is the only way I can find a way to hold the people I love. It’s hard work, it is manual labor. It’s work for big hands. And even on days when I can’t find a way to look at these hands of mine with any real love, I remember the color of the dirt and the way it slid through my fingers, and I know that all things serve the purpose they were meant for... even my hands.

mil besos,

rmg

Babylonian Theory of Evolution

This one is about my theory of evolution.

(expletives have not been redacted...smooch!)

I have no idea when it happened, but I can tell you the moment I realized it. I was standing in the toilet aisle of a big box home improvement store, trying really hard to decide whether or not to buy the American Standard model, with the 5 year warranty, antibacterial glaze, and the ability to flush a record 154 sheets of toilet paper at one time, or the Kholer Well-Worth model, which, while not as flashy as the American Standard, brought with it the esteem of the Kohler name, and looked like it would match my bathtub and sink fairly well. I was standing in the aisle, kind of biting my lip, shifting from foot to foot, trying like hell to pick out a toilet, and I was hit with the freight train of a thought that went something like, "holy crap, THIS is what it feels like to be a grown-up."

Keep in mind that the trip to the big box home improvement store was just the last portion of a string of events over a 36-hour time frame that made my head spin. On Friday of this particular weekend, I woke up ready to do some business on my day off, and so I went to the bank, and rolled over my 401k into an IRA. I went to see Mom and Grammy for lunch, since I had the day off, and I got my teeth cleaned. Later that day, I made a mortgage payment. It was not a Chico’s kind of day—I still haven’t had one of those, yet, but it was pretty freaking grown up.

That night, I went out with my friend Jax, and had 1.5 adult drinks—1.5…meaning I left half a drink still in my glass. Can you say “self-control”? Granted, we were at Pat O’Brien’s, by the Alamo, and they have HUGE glasses, but seriously...1.5 drinks. Then we went to some townie bar on the north side of town, to see some people Jax went to high school with, which we shut down, and where I didn’t actually drink anything but water. I was home and in bed by 2:30 am...on a Friday night, like a reasonable single girl in her late twenties. (I knew this was how they did things, because I had been watching all the right t.v. shows.) No big deal, right? I was in bed at a reasonable Friday night bed time. I had hydrated after drinking, and had been super adult and productive all day, and can I just say that the dentist told me I had no cavities? I should have been totally fine, the next morning.

Wrong. I woke up Saturday morning with a hangover that was secretly really A HANGOVER—light sensitive headache, scratchy eyes, general instability in the gastrointestinal region, and I was pretty sure my cat had forgotten to use his box, and used my mouth, instead. If my friend Ryan had called me that morning, and asked me to tell him what the reading was on my Wrath of God Index, I probably would have told him it was somewhere in the 22.5-25.0 range, on a10 point scale. I wanted to die, just so I could not feel hung-over, anymore. I cursed the name of Pat O’Brien, and wished terrible things to happen to whoever invented and perpetuated the Hurricane as a cocktail to be served in HUGE FUCKING PORTIONS. I wanted a shower and a big cup of coffee. I wanted to feel like a grown-up, again. After all, I had spent the whole last day acting like one. And then I realized how many grown-ups DO wake up all hung-over and ill-feeling, and that is a normal day for them. I was immediately sad and weepy about this, which was also a symptom of the hangover.

This hangover was vengeful—granted I have a somewhat limited experience with them...no, seriously. There was no cause for the violence of it. None at all. And it was during that limnal moment between being hung-over and finally feeling slightly ok, while I was standing in the toilet aisle at home depot that I realized that there was no going back. Not ever.

There had been a Change. And even if I sold my house, gave away my cat, killed off my plants, and ran off to some do a silent retreat and contemplated to whom I would give all my worldly possessions, the real change, the change that was in my head and my heart was there to stay.

I don’t think it’s any big coincidence that Jesus didn’t start His ministry until He was thirty. For me, I didn’t start putting all the pieces of who I was together until right around my thirtieth birthday, give or take a few months on either side. Here’s why I think this is true.

And let me say here, much of this is VERY general. I was parented very well,and very intentionally. I was not a perfect kid. We did not have a perfect family, but we had a good life together, and still do...but still, here's the other hand...

For a huge portion of my life, I was lead to believe that I was preparing myself for The Future, rather than living a fully integrated life and being alive. I went to public school for thirteen years (counting kindergarten), and then went to college for that all-important Bachelor’s Degree. During my growing up years, I also attended Sunday School, summer camp, vacation Bible school, mission trips, seminars on why nice girls don’t have sex until they are married, weekend workshops for super smart kids who would all end up in law school or MBA programs, and all the other shit people my parents’ age thought they needed to do for their kids to grow up and have a chance at a vibrant and vital life. I knew I was alive, but I don’t think I understood anything about what that really meant. I mean, I had homework that was due, tomorrow…and that dude in my health class made me feel all lit up on the inside…and sometimes, I didn’t know why I felt all alone in the middle of a room full of people, and thought that must mean there was SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME. And then, there was God, all around me, but I had no idea how to get to the middle of where or what God was.

You know what all I learned? Not too fucking much, but some of it had value. For instance, I learned that it’s better to sit at the table with the quiet kids, because the loud kids will eventually start throwing dinner rolls, and then everyone at that table gets into trouble. I learned that if I sat in the back, left-corner of the room, and took notes, I could be almost invisible, and no teachers would habitually call on me, and I wouldn’t be made fun of all the time for being smart. I learned to plan four or five moves ahead, so I could become invisible, if I needed or wanted to.

I think the worst thing I learned was that Life is Something that Starts Happening on the day you have all your shit together, but not until. I learned that Life was Something you prepared for, and executed, like a dive or a driving test. At no point do I remember anyone really telling me, in no uncertain terms, with their own actions and words that Life was Something that was Happening NOW. The only model I had for that kind of edginess was Jesus. When I found myself in Babylon, and realized that, I was thankful for Jesus and mad as hell at pretty much the whole rest of everyone that I knew. Nobody told me that this final was going to be cumulative. This shit was not in the syllabus. This was not fucking fun. At all. And it was going to be like this until I died. And of course, that kind of made me want to go stick my head in the oven, and do some deep breathing.

In my family, because my father was chronically ill from the time I was 10 until he died when I was 18, we lived from doctor’s visit to doctor’s visit, and how things were going at home was directly tied to his health, most of the time. I knew that things were good because someone told me they were. I knew that things were bad because people stopped talking, and their faces got hard, and a blanket of disease would settle over the house. I didn’t know that everyone, everywhere, in every family has something like this. I didn’t learn that, certainly at least wasn’t able to process that until I got to Babylon, and started hearing pieces of what I thought was a story that only belonged to me come tumbling out of other people’s mouths.

Standing in the big box store that day, when I was 28 years old, buying my first-ever toilet to go in my first-ever house, I started to realize what would crystallize inside of me over the next three years…I was a grown up, not because of all the things that I was doing, because I’d been doing grown up things, had had to do them, since I was 17. No one needed to tell me this, and I didn’t need to go down to the license bureau and have a new i.d. made. As I was looking at the toilets, thinking about how spending more than $150 at any one time felt like a major purchase, and how I wished I had paid more attention to toilet installation on mission trips so I wouldn’t have to pay for someone to come install mine for me, I understood that picking up the mantle of who I was, of who I believed God made me to be was about just that…ME picking up the mantle, not having it handed to me when the time was just right by my fairy godparents or an angel or someone else who really loved me and thought that I was ready. I knew I was ready, or at least as ready as I was going to be, and then…shock of all shocks, I realized, like a little kid learning to ride a bike, who realizes she is RIDING HER BIKE ALL BY HERSELF BECAUSE DADDY LET GO!! YAY!! And HOLY SHIT!!, that I had been doing this for a long time, ready or not.

Predictably, I fell right of the bike, at that most excellent and good moment, and scraped myself up pretty good. Babylon giveth, and Babylon sure the hell taketh away. But I knew, undeniably that I had crossed the Rubicon, at some point, and I was here, actively engaged in my life, and aware of that in a strange and different way than I had understood that, before. I remember standing there, having this thought blaze through my bewildered consumer responses, “So this is what being a grown-up feels like…” It felt like realizing I’d been wearing some strange new piece of clothing for months, and had just figured out that the thing I had tied around my waist was actually supposed to be wound around my head.

It would take me the better part of three years to figure out how to get the thing moved around, and situated correctly. And there are still days when I’m not sure how the fuck I’m supposed to wear it, or even if I should put it on before I leave the house. On days like that, I pray a lot. And sometimes, I stay home with the cat, and we watch “The Last Waltz” with the second commentary on (because Levon Helm is amazing and his voice reminds me of the collected wisdom of parts of my Southern childhood), and as soon as I hear Neil Young start the harmonica solo just before beginning “Helpless”, I know that tomorrow will be a better day. Learning to live in Babylon, to be a grown-up here, to try and walk beside Jesus…it’s a day by day reconciliation of the little girl in the drive way and the grown woman in the toilet aisle. It’s evolution on the most basic spiritual level, and just like my vestigial tail took hundreds of thousands of years to lose, learning how to walk upright into the Kingdom will take a long, long time.

scatter brain...

i think i'm going to have to start writing everything down...and keeping a notebook tied around my neck, so i don't lose my notes. i seriously underestimated the back-to-school madness. i'm pretty excited about being back with seventh graders, and teaching them theology, episcopal-style. i'm more than pretty excited...i've been waiting all summer to get back in the classroom. nothing feels better than being with them, and talking about how big God is. it's the best part of my whole job, right now...the part, besides taking communion to my old ladies, that feels like it's real, and holy, and active, and IMPORTANT.

one of my little old guy's cheese is totally slipping off the cracker. schizophrenia apparently gets worse as you age, and my little friend is really struggling to maintain his grip on what's real and what's not. there's a whole long sad story about this little old guy. his family is pretty well checked out, so the church (and by the church, somehow, that ends up meaning me...woo hoo...) ends up having to do a lot of heavy lifting for this little guy. i'm afraid some of the heavy lifting to be done soon is going to look like transitioning him out of his home, and into a group home or facility. and holy crap...that hurts my heart to think about. but i don't know that there's a lot that can be done to avoid it. i'd rather have him mad at me than to have to deal with him being dead, in his house, because of something that could have been prevented. shit, you guys...sometimes, i just wish for easy answers.

the oldest nephew started "kinneygardens" yesterday, at saint gwegorwy the gweat. how is he almost six?? geeze oh man...time does march on.

camp was amazing. camp is always amazing, and it's the place i always think of whenever anyone says the word, "home".

ken burns' civil war documentary was even better than i remembered it being as a kid, watching it with my dad. shelby foote's voice reminds me of my pops, and i loved that. the wwII documentary should start arriving in a couple of days. that guy makes some great films. i think i've got "baseball" and "the brooklyn bridge" slated for viewing in november. YAY. also, mad props to cory will, who sent me "no direction home"...which i can't stop watching. i still want to marry levon helm, circa 1974.

mil besos,
rmg

summermusic 2011

here's the music i've been listening to since june 21st... if you want a cd, i'll even mail you one. be advised, as per usual, the list is in alphabetical order. i think it makes a really good mix.

happy listening

ashokan farewell--nashville chamber orchestra, featuring paul gambill
at my most beautiful--rem
barton hollow--civil wars
chief--patti griffin
damn, sam--ryan adams
free fallin--tom petty
gimme shelter--the rolling stones
gin and juice--the gourds (if you've never heard this cover, you are MISSING OUT. additionally, this will be the song that plays during the credits portion of any movie about my life that is ever made. )
God willing and the creek don't rise--ray lamontagne and the pariah dogs
great high mountain--ralph stanley
helpless--neil young, the band, joni mitchell
hurricane--the band of heathens (cover of an old john anderson single...SO GOOD)
i'm sensitive--jewel (yeah, yeah, i know...i don't want to hear your whining...)
if i had wings--matraca berg
it'll all work out--tom petty
jonas and ezekial--indigo girls
levon--elton john
little green--alicia wiley (cover of a joni mitchell classic)
live forever--billy joe shaver
looking for a good time--david nail
mona lisas and mad hatters--indigo girls (live track, SO GOOD)
mr. bake-0--adam sandler (sometimes, revisiting joke songs from
mr. whoever you are-- tim mcgraw (i know...i know...i secretly love tim mcgraw...)
my father's gun--elton john (on my list of top twenty favorite songs, ever ever ever)
orange juice blues--the band
slow motion--third eye blind
wild world --marc cohn (cover of cat steven's classic)
your song-- elton john (there's a lot of the reg on this mix list...go figure)

mil besos,
rmg

On How Things Are: Babylonian Monday

I have become painfully aware in the last few years of how hard it is to be a grown up. Additionally, I understand that about seventy-five percent of the people I know and love are grown ups, in the realest and truest sense. They take care of their business, they think about what comes out of their mouths before they speak, they care for each other (and for me) when things get hard or crazy, they show up, they help out, they get it. The other twenty-five percent are either actual children (and therefore are not obligated to act like grown ups...even though some of them do...) or people who act like children.

I understand that being a real grown up is not always fun or easy. In fact, there are days when it really sucks to be a real grown up. However, the alternative is...well, it's not pretty.

This what I mean when I say "be a real grown up"... and I admit that I fail daily at one or several of these...but I try...

1) Be appropriate. If you're about to say something you think would embarrass your grandmother or someone else's grandmother, DON'T SAY IT. This also applies to Facebook. if you aren't sure what embarrasses someone's grandmother theses days, i can give you phone numbers for several grandmothers, including my own. please call them and screen yourself ASAP. Also, don't air dirty laundry, family feuds, divorce proceedings, or other melt-downs...you know that saying about turds in the punchbowl? Yeah, it's SOCIAL MEDIA, not your best friend's kitchen, your therapist's couch, or the confessional at church. THINK BEFORE YOU POST.

2) Pay attention and know your depth. If you have no idea about debt-limit, carbon footprints, the legal length for a keeper redfish, the migratory patterns of the swallows of Capistrano, etc., do not go read the wikipedia page on said topic and try and launch yourself as an authority on said topic. it's ok. not everyone can know everything. Be proud of your specialty. If you don't have one, be ok with that, or try to formulate one. Just be advised: reading the entire John Grisham canon does not give you license to practice law, or even to know what the hell is actually going on in a court case. This is the same situation as a cat having kittens in an oven...those kitties are not ( and never will be) muffins. Also, you can get a world class education with a library card. Just saying...

3) Say thank you as much as possible, to people, to plants, to pets, to God, to the universe. Even the smallest amount of gratitude, over the simplest of things goes A LONG WAY. Also, when someone says "thank you" to you, have the good grace to say "you're welcome", and not some dumb remark like "no problem" or "no worries". Acknowledge that the person is thanking you, whether you feel you went out of your way or not to help them out, do for them, refill their tea glass, etc. Same goes for smiling. Smile a lot. Return smiles.

4) If you say you're a Christian, or proclaim to be a person of any faith, have the good sense to act like it. Read your Bible (or whatever holy book applies to you and your method of knowing God) , and get in touch with Jesus (or appropriate incarnation of the Infinite) . Turn off your tv, and radio, and put down the newspaper. Go outside and see the creation God put in motion, and for the love of little green apples STOP BEING MEAN. You know that whole part about giving someone your coat if they ask for your shirt, or walking two miles instead of just one? I'm pretty sure Jesus REALLY SUPER EXTRA MEANT THAT. And all that stuff about poor people and orphans and strangers in strange lands? Yeah, he meant that part, too. It's super easy to talk about ideas and theories and dogma and doctrine from our clean houses and quiet lives. It's easy to forget that even the people (especially the people) who don't look, think, vote, act, pray or believe like we do are, in fact, still God's precious and incredible children. Stop smacking people around with your version of the Bible, and start asking God to help you love them like Jesus does. This is not easy. you will cry and be uncomfortable, a lot. Keep breathing. Keep praying. the Kingdom of God is between us. All of us.

5) However it works for you, be physically present. This may mean that you have to buy a plane ticket you can't afford, or sleep on a sofa bed that makes you understand what purgatory REALLY is, or go for thirty six hours without any sleep, at all. You will attend weddings, funerals, baptisms, graduations, etc. You will give presents that you won't receive thank you notes for (and yes, that's bad...), relations will exhibit terrible manners, some of the people you go to see will not behave well while you're there, and you will probably end up spending more money/getting less sleep than you bargained for. SHOW UP ANYWAY. There is no substitute, digitally or otherwise, that is better than YOU. If you can't show up, offer lots of encouragement via other outlets. but still...nothing is better than YOU in the flesh. And you'll be glad you went. Scrolling through your text message log is nothing compared to sharing a good/bad/funny/hilarious/ridiculous/shenanigans.

6) Work like hell to make things different than they are, better than they are, even though you know that you're just a cog in the wheel. Throwing up your hands and quitting because things are hopeless, feel bad, look ugly, or make you want to throw up...little kids do that...two year-olds do it really, really well. We are not two. WE ARE NOT TWO. We do what God, or the Universe asks us to do, answer the call that resonates in the deepest parts of ourselves, and give up the whine of "this shit is not fair", because as real grown ups, we've come to understand that "fair" is only something that happens in the city park, and has a lot to do with cotton candy and pony poo. Still, we work. We live in hope. When you see a wall go up, tear it down, even if you have to use your bare hands, and even if you see the work crew coming behind you to repair what you've just torn down. if you want things in life/world/etc to be different, stop expecting anyone else to make it different/right. The universe owes you nothing. God gave you breath, bone, and blood. That's enough for a major arts and crafts project. Do something major and magnificent, even if it's a little thing.

7) Don't ever believe, not for a single minute, that you are ever really alone, even when you feel like you are. God is there...even if you don't believe...God comes peeking into our lives in the most wonderful and joyfully sneaky ways. The loneliness we feel at the bottom of ourselves is part of the human condition, and a result of the fall. Deal with it. It's a universal. And it won't be right until we get to whatever happens after this life is over. No marriage, no babies, no lovers, no medicine, no retreat will fix that. Keep saying your prayers, loving your people, planting gardens, anyway. The loneliness is as heavy as you let it be, is as light as the burden you allow God or your peeps to help you carry. Deal with it. Get right with it. Know that it's not an eternal situation, and stop expecting it to be different.

8) Do not take yourself too seriously, but don't take yourself too lightly, either. Do the work it takes to arrive at a balance. It's hard. you'll readjust a lot. Sometimes, you will be very uncomfortable. Deal. It's good for you.

9) Pray when you wake up. Pray when you go to sleep. Pray during your day. Prayer looks like a lot of things to a lot of people. Find what your way looks like, and be fearless about the practice. Even if you aren't a church person, or don't know if you believe in God, or just what, it's good to pray...it gets you out of your head and encourages you to be engaged in the world in a different way. I think praying is a hallmark of adulthood.

10) Know your own story. Own your own story. Tell your story when it's time to share it. Know when not to tell your story. Your story is a holy thing. Treat it that way.

i think i have some work to do...

mil besos,
rmg

a confession from the midst of Babylon...

here's some stuff you might not know...

i love to talk on the phone...for hours...usually about nothing of great import. i have talked a full phone battery all the way down on one conversation, at least.

i sing, at the top of my lungs, in the shower. and i do smash-ups of my favorite songs, and there are occasionally dance moves involved.

i talk to my cat. i know he understands me. the only form of communication i've figured out from his end that is no-hair balls means "yes", and an abundance of hair balls means "NO".

the bulk of my netflix que are documentaries.

i really prefer the british-english spelling of most words.

i hate it when people call me "rach". i also hate how "rach" looks. seriously. hate it. but it's been going on for almost 33 years, so i've made a decision to just pretend it doesn't make me want to scream and throw things when people address me as such.

i compulsively sing harmonies in the car. i can't stop, and lately, don't even realize i'm doing it. this may or may not be a cool thing, depending on if you are in the car with me.

when i'm upset or irritated, and able to finally vent about it, i usually take ten to fifteen minutes to actually get to the part about what's upsetting me. there's a warm up lap, and then some sideways stuff, and then the real issue presents. it's weird. but it's how i do shit. knowing is half the battle, right?

i refuse to buy DVD's that do not include at least one commentary track.

the mix i made for winter 2010-2011 is one of the best music mixes i've ever made.

i will turn 33 on a business trip to new york. i hope like hell the meeting goes well, and i can convince someone in the publishing world to buy my idea, and help me be a real writer.

i will probably always vote democrat. people who know me know this...some of them agree, some of them disagree, and we all just kind of keep our mouths shut, and try to love each other, in spite of, and sometimes because of, our voting records.

i hate the fact that i'm installing cable this week...i've lived without it for ten years, but don't feel like it's reasonable to ask the renter to deal with my particular hang up...so...cable...eww. i'd like to tell you i don't plan on watching it...but i hate lying.

i can't walk into walgreens or half-price books without dropping forty dollars. i should just hand it to them at the door.

i really hate my new shampoo. but i bought it, and i'm going to use it until it's all gone. this is much like the time i though lemon flavored toothpaste was a good idea. i gagged my way through that tube, and i will wash/condition my way through these bottles. i never should have caved to the price point comparison, and totally cheaped out on my hair product...which is just something i need to get right with...because it's just hair. except that it's MY HAIR, and i like it to smell like flowers and feel soft and pretty. BUT IT'S JUST HAIR. i know, i know, i know. i still hate this shampoo, you guys.

i get to see bob dylan in six days. i will probably cry. i will probably dance like a fool. i will laugh, and close my eyes, and i won't care if it rains, because i've already planned out three outfits for weather contingencies.

i've been mentally reciting psalm 121 for the last three days.

i've realized that the cavalry is not coming. i am the cavalry. now, where in the eff is my horse?

i've played guitar almost every night for a month, just for myself. i love playing, again. i also drag out the autoharp, on occasion. i think i might even be ready to try and write a new song. two a year seems a little like a dry spell...surely, there is something else that needs to be sung...it's been nice to toughen my fingers up, to play, to sing, to feel like i'm making something that is unique in time and space, even if God and the cat are the only things that hear me.

all things shall be well. all things shall be well. all things shall be well. and all manner of things shall be well.

mil besos,
rmg

dry spell

You guys...it's so hot, here. But I'm so grateful to be here, grateful to be able to set the same number of plates at the dinner table as last week, I don't care that all the beautiful thunderheads that build every afternoon are a bunch of liars. Grammy had a major health scare last week, and we spent almost a week holding our collective breaths until Nurse Stacey figured the whole mess out, and things began to resolve. The doctor was so excited, he gave my mother a bear-hug.

Here's the real thing I learned, though. Even if this blog post were about telling you that Grammy had died, I'd still be grateful. God shows up, always. Even when you're not sure you want God to show up, and especially when you don't know what you want God to look like. We rise up singing. We are just visiting this life. We are pilgrims on a journey, and this life is part of the journey, but to imagine that this life is the totality...well, that just feels plain silly. At least today, that feels plain silly.

I think it's time to get out the poster paints, shuck the clothes, turn up Ritchie Havens covering The Beatles, and dance like a lunatic in my backyard...because I can't help it. I was praying a couple of months ago...really more just being quiet, and trying to listen. I remembered reading over and over "when you seek me with all your heart, you will find me..." and thinking that there came a profound point after my unconditional surrender when I realized I literally COULD NOT STOP seeing God's hand prints all over pretty much everything, and how that changed pretty much everything. So, in this dry dry dry summer, I find myself being grateful, all over again, and praying for rain, knowing that God is growing something gorgeous and delightful, in the mean time, just out of my sight. I'll know it when I see it. And when I see it, I'll know it.

mil besos,
rmg