Portrait of A Lady...

Sometimes, Thursdays were my Sundays.

I saw her every Thursday that she felt like it, unless I was sick or out of town. Sometimes, we saw each other on Sundays. But mostly, Thursdays were our day.

We had the same routine every week. I was always about ten minutes late. Her dog always barked at me, like I was after the good silver and all his doggie treats. Sometimes, she would show me pictures of ridiculous shoes in the Neiman Marcus Catalogue, and we would laugh wondering how anyone could ever walk in shoes like that, much less afford them. She would tell me about recipes she had tried, or ones she wanted to try. We talked about her kids and her beloved husband, Lloyd. She always asked about my family, any guys I might be dating, and would sometimes tease me that I had better not wait too long to start having babies, if I was going to have them. I would ask her about how she was feeling, and she was usually pretty honest, which means I didn't always hear happy answers. But this is what we did, week in and week out, whether we were at the top of our game or at the bottom of the hill.

Her living room was a holy place. The carpet, the pictures, the knick-knacks, the granny square throw on the arm of the couch, her chair, her mail table, the clock with shells that her daughter-in-law sent her from Florida, and the way she almost always had the card I sent her the week before poised on the coffee table that sat between us—this was our sanctuary. This is where we met, prayed, talked, laughed, cried, shared, and fed each other. This was our pantry, where we went to get our bread and drink. And this is what we did, week in and week out, whether we were at the top of our game or at the bottom of the hill.

Communion was a holy moment for us. Me in one chair, her in the other, the little dog perched on an ottoman between us…”This is the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven”. I would say to her, and I would put the Host in her hand, and I would hold it there for a minute, mostly just to hold her hand in those moments. To remind her that even though she couldn't come to the building, that this was church, that this was just as real, that she was and is just as important as anyone else, that she was and is a part of who I am as a person of faith.. She always met my eye. We had an understanding. We knew.

I hated leaving her house, every single time I did it. Saying goodbye to the safe, warm place we made, seeing her George Burns' rosebush fade into the distance... I hated leaving her house. The dog would get after me again, always while I was giving her a hug goodbye. She knew I would call her next week, but I would tell her that, anyway. She would always tell me “Thank you”, even though I knew she was thankful and she would always tell me she loved me, even though I knew that, too. She would lock the door behind me, and I would wait until I heard the bolt turn, before I made my way across the lawn, back to my little car, on to the next place.

Sometimes, Thursdays were my Sundays.

For my darling friend Arlene, this Thursday is a forever Sunday. And she's probably already in the kitchen, dancing and laughing, and waiting for the rest of us to show up and eat.

Such grace, such incredible strength, such a woman...

mil besos,

rmg

2011: The Year that Ate My Lunch...and Punched Me in the Face...and Then Pushed Me Down a Flight of Stairs Into The Best Place, Yet.

I remember a night last January, early in the month, when I still had Christmas lights up on the porch. Just about five minutes before I fell asleep, one of those lightening bolt thoughts shot across the landscape of my mind, and I knew that by the time the next January rolled around, Things Would Be Different. Despite the drop in my stomach and surge in blood pressure, I fell right to sleep.

You guys...2011 kicked my ass. Hard. Unmercifully. Explicitly. Remorselessly. Gratuitously, even. But here I sit, in the waxing days of 2012, with all my limbs and family and sanity (mostly) in tact. One of my favorite writers has a line that says, "Ka is a wheel". So it is with time. We are seasonal creatures. And the seasons move in circles, too. And sychronicity is everywhere. Once I started sifting through the pieces of this year, I realized that I had never been surprised by any of the drama and weirdness that's been thrown at me over the last twelve months. I knew, down in my bones, that God had asked me to be looking for a window, and that I would know it when I saw it. I know that sounds weird. It looks weird to type it out. But I knew it, in my bones. And I knew I had just better pay full and focused attention to pretty much everything, all the time. This was what we like to call "daunting".

By March, I'd promised myself and God that even if I had to drag myself screaming and crying through the rest of the year, or however long it took for things to not suck so badly, I would not just lay down and quit. That was a hard promise to keep.

By the middle of September, things had gone from weird to downright surreal, and I was mostly just hanging on for dear life. And then, I saw the window. No, seriously. There really was a window, and it was broken into a thousand pieces. Seriously. And it was my car window. I walked into the car port, and for a minute, didn't really register what I was looking at. Some precious child of God had smashed my window in with a tree limb--for an ipod and communion kit that I'm sure they though was a purse. Looking at the glass and seeing the mess, this cold shiver of understanding ran up and down my back, and lodged itself in my belly. I knew everything I needed to know about the whole back quarter of 2011 just by looking at that window.

In short order, over the next two months, I was informed that I would no longer be employed at my former parish after December 31st, because of monetary issues. One other staff person was also effected by the economy. Frankly, I was relieved. But I was also terrified to be functionally out of work, in the middle of such a risky time for employment in pretty much every sector. I looked and fished and hunted and pecked and prayed and worried and threw up a couple of times. I switched out cars. I found a realtor. I tried not to panic. Grammy almost died, again. My sister in law had major back surgery. Granny had major headaches and vertigo. My therapist had a major stroke (no seriously, I'm not making this up).

And...you'll love this...because this is what put shit over the top...this dude, with whom I'd had a 15 year long friendship and who I quite simply adored, decided that the new theme song to our relationship was going to be "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore", and made out with me fiercely after buying me a birthday dinner, and wants to see what would happen if we, you know...had a relationship for the real. Like real people do. And then...after two whole dates...THE DUDE DIS-A-FREAKING-PPEARED. No, seriously.

And when I called, to offer an olive branch (after not hearing from him for two days, and wondering if he might be...dead...) and asked him to call me, just to talk and clarify, not to yell or scream or try to fix--nothing. NOTHING.

Keep in mind, this whole shenanigan goes down the SAME WEEK, SAME TWO DAY PERIOD, that I was made an unofficial job offer that was for a really exciting job and had that offer unofficially retracted in less than 36 hours. For the record, I've still not been formally informed that the conversation I thought was official was unofficial, nor have I been informed that I am no longer in the running for the job. HOLY SMOKES. Yeah, so dream job and hot boyfriend were literally vaporized at almost the exact same time.

Clearly, there was nothing to do but drive to the beach for less than 24 hours, and rinse myself off in the Gulf of Mexico.

I cried a lot, this year. I cried more than I've cried since my dad died. I cried in front of people. I cried on my steering wheel. I cried at my desk. I cried on the phone. I cried in the shower. I cried while the cat stared blankly at me, wondering what in the deuce had happened to his person. I cried waiting in lines. I cried after dates. I cried before dates. I cried a lot.

And then, in the middle of November, my fairy godmother called to invite me to come work with her. In College Station. And all I could do was very tearfully say "Yes, and thank you." And I've been trying to figure out the rest of it, along the way.

I've moved all the stuff I own to a town I never thought in ten million years I'd ever live in. I moved out of the condo that I bought in 2006, five years to the day after I signed the closing papers. Driving out of town, and trying to avoid snarling traffic, I ended up taking the back way, which was the way we'd driven into town the day I started looking for houses.

Syncing up...life has a funny way of doing it. God has such a weird sense of humour.

I'm right where I'm supposed to be. I'm so happy to be here.

mil besos,

rmg

sweet spot

it was a shot i could hit over and over, for hours.

one, two, square up, swish...running steps, snag the ball...one, two, square up, swish...running steps, snag the ball...for hours. it was my shot, and even after i couldn't play ball anymore, i would find myself out on the court my grandfather put in, shooting for hours, until the security light came on, and it was too much of a hassle to chase the ball down the alley.

one, two, square up, swish...

i can still hit that shot, eight times out of ten, for hours...one, two, square up, swish...i think about teaching my hypothetical children that shot, watching them learn how to follow through, to shoot from the bottoms of their feet, to make a shot with their whole body, to hear the sound a brand- new net makes when a perfectly inflated ball drops right through...to wait breathlessly (if your shot was a little off...) as physics decides whether the rim pitches the ball in, or spits it back out...to chase your own shot and to keep shooting...one, two, square up, swish...to watch them get to that spot where making that shot, refining the mechanics of it, how the slap and shuffle become the only sounds in the whole universe, and the troubles of the day are worked and worried over and made right inside those sounds--there is something holy about the sweet spot.

the shot was something i could always do, like diagramming sentences or memorizing dates for a test. i just could/can do it. you'd think that finding the sweet spot would be more of an intentional endeavor...but the absolute surprise of virtuosity is what what makes that spot so sweet. when no other shots would fall, it's the one i would always go back to, and start reworking the floor from that best of all spots. nothing felt as good as hitting that shot time after time after time, even when no one was watching but me. hitting that shot became like saying a rosary, keeping my prayers, making my mitzvoh...like i was made to hit that shot...

all i need is a wooden floor, a hoop with a backboard, a basketball, and time. i can hit that spot for hours...hours...and nothing but the slap, slap, slap, the swishes, the way you start to rhythmically time your breaths to the shot...with no one watching but the darkened game clock, no one to hear me swear when i miss, or squeal when i barely make one in...

soon, i'll have a ball in my hands, again. and i'll find that spot, and i'll shoot until i can't get my arms over my head, anymore.

one, two, square up, swish...

mil besos,
rmg

catching up

by the time i was finally pulling my hair up into the black elastic hair-tie i wear around my left wrist, i felt like every string in my body was tuned up to a pitch that would shatter glass. standing at the edge of the water, all i could think of was that this was absolutely worth the tank of gas i used. i didn't run, like i thought i would. i never stopped walking, either. honestly, i felt like i could have walked to europe, and never had to break stride. soon, i was junior-high shrieking at the chilly water temperature, even as i was thirty-year old woman observing the clarity of the water that was creeping slowly slowly slowly up my legs. by the time i was up to my neck, that awful taste of tears had been washed out of the back of my throat, and i found myself laughing out loud, staring up at the late afternoon sun, as the latest edition of sunset water colors began to wash over all that unbelievably soft-enough-to-touch robin's egg blue.

i drove home with salt and sand in my hair, my lips chapped, and my eyes dry.

i have always known how to do this. and i have never been afraid to do it. taking life by the horns, and turning it around right sometimes takes years, or weeks, or months. sometimes it takes a bath of fire or ice to jar loose what is stuck....conversely, what is sometimes stuck will not be moved. and what cannot be moved must either be enshrined or left behind. the difference between an altar and a stumbling block is greater than or equal to the difference between a raven and a writing desk. sometimes, the salt wears away the blemishes, and the magnifying effect of the constantly moving water makes the rest of everything else look tame and rather ordinary, by comparison. baptism looks like about a million different things, and i have been baptized into a thousand different iterations, all along the way, and they all remind me of the one big time i was baptized...in a little white robe over my fancy purple little kid bathing suit, in a concrete baptistry that was painted as blue as the sky i swam under saturday afternoon.


the raindrops, the rivers, the swimming pools, the ponds, the gulfs, the oceans...all the water in the world has one memory. and that memory is about birth and being clean. the wisdom of the water, the sanctity of the sacrament, the banality of broken hearts and lazy afternoons--who would be foolish enough to stay in her room and weep over ANYTHING AT ALL, when such riches lay literally at her feet?

there were waves and laughter. that is worth at least a tank of gas.

waste is the cardinal sin.

mil besos,
rmg

PS...TANGENT...POST-MODERN RANT TO FOLLOW: ts eliot maintains that everything tends toward reconciliation. there is no good friday without easter sunday. crazy horse screams down from his wounded mountain, from a thousand-odd miles away, that silence is a message. G-d does not play at dice... how will you live your one wild and precious life...be a bride married to amazement? did you proclaim that it would not always be night, knowing you are right? how many bumpersticker slogans can dance on the head of a pin? and doesn't integrity do a fabulous job of keeping it's side of the bed warm, at night? wrecking balls come in all shapes and sizes, and you'd better be ready to watch them do their job...and those sacred cows you've tended so sweetly...hope you like hamburgers. do you want fries with that? buy the ticket and ride the ride. or buy the ticket, and chicken out at the last minute, and watch people step around and over you to take the ride. thought you were the only one in line? oh...sorry...this is a pretty popular ride...and it's awesome. you go on This One, and things will never look the same, again. not your idea of a good time? that's fine...just...you know...be on your way, stand not amazed, etc.

we have work to do. and we don't have time to deal with amateurs, because after twelve years in the minors, i don't try out.

an odd turn of events

all the major meteor showers conspired to occur all at once. rather than streaming down like normal, in the correct order, they simply agreed to go, as though they were all of a piece. of course, they seemed like a rather ancient and spectacular species of leonid, springing from the mouth of the lion. they fell so hard and so fast, this reporter was unable to keep track of the wishes, much to her consternation. it was possible, even for a moment, to believe that at the very least, a few that landed in her pocket might yet come true. but as with most things, we must all agree with tom petty...the waiting IS the hardest part.

strange astronomical weather notwithstanding, change seems to be abroad in the land. colors are rising, rain may indeed fall, ebenezers seem to spring up everywhere, and it would seem that the headlines ought to be eight feet tall and proclaiming that bidden or not, G-d is present. and that ought to mean something, ought to occupy us...on all the streets we travel. in the end, the things that bring us together are more powerful and transcendent that the things that separate us. this reporter is not the first person to say that, and is by far not the most eloquent. but the fact remains...some things, some people, some experiences must be. just be.

this reporter must add that while einstein's figure for the speed of light is just as true now as when light was switched on, to begin with, the old man left out the figure for the speed of thought. science currently operates under the premise that nothing may exceed the speed of light, as to do so would likely (...) result in the total annihilation of any substance, were it achieve said speed. would that such were the case with circular thoughts that have no real chance at reasonable or satisfying answers. would that the thoughts would speed up to such a pitch that they would burst into...stillness.

eye witness accounts report of a strange event, happening in what may best be described as "the long ago", and concerns a rag-tag bunch of exiles on their way to a home that none of them had ever, ever seen before. the rag-tag bunch was led by a run-away with a stutter. they found themselves wondering, and wandering, and being pursued by fearsome foes. they wondered if it would just be better to bag the whole shooting match, and go back to making bricks out of dirt and sweat, and pieces of their fingers and souls. they wondered why they were fingered to die in the desert, why they didn't just stay where they were. there were already plenty of graves to be had back the other way. they were panicked. up against the wall. freaking the deuce out. wondering what, if anything, they could do to at least make an effort to defend themselves, demoralized as they were. from somewhere down the line, word was passed, or rather A Word was passed. the only thing to be done, the most best right correct and absolute thing to be done, was to be still. the fight was on, but it was not their fight, although the fight was most definitely about them. and at the end of the day, there were no graves dug in the desert, only the sound of the wind on the water, and the counter-harmony of the mystic music inside the pillar of fire.

this reporter must own up to the fact that her account of this story is second hand, at best. she must also concede a rather large bias toward the rag-tags, and the stuttering run-away. there are other accounts of further escapades in the desert, however, this reporter finds this particular item rather notable.

one is not often presented with easy answers, surface or otherwise. to this reporter, the staggering and audacious simplicity of the order to simply be still, is humbling. we feel this requires further study, as this reporter is quite sure that understanding this very simple idea is Quite Important, on a wide variety of levels. she thanks you for your consideration of this matter. additional reports to follow as information allows.

all is well.

mil besos,
rmg

free form

low bellies of clouds hover. is this the end of the drought? is this the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end? does that even matter? it's raining in the now, and that's the only certainty any of us ever possess. right now, it is raining. full stop. i keep thinking this thought, the thought i think for all of us, "we are not made for this shit." we're not. we don't belong here. this place is killing us. but we got ourselves kicked out of the garden, and there's no one to blame but ourselves, because we had fair warning, informed consent, and caveats. and we keep getting ourselves kicked out of gardens, because we just can't help but break that shiny new toy. because you won't really be happy until you chew out all the flavor and stick the leftovers in your hair. and it's true--i've seen it--it's all fun and games until someone loses and eye, or a heart, or sanity. and then, katy bar the fucking door. because it's like what dr gonzo says, "when the going gets weird, the weird go pro." the secret is, the garden we got kicked out of is hiding in plain sight...it's between us when we love, when we live real lives, and i believe Jesus says that over and over and over because it's so important. the kingdom of God is now, is here, is real, is between us and expressed best when we get our bullshit out of the way, when we stop faking happiness and relationships, and just be, in the now.

but i digress...it's raining. it's raining right now. and in two minutes or two days or two weeks it might not be. i keep thinking this thought, this thought i think for all of us, "we don't have to live like this." we don't have to be mean and nasty when we say no. or disagree. we have just absolutely got to stop thinking of things in terms of "us" and "them". we are them. them are us. if we only treat the people we love well, the people who look or think or vote or marry or die or live or church like we do, it's really not much of a stretch. and frankly, it's just not enough. it's not enough to be personally responsible. it's not enough to just take care of yourself. i mean, it's getting the job done, you continue to respire and participate in the human experience...but you have got to learn to share. there is ENOUGH, and somewhere, someone has got a need that someone somewhere can fill. and then, there's Jesus, who tells us that our neighbor is whoever is near us, where ever we may be, and that loving our neighbor is only second to loving God. and then, you have to stop and realize that Jesus really, really, really meant what He said, because he went around DOING that very thing. it's not a hard job, but it's a job that requires your very life. no, really. but this is entirely doable. and it must be done. it's a mandate. and we have to get serious about it, and make it look real and meaningful in our own lives.

the now...so holy, so fluid, so mysterious...like silence, the minute you start talking about it, it's gone.

it's raining, now.

mil besos,
rmg

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