Serenity and Suffering

It’s 9:30 p.m., and my hubby and I just came in from the deck where blazing logs in the portable fire pit kept us company for the last hour.  A slice of moon still hangs in the sky over the lake directly opposite our house, shedding sparkles on the water while staring orb-to-eye through the picture window.  It’s been a serene eventide, bright, still, unobstructed and quiet except for the occasional ping of an acorn on the deck.   A tiny wisp of cloud just now appeared to wrap the tip of the moon in a shawl.  I feel the softness, the warmth of it all. 

And yet I am also conscious of suffering, the experience that shoves us into another dimension and confirms the spiritual greatness of the human spirit.  “Suffering seems to belong to man’s transcendence: it is one of those points in which man is in a certain sense ‘destined’ to go beyond himself, and he is called to this in a mysterious way.”  (John Paul II)

The co-existence of seeming opposites may appear to be contradictory.  However, in my experience serenity can and does exist simultaneously with suffering, and may even grow out of it.  When known horizons are stretched and redefined amidst suffering, we discover we are not the people we thought.  Suffering allows us to face the deepest need of the heart, to rediscover and rebuild our deepest selves in ways that bear witness to the inward life-giving power of God.  And THAT in itself is good reason for serenity.

Communication Breakdown

This morning I called my doctor’s nurse, Carol, on the phone to discuss the possibility of seeing Dr. P sometime soon.  Carol’s voice seemed especially soft and hard to hear, so I said, “I’m so sorry, Carol, but I can’t hear you very well.  I have a hearing disorder that makes phone conversations difficult…could you speak louder, please?”  Hearing is hard work for me.  I need all the help I can get.

She kept talking at approximately the same voice level, and at one point I decided to interrupt with another request, “I really can’t hear you.  It’s awkward having a hearing disability on the phone – could you speak a little louder, please?”

This happened a third time when finally I said, “This is quite embarrassing, but I really, really can’t hear you!”

She replied, “Oh, I’m not talking to you anyway, I’m talking to Suzanne.”

Oh.  

In about fifteen seconds I assumed she was speaking to me because her voice was just a teeny bit louder.  Still, her words came quickly, like little marbles that rolled right past me. “Ten o’clock Friday?”  And then, “Your phone must have a bad connection.”

I repeated, “I still am having a hard time hearing you – what time on Friday?  Oh, and the connection is fine, I have a hearing disorder.”

“TEN (long pause) O’CLOCK.  If you’d told me that earlier I could have spoken louder.”  This was said matter-of-factly without either apology or criticism.

Duh.  I resisted the temptation to smash the receiver on the table and give her fifty auditory lashes – er, smashes.  Rather, I would be gracious. After all, it WAS only 8:30 in the morning.  She probably wasn’t even awake yet.  I barely was.

“Ten o’clock will be fine.  Thanks so much.  I really appreciate your help.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, as if a switch suddenly flipped and she genuinely engaged with me for the first time.  “You know, you’re really lucky, because we’d just had a cancellation – it usually isn’t easy to get in to see Dr. P so quickly.  I’m glad you called when you did.” 

“Yeah, me too.  Thanks again!”

Communication: an adventure in exchange when words mean everything, and everything hinges on patience.

Clarity

Our weather shifted during the night, ushering in fall-like temperatures today. Lingering humidity and haziness vanished, leaving the air crisp and clear with in-focus views of metallic leaves flickering and mature grasses blowing in the wind. I could almost outline the edges of the waves, the bumpy, tree-topped horizon, and the smallest wisps of clouds with a visual sharpie.  Everything seemed close and distinct.

While driving home from the nearest Big Grocery Store (we’re in the boonies, remember, so it’s a 25 minute trip one way) I soaked up the optical clarity: the cultivated gardens with waning vegetables, the fading goldenrod, the shrinking lily pads in the big pond where the swan couple nested next to the road early in the summer.   

I appreciated details made sharper by today’s air quality, and this evening have been correlating the experience with shifts in other perceptions.  What if I could think, feel, act and react clearly, without any fuzziness? That would be a taste of heaven.

Vote for the Goat?

I’m in an eye-squinting brainstorming reverie at the moment, trying to drum up more potential solutions to a problem.  A red ceramic mug sits at my right hand holding steamy peppermint tea, inspiring me with its spunky tingle-taste reminiscent of the Wrigley Doublemint gum of my childhood.  Mmmmmm.  I still remember that lime green wrapper with the foil liner. Good brain food.  Mmmmmm.

Anyway, here’s the problem.  Our kids who are building a new house and domesticating 40 acres of Tarzan-wild, untamed countryside, have sectioned off an area close to the house as a play yard for the kiddos and fenced it in.  Within this play yard is a lovely shade tree, a beckoning low rock trellis for climbing, and plenty upon plenty of poison ivy.

The dilemma is this.  If they pull the poison ivy, some of the roots will almost certainly remain and the plants will grow back.  That’s what poison ivy does.  It loves to live and refuses to die. If they spray it with Round Up or some other toxic herbicide, a chemical residue could remain and their special needs child may end up eating it (he puts everything in his mouth and regularly eats dirt, for example).  Even if they dabbed the leaves, they feel squeamish about the possibility of a small amount lingering somehow – rubbing against neighboring grass or whatever. So we’re down to creative problem solving, with these as potential solutions:

1      1. Buy a goat.  Goats love poison ivy.  They chomp it down like candy.  They also can spread it to humans who touch them and will most likely paw/dig the yard and defecate on it. But they’re endearing, friendly, and generally gentle, and if you buy a bred female you’d get a cute baby and some ongoing goat milk (an expensive luxury) out of the deal.  Not a bad deal, if you're up for an adventure.

        2. Try a non-toxic home brew in a sprayer.  I’ve heard that a vinegar-dish soap solution kills poison ivy – one part vinegar to 3 parts soap.  I suppose an earth-friendly dish soap would also be kid-friendly if eaten.  Or at least more friendly than RoundUp.  However, this does sound a little too good-to-be-true and probably doesn’t even work.

        3. Cover the plants with black plastic.  This suffocates them.

If it were June, I’d lean toward staking down black plastic as the preferred choice and keeping the kids out for a season (or at least the special needs fella who wouldn’t leave the plastic alone). I guess the suffocation process needs to be a long, slow gag best accomplished in the summer.  But it’s not June, so my verdict is still out. 

I AM collecting new suggestions at large, and/or votes for the existing options. Feel free to vote for the goat if you really like the idea. Or whatever floats your boat.

Belonging

During the past few days I visited the old hometown, and then the old lake, with one big toe (maybe a whole foot) stuck in a door to the past and the other foot planted firmly in the present.  Chronological splits, anyone?

Hearsay says there will be a wedding in the front yard of our old farmhouse this fall; an arbor with a platform (no plants growing on it) has been built beside the currently dried-up creek.  I’m sure it will be lovely - I had a fleeting fantasy that our younger daughter’s wedding could be held in that same yard 7 years ago (instead it was held in a much more beautiful outdoor setting).  One small thing feels strange, though: we’ve been gone for over two years and our name is still on the mailbox…

Our kids camped out in our old neighbor’s woods Saturday night just like in the old days, only it wasn’t the old days.  They’re all grown up now and no longer silly teenagers pushing the limits (as with camping in a snowstorm one winter during -15 degree weather).  Hubby and I went out to share dinner over the fire and found a whole new focus as our grandkids smeared marshmallow goo from s’mores all over everything and played harmonicas and caught tree toads…

Funny how friends seem to age quickly when you don’t see them very often. Karen (name changed) looked puffy-faced and tired in the eyes, and made me wonder if I looked the same to her.  Tom (name changed) had more wrinkles and his hair – once curly – had turned blonde-white and straight!  They’re the same and not the same, just like everything else…

And the “old” lake, the first-love!!!!  It called me back and back to each and every summer through my 50^th year. That’s a LOT of summers!  This evening after the family gathering on the west shore, I magnetically was drawn to the south shore where I pulled in the driveway of our old neighbor.  The expansive view of the water from that familiar vantage point felt like old skin, and I climbed right in.  This was home, wasn’t it?  But wait. No longer.  I must leave. So I drove away, down the same old narrow lane, and watched for glimpses of water between houses, little glances of what was, and still is…

…And in all of this, I thought about how once you engage with places and people and belong to them, really belong in the sense that you’ve shared your heart, you never un-belong unless you choose to.  Circumstances can change, and do, but allegiances and intimacy don’t.  In fact, over time you just keep adding to the collection until belonging becomes a way of life - wherever you are.

Empty Page

An empty page is an empty canvas.  Its accompanying palette overflows with letters waiting to be shaped into words and phrases, sentences and paragraphs and maybe even books: colorful letters dancing a unique choreography for those who will read them. On the empty page, imagination is the stage. Fantasy becomes real, or conversely, reality twists to become fantasy. 

An empty page is place to lose yourself, to lose track of time; to lose limitations, to gain perspective and balance.  A place to discover what you knew but forgot, what you didn’t know but found.   A safe place.

What can you tell me, empty page? 

Thoughts from the Past

I’m back at it, working on a long-standing writing project involving collating materials left by my deceased sister.  It is daunting, challenging, exhausting, thrilling, rewarding, productive work.  This evening I was particularly struck by this excerpt from her memoirs:

In adult human relationships, feelings become generated by basic assumptions.  If those assumptions are incorrect, then thought patterns become stretched, magnified, distorted – all sorts of things. 

The expectations of how other people “should” live, behave, work – what they “should” do, say, be – are unbelievably rigid in my immediate atmosphere.  There is no flexibility.  What makes a person “bad” is his inability to measure up to another’s standards.  Emily Post seems to have more influence on things than I do.  If Emily Post says it, it’s truth. If I say it, my imagination doesn’t know what it’s talking about.

Words are also held in high esteem, but they are hollow and empty vessels intended to convey one meaning although emanating from another.  In actuality, honest communication is lost.  True feelings don’t count - only the ones that are supposed to appear on the surface. 

There is another kind of prison here; what is real stays confined, what is counterfeit is what is seen. This is like the Federal Reserve System – if there is nothing real and tangible to back up a paper dollar, it is worthless.  Words coming from ashes, rather than gold, are noise. 

The Holy Bible clarifies (paraphrase, I Corinthians 13):

“If I speak with the eloquence of men and angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing symbol.” 

Brass, in the slang sense, is forwardness and rudeness.

“Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage.  It is not touchy.   It does not keep account of evil of gloat over the wickedness of other people.  On the contrary, it shares the joy of those who live by truth.”