real life stuff

Lent is here again. I was smudged with ashes last night, preached a sermon, felt inadequate. I didn't feel inadequate because of the day, though maybe I should. Rather, last night I felt inadequate to my task as priest/pastor/preacher. That doesn't happen to me very often anymore. I love my work and it seems to love me. Once in a rare while, though, it all feels a little foreign and I feel ill-at-ease. Last night was one of those insecure nights.

One of my most beloved parishioners is in the hospital. She is 73 years young and a tap dancer. I believe she is dying. I hate this. Today, looking at her bloated, ventilated, overly hydrated body, I cried. Her vitals were a little more stable than they have been but they cannot wean her from the ventilator and she is still unconscious. She went in with a bowel problem and was diagnosed with a giant case of pneumonia in the ER. One whole lung is full of the disease. Next thing we know she's unconscious and hanging by a thread, a beautiful silken thread, but a tiny thread all the same.

Larry is on a tear again. He's manic and struggling hard. He is having significant urology problems and has managed to offend nearly every urologist who takes Medicare in this area. He needs help so badly. I keep trying to intervene and he keeps spewing his colorful, angry vitriol everywhere. The worse his problem gets, the more angry he is.... it is a vicious cycle. I am not sure what to do to help. But I want to so badly. Today I called around to doctors begging them to take him as a patient.

I just hung up from one of those calls. They didn't want to see him because he was so rude to their office staff the last time. I can only imagine how he treated them. I wasn't there. But if he actually said half of what he told me he said, it was ugly. Really ugly. I want him to get better... to be more comfortable. Everybody deserves that, no matter how unpleasant or rude or mentally ill they are. For some reason, no matter how rude Larry is or how much his mental illness gets in the way, I love him. It hardly makes sense. It just is.

As the economy falls apart and people lose jobs and homes, somehow my church community grows stronger. This community of grace is trying hard to function from faith rather than fear. Together, we are trying to remember that we share vital ties, strong bonds of love which will sustain us when we find ourselves in need. We are really at our best right now. For this, I am deeply thankful.

Also, I know that I am loved and that I love fully in so many ways. I am thankful for this, too. My world is rich and complex--like full bodied coffee or excellent wine. Really, it is more of a feast or a banquet with a variety of flavors and carefully prepared, incredibly tasty dishes. Every day is a little bit hard and a little bit good.

Lenten ashes, daily dust.... maybe even stardust.... It's all here. Laughter, pain... beauty.

I did a wedding for a friend two weeks ago. The 'for' line of the check she gave me read "eternal bliss." Yes, friends, eternal bliss for $150.00 and a few words.

The real truth is that it's free.

Love,
Orangeblossoms

The Room in My Heart

This room-in-my-heart is one of those Mexican papier mache dioramas, a Kahlo-esque, Dia de los Meurtos shrine in blood red, its primary colors practically dripping with the juice of pulverized blueberries and the thick yellow of rotting papaya; the inner seeds articulated, black and velvety. Vivid it is-- vivid and disturbing-- folk art simple; yet, the orange-red complexity, the midnight depth, the tiny details baffle. You cannot see all of it without inserting your hand deep into its pulsing recesses to be stained indigo and caressed by its engorged, misplaced tongue. Gristly and alive it is open simply for view --and for pleasure --if you can bear to enter it.

Careful, you remove your clothes, for they will be stained, and you stand at the entrance knowing that you must enter this labyrinthine mystery as you were born-- unprotected by anything but your own skin and living flesh.

And as you come, I will proclaim: "This! This is my home. Welcome."

You will smell the lamb roasting in the oven, the bread rising on a board. You will see the glistening wine decanting. You will smell the dusting of spice, of cumin and coriander, the distinct tang of lemon.

In the flickering candlelight, you will step forward to be received.

"Come," I will say, "Come."

...belonging to Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

morning

It is morning and I still miss myself.

Today starts early. I am facilitating a planning and visioning retreat for a church other than my own. It is still cool out and the cement outside my apartment is still damp from the 2:00 AM sprinklers. The kitty nudges my typing fingers for petting. I have already changed the sheets, watered the plants and will shower soon. My eyes aren't quite in focus, yet.

There is a way in which this day excites me.... I look forward to meeting new people, to embracing new energy, to helping them build and find clarity about their goals and visions. Mostly, though, I am anxious about the task ahead and how tired I will be afterwards--- I will still need to preach tomorrow morning and lead worship in the evening and hang out with the boys in the afternoon.

For now, I have last moment preparations and my coffee to finish.

missing you

My secret is that I miss myself.

I was going to put it on Post Secret, but I decided to put it here, instead.

Where on earth have I gone?

I used to be a blogger

Just now, I was contemplating the tiny, droopy arugula leaves I planted in one of the pots outside of my apartment. I planted them just this morning. When I pulled them out of their plastic container, the roots at the bottom were mulshy with mud. No doubt without sun these little baby leaves will yellow, shrivel, and die. Trying to avoid such a tragedy, I rearranged them and aired the roots before I planted them. Hopefully, they will live.

I think this is what happens to me when I lose perspective; when I start forgetting how important it is to tell my story.

My story is as tangled as the spiderweb I wrote about three months ago. My story is as mulshy as the roots of the arugula. And without some kind of sun, it will (I will) rot.

Planting things is an act of faith. So, today I plant these words here.

It's a start.

xo

Orangeblosoms

Waiting

I've started playing with Facebook. It is such a trip to announce things about myself, to choose my skin, so to speak; to state whether or not I drank coffee in the morning or whether I managed my yoga practice with some kind of integrity; to say what games I play, what music I like; to be in contact with people; to choose a picture of myself that reflects a moment or the way I want people to see me.

This is such a contrast to my blog experience. Here, I keep secrets. I am invested in anonymity-- in the darkened corners of the mind, of my life.

But in neither place do I tell the whole truth: the truth of divided heart, divided mind. The truth of my rather mystical, sexual self or the complexity of my feelings. I am not even sure I have words for these things. But, I try to make sense of them.

As I lift each truth out, it seems connected to all the others. They are connected by long, tangled strings, like balls of fishing line, knotted, so that nothing really comes out alone. No. It is like a spiderweb, and not a sparkling garden web; rather, it is like a garage spider's, chaotic and clumsy in the darkness.

Do you suppose that the garden spider's web is beautiful because she spins it in the light, unafraid to publicize her hunger to the unsuspecting succulents: worms, flies, soft-bodied moths? And the way the dew glistens off her web! Each drop bearing a tiny prism'd rainbow inside. Each thread, each drop draws her closer to the beauty of her hunger. Her body is redolent with this beauty: yellow and black and tan and brown, the nipped under-waist, the long graceful legs. Her silence and her waiting are beautiful.

It is her lot to wait and see; to wait and feel the soft vibration, the quake of her web that indicates a meal. Then, with her lithe legs she reverently approaches and begins the slow, steady spinning that will blanket this hapless one and keep its heart beating, its blood circulating until she can suck it dry. This she does in the sunshine, surrounded by prism'd dewdrops.

But do not forget the garage spider whose tangled, dark web never glints; who is just as hungry; who waits just as patiently; who sways not in the open breeze but in dark drafts. This one, with her short legs and bulbous belly, waits for the thrumb of prey; her hungry, soft, brown body expectant just the same--fangs and silk waiting, waiting...

I am this metaphor.

I am these two, these five, these nine.... spiders... persons... webs.... women.

I am dark-dwelling hungry and tangled. I am sunlit, dew-damp, and beautiful.

Hunger motivates everything.
In truth, I am hungry.
Yes.
For truth, I am hungry and waiting.

Notable News from a Delinquent Blogger

The California Supreme Court
voted to overturn the ban on gay marriage
today!

About time, I say!

This news moved me so much that I actually cried in the middle of what I was doing. I just cried. In the store.

More soon, my friends! (I promise!)

Meanwhile:

Let Justice roll down like waters and Righteousness like an every flowing stream!
-Amos 5: 24