Transcribed for your entertainment and edification:
Chet (8yrs) and Henry (6yrs) discuss the following:
Chet: I want to watch the first Indiana Jones. Who wants to watch with me?
Henry: NO! That has bad stuff in it!
Chet: No, it’s fine, we’ve seen it already
Henry: We’re not allowed to watch it
Chet: Why not?
Henry: It has scary stuff…and bad words.
Chet: like what?
Henry: Like Nazis. They’re like bad words, we shouldn’t watch that.
Among all the “scary” things or the normally considered “bad words” my kids saw in Indiana Jones the one that made the impression was this. I’m not kidding when I say that this moves me. I’m proud of that bit of discernment. A strangely profound gift today.
When I was pregnant with my second child I remember being excited but also there was this nagging sense of fear. I worried that I would not have enough room in my heart for another child.
I discovered at the moment my son was born that the heart is a remarkable thing; resilient, forthright, expansive, unending. The love was almost too much to bear I was so filled by it.
I talk about love a great deal. I do not demonstrate it in real life as often as I’d like, honestly, but I’m working on it. The essential thing about humans though, I think, is love. There is so much of it. So much available. So much ready to give. So much ready to be given. We never need to look for an alternative fuel source for the heart because as long as we demonstrate and in turn accept kindness and mercy and peace and joy and sacrifice and service one to another we create this perpetually refilling basin…a vein of gold which never ceases.
Can we have too much love?
Not the marred version of love that we are fed by media or culture but the real thing;
The moment with our selves when we breathe soft and full.
The moment with a child when we greet tears of gratitude.
The moment with a lover when we know we are known.
The moment with a friend when we grieve and heal.
The moment with our Creator when we know we are loved because we are made;
fearfully, wonderfully made.
Can we have too much love?
Can we give too much love?
That is a noble question to pursue. A research project which can only bear fruit.
I’m tired of fear talk. I’m tired of hearing people place their fears on top of me like a death shroud. I am especially tired of this as it pertains to my parenting. This is a friend who tells me all the horror stories of parenting. They are the “Oh, just wait” parents. The ones who temper all my good stories with, “Oh, just wait, they get worse…”
For example a dialogue like this:
me- “Oh, my gosh, Miles is hysterical…yesterday he wanted to ride the dog…”
her- “Yikes, you know that could really hurt the dog!”
me- “No, no…I was right there, I didn’t let him do it…the dog loves Miles.”
her- “Yeah, well, you know…that can turn the dog mean and then pretty soon he starts to bite little kids…”
me- “Erm….hey, so I gotta go….”
It’s this kind of “fear” thinking that makes me mental, as a parent. I’m all about the process of discernment as it concerns pretty much everything. I’ll ask questions, do research, seek advice and look for the best route as far as I’m able. I’m just not about “fear.” Discernment means walking INTO situations with eyes open, questions asked, heart studied, fear abated. It does not mean sitting around thinking about all the bad things that can happen. I can do all the research and ask all the advice I can muster but basically, in the end, I’m discovering it’s not really ALL I need to be an effective parent. I need more if I’m to live in the real authentic community I crave.
In the hard situations that surround parenting I needs lots of affirmation and encouragement sandwiched gently in love. I need that. So I’m giving that out…free of charge.
I’m starting this new trend….it’s my own version of “just wait.” I’m going to make sure to employ it, in particular with every new parent I meet. It will include statements such as, “Just wait….it gets even better.” and “Just wait, someday he’ll do that on his own and you’ll be so proud” and “Just wait, it won’t always be this hard.” I think I shall add an order of love while I’m at it.
I’m lucky to have some really fabulous “in the know” friends. It’s even more lucky for you because once they turn me on to what’s out there I can pass that along to you lovely people. This one I stole from that beautiful Jude Adam via her Facebook page, thank you very much.
She and Him are a duo formed by Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward. This comes from their site:
The She & Him story begins when in 2006 , renowned one man band M. Ward, recorded a duet with a girl named Zooey Deschanel. A delightful recording session, the experience lead to a dialogue between the two about collaborating further. This, in turn, led to Deschanel admitting to secretly making dozens and dozens of home demos and hoarding them like acorns for the winter. Sick and tired of being stingy and secretive about music, Deschanel realized that if songs were acorns then this was indeed her wintertime: she sent the recordings to Ward and these demos became the basis for their first record, entitled Volume One.
They are awesome, they are. Plus that, honestly, I love the video. It’s just whacked out enough to keep me watching and I like that in a video.
Back in Chicago I have many amazing friends…this one friend in particular came to mind the other day, though. I’ve been thinking a lot about my friend Paula, who I miss so much sometimes it actually physically hurts my heart. I’m humbled to say that this is true of a number of my closest friends up there in the cold north. How can any heart be so lucky? I don’t know.
I was thinking about Paula though not just because I miss her but because I’m terribly envious of something she has…or rather someone she is. She has and is an everyday friend. She and her friend Lisa live a few houses away from each other. They have known one another for a lot of years. I think they get to see and talk every day. Every day.
Living out here in the country obviously prohibits this but it doesn’t stop me from wishing I was and had an everyday friend. I’d like to have the kind of kitchen that invites a someone or lots of someones to visit anytime. I’d like to be a someone who would be welcomed in that way.
Am I the sort of person who can be an “everyday friend?” I’d like to be one. I’d like to be the sort of friend that someone would really want to live next door to, sit in the kitchen of, see on an everyday basis. In my bad moments I find it hard to believe that I could be that friend. Am I interesting enough, patient enough, transparent enough to be an everyday friend? Am I enough?
I know that I’m needy enough…lol…I know that I would not only like to be an everyday friend but to have one….or six. I know that I am missing this.
And that’s where I am today…articulating a little further the person I want to be in the world. I want to be an everyday friend. As we determine where we’ll go after this extended vacation in the wilderness, whether it be back to Chicago or into Nashville proper this is where my heart lives…ready to be expanded again, ready to become an everyday friend.
A few days ago I turned to Dave and said, “You know, I think basically I will just have to do laundry every day from here on out for the next, I dunno, 12 years or so. After that I might be able to only have to do laundry every couple of days.”
This got me to thinking about the things we do on a daily basis, things that ought not be left undone, the “quotidian” as it were. It feels to me these days that our entire culture is somehow geared toward ridding us of the every day. All of our modern conveniences are designed to reduce the number of things you have to do every day…there are devices now which will water your garden, feed your pet, even record your television shows so that you won’t have to do that on a specified day.
Where the convenience of it ought to bring comfort, it just disturbs me, really.
It’s not that I’m a glutton for punishment. Believe me, the mundane tasks of the everyday do not exude the “sacred” I hope for in the moment and yet, there is something to it. Something rewarding…elusive but rewarding.
I can’t help but feel that is the Deforestation of our lives. Who knew that losing so much of the world’s greenness would lead to so much difficulty down the line? (Don’t answer that, conspiracy theorists, that was a rhetorical question.) So in taking away the quotidian tasks, in stock-piling and reorganizing and automating our lives…what is it that we will have to trade? What will we be sacrificing?
I don’t have the answer at the ready…but I think the question is a good one for us to ponder. It’s a good place to start.
As my daughter ran up to me recently to ask me something I noticed how tall she’s gotten. She looks so grown up for 11 years old. I don’t know when that happened. I looked at my boys then and saw the same thing in them. The questions they were asking were blowing me away. I wanted to just soak it up and memorize every moment.
This one thought struck me and it stuck to me like glue. I’ve never been here before. I’ve been parenting now for 11 years and yet every day is new. They are each, all at once, the baby I carried and this brand new person I have yet to meet. They are so full of the now and the not yet.
I’ve never been here before…and that is going to keep happening over and over. It is terrifying and beautiful.
A while back I was out to dinner with some remarkable, wonderful and amazing women friends. After a few minutes of conversation the talk turned to antidepressants. A lot of people I know take antidepressants…I don’t know how to greet that sometimes. Not because I judge ANYONE harshly who takes ‘em…but mostly because many many days I wonder if I ought to get myself some.
Then recently I spoke to a good friend who just tapered off of his “happy pills” and he said, “I just feel like I’m finally waking up.” This stuck to me…and it put these lyrics in my head and then my guitar had an idea about it too so we put those together and this is the result.
Once again…rough demo people…me and my laptop and pegging the red…but you get the idea:
Stay Awake adc 5/08
Tried to cram my trepidation
Into a vase on the table
But it just keeps spilling out
Maybe it’s time
that I decide
That life is just that messy
I’m beginning to wonder
If all I really need
Are some happy pills
To fill me up
But it’s all I can do
To stay awake
In the process
It’s all I can do
To stay awake
Hear those whispers in the corner
And the rumors that will follow
It’s all shadow and fog
Maybe it’s time
That I realize
That life is just this hard
So now I wonder
If all I can do
Is take happy pills
To get me through
All I need to do
Is stay awake
For the process
It’s all I want
To stay awake
Tried to pour out my soul
Into a box on the table
But it just keeps on climbing out
Maybe it’s time
That I realize
That souls are just this messy
metaphorfrom the Latin. metaphora, from Gk. metaphora "a transfer," especially of the sense of one word to a different word, lit. "a carrying over," from metapherein "transfer, carry over," from meta- "over, across" (see meta-) + pherein "to carry, bear" (see infer).
metaphor
from the Latin. metaphora, 
