I’m too tired to write a full blogpost tonight, but I just wanted to post this quick pic from today’s Los Angeles adventure with two new friends (one of them was holding the camera for this shot as we rode the train back home).
And….thank you for all of your kindnesses and well-wishes. Three cheers to being ‘open’ to all of life’s pleasures and possibilities, I say! 🙂 I refuse to live my life by fear and I refuse to let others’ choices diminish any of the joy that I feel on my journey.
🙂
Feeling the need to republish this “classic” piece due to recent happenings. Perhaps my true sadness is that this church continues to provoke such strong feelings of frustration and disappointment, just when I think I’ve made “peace” with it. I want to say some more and to really vent, but I’ll hold off. It’s just not even worth wasting my time on, methinks.
The acknowledgment of our weakness
is the first step in repairing our loss.
~Thomas Kempis
While I was at the Sunstone Symposium in August, sitting in a session about women and the Mormon church, I had to fight the urge to flee the room.
In sitting there I realized that the rationales, the angst, and the pain of gender inequity–those were the things that I’d been so relieved to leave behind when I stopped attending LDS church. Being confronted with them again was repulsive and pulled me back to that dark place where I’d been a few years ago: a sort of dark cave where I felt stranded. Where I couldn’t see how god could bless an institution that was so biased, so short-sighted. And at the same time afraid of the pain that would come to me and to my extended family should I choose to walk away.
As these thoughts ran through my mind I felt a pendulum of emotion shifting to and fro inside of me and I was on the verge of tears. And then I realized something about myself…I’m just not one of the “strong ones” who can continue on in the LDS church while being fully aware all of its flaws. My soul and my spirit just aren’t up for the task. I am too weak. Too fragile. I need a spiritual home where I am buoyed and supported and affirmed. The dissonance of being Mormon was literally ripping my spirit into pieces. I felt no hope there.
For me, the move to practicing as a Quaker is not just transferring my allegiance to a new religious institution. It’s about adopting a spiritual practice and community based on the yearnings of my heart and not based on my pedigree and my upbringing. It’s a choice for comfort and peace. It’s laying down the struggle of trying to fit into the LDS mold–the continued abrasiveness of being a square peg that can’t adapt to the expectations and orthodoxies of Mormonism. It’s about recognizing my own weakness and accepting it.
The Mormon founder, Joseph Smith, compared his spiritual journey to that of a rough stone rolling down a mountain. He saw each of his experiences as chipping away at himself, smoothing away his raw edges. Me, I’m not up for a similar trajectory, or perhaps my body has just had enough trauma. I’m seeking an angle of repose.
Let me quote from a favorite author who has walked a similar path:
Spirituality is solitary…At times, it is lonely, often informed by pain. On other occasions, it is the body submerged in a phosphorescent tide, every movement sparking a trail of illumination. Afterwards, we sit on the shore in moonlight. No candles are necessary. Spirituality exists when we are present, buoyed up by the waters of attention. We learn the courage of faith. It is peace that is earned. We can take solace in the heat of doubt knowing this is the pulse of poetry.
~Terry Tempest Williams, Leap (2000)
As my birthday neared last month I received an email from the Facebook “Causes” application, suggesting that I could put a Birthday Wish on my FB page to gather donations for a favorite charity in lieu of birthday gifts. At first I was reluctant to participate. I tend to dislike FB apps and I don’t want to annoy my FB friends with frivolous emails or requests. However, I let the idea gel for a few days and then decided that it might be worth fundraising for HandReach, a non-profit that provides and education and medical care for children in China. When my friend Brecken (who works for HandReach) visited a few weeks ago I felt drawn to her stories of the children who were severely burned or disabled and were in need of prosthetics to replace missing limbs.
So I decided to jump in and do it, despite my initial hesitancy. As I logged onto the application it gave me many options for my “wish,” including setting a suggested donation amount ($38 because I was turning 38 years old), sending out individual messages to each of my FB friends, letting the application take over my status messages for the duration of the fundraising, and setting a reasonable campaign goal (I chose $380 thinking that maybe 10 of my friends might want to contribute).
What ensued blew me away.
I met my $380 goal within a few hours, then upped it to $600 and met that quickly, too. I then set the seemingly unreachable goal of $1000 and met that long before my actual birthday. What an amazing experience it was to see the donations and well-wishes pouring in from friends near and far.
Words aren’t enough to tell you how much joy it brought to be a part of this campaign and to experience the goodness and generosity of my friends. And I’d call this a tremendous success story for the potential of social media. While I think Facebook and Twitter can be huge time-wasters, they also have HUGE potential for connecting groups of likeminded people for doing good. We saw this with the impact of social media on the last election and I’m sure that we will continue to see its ripple effects in the months and years to come. It’s invigorating (even seductive) to participate in these forms of media and to get a feel for their immediacy and power.
After the hoopla of my Birthday Wish was over, one of the developers of the Causes application contacted me about the success of my fundraising efforts. From her I learned that my Wish had earned more funding than most, and they wanted learn why I was so successful. In a nutshell, these were my thoughts:
I picked this particular organization because they give money for medical care to amputees in China–I am an amputee myself so this is a Cause that I’m passionate about and that most of my friends have sympathy for through my experiences. My advice to those who are considering a Birthday Wish is to choose an organization that reflects your own experiences and interests–so your friends will feel invested in supporting your Cause.
One reason I believe I received so many donations is that I not only had FB announcing my Cause, but I also did daily blogposts leading up to my birthday about my Wish, I tweeted the link daily, which was ‘re-tweeted’ by some friends.
I found myself incredibly satisfied with the overall functionality of the Causes application and would encourage each of you to consider a Birthday Wish campaign. I look forward to seeing what Cause would motivate you to forgo birthday presents, and wish the developers of this application the best of luck in their efforts in using Facebook for such positive ends.
So I think my life is pretty awesome–I’m always trying something interesting and I generally love any new challenge. But you know what makes it even better? Having an awesome photographer-lover who’s recording it all along the way.
Who else would be able to document the gorgeous (early early) morning light in the tent as I dressed for my outrigger race, and so wholly capture the pensiveness that accompanies every race morning as the adrenaline builds and my whole attention is turned to keeping things together for me and my team?
Thank you John, for this and for everything else that’s you.
Today’s escapist fantasy: me as a ballerina. Though I studied ballet briefly as a young girl, I never showed any promise as a dancer.
But today I’m living my contradictions.
I’m typically quite practical and utilitarian. I rarely dress ‘girly’ and I’m not ‘fancy.’ But I do have this romantic pretty’streak inside that drives me to hang gauzy curtains on my canopy bed, wear silver bangle bracelets, and occasionally dress up in something that I wouldn’t dare wear out of the house.
Sometimes when I’m feeling angry, sad, depressed or frustrated, I need a bit of comfort. Sometimes that comfort comes in the form of a cuppa of my favorite tea blend. Sometimes it’s some time out for scratching a kitty behind the ears. Sometimes it’s my favorite black sweater. Sometimes it’s a pair of socks so soft and cozy that they are like a hug from the universe.
What do you seek out for comfort?
Perhaps it wil be CatGirl who will keep our Harvard dreams alive…she certainly has the talent to make it if she desires to do so. 🙂
Pic taken while we were dating and dreaming about our graduate school aspirations
The writing on my hand is an abstracted map of the racecourse for our meet on Saturday (the directions out of the marina and out on the open ocean). Our boat didn’t get lost during the race, but this steersman couldn’t follow her googlemap (or Thomas Guide) back to the freeway onramp, so we got a nice tour of Culver City as I attempted to get my bearings and find a way home. Hilarious, methinks.
Just one more Audre Lorde poem that I’ve found incredibly thought-provoking…an excerpt from “Stations” (the very last part is my very favorite bit):
Some women wait for visions
that do not return
where they were not welcome
naked
for invitations to places
they always wanted
to visit
to be repeated.
Some women wait for themselves
around the next corner
and call the empty spot peace
but the opposite of living
is only not living
and the stars do not care.
Some women wait for something
to change and nothing
does change
so they change
themselves.
Pic above is some rosepetal love from my garden, by way of CatGirl’s artistry.
One of my joys is to have books of poetry stashed on nearby shelves, just perfect for grabbing and reading a few poems when the time is at hand. Yesterday’s book was The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde, a book that I first happened upon at the Bluestocking Bookstore in NYC, but didn’t buy until later because I feared it’s weight would be too much in my slim carry-on bag.
One of yesterday’s discoveries was a poem about gardening and hope, titled “Walking Our Boundaries.” I suspect that only I could be so charmed by a poem that speaks of compost (yes, it is all-too poetic, in my mind). An excerpt:
I take your hand beside the compost heap
glad to be alive and still
with you
we talk of ordinary articles
with relief
while we peer upward
each half-afraid
there will be no tight buds started
on our ancient apple tree
so badly damaged by last winter’s storm
knowing
it does not pay to cherish symbols
when the substance
lies so close at hand
waiting to be held
your hand
falls off the apple bark
like casual fire
along my back
my shoulders are dead leaves
waiting to be burned
to life.
The sun is watery warm
our voices
seem too loud for this small yard[…]
our footsteps hold this place
together
as our place
our joint decisions make the possible
whole
I do not know when
we shall laugh again
but next week
we will spade up another plot
for this spring’s seeding.
