The thin horizon of a plan is almost clear.
My friends and I have had a tough time
bruising our brains hard up against change.
All the old dogs and the magician.

Now I see we’re in the boat in two by twos,
only the heart that we have
for a tool we could use.
And the very close quarters
are hard to get used to.
Love weighs the hull down with its weight.

But the wood is tired and the wood is old
and we’ll make it fine if the weather holds.
But if the weather holds
we’ll have missed the point
that’s where I need to go.

No way construction of this tricky plan
was built by other than a greater hand
with a love that passes all our understanding
watching closely over the journey.

Yeah, but what it takes to cross the great divide
seems more than all the courage
I can muster up inside.
Although we get to have some answers
when we reach the other side,
the prize is always worth the rocky ride.

But the wood is tired and the wood is old
and we’ll make it fine if the weather holds.
But if the weather holds
we’ll have missed the point
that’s where I need to go.

Sometimes I ask to sneak a closer look,
skip to the final chapter of the book.
And then maybe steer us clear
from some of the pain that it took
to get us where we are this far.

But the question drowns in its futility
and even I have got to laugh at me.
No one gets to miss the storm of what will be
just holding on for the ride.

But the wood is tired and the wood is old
and we’ll make it fine if the weather holds.
But if the weather holds
we’ll have missed the point
that’s where I need to go.

~ Wood Song, Indigo Girls

Filed under: Landscape, Light

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PRINCETON: Why does everything have to be so hard?

GARY: Maybe you’ll never find your purpose.

CHRISTMAS EVE: Lots of people don’t.

PRINCETON: But then- I don’t know why I’m even alive!

KATE MONSTER: Well, who does, really?  Everyone’s a little bit unsatisfied.

BRIAN: Everyone goes ’round a little empty inside.

GARY: Take a breath. Look around.

BRIAN: Swallow your pride

KATE MONSTER: For now…

NICKY: Nothing lasts,

ROD: Life goes on,

NICKY: Full of surprises.

ROD: You’ll be faced with problems of all shapes and sizes.

CHRISTMAS EVE: You’re going to have to make a few compromises…
For now…

ALL: But only for now! (For now)
Only for now! (For now)
Only for now! (For now)
Only for now!

LUCY: For now we’re healthy.

BRIAN: For now we’re employed.

BAD IDEA BEARS: For now we’re happy…

KATE MONSTER: If not overjoyed.

PRINCETON: And we’ll accept the things we cannot avoid, for now…

ALL:
But only for now! (For now)
Only for now! (For now)
Only for now! (For now)
Only for now!

Only for now! (For now there’s life!)
Only for now! (For now there’s love!)
Only for now! (For now there’s work!)
For now there’s happiness!
But only for now! (For now discomfort!)
Only for now! (For now there’s friendship!)
Only for now (For now!)
Only for now!

Only for now! (Sex!)
Is only for now! (Your hair!)
Is only for now! (Glenn Beck!)
Is only for now!

Don’t stress, Relax,
Let life roll off your backs
Except for death and paying taxes,
Everything in life is only for now!

NICKY: Each time you smile…

ALL: …Only for now

KATE MONSTER: It’ll only last a while.

ALL: …Only for now

PRINCETON: Life may be scary…

ALL: …Only for now
But it’s only temporary

PRINCETON: Everything in life is only for now.

~ “For Now” from Avenue Q

Filed under: Flowers, Perspective

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The first summer we had them, I was captivated by the sight of gorgeous purple blossoms against white woodwork.  It was clean, neat, and magazine pretty.  Best of all, they needed no tending, no watering, no attention at all from me, yet burst forth with glorious abandon, the very definition of plant perfection!

There was a time in my life when I felt that glorious abandon.  College maybe? Luxembourg YES!  Blooming, finding my place, feeling like the growth was so natural and easy. Bursting with life and wanting more.

But then came winter for my clematis – and the vines which had been so graceful, so green, so lush turned ugly and brown and dead, so I chopped them off to nothingness.  More life parallels: the brokenness of first love, not graduating “on time,” perhaps.  The uncertainty of leaving college, starting over at life, starting at all.

The next spring, new growth replaced old, and new flowers, too.  Joy again!  Winter came again, but my motivation was fleeting, my intentions sincere but unrealized, so the ugly dead vines stayed put this time.  I’d go in and out the front door and look at the brown, lifeless vines which seemed to chide me for my laziness.  Like life after college – a few jobs, temping here and there where I could.  Not feeling like I was doing enough, being enough.  Good intentions, lack of follow-through.

But one day early the following spring, a whisper of green caught my eye.  I saw a 2 inch green growth, then another, and another, and another.  Somehow, miraculously, the old, dead vines I had neglected to cut put forth healthy, hardy new growth!  This was how I discovered that, like grape vines, clematis USE the old growth to sprout new growth.

That winter, I didn’t cut a thing – on purpose.  I gritted my teeth, apologized for the ugly, and assured all who came to visit in winter that yes, though our porch was hideous now, you should SEE it in the summer in all its purple glory.

From my temp job, came a lead to a “permanent” job with a company large enough for me to grow.  My longest job ever – 7 years!  Held a few positions, got a Master’s Degree 100% paid for, all A’s.  Short term plans giving way to accomplishment of longer term goals.

But spring came – and near disaster.  The growth was almost violent – vines furiously shoving each other aside, climbing all over each other in a mad dash for…growth.  It wasn’t neat and it wasn’t pretty.  It was unruly and chaotic – until the flowers bloomed, so thick and so lush and so vibrant that it took my breath away.  And a vision started to form for me.  My own porch-as-secret-garden-room dream, an escape, a welcome.  Could I dare try to train these vines? to guide their growth?

Kids.

So the next spring, I tried selectively pruning. I snipped, paused, snipped again…so slowly, I worked.  Snip, think, snip – and discover I’d cut a vine which, 3 feet further on, had 6 inches of new growth. Sadness, frustration. FAILURE.  I cut new growth out, that I had meant to keep.  It was frustrating.  But somehow, the vines recovered, kept growing, and bloomed gorgeously.  And I got closer to having two different vines join at the top of the porch!

Parenting.

Another year, another chance to practice my pruning “skills” (or lack thereof).  But I was paralyzed by fear of failure, so I waited too long and  everything got tangled, bushy, unmanageable again.  Ironically, my own fear of failure CAUSED more failure, although the vines did meet at the top of one side of the porch, despite my sad, pitiful pruning.  So that brings us to this year.

This spring, I started EARLY – when the new growth was only a few inches long.  And I was actually excited about it!  And it occurred to me, instead of starting at the base of the plant, I could start at the tips of the new growth and work backward.  This method proved VERY effective for not cutting TOO much of the new growth by accident.  But after so many years, I was also able to take a step back and realize that the vines will be JUST FINE, even when I *did* cut off more growth than I intended.

As I was trimming, I also remembered how the very thick growth felt stifling somehow last summer, very much TOO much of a good thing.  So I got brave and started pruning more and more – leaving the long, healthy new growth that would be a great base toward connecting the vines at the top again, but cutting away some of the BULK of the plant.  And it felt GOOD!  And it looked – fresh, new, clean, light, right.

But then came the front.  The front went CRAZY last year.  And though I put up some twine and tried to help the plan support itself, the weight of its bulk overwhelmed it and it sagged precariously.  And it was so very tangled that I couldn’t unravel it, couldn’t figure out which vines to trim.  The technique I had used so successfully on the other two sections just wasn’t working.

So I chopped it.  Radically.  From 8 feet tall down to 2.  And I mourned the hasty destruction of years of growth.  It felt like a huge step back.  Like quitting everything, floundering, feeling directionless feels like a huge step back.  But freeing, too.  I’ve let go of everything weighing me down.  I’m now free to grow up again, to climb to the heights.

So the story isn’t finished yet, I know.  The clematis is growing wildly…still, again.  And maybe the vines will be healthier, prettier for the pruning.  It’s still early in the season.  And despite my current feelings to the contrary, it’s still early in mine.

Filed under: Philosophy Tagged: clematis, Life

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Yesterday, a child came out to wander.
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar.
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder,
And tearful at the falling of a star

And the seasons, they go ’round and ’round
And the painted ponies go up and down.
We’re captive on the carousel of time.
We can’t return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

Then the child moved ten times
’round the seasons.
Skated over ten clear frozen streams.
Words like, “When you’re older”, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams.

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now.
Cartwheels turn to car wheels through the town.
And they tell him, “Take your time.
It won’t be long now
‘Til you drag your feet to slow the circles down.”

And the seasons, they go ’round and ’round
And the painted ponies go up and down.
We’re captive on the carousel of time.
We can’t return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty.
Though his dreams
have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams,
maybe better dreams, and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through.

And the seasons, they go ’round and ’round
And the painted ponies go up and down.
We’re captive on the carousel of time.
We can’t return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

And go ’round and ’round and ’round
in the circle game.

~ Joni Mitchell, Circle Game

Filed under: Kids, People, Perspective

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Today is Palm Sunday for Christians.  I have always felt that Palm Sunday was  an oxymoronic day.  On one hand we remember, commemorate, and even replicate in small degree the parade that heralded Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem for the celebration of passover.  It must have been such a joyful outpouring of adoration!   But minutes later, we hear for the first time this week the somber and dramatic story of Jesus’ last few days of life on earth.  The same people shouting “Hosanna!” one day are yelling, “Crucify him!” practically the next.  It’s a wide swing of emotions for one day, but a good precursor to the emotional roller coaster ride which is Holy Week for me.

Lately, my entire life feels like an oxymoron, a carousel ride: up and down, moving, but getting no where.  I feel at the same time wise and foolish; old and young; loved and invisible; supported and abandoned – some times all of those in the course of a single day!  I am exhausted but cannot sleep, hungry with no appetite, desirous yet apathetic.  I have been energized one moment, yet sit down and in an instant have literally no momentum.  I have been full of words and thoughts…and speechless; strongly, boldly confident…and reticent; sure in my faith…and spinning in a void of questions.

Since mid-December, I’ve felt like I’ve been holding on for the ride of life.  I’ve felt complete awareness of this pulling back, yet a distinct disconnect from it all.  Part of my brain analyzes and worries that this is not right, not good somehow while another part acknowledges that life has ups and downs, like a carousel.  All my life’s a circle, and I’ve been here before; there’s nothing to be done but patiently wait it out.

I’m asking some faith questions, too.  Questions to which I thought I knew the answers.  Questions that are a bit scary in the asking.  But at the same time, I have always believed – still believe – that God is big enough for all our questions, that we were given brains to use, to apply, so as to come vigorously to our faith.  And I do have faith.  Deep.  Forever.  Unshaken.  Though the details may well move around and readjust themselves for me, that truth is unmoving.

I have faith that God is.  I have faith that my life has purpose, that I am loved for who I am in my entirety – good, bad, and gray.  And I have faith in humanity – or at least in God’s ability to turn all our mistakes into triumph.  I also have faith that we’re part of a bigger picture, a larger story.  I have faith that I am fully known and that I will know fully.  Someday.  I know I doubt, but I know.

Filed under: Inspiration, Philosophy, Religion

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When I am down and oh, my soul so weary;
When troubles come and my heart burdened be;
Then I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me.

You raise me up so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up to more than I can be.

There is no life, no life without its hunger;
Each restless heart beats so imperfectly;
But when you come and I am filled with wonder,
Sometimes I think I glimpse eternity.

You raise me up so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up to more than I can be.

You raise me up to more than I can be.

Filed under: Landscape, Light, Perspective

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A prayer for peace from advent, a time of waiting, of preparation.  I am waiting now as well, in preparation for a change I sense is coming but cannot foresee.  In youthful impatience, I once would have yearned, demanded, pushed.  In mid-life wisdom, I can pause, reflect, assess, and wait. I can wait.

Filed under: Perspective

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It’s the fall of 1989 and I’ve just finished the phone call which opened a portal of understanding I didn’t want to acknowledge or walk through. But I gathered my courage and I did walk through – to a life of uncertainly where there was once understanding and though I didn’t know it at the time, a life of profound joy where there would have only been disappointment. But at the time, I mourned deeply, intensely, for what was lost, both immediate past and perceived future.

Another portal has opened now, similarly earth-shaking and grief-ridden, but strangely comforting in its familiarity. This time I walk through with more confidence in the unknown, but still sad for a lost past and a lost vision of the future. And for pain I’ve caused. Though I’ve been pained equally as well, mine feels the lesser somehow for the knowing, the having been here before.

Back again in time, to 1990. I see an ethereal Easter morning, I smell the flowers, hear the birds, feel the caress of the sun through the bite of the breeze and know I am wrapped in a cocoon of love I have never felt before. And I know it’s real – and that I almost missed it for illusion masquerading as reality. Very quickly, the plot of my life takes a turn toward profound fulfillment, and I know it, but am afraid to embrace it. I can flip rapidly through the pages of the book of my past, seeing more clearly that part of the story that was once a dim reflection in a mirror. Has it really been twenty years, this blink of an eye?

It could have been over, the road bending in a different direction, a chance lost. But I was given a second chance. Or maybe the road bent and bent again – that’s what he has always believed. But in the last moments of 1992, a portal of joy blinked open for a brief moment, and I jumped through with whole heart dragging reluctant head along for the ride. And what a ride it’s been, more lush a life than my wildest fantasies could ever have conjured. And to think, it all started with an email. Twenty years ago.

Fast forward another decade, another snapshot in my life, another moment of upheaval planned for yet so completely unanticipated despite all possible, futile preparation. A push, a letting go, a tug, a cry, a joy and a love so instantaneous and enveloping it cannot be understood except by those who have experienced it. Again just a blink of my eye and the new creation is becoming again a newer creation apart from me, from us, yet so much a part of us it steals my breath.

So here I am poised at the brink of … something unknown. And it’s not as terrifying now, this suspension, this not knowing. This time, I feel change stirring, but I can wait for it with quiet confidence. I see the past, the journey, the way forward into fog. But somewhere beyond there is sunshine burning brightly and I will be in it soon. And I can wait.

Filed under: Adventure, Philosophy

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