Reflections on Friendship

Friendship is challenging at times, for me. In the course of so many years, I've had a lot of unpleasant experiences. Many of them have been due to my own lack of social graces...which is due to not having had much of a social life as a child, therefore no opportunity to learn the fine points of friendship, therefore prone to blunders, therefore avoided by the more socially graceful kids, ..... Sigh.

A lot of them have been due to others' lack of social graces, too.

This past year has been an interesting year, the beginning of several tentative new friendships. Each is so unique. Each of us, in some way, has hit a "bottom" where we were desperate to find a better way of living with ourselves and with others. We have been hurt, physically and emotionally abused, neglected, manipulated, you name it...by loved ones of all descriptions as well as relative strangers.

That means we come to friendship with "issues"..."baggage"..."history"...i.e., we're each in some way "damaged goods" thanks to previous friends, family, etc. Sometimes, no matter how compatible we are as people, our "baggage" just interferes with the other person's. It makes starting a new friendship interesting to say the least.

Last night I had a very special dream about one of my new friends:

In the dream, this person, like me, was a professional bus driver. We went out for a leisurely drive in one of the busses that I drive daily. (Like I said, this was a dream; I'm not really allowed to take the busses out for a Sunday drive!)

My companion and I did all the things we would normally do on a Sunday drive. We went up and down hills. We turned left and right. We stopped and started in all sorts of conditions. Ordinarily, we would have been doing this with the purpose of performing our duty of transporting people to their destinations. In our own cars, off-duty, we might have taken the same trip to see the scenery, or simply for the sake of enjoying one another's company and talking while driving.

But this trip had a different purpose. We were evaluating the vehicle--an older, quirky bus that had a lot of miles on it. Before we committed to driving it on-duty, with precious passengers on board, in all kinds of weather and road conditions, we needed to know its limitations...and we needed to develop reasonable boundaries for operating it in service, so that we would never exceed the limits of this particular vehicle. Some busses just shouldn't be driven out on K-10 at 65 miles per hour; others are just fine for that but would rather not go 5 miles per hour on the busy campus all day.

Each bus is a little different, and they become more individual with age and wear. On-going repairs and minor accidents add to the aging process of a vehicle. They start out bland and identical, but over time they are customized more and more. Zip ties and duct tape, Tek screws and caulk all come into play when something irreplaceable but non-essential fails.

We put the bus through its paces. We tried accelerating fast and slow, on slopes up and down, to see how it would respond in various situations. We assessed the play in the steering wheel, and whether the vehicle tended to drift to one side or another as we went down a level road. We tried the brakes to see how fast it would stop, and whether it pulled to the left or right. We tested the turning radius...and one of us had to help the other back it out of the cul-de-sac where it couldn't turn around (oops--we should have planned the route ahead, not just wandered around making random turns).

I woke up knowing exactly what this dream was about. It was about how to be friends. Or more specific, how to take good care of friendships.

We need to take time, now and then, and assess our friends/friendships. Not to judge, not to try to change someone else, but rather to better understand what we have to work with in our friendship. If someone has sensitive areas, we need to be careful of those in the friendship. If someone has blind spots, we need to understand that. Likes and dislikes, skills and disabilities--these are all equally part of the assessment. Not that anything about them is right or wrong, we just need to know what they are. Some, we may be able to fix right away. Some we may need to wait for a part. Some we may need to wait to fix them until they get worse. Many really can't be fixed, but are just the unique "character" of something that's gone down the road a few hundred thousand miles.

This assessment is not a one-time thing, because people change and friendships evolve too. With some friends, we may need to assess the boundaries of the friendship frequently; with others, not so often. With the buses, we do a daily inspection report, required by federal law. But sometimes a more comprehensive assessment is needed, as this friend and I did in my dream.

Too often, we go about friendship just like we go about driving our personal vehicles. We just take them for granted, and never take the time to look under the hood until we are stranded by the roadside facing an expensive tow and repair. How much easier it would have been to just check the oil routinely! But, in fact, many friends would be fearful of doing such an assessment, while others would be offended by the whole idea, fancying themselves free of quirks.

I especially treasure those few rare friends that begin the friendship with the instinct to do that "test drive" and assess our strengths and weaknesses right away, together, based on fact, so that we can set realistic boundaries for the friendship. In the long run, I think we will not be disappointed at having taken the time to approach friendship seriously, as seriously as driving a bus.

The prodigal Son, Revisited

I woke up in bed at home at about the time the opening in hymn was being sung at church. Oops! I jumped into clothes, grabbed a snack, and headed off on the 45 minute drive. In case I haven't mentioned it before, the fact that others frequently arrive after the beginning of the two-hour service helps me feel more welcome there--just as I am, imperfect. Better late than never. If nothing else, the weekly drive through rolling Kansas hills uplifts me with awe at the progression of the seasons, the diversity of plants and wildlife, etc. I see neat rows of corn and soybeans, home gardens, woodlands, wetlands, pastures kempt and unkempt, hayfields.

Thus I walked in as the minister was in the middle of expounding on the parable of the Prodigal Son. One of my all-time favorites, maybe because I've been such a wayward child of God all my life. It was a series on this parable that drew me back to Peace Mennonite months after the first time I left, after being publicly humiliated by the pastor during a service...that pastor left, and the interim pastor made room for this lost sheep to return to the fold. (That time was made easier by the outreach I felt from numerous people in the congregation. During that absence, I received several cards and calls from people who understood why I chose to stay away, who expressed appreciation for the spiritual gifts that I had brought to the church, who kept me in touch with church activities. Oddly, few of those folks are still with the church. This time, no one has tried to encourage me to come back.)

But the beauty of scripture is that it is always new. There is always something more to see in it, as in a mirror. There is always a new insight, a new lesson, a new juxtaposition of the verses with each other, or with my daily life.

Thus:

...As I struggle through a time of chafing at the isolation of my daily life...

...Having yesterday found myself in yet another seemingly pointless discussion of Peace Mennonite's bizarre shunning of me for the past 5 years...

...Remembering two single women of about my age who committed suicide in recent years and understanding from my own experience how easily one could come to feel too lonely to go on...

...Having very recently chided someone's stereotypical disdain for Pollyanna as an unrealistic optimist, where in fact she is courageously honoring her minister father's love for the bible's many, many "rejoicing texts" by struggling to find something to rejoice about no matter what horrible things befall her...

...What caught my mind today was the centrality of rejoicing with others in this and the two preceding parables. The three parables are perfectly parallel: Something valuable is lost; it is found (through diligent searching in the case of the sheep and the silver talent, diligent hope and patience in the third parable); and rejoicing naturally ensues...rejoicing with relatives, friends and neighbors.

How have I overlooked, in these parables, the theme of rejoicing in community as a scriptural, spiritually important activity, all these years? I knew that celebrating--rejoicing--was important, and I've lived my life accordingly for a long time, but I never really "got" its spiritual significance until now. Possibly because there is no immediate family or community in my life at this time, to rejoice with or to mourn with.

Modern life co-opts the spiritual need of humans to celebrate and rejoice together, and trivializes it in many different ways. We are encouraged to celebrate "Hallmark holidays" like Mother's Day by purchasing unneeded gifts and eating unneeded food. We are encouraged to celebrate annual milestones like birthdays and anniversaries in the same manner. We are encouraged to make sports teams our idols, and celebrate their activities. We are supposed to celebrate "hump day" and "TGIF".

These are the kind of celebrating that the elder son resented not having been offered--the opportunity to make merry with his friends. A kind of meaningless celebration that is not about the successful hard work of mending of something broken, not about gratitude for a miracle, but simply about glorifying things that we take for granted. The eldest son, like today's culture, does not recognize the difference between revelry and true thanksgiving.

This kind of celebrating is simply so many excuses to indulge in excess, to spend money, to lose our souls in meaningless frenzies of spending and indulging. The economic system loves these sorts of celebrations. They are predictable. Commerce can tell us when and how to celebrate them, produce special foods and media bits and attire and memorabilia. Commerce can make it easy to "rejoice" because we can purchase everything we need.

In the end there is hardly a moment that we aren't supposed to be celebrating some pre-ordained "special day". Every day is special, according to the calendar. They blur together. Celebrating becomes a way of life. Any true miracles worthy of rejoicing are lost in the bustle of day-in, day-out celebrating. We become immune to rejoicing, numb to wonder.

What is lost is something precious. There is no room left to celebrate the little personal victories in our lives. Our neighbors are too busy to rejoice with us over the finding of our lost sheep, because it's Superbowl Sunday. They are too busy to join us in celebrating that we've found our lost coin, because they are out shopping for Halloween costumes and candy. They are too busy to join us in celebrating our reconciliation with a long-estranged loved one because they are taking all of the neighbor kids to the pool to celebrate someone's birthday with swimming and cake and ice cream and pizza and pop after which everyone is exhausted and strung out on sugar and broke.

It is not just that we are too busy celebrating to rejoice. We've also become a culture where these real causes of rejoicing could never be admitted in the first place. It's a shame to admit losing something (only a bad shepherd would lose a sheep--call the humane society! And why didn't she have those silver talents deposited in an FDIC insured account?) We don't talk about our family problems (unless we're rich enough that the media talks about them for us); if we haven't been able to share our heart-wrenching parental agony over Junior's running away with our credit card and not calling home, how can we explain our joy to the neighbors upon his chastened, repentant return?

Understanding that, these scriptures take on an even deeper meaning. Not only do these people--this culture we have sadly lost--have close relationships with families and neighbors so that they rejoice together over personal milestones, rather than empty conventional occasions, but they also are close enough that they can admit to one another the misfortunes and errors that have laid the grounds for the situation calling for rejoicing.

For nothing can be found unless we have somehow managed to lose it.

But a further sad coda on the theme. What do these parables become, when the rejoicing in community is stripped away? They are empty, nothing is left of them. There are a hundred sheep in the pen, ten coins in the purse, two sons working in the field. The journey of the human emotions and effort to attain these things is negated. A tree falling in the forest with no one to hear. Meaning is stripped away.

At some point, the unacknowledged struggle isn't simply worth it anymore. I wonder if this is what my departed friends discovered, and sought an end.

People need others to rejoice with, real rejoicing, the rejoicing of personal struggle and achievement.

Coming to Christ

Some people are born into a Christian life, raised on it as well as the bread on their table. At some point they are asked to claim a deeper commitment to it, as a formal stage in their life journey.

Some people wander around for decades without any religion. In some cases, their lives become unmanageable, they hit rock bottom, and in the depths of brokenness they reach out to God as a last resort, and thus are led to give their lives to Christ.

It's plain to anyone that my life hasn't followed the first plan. So it's perfectly reasonable to think that there must have been some awful crisis that prompted my conversion. And it's probably human nature to look at my definitely non-bible-approved sexual/relational history, and come to the conclusion that the crippling burden of my carnal sins drove me to cry out to God for relief.

In fact, this doesn't seem to have been the case. In not one crisis did I ever think God would be any help whatsoever. I might have cried and screamed and thrown temper tantrums, but I certainly wasn't going to ASK for help from something that didn't exist, anyway.

God had to be sneakier with me. God courted me patiently during all those years I didn't even believe He existed. And when I finally started noticing Him, He wooed me. All that time, He was protecting me, fitting me for the work he had for me through the diverse experiences of my life, preparing me to be his servant. Whenever I decided to make that commitment.

The not-so-straight-and-narrow sexual history was (in hindsight) clearly part of that preparation.

For the occasion of Baptism at Peace Mennonite Church, it was the custom for the one being baptized and admitted to membership in the church to give a brief statement of their faith as part of the service. On February 25, 2001, I read these words to the congregation:

What I'm about to read won't make much sense. That's OK. It doesn't have to. I'm rummaging through a backpack I've been wearing all my life: some stuff I don't even remember, or know how it got there. Some of you will recognize bits and pieces and see that they are out of context or broken or inside out. That's ok, too--just how it is in a bag you've carried a long time. The cough drops come unwrapped and stick to the Kleenex and grocery store receipts, and there's some pennies, and magic beans a little kid gave me, some rocks, a dirty sock, some nuts and bolts and raisins and birdseed--well, YOU KNOW!

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A parable: A child watches a parade in a foreign city, surrounded by strangers whose ways make no sense. Her parents stand over her, hovering, keeping her safe from alien influences. The Emperor of that world walks by, wearing nothing. Her parents bend to whisper, "He's got nothing on." She is puzzled, then listens to the crowd around her describe the rare beauty of his garments to one another. "but He HAS GOT NOTHING ON!" she cries aloud. The foreign children throw sticks and stones at her. She clings to her parents.

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Childhood values: family values. Homemade dresses, saddle shoes. No cartoons, no bubble gum, no soda pop, no Barbie dolls, no paint-by-numbers, no movies, no social groups or activities, no church. No explanations that made sense. Everything scientific and educational.

In grade school, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, hymns. Tis a gift to be simple. Hiking the wonders of nature, identifying birds and flowers, rocks and fossils. Living in tents in Canada for a month every summer. Sailing; watching fish in their strange watery world under the docks. Tidepools; turning over rocks in the streams. Searching for living mysteries to unfold.

In high school, In Manhattan, Kansas, seeking to unfold mysteries of the spirit. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the Tao Teh Ching; for the first time in my life, the Bible. Unitarian Fellowship: taped classical music, lectures on social issues. It's all about coffee, which I never drink. The youth group, which hides itself from me, does drugs. A few wise elders inspire me to a long life of service.

Tentative friendships with peers in the foreign city: pot-smoking Hippies, vicious Born-Agains, treacherous Charismatics, suicidal Lesbian Feminists, crazy Artists, shy Poets, condemning Baptists, hypocritical Preacher's Kids. Where to I fit? How CAN I fit when I still can't make sense of their ways, and can't articulate my own? I have a dream.

Independence hits like a brick wall. an unplanned child, a brutal marriage, divorce, homelessness. No work or living skills. A few friends hold hands through the storm of early adulthood, each similarly desperate for unique reasons. The dream, unattainable, is abandoned.

A life of fragments, pieces from different puzzles, ends that don't meet. Waling the void's edg, three years of celibacy, lesbian lovers, drunken old men, two-timing young ones. Women of the Heartlands, Women's Festival, the I Ching, the Wander Game, The Manhattan Mercury, in slipstream time, cycles into a dark night, spiraling down a twisted tortured mile. None of this is sustainable. Who tempts me to walk away?

Only years later, I realize that over those troubled waters there came a quiet bridge, a bridge to gently lead me to a new way of thinking, living, loving. It came so ordinarily that it's taken 20 years to see it: the More With Less Cookbook. Not another issue of the Watchtower, not a visit from the Sister Missionaries, not people on the street corner selling roses. I bought it at the local food Co-op. i knew I had "less", I wanted to know what to do with it. The stains document its centrality to my life: a toddler's scribbles, Whole Wheat Orange Bread, Fruit Crumble, Mini Pizzas, Tangerine Peels. Gather up the fragments.

I walk away from the castle: a retreat into the wilderness. No child now; she's in my parents' care. Vision quest. Sitting zazen twice a week. Chopping wood, carrying water. Walking to the mailbox. meeting my self for the first time. A wise woman guides me through dark nights, helping me learn to heal and love myself. How can we meet the gods face to face till we have faces? I remember that once I had a dream.

A voice emerges from the wilderness. A new life, a new job, another marriage. Still in a foreign country, but learning the language. K-State, then Friends University; Vegetable Crop Production, then Business Ethics.

Time and again I realize I've strayed from the path. I boldly abandon each wayward trail and strike out cross-country in the right direction. I don't know what the path is or where it's going; I only know it exists because I am learning to know when I am not on it. I remember fragments of a dream. I buy a house from a Mennonite family; and old hippy friend turned Mennonite repairs the stair rail.

A divorce, a job loss, another job, another marriage. Lawrence. The Episcopal Church calls me a child of God but denies me bread at His table--even the crumbs. Hundred dollar floral arrangements with South American flowers, while we pray for the poor. An old lady I've never seen before, with too much perfume, tell me to move from HER family's pew on Easter sunday. Does the Emperor have clothes?

I retreat again: church in the garden. I consider the lilies. A friend comes to gather wildflowers for his church; the third time I follow them. Here! The upper room is full of windows and sky, faces I danced with on Saturday, friends I'll dine with on Sunday. Sunday school discusses stewardship: sustainable agriculture, not a pledge drive.

Thanks to a dog, a farm falls in my lap, I lose the job. The dream! The path! God calls me to follow. He sends a flock of Quaker sheep--I listen--a flock of Mennonite sheep--I act. Mennonite hay. One good dog leads to another. A llama. I don't need a sailboat any more, I'm in charge of an ark! I begin to know how Noah felt.

Who tempts me to walk away? I spend one Lent in silent retreat, being the Lord's shepherd through lambing time. At midnight, by moonlight, I walk to the flock pastured by a stream, I move silently among them, I rest on the ground where they lie chewing their cuds. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. It is good. I consider the lilies.

Who tempts me to walk away? We spend another Lent studying TREK. Puzzle peices begin to fit. Tis a gift to be simple. Everything that is not of the farm and church fall away from me like an old skin: pieces from some other puzzle. Some are people I love; I have been transformed into something new that I have always already been, and they don't know how to follow. I'm sad, but without self-doubt. Chop water, carry wood. Tis a gift to be free. At church, each service holds some special, surprising message for me. Mandy's dad preached on teh Kingdom of God. Imagination caps! I come to the little children; I'm a child. There's room for me at the table, whenever I'm hungry. Weren't we supposed to remember Him EVERY time we shared bread with one another? Dream becomes vision. Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be.

Who tempts me to walk away? Separation and sin, a season of stress and strife. Misunderstanding, regrouping. For others, great good fortune far, far away. For me, eventually, the prodigal daughter returns. What is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good--need we anyone to tell us?

The Emperor has no clothes; He's given them all away. He tempts me to walk away, and welcomes me to His table. Actions speak louder than words. I wash my face with tears, time and again. This water will be fresh and sweet!

Congregational response: And when we find ourselves in the place just right we will be in the valley of love and delight.

Where are we going? When will we get there?

I did a double-take as I passed a familiar church on the way home, and saw the signboard out front. "Galactic Odyssy VBS". Or something like that.

Another church is doing Vacation Bible School with a shipwreck theme. Last year two of them were using a program called "Crocodile Dock." These curricula come pre-packaged, with flashy graphics, advertising banners, games, etc.

I am not even sure I can adequately express my puzzlement. Total disconnect here, in my mind. I don't recall crocodiles playing a significant part in the bible, unless it was bit parts in the Old Testament...something related to Moses and the bulrushes, maybe...and of course Noah's floating menagerie. But Christ and crocodiles just...do...not...compute, in my mind.

Celestial city, yes. I just started reading the late 17th century classic, The Pilgrim's Progress. (This is the "little book" that Mrs. March gives each of the girls in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.) Galactic travels...not so much. What translation includes the world "galactic"?

By contrast, one of the ministers at Willow Springs expounded on Sunday School during his sermon. Or, more precisely, expounded on why the Old German Baptists do not have "bible study" or "Sunday School"...and I presume no "Vacation Bible School" either. Quite simply, it is considered the responsibility of the father to teach his family God's Word. Therefore the church does not undertake to do it for him.

In Alanon, we have a saying about "Don't do for others what they should do for themselves." It makes sense to train our own children in the faith we want them to claim and profess later in life, rather than delegate that important task to others. That goes for values, beliefs, scriptures, practices, etc.

Even in the context of an unchurched childhood, I think my parents got this right. I grew up with their values firmly in mind and heart, a solid foundation for the rest of my life. I had the raw materials, the concepts and vocabulary, to put together an adult faith when it came time to do so, even if I could not have explained any of it for a game-show quiz in VBS if that had been part of my childhood. Obviously, it is a quirky and unorthodox adult faith, fitting quite imperfectly into any of the conventional denominational boxes. But square peg though it may be, it is a strong square peg, one with deeply held and deeply lived convictions.

I don't think an isolated week of "Galactic Odyssey" would have given me the spiritual strength to persevere on the difficult spiritual journey that's gotten me where I am today.

One thing that has always impressed me about the Plain churches is that the children sit with the parents throughout the entire service...no matter how long the service, no matter how young the child. (Teens cluster in the back, wisely segregated by sex.) Some services are several hours long, and the mothers of young children may come and go occasionally to tend to the real needs of hungry infants or take toddlers to the bathroom. I liked this about the Mennonite church I first attended, too--that at least sometimes the little children remained for the whole service. After all, Jesus said "Suffer the little ones to come to me, for such is the kingdom of heaven." Sometimes their cries seemed to underscore a particular point..."out of the mouth of babes."

It is not only the mothers that see to their children during the service. Often the mother has an infant, and the father has the next older sibling in his lap on the men's side of the meetinghouse, tender and loving. How precious it is to see fathers attending to their young children so kindly in public! Not what one observes in more worldly venues, like the bus or the grocery store.

Sunday one of the ministers had his daughter--perhaps 7 years old--sitting with him at the front of the room. I was struck by the irony that she was one of the few women who will ever experience a service from that vantage point, since women are not ministers in the OGB church. An odd concept to me, certainly, but I can see that it serves these people well in the context of their practice and community. But how wonderful that her father is, truly, teaching her the Word in every way he can. She will grow into a woman with a special sympathy for her husband should the lot fall on him to be a minister.

But--how could a complex adult sermon, more than an hour long and full of tracing the referenced scripture from one chapter and verse to another, ever compete with Gameboy? And there, perhaps, is the key to understanding the "Galactic Odyssey" phenomenon. The OGB children don't have Gameboy, tv, movies, etc. to draw their attention towards the realms of fantasy. They are surrounded, instead, by people who are talking and living the scriptures. Like Mary, they sit and listen when Jesus visits their home through their father's words. Their challenge is to find the scriptures, rather than achieve some computer-game goal. What different skills and values they will learn, compared to their worldly peers!

The world's children, by contrast, are distracted by many things. Like Martha. It takes something with flashy graphics and a catchy title to get their attention, much less hold it.

I think the OGB have chosen the better part.

For Goodness' Sake

A friend has undertaken an inquiry into the nature of goodness (www.insearchofgoodness.wordpress.com). In the midst of busy times and transitions at the farm recently, I have only been aware of this in a perfunctory manner...noticing her facebook updates, and nothing more. But today's status made me stop and take notice:

"Something weird is going on with my soul."

Been there. Done that. Here's where it got me. It's a good thing...but profoundly surprising, if I stop and think about it. I'm not the least bit surprised other people think I'm nuts.

Not that she will end up anywhere remotely close to where I appear to be, from the outside. Or she might. I'm just saying there's no correlation to any outward result. Heck, I don't even know where I'll end up, just a little of where I've been and where I am now.

Skimming her blog brings cascades of recognitions, memories, understandings of my own journey. This blog was begun to tell the story of the rainbow covering that I wear daily, to explain it to others, to help myself to understand it better. But it is also the current chapter of a lifelong journey. And so she has reminded me that after starting in the middle of the story, it's only fair to spend some time, now and then, going back and filling in some of the history.

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Where did my own journey start? The foundation was laid in family values: beauty (real beauty, like a lawn studded with thousands of dazzling dandelions), truth (like the little child saying, "but the Emporer HAS GOT NOTHING ON!"), education (like having Audubon guides read to me instead of bedtime stories when I was a toddler), etc.

But I can (at least at this moment, from this perspective) trace the actually intentional quest to a season in high school. Finding the Witter Bynner translation of The Way of Life [Tao Teh Ching] while taking inventory of the high school library one summer. NOTICING the shimmer of sunlight on autumn grasses. Reading and discussing Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM) with my best friend. Was that also the year I learned to spin yarn, and realized I needed to raise my own sheep someday? It well could have been.

From ZMM: "And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good: need we anyone to show us these things?" Those words have been faithful guides on my journey. ZMM tells of several, interwoven journeys: spiritual, psychological, physical. The complex, non-linear telling of these inseparable tales foreshadows my own convoluted sense of time in my own life...a non-linearity that sometimes puzzles others. The past is current here in the present; the future is embodied here as well; now is all there is but the past and future are both enfolded here. When someone says, "oh, forget that, it was all in the past"...well, how can I do that when it is part of the present?

Circularity. The poem Miracle tells about one seed, that of my baptism: a truly momentous event in my life, in hindsight. Getting there was 40 years of the journey--40 years of other, generally more subtle miracles.

But before my deliberate commitment to God (baptism), I simply didn't have the language to describe the previous miracles, the steadfast guidance I received from God in my daily living, the love and care that nurtured me whether I believed in it or not. I didn't believe in it, in fact. Not a passive lack of considering believing, but an active, "informed" denial of any such thing. It is very difficult to be aware--in any detailed sort of way--of something for which we do not have language. About the most we can say is--as Diane so well put it--"Something weird is going on". And then we can hope that someday we will stumble on the words with which to explore it.

Silly me. God was here/there all along. This I know from the depth of my heart and soul and mind and spirit. Yet back then I "knew" the exact opposite: that God was a ridiculous myth, an intellectual construction by and for those who were too stupid to live without some sort of SuperParent making up rules and punishing those who broke them.

I can't prove it either way. Neither can anyone else. Perhaps it's simply a symptom of mental illness that I'm wearing this "little piece of spiritual cloth" on my head.

But for goodness' sake, for God's sake, I can't imagine not wearing it, now.

For God's sake, because it is one little thing I CAN do that is following scripture (obedience R-not-me)...and...(because I am not as nice as I think I'd like to be yet) it asks the Emperor's-new-clothes question of all biblical literalists, "so why aren't YOU taking that scripture literally, if you claim to be taking all these other really vague scriptures literally?"

For goodness' sake, because it reminds me to be good. Now. Today. Always. Whenever God or anyone else is watching.

Good. Good day. Good night. Good bye. Good grief!

For goodness' sake, it's WAY past my bedtime.

On Parade

Yesterday was the annual St. Patrick's Day parade in our small city. Quite a big deal this year--I heard there were something on the order of 100 entries.

Someone on the bus commented that they like the St. Patrick's Day parade here because it really shows the town who it is ...the fire department, the electric company (their float had linemen up on utility poles on it...I can imagine their engineers having a blast figuring out how to make that safe!), the day care centers, local businesses, schools, bars, Miss Kansas, you name it. The whole motley assortment. Our other annual parades are perhaps more unique to our community (the horsedrawn Christmas parade, or the art vehicle parade, or the Earth Day parade), but this one is all-inclusive. The parade anyone can be in, the parade for just being seen in a parade.

For me, it was an ordinary work day driving the bus. Well, sort of ordinary. At shift change, when I went on duty, we had to hike across the parade course...making it through just 1/2 block in front of the head of the parade. Traffic! Oh, my! And pedestrians, enough that anarchy took over for the crosswalk lights.

Waiting and waiting in heavy traffic, seeming to go nowhere while theoretically having a schedule, would make others tense, but the job has taught me to just relax and be in the moment. A time to meditate around the edges of full attention to the traffic light before me.

Is this parade really who we are, as a community?

So many people! So focused on one passion--St. Patrick's Day! St. Patrick's Day? Probably few of them know any more about him than I do, so what are they "celebrating" by wearing green--green anything, green everything? Do they even know?

A certain amount is spring fever, a rebound disease from cabin fever. An excuse to be out and about with the kids, to meet up with other families and friends, etc. But a lot of it seems to be simply reiterative. They are excited because the people around them are excited, who are excited because other people are excited...but about what?

Perhaps it is simply that wearing a particular color is one of the safest things they can do together with so many other people--strangers, even. It's something they can agree on, without discussing the details. There is no right or wrong way to do it, you just do it. It's easy. It's cheap. It's one size fits all, good for all ages. It contains no calories (except that green cotton candy) and doesn’t cause cancer (although the green beer was obviously causing some of my customers problems).

But what difference does it make, in the long run? It is so easy to do easy things, but what is the point? This parade may be who we are, but is it who we want to be?

I had a vision of a different parade. A parade for what REALLY matters. A parade about loving our families, whether they are broken or whole, gay or straight, nuclear or extended. A parade about loving our neighbors as our selves, whether they are homeless or housed, renting or owning, like us or different. A parade about loving God, whoever we conceive God to be.

In April, the town will have a parade about loving the earth...an Earth Day parade. Will there be 100 floats? Will there be thousands of children watching us say THIS IS IMPORTANT?
Or will they get the message that wearing green and getting drunk and acting silly is the most important thing our community celebrates?

Who are we? Who do we want to be? When do we start being it?

The rainbow covering reminds me that I am in this world, not of this world. I march in my own parade, I AM a parade every time I walk down the street. A parade of one.

A parade for living out my integrity, for keeping my focus on the things that matter.

You can be in my parade if you want to.

Why not now?