I declare today 6 June 2018 the first annual celebration of life day.  I celebrate you!

"come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed."--Lucille Clifton

#celebratelife

EXHIBIT 4: Peace while I wait

Love is patient

That is a metaphor.  Meaning the author is conveying an idea about “love” by showing us something different.  A metaphor is an equation that presents the thing that we don’t know as the same as a thing that we do know, i.e. A = B. 

A Love = B patience.

The problem for me is that while I think I have loved, I am not certain about the patience.  Certainly, one does not stay married for 25 years without having been at least somewhat patient.  The question for me is what’s the measure of patience?  Does it have a limit?  If so, then have I hit it, gone beyond it, or fallen short of the mark?

Patient means to be at peace while one waits. 

I must admit, that is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think about love.  It ain’t the second or third or fourth thing either.  But it is the first thing that our pastor said to us about love when she officiated over our wedding ceremony. 

That day was hot.  And so was I, at least just before the wedding got started.  Our ceremony was held up and I was sitting in a car with my father waiting—impatiently—for the ceremony to begin.  There were other challenges that day too.  My train was put on inside out and I had to correct it on the way into the chapel.  My photographer took terrible photographs.  Some big things.  Some small things.  But a simple, union was consecrated on that date.  And so it was beautiful.

Weddings require a measure of patience.  Marriages require more.

Love is at peace while one waits.  Waits?  For what?

For whatever.  But chances are if one is waiting then it is likely for something that one wants IMMEDIATELY.  So if the waiting proves too difficult.  Too hard.  One imagines that the love has been injured.  That it’s been marred.

But no:  Love is patient. 

So the difficulty in waiting, the perception of injury happens elsewhere.  Not to love—because love waits patiently.  And it doesn’t say for how long.  Sometimes the waiting seems to be too long.  But too long for whom? 

Love waits peacefully.

So the perception of waiting “too long” happens elsewhere. 

Time.  The perception of a limit.  An expiration date.  That is not love. 

After a quarter century of marriage, this simple revelation is clear evidence that God is giving me another opportunity to get things right.  

Now THAT is loving.

Exhibit 3: the will to love

Today after 28 years (nearly 26 years married) my husband and I chose to love each other again.

  

He got up and went out into the cold winter’s morning for donuts.  We are together in a new city with our youngest son.  We don’t know where the good donuts are so he looked up “donuts near me” on his phone.  We debated the names and counted the stars and the number of ratings.  Then we made a decision.  4.9 miles away.

After he returned with the donuts, he and I went into the kitchen together and cooked pancakes, eggs, bacon.  I washed grapes and heated chi tea.  I know how he likes his eggs cooked, how much cheese, how long on the heat.  He showed me the donuts he bought with me in mind.  We ate our meal together.  We laughed together.  We touched.

Our family is aging, along with our love. 

In 1992, when we headed to MI the first time, we got in the car in DE wearing shorts and tank tops only to discover that August nights in Michigan can be like fall.  We were kids, newlywed, bright and in love.  New love is great because it elevates and titillates and giggles and tickles and makes us feel alive. 

In 2018, we have returned under very different conditions.  We have property and kids and cars and jobs as well as nearly 30 years of experiences that run the gambit.  We have doctors and lawyers and networks.  We have losses and gains, portfolios, and such.  We both have winter coats, too, at the ready. 

This love here knows something about the cold.  And it dares to love regardless.

My husband chose, today, to zip up, hat up, glove up, boot up, to venture out again—providing clear evidence that God still loves this woman.

Life is not story

3 January 2018

My husband and I watched Armageddon, one of those old action films that pictures Bruce Willis as hero.  He’s a cranky oil driller who’s called upon by the US government to save the world from impending disaster in the form of a giant asteroid barreling at incredible speed toward earth.  I don’t like movies that hinge on high tension.  My husband knows that.  

He told me, “Don’t worry honey.  The white man is there to save us.”

  

We laughed.

Yes.  Armageddon is one of those tales that projects an image of the Nation as like the film’s unlikely savior—raw, unrefined, hard working, devoted, honorable, and sacrificial.  Messiah.

Perhaps such films would matter more if they proved that the country was aspiring to be those things.  But they don’t.

This film is but one of a trillion examples of the way we project that which we hope others will believe about ourselves.  Rather than an action flick, it should be considered a farce given the violence and destructive nature of our country with it’s weaponry and endless wars and guns and desire for walls.  We are far more likely the harbinger of death, than the belly that bears the world’s salvation.    

Stories like this one demonstrate our ability—and I’m not sure who the “our” here is but I suspect is a very BIG “our”—to hold contradictions in our minds.  We have a tremendous capacity to tell stories about ourselves which are in blatant conflict with reality.  And to accept those stories into our psyche.

I watch this film aware that the “our” here includes me.

My health—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—no longer seems able to tolerate such contradictions.  I am rejecting them.  Not righteously like a Saint committing herself to walking barefoot among the poor.  But involuntarily like a patient with lupus whose white blood cells have turned on vital organs.

To cite the problem is one thing.

To identify a solution an entirely different thing.

So I begin by turning toward the thing that is most painful to me at the moment.  Feeling it.  Fingering the jagged edge of it.  The pain comes when that thing impales me.  From the outside.  Forced inward.

I want to point and scream at the one who hurt me.

Then I stop and turn my gaze elsewhere.  Toward a playback of security camera footage taken of me when I was not aware.  And I watch myself.  Not in the Hollywood version, but in the grainy night light of the alley.  

I weep and wail at the me who hurt others.  

In the movies, the film ends after passing through the editing room.  I love editing film.  That’s where stories are made.  

Life is not story.