Seeing Through Fog

The small town I grew up in nestles near the foothills of the Blue Mountains.  In winter, fog settles in like a close friend, creating layers of gray that bathe everything like a soft focus lens.  To this day, I completely love fog....its gentle envelopment and quiet mystery.  I feel comforted and held by fog.  It's sacred space for me.  Rest and solitude.  Light and voice.

Where I live now, I am just a few minutes' walk from Puget Sound where vessels large and small make their way through the steel waters all night long.  This week, the fog arrived....mornings of opaque misty gray, amazing banks of clouds hovering over the waves, lit at night by the full autumn moon.  Tonight a symphony of foghorns sound their way across the water into my home.  It's cold out but my windows are open, inviting in the deep resonating tones as boats make their way through the night.  It's a lonely sound and a calling out.

My sweet baby is down, cuddled in soft pajamas and blankets, his ear inclined toward the open window and the foghorns across the way.  He had a long day with little napping so he's somewhat agitated in his sleep.  He cries out periodically and I go to him, offer the gentle pressure of my hand on his little body, lay my head next to his.  He gently sighs his way to letting go.  His tiny hands wrap mine to his chest even in his semi-sleep.  I listen to the foghorns as he sounds his way to rest, warm tears dampening my cheeks as the struggles of this journey flood my heart.  Even with moments of clarity and the growth of an intensely deep and abiding love, the last four months have been foggy.  This is so hard.  And this moment is so right.

I am saying goodbye to a friend this week, a woman I've known for a short period but whose space in my heart is marked indelibly.  Our tears today were hard.  Very hard.  I don't want to let her go.  I listen to the foghorns and reflect on her experiences.  She has taught me about reaching out, about making moves one at a time, about risks toward unseen hopes, about staying in and naming realities, about the "-ing" of faith and in human relationships.  She reminds me that we do not wrap up life in our places, that we take our stories as we move.  She is courageous and loyal and seeks living honestly, and I am better for her voice.  Our relationship reminds me that when the future, even the very moment, is foggy, there is still a sounding to do.

The foghorns are peace for me tonight as I say goodbye to my friend, pause to settle my sleeping child, wait to hear the resonance of my own heart in the moment.

Despite the dangers in movement, the ship dares not be silent nor still. 
We must move through fog.  And the only way to do that is one layer at a time.

Reached

When my mom was diagnosed with melanoma I had no idea how important people I barely knew would become to me. I've always been one for rich, meaningful friendships and leaned toward having a small circle of close friends over a large gathering of more casual friends. It doesn't have to be one or the other, although for many reasons I found that I could enjoy a larger circle but felt more alive in a closer one. Mom's diagnosis came when I was about 21 years old and I turned to my family and a few close friends in that time. But when her disease progressed I discovered I was also leaning into the larger communities I'd become part of. They were rich, healthy communities, able to help carry the weight of reality in life...the joyous and the grave...for so many of us. It was a natural leaning for me because it was a relational one. I hold the memory of some dark days with the sweetness of those connections. I also saw how a bouyancy formed out of the hearts of people around the globe...people who simply heard a story and followed their hearts' responses.

Now I find myself in different but familiar circumstances with my brother Ned's cancer journey and see again how the comfort of established friendships and the rising of new ones form the love God meets me with. I usually have a lot of bandwidth for life's harder curves, but right now much of my capacity feels used up by the recent birth of my son and the play-out of some postpartum depression. At times I feel the ground in everything going on right now and at times I don't. In all of it I am grateful for friends and family who also live in light of love, shared love, love that embraces and accompanies. We don't usually know why new relationships enter our lives at certain times but I know that the advent of new circles in my life this past year is no accident. They widen my heart without diluting meaning...rather, enriching it. They carry part of my story, helping to remind me of what I know and marking pages for me to come back to. I am deeply grateful for friends old and new....in relating we can be for each other expressions of God's heart.

Ned's in surgery right this very moment and his post this morning shares a note he received from our sister Britt, a true illumination of the kind of love and living that most moves me....moves me toward desire for closeness with those I love and deeper appreciation for the massive host of humanity we are graced to be part of.

See the post here, click on his blog title for all of his posts:

http://nedabenroth.blogspot.com/2013/08/i-consider-myself-luckiest-man-on-face.html?m=1

On In/Fertility. And Children. And Being People. And All That.

A friend recently sent me an article about Anna Karenina. The timing was perfect, partly because I was in the midst of re-reading the book (before seeing the new movie, which I want to see for its fabulous costumes) but also because the writer's point about the idolatry of giving one's entire self over to a person dovetailed with things I've long thought – and have been recently thinking about again – about marriage and children.

Jonathan and I have been married for a little over 9 years.  I always felt that if we had kids it would be good and if we didn't it would be good.  There has always been a little underlying question there for us, but I wasn’t worried about it.  But since we didn’t have children over the years, I especially appreciated the women who got me – who understood my blend of openness to having kids, occasional uncertainty and fears about having kids, and contentment if we never had kids, all of it woven with awareness of both grief and celebration in either case.

Plenty of women feel it differently.  They’ve always wanted kids.  Or they got married and wanted to have kids.  Or some have never wanted kids.  For me, it’s not that straight, and while I didn’t want my fears to rule, neither could I “fake it till I make it”.  As I searched for voices that would resonate with mine, I found them hard to find.  I've heard polarized versions certainly but not mine.  So I’ve felt a bit of a compelling draw to see if I can articulate a few thoughts here in a way that describes my experience, creatively and maybe with a little humor confounds a few assumptions, helps illuminate something of the width of being God's in this world, and offers accompaniment for others. That oughta be easy enough, eh?

Jonathan remembers me talking early in our marriage about liking the idea of having 3 kids and he also remembers periods when I wasn’t sure I wanted to have kids.  I’ve always felt that mix.  Motherhood never felt like an imperative for me.  I've never been one of those women who felt like I had to have kids, that it's what I "was made for".  It wasn't something I was adamantly opposed to; but it also wasn't a centering point for me.  I knew that even if I was a parent one day I couldn’t see finding my sense of self in my children.  I felt the same way about marriage and still do.  I wouldn't trade Jonathan for anything, I utterly adore him.  But even as we are each transformed in our relationship, neither of us finds ourselves in the other.  Being married with him is not who I am in terms of grounded identity.  The same is how I see having kids.  If it happens, it happens.  If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.  It changes a lot, but the essence of who I am is not defined by that.  I turn to God for that.

But when I got married it seemed like kids were almost assumed.  Why else would you get married?  You might feel uncertainty around parenting but of course you’d have kids.  And voicing something beyond that was almost heretical when it was really only disruptive.  Truthfully, it really bothered me because those questions about motherhood don't usually start by asking about who you are; they start with wondering why you're not one, or when you'll become one, or don't you want to be one?  At a party earlier this year Jonathan & I got into a conversation with a couple.  The wife talked a lot about their sons, the husband his work.  After a bit she asked us if we had kids.  When we said no, the conversation literally stopped, I kid you not.  It was pretty uncomfortable.  I tried to fill the space for a moment or two with what we were involved in, but they were clearly done.  Neither of them had anything left to say.  It’s like parenthood becomes the central pin you’re identified around.  Absent that, you’re almost nothing.

Both Jonathan and I have been blessed by people who do not have kids and who are committed to caring for others in ways they couldn’t if they were parents.  I deeply admire and respect them.  What about them?  And what about people who can’t have kids?  If having children is so key as to be assume-able, what’s being said about people if they are childless (I hate that word) in either case, by choice or by chance?

While we weren’t "neutral" on the topic of wanting kids, neither Jonathan nor I assumed we would be able to have kids. We certainly didn't marry with a plan around having children. In fact, our pre-marriage conversation about kids fell sometime in the final few weeks before we got married – it was fine to not know numbers and timing and have a plan, but I thought we at least needed to know if either of us definitely didn’t want kids.  It went something like this:

Me:      So we haven't really talked about kids, do we need to?

Him:    I'm not sure.

Me:      Do you know for sure that you don't want kids?

Him:    No

Me:      Ok

End of discussion.

Those of you who know me well might find the brevity of that surprising, but that's really all there was to it. It was similar to our pre-marriage discussions about finances, community involvement, retirement, cohabiting, career aspirations, vacations, vegetarianism (ok, not really) and other kinds of Big Things you’re supposed to talk about before the vows.  And so we were married.  And honestly, over the years "kids" really came up relatively little.  We'd meet the topic here and there, and there remained unexplored questions, but neither of us expressed much urgency around it.

Because it’s who I am, I would check in every now and then to see what Jonathan was thinking. When he turned 40 he told me, "it's not that I'm dying to have kids right now but I don't want to turn 50 and regret never having tried." So we decided to try. For non-fertility related reasons, I'd been off birth control for several years and in that time had only one or two unexpected "I wonder if I'm pregnant" moments (I wasn't). For brief stretches during those years we tried getting pregnant but frankly being so focused on it really wasn't very fun, and I am not a good fertility tracker. Absent a compelling expression (like his directness when he turned 40), I was content sailing along in other streams. But he turned 40 and we got serious.  And several months went by. I eventually signed us up for information sessions at two adoption agencies and a fertility clinic.  We weren’t committed to adopting but it was an option and we wanted to explore it.  I’d never felt like I had to be pregnant to have kids (although I have thought a pregnancy wardrobe would be fun – the clothes are cute!) but it was an option too so we explored it as well.  The doctor at the clinic said, "here's what I think, here's what we'll do, and you won't be doing the same thing in a year."  I loved her.  For several reasons, we went that route instead of adoption.  So I knew that in a year we'd know:  we're either having kids or we aren't.  That was over a year ago.

I have friends who've given birth, who've adopted, who've never done either, who don't want to, who would love to but are single and don't want to be single moms, who have given birth or adopted as single women, who’ve been through termination of a pregnancy, who’ve given children up for adoption, who've gone through multiple miscarriages and multiple failed adoptions. Women whose stories around having kids are full of fullfilment and others whose stories are full of pain. Many whose stories blend a lot of both.

As we started this process last fall I felt a genuine curiosity about how it would be for us.  I didn't see it mostly as me becoming a mom, I saw it as us having a baby, and on a route that was familiar to us through many couples we know but experientially new for us.  Some of it was as easy and blasé as brushing my teeth.  And some of it was really, really hard.  Emotionally draining.  Physically uncomfortable.  I got tired of tests and procedures.  Very tired of it.  Anxious about a few.  Angry occasionally because it mattered to Jonathan too yet it fell to me to research procedures and schedule us for information sessions and appointment times and ultimately to put my body on the table.  He had his moments too...babies require two people.  There were times when I was ready to be done, when it felt like the damage to the soul was almost too much.  Toward the middle of summer as we talked about it one day Jonathan said he'd rather be with me than have kids with someone else, which was sweet and good timing and something I knew, but which I grasped the truth of with both hands because there were times when I didn't know how much longer I could keep up.  We didn't go as far as you could, but you can't undergo much around fertility treatment without some sense of being invaded.

The cycle of hope and disappointment can be devastating (for both men and women).  That wasn't the hardest part for me.  The hard part for me was the waiting, the staying in it.  And in that staying and waiting, I carried my uncertainties and fears and my full-on openness.  I tried not to leave anything behind.  Staying in a process whose end was somewhat clear but ultimately would be defined by us.  I didn't feel free to make commitments that might last more than 8-12 months, and that meant not doing a couple things I really wanted to do.  Trying to figure out the balance between putting some things on hold and yet not putting ourselves on hold – the heart of that personhood/identity crux.  Jonathan and I had decided where our limits were and that helped.  We knew we'd try some things but not others.  Some options simply felt more drastic than would meet their value to us.  But in the meantime we were going through this process that I knew we'd set aside a year for but could actually last longer than that.  Because you do enough cycles of everything and then at some point you decide you're done.  Or you take a break and re-tool for the next step, if you want to take the next step.  But even if you've paid your final bill from the clinic and deleted the medical assistant's phone number from your speed-dial, you know that unless a surgical procedure occurs there's always that off-chance of pregnancy and you wonder if you want to remain open to that possibility or if you'd rather just say "no" to it so you are free to say an unequivocal "yes" to other things.  It's a bizarre place to be, and it was the part that brought me to tears and exhaustion.

I'm married to a fairly placid man, and I mean that in the kindest sense.  He is sentimental and intuitive and cares deeply.  He also doesn’t express things with much volume, and even less under pressure.  It takes a lot of work to get him riled up enough that the more juicy bits come out.  And I know...I've tried many times over the years to push him to that tipping point.  At any rate, when he is ready to speak it’s always worth listening.  While I knew we both cared and felt invested in the process, I came to know that Jonathan & I also felt that in different ways.  It’s a little terrifying…the questions…“when will we know we’re done? and will we both know it at the same time? and what if we don’t?”  I knew that the year-end would bring a very different kind of grief for him than for me if it meant we weren't having kids.  We'd both feel it, but for different reasons.  There's no way to prepare for that, it was just a reality I began tracking with.  How to be together in our own ways.

A few of our family and close friends knew what we were in, and talking with them was usually good.  I knew that I could carry everything to them and they wouldn't look at me like there was something wrong with me.  Or I could not talk about it and they were ok with that.

One of the most gracious gifts came from my sister.  Six and a half years ago she had their second baby.  That summer when they were over for a weekend Mel and I sat in my sunny living room talking.  I’ve always admired how after she had kids Mel was still so actively interested and inquiring about people and the world.  I appreciate that about her deeply.  That summer, we were both at transition points, her with another baby and me with a shift in commitments.  From the outside it seemed like the perfect time to have a baby.  But I acutely felt a desire to not have kids during that period.  I struggled with how to describe my heart to her, my not knowing, my uncertainty.  In the midst of it all, she said the most loving thing anyone had ever said to me about it:  "Mindy," she said, "I think you'd be an amazing mom.  But if you never have kids that's fine."  Even though her words were what I knew to be true, I seriously felt like I’d been set free hearing her say them.  My sister has three kids.  She adores her children.  I knew she’d adore mine.  She loves being a mom and holds motherhood in very high regard.  I knew that it was something she would enjoy doing together with me.  And in that moment I also knew (again) that she loved me too.

Here's my bottom line:  I think that life is basically about creating life, in all the many varied ways that happens.  In the midst of everything, I always came back to that:  what is it for me to create life right now?  I felt like my constant prayer was “God, remind me who I am, who you are, and how that creates.”  Because even if somewhere in this process something "worked" and we had a child, it would be fundamentally altering, and I would be bringing myself along.  My heart, my soul, my energy, my living.  However life goes, with or without children, creating is vast, a realm wherein we get to hear and experience the voice of God in our very selves and others.  It’s a truly phenomenal thing to know that we matter that much!  A few years back I revisited the question “what is the voice of God in my life?”  I came to know that the voice of God is in my own voice, my own life, my own being.  As it is in everyone’s.  The person I am is completely and fully unique across all of place and history – no one, ever, has been exactly like me and never will be.  The individual person that I am, that I was created to be, matters.  Cosmically.  As I play out in the world, whether with kids or primarily in other ways, an en-livening is possible.  And THAT is stunning to me.

And that's what I wished was the dominant thread, the affirmation I wanted to hear. I know there are millions of women out there who say that they were made to be moms. And I can believe them, that they really do feel that way; but I also suspect that being a mom is like other meaning-ed undertakings in their life:  it’s on the path to becoming who they’re made to be. That's not to say their motherhood is not fulfilling or enriching or transforming or grounding.  It can be all that and more.  And yet it's not enough.  It'll never be enough.  It'll be powerful and influential and pivotal.  But if they had never been moms they wouldn't cease to be or make significance.  They wouldn’t be less of a woman.  Their story wouldn’t be over.  I know because of my own life, and because of the millions of women out there who would desperately love having children but who aren't/can't, and are still vitally alive and creating in the world.

It's now December, with Christmas just a couple weeks away. We put up a Christmas tree last Saturday afternoon and hosted the neighborhood shindig on Sunday night. The year allocated to tests and procedures has ended. And since I know you’re wondering, I’ll tell you:  we're expecting a baby in June!  And all that comes with it.  I am slow to excitement around most things in life, it’s not my immediate go-to response; but Jonathan was immediately on cloud nine and the whole thing is starting to become more real for both of us.  And we are both deeply happy.

And I keep thinking about all the things I usually think about and am dreaming about some endeavors I want to undertake.  I fully anticipate profound changes.  A friend was over at the house recently & commented that "it's finally going to look like someone lives here!"  You laugh at that being a profound change...  Messier though it may become, I'm pretty sure I still won't like stuff strewn all over the place.  (Except shoes....I'm good with shoes being everywhere.  As long as they're cute shoes.)  With all that and more, though, I'm also pretty sure my heart will remain drawn to the things God opens me to see in the world, and those will expand, simply because that's how life – and love – works.  It’s grounding and it’s moving.  There is always more to the story.

This baby that started growing a few months ago will forever be attached in some way to us but we are not the extent of its being.  In fact, we are barely the beginning.


©2012 Mindy Danylak

Introducing Melanie: Blue Marble God

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too. 

... Frederick Buechner ...

When Shannon and I launched The Front Porch Series, we knew we were onto something.  We'd sat with many many women over the course of years, hearing stories and longings and celebrations.  And we knew that people (and most of the people we meet with are women) need places to take their stories, and themselves, to.  Places to speak and be heard.  To practice and express self.  Where presence is healing, supportive; even if it doesn't change circumstances.  And, importantly, places that are a bit removed from but still very close to the everyday.  We are huge believers in counseling (done with good therapists), but one thing we have both also known is the parallel need for a typically-people-ed existence...a process-oriented, grace-experienced, love-offered space with the people who we normally live life with but in settings and experiences that are not the usual normal.  That are a bit more sacred and protected.  One cannot replace the other:  we encourage people toward counseling when needed, we offer the parallel.  Among many other things, time and again the groups we've led highlight how life bumps up against spirituality.  Questions about meaning, about God, about the abuses and joys of gathering around faith.  And as we send people out after a day retreat, we want them to continue a connectedness because we can't carry all the day forward for them....they have to do some of that work in their own life, in their own way.  But we know amazing people who love well.  So we keep a list.  Some are counselors, many are not.  They are mentors, spiritual directors, good hearts, women who listen well, who have experience in certain domains of the every day of life.  For that is where we live:  in the every day.  And being accompanied in the every day is phenomenally powerful.  Here is your life.  Be in it.

And Melanie is one of the people you might want to be in it with.

One of my absolutely favorite women EVER is my friend Melanie Poole Gillgrist. I think I cried with Melanie the first time I met her (always a good sign in my book!) somewhere in the ballpark of 2004, sitting in her office at Northwest Family Life.  I volunteered for a little while at NWFL...their executive director, the amazing & incomparable Nancy Murphy, was on a world-wide speaking/conference tour & I checked her mail, voice mail, and email while she was away then did some work on a research project I no longer remember the details of.  But Melanie was there and helped hold the place together, and I spent at least as much time in her office every week talking as I did at Nancy's desk working.  My mom had died a few years before, I'd lived abroad, I was in a relatively new marriage, I was figuring out who I was at that time, and I was in need of a friend who was a bit older than me and wiser but who would love me in a way that didn't make me feel the difference between us.  The kind of woman who would give me a vision for the future without her trying to do it.  I found her in Melanie.

Melanie is one of those women who gets under your skin and settles into your heart simply by bringing who she is.  She speaks soul and humor and comfort.  She is brilliant, witty, analytical, comfortable, contemplative, kind, focused, poetic, strong, and completely memorable.  I fell head-over-heels in love with Melanie and her husband Rob and will never be the same for it.  Melanie's compassion and steadiness and thoughtful conversation, Rob's intensity and intellect and hearty laughter...the authenticity and emotional warmth and relational style they each bring...availability and health....as two individuals and as a couple they are a gift of passionate life (and I think 'passion' is a tired word so for me to use it is saying something!). 

They became friends for both Jonathan and me.  (Photo on the ferry to Bainbridge, 2005.)  The four of us shared meals and ferry rides and coffee and work.  We drank wine and ate pasta and talked as the candles burned down.  We watered our plates with sprinkles of tears and waves of laughter, moving through life's turns both good and, frankly, terrible, and then in moments of redemptive amazement.

Rob & Melanie moved to Minnesota a few years back and then to Butler, Pennsylvania (which, ironically, is where my mother-in-law grew up).  I would move heaven and earth to get them back here but, alas, God hasn't left moving heaven and earth up to me.  But she's now on the Internet, which is sort of like the human version of being everywhere at once!  Melanie's new venture, Blue Marble God, launched this week & I'll be reading every post.  When I read, it's like being with her.  Her words speak the integrity of honest spirit and everyday life.  They come simply but from deep personal exploration, marinating the soul toward places her gentleness might belie.  Because I know her, I know:  she knows.  Melanie has lived a textured life...she is acquainted with deep grief and loss and sheer fun and delight.  Her heart for contemplation and integrated spirituality beats strongly.  If you've ever wanted a spiritual director Melanie's your woman!  Cheers to you Melanie!  The word needs your voice.  Its sound is so lovely and I am grateful for the vibrancy of it that I still experience today...a heralding of God....in my everyday.


©2012 Mindy Danylak

The Backward Glance Carried Forward

Ten years ago last weekend I boarded a plane in Seattle, competing with a winter storm all the way that blanketed much of Europe in snow and ice.  The haunted cold of lovely Prague matched my mood perfectly upon arrival.  I've loved that city and always will.  I met Megan in the train station where we hugged and cried and then rode the rails to Ostrava.  It was the last place I wanted to be.  I'd been living there since mid-November, the 2 weeks at home with my family over Christmas a welcome respite.  Those eight months in the Czech Reublic rank as the hardest thing I've ever chosen for myself.  I knew early on that I wasn't drawn to the venture so much for reasons of place or people or work, although those each had compelling elements in their own ways, but rather for God, and for myself.  My mother had died exactly one year before I moved to Ostrava...she was gone, and I needed to know where I'd gone.

We arrived four hours later, Megan taking a bus to her & Priya's flat, me to mine & Brooke's.  I walked to the apartment where my teaching director and her husband lived, had dinner, got my keys from them, and then wheeled my suitcase through the snow to my building across the street.  I entered the lobby and walked to my door on the first level, flipping to the right key...raised my hand to open the lock and stopped short.  The lock was gone, an empty hole all that remained.  In the darkness I looked up and saw crime scene tape criss-crossing the doorway with instructions to call the police department and not enter.  I literally felt like I was in a Law & Order episode.  I wasn't sure whether to cry from exhaustion and back away from the door as instructed or whip out my camera and start photographing something I'll probably never experience again.

Lest you wonder, as I did in that moment, who had been murdered in our flat over Christmas, it was simply that winter reared her head.  A window left open a crack wouldn't ordinarily have been such a problem but Ostrava had experienced near record breaking cold and our heat was turned down, causing a pipe under the window to freeze and then burst, flooding and spraying at least 50 years of gritty black radiator gunk all over the place.  It seriously stank to high heaven.  Messy, inconvenient, costly, thankfully not flooding anyone else.  But honestly, that wasn't what bothered me.  In fact, it potentially made for a fantastic story and I figured it would be a great one for the book someday.  What I struggled with were reactions that bubbled in the ensuing days...I probably would have been able to laugh it off had it not been for that.

"Crazy American girls," some said. "Who leaves in winter with the heat turned off?!"  "But it wasn't like that," I wanted to protest.  It's my blog so I can set the record straight and say that in truth, it was not off, just low, and if the window was open at all it was seriously barely open, and it wasn't like Brooke and I had wanted to spend a couple nights sleeping on a kitchen bench waiting for the men in haz-mat suits to give us the all-clear.  We'd never lived with radiators -- the house I grew up in had walls ten inches thick and triple-glazed windows and was so energy efficient that we heated rooms simply by turning the lights on and off.  But I didn't say any of that, I just apologized and tried to be gracious and understanding.  I didn't feel like there was space for a different conversation, and all things considered I wasn't sure how to make the space myself.  And besides, that all sort of side-steps the point.

A few years later I met a woman who'd heard the locals' side of the story and laughingly relayed it to me as such.  I ground my teeth a bit and called her a mean name in my head but a grace also occurred to me in that moment, I'd been so busy trying to be open to the new around me that it never occured to me the locals experienced a certain culture shock of their own in having me there and they might not have known it.  When we're the main cheese most of what's around us is familiar, or at least our tacit knowledge trumps, lulling us into a deceit of ease and located normalcy.  And for the most part, we tend to think we're the main cheese, regardless of where we are and who we're with.  All I could do was wait and deal with the moment.  Which we did.

They say that when you move abroad there's a honeymoon period where everything is great for about 3-4 months.  Then, what was new and exciting becomes just frustrating and irritating and from there you start working your way to a new kind of good.  It didn't go quite that way for me -- for me, it was hard from day one and I just slowly moved through it.  Cultural navigation had only a little to do with it.  Having been through the previous year, I was far from expecting a large Czech city to provide the solace and renewal I needed.  Mine was an internal process of adjustment that occurred in a foreign country, supported by a small circle of incredible women who loved me deeply in shared experience, buttressed by the long-distance care of family and friends far away, given local color and interest by good Czech people with whom life intersected for a brief while.  It couldn't occur anywhere else or in any other way.  And I felt a fundamental ok-ness regardless of what was happening around me.  Which, truthfully, was much good.

I tell that story partly for the fun and memory of it but also because I was thinking about it when I awoke this morning and it's not entirely unrelated to other things I'm thinking a lot about right now. You've seen in the last 3 posts that my mind has very much been in another part of the world, one that is new for me, one that is also 'a place where peace is not the frozen silence' ... related to issues that I have worked nearby in different ways over the years and can't stop thinking about ... where my understanding is experiential and storied ... where alteration comes only in time, being in and seeing as much as we can of what's actual and hoping for better, all in the same moments.  By the time I came home from the Czech Republic in July 2002 I was good, and I was better for it. Those months made for a difficult time.  I would do some things differently now but I don't have that choice for the past and it's a past that I would never give up, a time that I innately knew would move in beauty....a movement that I carry in me still, unto the ends of the earth.

So I crawled out of bed and found my old journal to see where my thoughts were on this day back then, after I found my flat a disaster, wanting the mess to go away and for people to be more...well, more of whatever all I needed them to be at the time.  I'm not entirely sure whether the words would be what I'd turn to today, but there is surely still a resonance with what I inscribed in my journal ten years last night, January 6, 2002, as I settled even then, as I try now, into what I was chosing, dealt with what I wasn't chosing, words that helped me to meet the now-ness that is life at its widths, be that relaxed or strained:

Peace is the centre of the atom, the core

of quiet within the storm.  It is not

a cessation, a nothingness; more

the lightening in reverse is what

reveals the light.  It is the law that binds

the atom's structure, ordering the dance

of proton and electron, and that finds

within the midst of flame and wind, the glance

in the still eye of the vast hurricane.

Peace is not placidity: peace is

the power to endure the megatron of pain

with joy, the silent thunder of release,

the ordering of love.  Peace is the atom's start,

the primal image: God within the heart.

-- Madeline L'Engle

©2012 Mindy Danylak (for all original content; not including Madeline L'Engle poem)

What are you?

A few months ago three friends started coming to my house every Wednesday afternoon.  Shannon, Colleen, Jana, and I fill our coffee cups and settle in.  I love autumn.  It's a good time to settle in.  We range in age from 36 to 61.  The first time we met, we watered our laps with tears...tears for ourselves and for each other...and I knew that the meaning of life was present.  I've known each of these women for a long time, years, but never in this way and every week my heart is astounded at the richness of it all.  Our conversations usually overflow the clock.  We take turns emailing something ahead of time...poetry, quotes, pictures, stories...so we have time to reflect a bit before filling our cups together.  Conversation is never boundaried by those words from others...they do not define...but they do weave, inspire, assist.

This past week, the text below was our launch.  I haven't studied Maya's life and I've only briefly read the Unity School's "Lessons In Truth" and whenever this remarkable woman is mentioned I always think about the remarkable women who Oprah will never notice and I want to be in the room with them instead.  I love being in the room with them.  At the same time, Maya's poetry is beautiful too and I too hope to be more amazed the older I get and Mamma's faith seems so solid.  So on Monday these words landed in my in-box and on Wednesday Shannon read them aloud to us, her northern Alabama accent lilting the words warmly, and then followed with this question:  What are you?  And so I ask you:  What are you?

Many things continue to amaze me, even well into the 6th decade of my life. I am startled or taken aback when people walk up to me and tell me that they are Christians. My first response is the question, “Already?” It seems to me a lifelong endeavor to try to live the life of a Christian. I believe that is also true for the Buddhist, for the Muslim, for the Jainist, for the Jew, and for the Taoist who try to live their beliefs. The idyllic condition cannot be arrived at and held on to eternally. It is in the search itself that one finds the ecstasy.

One of my earliest memories of Mamma, of my grandmother, is a glimpse of a tall cinnamon-colored woman with a deep, soft voice, standing thousands of feet up in the air on nothing visible. That incredible vision was a result of what my imagination would do each time Mamma drew herself up to her full six feet, clasped her hands behind her back, looked up into a distant sky, and said, “I will step out on the word of God.” The depression, which was difficult for everyone, especially so for a single black woman in the South tending her crippled son and 2 grandchildren, caused her to make the statement of faith often.

She would look up as if she could will herself into the heavens, and tell her family in particular and the world in general, “I will step out on the word of God. I will step out on the word of God.” Immediately I could see her flung into space, moons at her feet and stars at her head, comets swirling around her. Naturally, since Mamma stood out on the word of God, and Mamma was over 6 feet tall, it wasn’t difficult for me to have faith. I grew up knowing that the word of God had power.

In my twenties in San Francisco I became a sophisticate and acting agnostic. It wasn’t that I had stopped believing in God; it’s just that God didn’t seem to be around in the neighborhoods I frequented. And then a voice teacher introduced me to Lessons in Truth, published by the Unity School of Christianity.

One day the teacher, Frederick Wilkerson, asked me to read to him. I was 24, very erudite, very worldly. He asked that I read from Lessons in Truth, a section that ended with these words: “God loves me.” I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, “Read it again.” I pointedly opened the book, and I sarcastically read, “God loves me.” He said, “Again.” After about the 7th repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me. Me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with God, constitutes the majority?

That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me. I am big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I’m a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.

- Maya Angelou, from Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now

Good-bye Robin

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
-- Emily Dickinson

A few weeks ago I stood in the foyer at College Place Presbyterian Church on Easter morning, reading a letter my mom wrote over a decade ago to our pastor and his wife, Robin & Kriss Peterson.  "They thought we should have this," Mel said, handing the envelope to me.  "Do you want to read it?"  Mom's handwriting spread across the paper expressing her gratitude for Robin & Kriss's kindness and care, how she felt about her upcoming treatment process, her resonance with him as the two of them moved through cancer diagnoses together.  Several months later he & Doug Barram together led my family down the aisle at her memorial service.

I handed the card back to my sister, thinking about him.  Mom was not alone...there are thousands of people whose lives are peppered with these kinds of stories, who Robin walked with in their life and whose casket he stood by in their death...many kinds of aisles people do not want to walk alone...the moments that mean "to live."

Robin Peterson died yesterday.

Walking will continue but it does feel like the earth takes a brief pause to re-adjust itself when people die.  The very lilt of a day is altered by breath, our own and others'.

I am grateful to have known this man who lived the kind of startle that is awakening...who tended hearts and animals with equal passion...who cared for his land and prayed for his community...who saw and who was with and who recalled...who spoke the language of the soul...who sang joy and whispered peace...who rained kindness and lived generously...who was honest about himself and grieved his losses...who understood and entered the story...who pursued love.

Thankful tears fall for you.
Good-bye, Robin.

Daily Bread

"Food is nothing less than sacrament."
-- Leslie Leyland Fields, "The Spirit of Food"

I'm not much of a baker...yeast freaks me out.  But I love cooking, and meals are a favorite way for Jonathan & me to spend time with people.  I always light candles and I know that the typical tea-light will last about 3 hours.  When friends are over, we rarely leave the table before the tea-lights have burned to silent pools in their holders.

I'm reading a book right now called "The Spirit of Food."  Each chapter is written by a different person, sharing stories about the intersections of faith & food in their lives.  Some chapters are better than others.  But I love the Introduction.  It makes my very soul water.  I've read lots of these lately -- The Spirit of Food edited by Leslie Leyland Fields; Take This Bread by Sara Miles; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver; and others.  They make me feel alive.  And they make me want to plan meals & invite friends & track down the best-tasting whole ingredients possible.  Flavors & tastes fascinate me, plus it's just relaxing for me to chop an onion or mince garlic or stir a pot or flip french toast...and I love eating with friends so it works well!

My sister Melody is an incredible cook.  She doesn't just understand gourmet, the science and the art of ingredients & mixing and combining, she was born as part of the definition.  There are some people who learn & others who are.  She is both.  She is a student and a natural.  I've learned a lot from her over the years.  She puts together meals the mouth remembers.  I love watching her kitchen turn into a tornado of flour dustings and spices and heavy knives on butcher block cutting boards, pottery bowls of spiced shrimp in the oven and mixing bowls of sliced peaches on the counter and double boilers of melting chocolate on the stove, her 3 kids swirling around the room.  Sometimes, preparing for holidays or special occasions, we all eat dinner and then put the kids to bed, cooking more later in the middle of the night, talking all the while.  The best conversations happen at those times.  A meal at her home is a thing of delight.  It feels like home to me.  It feels like her.  It feels like love.

I'm not a fancy cook.  I don't have the patience for it.  But I have a version of her passion.  I like watching prosecco bubbles climb the edges of a flute, or hearing the sizzle of a shallot in hot olive oil.  I like the oily pucker of an olive and the relief of sea salt on chocolate covered caramels.  I love how sage and rosemary permeate a kitchen or fresh basil perfumes mozzarella.  I love the artistry of a table & making sure each person has space.  I like the forethought....thinking about who's coming & what they like & don't like, how I get to become more creative as a cook for friends who have allergies or are vegetarian or who are Muslim so don't eat pork.  I love to anticipate.

When we have friends for dinner we start with a toast.  As people gather toward the table Jonathan pours.  Each person gets a crystal shot of pomegranate vodka and we raise our glasses at the same time.  I love hearing Jonathan offer a toast at the beginning of the meal.  A couple weeks ago it was a twist on Julius Ceasar's "veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered) -- he told this little story & ended by toasting with "I came, I ate, I stayed" (in Latin).  We were having dinner with 2 couples, old friends and new friends.  It was the first time the 6 of us had all been together so it was perfect!  A few years ago at a dinner with 3 couples who didn't know each other, Jonathan whipped out the New Testament & read that story of Jesus cursing the fig tree, and then toasted "for faith that can wither fig trees." !!  That one made me nervous because it was so off the wall but conversation never lagged and now I recall it with a smile.

When I think about my growing up years, family circles around the kitchen table, or company in the living room, dessert & coffee in hand, invariably pop to mind quickly.  I grew up with groups around the table & loved it.  We had people for Sunday dinner virtually every week.  My mom didn't especially love cooking but she cared widely for people.  I learned from my mom about hospitality, about blends, about thinking about who would be present, about caring, and about ways of expressing myself in the midst of all that.

Conversation happens at tables.  Life is shared.  Cooking & eating is creating & creative space for me.  It's narrative.  It's creative.  It's life and conversing.  With every meal there's a story to create, a story to experience.  The arc unfolds across the duration of the meal, each person at the table helping write it.  The story cannot be controlled, it can only be joined in.  Life and faith are no different.

Next week I'm having a cooking class in my kitchen with a few friends.  We'll learn a few kitchen tricks and drink a glass of wine.  Women who love cooking will be right at home, and those who consider themselves inexperienced & hopelessly lost cooks will go home with a trick up her sleeve & a guaranteed successful meal she can make at home.  But mostly we'll do it together.  We'll prepare a meal together, and we'll eat it together.  Together being the operative word.  I don't mind being alone.  When I'm by myself I eat things like bread & cheese with sparkling water.  Spinach leaves wilted with a drizzle of warm olive oil.  Snap peas tossed in a pan with a little garlic.  A scallop wrapped in proscuitto, roasted in lemon zest & black pepper.  Being alone is no excuse for eating badly.  Food speaks.  But eating it together is better.

"This is the first salmon of the season.  You all know the tradition that fishermen kiss the first fish.  Anyone do that today?"  My oldest son rolls his eyes, wanting only to eat.  I hurry on.

"I'm going to read something before we start."

I pull my Bible onto the table, and before anyone can resist, I begin:
"This is from the book of Job:

But ask the animals and they will teach you,

Or the birds of the air, and they will tell you;

Or speak to the earth and it will teach you,

Or let the fish of the sea inform you.

Which of all these does not know

That the hand of the Lord has done this?

In his hand is the life of every creature

And the breath of all mankind.

Everyone listens, watching the food.  I want to say far more, to deliver a sermon, but I stop, knowing the wafers of fish on our tongues will deliver its own message."

-- Leslie Leyland Fields, "The Spirit of Food"

A scandal afoot

Charissa Jones is one of the world's most amazing women. She is kind, fun, gracious, strong, gentle, and wise. To be with her is to experience the best of what it is to be a woman, to be a person. I also just simply enjoy her company. Charissa speaks from time to time at her church, a beautiful Episcopal parish in Seattle. Here (and below...if this isn't working) is a link to a sermon she gave in December. I always love hearing about women!

http://www.epiphanyseattle.org/media/2010Dec19/Sermon.mp3

Thoughts on Haiti

Last week we demolished a massive brick & concrete block fireplace in our living room and dumped the rubble on our front lawn. The pile is about 3 feet high, 30 feet long, and 10 feet across. It weighs several tons and it gives off a strong, concretey sooty smell when it’s wet from the rain…which we’ve been having virtually non-stop for over a week now. All that remains where the original fireplace stood is under the living room floor…a long trough filled with broken bricks and blocks. On Monday night, I looked at that trough and turned to Jonathan. “That’s the beginning of what I imagine when I think of earthquake rubble,” I commented.

Then Tuesday happened.

Driving to work Wednesday my eyes spontaneously filled with tears as I listened to news reports of damage and death and destruction in Haiti. It was early…despair didn’t seem to be setting in but desperation seemed palpable, even across a radio broadcast. As I listened while driving home later in the day, I became aware that I was shaking my head…back and forth…no, no, no…how long had I been shaking my head? Tears streamed down my face…involuntary, effortless, unstoppable.

Ten years ago that morning (January 13) I flew to Manila with 9 friends for 10 days. The first day we were packed into a jeep and driven through the sweltering city. It was my first glimpse of people living in cardboard boxes, the overwhelming smell saturating the humid air, kids blocking the road begging for anything you’d give them. The sunsets were amazing but children’s lungs look like they’ve been life-long smokers due to the smog. Poverty and street life in a devastating collision. On January 24 I went back to work and one of my colleagues asked how it had been. I looked at her and replied my honest reality. “I would be willing to change everything in my life.”

I had no idea. Six months later, I left the family law firm I’d worked for since before I finished college. I took a position with a financial services firm that I held for a few months. Mom died before Thanksgiving. A year later I moved to the Czech Republic and less than a month after arriving I found myself one weekend in Cheb, on the western border with Germany. The area was first settled around 800 AD. Population today is around 30,000. And it is a hub for child prostitution and human trafficking through Europe. Babies are sold to pedophiles. I’m not kidding.

I arrived home and looked at that pile on the front lawn. My house is ripped up and compared to my regular life it’s highly inconvenient. But in comparison, it’s not. Not really. My rubble is organized. It’s creative. I planned for it and paid for it. It’s even government sanctioned…I have a permit for it. I have a truck coming to take it away. And there’s no one under there, dead or dying, reaching out with an empty hand or a gasping plea for help.

Haiti. Death, injury, disease, trauma, government, shock, displacement, refugees, exploitation. And that was off the top of my head. For nearly 15 years now my life and work have linked with people in difficult and sometimes dire situations. I would never presume to “get it”…to relate, understand…especially in this situation. That might be the height of arrogance. But in my humanity I have been caught differently with this one…the intersection of reality and my heart and things brewing right now. The inclination is strong to find a way to “do something”…“to go.” And for some people, that is entirely appropriate and needed. For all kinds of reasons, that’s not really what I should do right now. But one thing I do know is that moments create movements. Some moments live in their own kind of time…they are part of and they are different from…and they need to be honored as such. And even when they are part of something else it can all be so imperceptible. But in their coagulating they create something. I have been here before. Each time it’s different but hazily familiar, and somehow that sense is instantly recognizable. I know this place. I’ve been knowing it for some time. And I suspect that, in your own life, you do too.

I don’t often carry Bible verses in my mind, but I do carry images I see when I read them. Among the most vivid is the Old Testament story of when the Israelites crossed the Jordan River. After they were safely on the other side, they gathered stones and created memorials. These stones represented reminders for them. I can see them, walking, deciding which to put down and leave behind, which one to carry…gathering them together and telling the story. I have released and collected some stones over the years…some literal, some figurative…some I’ve selected, some were given to me. Some of them carry meaning, but mostly the meaning is in the story. I’m not sure yet what I will “do” around Haiti and what is happening there. But one thing I do know…I will save some of those stones in my front yard. It is part of my movement right now. It’s part of Haiti in my life. And those stones and broken bricks in Haiti…they’re not going away any time soon.

©2010 Mindy Danylak

Flying & Blogging

My flight from Denver was delayed an hour and a half and way oversold. When the gate agent finally handed me a boarding pass, I took a deep breath and walked out to the waiting plane. Row 14. Seat B. Right in the middle. Our 10:30 take-off was smooth. I slept for a bit, watched the end of "Lyrics and Words" and read the in-flight magazine. We arrived in Seattle to light drizzle and mid 40s. The train wound around underground to the main terminal and I made my way to baggage claim. I walked out into the cold air to wait for my husband. It's illegal to smoke so close to public buildings in Washington, but cigarette butts littered the sidewalk and the damp air was permeated with the scent of stale smoke. For all its unhealthfulness, there is something oddly homey about it. I watched cars dance their way through traffic on the arrivals drive, the flashing lights and occasional sirens from Port of Seattle police cars impatiently commanding drivers to keep moving, no parking allowed. I was asleep moments after hitting the pillow.

I hate flying and travel stresses me but I love it & cannot live life without it. Something about flying reminds me of blogging. Millions of people move through common space in relative anonymity. Polite nods to the people in Seats A and C, maybe a bit of chit chat, the flight attendant moves the details to the overhead bin. Each passenger with their own life and story, possibly talked about but rarely for the sake of forming real relationships. Anonymity with a name - maybe real, maybe not. It's a curious thing.

©2009 Mindy Danylak

The Invitation

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

© Oriah Mountain Dreamer, from the book The Invitation published by HarperSanFrancisco, 1999