God in the sink

"What is God doing in the sink?"

Bobble Head Jesus

 My granddaughter, Ava Lou, was standing on a stool washing dishes with a sink full of cold water and soap suds as only a four-year-old can "wash" dishes. She was looking at the bobble head Jesus who was over-seeing the process.

Ava Lou

 I wondered how to explain irony to her. How to say it had some obscure, but special meaning to me. I've often thought, I should put it away because people must look at it all the time and wonder if I am a heretic of some kind, worshiping saints or idols or something equally suspicious. So here is my explanation. He was a gift from a friend, Jeremy Huggins. Together we appreciate humor and irony in Christian paraphernalia that is marketed in certain stores that purport to be "Christian." Things like Frisbees that say "Flying for Jesus." Or night lights with the inscription: "Jesus is the light of the world." So there Jesus sits on the edge of my sink as a reminder to laugh at ourselves for the stupid ways in which Christianity is marketed and to try not to participate in the trivialization of such great things as the gospel. I mean no disrespect to a God I love. I think he knows that.

When it took too long to think of a simple answer to this dear child, she moved on to the next question.

"Can I give God a bath? He wants a bath."

I gently said no. He will get all rusty inside and not bob anymore, and I moved to pack him up in a box, ready for my next kitchen.

She and her mother had visited us for a few days to help me clean out the attic. Micah's presence and and help was so stabilizing. Much was accomplished in a short time. Everything down from the attic and out. Throw away, give to family, give to charity, sell some if possible. Label what to keep and where it should go in the next place. All done.

It really does feel like God in the sink with us. God with us in the midst of real life helping us to a new stage.

Thank you for stopping by. This time I will truly have a good excuse for not posting for awhile because this Friday we move and we will be living in the wreckage of boxes and plastic bubble wrap for quite awhile. But it will be a happy wreck.

Witness to life

     The cowbirds in our neighborhood have been busy. They are like cuckoos and practice a kind of bird abuse that ought to be punished, in my opinion. I would like to punish them and can’t think why this is part of creation, unless to remind us that life is not always the lovely, sweet place we wish it to be.

Bronze-headed Cowbird

     Last spring I found two cowbird eggs in the nest the purple finches built on our front porch. This year when I checked on the progress of mother finch’s nursery I found three finch eggs and one rouge. You can’t miss the difference. Notice the larger egg is a spotted buff color =  cowbird. The finch eggs are turquoise. The cowbird lays her eggs in another bird’s nest, leaving the responsibility of parenthood to someone else. The problem is, birds being what they are, the parents don’t recognize this egg is not their own and the female hatches and feeds the little criminal as if it were native. This hatchling is always larger than the real offspring and aggressively, starves the other babies and is soon able to push them out of the nest where they die on the ground. That’s why I removed the egg.

Purple Finch nest

Cowbird Egg

   I noticed the fine architecture of the nest - it is so pleasingly and carefully woven with grass, wool, and even flowers are incorporated if they are in bloom. And see how they surrounded the nest with little snippets of cedar? I heard that long ago the remedy for bedbugs was placing cedar boughs under the bed. Bugs and pests don’t like cedar - hence cedar chests that safely store wool blankets and clothing. So I wonder if this helps repel the mites that birds are prone to host. A natural wonder. So interesting to find both wisdom and villainy right on our front porch.
This may be one of the last acts of charity I perform while living at Toad Hall. Our days here are numbered as we pack the house and get ready to move in a week. Saying good-bye to many friends and leaving our home of thirty-three (!) years will be hard. But we look forward to our new place where there may be many more birds who will benefit from my moral compass.  We found a house in a quiet neighborhood in Savage, Minnesota, and the back yard abuts a wooded ravine that drops down to a little stream and a forty-six acre park called “Hidden Valley.”
All I can say right now is everyone was right - that we would find something. This is a gift. A mercy. Grace upon grace. Something my wizened heart does not always expect in this life. I’m more accustomed to expecting difficulties and impostors. I am so thankful.

Ice Jam

It’s been more than a month since I’ve posted and I’m sorry about that. I'm going to try to ease back in here. I’ve been dammed up like the Zumbro river I mentioned in the last issue of Notes From Toad Hall. We captured a little video of the muddy waters and chunks of ice moving under the bridge. The gradual building of pressure finally broke an ice jam and we happened to be there at the moment it happened. Something I’d never seen before. It was both frightening and fascinating at the same time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y-kW3_ztzI&feature=youtu.be

Ice jam on the Zumbro River

Everything has had to come together from prepping, selling, looking for and purchasing another house and it has, in amazing ways. But I am excruciatingly aware that people do this all the time, and some do it over and over again, and I am that anemic American that thinks moving is tough. During the first six years of our marriage we moved thirteen times; somehow I’ve either forgotten what it took or just don’t have the stamina anymore. Plus, it has been thirty-three years since we last moved; that's a lot of time to forget how to pack boxes. You’d think I’d be more mature about the unknowns and the stress, but no, it seems not.
It’s not just the upheaval of moving or entering a new stage of life, it’s a combination of other things that add to being somewhat depressed and emotionally jerked around. Like earlier this week I learned that my recent up-tic in hearing loss qualifies me for hearing aids and that this isn’t going to go away, like I hoped it would. And I may need to wait awhile before we can afford them. (So I might be saying WHAaaa? a lot.)  One moment I’m so thankful we sold Toad Hall in three days and the next I’m quite certain we will never find another house that works for us and we’ll end up living in a yurt in my mother’s back yard. This has made it hard to think or write in a fundamentally coherent way. On lots of days going to bed with Almond Joy bars and People magazine seems like a good option, but honestly, I only succumbed yesterday when I couldn’t resist George Clooney on the cover. But even more shameful, is being tempted to buy the nasty National Enquirer. Fortunately I said, Satan, get behind me, and really? I mean, really? People, I don’t think dressing in a kilt qualifies as cross-dressing.

Camilla's World Falls Apart

 I have a friend whose family has been with the State Department and they have relocated across the world many times. She says that each time they moved she wished she were a nun and only needed to pack an extra habit, prayer beads and a cot, but the feeling passed once they got to their new home. I count on that feeling to return. The good news is that we haven’t needed to down-size as much as we initially thought, and in the new house we get to look out the back to a wooded ravine and park full of birds, predators, wild ginger and ramps. A bedroom and laundry on the main floor, and a wonderful and convoluted journey through the wilderness of real estate negotiations brought us to this house. I didn’t think we would make it, but my husband did. In all, we have much to thank God for.
Thank you for stopping by and, again, I apologize for being so spotty with postings, but don’t know how much better I will do in the next few weeks as we continue to pack and plan to move at the end of the month.

Another reason not to write

Ready to show

We continue to clear surfaces, sort drawers, pitch expired canned goods like crazy people. We are almost ready for the 360 Video Tour. By Saturday Toad Hall will be listed. I’ve heard that when people look at a house for sale, they open drawers and cabinet doors. Would that be the case? I mean do you have to be interested  in buying before you open the dressers drawers? Or are we just a snoopy species and look anyway? I shuddered when I looked under the bathroom sink with snoopy eyes wondering what whoever might think when they saw ... well, when they saw what they saw? Like a gallon of periodontal mouth rinse, a dried up box of soft wet wipes, and much else. This stuff is going straight to the trash, no thinking about who might be able to use this.
The big triumph today is that my office is ready to show and it looks magnificent. Never better. Better than Denis’. His desk tops are always organized and clear. I admire this, but one just shouldn’t do that much clean living. It makes me slightly bitter. But right now? Clean. Clean. Clean. I WIN! You’d think anyone would be able to write a book and more here, it’s that inviting. For the time being But not one word will get out because as soon as I start, books and papers gather from nowhere and start breeding like rabbits and this in the digital age! When everything could be done online? But now, at least I’ll have the memory of this tidy place where I’ve brooded and wasted so many years staring out the window. Eventually when I look back at these pics, I may try to rewrite history to say it looked like this all the time. But now that you know, you can hold me accountable. I’m asking you.

(Yeah.  And speaking of the Happy Bunny "let's focus on me" could the video I took be any more out of  focus?)

Anita just came up to show a spring-time wreath she made for the front porch. It is so so so whimsical and sweet with that little crocheted hen sitting one her nest surrounded by pussy willows and baby’s breathe I could eat it! If I came to our front door, I’d want to buy this house just because of that. Wouldn’t you?

Spring is here. Maybe.

Saturday is it, then. The house goes up for sale. We are in the chute and I don’t know where or when we will come out.

Against Anxiety - "put it into practice"

Snow just a few days ago and now inches of rain on top

“The Lord is near.” I’ve known that phrase since I was a child. I think adults said it to make kids afraid to scratch and pick the dead skin off their heels or other socially unacceptable behavior because this very important and glorious person who has power to see you through walls is watching so you better behave. No, I think Jesus means to calm us, to love us by being near.
Do you ever waken from dreams that are not specific. They aren’t frightening, but they leave you with impressionistic confusion and foggy memories of busyness that makes you anxious?  I want to know, really know, the meaning of “Rejoice … the Lord is near.
I came away from home a few days to visit long-time friends who make people feel loved and at-home. I am experiencing the grace they offer. You can get up get a cup of coffee that is already perfectly made and go back to bed, even. This seems to be a good place to be before we dive into the unknowns of the coming days. But thoughts keep knocking at my door: will Toad Hall sell right away or will we endure weeks, perhaps months, of see-sawing on the market? Will we forever be grabbing wet towels and stuffing them in baskets? Wiping the crumbs? Recycling newspapers, tidying pillows, etc, etc? Right now it is a little exciting. I hope the next stranger who enters our door will become the owner and will love this place as we have. However, it’s possible this will all become so tiresome I’ll want to kill any agent who dares show the house and I will despair of EVER selling. I don’t know. And what if it sells immediately and we do not have a place to go?! What then?
Here, in such a beautiful place where the desert blooms and the light reaches the mountain peaks with friends I love, I should not be thinking about anything except where is my wine glass, but even my subconscious conspires to dream empty, busy, confusing dreams.

Thankful for outrageous Bougainvillea

“Do NOT be anxious about anything.” The Pauline prescription for anxiety follows this up with “but in everything let your prayers (more formal words …Our Father) and requests (a little like begging) AND thanksgiving be known to God.” These three things are part of the formula. Pray. Ask. Be grateful, you who could be living in a refugee tent somewhere.
The news that it is raining back home doesn’t help. All day rain has poured down on top of four feet of snow. A foot of ice.

Desert peaks lit by setting sun

Trying to shovel it away or dig a trench is quixotic. Some of it is sure to leak into our basement because it has nowhere else to go other than down through the walls and out onto the carpet. The past month I have already spent time worrying about this possibility and in case it should happen I may have mentioned it to Denis and Anita possibly ten or twenty times. Please help me watch for it, I say. (And they flinch.) And now? Rochester is a hellish mess. Water pooling every where on top of mountains of snow. So I have to ask. Is our basement leaking? I could tell Denis didn’t want answer that question. He wants me to not worry and to have a good time - to rest before we plunge farther into no-return. But I must ask. Is water leaking into the basement?
A long pause. (Not good.) Yes. It is. But we have the carpet rolled back, the heat is on and the fans are going. It’ll be okay.
I am silent. There is nothing you can do about such things after all, is there? So many things in life like that.
Stop your infernal worry. Before that statement about not being anxious comes that well-placed reminder “…the Lord is near.”  Yes, he is. It’s like the SWAT team, your Grandma, your bridegroom and the sheriff who is your brother - all rolled into one is watching out for you. Petition. Prayer. Thanksgiving.  Do it, Margie. Pester God. Say your formal prayers. Add a list of things your are thankful for.

There is more to this piece of advice that is worth thinking about. But I’ll skip to the end where Paul cryptically says: “…put it into practice. And the peace of God will be with you."
I hope you don’t find this territory completely foreign. We like to think we are not alone in our neurosis. I pray you find comfort for whatever you are facing this week. Peace.

Let it rain and snow. Thankful to be here awhile.

Forgive yourself

I’ve had a little vacation from my computer when I sent my old one off to Ed in Florida. Lucky me, he transferred all her data to a new one - as long as Ed is around (thank God he is doing pretty well and about to be another “first” in getting a new-fangled treatment for stage IV metastasized prostate cancer) he still keeps our machines rotated and up-to-date. It felt good to have it gone, gone, gone. Like I was free from one of those enslaving robot pets that quack for mama duck all night. I looked at that empty spot on the desk and was happy not to hear the little ploops announcing the arrival of messages. It reminds me that there were days back when, when I still knew how to use paper and pen.
Now she's back. I call her Jane. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s Calamity Jane I’m thinking of - blazing fast and easy on the eye. I quite like her, but I’ve still been avoiding her, distracted as I am about selling, moving and buying the next place in life. It’s the best excuse I’ve had for not writing in about a hundred years. Don’t bother me, I’m sorting moldy tub toys that haven’t been used since my 36-year-old daughter was a baby. Go away, Denis and I are in intense and delicate conferences about finances and futures.
When pressure mounts to brain stroke intensity, I feel like beating myself up all the way from here to Glen Allen, Alaska. Then I realized something important about forgiveness. You need to forgive yourself, Einstein. Stop your ridiculous self-abuse.
I came across this by Ann Patchett and I’m pretty sure it applies to a lot more than writing:
     Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper, ... I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people form being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.  - Ann Patchett, “This-Is-Story-Happy-Marriage"
For me this translates to: I grieve most about lack of diligence. I can’t or don't write as much as I would like, but I can and will write what I can when I can. Does this make sense?

Do Nothing

"Do nothing." That’s what my friend, spiritual director and Mac support man said. "I’m on it, Margie. It’s all taken care of. Do nothing.” (for more about Ed go to his blog: www.wedonotloseheart)
I have a response pattern firmly woven into my amygdala. It loves to presuppose that Margie should never make a mistake. However small it might be, you are not allowed to get it wrong. If the thing is big, involving another’s well-being, lots of money, losing your keys, or moving your house and job from here to there, well then, there will be hell to pay if you get it wrong or can’t fix it. Matters of less consequence are not exempt from punishment.
Some would say when mistakes are made they are accidental. Circumstantial. Just life. Maybe, but lately I’ve come to believe God is messing with that organ in my brain; perhaps it should be called my heart. Or my spirit. Whatever, where ever it is, He is in that place where the real me dwells beneath miles of protective layers and he allows me to make mistakes. Sometimes he’s there with a wrecking ball trying to get my attention, other times with an instrument so delicate I barely feel the exposure of this ill conceived notion that whatever Margie does, must be done perfectly.
What happened yesterday will probably seem inconsequential to you. Not to me.
I was excited that it’s time to replace my aging computer with the new MacBook Pro Retina Display. Ed sent me the link and told me to go ahead and order the computer and a warranty and have it shipped to him for set-up.
1. I ordered the wrong computer.
2. I forgot to purchase the extended warranty.
3. I was dropped several times before I finally got the warranty purchased. When I purchased it, it was, of course, for the wrong computer.
4. When the receipt was emailed I saw I had even accidentally ordered an extended warranty for a computer I knew I wasn't getting.
5. By the time Ed figured it out, the wrong computer had already been shipped with the added cost of a warranty for a computer they hadn’t shipped and I wasn’t getting anyway. Do you understand this? Good.
It is the most mystifying thing to be a person who can get so many things wrong in one go. It is also humiliating. Shameful. It was time to beat myself up.
Suddenly I decided I’d had enough of that. This is who I am. A person who makes mistakes. Even sinful mistakes. Not one of my weaknesses is a surprise to God. (Not to Ed or to you either.) Being a person who tries to control every thing and every one and fails at the simplest thing and yet is still loved by Jesus? That’s not bad.
In a book I’m reading slowly these days - Barbara Duguid writes in Extravagant Grace: "Paul’s description of himself as chief of sinners (see I Tim. 1:15-16) is not some charming attempt at humility and self-abasement; it is the absolute, glorious truth. We are all frail and fragile children who sin a great deal in our disobedience, but who also manage to sin a great deal in our best obedience as well. Discovering this truth and growing to love it can be one of the most powerful and joyful motivations for change that God ever invented, but it seems that few Christians today ever get there. They have such a hard time giving up their great expectations for themselves and others, and they are left spinning aimlessly in cycles of fear and shame as they try desperately to impose those expectations on the recalcitrant world around them."
May God continue to hammer at my heart. I want change. I want/need joy.