“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.”

- Wendell Berry

You know what’s nice? Opening your front door to a smiling family bearing a basket full of produce they’ve grown themselves. Recently we invested in a co-op of sorts and the benefits have proven to be more than just nutrition based.

You know what feels nice? Investing in real, live, flesh and blood people. 

As Christians we are here to affirm the supreme value in direct sharing, of immediate encounter — not machine to machine, but person to person, face to face. 

                   -  Bishop Kallistos Ware “The Mysery of the Human Person.”

Once upon a time, before Facebook and box stores, people in a community had little choice but to interact closely. And it was then, as it is now, a messy affair:  navigating relationships with individuals who may not think like you, believe like you. It’s hard work sometimes, finding common ground to meet on. 

Now a days, however, we can accumulate and cull friends on the internet, based on our specific opinions and preferences. We can build walls around our two-dimensional, on-line colonies of “like”-minded acquaintances, keeping them free from intrusions on our  shared values and presumptions – hurling over those walls heated accusations (in 140 characters or less) when those values or presumptions are questioned. 

“…Individualistic material progress and the desire to gain prestige by coming out on top have taken over from the sense of fellowship, compassion and community. Now people live more or less on their own in a small house, jealously guarding their goods and planning to acquire more, with a notice on the gate that says, ‘Beware of the Dog.” 
―Jean Vanier, Community and Growth 

I’m finding it far more satisfying lately to take my chances connecting with people I’ve been specifically planted next to on this earth, despite the risk of being disagreed with, misunderstood, of putting my foot in my mouth, or of being exposed as the imperfect mother, friend, Christian that I am. Genuine kindness really and truly can close all kinds of gaps that distance us. Who am I to assume anything, to call anyone out on anything, being so steeped in my own sins? What softens the soul more than mercy and love? 

“Fire and water do not mix, neither can you mix judgment of others with the desire to repent. If a man commits a sin before you at the very moment of his death, pass no judgment, because the judgment of God is hidden from men. It has happened that men have sinned greatly in the open but have done greater deeds in secret, so that those who would disparage them have been fooled, with smoke instead of sunlight in their eyes.”

—St. John Climacus

Of all the various undertakings I’ve pursued, none have been more challenging, and fulfilling, than keeping my eyes prayerfully peeled for loveliness and goodness in the persons closest in proximity to me, including my children. I find a great deal of significance and peace in staying focused less on things and more on watering the relationships I have formed in my own small town.

This life is too short for wasting on self-centered pursuits and judgement. If I err, let it always be on the side of having loved too much, sacrificed too much, on having given the benefit of the doubt too many times. 

I want to stuff my brief existence on this earth with grace and beauty.

“We see the water of a river flowing uninterruptedly and passing away, and all that floats on its surface, rubbish or beams of trees, all pass by. Christian! So does our life. . .I was an infant, and that time has gone. I was an adolescent, and that too has passed. I was a young man, and that too is far behind me. The strong and mature man that I was is no more. My hair turns white, I succumb to age, but that too passes; I approach the end and will go the way of all flesh. I was born in order to die. I die that I may live. Remember me, O Lord, in Thy Kingdom!”

—St. Tikhon of Voronezh

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This morning at breakfast, my youngest two kids were annoying each other.

“Stop,” said my husband.

“He/she started it!” they both claimed.

“Then one of you must step up and break the cycle by treating the other how you want to be treated.”

“But….but…buuuuutttt…”

Seriously, is there anything harder?

Right now, that’s all I have time for:  focusing on my own habitual cycles of self-centeredness in my roles as a wife, a mother, a daughter, friend, sister, neighbor. It takes every ounce of concentration I can muster to subdue my passion for comfort, convenience, recognition. 

“When you hear someone complaining and you struggle with yourself and do not answer him back with complaints; when you are hurt and bear it patiently, not looking for revenge; then you are laying down your life for your neighbor.”

—Abba Poemen

 

There are countless battles to wage “out there,” in the name of  justice and morality. But I feel so woefully unqualified to make judgement calls of any kind, God being so vast, mysterious, beyond my comprehension, and all. In fact all I know for sure, having chosen this particular, eternal, vocation of my own free will, is that as an Orthodox Christian I’m called first and foremost to serve, expecting nothing in return, that I might be emptied of pride and filled with mercy. 

It’s a simple path, a quiet path, an all-consuming path

- a rewarding path despite its ruggedness. 

“Remember!–It is Christianity to do good always–even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbours as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them or of our prayers or of our love of God, but always to show that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything. If we do this, and remember the life and lessons of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to act up to them, we may confidently hope that God will forgive us our sins and mistakes, and enable us to live and die in peace.”

― Charles Dickens 

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” 

― Mother Teresa

Because that part of my brain containing basic navigating know how never properly developed, I am utterly dependent on my iPhone’s GPS app. If my gut instinct tells me to head in one direction, I know going the opposite way is probably advisable.  If you ask me for a ride someplace, just assume up front there will be several u-turns involved. I’ve finally made peace with this ridiculous, sense-of-directionless, side of myself but sometimes the drawbacks of being always and forever lost can still be frustrating.

The other day, I was coming home from the beach and, as usual, turned right when I should have turned left, necessitating a quick glance down at my iPhone to find out how to get back on track. In the process, I TOTALLY cut off the car behind me.

Immediately, I could see from my rear view mirror, some frantic and angry gesturing was beginning to take place. The driver of the Buick on my tail was ticked, and I was at fault.  When he changed lanes and stopped at a red light, I pulled up to next him and rolled down my window. The young man and his scowl-faced girlfriend in the passenger seat glared at me, then looked surprised as I expectantly locked eyes with them  until they also rolled down their window.

“OH MY GOSH, I’M SO SORRY ABOUT THAT!” I yelled. And then to my surprise, their hardened expressions instantly softened. “DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT!” they answered, now smiling at me, as if they hadn’t wanted to run me off the road only thirty seconds prior.

When the light turned green, we waved goodbye to one another then drove off into our own little worlds. Our brief encounter stuck with me, however – a spark of light, it brought significance to an otherwise mundane commute home.  We’d both had a choice – that crossing of our paths could have gone down so much differently, burdening all three of us with irritation and resentment.

The power at my disposal, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to either hurt or heal is awesome, overwhelming, not to be toyed with. It takes so little to break a binding chain of negativity; it takes so much.  

“She was not one for emptying her face of expression. ”
― J.D Salinger, Franny and Zooey

See this entire fun-filled, expression heavy photo shoot HERE.

We went from a beautiful Holy Week and Pascha straight into tech week for the kids’ school play and now I hardly know which end is up, quite frankly. You know people are always asking me, “Molly, as a mother of four and part time photographer/blogger/stage manager, how do you manage to do it all, to have it all?!”  And I look at them sympathetically for not everyone can attain my level of womanly success. It takes a special kind of individual to:

… maintain a once a month half-hearted twenty-five minute speed walk workout routine

… pile three weeks worth of clean unfolded laundry into one average-sized hamper

…so efficiently remove food stains with a soaped -up washcloth from a school uniform t-shirt so it can be worn again not once, not twice, but three times.

 …frequently help her procrastinating children rig up book reports and science projects the night before they’re due

…fit in a shower upwards of twice a week

…keep the trunk of her minivan stuffed with goodness know what

…cover the vast majority of her picky eaters’ nutritional needs with dinosaur shaped vitamins from Costco

…stay consistent with an all carb/dairy/meat/red wine/chocolate diet

…create homemade field trip permission slips out of notebook paper when the originals get lost

…expertly employ the “Wait till your father gets home!” discipline technique when too exhausted to parent all by her lonesome

O.K. so the truth of the matter is that over these last fourteen years as a mother I’ve had my ideals and obsession with perfectionism squashed, smothered, yanked, burned, strangled out of me. My expectations these days are freeingly realistic, at least when it comes to the ridiculously abundant logistics of managing a busy family.  I can’t afford to be hard on myself anymore for forgetting details, my kids’ accumulating tardy slips, or making quesadillas for dinner…again, otherwise I won’t have the stamina to pursue wholeheartedly what matters most.

Ultimately, what brings me satisfaction is having connected in a positive, healing way with other human beings, my beloved family members most certainly included. Going out for coffee with friends has become a priority in my life, as has hugging and kissing my husband. Laughing with my sons and daughters is essential to my happiness, and reading with them, snuggling them, hearing them, forgiving and being forgiven by them. 

I pray fervently and continuously to stay interruptible, allowing my best-laid plans to fall by the wayside when I am needed by a neighbor. “Success” to me is measured by generous hospitality, kind words spoken, beauty created, a helping hand freely given, gossip and judgement being squelched. 

This afternoon I’ll be lucky if I get half of those laundered but now wrinkled clothes spilling onto my bedroom floor actually folded and put away; alas the available hours in my day for chores/meal planning/ errand running are limited. Fortunately, what remains limitless are my opportunities for living out the hope of the Resurrection via eye contact, a warm smile, a listening ear, or self-denial. May I always, always, always be as merciful to others as Christ is always, always, always to me. 

“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” 
― Albert Camus

After much patience-testing lenteness, Holy Week is finally upon us. We spent Saturday cleaning our parish in preparation. I think I needed that physical challenge of dusting pews, cleaning glass, wiping down tables to help get my head and my heart in the game so to speak. Out with the yuck and in with the bright.  Work and purity, freshness, newness go hand-in-hand. 

My friend, Julie, in a wonderful article she wrote for Chicago Now, entitled Greek Easter in a Box, had this perfect thing to say about Orthodox Holy Week:

Don’t get me wrong–it’s a gorgeous, awe-inspiring experience.  It’s just quite a lot for a newcomer or the unsuspecting.  You need to be in the right frame of mind.  You have to step off your mental hamster-wheel of to-do lists and worries and plans.  And you need to step into a place where the passage of time doesn’t have a lot of meaning, and just listen, just absorb, quietly, for several hours.  (Hopefully, you won’t be plotting out the rest of your Easter feast.)

So that’s what I’ll be doing the next few days, just trying to listen and absorb, to release my earthly cares and soak it all in. To everyone else doing the same, transcendence, peace and joy – so much JOY to you!   

A growing giddiness for the incomparable elation of the Resurrection is already starting to burn in my hungry soul! The Paschal hymns are in my mouth! And look at that, the sun is shining!   Oh Life, what a gift! 

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” 

― C.S. Lewis

It has come to my attention, by way of talking for more than three minutes with pretty much any other mother in my community, that I’m not the only woman stretched  to her limits. It’s not just me, apparently, who is drowning in the details, reheating fish sticks for dinner, pulling dirty socks out of the hamper for yet one more wear, and pleading God always for parental wisdom, and for forgiveness when I lose my cool too many times a day.

All this was on my mind at breakfast this morning when I heard the kids being kids, making an assumption about a teacher who they claimed was too something or other and this bothered me more than usual, enough even to enter into a discussion about it before 7:00 am, without having finished my first cup of coffee.

“Have you ever been misunderstood?” I asked them. And of course they had, because we all have and it hurts. “Look,” I said, “I totally know how easy it is, way too easy, to get sucked into a group attack against another individual, filling in blanks with our slanted speculations, creating an exaggerated story or fictitious motivation out of our own insecurities to make ourselves feel superior, or just to fit in.”

“We only just get this one life here on earth,” I went on, crossing over into preachy territory, “and every day we have the choice to wound or heal those all around us.  Please, please watch your words. We have no idea what kind of internal battles others are fighting.” 

In the face of humbling failure – a failure at being organized, consistent, sinless, perfect – there is grace still to be found, in patience with the shortcomings of others, in empathy, in never judging, in being excessively gentle and kind because we’re all just limping forward the best we can, taking turns carrying and being carried by one another. My fellow flawed, but yet so Loved by God Himself, in spite of everything, human beings, this is for you:

A Blessing For One Who Is Exhausted

by John O’Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.” 

― Virginia Woolf

Yesterday I turned on the news, it was death and explosion this and amputation that. “Mom,” my daughter Priscilla said in a loud whisper so as not to scare her little sister, “Did you know one of the Boston bomb victims who D-I-E-D was only eight-years-old. “Yes,” I sighed. Then she looked at me expectantly for a logical answer, like she did only months ago when a gunman murdered first graders in Connecticut. Again, I longed to soothe her with some sort of  plausible explanation as to why one human being would take pleasure in making other human beings suffer, but again solid answers and explanations eluded me. “It’s tragic,” I finally told her, “And senseless.”

When her eyebrows furrowed in anger, I too was seized by anger. “Do you remember how we best honor those who have fallen at the hands of evil?” I asked Priscilla, and myself, this being a day and age apparently when these kinds of grim reminders are growing increasingly necessary. “By being kind,” she answered automatically, because admittedly I tend to harp on meekness and kindness, and keeping your mouth shut if you’ve only got nasty things to say. “Yes, that of course,” I told her, “but also by staying focused on living purposefully, actively seeking out ways, every moment, to boldly heap light, courage, generosity and beauty on darkness.”

It had been raining throughout the morning and afternoon, not just raining but pouring. So much so that my seven-year-old became alarmed by the deluge of water forming a lake in our park. “God promised!” she said, and I knew what she meant. “Sweetheart, we will not need an Ark,” I reassured her. The air smelled like mildew. Even the blacktop seemed to squish and give way under our feet. To me it looked as if all of nature was grieving, weeping thick heavy tears over our fears and our losses. 

“C’mon,” I told Priscilla after too much talk about morbidity and destruction, “let’s go play outside! Go get your boots on!”

Descending Theology: Christ Human

by Mary Karr

Such a short voyage for a god,
and you arrived in animal form so as not
to scorch us with your glory.
Your mask was an infant’s head on a limp stalk,
sticky eyes smeared blind,
limbs rendered useless in swaddle.
You came among beasts
as one, came into our care or its lack, came crying
as we all do, because the human frame
is a crucifix, each skeletos borne a lifetime.
Any wanting soul lain
prostrate on a floor to receive a pouring of sunlight
might—if still enough,
feel your cross buried in the flesh.
One has only to surrender,
you preached, open both arms to the inner,
the ever-present hold,
out-reaching every want. It’s in the form
embedded, love adamant as bone.
In a breath, we can bloom and almost be you 

When I empty my head of opinions and hypotheses, of assumptions and prejudices, deliberately ousting the urge to put my own words in God’s mouth or to make sense of heaven and hell, then Jesus Christ explodes from the palatable, blue-eyed, honey-haired caricature of a god-man we’ve tried to encase Him in, to define Him by, becoming Fire engulfing everything, everyone, even the drunks, the jerks, the harlots, the overly-confident. And when His white hot mercy  rains down impartially upon the rich and poor, the wise and foolish, the disciplined and forgetful,  the selfish and selfless, the seeing and blind, mystifying us poor, feeble minded human beings with its fierce boundlessness and seemingly impossible demands, I can submissively accept it, even welcome it sometimes, if I’m still enough, if I’m present enough, if want it more than comfort or admiration.

Every Sunday, I battle against tiredness, grumpiness, hunger, idle thoughts and countless distractions in a far from perfect effort to empty myself of vanity, anxiousness, bias, slothfulness that I might ever more fully taste of eternity and be renewed by it. I lean into the Liturgy for strength and guidance.  Then like the thief, all broken and unworthy, I confess Christ as God and draw near to receive Him, His body and blood.  Isn’t that crazy? Crazy hard? Crazy irrational? Crazy inconvenient? Yes, and yes, and yes, and yet on the other side of faith and sacrifice lies unconditional love for my fellow man unsullied by judgement or jealousy. And within that Love is all peace, hope, truth, purpose, courage, joy, everything I need to defy despair and death. This mysterious Love alone is what I live and long for. 

“Let us go forth in peace” is the last commandment of the Liturgy. What does it mean? It means, surely, that the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy is not an end but a beginning. Those words, “Let us go forth in peace,” are not merely a comforting epilogue. They are a call to serve and bear witness. In effect, those words, “Let us go forth in peace,” mean the Liturgy is over, the liturgy after the Liturgy is about to begin.

This, then, is the aim of the Liturgy: that we should return to the world with the doors of our perceptions cleansed. We should return to the world after the Liturgy, seeing Christ in every human person, especially in those who suffer. In the words of Father Alexander Schmemann, the Christian is the one who wherever he or she looks, everywhere sees Christ and rejoices in him. We are to go out, then, from the Liturgy and see Christ everywhere.”

—Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia

“Youth can not know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.” 

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 

My brother teaches Sunday school to my three oldest kids. Yesterday, he was trying to get through his lesson but my youngest boy was feeling squirrely, and ornery.   Every few minutes, Ben would interrupt with what I’m sure was an absolutely hysterical one liner, until finally, after half a dozen warnings, my brother had to ask him to leave the room. That part of the story is not all that shocking, quite frankly; few things are as challenging to a ten-year-old boy as having to keep his comic genius all to himself. It’s what my brother told me happened next that totally surprised me.

After Ben left in tears, Priscilla and Elijah instinctively rallied to his defense. Priscilla, especially, became indignant, refusing to answer any more class related questions. Elijah, when he did answer a question correctly, promptly gave his token “squinkie” prize to Benjamin, who could see what was happening but was not allowed to participate. Since my kids bicker and nitpick at each other, seemingly all.  the.  time., I didn’t expect a primal urge to protect their own to rear its head in the face of a perceived “attack”. And though I know there are all sorts of things wrong with this situation, including disrespect for an adult and a general lack of self-control, all of which were addressed by yours truly once everything had settled down, as it always does,  I am secretly beaming on the inside. 

Of course we’re going to drive each other crazy and make a million, billion, mistakes, but familial love, I’ve told my kids over and over and over again, should and must be resilient, loyal, tough as nails. “Are you still upset about this morning?” my brother asked Benjamin when they were over for dinner last night. “No way,” he answered cheerfully, “I don’t hold grudges that long. You wanna see the comic I drew this afternoon?” Just like that, all was forgiven and forgotten. And so it goes on, a lifetime of stumbling, getting up again and moving forward hand in hand. 

“What can you do to promote world peace?

Go home and love your family.”   

― Mother Teresa

I am certainly not immune to pangs of “wanting something more-ness”. Just yesterday I filled out a medical form and found myself relieved to be able to write “photographer” under “occupation” instead of stay-at-home mom. And then, of course, I made a mountain of an existential crisis out of an administrative molehill.

It’s not that I feel guilty about having my own interests, hobbies and vocational aspirations. Pursuing photography, scratching my creative itches, has only energized me, which is a positive thing for my family. No, what’s eating at my conscience is my knee-jerk discomfort with being labeled as a mother first and foremost. Where’s the glamour in that, the respect, the “Well, that’s so interesting” response reserved for careers that don’t involve minvans and juice boxes?   Desiring to be admired is a slippery slope for me, ending far more often than not in a lingering dissatisfaction with the many, many...many thankless aspects of motherhood – the very aspects that instill a rooted sense of security in my children. 

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” 
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  

I know it’s cliche to bring up death beds and last regrets when speaking of ordering one’s priorities, and yet it’s so heart piercingly true that in the end nothing will matter but the love I gave and received from day-to-day throughout my life. Logistically, it changes little if I mentally and emotionally embrace my role as “homemaker,” “house manager,” “domestic engineer,” what have you; I’d never cease to feed and clothe my kids or let our home become a condemnable trash pit.  Inwardly, however, it matters a great deal if I care more about the opinions of others than the inner calm (or lack thereof) of my own flesh and blood. The power I have as a mother to either build up, tear down or neglect the souls of my family members is nothing to toy with. 

“Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.” 
― Robert Louis Stevenson 

I guess its vanity I need to uproot that I might find joy in the here and now, eternal significance in the mundane, and the wherewithal to avoid the trap of comparing myself to my neighbors instead of sincerely rejoicing with them when they rejoice and weeping with them when they weep – no matter how much we may differ, or how much more together they seem to be than me. That right there, in dying to selfish pride and insecurity,  is where contentment flourishes.  

“Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.” 
― Wendell Berry

Here’s where I’ve been planted. Here is everything I need to bloom and grow.