Good Stuff

I spent much of yesterday grading papers, making up for a tiny little bit of procrastination earlier in the week.  But while I was sitting here at the computer, the alert bell went off and I took a detour to the Heartsong essay contest to see who the winners were.   

I can only say:  Wow!  I am totally thrilled and humbled to have my Water's Edge piece singled out.  When I read through the entries last week, I kept thinking, "Oh, this one will win!"  Or, "No, this one's even better!"  So I feel truly honored even to have been noticed.  And for anyone who hasn't been there yet, head over to read Marigold2's winning writing.  You will want to pack your bags for the Texas hill country immediately.  

One of my sons came home from college for the week-end.  He needed a tooth filled and, as it turns out, he still has one to go.  He had one filled over the holidays, too -- the perils of his addiction to Coke, I'm afraid.  At any rate, it was incredibly nice to have him around the house for a couple of days.  He and I went out together to our favorite Italian restaurant on Friday night -- his dad was off coaching in a soccer tournament and his sister was at an orchestra concert with friends -- and had a chance for a long conversation about the other challenges in his life: making it through college and sustaining a relationship with a young lady in France.  

Today was a big day for me personally: it was elder/deacon ordination day in our church and I'm a new elder.  It was exciting to be a part of the solemnity and excitement as a new class of leaders fumbled its way to the starting line.  (All right, I should speak only for myself.  I was pulled a dozen  different ways this morning so I felt more like a klutz than anything else as I kept trying and failing to get to the right spot at the right time.  The church will no doubt survive.)  

Now I'm back to grading papers.  Colonial governments, craftspeople, writers, pirates, statesmen, wars and witch trials -- bring on the Revolution!  I'm more than ready.

Water's Edge

The edge of the water is the most extraordinary place.  The place of transition, where sand turns to water and water to sand, rough to smooth and smooth to rough, brown to blue and blue to brown, pebbles to liquid and liquid to pebbles.  The creatures who live there survive as if by magic, washed by small waves, disappearing into the sand, skittering along the edges, vanishing into shells, taking flight across the crest of the waves.  Tiny, graceful crabs and lumbering, awkward pelicans.  Beached starfish, lost jellies, waiting for the tide to roll back in.  Raucous laughing gulls, their coal-black heads glistening in the sun.   

 

I am a little girl, maybe six years old, and my younger brother and I are way, way out on the beach.  The tide is as low as I have ever seen it or ever will, even in another 45 years.  We squat in the sand, our toes sinking into its grainy softness, to play with our pink and blue plastic buckets and shovels.  The water, even a couple of hundred feet out, barely covers our feet, so that every tiny shell beneath us is visible.  The sun beats down on the damp hair plastered to my neck and tiny ripples of waves make occasional passes around our ankles.  It is a wild sensation, to be so far out on what seems like the edge of the world, placid ocean and turquoise sky melding into an arc of heaven on earth.

It is pitch black except for the stars; we are skinny-dipping in Lake Michigan off South Manitou Island.  A group of girls and their counselors, out for a three day trip on an isolated island, remnant of the last Ice Age.  We have been doing the usual -- hiking the forest, checking out a shipwreck, pitching tents, cooking over a fire, roasting s'mores -- but late at night we come running down to the beach to experience the world at its most elemental and free.    We are out to where we can just keep our heads above the water and the sky is huge and the lake is vast.  Utter abandonment.  

We are high in the mountains, backpacking Glacier National Park.  One of my hopes for this trip has been to see a dipper, a small, nondescript, grayish-brownish bird who makes its living by hiking upstream in seach of food in swiftly flowing waters.  I can hardly believe it when we accidentally come upon one.  A life bird in the starkest sense -- not only my first dipper but, quite likely, my only one.  Backpacking in Glacier is hard work, and unsettling, too -- we camped the first night beside a lake where human bones had been found the previous summer (the rest had become a meal for a grizzly).  The Montana/Alberta border is a place of astonishing magnificence, but it probably won't be one that we backpack with young children.  I will have to remember that little dipper at the edge of the stream for another 30 years without another sighting.

A crowd is gathered down the beach and my little sons emerge from its tangle, racing and laughing, eager to pull me back with them.  The early morning fishermen have dragged their boats and nets onto the shore and are busy tossing their fish into their trucks and their leavings back into the surf.  Flopping rays, tiny hammerhead sharks, a blowfish -- the children are enchanted by the treasures the sea spews forth.  They bring everything they find to show me, pose gleefully for the camera, and rush back to the water, trying to return as many lives as they can to the mystery of the ocean.  

 

I am all by myself, standing in the rivulet of water that runs from Lake Michigan into North Bar Lake.  Or does it run from North Bar into Lake Michigan?  An isolated place of perfection.  I could hardly believe that I found it last summer, after driving in erratic spirals around Empire, looking for spots where my family had spent some of our happiest days a few years earlier.   I had remembered an afternoon on a small lake that stretched between the dunes to the big one, an afternoon of sunshine and laughter and splashes.  By the time I found my way there again, an evening chill was settling across the water's edges and there was no one else to take it all in: sky, sunset, water.  

 

I'm not particular.  The edge of the water can be anywhere.  The water itself can be any kind.  Creek, stream, river, lake, sea, ocean.  They all bring mystery to the shore and carry dreams to the horizon.  The water's edge is my favorite place to be.    

Oddities

I got involved in a little debate elsewhere from which I have tried to withdraw gracefully, owing to the snarky nature of some of the posts.  One of the more interesting aspects of the conversation, if you can call it that, was that a couple of people made fun of me for reading and pursuing an education.

I've never before heard of someone criticizing someone else for READING.  Just goes to show that, true enough, "there are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of..." .  (Oops.  That's from a BOOK.  But it was a play before it became a high school staple, so that makes it sort of like...Desperate Housewives, maybe?)

So before I take off today, I thought I'd just mention, in case it's been overlooked, that oh, yes, I am a reader.  A smattering of what's lying around on the first floor of my house:

Coffee table: a small pile of magazines.  The lone book:  The Human Web: A Bird's Eye View of World History.

Bookstand behind the piano:  mostly travel and home magazines and my daughter's music.  The two copies of Antigone given to my sons by their beloved sixth grade humanities teacher as high school graduation gifts, in remembrance of the fun they had had performing Greek drama in her class.

My living room desk: a collection of religious magazines: a few years' worth of Weavings and Alive Now from The Upper Room.

Sunroom bookcase: three shelves of nature-related books.  A favorite: A Sand County Almanac.

Sunroom couch: a couple of miscellaneous books; Girl Meets God, for one.

Kitchen counter and bookcase:  the last week's papers, a couple of issues of Time, and some cookbooks.

Dining room bookcase: Five shelves of mostly books for teaching world history.  But I see Walking the Blue Ridge and A Guide to the Mountains-to-Sea Trailstuffed in there.

My computer desk:  again, mostly world history books.    Past Worlds: Atlas of Archaeology, for instance.

I'm too lazy to leave the computer, but suffice it to say that there are bookshelves in our bedroom, books next to and under the bed, books stacked in the guestroom, bookshelves in my daughter's room (where there are also books all over the floor), bookshelves in my sons' rooms, bookshelves in the attic.  And there is, actually, a library up there, which is overflowing with books.  And, of course, there are bookshelves in the basement. 

Just wanted to clarify that, around here, we see reading as a GOOD thing.

Kaleidoscope

I do love to play with photos!  That's marsh grass in the snow up there.

But I also have a kaleidoscope of things about to get going in my life.

Tonight is our church annual meeting at which new elders and deacons are elected.  That would include me, a prospect which would be laughable to anyone who knew me in my younger days.  How wonderful -- truly full of wonder -- it is that we do not bear the burden of our high school personae throughout our lives.

Tomorrow night I am beginning a six week class on Meister Eckhart, 13th and 14th century Christian mystic.  It's one of a number of courses offered by an ecumencial educational organization in our city, which pulls in local college professors to teach  on a wide range of religious topics.  I took a course on St. Francis of Assisi from the same professor a couple of years ago, so I am really looking forward to this opportunity.

Tuesday night I begin my graduate course for the semester, this time an art history class on Michelangelo and the Medicis.  Even though I've been to Florence and teach (ahem!) world history, my knowledge of the European Renaissance is pretty sketchy.  By the way, I'm reading a terrific novel right now whose heroine is a would-be painter in the post-Medici years and I'm learning tons of history about which I knew nothing: The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant.  The problem with reading historical novels is the obsession with an era that inevitably follows, leading to more and more reading. . .   .

Despite the snow and the zero degree windchill (in which I walked for three miles today!) I am feeling ready for action.  This has been the first week-end in probably three months in which I have not been (a) preparing for a holiday (b) making the four-hour trip to see my stepmother or (c) sick.  Add in the bonus of a house entirely to myself for two days -- two children at college and the third with her father off in New Orleans visiting a prospective college -- and I have had a peaceful and energizing week-end.

I do understand that the weather in New Orleans is something of an improvement over ours.

Bats (A Favorite Place and Time)

Dark, dark, midnight-blackened sky, twinkling with thousands of stars.  As we pass streetlamps, we can see the bats, diving and zipping and streaking in pursuit of mosquitos.  My little son and I are walking across the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution on a warm summer night, en route to  a late night "bat watch" hosted by the resident bat naturalists. 

Chautauqua, with its creaky and drafty old century homes, their attics easily accessible to winged guests, had been a summer haven for the little brown bat as well as for symphony and lecture-goers.  But as the houses were remodeled into elegant condos and the walls sealed with modern techniques, the bats had begun to depart en masse.  University students from Canada were recruited to study the bats and advise residents on how to make their homes more bat-friendly.  Each week they offered an afternoon "bat chat," well attended by youngsters and their parents, and on occasional evenings they would show us bat roosts while they worked at counting bats. 

My son, who at six loves everything about nature and science, chatters the whole mile to the bat-banding place and the whole mile back, well aware that the bats are chattering, too, but with sounds beyond his capacity to hear.  Music drifts across the grounds from the central plaza, where orchestra students play in impromptu post-concert ensembles, and people murmur on porches, where they have gathered to talk late into the night while their children sleep.  And the bats dip under the lights and soar across the lake, tiny members of a summer community.

No Way

Judith Heartsong's Artsy Essay Contest this time  around invites us to write about our favorite place on earth.  I have already protested that limitation to her personally, noting that she herself seems to have a few more favorite places than just one.  I decided that I would write about several of mine, but life has a way of blocking the best of intentions, so I haven't actually done more than one - but since it's not my one and only favorite, I'm not going to submit it to the contest.  I'll just post it later. In the meantime, a few of my favorite places:

Chartres Cathedral (France)

the Cinque Terre (Italy)

St. Augustine Beach (Florida)

Chiracahua National Monument (New Mexico)

Sleeping Bear Dunes (Michigan)

Monhegan Island (Maine)(and I haven't even been there yet, but I've gotten close)

Northfield, Massachusetts

The Mall in Washington, D.C. (not necessarily today)

Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge (Virgina)

Graveyard Fields in Pisgah Forest (North Carolina)

Turtleback Falls (North Carolina)

Gull Lake in Algonquin Park (Ontario)

Cedar Key (Florida)

Florence (Italy)

Isle Royale National Park (Michigan)

Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming)

Chautauqua Institution (New York)

Looking Glass Falls and Sliding Rock (North Carolina)

Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge (New Mexico)

Cumberland Island (Georgia)

Les Champs-Elysees on New Year's Eve

Bergen (Norway)

**********************

Maybe I should stop...

 

Winter Ramblings

. . . The news last night reported that 61% of Americans believe in the Biblical story of creation.  Astounding. . . until you hear some of the leaders of that 61% talk.  I heard a gentleman last week arguing that the essence of the theory of evolution is found in the word "chance."  If I understand it correctly, all the theory of evolution posits is the "how," not the "why."  I don't see any inconsistency the theory of evolution with my belief in a Creator.  What fun for God, to play in the fields of evolutionary creation.  What a brilliant way to allow the universe to unfold.  At the same time, the theory of evolution leaves plenty of space for other "whys" of a religious or spiritual dimension.  The problem eludes me, but my hat is off to the high school science teachers who refuse to acknowledge "intelligent design theory" as anything other than junk science.  (I presume that 61% of the thousands of people who read this will completely disagree with me?)

. . . Apparently the president of Harvard University suggested last week that perhaps innate gender differences are behind the lag in scienctific and engineering careers for women.  Excuse me, sir?  Innate gender differences or lack of support?  One of my daughter's best friends, a brilliant young lady with enormous potential for a scientific career, has been admitted early to an Ivy League institution and her parents, despite their own success in related areas, are pressuring her to stay closer to home.  Another young woman I know was planning to apply early decision to M.I.T., but was somehow completely dissuaded from that path before she even filled out the application forms.  A third, who is hoping to go to medical school, is reportedly basing her college decisions on what she has heard about where the science curriculum will be "easier."  Careers in science, engineering and medicine are intensely demanding and require unwavering committment and discipline in the preparatory years.  If even the brightest of our young women who have worked hard throughout high school toward admission to the most elite universities are tripped up by their own families and friends at the starting line, how do we expect women as a group to maneuver the subsequent academic amd political paths such careers require?

. . . One of my college sons wrote me the following a couple of days ago:

"I read an interesting article in the paper today. It suggested people abandon their attachments to online communities because they are gradually destroying our abilities to exist as social beings in real society. The article referenced sites that targeted specifically demographics of young people, but given your addiction I thought of you. It was in the [college paper]; ironically you can probably read it online (without having to interact with anyone!). "

I responded that I had been thinking about that very topic, although in a somewhat different vein.  I have lots of wonderful friends in my life, for whom I am extremely grateful.  But oddly enough, we don't share many interests in common.  We came together over common experiences in church and as parents of young children, but most of us have taken different religious paths from one another and our children are almost grown.   So while we love each other dearly, we don't DO things together.  It's probably been ten years since I first sought out an online community when a child's unusual medical condition left me isolated and alone in a strange new world, and I just got used to seeking companionship online when I couldn't find it in my daily life.  Does that mean I have destroyed my ability to exist as a social being in real society?  I see my friends all the time and we all count on each other for a great deal, so I don't think so.  But it's a question worth thinking about.

. . .Well, I think that's enough procrastination for one morning.

Quiet Day

If you're interested in serious/Christian stuff, I've been adding to my other journal each week. 

If you're not ~ well ~ I've been grading 8th grade papers on Colonial America ALL DAY LONG and my mind is fried.  I'm looking forward to switching to adult persepctives on the French Revolution on television at 9:00 tonight.

Silly Stuff

Usually I can't finish these, but since it's like this outside:

(not that I would know for sure, since I'm not going out there), I thought I'd play for awhile:

A - Accent:  Flat midwestern.

B - Breakfast:   Croissant and juice.

C - Chore you hate:  Washing the bathtub.

D - Dad's name:  Peter.

E - Essential make-up:  Does moisturizer count?

F - Favorite perfume:  Can't do that -- no sense of smell.

G - Gold or Silver?  Either is fine.

H - Hometown:  Rural midwest.

I - Insomnia:  99.9% of the time.

J - Job title:  Teacher.

K - Kids:  20, 20, 17.

L - Living arrangements:  Long-married, in same house for 21 years, 1 child, 1 cat, 1 dog still here.

M - Mom's birthplace:  Midwestern city.

N - Number of apples you've eaten:  Lots of mostly macintosh.  Oh, you meant the Biblical kind?   Lots of those, too.

O - Overnight hospital stays:    2 weeks after childhood car accident, 7 nights after twins (the good old days), 1 night after daughter.

P - Phobia:  Snakes.

Q - Question you'd like answered:   Why not?

R - Religious affiliation:  Presby (USA).

S - Siblings:  One brother living, one not, three stepsisters, four stepbrothers, one half-brother.

T - Time you wake up:  Between 6 and 7.

U - Unnatural hair colors you've worn:   Sort of purplish once, by accident.

V - Vegetable you refuse to eat:  Brussle sprouts.

W - Worst habit:  Why would I tell you that?

X - X-rays you've had:  Broken leg, chest for bronchitis (more than once).

Y - Yummy foods you make:  Who are you looking at?  

Z - Zodiac sign:   Leo.  Which explains why I don't cook.

Sure Signs of Stress

Four nails broke off today...

Terrible cold requiring liberal doses of OCMs...

Laundry all over the place -- DIRTY laundry...

College financial aid forms stacked with a compulsive neatness, as if I won't be coming back...

Ungraded papers tossed on bed...

Too exhausted to call college sons to see how their week-ends are going...

Reading two mystery novels at once, one contemporary and one medieval...

SOUND ASLEEP IN THE MIDDLE OF A SUNNY AFTERNOON.

Time to remember the word "Serenity."

This 'N That

...In the first successful round of my Buy One, Dump Ten program, I realized that I had sort of accidentally purchased four new books since New Year's (two of them solely the responsibility of marigolds2),  so I headed off to the second-hand bookstore with forty others.  (Didn't make a dent in the stacks and shelves in this house.)  So here's the problem: the store gives a small credit for each book that you deliver, which may be used toward 50% of the purchase price of OTHER second-hand books.  I am now in possession of a $93.00 credit, which means I can purchase $186.00 worth of used books at half-price.  Somehow I don't see this plan working out too well.  On the upside: as I was searching through my books, I found lots and lots that I'd like to read again.

...Last night I went to my first meeting as a soon-to-be newly ordained elder in my church. I discovered that, in my excitement about this new adventure, I had totally overlooked the fact that it requires attendance at meetings.  I pretty much hate meetings. 

...My stepmother ended up in the ER last night, unable to breathe.  She's home now, with oxygen and meds for bronchitis.  My father was able to acknowledge, with a faint sense of humor, that it had taken less than 48 hours since I had called and "read him the riot act," as he put it, about his need for some help, that the reality of that need was brought home to them.  Their local doctor has prescribed home health care, and an American Cancer Society lady showed up in the hospital with additional information.  So I have allies.

...My 98-year-old grandmother has fallen and broken her collarbone.  These are the times when you regret having moved away from your family.  She has an orthopedic appointment tomorrow and is no doubt soon going to face a move from assisted living to nursing care.  Since she can barely see or hear, that means that she will also have to cope with added stress and depression without really understanding what is going on.

...And I have a cold.  Whine whine whine.

Part II: To Be Or Not To Be

And yes, that IS the question.

For several weeks now my brother, sister-in-law, friends and I have been discussing what we would do if presented with a prognosis as grim as my stepmother's.  Of course, none of us really know.  What, in those likely final months, becomes most precious?  When life is stripped to its barest, what must we have? 

My stepmother, only  a few years into what has been a wonderful marriage, is determined not to leave this world.  If her life is telescoped into a couch, a living room, and emergence into the out-of-doors only for the purpose of medical care, she's fine with it as long as it includes her husband and the hope, however faint, that her body will someday be again capable of more than shuffling a few feet with assistance.

My brother and I, passionate excavators of information, think we would want much more clarity about the future before we would make the choices that she has.  We both think that we would be of a mind to spend a week "putting our affairs in order," as they say, and then to pull our kids out of school and head to the beach for as long as we were physically able to walk to the edge of the ocean.  (I've tried to slip a trip to the Grand Canyon into my plan, since I've never been there.  Actually, I have a lengthy list of places to which I'd like to return, and others I'd like to see for the first time, but I'm presuming a very short time frame here.)

Of course, that clarity we seek is absent.  Would you get a few weeks of relatively pain-free movement and energy?  Or would those be gone in a matter of days, absent chemo and radiation and surgery whatever else doctors might have to offer?  If you accepted their invitation into the world of high-tech oncology treatment, would you be dooming yourself to a few more months of a dramatically limited capacity for even staying awake?  Could you avoid the pain long enough to have the conversations that you wanted to with your family and friends?  Could you maybe make the cancer go away, if only for awhile?  Would it be enough?

As I wrote to friends some weeks ago about these impossible questions:

One choice: Try everything the doctors have to offer.  It's an exhausting and debilitating process, requiring that all mental and emotional energy be directed to the hope of recovery.  It gives you little time, assuming you are seldom awake, to think or talk about death.  You can't connect with hospice because you aren't eligible as long as you are trying extraordinary treatment measures, so you are pretty much on your own with your fears, concerns and wishes about the end of life, and taking a risk that by the time you are ready to accept what is coming, you may be too disoriented to address the things you want to.  And your caregivers are stressed beyond imagining.  

Another choice: Forget the medical care and focus on a good death.  The obvious downside: you might be foregoing a genuine chance for recovery and you will never know.  The upside: you can get hospice care, make the plans you want to, say the things you want to say, and hopefully reach some peace about the end we all must face one day or another.  Life may be shorter by months or even a couple of years, but perhaps you get a few weeks of energy for things that you can't manage when you are doing chemo and radiation.  From the point of view of the caregiver, I have been told that there is a lot of peace to be had in knowing that the dying person is at peace about her decisions.  

Having lost a mother, brother, stepmother, and aunt to sudden and completely unexpected deaths, I  can see great potential in the gift of knowing the end is near.  But seeing how happy my father and his wife have been, I can see why they don't want to concede defeat.  

Of course, to do otherwise, you would have to be ready to see yourself as embracing the next step rather than conceding defeat.   

I don't know what I would do.  Last night, I was sure about the abandon-the-docs-head-for-the-beach approach.  Tonight, I think I would not want to miss one possible last moment with my beautiful children.  

Somehow, you have to do it simultaneously.  You have to fight to live and you have to fight to move on.  

When The Sun Has Gone Down

Part I: What Would You Want?

I don't know what I would do.  I know what I think I would do, but I don't have any way of actually knowing, not really.  However, I do know exactly what I would want.  

I spent the last couple of days trekking southwest across the state and back so that I could accompany my stepmother and father to her one of her oncology appointments.  I had been under the impression that she had had several body scans to assess the complete situation with her lung cancer ( 3 lesions), which has metasasized to her brain (ten more), and that their visit would be a traumatic one.  I was wrong about the nature of both scans and visit -- the oncologists work independently, so this was a lung assessment only.  The look at the brain doesn't come for another couple of months.

There is, sadly, no whole-body, whole-person approach to cancer in our highly technological culture, a situation which was about to be dramatically clarified for me.  (Would you be  surprised to hear that I have some suggestions for improvement?)  

We waited for a little over an hour in the typical university hospital setting: uncomfortable chairs and seating arrangements, no windows, harsh flourescent lighting, cheerfully impersonal nurses dressed in bright whites and even brighter colors, scintillating reading options (cancer in its various guises).  I am usually keenly aware of my environment, and I found this one miserably suited for the patients at its focus.  (Of course, if you think that the real focus is the people who work there, rather than the people they serve, then it's probably pleasantly crisp and energetic.)  

Once we were moved into an examining room, we got the usual visits: a nurse who asked questions and wrote everything down, an intern who asked the same questions but did open the chart and reveal that my stepmother's lung spots have responded somewhat to the weeks of chemo, and finally the doctor, who confimed what the intern had said and announced that he wanted to continue with the chemo, although on a slightly different and somewhat harsher  regimen.  

My father and stepmother accepted all this with equanimity, asking few questions and struggling to understand the details and scheduling of the next portion of the chemo regime.  I asked how long it would continue, and the response was "three months, unless she gets to the point where she cannot tolerate it."  That didn't sound so good to me, so I asked how she was likely to respond to this newer, tougher regimen, mentioning that things had been brutal so far.  That comment elicited a bit of hostility on the doctor's part; he glared at me and told me that I obviously had little experience with chemo if I thought that what had gone down so far was brutal.  He told me that people who do chemo usually "do better" than people who do not.  

It was apparent that my father and stepmother were not up to a recitation of the situation as I see it, so I shut my mouth.  They finished up the meeting, desirous of nothing more than to make their exit, and headed down to the main desk to get their new schedule.  I waited in the hallway for the doctor to respond to another couple of phone calls and talk to his assistants, and was then able to have a brief conversation with him before he was pounced on by nurses with matters clearly more pressing than any conversation with me.  

The doctor was reasonable and somewhat informative when I pressed him for answers.  He told me that he was aware of her limitations -- which I am sure he is not.  She is awake and alert for maybe a total a two hours a day right now, during which time she sits or lies on the couch and talks to my dad and whoever else is around.  She has slept on the couch almost every night for the past six weeks, because going to her own bed involves stairs, and stairs are for her a long and difficult ordeal of  one step at a time followed by a rest to catch her breath.  Her ability to even stand, much less walk, without assistance is completely compromised, by a combination of her inability to breathe and the numbness  in her hands and feet ( common side-effects of chemo). Her vomiting is largely, but not entirely controlled -- she mostly retches  up gunk from  her lungs, which she did at length on the way home and again in the restaurant where she was determined to have lunch afterward.  This is a woman who in September was canoeing in Canada.   

What I most wanted to know, therefore, was what he meant by "doing better" on chemo.  As far as I could tell from his response, "doing better" means "living."  Living for maybe twelve months as opposed to six.  Living, I think, assuming things get no worse with the new chemo protocol, as she has been for the last several weeks.  Of course, it is unclear to what extent her disabilities are caused by chemo, by radiation, and/or by the cancer itself.  He answered a few more questions about her prognosis and other options before he was whisked away by the nurses, leaving me with two clear impressions.  For one, he is more than willing to attempt to answer questions if they are succinctly and directly posed to him, but he does not offer one iota of information beyond that specifically requested.  And secondly, the so-called "Cancer Center" is in desperate need of social workers to participate on its team, accompanying doctors on their visits and creating space for patients to ask questions and understand options, to express their concerns and fears, to enable them to be treated as "whole" patients rather than as lungs or brains.  

I am a person who likes to understand every aspect of a complicated situation, to ask endless questions and to make my own decisions.  Most people in critical medical situations are trying to process more information and emotion than is humanly possible, and are quickly overwhelmed by the complexity, scheduling, and language of a medical facility.  They are not in a position to insist on obtaining the information and clarity that might make the next step more comprehensible.  

What would you do?  What would you want to know?  What choices would you make?  

As it turns out, my brother and I have one answer to that set of questions; my husband and daughter, a very different one.  That's  a topic for another entire entry.   

 Midwest Midwinter Sunset      

Winter At Its Best

This One Is For Theresa

A collected and composed horse chestnut tree in a winter cemetery....

for Theresa, who has some kind of idea that winter is a tolerable season.  A season, even, for serenity.  

It's feeling all right today.  The sun was out and my daughter's college applications are all in the mail, voice audition CDs included.  What more could a mother ask? (Well, maybe she could pick up her room... .)

Blue Ridge Tranquillity

Anyone else noticing that my serenity pictures all have SUMMER in common?

A Bible Funny

So...there has been this little discussion going on, a bit behind the scenes.  And in that context I mentioned something to the effect that the Biblical book Micah 6:8 represents God's basic operating instructions.  I did not quote the verse, but I will here.   

The King James Version, which many people prefer, both for its lyricism and because it's what they grew up with, reads as follows:

6:8  He hath shewed thee, O man, what [is] good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?  

The New Revised Version, the one I use most of the time, due to its excellent translation and inclusive language, puts it this way:  

6:8  He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? 

Someone of, shall we say, a more conservative persuasion, put the quote like this:  

I will show thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requireth of thee: Verily, to do judgment, and to love mercy, and to walk solicitous with thy God.  

No attribution was included and I haven't been able to find it via google, so I can't say where it came from.  And yes, you may have to read it closely to see the difference.  But when I showed it to my daughter, she just started to laugh, and exclaimed, "OK, that explains SO much!"  

Now maybe it was just a typo.  As the self-proclaimed Queen of Typos, I have to be prepared at all times to laugh at myself over things like this.  But maybe it's for real.  And if so, it DOES explain a lot!    

************************

I found it!  The translation referred to above is NOT a typo; it's from the Latin Vugate, Jerome's translation of the Bible in the 300s-400s.  I wish I were a scholar of Biblical translations but I'm not, so it will take me a while to sort out the questions this raises.  I do know that authoritative modern Bible translations bypass Jerome and go straight to the original Biblical languages, but I don't know anything much about Jerome's translation.  Something to explore someday.  I still find a lot of humor in the juxtaposition of the two translations.

Serenity: Word for the Year

When I was 35, I think, I decided to inaugurate a Five Year Plan ~ my own self-improvement kind, not the Russian economic kind.  My goal was to do a better job of standing up for myself, making my wishes known, and getting what I wanted.  Yeah, it took me 35 years to figure out that no one was reading my mind, and that my desires weren't at the top of anyone else's list.  As it turned out, it was surprisingly easy to achieve my objective ~ so easy, in fact, that my next Five-Year Plan was to become more diplomatic.

That little goal was not so easy to achieve.  In fact, I had to renew it when I turned 45.  And again when I turned 50.

Now that I am in my 11th year of my Five Year Plan to Become More Diplomatic, I am throwing in the towel.  Not gonna happen.  I have a better idea anyway.  My word for the year:

SERENE.

I looked it up in the online thesaurus: collected, composed, easy, easygoing, placid, poised, self-composed, self-possessed, tranquil.  I'm not too inspired by "placid," but the other adjectives will do.

My daughter would die laughing if she read this.  "Mother dear," she would say, "the one thing you are certainly not, and can never hope to be, is serene."

Ha.  Little does she know.  I am putting my illusions behind me.  I get it: most of life is far, far beyond my control.  I can't choose where she goes to college, or what she studies, or whether she makes use of her many gifts.  I can't do it for her brothers either, and I can't keep any of the them safe. Serenity is what's left.   What I can do is hike up a dune and look at what there is to see.

Up on Sleeping Bear Dunes, looking out over Lake Michigan...

...this is the view....

...and this is what patience will buy you.

Conversation

I'm not sure if I should attempt this, but I was, after all, the one who wondered whether Christians of different viewpoints could talk with each other.  (Yeah, this'll teach me.)  So I'll try.  This is a response to a lengthy comment left in my journal earlier today.  My responses are in blue.  

<<Wow, I haven't checked back here for a while but what I am reading here is truly amazing. Correct me if I am wrong, (which based on your writing style I am sure you will) >>  

I guess that's an insult but I'm not sure why so I can't really respond.   

<<but doesn't the concept that you have categorized Christians into two categories (left and right) completely go against what Christianity is all about? >.  

I haven't categorized Christians except as we have obviously divided ourselves.  I don't think that there can be any denying that Christians tend to lean toward either a conservative or liberal viewpoint, in terms of social and political issues and Biblical interpretation -- although different individuals may have different concepts of "conservative" and "liberal."    And yes, Christianity does call for unity among Christians.  But we are human, and that unity has never existed.  All you have to do is look at Paul's letters to some of the earliest churches to know that Christians have always been a contentious lot.  We are even contentious within our own groups, as any experience with a modern church will indicate.  

<<It is my understanding that there are Christians. Period. Not left Christians or Right Christians or any other type of Christian. Just Christians. >>  

It is possible that folks on the Christian right aren't terribly aware of the differences of opinion within Christianity.  They have for the most part, with ample assistance from the media (most of which is religiously uninformed), co-opted the term "Christian" for themselves, and often react with surprise when people with other viewpoints also claim Christianity as their faith.  The truth is that there are plenty of us Christians out here who support positions very different from those identified as "Christian" by the religious right.  

<<So, since you obviously feel the need to re-write the Bible's teaching on what it really is to be a Christian,>>  

I have no idea what this statement refers to.  

<< perhaps you can start by educating me on what exactly a Left Christian is and what a left Christian believes. >>  

I think that most progressive Christians would say that they feel a deep respect for other paths of faith, that the most important message in the Bible is the vast breadth of God's graciousness toward all of humanity,  that Christ is most concerned with the poor and disenfranchised of this world, and that our tasks are set forth clearly in Micah 6:8.  I'm sure that others could amplify that statement far more articulately than I can.  

<<It is obvious to me that although we may all have our opinion on what is the correct interpretation of the Bible, there can still be only ONE truly correct interpretation.>>  

Millions of ordinary people like me and people of much greater insight have been struggling to interpret the Christian Bible for nearly 2000 years, and the Jewish Bible for longer than that.   In the article that I cited earlier by William Stuntz, the argument is made that, while evangelical Christians have much to learn from university professors about debate, university professors have much to learn from evangelicals about humility.  I think that we can only approach the Bible and our questions about what it means with humility.  We would be pretty far off base to claim knowledge of the one and only interpretation.  

<<You are one of three things; A Christian who understands what God expects, a Christian who is learning what God expects, or in the worst case, a self proclaimed Christian who "Interprets" what God expects so that it is convienient for them. >>  

I'm not sure whether this statement is directed at me personally or is a general statement of the author's idiosyncratic ways of categorizing people.  As far as myself, personally, I'm not sure that I think in terms of what God "expects."  I have noticed, however, that what God asks is seldom all that convenient.  

<<I find it mildly amusing that all the comments I read here are in support of your stand. Perhaps it is because you too delete unwanted comments that challenge your way of thinking.>>

I will, of course, delete offensively aggressive or obscene comments.  But I think I am correct when I say that I have only ever deleted one comment from my journal, by accident, months ago.

Ah, yes...debate. 

I need a good night's sleep.

Buy One, Dump Ten

There is a lot of stuff in the attic.  Attics.  Three of them.

There is even more stuff in the basement.

There is stuff in my car.  Stuff jammed into various drawers and cupboards.  I think there are shells from St. Augustine Beach in the garage, collected in, oh, maybe 1989?

I made a little chart of New Year's Resolutions, most of them the ones I make year in and year out.  Lose weight organize papers lose weight organize pictures lose weight organize clothes lose weight walk every day lose weight clean out closets. 

Is there a theme here?  Excess weight and excess stuff?  I'm sure they're related in some Freudian Jungian cosmological way.  It's not even hard, is it?  Experience enough loss and despair in your life and you never let go of a single thing that isn't taken from you?

Time to grow up and move on.  So...hidden within those boring, run-of-the mill annual resolutions is the big one: for every new thing that comes into this house, ten existing things have to go.  I don't care where they go.  The thrift shop, the Salvation Army, a school library, the tree-lawn, the landfill.  I don't care.  They just need to get up and walk outta here!

(So far so good.  There is an outfit in a catalog I really want.  A silk tank, a long pullover sweater, a  long skirt.  To get all three, I have to get rid of thirty other items of clothing.  I haven't gotten rid of anything yet, but I haven't added anything either.)

Deleted! ~ or, Can't We Talk?

On New Year's Eve, a journaler whom I often read, for both her fine writing and her window into a life that bears little resemblance to my own, posted a piece that has apparently been making the online rounds, about the need for Christians to speak up and be heard, and the general frivolity and idiocy (my summarizing words, not hers or the original writer's, whoever that may be) of those who protest prayer at football games and similar events.  She's gotten a number of warm comments in response, all in support of her position.  

As a Christian myself, and one who finds it hard to comprehend the argument of right-wing Christians that they "do not speak up,"  have "not been heard," and are among the most persecuted of Americans, I felt compelled to object.  Here, in part, is what I posted:  

"I always enjoy your entries, but I have to register my profound disagreement with this one. We as Christians have never been told to stop praying -- we have just been told that our government cannot further the establishment of any religion, including our own, and that, therefore, public prayer led by government-funded representatives, is usually out of bounds. The fact that Christian churches outnumber others 200-1 is exactly what should give us pause -- if it were the other way around, would you want your school, governor, etc. insisting that another religion's prayers be at the forefront of public events?  

It is exactly because we do not live in Jerusalem or Baghdad that we are not subjected to religious expression not our own.  (And if you think the Christian right is a "silent" majority, then your ears haven't been open.  It's the Christian left that has been too silent for too long.)"  

I can't be entirely sure that the above represents my entire comment, because...she deleted it!  

In all fairness to the writer, she did send me a lengthy email defending her position and, when I pointed out that she had written an inflammatory entry and then deleted a comment that expressed opposition, told me that she had readers who would perceive my comment as "Christian-bashing," although she herself did not, and did not want either her journal or my email box to become a battleground.  

That response was even more disheartening than the original post.  Are those of us who are Christians really unable to discuss these matters without being perceived as "bashing" one another?  The mainstream media to the contrary, there are deep disagreements within the Christian community -- disagreements over how to read and interpret the Bible; over the role of tradition, experience, and reason; over our obligations as citizens, and over the public role of religion, to name just a few areas of contention.  These disagreements indicate a vital and lively church at work, a church in which people are committed to wrestling with difficult texts and millenia of tradition in order to work out a way to live that confirms and heralds the presence of God.  

In his wonderful essay on the surprising similarities between the "red-state" evangelical church and the "blue-state" elite of academia, evangelical Christian and Hardvard law professor William J. Stuntz argues that "Evangelicals would benefit greatly from the love of argument that pervades universities. The "scandal of the evangelical mind" -- the title of a wonderful book by evangelical author and professor Mark Noll -- isn't that evangelicals aren't smart or don't love ideas. They are, and they do. No, the real scandal is the lack of tough, hard questioning to test those ideas. Christians believe in a God-Man who called himself (among other things) "the Truth." Truth-seeking, testing beliefs with tough-minded questions and arguments, is a deeply Christian enterprise. Evangelical churches should be swimming in it. Too few are."  

In the Jewish school in which I teach, debate and argument are at the heart of learning -- to such an extent, in fact, that the level of dissension is frequently disconcerting to an  outsider.  However, I have been in countless conversations with conservative Christians who, rather than debate a point, quickly revert to a position that argument is in some way thoughtless or impolite.  

I don't want to see my journal, or that of the other writer, become a battleground either.  But I do wish that we could find a way to challenge and question each other without animosity.