This is My Body, This is My Blood

Chasing Enlightenment

"Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom." Jiddu Krishnamurti

From the moment I left the comfort of my father's religion, I began a haphazard journey toward a higher truth than what I perceived as his fault-ridden dogma. Beginning in my late twenties and ending a few years ago, I latched onto a spiritual pendulum that swung from Native American Studies to Wicca to New Age Metaphysics to Buddhism to Humanism to Earth Wisdom to Goddess Worship, gulping down words and rituals I hoped would slake my existential thirst only to end up more parched than ever.

It's not that I didn't find some truth in each of my quests for spiritual enlightenment--I did--but mostly I found a plethora of people whose walk didn't match their talk. In fact, most of the so-called gurus practiced hypocrisy through the mere existence of their self-proclaimed titles. An "old soul" will never tell you they are an old soul any more than a Wise Man needs to advertise his sagacity, because in doing so, the ego steps forward in complete contradiction to the larger truth. It's easy to regurgitate talking points, whether they be philosophical or religious. What's hard--and truly enlightened--is living those words.

The other resulting epiphany was that most of the teachings I unearthed were simply different ways to mimic Christ's teachings of love, compassion, and tolerance (or perhaps Christ mimicking others who came before him with the same message). Unlike so many self-described instruments of enlightenment who exercise habits of righteous indignation and condemnation, Christ's teachings were about acceptance. From lepers to prostitutes, he not only preached compassion, he modeled a life that embraced rather than abandoned others for their shortcomings or imperfections.

What I couldn't know when I rebelled against my religious upbringing, is that my search for truth would bring me full circle, back to words from a book I continue to reject in whole, but now embrace in essence, most specifically, The Golden Rule. Do Unto Others. Or in the verse I like better from I John 3:18, "Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action." To that end I have tried (and failed and continue trying) to live a life of love with a capital L. Giving without remembering. Taking without forgetting. Forgiving without conditions.

I think Thomas Merton said it well (although I have no idea if he succeeded in living it) when he wrote, "The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” I have no need to see you in me. However, I do long to gaze upon the trail of your footprints as you walk your talk, do your dharma, work your plan, or whatever you want to call it rather than mire your feet on a soapbox. This daily practice of love is all I've ever needed to know.  I no longer have a desire to chase after isms in order to find the pathway to enlightenment, because this little light of mine is the truest and brightest I've ever known, and thankfully, doesn't judge its own shadow.

Photo Credit: Chapel Hill via Bill at Webshots.

Round Trip

Did it take long to find me? I asked the faithful light.
Did it take long to find me? and are you gonna stay the night?
Cat Stevens, Moon Shadow

The moon hung like a broken pendulum from an abandoned grandfather clock outside my window last night. I tried pulling the covers over my head but the white noise crawled under the sheets and played a busy highway against the mattress. I closed my eyes and tried to turn the roar into waves the way I do when I stay at a cheap roadside motel, but it didn't help any more than when I stay in an oceanfront inn and the pounding waves turn into cars on a phantom freeway. It's all the same, isn't it? Coming and going. Going and coming.

So I got up. I got up and yanked the blinds, let the light all the way in. Stood there naked in front of the window, daring the moon to drown me in his bluewhite rain. I know it's been coming just as sure as I know winter's buried beneath my feet and one of these days it's gonna burst forth and turn Cerro San Luis green again, so why not welcome it? Yeah. Why not.

Because I'm tired of this swinging door of seasons. I'm tired of saving daylight and holding onto mornings when the evening is inevitable. I'm tired of the goodbyes and laters and maybes. I've had it with watching my life unfold in a rear-view mirror, one hand waving as he shrinks in the distance. The sun does its best to shield me, burn the memories into a smile, but with the darkness comes oblivion--a million pieces of me scattered in the sky like so much nothing.

I stood there anyway. Let the lump of sad fill my lungs then wind its way up my throat, where the soft tones of denial turned into a howl that shook me to the core. I became the highway, the ocean, the nothing and the everything.

I don't know how long it lasted, don't remember the walk back to bed where the cats curled themselves around my legs like bookends. The only fragment that has stayed with me this morning is the last arc of curved light as it rose above the window, leaving behind a soft dent in the sky where I suspect that howl must have landed. I woke feeling hollow, quiet, strangely stoic against the weaving of heart and head as they rally for tactical positions.

I give myself over to my feet instead. They take me to the kitchen, back to bed, to the window, back to bed. Coming and going. Going and coming.

Technorati Tags: relationships, perimenopause, menopause, cat stevens,  essay, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, endings

Breast of Times

This post is in honor of my Breast Friend, Sue Richards, of Calendar Girl for all her dedicated work and hard-fought battles to promote breast health to men and women everywhere.  I made a vow as a Breast Ambassador to spread the gospel of breast health, so please click on over to her blog and buy a lovely Breast of Canada Calendar for as many people as you can think to endow with this gorgeous and informative gift. Thank you.

Up until my youngest brother pushed his way into our already-crowded house of six girls plus  two parents, I hadn't taken much notice of the difference between my chest and my mother's--or even my oldest sisters' developing bosoms.  In fact, at a mere five years of age I assumed the matching bulges that filled my mother's dresses were God's way of gifting warm pillows to sleepy heads as they nodded off on soft laps.

This all changed the day my grandmother stood over our kitchen table sprinkling starch-water on white sheets and pillow cases while my mom rocked D in her arms. To my utter amazement, she unbuttoned her blouse and  pulled the swaddled lump that was my baby brother against her bare chest. I watched in awe as D  latched onto her nipple like a Kindergarten painting onto a fridge door and suckled for all his 13-pound worth (yes, that was his birth weight!).  My mother and grandmother continued chatting as if neither considered the fat-cheeked new person gumming my mother's breast to his heart's content, was worthy of wide-eyed staring.

Dumbfounded by the extraordinary event taking place in our kitchen, I moved closer to my mother in an attempt to get a better look, but the edge of her blouse concealed both her boob and my brother's face. Undaunted, I planted myself in the adjacent chair, then matter-of-factly reclined until my head was in my mother's lap, under the arm that supported the slurping baby where I had a dead-on view of this most curious happening.  Sure as Sunday, D was sucking on the end of my mother's breast, and as if that weren't impressive enough, my mother suddenly pulled the nipple out of his mouth and flopped him over her shoulder, leaving the pendulous pillow dangling above my face where I-shit-you-not warm, bluish-white fluid sprayed my face.

I jumped to my feet and wiped my cheek with my sleeve as my grandmother cackled in the memorable way that is forever etched into my bones.

"Whatsa matter, Ellie? You want some?"

I shook my head furiously.

"Sure you do. Give her a taste, Aussie." That laugh again.

I felt a warm heat travel up my neck and over my face. In a moment more surreal than I'd yet to experience, my mother pulled me closer and placed my small hand on her bare breast.

"There's milk inside. It's how D gets his food. Same way you and all your sisters were fed."

Still recovering from the blasphemy of bodily fluids that had just coated my face, I was now completely blown away by all this new information, along with the sensory input of my mother's breast under my palm.

As if sensing my thoughts, my mother smiled. "Go ahead," she said. "Squeeze."

I looked down at the hand that no longer registered as part of my own body and curled my fingers around her flesh. Milk bubbled out from the big brown nipple and onto my mother's aproned knee. I remember thinking this was the warmest, softest thing I'd ever touched in my life.

My brother belted a burp that broke the suspended silence.

"Atta boy!" my grandmother said. "Let that air go, it ain't payin' rent."

My mother tucked her breast back into her blouse and dropped the other before shifting my brother to the opposite side while her mother moved a basket of damp linens to the mangle in the corner of the kitchen. I left a room filled with hissing and suckling and my mother's low hum changed by the extraordinary events I'd just witnessed. As I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, I carried with me a new understanding of how much my mother loved us, and her mother, her.

That night I lay in bed with my hand on my smooth chest not yet knowing the magic I would experience upon nursing my own three children, nor the words a lover would one day whisper upon first caress of my nubile young breasts.

These are the warmest, softest things I've ever touched in my life...

Technorati Tags: aging, perimenopause, menopause, breastfeeding, nursing, mothers, Breast of Canada, Calendar Girl, essay, blog, breasts, breast health, writing, writers, mothering, daughters, women, massage

Photo by Lauren Cruickshank for 2007 Breast of Canada Calendar
 

Bedroom Sweet

My mother moved the furniture when she no longer moved the man. The Story (The Angel in The House)

A few days ago I moved my bed back to where it was before S moved in. I don't know exactly what it was  that drove me to change it other than that I had to move it over for the satellite guy* to string cable through the wall which led me to clean under the bed which got me to thinking how much space that bulky headboard takes up which made me decide to give it to J which eventually led me to put the bed back against the east wall. As soon as I crawled under the covers that night, I felt more at home. I don't know all that much about feng shui (other than the crap stored under the bed is probably extreme funky shui) but I do know I slept like a drunk on payday that night and have nearly every night since.

As much as I enjoy snuggling with my snugglee, there's something about reclaiming one's space that feels almost bulimic--as though you've been stuffed with all these extra shoulds and hold-backs and then suddenly you just let it all out, take up every inch of the room with your own breath. For the first time in months (or years) you relax into the Who of You and it feels so damn good you laugh for laughing's sake until your kid hollers from the next room, asking what's so funny, which only makes you laugh harder.

In the middle of a recent night I turned over and reached across the bed, forgetting the wide open space of a frog on a queen sized lily pad. I pulled his my other pillow closer, then stretched myself diagonally across the great mattress, planting a toe in the furthest corner like a flagpole on an unclaimed planet. As I nestled back into the web of come-dreaming, I felt something tiny and rough against my thigh. In the netherworld of slow-moving limbs, I plucked a sunflower seed shell from beneath the covers and tossed it aside. As I fell back asleep I smiled the wide smile of cotton-breathed comfort on the threshold of full-blown contentment.

* I killed our TV in March and haven't missed it. J apparently has, as he's paying for it himself out of meager Subway wages.

Technorati Tags: sleeping, sleep, moving furniture,second half of life,aging, perimenopause, menopause, hot flashes, essay, blog, relationships, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, massage

You're In Trouble

I refuse to think of them as chin hairs.  I think of them as stray eyebrows. Janette Barber

I can't recall how we got on the subject of incontinence, but as I was giving a massage treatment to my octogenarian client yesterday, she relayed a girlhood story of how she and her mother were out for a walk one evening when they came upon an older woman wearing a long black skirt. The woman, who happened to be peeing on her shoes, pointed at the sky and said, "Isn't it a lovely sunset?" My client's mother later explained that in an attempt to cover her embarrassment, the woman was trying to divert their attention away from the puddle at her feet. From that day on when my client or her mother needed to use the restroom, they simply said, "Isn't it a lovely sunset?"

As I massaged E's back, I suddenly flashed on the day my mother stood in front of an our old O'Keefe and Merit stove, stirring a pan of tomato soup while 3 cheese sandwiches fried on a cast iron griddle. My sisters and I had walked home from school for lunch, and I was in the midst of telling a funny story when my mother suddenly clutched her belly, laughing in that way that sounded like hollow bells. "Stop!" she said. And then to our complete horror, she pissed herself, a yellow puddle forming on the linoleum as we looked on in disbelief.

As with most benchmarks of the aging process, I never expected it would happen to me. The first time I peed myself, I was facilitating a dance workshop ala Gabrielle Roth with a group of about eight women on a warm Sunday afternoon. When we reached the "lyrical" section of the five rhythms, I went into faerie mode, skipping my way across the wooden floor to the accompaniment of a Lord of the Dance CD. Mid-song, I leapt rather effortlessly, before landing on my bare feet in the center of several ecstatic women. In that moment I suddenly became profoundly aware of a lowering of my bladder, not at all unlike the end of pregnancy when one's baby drops and settles into the pelvic girdle. Before I could stop myself, I leapt again and this time felt the full weight of the last swallow of morning coffee as it escaped its leaky container.

Deeply grateful for the choice of black tights under my long skirt, I side-stepped my way toward the bathroom with as much grace as anyone who just wet their pants could possibly muster.  Mortified by my sudden loss of urinary faculties, I rinsed my tights in the sink before hiding them in my purse. I was only forty-two years old. Surely this couldn't already be the beginning of my feminine decline into crone-hood. Could it? The horrified face in the mirror said yes, it probably could. What did you expect after giving birth to three children--the last of whom weighed in at ten pounds?

Eventually I gathered what was left of my pride and rejoined the other dancers, making some silly comment about those tights being too constricting and hot. Five years later I can retell the story without blushing every shade of a lovely sunset. 

(You gotta admit this was one of my best--or worst--titles of all time. I kill myself sometimes. Heh heh.)

Technorati Tags: aging, perimenopause, menopause, hot flashes, saliva test, dance, body image, dancing, gabrielle roth, essay, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, hormones, incontinence

And The First Shall Be The Last

My first love was a wicked twisted road
I hit the million mile mark at seventeen years old
I never saw the rainbow, much less a pot of gold
Yeah, my first love was a wicked twisted road (Willy Braun)

On my way back home from the library this morning I stopped to grab a soy latte before switching on the radio and pointing my van north on Highway One. Along the palm-lined freeway, acres of red-roofed houses sat perched like watchful hawks overlooking the ruffled the Pacific as she dragged the tail of yesterday's storm kicking and screaming back to sea. A crowd of camera-laden watchers lined the shore, fingers like  tiny crab claws, clicking endlessly. Over and over, the ocean curled her cold blue lips then spewed rabid foam, dotting expensive lenses with salty spray as she hissed a retreat over knuckled rocks and seashells not yet picked over by wide-eyed tourists.

I pulled into the slow lane so I could soak up the view without being run down by the Hummer behind me. Since the first time I set eyes on the Central Coast, California has become the lover whose touch sends shivers up my spine every time I’m near her. It’s all I can do to keep my attention on the road in front of me when there’s so much beauty to the west. As often as I drive this highway, the panorama of cliffs and water still takes my breath way.

Rounding the curve that tucks the water behind our still-green hills, a song came on KPIG called Twisted Wicked Road, a sweet little melody with lyrics about firsts. First love, first winding road, first ride on a motorcycle, and other firsts I can no longer remember because my mind took a little vacation as I recalled the first time I ever saw the ocean on a trip out west with my future was-band. Upon seeing the water, I climbed down a steep cliff, shed my skirt, and waded into the water with my sweater held to my waist until I finally gave up and surrendered to the salty blessing of a Pacific Baptism. When I returned to shore, we stripped off our clothes and lay behind a big rock to dry out. I remember thinking that this was where I belonged. Not just the beach, but a place where you can lie naked in the sand because that's what people do in California and I'm one of those people.

I finally left Michigan for the West Coast a few years later, surprising neither friends or family. When I told my friend, Laura, of my plans to move, she just smiled and said, "What took you so long? Everyone knows the stork dropped you on the wrong beach in 1959. Seems to me, you're going home, not leaving it."

As I pulled into the driveway upon my return this morning, I dropped the empty coffee cup in the trash and flip-flopped my way past a flood of orange poppies to the front door. I thought about the first time I opened this door, the first time I stepped barefoot onto its newly-sanded wood floors, the first time these walls smiled back at me, and suddenly I knew what I'm supposed to do. Today became another in a long line of firsts, as I made a quiet promise to stay here and conquer my demons rather than trying to outrun them by pulling up shallow roots yet again. And you, dear friend, heard it here first.

Photo Credit: Avila Morning by Bill Bouton

Double-Wide Eyed

This photograph I took of an uprooted tree in Los Osos Oaks Preserve reminds me of how I feel whenever I start thinking about moving. Every single time I settle into a new place I tell myself  this is the last one and yet there I go again, pulling myself up by shallow roots, making plans for yet another transition, be it across town, or all the way across the country.

When I was a little girl, my parents would herd all six of us kids into our VW bus on Saturday to make the 30-minute trek to Muskegon, Michigan, where my grandparents lived in a little yellow house with a huge oak tree in the front yard. My little sister Vonnie and I used to catch toads in the basement window wells, which our grandmother would bat out of our hands and make us scrub until we bled, for fear we'd end up with warts. My grandmother believed this just as strongly as she believed that colored people would "cut off your ears" if you crossed them, refusing to let us play with the dark-skinned kids across the street.

A few years later, when they and one other lady were the last whites on the block, my grandparents sold their little bungalow and moved to Springport Trailer Park, acres of metal boxes in neat little rows like forgotten caskets waiting for a proper burial. I was devastated. How could they give up their beloved house with its claw foot tub and windowed porch for a tin can squeezed between wheeled homes that weren’t nearly as mobile as the people who lived in them?

I got my answer earlier this week when--after weeks upon weeks of unrelenting rain--I was faced with the reality of maintaining an old house with a big yard that needs more work than I have time or money to address. The yard needs more french drains, the skylights are leaking, and the old crank-out windows are long overdue for vinyl replacements. As I added up the projected dollars and hours of labor, it occurred to me that I could sell this house, pay cash for a brand spanking new modular home with almost twice the square footage and a tenth of the maintenance of this place.

It's tempting, to say the least. And yet. And yet no matter how you look at that fancy garden tub, beamed cathedral ceilings, community swimming pool, or even the fact that the lot is near the back of the park right by the off-leash dog area, it's still a mobile home and it's still in a trailer park and despite what anyone says, there's always going to be that apologetic pause before giving directions to one's home. Creekside Estates? They'll say. Oh. The trailer park on South Higuera. I can almost feel the contrasting roots pushing their way out of my head, a Nascar t-shirt tied at my waist as I drink Blatz in long-neckers straight from the bottle on the front porch where fifty yard-ornaments line the carport and no less than a dozen wind chimes hang from the eaves.

But I'm still seriously considering the move, given the advantages. Yes, I love my little house, and I don't want to be married to it. S made it clear he wasn't into yard work and house projects before he moved in, so I can't fault him, but it's starting to feel like every spare nickel and every spare hour is spent on The House. As much as I've enjoyed fixing up this little homestead, I'd rather use that money for concerts and plays and travel and...?

So I can understand now, in retrospect, why my grandparents did what they did. I can almost feel my grandmother's bony hand on my shoulder, telling me it's okay to let go of this house in exchange for an easier life. However, I can't help but also feel her lift my hair, checking my ears, knowing one of those scary kids now sleeps beside me at night. One woman's toad is another woman's prince, Grandma. Warts and all.

Technorati Tags: aging, relationships, essay, blog, self image, baby boomers, writing, writers, poetry, prose, women, moving, mobile home, trailer, grandparents,

Full Circle

So help me jesus, I tried to talk myself out of writing about this, but as posterity and propriety duked it out, the memoirist took up her pen keyboard and began scribing herstory even before a clear winner had been determined. Because when it comes right down to it, one must never sacrifice creativity for the sake of conduct. Says who? Says me. Right there on page mumblemumble (I'm too lazy to look it up) of my book, Journaling from the Heart. A book, by the way, I wish you'd order so I can work on my damn novel because it contains a bunch of really great writing prompts to jump-start your blog/journal.

Back to the story I mean to tell. Understand this: I am a clean person with excellent hygiene, bathe daily, blah blah blah. In fact, I'm sitting in my robe as I write this, wet hair in a towel, having just languished for almost an hour in my outdoor claw foot tub under a light Spring rain.

The one exception to my cleanliness is that I love my animals enormously, enough to let them sleep in my bed, sometimes under the covers where the kittens enjoys curling up between us. A few mornings ago I got out of bed and drew a hot bath to ward off the cold air. S wandered into the bathroom to take a pee while I was in the tub. Wait. Let me try that again. S stood over the toilet, which is next to the tub, in which I was enjoying my bath. Taking advantage of the view, he glanced over and smiled, then wrinkled his forehead.

"Baby, did you scratch yourself?"

"What? Where?"

(Pointing to my pubic bone) "There."

I looked down and sure enough, there was a red blotch right above my hoo-hoo.  "Huh. I must have gotten carried away with the loofah."

"It looks like one those wax seals, the kind you stamp on an envelope."

"Are you finished?"

"Looking at you?"

"Peeing. Are you done in here?"

"Oh. Yeah, sorry."

As soon as S left the room, I examined the moon-shaped scratch more closely. Like my cats, I am infinitely fascinated by my body. So intrigued was I by the symmetry of the mark, I grabbed my razor and shaved off the hair so I could get a better look.

This is the point where any other woman would have run screaming from the bathroom, driven straight to the nearest pharmacy for Lotramin, but I am not any other woman. I am special. I know this because aliens have chosen me, me, on which to emblazon a perfectly round crop circle, right there under my pubic hair, probably while I was sleeping. Definitely because I am one of the Chosen Ones.

Or, possibly, it might be because a couple weeks ago, the kittens came down with some kind of skin infection after an overnight visit to the vet where they were spayed. I'm assuming the razor used to shave their bellies wasn't disinfected between cats, and this is how the infection was spread. First to them. Then to me. I know. Gross. Makes me itch just thinking about it. Not as bad as the the hair growing back, though. Now that itches.

You may, after reading this, believe I have no boundaries, but I do. For example, I could have posted a picture of the amazing crotch crop circle, but I have more class than that. Not to mention I'm out of batteries again. Lucky you.

Technorati Tags: body image,  essay, blog, self image, writing, writers, pets, fungus, humor, weblog

Silly Tricks, Rabbits Are For Kids

Two significant structures sat across the street from my childhood home, each on opposite corners. New Era Bible church was as much my home as the parsonage we lived in, given the amount of time I spent yawning away the hours inside. But as soon as the last amen was uttered, I often ran across the street toward Rabe's house instead of the one holding my Sunday dinner.

Mr. Rabe (pronounced ray-bee) raised rabbits, though at the time, the irony of his last name was lost on me.  A white-haired man who wore denim overalls and black rubber boots, he'd sometimes let me help fill the bowls with nuggets of grain along rows of cages stacked two high in the barn behind his house.

As I fed each pair of floppy-eared bunnies, I'd stick my fingers through the wires to touch their soft fur, longing to take one home. To me, the moments I spent in the rabbit barn were as close as one could get to experiencing the heaven my father promised his parishioners from the pulpit every week. Mr. Rabe offered to give me a pair, but no matter how many times I asked or how passionately I promised to care for them, my parents always said no to pets. I suppose seven children were enough to feed without having to worry about kibble, let alone the offspring of one of God's most prolific species.

However, I was a clever child, or so I thought, and in the sixth month of my eleventh year, came up with a brilliant plan to assure ownership of a couple of my fluffy friends. My parents were both born in June, only five days apart. What better gift than a warm, furry, rabbit bestowed upon each of them, in honor of their years on the planet? And so it was that I presented my mother and father with one black and one white bunny on the occasion of their party, which we celebrated midway between their respective birthdays.

"Take them back," my father said.

"But, they're your presents! How can you ask me to take them back?"

My mother looked at me and I returned her gaze with the best velvet painting puppy eyes I could manage. She turned to my father with her much more practiced rendition of the same sad face. My dad could easily turn down his children's numerous requests for everything we begged for, but he could rarely refuse my mother. He loved that woman more than anything and would have asked God to turn himself into a bunny if he thought it would please her.

"One," he said. "You can keep one. Take the other back."

"But--"

My mother gave me her other look, the one that said git while the going is good, kid and I nodded. One was better than none.

Mr. Rabe laughed when I returned the white bunny. "How you going to breed rabbits without the daddy?" he asked.  As smart as I thought I was, I believed Mr. Rabe raised those rabbits for the pure pleasure of having them. It never occurred to me that I'd sometimes eaten the same animals whose little pink noses I'd kissed.

Two months later while I was away a Bible Camp, I got a letter from my older sister, Anita, written on several squares of toilet paper. I loosed the scroll and read my way down.

"Your rabbit died," she wrote matter-of-factly.  "Strangled itself in the wires of the cage while trying to escape." As if this information wasn't shocking enough, she'd drawn a picture of the ghoulish scene on the bottom square, complete with the rabbit's tongue hanging out of her mouth.

I convinced myself it was my fault for leaving Blackie in my sister's care. She was probably trying to find her way to Stony Lake, where I spent two long weeks every summer as a "prize" for learning Bible verses. Knowing my penchant for melodrama, I probably would have had a full-blown funeral for the bunny if I'd been home, complete with an A' Capella version of Amazing Grace. Knowing my dad, they probably ate her for dinner that night.

I'm telling you this story because although I can't give you a rabbit for Christmas, I can give a trio of them in honor of you, to a struggling family who will pass one of the offspring onto one of their neighbors, thanks to www.heifer.org. I hope you'll join me in the spirit of giving (as opposed to the mass consumerism by those of us who already have more than we'll ever need) by gifting a pig, a beehive, a goat, a llama, a gaggle of geese, or even trees, to help a child in need this year.  After all, Christmas, like Trix, is for kids.

Far From Heaven

Last night S & I had dinner with an interfaith couple, during which we touched on the topic of  our various religious upbringings. J was raised Catholic, R is Jewish, and S and I both teethed on the back of a Baptist pew. The conversation led to stories of if/how we'd ever lost our faith. I admitted that although my father was a minister, the religion thing never fully took. I do, however, remember how badly I wanted it to.

From as far back as I remember, my Dad had assured me that I was a Child of God.
He described heaven as a glorious place where people spend all day worshipping Jesus. I figured that meant sitting in church from morning 'til night, except the streets would be paved in gold instead of asphalt. It sounded like a pretty boring way to spend eternity, but I was sure it'd beat being thrown into the lake of fire from the end of a pitchfork. My older sister had told me that demons float above the flames so they can rat you out if they catch you trying to sneak out of the fire. I was terrified of going to hell.

My first-grade catechism teacher, Imogene Houson, sealed up my heavenly reservation when she led me to the Lord on my sixth birthday.At the end of every class, Mrs. H would pray, then ask if anyone wanted to take Jesus into their heart so they could be assured a place on high. On this particular Sunday, she was just about to give up and let us go home when I peeked around to see if anybody was looking, then quick stuck my hand in the air. After everyone else gathered up their pictures of Zaccheus glued on the branch of a tree,  Mrs. H took me into one of the little side rooms of New Era Bable Church, where the deacons counted the day's take after Sunday services. She asked if I knew I was a sinner. Because I was tempted to grab a fistful of dollars from the offering plate, I told her yes, I believed I was. She nodded like she already knew that, and was exactly what she wanted me to say. She instructed me to bow my head, fold my hands, and invite the Lord Jesus into my heart.

I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead into my kncukles. “Dear God," I said. “Please come into my heart and forgive my sins.” I waited for an answer but nothing happened, so I just said, "Amen."

Mrs. H hugged me so tight her beaded brooch left dimples in my cheek. “If you’re ever in trouble, all you have to do is ask for His help because He’s right here." She patted my chest. "And remember, Ellie, He sees everything you do and hears every word you say." She gave me a little, red New Testament and said I should read from it every single day. I promised  I would, but knew I wouldn’t. I didn't even read my Little Lulu comic books every day.

Later, I announced over Sunday dinner that I had been saved.  Dad said, “Praise the Lord!” but he’d just taken a bite of mashed potatoes so it came out “Pwaise da Load.” My older sister, N,  rolled her eyes, figuring I was just trying to get attention, which in a way I was. In a family of seven childen, you do what it takes to take center stage from time to time.

That night as I lay in bed, I held my hand over my heart. I waited to see if I could sense the three new guys--God the Father, Jesus the Son, and their creepy cousin The Holy Spirit--who'd supposedly taken up residence on the other side of my ribs, but I didn't feel any different than when I'd gotten up that morning.

I still don't feel any different today. I rarely talk to God, but occasionally I talk to my dad. Mostly I  talk to myself. And to you.