The Sacred and the Profane

Nearly three years ago when Here’s to the Village first saw the light of the Interwebs, I had no idea what I was doing. Blogging was a soapbox, an altar, a practicum, therapy and a thank you note all rolled up into amateur but bewildering technology. Some days I was desperate to share what I was thinking. On others, the knowledge that I could not figure out how the FUCK to make the coding stop double spacing was enough to derail a post. 

Life was a knife’s edge. Work ended. Community changed. The family I worked so hard to maintain was now the poster child for WHAT CAN GO WRONG. I felt alone and adrift on a rickety raft, free and terrified in a way I hadn’t been in years.

I came of age at the tail end of the Jesus people movement, traded beers for a Bible and made an even exchange of identity for belonging. I married young and had children fast. Moved five times in nine years, twice with a newborn in tow. And then one day a therapist in a small town in Michigan talked me into squinting just enough to see  the world outside my homeschooling, hard-judging, evangelical Republican door. I started telling the truth and learned how to ask for help.

We moved to New Jersey, God help us, where the two dog years were a straight up bargain for my dearest friend, a Jew who didn’t freak out when I talked about Jesus. I stopped going to church and we moved to a corner of New York City that is, to this day, the gold standard of community in all its intended annoyance and glory.  Hard times and great parties; uncertain theology and the surprise delivery of a dozen bags of groceries on a day I couldn’t afford to buy one.

And when I believed I could not love it any more, the grace ran out and in 2001 all roads led to Kansas, a place I most assuredly did not want to go. It was all well and good to be a Midwesterner in Manhattan where I didn’t have to look like everyone else, but I certainly couldn’t be one in Kansas. No one would understand why we didn’t go to church or lived in an empty house because we couldn’t afford to move our furniture from storage. We’d learned to drink and swear and stand up for ourselves; to find Jesus in drag queens and the pages of Tom Robbins novels, of all unlikely places. How in the world could we find our way in Oz?

I underestimated the Kansans.

They showed up with spare mattresses and loose change; opened their homes for dinner and life, and occasionally allowed their curiosity to overcome their politeness. “So are you heathen now?” asked one kindly when I said yet again, “We don’t go to church anywhere,” in answer to the question everyone asked.

God love her. I was actually grateful for the chance to explain my life to someone so different from me. My gratitude grew as I encountered further surprises. There were people with open minds on the homeschooling swim team; a Southern Baptist Texan with big hair and a wicked sense of humor whose teaching I devoured; the minister who'd married me and didn't bat an eyelash when I told him I was getting a divorce. 

Like a slow-growing plant, I fed on truth I couldn't see. I had no idea that leaving church was now a “thing” or that a new breed of heretical believers were roiling the waters of faith and philosophy. The lines were blurring for a lot of folks, but life was so fractured I had little knowledge of anything beyond the edges of our small and broken world.

Inch by inch we recovered and healed, some days with Psalms and some with Springsteen. I found a spiritual director in an old friend and career inspiration in the Port Fonda food truck. I read Patti Smith’s memoir of life with Robert Mapplethorpe and wept at the beloved provision in its pages. I learned that love doesn’t have to make sense to serve its purpose and felt the unique joy of giving after losing so much. I joined brilliant colleagues who could explain modern art, and then others who would wade into a bar brawl with anyone who disrespected me. Weeping through a white hot production of Titus Andronicus, I saw everything fall away except the holiness of creation—In the beginning was the word… And God created…And it was good.

And so today, as I survey the landscape and see harvest and hope, there is no life except the naked public square. From now on, Here’s to the Village will have to live in the same occasionally uncomfortable place I do. There will be days when I write about Jesus, that those of you who break out in hives will just have to close the page. Or grit your teeth and hang on. Because the next post will undoubtedly contain some pissed off rant or gleefully swearing review which polite company would never tolerate. The only constant will be the original one –the village and its people. Singing hymns or YMCA.

More and more I think they're all the same.

Friends with Words

For each graduation from high school, family and friends of whichever Fredrick was commencing have sent letters, photos and memories to be compiled into a scrapbook of extraordinary encouragement. A week ago Matty batted cleanup for this crew and ended our high school days forever. While the book awaits a few additional entries because of my slow start, it is already the best kind of treasure -- words of life for the days ahead. 
This entry is one he hasn't seen yet--it came in on graduation night from Ghana, a friend who is family and who has known him since he was two. It's the kind of wisdom that should be a commencement address and so I'm offering the only platform I have in order to share it.

Dear Matty,

I missed some of your siblings with this, don't want to miss you, so your mom is receiving this in an email, which she will print.  That's the only reason my real signature isn't on it.

Ok, here we go...

1. Money is Important
Learn how to manage your money: get a checking and a savings, learn how to balance your checkbook, do it, keep track of your spending, and save 10% of everything you earn or receive.  When you get enough saved up, start investing in some form or get long-term savings acct.  Don't have a poverty mentality: decide how much income you want per year and then go for it.  Even if you're being supported by your parents for awhile, figure out your expenses and tell them how much you need.   I'm totally not kidding.  Learning how to manage money now will save you so much heartache in the future.  You don't have to love it or make it a God.  Money is a tool, and it is really good to learn how to use it.

2.  It's On You Now
No matter what anyone says to you, or treats you, or how you think, you are now an adult.  Ok, your brain isn't fully formed yet, however, the decisions you make now, whether they are good, bad, or ugly, will only REALLY affect you.  In other words, you can no longer stick it to your parents or siblings or anyone else.  The only one you really f__k up at this point is you.

3. Death Is An Equal Opportunity Taker.
Young people die every day from being with the wrong people, at the wrong places, doing the wrong things, at the wrong time.  (See # 2).  Don't waste your time and life on B.S.  There is fun, and then there is B.S.  We all know the difference.

4. Know thyself.
What are your gifts, talents and abilities?  What do you want to do?  What vision do you have for your life?  I'm sure you have one.  You may not have told anyone about it yet, it may be embarassing to tell others your dreams.  It's hard. 

That's ok.  Share carefully.  Take the vision seriously.  In the next few years you will refine it, it will morph, but I dare say that the essence of the vision Matthew has for Matthew will NOT change.  These thoughts, longings, urges, dreams (waking and sleeping) come from God.  God gives that to everyone, regardless of faith or church affiliation...and you know what is true vision and what is not.   I don't think your vision is to be the dictator of a small country, so I'm not worried.  

5. Pay Attention
In the Holy Grail stories, the person who guards it is a wounded knight.  The person who finally asks him, "Why do you suffer?" is the person who finds the Grail.  Pay attention, not just to yourself, but to other people.  Of course you must take care of yourself (that's what 1,2, 3 and 4 are about, use your common sense).  However, the key to success is being of service.  Give your gifts away to the world in service for money.  In other cases do it for love.  I don't know, you have to figure it out for yourself, this is kind of mystical.  Look at people.  Read. Look at places.  Think.  What does the back of your hand look like?  Be in the world and serve.   Pay attention.

6.  There is a God.
You may not end up with the faith of your parents', siblings, or grandparents.   I hope you keep a faith.  I hope you continue to believe in God and the goodness and beauty of life.  Because oh Matty, in spite of everything you may have suffered or seen or done, life is so DESPERATELY good.

Oh, the possibilities that lie before you!  Trust me when I say your life can be beautiful and wonderful.  But you have to believe it, and step out in that. 

The world is wild and wide, and I wish you the best of it always.  I hope you find the Grail that is yours.

Congratulations on your graduation from High School.  Shit, no more little Fredricks.

I remain your friend, with much love and affection,

Ghana

These Are Days

The plane bumps. Matt Nathanson sings in my ears as he did in the fall when I ran through sunlight and decades to find my way back to myself. I am headed home from California, a place where two of my children live, one finishing a story, the other just cracking the table of contents. I have finished a book with which I had a divine appointment and as I bask in the sorrow of its ending and the glow of its enlightenment, I look behind me and see so clearly.

There was a time when I was eaten up with longing for what might have been. How is it that I now live in a place where peace has replaced craving? Fear, once the water that filled my basement, is now but the occasional drip of a faucet and needing only a turn of wrench or mind to stop the leaking. The promised land is ahead of me. But today I see milk and honey where once lived only monsters. 

At 21 I had a vision of what my life would be. At 35 I clung to that vision with bloodied hands, and at 45 I let it go, slipping beneath the surface of dark waters not knowing if I would breathe oxygen again in the fair light of day.  I did not see it coming, the day when my life became unrecognizable to me. No signpost on the road-TURN OFF HERE-to warn me. Just a day when I woke up in a land not my own and without a soul I knew in the jungle, an invisible compass recalibrating every step. "He who loses his life will find it," was not some Jesus catch phrase, no 'let go and let God' for the wannabes and rabble looking for inspiration, dinner, or love in all the wrong places. Wannabe and rabble member both, I repeated these words in darkness, some days like a magic spell and others with faith smaller than a mustard seed, believing there was nothing ahead but more loss.

I was wrong.

And as I contemplate, from 35,000 feet, the land I now inhabit--the people I love and the places I call home--I am stunned to discover those words are true. It is a life I live but do not own, of human frailty, f-bombs and forgiveness. It is also a life of unexpected comrades, unrequited love, and unparalleled joy; a wilderness inhabited now with experienced guides and hands that need holding. The night sky's crescent bears witness to the hope of light and the reality of dark; the land we inhabit somewhere between the two.

Thursday on the plane, a slender bookish man with beautiful reading children and a sympathetic wife, offered me a drink ticket with a smile as if he were handing me a $100 bill. The surfer next to me read the Bible and played video games on his I-pad. A former colleague and I shop for her dress online and a current one calls to report in, the cheer in his voice when he heard where I was headed all the proof I need that this is more than a job. A familiar face in the airport gift shop takes me back 25 years as I see the outline of an old friend in his now-adult son and in greeting him, see that he is his parents' child in every good way. There is no direction I look in which I do not see a miracle.

I see again, my daughter's life in the midst of a weekend that didn't always go as planned and yet somehow managed to deliver all we hoped. Friends like precious pearls are introduced as the treasure they are and time too short is released with a sigh and the promise of more. Another daughter sings of love from 3000 miles away, her joyous spirit resounding in my heart as if she were across the table from me. My sons weave threads of life amidst three circles of unknown. They are brave and have chosen their comrades so well, willing themselves to walk in such a way that the bridge will appear beneath their feet. It is not the life I imagined nor even a repaired version of that broken vessel. It is something entirely new and but for years of grief I would never have known it.

Ten years ago I read the Book of Job like an owner's manual, frantically searching for anything that would help me make sense of our life. There was much that would bring me comfort over the years but nothing like this passage from the 23rd chapter, Job's words after calling out the big fat nothing his God-seeking days had produced, "But He knows the way that I take, and when He has tried me I will come forth as gold." There were days I was so furious that this assertion meant nothing to me, and days when it was the lifeboat to which I clung. Tonight it is the thought I'm dying to tattoo on my arm, this reminder that there is no outcome I seek more precious than what has already been planned. 

Your journey will be your own perfect, disastrous story, every wrong turn and hiccup the seeds for a great harvest ahead. I don't know when.  I don't know how.  But let go, open your hand, lose your life. I promise you'll be glad you did.  

B.O.B.

Of course his present is late.  As my father says, the day I get a birthday gift to you on time is the day you need to worry about the state of our relationship.  That said, I did mail it today.  It is small and not early extravagant enough, but it does contain an important message--I love you brother.

He came to us on September 11, 2001.

I know, right?  Accompanying my sister to a weeping home, he let us be as we were.  Laughing one moment  and heartbroken the next, he rode our roller coaster, finishing the ride with the pirate eye patch and earring that Matty and Rayner determined was just the thing for a new friend on an old day.  We'd have proposed if he hadn't gotten to it.  But he did, and here we are ten years later celebrating his life from more than a few locations.

"A good man is hard to find," said Flannery O'Connor. Life is tough and begs the easy answer, the angry retort, the default method.  But I have seen him walk beyond these, quietly teaching the young men watching him that authenticity and quiet strength, partnership and kindness really are possible in this jaded world.

Bob Otsuka, you are a gift to so many people.  And unlike me, you're always on time.

Happy day, happy year, happy life.

Thanks of a Grateful Nation

They are invisible, even today.  

Is it not amazing to realize that they walk among us?  No tattoo of bravery to let us know they jumped out of planes, tiptoed through jungles, or suffered night after night of bitter cold and little food.  They buy apples and milk at the grocery store and wait in the lobby of the doctor's office, and we brush against them daily, with little knowledge of the sacrifices made--loves lost, nightmares found, greatness achieved with no witness but the dead.

We've had our fill of gut-wrenching failure this week, humanity looking worse for the wear.  Today our best will be on display.  

Life Today

I've been fiddling with another blog entry, but work has been busy and I have another project as well, so I’m finding the inspiration for great ideas a bit lean.  I have had a few thoughts--insubstantial little trickles which could very well be left unsaid, given the fact that there is no one breathlessly waiting for these words.  

Still and yet, yet and still.

Which brings me to point #1.  The above phrase is from a book I read maybe 20 years ago with a book club comprised of terrifically smart women.  I had about a million kids at the time and three hours at book group was like going to Stanford for a semester.  In fact, given how many children we all had, it’s a wonder we didn’t open meetings dancing around the room shouting, “We’re free!”

Anyway.

The book was Run with the Horsemen by Ferrol Sams and the phrase, spoken by two sisters on a semi-regular basis, eventually made its way into our family lexicon.  The Brothers K gave us, “Hay, grate!” and this summer Mary Karr’s remarkable memoir, Lit, offered up, “Build a wall around the day and don’t look over it,” a thought I just texted to my sister today.

The joys of reading are incalculable and recited by far more auspicious observers than I, but one of the best is the way a book makes its way into shared consciousness--one more bridge across the rivers of relationship.  These phrases are touchstones, ritual mezuzahs we tap as we pass back and forth into each others lives.

I went to Philadelphia last week to see Daniel in The Merchant of Venice and The Venetian Twins, which got fantastic reviews from the Inquirer.  He and I spent four days talk talk talking and I got to see a life I'd only been able to imagine since last January. Ghana came down from NYC and spent the night in the garret with me.  I ran every day and got to eat at my colleague Casey’s favorite restaurant in the whole entire world (Alma de Cuba--Best Mojito Ever). I cooked for a crowd and saw the WORST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN*, made bearable by the Rocky Horror-like attitude of the people I was with, and came home with clear eyes and a full heart.  My gratitude runneth over.

Tony La Russa is a smart guy and a manager who will go down in history.  But really, someone should talk to him about his hair.

I am listening to music again, another glad development. Matt Nathanson and Mat Kearney are currently on replay and I am wondering when I will tire of them.  I’m not going to say this reminds me of my Archie’s, Sugar Sugar phase, but writing that just made me feel some anxiety.  That said, If I Left the Zoo is playing now and 12 years later, Jars of Clay can still be the cure for what ails me.

Mary Glen lost her room key awhile ago.  She was going to have to pay $107 to have a new one made, but didn’t get to the office in time because of a busy day....which included class, allergy shot, and an email letting her know that someone found her key.  Dude I love when that happens.

I can make just about any dessert there is.  But seriously, what is better than a s’more?

My friend Elizabeth has a big time job with a big time company, a husband, two kids and a very busy life.  Last week I got hung up at Midway Airport and called because I thought she might have insider information, which was a little like calling the mayor's office to ask about road construction on I-70 (I realized this after the fact, of course.  At the time it seemed a perfectly fine thing to do.)  Not only did she call back, but she kept me updated until things were moving again, all while doing her actual job.  That woman is a keeper.

Rayner Fredrick, look at you playing college basketball five years after a coach said you didn’t have what it takes.  Haters gonna hate. Ballers gonna ball.

It’s a gorgeous day outside.  I’m done taking those for granted.

* The Three Musketeers.  It’s still too painful to discuss.

You All Know Who You Are

It’s been 10 years since we left New York, a healing decade in which I learned to appreciate the skyline in my rearview mirror and love the plains with specificity and devotion.  Embracing my life and my people here, I put down roots that I thought would grow forever.  And then one day my mailbox held a package with a Riverside Drive return address and just like that, an old lover walked through the door.  

The Porch Where It All Happens is what Gina called the painting she sent, a tribute to the three years we spent at The Cathedral School.  They were days of life and death-- 100 year old steps bearing witness to grief unspeakable and laughter so loud it drew public chastisement (We are still trying to teach students here).  There were public debates and private glances, yet through it all, unseen hands knitted together a unit that miraculously still survives.  Some people go to New York to see theatre, and some to revel in art.  I go to New York because, to my grateful wonderment, there is still a seat in the garden for me.  

But you cannot hear from an old love without taking a bit of inventory and it’s been the fortnight for that, memory trawling me back through different lives and other porches.  I’ve heard from someone who joined me when our existence was measured in single digits and shared meals with a few who knew my unlined face.  I began a new timeline with one and sent a family email to another with whom I share no dna--both of them The Right Answer for the days the universe carried them in.

I returned to Kansas City once before--17 years ago after two years away.  Feeling like an out-of-towner, I realized how completely life had moved on without me.  I was wieldy, lemme tell ya, with five tiny companions for every step outside the house, so it didn’t look like much would change. I don’t know if I actually prayed, or if the heaviness in my heart was enough, but I remember wondering--Is this it?  Except for a few add-ons through the years, Have I met all of the people I will know?  

And then this small, smoking, swearing, high-powered career woman was standing on my porch.  It was the unlikeliest of friendships, me with naps and after-school pickups and hers a life of Senators and eventually Presidents.  Yet through some crazy mix of need and persistence we found a place in the middle where each of us shared the overflow that was exactly what the other one needed.  It was the beginning of the rest of my life.  

From that day on, old friends and new were received as the miracle they are, held with an open hand and the knowledge that, Lord have mercy, we needed each other.  I laugh to consider that question I asked, the pieces of my heart since scattered across the country and held in people I never knew I would visit, much less grow to love.  That’s the thing about porches--anyone can come up and have a seat.

I feel the ground moving, hands loosening roots that I have tried desperately to protect.  I don’t know where they will put down, but thanks to Gina, I know there will be a crowd.