Tag: Attachment

Preparing for Guests

Rita Sommers-Flanagan8 Comments

Not long ago, God and I were kneading dough, trying to time things so the smell of fresh bread would greet our guests at the door. Homemade sourdough is one of my staples, and I wanted to impress these acquaintances with my earthiness. I had a hunch they were our kind of people.

Most of us need a few homies; a posse, an inner circle of those who know us well enough to hold our fears and failures–and reveal their own. Recently a chunk of our inner circle fell to the forces of mortality, and the wound is still tender, keeping me acutely aware that anyone can fall at any moment and no longer be. God puts the dough in a cool place to slow the rise. She gives me a knowing glance. “You’re ambivalent, aren’t you?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “There are days I think it’s best to be disconnected. Less risk. Less pain.”

“Slight correction, if I may?” God says. “What you mean is that the illusion of being disconnected offers a bit of respite, but…”

I hold my hand up. Mercifully, the Center of All that Is and Isn’t, the Author, the Plot, the Weaver of the Tapestry, the Queen of Connection stops talking. I know where this is headed. I know about Oneness, and I know about loss. Many’s the time I’ve tried to make God understand how it feels to be on my side of the perpetual falling away, but God only sees it as falling into, not away. I think that’s callous and naïve. God thinks I’m tiresome and unsympathetic. So, once in a while, to show God how hard it can be, I sing to her–usually James Taylor’s Fire and Rain–and she cries a little for our sakes. But being the thing we fall into is also hard. She borrows Paul Simon (himself, a borrower of ancient hymns) and sings to me.

“…I’ve often felt forsaken, and certainly misused. But I’m all right, I’m all right. I’m just weary to my bones. Still, you don’t expect to be bright and bon vivant so far away from home, so far away from home.”

And I cry a little for her sake. The best homies remind us we aren’t home, and the wisest among us realize there is no home, only the lonely journey and the shared and cherished resting places. Most dreams have been driven to their knees, but it’s all right. It’s all right. Even when exhausted, God kneels alongside the dream. And shatters with the dream. And sings.

The oven is ready, the table set. We will break bread together, drink leftover wine, and in those rare moments, we will bravely partake of a singular and temporary joy.

Wildfires

Rita Sommers-Flanagan13 Comments

We evacuated a few days ago. God refused to help sort what to take but rode along in the tiny spaces available in the car and winked at me as the fire officials at the station explained that the wind had shifted. The fight was going another direction. If we took the back roads, we could go home. As we turned around, God disappeared and I was glad to see him go, even though his absence is as much of an illusion as his presence. At least with him ostensibly gone, I could avoid thorny conversations for a while.

Who wants to talk with the God of fire during an evacuation? The God of suffering, loss, and apparently random events? It never goes well. The book of Job for example; an elongated poem, a chorus of voices and views, Yahweh and Satan in a cosmic pissing match, Yahweh’s praise of evolution, and a lesson in pointlessness. Sure, there’s the veneer of a happy ending, but not if you realize it will all end again. Who wants to lose everything twice? Thrice? Forever?

“Do you think the key is to have nothing to lose?” God asked as I sat by the window, breathing smoky air, waiting for another evacuation notice. I didn’t mind that God had swung back around. He was better than the meager offerings on Roku.

“I don’t know about that,” I said, scanning my accumulations; books, art, a sheepskin rug, my yoga mats, special rocks, blue glass, a cedar jewelry box filled with trinkets, a stack of incomplete gardening journals (we start a new one every spring). Of what consequence would their loss be? Little to none. Of what consequence has my life been? Or anyone’s?

God nodded, noncommittal. Listening. I grieved and tried to be brave about it all. I wanted to imagine I was of great consequence; something other than one of the trillion dominoes God has gleefully lined up, waiting and watching to see what might set off the next run, gently drumming his fingers, offering substantial odds to anyone willing to bet against him. I wondered if I could step out of line. Redirect the future of my particular genetic strain, remain standing, and win.

“Of course,” God said. “Be my guest. I like winners.”

“But I thought you liked losers,” I said. Conversations like this give me vertigo of the soul. Winning isn’t definable, and I don’t actually know what kind of consequence I want to be. It’s risky business to have God along in an evacuation because no matter what you take along, God knows what you’ve left behind and will circle back. God always circles back. This may be a good thing, but I’d rather have the promise of perpetuity or at least a direct way home.