Tag: Forgiveness

Sun Stroke

Rita Sommers-FlanaganLeave a comment

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It is early afternoon. God has arrived wrapped in a comfortable silence, a silence more welcome than river or sky. Profound. Eloquent. Invisible. Soothing. I drink in big gulps, aware of how perilously close I was to sun-stroke of the soul. Here, in the shade, the sweet darkness, the shelter of the womb, I am restored. I curl fetal. Passive. Receptive.

“Hello, weakness,” I say. “Hello, futility. Hello, starkly cold breath of God.”

Silence holds me like a baby. I’m a simple puzzle, easily taken apart. The silence doesn’t mind. I’m easily put back together as well. It’s been unbearably hot lately, an unforgiving sun claiming the right of way, scorching anything exposed. Defying the clouds, reducing the breeze to an occasional sigh. The meaningless heat strips my excuses to the bone. Subtleties melt away, dreams forgotten. The God of heat is relentless, deadly. The only way to survive is to find the darkness and repent. Crawl down, dig deep, sink into a place below the surface, where shadow befriends the weary.

God politely waves from a respectful distance, leaving the holy silence unmarred. I wave back. God pulls the silence closer and shakes it a little, like someone fluffing a pillow. God likes it here in this moment. In this nothingness. I’m glad we’re both at ease. I put as much gratitude into my gaze as I possibly can. Then God and I nod off. A little siesta, a full relinquishment of our ambitions and fears. We give up together, letting the afternoon be whatever it might be. We rest.

There’s a dark night just over the horizon, and after that, more sun. I’m vaguely aware of this, but I stake no claim on what might come. God’s breathing has slowed, deepened. Like my own, it rattles a little on the exhale.

Glimpses

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Some people have  indicated they wouldn’t mind meeting up with my co-author, or at least, they hope my descriptions are accurate. Frankly, accuracy is a subjective term, and I wouldn’t wish this particular relationship on anyone. It has aspects that make me feel about as safe as I do when I forget to flip the breaker before installing my latest funky light fixture. Awaiting that final jolt does something to your mind. And there’s despair. Real, chest-smashing despair. Much deeper than the despair currently caused by the evening news. This God. This life. Here are a few recent observations.

God’s a dumpster diver. I don’t mind being seen with God, picking through discarded clothing, sunglasses, and broken toys. In fact, earlier today she gave me three pairs of socks and a scarf she’d fished out with a long stick. And get this—I don’t even need any socks. But she knows how happy I am to deny the landfill one single bite of something not yet entirely used up—something with potential for restoration, renovation, or renewal. I’ll use these socks when I jog, with a defiant spring in my step.

God’s a prankster. Things that look awful might be priceless. Things you think you deserve do not come your way, but things you don’t deserve do. Blessings turn rancid. Curses blossom and bear fruit. He’s very like that, and most of us don’t think it’s all that funny. I suspect God does.

God bewitches and beguiles. Creates and destroys. God answers to no one, but will wait patiently for a chick to hatch or a badly-needed idea to occur. God often walks alone in the rain. Zillions of years have gone by and will go by. Stones have worn down to heart-shaped pebbles, while molten lava shimmers and cools. God isn’t easy. Neither is love.

So, God, do you have anything to add? Um…God? GOD!!! Come back here. I’m sorry. I meant to say you’re not easy in a good way. Who’d want an easy God anyway?

God creeps back, waiting, I think, for a more complete apology. Maybe I left some things out. But it isn’t all up to me. My arms are crossed. God’s arms are loose. My vision is narrow. God’s is wide. My time is finite. God’s isn’t. I can live with that. At least for a while.

We dangle our feet in the raging snow-fed river of Now. The water is brutally cold, but it sizzles and swirls around God’s delicate ankles. She isn’t showing off. That’s just the way she is.

 

Sin

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So much depends on the right weed-eater and a proper attitude toward sin. The root structures of unwanted plants and unwanted behaviors are similarly complex.

God explained this to me as we dragged out the various weed-eating options to face the onslaught of summer. I was making an attempt to consider my failings this past week. I don’t like weeds, but I try to be patient. My friend–a permaculture fan–is determined to teach me about biodiversity and tolerance. God, also a permaculture fan, constantly urges me to considering the grand scheme of things.

“Did you want me to confess anything in particular?” I asked God, as we checked the oil in the Husqvarna.

“No, not really,” God answered. “Sin is separation from Good Things. Which happens to be one of my names. One of my favorites, actually. Good Things, I mean. Not Sin. Damn Good Things in fact. You can call me DGT for short.” God chuckled at this little joke and then said, “But seriously, you don’t have to confess. Sin carries its own price. Disconnection sucks. For both of us.”

I nodded. Life is definitely harder when I’m all disconnected, my ego bloated and unwieldy. When I’m my best self, I fill a tiny, unique space in the garden, and I’m happy. When I get greedy, I trample on vital species, poison the soil around me, gobble up nutrients not meant for me, become increasingly undisciplined, and frankly, ugly, common, and boring. And when I get frightened, I yank my roots in close, breaking the thin strands of connection to the earth, and topple over in the dry western wind.

“But I’ve heard that confession is good for the soul,” I said, wanting a bit of encouragement.

“Oh, it is,” God said. “It is indeed. But what’s even better is compost.”

I sat on my favorite boulder, watching the sun go down. For once, God pitched in and did a fair amount of work. My feet and hands were still as I willed myself into the void, waiting for night to descend. I was confident I knew the way.

Easter

Rita Sommers-Flanagan6 Comments

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Born of water and fire, born of wind and mercy, born of bread and wine, Easter has arrived.

Spring is a hungry season. We emerge lean from winter, enduring the bite of weakened bone. And we have this weirdly moving target–a holiday called Easter. Of course, down under, Easter signals the coming of autumn. And on other planets, spinning around their own stars, we can only guess what might be. But in Jerusalem, it’s spring this time of year. In fact, Accuweather says the high today will be 57 F.

Last night, I re-read the account of how terribly wrong that infamous Passover went a few thousand years ago. I read it as a mother. Usually, the focus is on the suffering of Jesus, the child. And granted, it’s horrific. But what of the parent? As a nonviolent person, I’m sometimes challenged by my gun-enthusiast friends who say, “If someone was threatening or hurting your child, you’d get violent. You’d kill.” And I admit I’m not sure what I’d do. But here’s a haunting truth: I don’t even have to believe the story to know what God would do, and does.

I live here on this planet, with my eyes as open as I dare. I see God, wailing in the eviscerating agony of the death of a child. “My child, my beautiful gentle son, my baby, my perfect one,” God moans and shrieks. “You’re killing him.” The sky darkens, the stars fall, the earth convulses. The parent’s beating heart, yanked from the chest, thrown on the fire. And then, it is over. But it isn’t. We know it isn’t. God knows it isn’t. Easter is a reprieve. A promise. A reminder that all things die into the hands of the Great Beyond. And the Great Beyond is not violent, or frightened. The Great Beyond is tender. Filled with love. But here, in this linear life, hour by hour, we drown with God in the futility of repeated violence. And on this hard, narrow road, in the Now of our existence, the Great Beyond does not spare itself one iota of the pain. Not one.

 

Dust Mite

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Sometimes, my co-author pushes things a little further than seems appropriate and leaves me dangling. For instance, this morning I’ve had to gulp back my aversion and hide my incredulity while  I try to model polite acceptance. “Hello, God,” I said. “I see you’ve become a dust mite.”

No discernible answer. I try a little ingratiation. “Wow. You’re so tiny and translucent.” But I’m thinking UGLY! Of course, I realize beauty’s in the biased eye of the beholder. I continue on. “And bugs like you are impossible to eradicate.”

Without a word, God infiltrates my psyche and I drop a little deeper. Humans can dip very low. God can dip lower.

“God, you freak me out. You’ve taken up residence in the detritus of humankind, yet you remain essential and good. You’re living where we’ve been, transforming what’s fallen from our bodies into sustenance. You restore meaning to things that have been cast off and forgotten. You complete the circle. You’re like a mother clasping the old sweaty shirt of her child to her heart, weeping for all that has been, all that could have been. Taking courage from the scent remaining in the shredded cloth. You fearlessly find the way forward. Onward.” Still no answer, but I think God is in agreement.

“I’m like that today too, God,” I say, longing for some kind of affiliation.

I’m sitting beside my expanding rock collection–stones that were once fallen trees, transformed by minerals in the ancient putrid waters that sucked them down. I can’t fathom the pressure necessary to create these stones. And how is it they’ve come to be here, on my bench, in my house, absorbing the warmth of the morning sun?

Judging from the way things break down and are reconfigured, my place in this cacophony of life and death is a whimsical bit of happenstance. This upsets me a little bit.

“Sometimes, I wish you took me a little more seriously, Dust mite God,” I said. Of course, no answer.  “Okay, sometimes I wish you didn’t pay any attention to me at all. You’re a frightening, infinitesimal speck of persistence, patiently digesting, creating and re-creating this ragged world and all that is within it.” No comment. No reaction. I stumble on.

“Diminutive God, you’re nearly invisible to the naked eye.  I don’t know what to make of you. Why have you chosen to inhabit such a tiny space.?”

Finally, I realize there will be no reasonable answers. In fact, there will be no answers at all today. Only compassion. Only resurrection. Only the icy hope of rising water, the magical appearance of red-winged blackbirds, the ambivalent green of an ordinary day.

In this version of myself, I am the friend of dust mites, the builder who will not reject these temporary stones. I am a transitory being of ashes and dust, improvising the best I can with the materials at hand. I won’t get it entirely right. No one ever does. And it doesn’t matter in the least.

 

Brown God, White Bread

Rita Sommers-Flanagan7 Comments

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Dear Brown God,

I ate white bread for you today. Yes, I did. I swallowed my aversion, draped a delicate veil of righteousness over my shoulders, and let the elements slide down my throat.

I did this without expectation. Frankly, it was mostly for show. But suddenly, there you were, sidling my direction. I shook my head, signaling you should leave me alone. My face said, “Do not sit anywhere near me.” You ignored my face.

We sat in uncomfortable silence on the back bench. When the time came for confession of sins, I scratched you a note, “Do not expect much from me. I’m white like the bread, inside and out.” But I didn’t have the courage to slide it over. We stared straight ahead. I felt myself starting to come apart. Like a shy lover, you gently took my hand, entwining our fingers one by one. No one noticed this merger, this complete dissolution of boundary and intent. In what was left of my center, a longing welled up to be poor, and brown, and hungry. To be courageous, worthy, alive. There, amongst acquaintances, I was a refugee—landless, homeless, stripped of my claims to humanity. Then I was a snowy owl, a field of lilies, a night, blackened by the turning of the earth, given a small reprieve by galaxies that refuse to be silenced.

A ragtag choir rushed to the front and began to sing the haunting plea, Dona Nobis Pachem. They were joined by the Gay Men’s Choir from San Francisco, and then by what appeared to be German children, mostly blond, and an orchestra, complete with a massive section of violins. They played. They sang. They begged for peace. You and I, God. You and I. We drank the music in like water. We sang until we dissolved, flowing in harmony toward the rising sea. All that remained was a little smear of hope on the new carpet. It glowed iridescent beneath the worn boots of those who will always stay faithfully behind.

And now, back in my tentative body, a howling wind is blowing me sideways. The evening is falling hard. I’m writing you this note to say I’m sorry. No matter how many times you stop by and remind me to be brave, and to eat with joy, I’m still a bit selfish and afraid.

Dona Nobis Pachem, Brown God. And rest well. Tomorrow will be another day.

Yours,

Rita

Longevity

Rita Sommers-Flanagan6 Comments

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Out the southern window, eleven Canadian Geese sliced silently through the sky in a straight dark line. But it only looks straight. It’s curved like the earth, curved like all who dwell herein. An orange school bus glides along the distant road, carrying tired values and outdated ideas back and forth while unruly children bounce on the cracked leather seats. I’ve ridden that bus all my life. The back window rattles loose and I occasionally escape, but I don’t get far.

To mark the path home, I’ve rolled large stones into a curved line, and stacked smaller ones on the rounded tops, held in place by gravity, spit, and Zen. When the wind howls through the valley, some of them tumble off. These are local river rocks, but I drag stones home from wherever I go. Alleys, beaches, roadways, mountains, even other continents.

Decades ago, I rescued a collection of agates that had been buried by debris in the back yard of an old Forest Service office. I imagined the collector, likely now dead, watching from beyond. I wash them occasionally, and put them in new buckets, but at some point, I’ll do something more fitting, more spectacular with them. They seem content to wait. If anything can grasp the term geologic time, it would be rocks. When I was a child, I thought trees lived forever. Now I know they don’t, and I’m glad. I’m warmed by their cast-off bodies, sheltered by their harvested limbs.

And rocks don’t last forever either. But their comparative longevity is comforting.

And what’s forever, anyway? The little God on my shoulder—the one that ordained this moment–whispers something in my ear. “It’s music. Or another name for winter.”

Ah. I see. Listen to me all you fireflies and buffalo, nymphs and gnomes, wind and sun, seeds and stones. This is the gospel for today: Trees don’t live forever. Rocks don’t last forever. Bus rides eventually end. The earth is a circle moving in circles, creating the cradle, smoothing the grave. And that is how it should be. Amen.

A random text from God

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God texted to see if I’d be available for a get-together one Tuesday shortly after I’d finished the chemo. I clenched my jaw as I acknowledged I was free, but pointed out other options in case I could throw him off. He’s crazy, and difficult to talk to sometimes. Slow to speak, unassuming, but simultaneously requiring too much unearned adoration. Seriously. He’s almost condescending. And often he sets up these meetings and then no-shows. He runs out of money and his phone shuts down.

I called his mother later in the week, just to see if anything God said was true. “Yes,” the mother of God said. “He’s honest. Just unfiltered. He’s got a lot on his mind, you know.” She paused and said, “Say, you don’t happen to have any contact information, do you? He’s been out of touch with the family for a while.”

This set me back on my heels. Where was God? Last I knew, he was eating at the homeless shelter, picking up odd jobs and repairing bicycles. He likes to camp along the river if it isn’t too cold. How could I tell his mother this? How could his mother not know?

As Tuesday approached, I grew more and more anxious. I wished I could cancel, but with God, this is difficult. He arrived early, agitated. “Did you call my mother?” he asked, slapping his fist into his hand. He was clearly angry.

“No,” I lied. God knew. We locked eyes for a brief moment. Then he looked out the window at the apricot tree. “Looks like rain,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, sobbing. Why did everything have to be this hard? I’d lost my last apricot tree to aphids, and two sweet cherry trees to moles. I’d lost my uterus to cancer and my idealism to the nightly news. And now, God was angry just because I called his mother.

“Look,” God said, the anger abated. “Just as you are. And just as I AM.”

Then he put his long thin arms around me and bent his wild head down so it touched the top of my partially-regrown hair. “So it is, and so it will be.” His voice was as soft and dense as sleep. I climbed in, and was welcomed into the folds of that voice.

I still find rest in that thick, palpable space. There are so few places that offer any kind of shelter these days. I’m thankful, but sometimes, lately, it’s too crowded and noisy to really relax. And who knows which of these refugees might be carrying a bomb? I’ve been asked to carry one myself, but so far, I’ve refused.

 

 

Mistaken Identity at City Brew

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There’s one vacant seat, and I ease into it without spilling. Two women to the right share a long forced laugh that ends in an awkward sob. One of them is trying to absorb what it means to have a dead husband. The other one is helping, such as she can. Not long ago, her husband died too.

The man directly in front of me is typing, fast and loud. A swarm of words hovers above his keyboard, landing occasionally on his glasses. He has to wipe the lenses. I’m not sure if it’s words or tears and I don’t want to look too closely.

Sticky muffins punctuate the shiny table, and an older woman, her skin, deep purple, is texting and sipping from a tall black cup while a younger woman sighs, making her way through a stack of bills, paying with her phone. The devil is in the details. But if that’s where the devil is, where’s God? Where are you? Do you hang out in the details too?

Yeah, yeah, I know. You’ve dropped a lot of hints about this over the eons, but remember how dense we are, how sheltered, avoidant, afraid. Have mercy, Royal Master of the Known and Unknown. Peek out at me. Wave or wink so I can get my bearings. Who should get the lion’s share of my love and attention? Is there anyone here I could scorn, just a little? I need to scorn someone right now. Oh, how I need to scorn.

A train rolls by. The conductor waves, the whistle blows, I stare out the icy window and then refocus back in the cozy room. Halleluia! There you are! I jump up to offer you the last muffin. I’m a dog, licking your wounds. I’m a bird, nesting in your hair, I’m an apple, a warm coat, a shiny red car. God, do you want a ride? Can I give you a lift? Where shall we go? C’mon God. I need outta here, outta here, outta here.

Oh, no! Not God? Oh my. Excuse me. I mistook you for an old friend of mine. Very sorry.

I’ve caused a ruckus. I’ve been asked to leave. God is laughing from the belly of a very pregnant woman. She shouldn’t be drinking coffee anyway. How could I have known? I cross the street, dazed. I hear the caw of a crow. The twisted feet of a hundred homeless people have frozen to the sidewalk. They can’t move. I can’t move. We will wait for the sun together. I am at peace.

 

Fire

Rita Sommers-Flanagan12 Comments

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Before the snow came, I burned rotten, misshapen wood. Dirty wood, not even worth cutting up for the woodstove. Wood filled with unremovable, wayward screws. Such fires are my last resort.

Enduring the scorn of my carpenters, I save every scrap of wood—wood that was once a seed that grew into a tree that was felled, milled, planed, dried, sawn, hammered, and then, in this case, tossed aside as remnant. I am a gatherer of remnants. I restore things. But there’s a limit, and sometimes, fire is the answer. It burned ferocious and unfettered.

Evening came, the fire died down. I went in to watch gratuitous violence on TV and eat fish wrapped in freezer-burned tortillas. Long after dark, I looked out the upstairs window. Of course, the flames were gone, but to my consternation, the embers were visible. The air was still, but I know well the nature of wind—it can blow up sudden and savage. Not long ago, our neighbor’s smoldering garbage nearly burned our house down. My fire wasn’t dead enough.

Boots, flashlight, rake, shovel, I trudged across the uneven ground to assess the cinders. Things were hotter than I’d thought they’d be. I found a long hose and hooked it up to the hydrant. Water hit and hissed. I put the hose down and stirred the steaming mound. Embers, given a last gasp of air, burst into flame. I let them burn themselves down, down, down, littering the night with airborne sparks. Hose at hand, I admired the blaze for a while. Then I broke the fire apart. Flame fell back to glowing embers. I raked a perfect circle of pulsating orange heat and stared into the hypnotic beauty.

The circle glowed vibrant and seductive. I imagined screams of agony, should I walk across these coals, or sink down through the intense heat to the inverse world below. The vision was potent enough that I turned the hose on full force. Fire, water, earth, and air. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It took a while, but finally, I could put my hands anywhere in the gray soup. It was over.

I walked slowly back to the house, a somber carbon-based lifeform, caught in the trappings of a long-dead Deity. I glanced up. Dark sky came to life. My eyes adjusted to billions of stars, mirroring my true, living image back to me. Minuscule. Vulnerable and magnificent. Stardust, spit, and ash. Ragged, weary, incomplete.

I knew I would be what was left after the fire. And I wasn’t afraid. I tucked myself into the womb of the ever-birthing, ever-blazing God.