Worry Sources

Today's Ten Thousand Questions question:

Which do you worry about most: money issues, relationship conflicts, or potentially embarrassing social situations?

For me, it's relationship conflicts, no contest. I can shrug off social embarrassments as ultimately meaningless, and I feel confident that I can solve the money questions that arise in my life through information, intelligence and effort. But relationship conflicts--no matter how much effort I put in, there is no guarantee of anything working out.

First

So many things to worry about today, but I will choose not to. First things first, and all the rest will follow.

At Sunday school a few weeks ago--in the middle of the "Will O. quit, or won't he?"--before the retreat, before the hurricane: that quiet Sunday morning, our leader, G., read to us from Matthew 6 in his lovely Southern accent: "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well."

I started thinking about first. Seek God first: first in importance, first in line, first in the day. "Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil into the house of the LORD your God." "But I have this against you: you have forgotten your first love." "We love because He first loved us."

Another one that I didn't think of at the time: "In the beginning was the Word." He was here first, before there was a here. God is first. ("You shall have no other gods before Me.") Everyone else's opinion can come last.

May I live this today.

Life Questions

Lately, I've been asking myself a lot of questions. Life-changes (especially those in the box of surprises we call marriage) seem to generate these questions--or perhaps it's the conflicts created or revealed by changes that give birth to these questions. The questions come in flocks. They descend from the skies, their wings clattering. They leave the ground a mess of droppings and feathers.

One flock is the color of money. Its birds sing about saving, about future expenditures, about how I spend too much. They demand to know why I need so many things, why I want them. They remind me, people are starving in other places. Children are shoeless in the Russian snow, and here I am, my closet floor full of shoes, considering whether I "need" a pair of boots.

When that flock drifts away, another flock settles around me. It pecks at me. It caws about newer clothes, more make-up, a different purse, more care in putting together an outfit. It tells me I am not doing things right.

Like sparrows that fill every bush and peck every square of sidewalk, questions twitter at me about chores. Has the laundry been done? When are you going to do it? What's for dinner? How about breakfast? Is there granola? Is the bread dough going to go bad? Are we getting enough vitamins?

There's a bird that shrieks that I'm not accomplishing anything, that I'm going nowhere. When will you apply to grad school? Why do you expect anyone to accept you for a PhD program? Why haven't you sent out any poems yet?

There is a rooster that crows some mornings: What do you have to contribute? What could you possibly have to say that is worth reading? (This started after I read a couple of posts on how to get more readers for your blog, which introduced previously unconsidered goals and standards into my brain.)
 
There is a vulture circling overhead, asking, What are you forgetting?

And I keep hearing the questions, Am I a child or an adult? What makes me happy? Why am I here? But at least those questions are asked by my own soul, not by insecurities and fears and the polluting influence of a materialistic, narcissistic, workaholic, kaleidoscopic society.

I constantly need to remind myself: I am not what I accomplish. My worth is not measured in statistics of any sort--in fact, it isn't quantifiable. I am a person, a story, a poem, a picture: not a machine. In solitude, in silence, in stillness, I still exist.

I breathe in deep, and blow out. I blow away the birds.

Quote of the Day: Real World

From this long but insightful and interesting interview with travel-writer Pico Iyer:

I try not to think too much about writing as a business. For me, all the joy comes at the desk and what comes after is a kind of sales tax and is what you have to do to pay admission to this otherwise wonderful career. So I live in rural Japan, and I have never really been on the world wide web, and I live very far from New York, and, from, I suppose, the day-to-day real world details of publishing. But that’s a conscious choice. It was almost a choice between, I won’t say happiness and success, but between being very plugged into that world or being plugged into the real world, and I figured I didn’t have enough energy for both, and I got more satisfaction from the real world. I did, after all, move from a 25th floor office in Rockefeller Center to a Zen temple on a backstreet in Kyoto when I was in my late 20s.

I'm glad he didn't use the words "authentic" or "experience", which are all glossy and plastic now from being mass-produced. Real world: he goes for the jugular. "Authentic experience" is marketable and inoffensive. "Real world" is a judgment and a challenge.

What is the real world? It is not the world where you worry about paying your credit card bills on time, or the world where you have to know how to tie a tie properly to impress the right people, or the world where no one will look out for you and you have to take care of yourself by yourself, or the world where being 15 minutes late will ruin your life. That is the world people here mean when they say, "In the real world, that just isn't going to work."

No, the real world is the place of life. Depth. Breathing slow. Green leaves, a wind untainted by exhaust. Light on the water. Peace in your heart. One thought at a time.

I wish I lived in the real world all the time. I don't. I live like a squirrel, chittering and skittering, collecting acorn after acorn, burying them, forgetting where they are. Sometimes I am so happy as I run and leap. Other times I am frantic, and I can't make up my mind which side of the street I should be on as the car zooms closer.

But there is peace, there is joy, there are full stops instead of restless commas. I can end my sentence; it doesn't have to continue with a semicolon--a dash--one more thought. . . I can slow down. Isn't that what this time is for? For rest, not restlessness. Peace of mind, not a mind in pieces.

Breathe. Breathe. This is the real world.

Time

All my time lately is with people. It begins to feel as though time in class is downtime. Classtime is when I don't have to be fully engaged, when I can think some of my own thoughts. Classtime is when I can explore someone else's ideas without any thought for their emotions or personhood, because that someone is not present and very likely not even alive anymore, and their ideas have taken on their own life and they stand before me, strong on their own two feet, and they talk to me whether or not I listen. I don't have to encourage them, to ask the right questions, to offer to pray for them. I can check in and out, and hear enough, and my professors will still think I am a great student and I will still learn.

Meanwhile, as the professor talks about the stages of compilation (lexical analysis, syntactic analysis, ...), I am writing a poem about Andromache weeping on the walls of Troy. As Herr Bloomer chatters on in Deutsch, I am writing about tears running down the armor of the Greek soldiers. As vocabulary about the types of deixis flies around me, I am planning: how many books do I have to read this week, how many poems do I have to edit? As I hear, for the thousandth time, detailed instructions on how to format an academic paper, I am writing about the shorn hair falling on the corpse of Patroklos, about Achilles dreaming of his lost friend, and the spirit vanishing into the earth, like vapor.

And as soon as the lecture ends, the ghost of solitude that has accompanied me vanishes like vapor. My classmates speak to me, I smile back. We walk together, I ask them how they are, where they are going. I meet someone for lunch, someone else for Bible study planning, someone else for a programming project. All the while, a list of things I have to get done is clattering around in my skull and the wind is trying to freeze my ears off and draw frost-patterns on my scalp. And then it's off to small group, and we. Pause. Pray. And then talk talk talk. And then it's a ride home in a crowded car and I hear myself chattering but I can't stop it.

When I get home I shut the door to my room and it's time to write. Count the words (249 of them), make every point (all the reasons I am "excellent"), collect all the supporting documents: I've been nominated for an award, apparently it's significant, I have to "hold up my end," as my professor said. As midnight creeps closer, I wrap up those cumbersome sentences, the boasts wrapped in gauze and tied with pretty ribbon. Finally I throw it out into the internet-void and hope it flies.

And now it's long past midnight and I haven't had a free thought since... How many days ago?

When will I slow down? My suitemate claims solace and solitude are related. I can't speak for the etymology but I have to agree about the semantics. Silence must be a close cousin, and slumber.

TBA = to be absorbed

"If God is for us, who can be against us?": If I'm in the right place with God, does it matter whether I do well on my Arabic quiz? I've been great in language classes all my life, but that doesn't mean that who I am is the person who does well in language classes.

"You, however, are controlled not by the flesh but by the Spirit... Those who are led by the Spirit are sons of God." There isn't supposed to be a Spirit-led part of my life and a self-led part of my life (or rather, an anxious part of my life). If I really let the Spirit lead me, God will also lead me about how much sleep to get, whether it's really a good time to cook dinner, how long to study for Arabic quizzes, and whether to hang out with someone when really all I want to do is get some time to be still.

"Just a closer walk with Thee"--All I need is You, Lord, "and all these things will be added to me as well."

[This blog gives such a bipolar depiction of my life... Oh well, it's the nature of a fragmentary record.]

Sometimes it gets very crowded in my mind

[I found this scribbled on the back of a page of notes from a couple weeks ago, amidst other ramblings, so I pulled it out of the scrawls and titled it.]

How It Feels to Need Solitude

The messages never stop
flying in and out,
always in my eyes
so I can never see
clearly.

Falling Leaves

There's never enough, really. Do, do, do, but the tasks keep coming, falling, like leaves from the swaying trees. Autumn is still on its way: leaves, stay with your trees! Don't come swooping down, unexpectedly. I am not prepared for this onslaught--not prepared for the flurry of leaves when the breeze brushes by--not prepared for the fluttering in my peripheral vision, in my face, in my eye when I whirl around.

I close my eyes, but the leaves keep falling, falling. I can't stop them. Suddenly gravity is calling, and every leaf is falling. Who am I to sing over Gravity's endless music?

Eventually the trees will be sleek and bare. Their spare lines will slice the sky, while their lush leaves fill the earth. Such extravagance, the bright leaves that fall, like expensive gowns shrugged to the ground. Scarlet, violet, russet, gold. So much color spilled heedlessly, because the trees know: When spring comes home, the leaves will grow again. Then no branch will lack for its emerald cloak. But winter is the time for dancing naked.

Why do I keep looking for a rake? What am I really looking for? A mountain of leaves, a landslide of colors. A place to leap.

Inspiration via Typo

From an NYT article online: "... in Japan, where they have been growing anxiety ..."

Japan has an especially good climate for planting and growing anxiety, but it will grow anywhere. It's a hardy weed that shoots up quickly and comes back after you cut it down, because its roots go deep into the secret places in the land, and they grip the soil with matchless determination. The stalk breaks before the roots let go; your hands slip, torn by the thorns, before the roots give up.

Plant peace, water it diligently, but none of its flowers will open if anxiety flourishes around it, blocking out the sun. Peace bears glorious blossoms, but its petals tear on the thorns of the weeds, and its leaves need the Sun. Peace will die in your garden if you keep growing anxiety.

Waking

I woke up slowly this morning, and I woke up early. Sometimes it seems I sleep less soundly in my own bed at home than on the narrow, thin mattress at school, or on the unfamiliar and lush beds in hotels. Which bed is most "mine", though? At school, the room is lent to me, but while I have it, it is mine alone, with conflicting allegiances. At home, the bed is covered with complications like layered quilts. Memories and obligations are the walls and floor of this room. It's "my" room, but not all the memories send their roots into my past; they are "my" obligations, but all of them bind me to other people's ideas.

I woke up bound to someone else's ideas. I woke with someone else's worry tightening my shoulders. The shoulder blades lie uneasily under my skin: ready to explode into wings and feathers, ready to shift like tectonic plates, like Africa and South America in their continental dance.

I woke in the blue light, in the cloud hour. Green leaves hang from the trees outside my window, but at dawn, all the leaves were silver and blue. The little dog's barking had broken the calm of my sleep, but when I drifted to the surface, all the sharp sounds had ceased. I woke to stillness, I woke to the silver noise of the cars floating by.

I woke, and I bobbed up and down through sleepiness, till I settled at the surface, floating on the silence. Through the dark hallway, into the empty kitchen, into the cool dawn that poured through the windows: the house was asleep, and I was barely across the border into waking.

I stared down into my mug at the minute bubbles sizzling up through the tea, but the hot liquid couldn't soothe me. I stared up with inner eyes, but morning imagination failed. I saw only the ceiling.

Meditation: what am I thankful for? what do I want? So crude, to want, but in the end, I am not a creature of the dawn, with mere blue wishes and dreams: I clutch my desires with curled fingers. Where did I experience God's love? where did I ignore God's love? today, how will I allow God to lead me into tomorrow? I am thinking about a day, just one day, but 24 hours is a million moments, uncountable thousands of thoughts.

Wrapped in a blanket, I fell asleep on the couch. Later, the poodle's nose prodded me awake, and she leaned up against me. We slid into sleep, in concentric curls.

I woke again, slept again, woke, slept, bobbed in and out, till finally I washed up on the shore in the full light of day. The moon was gone, the dawn had drained away. In the kitchen, my mother and I ate marionberry pie. I opened my battered Bible and read Psalm 44 (For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. A maskil.): We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what you did in their days, in days long ago. With your hand you drove out the nations and planted our fathers; you crushed the peoples and made our fathers flourish. It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them.

In the light of day, in the light of your face, I cast off worry. I cast my bread upon the waters. I bade my worry sink in the lake of sleep, where the dreams lie in layers on the bottom and the silt settles on them softly. Having woken a hundred times, I woke yet again, and now I can go out to live.

Pause

I keep meaning to write but when I haven't taken the time to deepen the joy of gallivanting about into the peace of being in the right relation to things, the words don't come. I need to confess, to unburden my heart, or else I will never be able to write the way I mean to, the words pouring out smoothly in a steady stream, the way they do when every image is a spring that cannot run dry. All I have to do is direct the flow, when my heart is in the right place.

But instead, when I pause, I find I am restless. I have to work to punctuate a sentence, because the ideas I do have to write want to stream out all at the same time with no breaths between them so that reading the line is as exhausting as having thought it-- Stop. There is no stopwatch, these days, but my mind is racing anyway.

A confession--there is something wrong, and I don't know how to fix it. And another--as long as the sun is shining, I can make myself believe there is nothing to fix in the first place.

Rain at Midnight

When the rain falls this hard, it sounds like the wind blowing downward, flattening everything.

It sounds like all the trees and buildings and rocks muttering. I wasn't paying enough attention to hear the alarming announcement they are discussing so furiously. What did I miss?

It sounds like a conversation between the sky and the ground. Family business needs to be discussed, but not so the children can understand. Sky and Earth are the parents talking downstairs so their voices hum throughout the walls and floor.

It sounds like a giant just dropped the world into a frying pan so the hot oil sizzles and pops. Soon we will be crispy to the core.

It sounds like a long shower at the end of the day, like the ocean just around the corner, like the orchestra from outside the concert hall. It sounds like the confusion of voices in my mind, like the clattering of emotions when I try to sleep, like all the things I need to get done (by that time, before this time), tumbling together. It sounds like minutes rushing by before I can catch them. It sounds like memories washing across my face.

--and it stops. Nighttime silence falls instead. The world is still. Now I remember: those things can wait. Each day has enough trouble of its own.