I almost titled this Sequences and Coincidences.
I almost titled this Wild Geese.
I almost titled this The Belonging of Sammy the Cat.
The runner-up title is where I will start….
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Yesterday was a difficult day for a number of reasons. It was a periodic day of physical and mental exhaustion and deep discouragement on several levels.
A couple of weeks ago I sent separate emails to each of my sons after reaching out to their father and his fiance about potential Thanksgiving plans – just so I’d know – and learning from her that the boys have asked to be with them on Thanksgiving.
I thanked them for that information.
I then decided it best to send two separate emails to each of my sons.
To the one, after some wrestling in my mind as to approach and since there had been other recent communication asking if somehow we might have a visit (and recalling the response), to that adult child (I expressed but I did not again send an invitation of any sort) that I would be thinking of them through the holidays and some other positive thoughts including asking if they were willing to receive any gifts from me this year for Christmas and early January birthday and how best to get those to them.
There was no response.
To the other son I mentioned awareness that they would be with their dad on Thanksgiving Day and invited him to be with me on Wednesday.
There was no response.
My oldest one is a lot like me at times… crazy busy and has his hand in so many different things. And that’s how it should be with someone in the prime of their life making their way forward in this world. I get that.
The one way he’s not like me – details and communications. It is not unusual to not get a response since his internet connection is terrible and other things. A lack of response doesn’t necessarily mean anything other that he is an inconsistent responder.
As a parent of grown children I know I’m not alone in this pattern. Between cell phones, texts, email, social media…generational differences…communication can be tough.
And this is probably nothing new, maybe just in a new form these days.
He and I have been chatting back and forth over other things and other more immediate plans and during one of these chats last night I again asked about his Thanksgiving plans and whether he saw my email.
Therapists usually tell us not to presume things. But that can be challenging, at times.
Because it was late and there were two separate message sends, he may have seen and read only the last sentence but not the two sentences prior. I don’t know.
But of course it was marked seen on the social media platform, so I naturally assume he read it, which may or may not be the case. Sometimes just handling the phone prompts the “seen” indicator whether or not the person read the message.
But, it just added to my sense of heaviness at the end of yesterday.
As I brushed my teeth for bed last night, a friend messaged me to see how I was doing and I simply said “okay but kind of depressed and overwhelmed” and “how are you?”
She responded that she would listen if I needed to talk. I thanked her and said “I’m okay just really tired.”
I made it into bed and as I typically do, browsed some readings on my phone of various sorts, ending up with the tab I had opened earlier on the History of Transgender according to Wikipedia.
I read an amount of it, thinking to myself “I am interested in researching this more deeply. Why are statements made and links to the person, or otherwise definition of words made, but not links to the sources of the actual historical account and content of these statements?”
If there are evidences of third gender ideology going back 4,500 years I want to read about that first hand.
Because the idea of humans being a mixture of male and female attributes is not foreign to me nor rejectable. Not at all.
In my mind I was thinking from Genesis, “And God made them male and female.”
What does it mean to be male and what does it mean to be female, within?
But my biggest curiosity is whether I might find evidence that these individuals expressed deep anger toward their society and whether cutting off a parent or parents or others close to them and rewriting their personal history was part-and-parcel to this mixed or unclear inward gender identity.
Because that just seems so…unnatural…unlike the fact that there are some people who struggle in their processing their gender identity and orientations, and I give space for that, even if as a currently termed “cis-gendered” person I seem to understand some parts of that more than other parts of that. I mean, I think we all have a differing amount of internal expressions of male and female qualities and outward manifestions.
I am deeply woman – I love flowers, paint and grow flowers among many other traditional woman things and I also love World War II history, can tolerate watching war violence in films with purpose, love running power tools and in some ways, my thinking at times is more characteristic of typical male intensity of analytic discussions.
(I recently listened to this great talk which I identified with S1E10: Feminism Crash Course: Lauren Smelser White …like her…I am that woman in church settings that wants to get in on the deeper theological discussions…and I have not found many women I’m close with to want to engage in the same way, which for me also involves a lot of deeper abstract conceptualizations…)
But back to my ruminations last night…were there large movements of such transgender people and was severence with others seemingly inherent in their journey?
I could be wrong, but given that historically the family, and respect and value of family, is so central to human thriving and health, I find it difficult to believe that one finds themself by disconnecting from themself.
We are the sum total of all of our history and experiences, even though we all are on a journey of various growth and discoveries.
Disconnecting from one’s origins (let me insert and stress, in unwarranted ways for unwarranted reasons) is disconnection from oneself, in my opinion.
Because I am a big believer in need for continuity.
I think re-framing can be a great tool, but the idea of breaking with the past, at least in my mind, can only create further personal identity disintegration.
I believe in a need to connect past, present and future in some cogent and personally healing manner.
I believe this is what good self-therapy is about.
In this Wikipedia history, there was also a reference that one individual may have sought biological transgender surgery but I didn’t see any way to access the original source of this statement and I don’t even know what that meant thousands of years ago.
I did click on a Hindu painting of a god that was half male and half female which I found interesting and beautiful but I did not know why it would be interpreted toward contemporary transgender considerations.
I exited Wikipedia at that point and glanced at the Catholic painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that I recently put on my nightstand.
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There is a story to that and a couple months ago was contemplating that story and decided that finding this image and putting it on my nightstand would empower me in a number of ways, including my current interest and considerations of embracing Christian ecumenical harmony.
When I was about 9 years old there was a Catholic woman in our neighborhood who watched me after school. I can remember one day her asking me about my mother and my home life and having a conversation with her at her kitchen table.
My father and I attended the Methodist church together and I went to Sunday school. Perhaps I had started this conversation myself by asking her something. I had noticed she was a religious woman with Catholic images and symbols in her home.
Regardless of whatever prompted this, I recall her giving me an 11 x 14 framed image of this Sacred Heart of Jesus painting, talking to me about praying to Him for God’s protection, giving me some other pamphlets to read and encouraging me to read the Bible.
In retrospect, I must wonder if she was part of the charismatic Catholic movement that was developing in the 70’s, as I recall her evangelical spirit. I use this term as it was intended – one who wants to share Good News.
It was around that time and that Christmas, 1972, that I asked for a real Bible instead of a children’s Bible and I was given one that year, along with my Chrissy doll. I pause to remind that in developmental theory, the age of 9 or 10 according to Piaget, is when a child moves from the stage of concrete operations to the stage of abstract thought.
I remember from college…fill two glasses with equal amounts of water but one glass is tall and slender and the other short and wide…the child who is under around age 9 will insist the taller glass has more water in it than the shorter. Because the idea that they are both equal is a somewhat abstract idea. I suppose it would require literal measurement (concrete operations) to convince a younger child of this truth.
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In my childhood I can remember having this framed image of Jesus on the floor near my bed under a night light, because I liked the sense of glowing that this produced.
Thinking these thoughts in bed last night nearly 50 years later I also thought maybe I can write a post called Impact.
As I got up from bed with the picture to the night-light here to see what kind of image I might capture I thought about this woman and how she will never know how she impacted me at that age and what Jesus was doing through her in my young turbulent life.
I think it’s fair to say I felt depressed yesterday.
And I think it’s fair to say that I woke up with depressed thoughts and fears this morning, as I typically do. I woke up thinking about a writing I did last year called Land of the Living, based on a Psalm.
“I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the LORD.he living.” – Psalms 27:13-14 NASB1995
I saw the beautiful sunrise through my window and lay there examining my own thoughts and feelings.
I ruminated back to the days when my youngest son would come into our room and awaken me to nurse him and snuggle in bed. My regular greeting to each new day…
Yes, I allowed my second son to wean himself which naturally happened somewhere around three years old when he (and I) mutually lost interest in that stage of connection.
The process came so slow and gradually that by that time I too, had no issue letting go.
I knew we would not have any more children and I had other friends who also advocated for natural weaning. It was a beautiful time.
Nursing children (and their mothers), at that age, are not really seeking nourishment or to physically nourish primarily but are making space for intimacy and comfort.
The last year of this was before bedtime and in the mornings. I can remember him snuggling in bed nursing and then more and more frequently stopping to talk to me and I would listen and dialogue with him, until he would pause and latch back on for a little bit more nursing and then stop again to babble about something.
It was so natural.
Like pausing to take a sip of Pepsi or something while in a conversation ha ha…
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Laying there this morning I was wondering what did the mornings feel like in those days? Those were days where the bulk of my life lay before me.
I can recall a beautiful poem an older woman at our church had written and shared during a women’s retreat. It was about seasons, and I recall the powerful words describing women in the summertime of life:
(paraphrased from memory) In the season of a woman’s summertime, life is hot, heavy, full…there are children to raise and all sorts of exhausting extractions from women…and like in a second…later…that wonderful time is behind us and into the fall and winter…we long for its return in our mind’s eye, in some ways…and that…is probably why God gives grandchildren and other children in our spheres.
For me, this regular and predictable sense of fear and dread in my mornings has slowly crept up and intensified during the last 10 to 18 years…like Cinderella, when night begins to fall and I wind down before bed, the sense of existential rumination increases until I metaphorically turn into a pumpkin…entering that place of sleep and dreams where we all journey and process during the nighttime, regardless of our recollections of being there when morning comes…
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Next, my mind ruminated to one of my favorite photos which was taken around the time my youngest was 3 years old.
I remember this Easter Sunday 1997 so very well for a number of reasons.
It was the year that a close friend died around that time of a brain tumor. He died possibly that weekend or the weekend prior.
I can remember where our family was sitting that Sunday in the sanctuary.
And I remember why I had on a white skirt, white tights, and a magenta shirt, earrings and shoes.
I was part of the women’s worship dance group and we were doing a special dance that Easter morning.
We were all given identical white skirts to match (I think I recall which woman made them) and asked to wear pink blouses, as I recall.
I happened to have a pair of magenta shoes from a wedding I had been in and a magenta shirt.
I remember the dance we did up the center aisle and around each side of the sanctuary was to Come, Now is the Time to Worship. And I will just say it, though maybe I shouldn’t, I was the one who choreographed the worship dance routine to this and had shared it with and taught the women in the group.
At the time, I was going back and forth dancing with another group from our previous church and I had been inspired by the song. By the way, the video I found and linked of this is very good! The songwriter shares of his inspiration for the expression.
And as I lay there this morning, I tried to remember the dance.
It started with a flowing, beckoning motion of the hands that went simultaneously with a flowing, forward-stepping movement and as I recall, kind of went to the right and to then to the left, toward each side of those in the sanctuary, and flowed into some type of three-point spin and turn that was a little difficult for all of us to keep together.
I think there was also a movement where we went down onto one knee. I honestly cannot recall this though I knew it so well at the time, as I did a number of Messianic-style worship dance routines. (Yes, after listening to the song video, it was timed with that lyric…)
So I thought about this.
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That photo was actually taken during a difficult time in the life of my family.
And I thought about that.
I thought about the coming day and needing to get up and I thought about what I thought about before going to bed.
I believe it was then in this sequence as I was watching the sunburst a little more in the window that suddenly a flock of wild geese flew low across my backyard.
Like seriously.
This happened.
Right then….
This has never happened here, yet, that I’ve seen a flock of wild geese in the morning, flying south, from my bedroom window.
My room is on the second floor of the house so that tells you how low they were because I saw them right through the top of my window…
They came into my view suddenly from the left and flying to the right and I guess there were about fifteen of them.
In that brief few seconds I observed their large geese bodies in flight, all together, and heard their honking noises.
This can’t be happening, I thought to myself, taken aback at the timing and connection of this happening alongside my current thoughts.
I immediately thought of one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver which has meant a lot to me in the past 6 months, and at this point I was momentarily undone with a rush of emotion, a few tears and wonderment thoughts of the possibility of God’s unfathomable orchestration of His creation and inmost knowledge of our thoughts…
How in the world could this possibly happen to me at a moment when I was having these other thoughts and ruminations about so many difficult and disconnecting things?
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
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It was at this point I turned my attention to my cats.
My mornings are no longer filled with a three-year-old climbing into bed to gab and nurse and an eight-year-old to wake up and help get off to school. This was before homeschooling. And I do confess, getting my oldest off to school was some form of shared activity with their dad, ha ha…I have never been a “morning person!”
Rather, now, I am surrounded by three and occasionally four cats who patiently stare at me and walk around on my bed until the moment I put my feet on the floor and they all take off running down the steps, knowing they will soon get their food.
Marley (named the summer of 2019 around July 4th weekend when he was found outside as a stray kitten in my garden, and I happened upon listening to Joan Baez singing Bob Marley’s song No Woman No Cry) and Mr. Lost are usually closest to me and Crouble leaps high up on my dresser to look down upon me.
He is known to take his paw and pull framed photos off the wall or knock objects down if his morning wait becomes too lengthy!
Seeing is believing! (video from 2-11-21)
I thought about their belonging in the family of things as Mary Oliver so beautifully wrote and I took some pictures and then thought about Sammy, the black cat who normally stays aloof from the rest but occasionally will also come in the morning.
He is a strange cat with his own story that someday I may write about. I actually started a drafted writing Sunday morning about The Belonging of Sammy the Cat but never finalized it…
But, I kid you not, I had no sooner had I these thoughts in my mind than Sammy came into the room also, hopped on my bed and did something very unusual. He jumped up on the dresser with Crouble!
Unbelievable.
Seriously uncharacteristic of him.
And I notice in my photos (which I took quickly!) that Crouble was checking Sammy out following this bold move upon his sacred territory and high position!
Apparently, some interaction between the cat gods!
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A few years ago in Alabama at Theology on Tap (this was a weekly social our church had at a local tavern….Episcopaleans have no qualms about eating, drinking and talking about God all at the same time!), the question for discussion was “do you believe in miracles?”
I suppose this question could be extended to “do we believe God is present with us and aware of our thoughts and in control of external-internal coincidences?”
Because among the answers discussed about this question of miracles was the idea that a miracle can be something natural that happens but the timing of it and the seeing of it as miraculous is so personal.
Therefore, to that person alone, it is viewed as a miracle of some sort.
I read once that there is scientific basis (here is just one reference) for the waters of the Red Sea to occasionally dry up.
Huh.
But it seems we all, even when hearing of someone’s testimony to something they say God did, and rejoicing in this, still retain an amount inwardly of doubting skepticism.
If we are honest with ourselves.
Right?
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Last night as I was staring at this Catholic image of Jesus, as an artist, observing the way he is portrayed here and what it was that captivated me so much about this, I looked at His eyes.
Pretty intense.
I paint portraits and study faces, and when the whites show under a person’s iris, there are a number of things this communicates, or reasons thereof.
(I once read that when people with deep psychiatric type disorders talk – or it is also observable in photos – that sometimes you can see the whites ABOVE their iris showing and this, generally, is unnatural. But, there are also physical conditions, for example thyroid conditions, which can also cause this in some people or sometimes, when someone is animated, is completely normal and expressive. I’m not a psychologist, but I did read this once and apparently it is when it is an atypical affect…)
Back to ruminating on the eyes of Jesus in the painting….
His head seems to be tilted ever so slightly so that his eyes have this expression.
I tried to read the expression of his mouth, which is somewhat, to me, ambiguous.
It could almost be read as an ever-slight precursor to a welcoming smile or a somewhat sorrowful look.
Maybe what it is, if we cover either the eyes or mouth, there is some incongruity.
Perhaps I am seeing sorrowful eyes with a slight smile.
I don’t know.
I also notice, now, a somewhat effeminate (or very sensitive) portrayal of Him, whether intentional or not. It is quite mixed and contradictory: soft, glowing skin, sensitive eyes and expression…and…a beard.
Unlike Rembrandt’s depictions of the Christ in various biblical narratives, this image displays not-so-subtle symbolic features.
We literally see the heart of Jesus outside of his chest encased by the thorny crown of his suffering with flames of fire and a cross above it.
I imagine there are some that will wonder weather creating an image of our Lord is even acceptable, if there is a certain reading of one of the ten commandments.
I’m a human and I’m an artist and I have zero issue with it.
If we can draw connection in viewing an image of anybody that we love then why would we be hesitant at times to find some personal connection to some image of the Divine?
In case you need another look…here…
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I’ve interrupted my Sequence of Coincidences here so let me get back to where I was.
And that was lying in bed ruminating about loss, unwanted and unwarrented disconnections and the upcoming holidays.
The friend that messaged me last night before bed has invited me to be with their family on Thanksgiving and I’m grateful for that but I told her several days ago I probably will want to just take some time alone on that day and plan to do something I enjoy.
I had gone to bed with 100 thoughts and a 100 wordings of something I felt like writing on social media (don’t we all…at times?) but decided there was really no point in that. I posted enough yesterday and clearly we all have our own griefs and life difficulties before us.
It says a lot that I, like many people these days, often turn to social media for connection and expression in various ways.
Also in my thoughts last night were imaginary ideas of creating a poll.
You know, one of those “real life” quizzes…
Ask on social media, “How many meaningful conversations with humans did you have today and is this typical?“
And, “How has the pandemic affected this?”
Sadly even some people who live with other people, and apart from the pandemic, if they are honest might say “zero.”
For those that live alone, meaningful conversations surely can be found, but often, we find ourselves talking to cats! (telepathy counts, too, ha ha!)
Because, I suppose, of their physical and constant presence!
As they say, WORD.
Ha ha ha…..
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So with this in mind I got up and headed into the bathroom contemplating the essence of last night’s imaginary post along these lines:
“I’ve decided this year to have zero expectations for Thanksgiving and Christmas and intend to not celebrate but be by myself.”
Ha.
Well.
That would probably get some emojis, right?
Of course we all resist writing our true thoughts on social media, for the most part, right?
I was imagining the response this might bring.
Invitations from 508 friends to join them at Thanksgiving, right?
Ha.
I’m an artist. I’m a writer. Believe me, I have some imagination!
And a more cynical side…probably why I love dark comedy the most!
I’m actually chuckling a bit as I dictate this into my email while having my morning coffee…
But let’s get back to the sequence.
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I was thinking these heavy and difficult thoughts and how I don’t want to have Thanksgiving with any of these 508 friends. (Ha…no offense to the 508…this isn’t personal!)
I want the kind of Thanksgiving I want, and that is not possible.
And I must accept that.
There is a reason the holidays are such a bad time for so many people.
I have a love-hate relationship with them and find immediate relief January first.
I was imagining how I would politely decline all such imaginary 508 invitations in my imaginary creative social media scenario.
Which, of course, I would never write.
At least not directly on Zuckerburg’s Frankenstein!
Ha.
And then.
From somewhere in me in a millisecond the word refuse entered my thoughts.
It entered my thinking from a Scripture I hadn’t thought of in quite awhile.
(“Thy Word have I hidden in my heart.” – Psalm 119:11)
From somewhere in the reservoirs of my being the words entered my thoughts, triggered within my imaginary scenario of refusing my potential 508 Thanksgiving invitations which would not relieve the loss of not having both of my grown children with me together either on that day or a surrounding day, “Rachel is weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted.”
And I was undone.
The presence of God and tears collided.
I knew where this came from. At least initially, or so I thought…
It is from Lamentations…no, no Jeremiah… Lamentations follows the event which is found in Jeremiah.
Once I searched my phone and read the passage, I knew this, once again.
Not only did I know this, but I knew at least part of Jeremiah 29:11, that famously yanked text of encouragement given to those in situations that seem to have no hope and no end.
Actually the words about “situations that seem to have no hope and no end,” accompanied by a statement of “attesting to my faithfulness to God, and to some others in my sphere…(paraphrase)” were spoken to me in a personal message from a spiritual leader many, many, many moons ago…
I think often of this phrase, actually, as I took it to heart at that time and it seems, in retrospect, naturally or supernaturally prophetic in some humanly divinely inspired way…perhaps…
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I brought up the entire Chapter of Jeremiah 31 and read the beginning.
I get it.
This was written to a certain people in a certain time about a certain occurrence.
I get the argument that we can’t just take seemingly random words found in the Old or New Testament as though they were written to us and our situation, severing a historic text from its context.
I get that.
And, I agree.
I also get that this string of coincidences empower me today.
They have taken me up a notch or more from a pit and though I have now – according to part of my thinking – wasted my time until noon formatting what I dictated to myself while drinking my coffee, there must be some reason.
I am compelled to write, to express.
I can only hope this will serve not only for my own needs of self-empowerment and longsuffering, but will encourage others.
Perhaps, like the Catholic woman of my childhood, this time taken will have unknown impact into the future which I cannot ever see or know.
Because, no suffering and its accompanying temptations have overtaken us which are not common to mankind. – I Corinthians 10:13
And I use the word man in the traditional gender-neutral-and-all-encompassing sense.
This one, is for the moms of mankind.
Moms which grieve unnatural losses.
And, sadly, there are so many different possible forms of these losses and for so many complicated reasons…
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I must ask and ponder…what is the likelihood that this morning, I was (arguably) reminded by God of a passage dealing with loss, grief and future return to dancing?
Immediately after thinking about loss, grief and past dancing?
Jeremiah 31: 1-17
“At that time,” declares the Lord, “I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they will be my people.”
2 This is what the Lord says:
“The people who survive the sword
will find favor in the wilderness;
I will come to give rest to Israel.”
3 The Lord appeared to us in the past,[a] saying:
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.
4 I will build you up again,
and you, Virgin Israel, will be rebuilt.
Again you will take up your timbrels
and go out to dance with the joyful.
5 Again you will plant vineyards
on the hills of Samaria;
the farmers will plant them
and enjoy their fruit.
6 There will be a day when watchmen cry out
on the hills of Ephraim,
‘Come, let us go up to Zion,
to the Lord our God.’”
7 This is what the Lord says:
“Sing with joy for Jacob;
shout for the foremost of the nations.
Make your praises heard, and say,
‘Lord, save your people,
the remnant of Israel.’
8 See, I will bring them from the land of the north
and gather them from the ends of the earth.
Among them will be the blind and the lame,
expectant mothers and women in labor;
a great throng will return.
9 They will come with weeping;
they will pray as I bring them back.
I will lead them beside streams of water
on a level path where they will not stumble,
because I am Israel’s father,
and Ephraim is my firstborn son.
10 “Hear the word of the Lord, you nations;
proclaim it in distant coastlands:
‘He who scattered Israel will gather them
and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.’
11 For the Lord will deliver Jacob
and redeem them from the hand of those stronger than they.
12 They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion;
they will rejoice in the bounty of the Lord—
the grain, the new wine and the olive oil,
the young of the flocks and herds.
They will be like a well-watered garden,
and they will sorrow no more.
13 Then young women will dance and be glad,
young men and old as well.
I will turn their mourning into gladness;
I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.
14 I will satisfy the priests with abundance,
and my people will be filled with my bounty,”
declares the Lord.
15 This is what the Lord says:
“A voice is heard in Ramah,
mourning and great weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”
16 This is what the Lord says:
“Restrain your voice from weeping
and your eyes from tears,
for your work will be rewarded,”
declares the Lord.
“They will return from the land of the enemy.
17 So there is hope for your descendants,”
declares the Lord.
“Your children will return to their own land.
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As I read this again, it appears to also be, unknowingly when written today, a companion piece to my recent writing When God Refused to be Held Hostage; and When God Became Ransom
Thank You For Reading
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