a poem

Litany by Billy Collins [from Nine Horses]

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass,
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is no way you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's teacup.
But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.

da vinci vs. the dark knight

SPOILERS: If you haven't yet seen The Dark Knight, go watch it. I'll wait.

---

Have you ever participated in one of those theoretical Ethical Dilemmas like "Cruise Ship Explosion" or "Who Gets the Liver"? The ones where you're presented with an impossible decision--usually who lives and who dies and if you don't pick, everyone dies--and have to weigh all options in a matter of minutes and it all comes down to you? The new Batman movie The Dark Knight is, in many ways, one of those Ethical Dilemmas come to life. The Joker sets up ridiculously complex life-or-death situations for Batman, theoretically for him to solve but, realistically, to make him miserable. And it seems his entire reason for existence is to promote chaos and nihilism. He and the Batman are larger-than-life vessels for our daily struggles with good and evil; the Joker in his conviction must indeed hold our souls in his hands like a modern Satan. He single-handedly turns Gotham City upside-down and destroys what little good there is.

Or does he? Is it possible for one person to completely destroy the beliefs and emotions of a people? Is it possible for one event to undermine everything? To put it another way, will everyone really die if we don't choose someone to get the liver?

That is, of course, the premise of The Da Vinci Code. Before you stone me for bringing up a long beaten and dead horse, pause and reflect. The main thrust of The Da Vinci Code is that if certain secrets come to light--Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene, etc.--the entire Church will fall apart. Its main characters must work out an Ethical Dilemma of their own--do they let the world know about the secrets they've discovered? Do they share their experience of a vindictive and violent secret Catholic body, the knowledge of which could shake the Church Universal to its very core? Apparently, Dan Brown and the writers of his major resource Holy Blood, Holy Grail think very little of Christians. As though our faith or an institution as old and, to put it bluntly, powerful as the Church would fold because of a single challenge. Can that one fact destroy the Church? Considering the idea of Jesus as a married man has been around since the beginning, as well as an even more difficult idea that he wasn't resurrected at all but robbed from his grave by his disciples, I don't think this even counts as a Huge Secret or even an Ethical Dilemma. The fallacy of this genre of supposition is not in the facts or the supposition itself but in the assumption that the people as a whole can be destroyed.

The Joker and the villains of The Da Vinci Code try hard to be the single Anti-Hero who will annihilate good and beauty and truth and justice for all eternity. But it won't work.

Recall the climactic scene from The Dark Knight. Recall that neither of the two barges carrying, respectively, the average folks and the hardened criminals solve their Ethical Dilemma by blowing up the other boat. The Joker insists that all is chaos and without meaning beyond the struggle, yet behind him the people prove otherwise. They are the grace in the midst of trouble, they are the heroes.

A single person cannot destroy the world, but a single person can change the world.

newsletter article

"Baby love, my baby love, I need you, ooh how I need you…"

I never knew I could love someone so much. Before I gave birth to Abigail, I thought, "Of course I'll love her. She's my daughter, my flesh and blood, and I will love her." It was a kind of theoretical love, one that made sense in my head and made me weep when I first felt her move. When she finally arrived, that theoretical love became real, and fiercer than fire. Abby is so beautiful—her tiny, perfect toes; the way she stares into my eyes without blinking; the way she arches her back when she yawns hugely—my heart swells just to think of it. All the potential in her is enthralling. She will be the only one in the world with her heart and mind and soul and she will love God and the world in an unique way. I can't wait to see who she'll become. And when I hold her close and feel her little furnace of a body, I am overwhelmed by sadness to think of all the babies in the world who are malnourished, neglected, or unloved. In the first couple of weeks, I cried every time I thought of it. How could a parent stand it? Abby is so vulnerable—she can't do anything for herself and relies completely on Leighton and me for everything. I could never betray her trust.

I never knew I could be tired like this. There's the lack of sleep, of course, and I don't think I'll ever look at 2am in the same way again, but more than that is the emotional tiredness. Loving someone this much exhausting. The energy I expend worrying about how much she's eating or excreting, whether that cry is one of pain or boredom, if I'm entertaining or educating her enough for this stage of development—that energy is joyful and almost unsustainable. It is love tinged with worry for all the things that might go wrong. I'm my father's daughter: we excel at finding something to worry about.

I never knew how loved I was. It struck me the other night that we talk about God as a parent—Father or Mother—and that image has never truly resonated with me. It isn't that I don't love my parents—they're two of the most amazing people I know—but that I never really understood the love they have for me. I took it for granted, perhaps; their care and worry was not as immediate as my own desires. Now, I get it. Now, I wonder if the church fathers and mothers over the centuries have talked about God as parent, not because of what it's like to be a child, but because of what it's like to be a parent. I suspect God looks at us with the same overwhelming love and exhaustion. God sees all that is precious in us, the children. God sees all that is in us, all the potential, all the mistakes and successes. God's heart swells to see our dear faces looking back. God is pleased by our attempts to make things—buildings, laws, art, systems, relationships, laundry—just as we are when our child first clings to our finger or brings her first macaroni painting. God's heart breaks to see any of us in pain.

Perhaps you've never thought of yourself in this light, as the infinitely beloved and vulnerable baby of God. Perhaps you've already thought of God this way and you're miles ahead of me. Either way, "Our Father…" has never meant so much.

advent conspiracy

Advent is the season leading up to Christmas. It's a season of waiting, of pregnant pause, of calm before the storm of Incarnation.

In my house growing up, one of our consistent holiday traditions was arguing over when to put up the tree. It never went up earlier than a couple weeks before Christmas, usually much later--my father insisting that it was not only incorrect to put it up earlier but also crass. These days, I get what he was saying--decorations in the stores in October, commercials telling us to "buy, Buy, BUY", everything pointing us to money spent=happiness--it's horrible. And the "Jesus is the reason for the season" folks aren't any better. What does that even mean? My experience of the phenomenon is that it's just as empty as the consumerism it rejects--often it involves t-shirts and buttons you can buy to make your point.

There's a small movement happening out there called the Advent Conspiracy. The idea is that the point of Christmas, to Christians at least, is relationship and worship. How many sweaters or cheap candles have you bought for friends and family members simply to give them a thing? How do you show your love for those people in real terms? How much time do you spend with them? In the days after Loving Husband's last grandparent died, we're asking ourselves, "What's more valuable than time spent?"

Check out this video from the Advent Conspiracy folk. It's really pretty (well-designed, that is, for the design dorks out there) and quite powerful. How can we make a difference?

happy note

I should note that I love my daughter Abby more than I thought possible. Her big grey eyes, her perfect ears, the way she curls her toes around my finger when I massage her feet--I am filled with awe that Loving Husband and I made her. She is proof to me of the existence of God.

learning to let go

For a new baby, one is supposed to:

• feed her every three hours or so
• give her several minutes of "tummy time" each day
• read to her whenever possible
• have as much "skin-to-skin" time as possible (I use a sling)
• feed breast milk, which requires both actual feeding time and pumping
• sleep when the baby sleeps
• give her an hour or so of naked time (to help prevent diaper rash)
  

It seems there is not time in the day for everything you're supposed to do to help with baby's development. Each night, I look at her sleeping in the crib and think, "I didn't do enough tummy time today" or "There were several minutes today when you were awake and I wasn't reading to you". Each thought is followed inevitably by "I'm a terrible mother."

I am aware of the ridiculousness of this feeling, yet there it is. I'm sure I'm not the first to feel it either. I've got this driving need to do everything right. There's so much pressure--from baby books, from the pediatrician, from the lactation consultant, from my experience of my parents' childrearing--to succeed, not just manage. And, honestly, I am having a hard time managing at times. If I'm really honest, all that pressure is from my own big brain--I haven't figured out how to filter all the information and I'm trying to do everything. I've got to let go.

I love my new daughter, don't get me wrong, but there are moments when I wonder when and if it will be worth it. She herself is the grace of the moment, the free gift from God, and yet the trouble associated with taking care of an infant seems insurmountable.

I do what I can. We all do what we can. When we can do more, we do. When we can only do less, we do that.

It will all be ok in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.

tea

One thing I missed while pregnant was tea. Among the many diet restrictions (sushi, lunch meat, alcohol, street drugs) is caffeine. I used to have at least a cup of tea every day and, though it's got far less caffeine than coffee, I cut it out while gestating. Drinking my cup of Lady Grey right now makes me feel at peace with the world.

Tea-drinking is not something to be taken lightly. Making it well is an art. There are ceremonies the world over involving it. And drinking it draws people together. You could make the argument that all beverages, when approached with a spirit of intention draw people together and you would not be wrong. In Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Haji Ali, village chief of Korphe in Pakistan says

Here (in Pakistan and Afganistan), we drink three cups of tea to do business: the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything--even die.

Three Cups of Tea is a phenomenal portrait of the varied peoples and complicated relationships of Pakistan and Afganistan. It's tempting in America to lump all the people in that area together--like those awful cubes of sugar. Whether you see all Arabs as terrorists or as radical Islamists or as victims, they're so much more than any label. Perhaps you read this and nod sagely and think, "Of course they are. We're all our own person," or similar. There's a difference between academic recognition and the story Mortenson has to tell. Some folk are indeed terrorists, pure and simple. Some are thugs. Some are protecting the land they've lived on for centuries from all comers--India, Russia, the US, even mild-mannered Mortenson. Some are victims. Some believe powerfully in Islam, but so, too, do many of us believe powerfully in Jesus. Some live and work and try to make do with what they have. And Mortenson met them all. He says

"I don't do what I'm doing to fight terror. I do it because I care about kids. Fighting terror is maybe seventh or eighth on my list of priorities. But working over there, I've learned a few things. I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afganistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death."

He failed his attempt to climb K2, one of the tallest and most dangerous mountains in the world. He barely made it down the mountain alive and made a wrong turn in his way back to the nearest town. What he found was a tiny village at the edge of the glacier which welcomed him in as a stranger and later as a brother. They fed him tea with rancid yak's butter (their cream and sugar) and nursed him back to health. While there, Mortenson discovered that the village had no school--something like 50 children of all ages met on a wind-swept rock to copy out their lessons on their own with no help from a regular teacher. The cost of a teacher is the equivalent of $1 a week but the Pakistani government refuses to pay it. The children don't even have a building to meet in, yet they meet day after day on the rock. As my friend Bob would tell you, it's the small things that make you feel human, that give you hope. For Bob, it was having his teeth fixed so he was no longer ashamed of his smile. For this village and hundreds like it, it was having the opportunity to learn. The people of Korphe offered Greg Mortenson tea and he offered them hope.