The Royal We

What can I say? Some people got it and some people don't.

This is my Best Season. I am so grateful for courage and stamina to work within it. In former times there has been the spirit of Christmas past which has been heavy on my shoulder, but not this year. It's Christmas Present visiting me lately.
I'm so grateful; have I said that?

I'm busy in a good way. I'm making gifts and enjoying that process, but all the while so mindful of the deeper spiritual growth that has come about this past few months.
I am not the same person I was last year at this time.
Not all for the better, but accepting things as they are.

When I had finally lifted my head, I found friends and family in plenty.
A royal plenty.
The preparation for Advent has already been tooled in me. I am anticipating generosity and the exchanging of Gifts.

afterward there may be a reflection of that Gift under the tree.

Can You Dig It?

Matthew was an Existential Caterpillar in fine form. Complete with the rhythm of bongo and finger snapping, he delivered his lines in Olivier fashion.
Alice in Wonderland, the Musical.
"Nietzsche!"

After the Houseguest

On November 5th
They came.
We talked with Shane.
We ate.
The fledglings, myself included, mingled about and looked harder at each other and the future of our faith.
Well, what shall we do now?

I think we agree that we are meant for each other. We can only really live if we stick together. Use whatever you've got. Enjoy the ones that are around you, they are really quite unique.

It's okay to dream out loud and meet the ones who stir up our dreaming. Then we wander off and remember the time we had together.
23 of us.
Maybe like a church.
Maybe like the start of something, like Jesus was true.
Maybe a way to feel the love we need to feel in order to change.

...and here's a couple photos of Joel and Karin that Cole took.

Shane's coming

Wow, this is great! I got to meet him @ Soliton last August. I had read his book over the summer and then handed it to three of my friends. We thought we'd try to hear him speak next time he was in town.

Well, one thing lead to another and now it really is a mini-soliton (is there any such thing...?)
here in Fullerton. Though it's a little weird to not know how many people will actually come, there are a few extremely joyful senior guys who are inviting everyone.

Stats:
Joel Bond's House
339 N. Drake
Fullerton, Ca. 92836

Sunday November 5th
5-7pm

Come.
We shall watch events unfold...

garment

When you tend to a child be gentle
Before you approach
say a prayer
Tender skin to match a tender heart
Too fresh for self-preservation:
a word a child can't know

When you speak to a child be slow
Before you breath in
accept what you hear
Tender past that never leaves you
Can grow again a-right:
a hope a child can't deny.

Cloth a child in cloth made of mercy
Feed a child the steady diet of plenty
Lilies of the field
Birds of the air

The Poverty of Dissention

I have been challenged this year in a way that I thought I would welcome. I have put myself in places of discussion that has broken down some of the tired and fruitless ways of being in community and faith.
I have crossed boundaries that kept out love and yet am confronted by the lack of connection within my own fences.

I have been reading Wendell Berry and he is illustrating community for me in the context of the deep social contracts which are grounded in marriage, extending to the preciousness of trust and forbearance for those who gather together.
This comes on the heals of discovering the conditional description read in one of Brennan Manning's books: the poverty of uniqueness.

Berry is a dissenter, an observer of community that can only offer his true observation from within the bounds of community. He says only community has the grace within it to shape it's change. A dissenter must speak out the truth that can offer fruitful change. A dissenter must remain within the community it criticize in order for the community to trust what the dissenter observes.
If the community doesn't trust the words of the dissenter, then membership is broken by their inattention or ambivalence.

It's feels like hard work to be a dissenter. Within even the best and most affectionate communities, the dissenter must be respectful of the irregular paces she might put them through. A seed planter is not experiencing the same fellowship as the harvesters.
Artist and poets who are often dissenters, if not always, create their own sub-communities in order to teach each other the proper social steps which engage the encompassing community.
I am coming to this artful community with more energy and purposefulness lately. I have to name myself Artist. No one else can.
I must also deal with the dissenting quality of an artist, who is not so named to satisfy a hunger for notariaty or position, as I am learning, but merely a word of description.
People may admire art or poetry for the mystery of it, but if doesn't effect change, the community is itself poverty stricken. Artistry is not always rewarding. It has within it a mysterious fellowship. An artist can find her life within that fellowship. Each unique person, no matter what their labor, has their fellowship which then nurtures the other members.
There is an interdependence within the community that must loosely grasp by respect the unique poverty of each of its members. We don't belong to each other because we must, but because each one of us contains a unique gift with the freedom to give when it's fruition comes in season.
Even if it's the gift of dissenting.

Happy 17 Jacob

Alain and I warmed up the Industrial Cottage and produced a shirt for our friend.
serendipity ruled the day as I had a vintage pattern from '68 and yardage that I bought in Carmel last summer. We made the v-neck of Jake's dreams.

Credit to Alain for the idea and impute. He can sew now, putting in the hours for pinning, cutting and machine operation.

Get Yours

Support the Protest

vapored fresco

You walk barefoot silent along dark stone, the infinite
come small
You come years and years through musty kitchen dust
brushed off
You shape hair and smile in chorus sung broadly, plaited
wax and fibers twining
You kiss tender beads to marble, standing, catching,
caressing music
You tell plays and swinging hammers, clay to seaglass
treasured findings, worshiped Godhead

You bear children
You seed kinfolk
You smile broadly
You pass doorframes
You see moonlight
You crown princes
You cover homeless

You voice sighs in waiting rooms, cast peppered, wrought
and bloody
You yearn singular life, our one and only, scattered seed
born; multiply many

You wait
You watch
You live
You listen manifest in new days stretched membrane thin
to press your lips I'm hearing

-written 8/11/06

Some Things Worth Saving

My friend gave me this. She received a box from her mother's friend. It had all the scraps of calico purchased from the local department store where she lived in 1960's Iowa. Amoungst the quirky fabric was this child's pattern tenderly folded in a clear brown sugar plastic baggie (the elder saved everything of use. Recycling before it was a planitary caution) To get warmed up for my Industrious Cottage of sewing my own garments, I made up the vintage pattern.

I'll post the results when the buttons are sewn...

A Group

The first Knitting Blog Group I ever was excited to join is now posting some great creations by fellow Elizabeth Zimmerman Enthusiasts. I thought I would show off a few of my own on this bit of turf.

Following a Thread

I have a friend who tells of her early years being very conscious of God. She tells moments where she experienced extraordinary devotion and worship of Christ as a young child. They must be stories from family lore as she recounts it like she is reminiscing from a photograph.
Some childhood stories have to be like that. You know, the type of stories your mother tells about frantic travels to the hospital or how you were such a fussy baby who wouldn't let Auntie Maude hold you.

But when does the consciousness of God happen? When do we start the narrative from our own experience?
God is sometimes described as Other. Holy, as in set apart. When do we become aware of His separateness?

I, for my part, cannot remember being unaware of God. There was no dramatic conversion. I had my middle school years in which I was challenged to pray and read the Bible. This began the Great Segregation of Time for God from the time when everything else happened. Did the effort of others to instruct me end up creating a great fault line in me that now must be ratified? I spend so much effort reassuring myself.

So I read books and talk with people. When my Mom was alive, we would talk for hours about faith and how we thought it should be. She had a dramatic life with real grief, qualifying her for wisdom and heart. We often ended the conversation with an "I don't know" and a shrug of the shoulders. And we kept on watching. We both seemed to be literally fascinated with Jesus. I would often ask her tell me stories of him that anyone would call the gospel. But for me they just felt like family stories, not unlike the ones she would also tell about her brothers keeping the farm.

When the books don't sound like her voice, when they don't speak from her trusted vantage point of real suffering, when they don't have the affection for the Nazarene Jew in their tenor, I find I am guarded.

The eclectic background of Catholic/Protestant/Recovery serves me to narrow the choices. I want to hear of faith as it holds up a mirror to what I want to see in myself. But I have a home of heart.

As I knit together my days, what's left is the hollow where light can shine. I make a life, but I also create an emptier space in order to be filled up with more stories that woo me home.

One of the Many Reasons

Sometimes I am reminded of how much I miss Joel.
How long has this photo of the chandelier from our old house
been sitting on top of our current hall fixture?

He left breadcrumbs that say "this is still my house too!"

Can I enjoy the fruit but not the tree?

I am taking my cues from this book for my journaling. Like Fr. Driscoll, I am taking a word and enjoying what I have to say to myself about it. Authors of books become kindred spirits. I feel that affinity with Jeremy Driscoll.
I began to research him, and the publisher of his book. What I find there leads me even farther from home and I am skeptical. Cautious and not easily convinced. This publisher does not do the deciding for me. It offers many books on other philosophies and religious practices. And even as I am casually curious about my new literary friend, I get set off today by the vast heading of "Christian" books. It's a big wide world, and although I am ready to listen, I am not ready to buy the cow and farm, as it were.
I feel that over the past year I have examined many erroneous lines of thought on my part and have been willing to change and become more accepting. But there are limits. I am reminded that there are limits. And the truth that I pursue is served by limits. What those need to be is beyond my declaration, but I am happy with the choice to examine and say "I don't know." At least not yet.

Not a Cobbler

So along with my new conviction to be my own Cottage Industry, I took all the clothes that gather unless dust in my closet to the somewhat local Buffalo Exchange. They gave me money for my, what, hip clothes and then sent my more likely unhip clothes to the needful unclothed.

Phew.
So with this cash, I went to Nordstrom.
My long story shorter is that I need (nearly) orthopedic shoes for work. After being gone from the "floor" for nearly a year, I have discovered I feel my youth after 8 hours of heavy lifting.
I went to the internet and researched that in fact the USA makes ugly shoes.
They tend to make ugly cars and apartment houses too, but that's not what I'm talking about.

How can you possibly buy shoes that are not made in China? You can't buy them cheap that's for sure. You can buy shoes that you wear out and re-sole. You cannot please peer-pressured children. I'm sure conscious shoppers have all their own set of hurdles.

But here is where I discover that somewhere in my childhood I've heard this discussion before. Then I never had the realization that other people might not like making 3 cents and hour. My not buying shoes from their bosses hardly handles their paystub, but where else can I start?
I cannot make my own shoes. My mother, in her own deprived childhood having tried, told me it is not meant to be. Slippers, yes. Back supporting treads, no.

Funny, ironic, surprising as I looked at labels, thinking a European origin was better for my conscience, I got to meet the VP of ECCO shoes right there on the sales floor of The OC's Mecca. Since I am hip, I liked the styles. Ecco seems to be turning a new leaf in the fashion department. I think their bread and butter clients may be dying off.
I made the sales rep who organized the product event nervous as I asked the introduced VP about outsourcing. He explained that his company was part of the 3% of shoe manufacturers that own their own tanneries and factories. Not minding that a cow gives her life for my shoes and that people who crafted them were actually making a livable wage, I bought a pair with my recycled money.
Funny, ironic, surprising that I found what I was seeking. I wonder if my questions to a VP sifts down somewhere among marketers? The sales guy commented on my concerns as unique. I'm sure they were.
What kind of questions are you prepared to ask out there in the marketplace? I'm sure we're asking "Where did that spinach come from?" these days.

What other questions could we be asking? One never knows who might actually cross our path who could really provide the answer.

the Corp

Finally saw it and it just reinforces my desire to live a sustainable life right here in my own kitchen and closet. I cannot wait to downsize, live more simply and cheaply and get back to making all my own clothes again. I am committed to not getting anything until I understand where it's coming from. I am too powerful with my choices to not take heed.
I'm so glad K is working at Buffalo Exchange. I'm so glad I can have the option to get a hybrid car. I am finally glad I live in a Democratic state that is getting some clean air legislation on the books. I'm so glad we can sell this home and make a choice to live near where we work and worship.
I am overwhelmed after seeing Inconvinient Truth and now this movie. Even though some issues might be politically super-charged, I want to live in my conscience, grateful for the wisdom and the will to do what's right.
About fifteen years ago I really began paying attention to all the garbage I generate. I hated giving my kids juice boxes and happy meals with trash for toys. I got overwhelmed by the mega-super markets with the endless supply of 12 to 24 packs and the leaning tower of paper towels at Cost-Co. I am happy now to have the spell broken. I was right! It isn't good, all this garbage! I'm excited to think about how much money I'll save now that I'm not shopping even at cheap Old Navy every other week. I won't be having anything new except what I make with my own hands. I am running my own sanctions protest against my own spending.
What would our lives look like if we truly were sustainable as families?
I am ready for this.

insomanywords

Joel Bond has a new tune. Let him know what you think.

Encouragement

I've been reading Manning's Abba's Child. I'm hoping to be able to sit in on his talks at Vanguard in October. We'll see if I can sneak get into the closed sessions with Karin. I found this article on Brennan. I hope to act on love with as much courage as he has.

Let's Turn it Down

Kester Brewin has a challenge for us. Who will lead? I just turned it down and got myself a tall cool glass.

Leon Leyson

Leon Leyson is the youngest person on Schindler's List. It took an American movie maker to encourage him to open up his story, but now Mr Leyson is gently and insistantly telling his life.
My friend Margie McCoy, who works for the Dean of the School of Education at Chapman University in Orange, Ca. invited me to hear Mr.Leyson as a part of the school's Welcome Week. Chapman has an active and flourishing Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education.
I was able to meet Mr. Leyson and the kind individuals who work on campus for the Center and it's Library.

When Mr Leyson took up the podium he spoke with the universal humility and truth of all survivors. He explained his method of witness: no prepared notes with only an intent to open to us as he "let the events roll out from behind his eye, coming as he remembered them".
It was a moment.
He took us there with him and he shielded us from the horror as he once again re-lived the memories, occasionally pausing to feel the tip of grief. He would breath and then proceed. He shared the irony of being forced to the back of the bus in pre-ghetto Germany and then forced to the front of the bus in the pre-civil rights South. He spoke of his respect for Schindler and his still child-like amazement of the rescuer's attentive capacity.

I think his silence all these years prior comes from thinking, along with many other valid reasons, it could never happen again. But now we see that it might not for Jews, but it is for countless other people groups. We all must listen in order to be watchful.
"violence will not be heard again in your land"... Is 60:18
Our work is cut out for us.