What We Leave Behind

In the beginning there is pressure and a crack appears. There is a breaking open. The light is let in, or let out, in this coming forth. It is always this way. The seed, the egg, the stars, the womb.  Swell, expand, crack, open, come forth. It is the way the universe began and how it continues. Observers, those who have the patience to watch, to wait and to consider, will all tell you everything is cycling. Water, air, seasons. Even the rocks are cycling, going down, down, down into the earth, being heated, melted, crushed, reformed and eventually rising out of it again, transformed into a new creation.

Eleven years ago when we moved in this house, there was a dying oak in the backyard. There was not much left of the grand being it had once been, just a fragmented part of its trunk struggling to hang on to life within a deteriorated stump. A few leaves. Miraculously, a few acorns. Eventually it gave in to the inevitable.

Soon nothing was left but a rotting stump. For the next winter a rat snake made a fine house underneath, cozy and safe.

I feel sure the snake had to move on because there is again an oak tree, standing eight feet tall in the same place the old one was. Its roots have grown deep and wide. It has encompassed and absorbed all the space and elements given to it. Before it died, the old tree dropped a small representation of everything it was made of in the form of an acorn. A nugget of DNA and the secret wisdom of the natural world. It rested in the heart of its giver, where decay nurtured it and brought it to life. A birth by way of death.

When the time was right, it cracked open and came forth.

 It is the way it always is.

 Human beings are made of the same elements. We are part of the same cycle. We come forth, we weather the seasons, we grow. We bring forth our own seeds, pass on our DNA and imprint
ourselves on those who shelter in our shade.

He has my eyes.
She has your smile.

She’s empathetic and artistic, like her mother.

He’d give you the shirt of his back. Just like his dad.

I’ll never forget that time. He let me lean on him when I needed someone trustworthy.

She could always make me laugh.

We just really got one another. Ya know?

The old tree died. But it is not gone. How can it be when it’s very own seed and the substance of what it was made of created the life standing in its place?  A life you can see and touch and looks in every way the essence of what came before.

It is that way with us too. When we give of ourselves in loving others, in reaching out to them and opening ourselves so they may find solace, kindness, generosity or hope, we leave ourselves here, nestled in the hearts of those we love. Memories cherished and tender moments unforgotten keep us here. And the more we give, the more of us remains.

This spring's tomato seed and the plant that came from it. A beautiful picture of what we create when

we give of our true self. It is November and the plant that came from this tiny seed is still producing

  fruit.

On Pyrotechnics and Not Being the Fun Parent

I was a sensitive child. I had a lot of anxiety. However, when I became a mother every worry I ever had jolted into high alert. Being fully responsible for small people who consistently and impulsively put themselves in danger was the hardest experience of my life.
Climbing could lead to stitches and broken bones. Stuffing inedible things in their mouths could lead to choking. Jumping in the pool with no flotation device could lead to drowning. As a parent of a lot of little kids, one is constantly looking out for the hazards children are blissfully unaware of. Cars. Strangers. Poisons. Fire ants. Bullies. A bone in the chicken nugget. The list is endless. Then there are the things you can't see. Viruses. Bacteria. Deadly insidious microscopic monsters. All of these things make a chill person uneasy, but they make a nervous person bat-shit looney. Alas, kids grow out of things, they learn the dangers of the world around them. They become more cautious.

Just kidding. This does not happen.

After that intense period of training and security you'd think they'd give you a break, let your overworked consciousness relax a bit. But you know what they do? They do scary stuff anyway. And lots of it.
They like moving fast. In cars, jet skis, boats, even on snow skis. They ride dirt bikes at speeds that make you want to cry. And then they crash and you do cry. Then they do it again.
They jump off cliffs into rivers, do back flips off 2nd story boat houses into the lake and swim further out into the ocean than you would ever do. They bungee jump off of bridges. They shoot guns and bows and arrows. They travel across the world to places you've never been, where you nor they know nary a soul, and there is no cell service more than half the time. They take unreliable trains and uncertain taxis. On a road trip, they stop to admire a biplane and within the next few minutes are in the clouds with a pilot whose credentials they know nothing of. They attend week long music festivals where they meet strangers. Then they go visit those strangers for the weekend.

They cannot do enough of anything you ever told them not to do. It's not danger to them, it's adventure.
God forbid life should get boring.

Once or twice a year, these offspring of mine, become temporarily crazed over their love for monstrously obnoxious fireworks. They then gather others whose adoration for explosives is equal to or greater than their own. This year it's their spouses. At this 'community outreach' you will also find a bonfire, barbecue, beer, Jim Beam, trucks named after dinosaurs, and a bunch of dogs who, like me, hate fireworks. If it sounds a little redneck, that's because it is. My husband is the ring leader of this fear-fest that they call a 'party.' The kids worship him for his generous gifts of "Death from the Sky" a giant box of TNT that promises a minimum charge of 500 Gs. Mostly, they adore him for his enthusiasm and his lack of fear. He's the FUN parent. Just look at what he got today. He didn't tell me anything about the purchase of this mother load, because he "wanted to surprise the kids."
That explains why, in his glee, he promptly texted this picture to my daughter and, in her glee, she promptly put it on Facebook and that's how I found out. SURPRISE!!!
I suspect there is another reason he didn't want to tell me. (It is easier to ask for forgiveness than agreement... or  something like that.)

I am not the fun parent. I wish I could be fun like him, but Motherhood has given me a type of PTSD. Sudden, loud noises, or certain noises in general, send me over the edge. Pyrotechnics bring back all those terrors of what might happen if I'm not intensely vigilant, or even if I am. Every fuse ignited gives me the feeling of doom. What if the fuse goes out and when someone goes to ignite it, it blows up? BOOM!What if one shoots through the crowd and not up in the sky? BOOM! What if one blows up in your hand? BOOM! Your face? BOOM! What if your clothes catch on fire? BOOM! What if the house, lawn or car catch on fire? BOOM! What if you lose fingers over what you call fun?! BOOM! It brings me back to the days of constant anxiety. The noise, the smoke, the fear. It's enough to send me looking for a dark, quiet corner with the dogs. I once read the teenagers the statistics of injuries from fireworks. Did you know sparklers could reach 2500 degrees and account for an incredible amount of emergency room visits every July 4th? They accused me of trying to ruin everything. "Why do you have to be such a downer Mom?"

"You worry too much," they say. "Everything will be fine" they say.
"Relax Mom. With no traffic, the hospital is only 35 minutes from here, and we could cut that in less than half if we take the Raptor instead of an ambulance."

Fundamentalism. No fun, just mental.

     Yesterday, a young father threw his 5 year old daughter off a bridge. A police officer witnessed the scene but was unable to rescue the child. Her body was recovered by divers in the middle of the night.  USA Today report.

Every day we hear unbelievably heart wrenching news.
162 people in the bottom of the ocean.
A baby dead in a dumpster, her parents murdered.
Twelve men gunned down at work.
Stories that make no sense and leave our minds clamoring for answers. We ask, why? Those who believe in the biblical God tell us he has a plan, he knows better than us how things should go, his ways are higher than ours.

You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand. John 13:7

 Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. 

1 Corinthians 13:12

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, said the Lord. Isaiah 55:8

Band aids for amputations.

He is all powerful. All knowing. He has created a divine plan. 

The LORD Almighty has sworn, "Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen. Isaiah 14:24

All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: "What have you done?" Daniel 4:35

I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. Roman's 9:15

If we believe the literal words here, it was God's plan that Phoebe should be thrown off a bridge by her dad. God chose not to have mercy on either of them. Not the father's sickened mind nor the daughter's helpless body. He's going to do something great through it though. One day we'll all stand back and say, "Oooohhhh! Now we get it! It's all clear now! Yay God!" At some point, according to the Bible, we are going to understand that the murder of this child was in God's plan for a good purpose. Bullshit.

The one who causes our pain and plans our worst nightmares is also the source of all comfort. An abused child seeking comfort from the abuser is sick. But this is the way we are supposed to believe.  It doesn't make sense.

My problem isn't with God. My problem is with the idea that the Bible is perfect, to be taken literally and not questioned. One of the biggest issues surrounding the fundamentalist evangelical christian's idea of the Bible, is the one of picking and choosing. It's not allowed. One cannot say, "I accept this, but not this." For them the Bible is not a buffet at Piccadilly. It's a plate of comfort food and poison. Next to macaroni and cheese so good it'll make you cry, is something dead, crawling with maggots. And a cup of tea laced with arsenic. You're starving for comfort, but put off by the grotesque. The fundamentalists say if you are to have any of it, you have to swallow it all. Yet, even in the garden, which was perfection, there was picking and choosing. You can eat this fruit, but not that one.

Why, I wonder, is it so far fetched an idea that the Bible could be flawed? It wasn't written until people had inhabited the earth a long time. According to the scriptures, the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve were the first living things God created. It was cozy and pristine. Except for that serpent God allowed in there. If God would allow deceit in the garden, why not the Bible? We are even warned biblically, to be careful of doctrine influenced by men. Is not the Bible influenced by men?

...having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, Colossians 2:7-9 

Jesus, the Bible says, is the Word made flesh. We can read the Bible in it's harshness, or we can follow the bodily form of a man who never hurt anyone. A man who did not love one more than another, a man who loved his enemies, who healed the sick, who cried in pain because we hurt. A man who would never throw a 5 year old off a bridge or allow another to do so. That is not part of his plan. We are fools to think so. The God of the Bible and Biblical Jesus are said to be the same. They are not and anyone can see it is so. Jesus said that God is love. Jesus was love in the flesh. The way God and Jesus are unified is in Love. Which is in all of us. How do we know this? Because the spirit of love tells us so. "For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God." Romans 8:14

The Bible says God is Love. It also tells us what Love is and isn't. In doing so, it tells us what God is and isn't. God is patient. God is kind. God is not jealous. He does not brag and is not boastful. He is not easily provoked. He keeps no record of evil. God rejoices in the truth. He endures all things. God never fails. 

There are verses in the Bible that contradict the above sentiments. 
God is VERY jealous, and says so. He is arrogant and boastful quite often. He is exceptionally easily provoked and he has a great big book listing the good the bad and the ugly.

How can both of these ideas be true? They can't be. Play all the brain games you want to. God can't be both jealous and not jealous, patient and peaceful, but also short-tempered and violent, a braggart who is also humble. We have to pick and choose.  If we are rational thinkers using the faculties of our powers of reasoning, we have no choice. Some like to say, it's a mystery. But it isn't. They pretend to understand. Most would never share their doubts. The naked emperor has fancy clothes on. You see them, don't you? 

Fundamentalism is causing pain and suffering all around. The literal adherence to scriptural texts combined with a spirit wishing to please God, gain his rewards and escape his punishment, is destructive. It destroys the freedom to choose good over evil. It hardens the heart, making mankind's differences reasons for division instead of unity. It fools people into choosing law over love. It is time for us to  be brave enough to ask  hard questions and to stop pretending that the answers we've  settled for are good enough.