Day 10 of Gratitude: Home

I am so amazingly in love with this place that we found to call home.  Instead of talking wistfully of "someday" when we have "a few acres", now we actually have them and we're just busy enjoying and taking care of them.




I've been reading Making Home by Sharon Astyk (one of those rare books that I enjoyed so much from the library that I bought a new copy) and it has inspired me to appreciate and love my home even more.  It's also inspired me to want to do even better, to settle, to be a better steward, to plan for the future in responsible ways.



One immediate change I'm making is to break my dependence on the dryer.  If I have a "laundry day" once a week, the only way to get all the laundry done is to use the dryer.  But dryers use a lot of unnecessary electricity, when the same job could be done by passive energy and a sunny corner of my living room.  So I'm not doing the laundry once a week anymore, and am drying everything on my wooden drying rack.  That means I need to do laundry three or four times a week, and have a better system of storing dirty laundry as it waits its turn.  But I've made the changes, and everyone still has clean laundry as they need it, and our dryer now just sits empty.

I am very grateful to have a home, to have the resources that give me the freedom to make choices in how I want to live, and to have found this corner of the world to settle down on.

Day 9 of Gratitude: My Husband

Today is my 10th Anniversary of being Handfasted to my dear Husband.  We were handfasted in a lovely pagan and not-legally binding ceremony held at the Supreme Court House of our State (with the Chief Justice coming in to unlock the building and be there for us, but the officiant being a family friend and member of my mother's Full Moon Circle).  A few months later, we would be pushed to make the union legal because of my husband's impending deployment to Iraq, but the date we care about is the day we stood before friends and family and bound ourselves to each other with vows and symbolic cords, then jumped over a broom together.

We were young (I was only 23) and we jumped into it all very fast.  But we had been living together for a year, had decided to have a baby as I faced endometriosis and felt my fertility to be a ticking time bomb of scar tissue and troubles, had been strengthened/tested through the experience of miscarrying our first pregnancy, had bought a house, and were again 4 months pregnant by the time we took those vows to each other.

And since then those vows have been tested again and again: babies, deployments and war, graduate school, bouts with depression for both of us, escalating debt and money troubles, home daycare, illness, our bodies aging, stressful jobs, long hours and commutes, family members moving in with us, personal growth that doesn't always go in the same direction for both of us, snoring, different "love languages", my tendency to throw hissy-fits, and all the times I've had to pick up his dirty socks from all over the house.

But a commitment doesn't happen just once.  It's made over and over again, day to day, moment to moment.  It's a choice, and we make it.  Sometimes it's a hard choice, when I'm so mad I could spit fire.  And sometimes I marvel at his choice and how he can be so amazingly patient and supportive of me.

Did I find Prince Charming?  No, of course not.  But I've been plenty lucky, to find a good man to walk by my side for these years.

Once the realization is accepted
that even between the closest human beings 
Infinite distances continue to exist
A wonderful living side by side can grow up
If they succeed in loving the distance between them
Which makes it possible for each to see the other
Whole and against a wide sky.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Day 8 of 30 Days of Gratitude: Bulbs

Today I am reflecting on how grateful I feel for the amazing property of bulbs to be planted in the ground in this time when everything else is dying, and that they will be growing away and seem to just appear by magic in the spring.  When the rest of the garden is a dreary place, there is something so comforting to be pushing the garlic cloves into their new bed.

 

They have been planted and tucked into bed for the winter, and now we can look forward to lovely garlic scapes and garlic bulbs next year.

Day 7 of Gratitude

(History Lapbooks)

Today I am feeling grateful for the place we are finding ourselves in with our homeschooling right now.  Although I know this won't last forever, I am very grateful that these days it feels easy, that we have the right pace and routine down, that the kids are (mostly) doing all things they are interested in and are excited about learning, and that we have found resources that are working.  It feels like we have a good balance of time with other kids, time alone, structured time, flexible time, and time to just Be.

When it's working like this, it feels so great.


(FieldTrips)

30 Days of Gratitude: Days 4-6

No post from me yesterday, as I observed a new Sabbath practice of no driving, no internet, no shopping.

But now on with my 30 Days of Gratitude:

4.  I am grateful for this sign that I found taped to a closet door on Sunday as I prepped for classes.  I don't know who put it there, but it was a message I appreciated.
5.  After his motorcycle broke down on the freeway on the way home from work last night, I am very grateful that my husband managed to get off the freeway safely and to push his motorcycle for 1 1/2 miles to the hospital parking lot.  A very unfortunate event, but thank goodness he didn't get hurt in the process.
6.  And tonight, I'm grateful for the Election Results!

30 Days of Gratitude

As much as I am able, I want to observe the 30 Days of Gratitude this month.  As spiritual practices go, gratitude seems so easy - and yet I don't make time to practice it nearly enough.  So far I note that I am grateful for:

1.  The beautiful fall leaves.

2.  Being warm and safe and having enough food and water ... not to be taken for granted.

3.  My dear generous children, who have pooled all the money they had to adopt a penguin from the World Wildlife Fund, and when they discovered they had read the catalog wrong and only had enough money to receive a picture and certificate in the mail, but not the stuffed animal, took that in stride and still want to send in all their money.

What are you grateful for?

The Day of the Dead

Today is Dia de los Muertos, or The Day of the Dead.  It is a primarily Mexican holiday, in which people remember their loved ones who have died by cleaning their graves, bringing food and drink and flowers, and having what seems like a party.

Our congregation has marked the Day of the Dead with an intergenerational worship service on the Sunday before for as long as I have been here.  Originally, a member who grew up in Mexico began the practice, but after a few years she passed the leadership of the service on to the worship arts committee, and I have been involved in this service ever since I became the Director of Religious Education here.

A few things really jumped out at me last Sunday as I sat in the service.

When people are called to come forward and place mementos on the altar, almost everyone does.  Everyone is touched by death.

The pain of loss may lessen with time, but it's still there.  Some people are in tears for a loss that happened many, many years ago.  A twin sibling that died in childhood.  A baby stillborn.  A child or young person.  A spouse tragically killed too young.  Or other losses that surprise me that they are still so raw: parent, grandparent, aunt.  We will always mourn.

I know that some people avoid this service every year.  Not that many people bring their children.  But for many, this service is important.  They come to cry.  They come to see their tears as part of a larger picture of the cycles of life and the larger life of the community.  To truly engage with life means to truly engage with death.

Over the years my "list" has grown.  At first I was just placing a memento for my lost pregnancy (and no matter what some may say, that was a "real baby", and I still mourn it), then for my grandfather.  This year it was my unnamed little peanut, my grandfather, and my other grandparents.  More life also means more loss.  

It is real, it is unavoidable, it is part of the experience of living.  

It is the ultimate Great Mystery, the Final Frontier.

We live In Between (as our reading on Sunday by Richard Gilbert says).

Or, in the words of Tim McGraw, "I hope you get the chance to live like you are dying".