Day 23 of Gratitude: Food

We spent Thanksgiving here with my in-laws, for a very different food-culture for Thanksgiving.  It was a bit of a sad thing for me, because we have always been with my family for this holiday before.

More than in any other area of life, I notice the family-tradition that goes with our Food Culture.  It is about where you live, yes, but it is also about where your family has come from.  Here, we ate a local feast, but still brought along our can of cranberry sauce and made a pumpkin pie.

Food and Family.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Day 21 of Gratitude: Flexible Work

I have a great job.  What you do for work is going to take up a huge part of your life, and although this is a pragmatic transaction (your time in exchange for the money you need to live) people almost all agree that a happier life results from finding work that you love - work you want to do even if you weren't being paid for it.

As a Director of Religious Education, working full-time, I have quipped that I have the reverse of what many working people I know have: They have 5 or 6 days a week of rigid work and 1 day to figure out how to get everything else done, while I have 1 day a week of rigid work and 6 days a week to do everything else and get ready for that one day.  It's a pretty sweet deal.

Don't get me wrong - flexible work does not mean No Work.  A flex day is not a day off.  And sometimes flexible goes both ways - most of my meetings have to be in the evenings and that means less time with my husband, I work weekends and that means no normal weekends with my husband, I get random work calls on my cell phone at any old hour, and I find it hard to go out for coffee by myself without running into someone for church who would like me to sit down and talk with them for a bit ... sometimes for impromptu pastoral care sessions.

When I go on errands, they are usually mixed, with a list for church and a personal list.  I'll separate my purchases at the check out line and saying "I need to use two different charge cards today" rolls off my tongue on a regular basis.  My family is used to the line "I just need to run into church for a little bit ... I'll try to be back soon".  And of course holidays have no real meaning for a religious professional, and I'll never get to enjoy a 3-day weekend with the rest of the world.

But ... if you can take your work to the beach with you, how cool is that?  I love 85% of my work, and would do it even if it wasn't my job.  (I'm giving it 15% for attending boring or unpleasant meetings, which not all meetings are, cleaning up after others, moving heavy furniture around at church, and the other less-fun but necessary tasks).  And I get to read or write or plan while watching my kids play on the beach, or at the park.  And, yes, I've also brought my work to less fun places, like dentist or hospital waiting rooms - but that is also a blessing to be able to do.

I am very grateful for this flexible work.  There is a lot to be said for a change in work culture that requires a bit less "face time" in the office and transitions us to a focus on productivity rather than time-spent working.  If you can get it done on the beach, why the heck not?

(Caveat - I do see some necessity for face-time for work teams, and it is nice to be able to pop down the hall and ask a co-worker their opinion real quick.  But overall I still think a lot of professions and groups could have less face-time and more flex-time if we had a small culture shift and worried more about product and less about controlling people.)

Day 16 and 17 of Gratitude: Libraries

I'm a day behind on my 30 days of gratitude, but I love Public Libraries so much that I think I can give them two days worth of my gratitude. :)

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.
Ray Bradbury 

I have always loved libraries.  As a child, my mother would take us to the library and we'd haul out a radio flyer wagon full of books to take home.  We always had as many books out as we could, and although we ended up paying a lot in overdue fines because of having too many books out to manage properly (a problem I still have - the bane of homeschoolers, autodidacts, and avid readers alike), but I think paying fines to libraries is only right and just.

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
Barbara Kingsolver 

What do I get from the library?  Books, of course.  Audiobooks, as well.  Music CD's, sometimes.  Children's DVD's.  Bilingual books that we use to try and learn spanish.  But we also get children's story hour and other educational events, author talks, meeting rooms available for community groups, internet access, printers, reference librarians, children's librarians, summer reading programs, and more.

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
Saul Bellow 

The kids and I go the library at least once a week, and habitually have out about 150 items (our limit with three cards).  I end up paying between $5-$20 a month in fines, but the service we receive is priceless.  

Day 15 of Gratitude: the town we live in

A new building for the local Children's Museum just opened this week - and it is amazing.  The kids love it.

Today I'm grateful for the town we live in.  It has so many wonderful amenities like museums, performance art centers, art galleries, bookstores, public transit, and parks, a great local culture with lots of artists and cool people, a good Farmer's Market, and yet it isn't too big and the traffic and crime are pretty low.  It's also the sort of town where you can get from downtown to a small farm in 15 minutes of driving.

I grew up Seattle, and by the time I was leaving I was so sick of the traffic.  I love our little slice of rural life, but there are also some things that I will always want somewhat near me: a UU church, a place to see live performance, access to local shops and not just big box stores, a public library, good restaurants and coffee shops, and a fabric store.  I could live without them, and I would if I had to, but I am glad to not have to give them up.  This town is a wonderful balance for me.

Urban, suburban, and rural are the only categories we talk about anymore.  Technically, we're suburban.  But what happened to the category of "Town"?  I love my town/small city.

Day 14 of Gratitude: Head, Hearts, and Hands

Today I am grateful for a varied work life that keeps our whole selves busy and active.  I think of this sometimes when I am planning our To Do Lists or packing for a time away from home:

What is our Head Work right now?  What are we learning, reading, thinking about?

What is our Heart Work right now?  What is calling us to care for others, feel beauty, express ourselves?

What is our Hand Work right now?  What are we making, doing, and building?

(And then there is also Body Work, which is running, playing, jumping, etc - but that doesn't fit into my "H - Work" alliteration theme.)

I know many people - adults and children - end up in routines that specialize in one of those types of work, but I personally feel out of balance whenever I'm too much in Head, Heart, Hands, or Body.  My job, home, and our homeschooling are so wonderful because they all allow for a balanced approach to the types of work in our lives.

Today I spent time comforting a sick child, driving to and from a meeting about 70 miles away from home, meeting with colleagues for mutual support, giving a presentation to colleagues about systems theory and a specific book we had read together (How Your Church Family Works - great book), ruminating on a passing comment that caused me some anxiety and self-reflection, meeting with the youth advisors in my congregation for a check-in and planning meeting, reading another study book (Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times), supervising a child with Spanish and math schoolwork, watching a nature documentary with a sick child, washing dishes, folding and hanging laundry, cooking dinner, knitting a hat, emailing, playing Words with Friends, watching Dexter with my husband, reading blog posts, ranting to my husband about said blog posts, writing thank you notes, and tidying up and sweeping in my home.

With a life as varied and rich as that, no part of me has a chance to atrophy or get out of balance.  I am very grateful for the sheer variety life provides.

Day 13 of Gratitude: Dance

Tonight the family got to see Le Ballet Jazz de Montreal.  Despite the challenges of taking two young children to adult art, it was so worth it - especially the second half where they performed this piece "Harry".  Very interesting and accessible.

Ballet was a huge part of my young life.  Much as the song from Chorus Line says "Everything is beautiful at the ballet ... whenever you lift your arms someone is there ...".

I dreamed of being a ballerina.  I attended the best local dance school (a national level ballet school) from the age of 9 to the age of 16, with private lessons and intense dedication.

It didn't work out for me ... I am not built for it and no matter how hard you try (and I tried - anorexia and torn muscles and deformed feet to show for it) in the end I found it impossible to defeat my own physiology.  Spirit didn't beat out biology.

That hurt.  It was the greatest heartbreak of my young life - it far outweighed any sort of romantic heartbreak I could have experienced.  Giving up on ballet was giving up on my dream ... in a way it felt like giving up on myself.

For years I couldn't appreciate dance as an audience member, because it still hurt too much.  Now though, I can see the beauty again.  I can appreciate how marvelous the skill and dedication (and lucky physiology) of the dancers truly is, and I am glad to be able to appreciate the dance.

Gratitude Days 11 and 12: Veterans Day

(My husband and daughter, a couple years after he returned from Iraq.  She was our post-deployment baby, and I remember on this day as I watched them both walking ahead of me that I was pierced with gladness that he had come home and that she had been born.)

Today I am grateful for all who have served.  I believe in service, and I my time served in the National Guard was an important part of my life.  I met so many people that I never would have known if I hadn't taken time before college to attend Army training.  I'm extremely grateful for the experiences I had, the training I received, and the opportunity to serve my community in times of fire, flood, and riot.

I am also grateful today for my husband's safe return from his time serving in Iraq.  We met in the National Guard, but my time in was peacetime.  His luck was different, and his year of combat was something we never expected.  I am so proud of him for self-lessly and stoically honoring his commitments, and I am so grateful that he was one of the lucky ones to return relatively unscathed.

War is never a good thing.  I wish our leaders the wisdom and will to always work for peaceful solutions.  But for those who fight, it is different.  They serve, with the very safety of their bodies, hearts, and souls on the line.  Thank you to all who have sacrificed and served.

A few quotes I like from this article:

"The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war." -Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers." -Jose Narosky

"We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude." -Cynthia Ozick

"How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!" -Maya Angelou

"When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?" -George Canning

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die." -G.K. Chesterton

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, 'Mother, what was war?'" -Eve Merriam