A Far Foreign Land

My most recent solo travel experience was to Norway in 2005. I had made a concerted effort for three years beforehand to learn Norwegian after having a wonderful time on my first trip there in 2000. While I was in Norway I made a concerted effort to speak only Norwegian. Luckily I had supportive cousins to practice on for the first week I was there. They were all very patient with me and even tried to explain Norwegian jokes to me. I remember following the explanation (just barely) but now all I can remember is the feeling of almost getting it.

After the first week in Oslo, I traveled to Bergen on my own and spent a week wandering around on my own. It was strange and wonderful. I entertained not a few shopkeepers with my basic language skills. One of the most comment comments I got from them was that it was nice to take a break from speaking English all day. I can't say how wonderful it was to have so many strangers be willing to play along with my somewhat odd attempts to communicate. I know I sounded funny (I still mix up the words for 'it' and 'they' when speaking) but no one gave up on me.

Upon returning to Oslo, I had even more time to myself and I went into downtown nearly every day. I think I went to church more times while in Norway than the entire year beforehand. There was something about experiencing the Eucharistic service in a foreign language that made the Mysterious feel very near indeed. For while I had a basic grasp of the language, my skills were nowhere near keeping up with liturgical-poetical language.

I thought a lot while I was on my trip. I had never traveled alone to such an extent and so had plenty of time for my thoughts to wander as my feet did. During one of my ramblings around the city I thought about death, and how it is sometimes compared to sleep or a long journey. I don't now remember the complete chain of thought that got me there, but one of the things that struck me was how much work goes into getting ready for a long trip or vacation.

Before I left the United States, I had get get my work to a place where my absence wouldn't cause a major problem, book tickets, pack, weigh suitcases, repack, shop for essentials, pack more, pay bills, get finances to a place where someone else could pay the bills while I was gone, etc... The list of chores just kept growing as the date kept getting closer, and then suddenly, like magic the day came. Whatever I had packed was what I was taking with me. The time for repacking and regrets was past.

I don't have a lot of experience with death, but for what little I do have, this image resonates for me. In particular I think of my maternal grandmother. She took a turn for the worse and the whole family came to see her off. It turned out she wasn't quite ready to go. She got better for a time and was very busy 'settling' things for a time. She had a long awaited visit from friends, dealt with her finances, kept an eye on the brother she felt responsible for and generally kept people busy around her-- and then, one day, she died. Just like that.

She had everything arranged and suddenly it was time to go. No regrets, no excuses, with whatever she had with her at the time.

We come to our end sooner than we would hope and all we can do is have our suitcase ready.

Faith formation through fiction

Rev Gal Blog Pals had a question come into their "Ask the Matriarch" column asking what children's books would be good for a pastor's bookshelf.  

In thinking about the books that most strongly made me think about my concept of god and my relationship to faith, I realized that most of them are Science Fiction or Fantasy.  Not only that, but they are books that made me think.  I don't know that a priest would want to have these books on their bookshelf (I suspect they might offend some sensibilities) but they were instrumental in my faith journey.

The following are books that spoke to me when I was a kid-to-teen reader and newer books that I wish I had had back then.

Madeline L'Engle's "Wrinkle in Time" trilogy (Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet).

C.S. Lewis's  Narnia series (read in publication order, please!) :).

His  Perlanda series is also good, but a little weird, and I found the last book too scary to read initially (the cover scared me). I remember reading several of his other works (The Screwtape Letters is the only specific title I can remember) and finding them interesting as a teen.

Anything by Ursula Le Guin-- though her "Earthsea Cycle" (now up to about 5 books) is probably the most accessible for younger readers. She is someone who is fun to read because I 'got' more and more of the layers of her writing the older I became.  My favorite book of hers is "The Dispossessed."  Every time I read it, it changes the way I think about the world.

Frank Herbert and poet Bill Ransom had a series of science fiction books that I liked as a teenager-- not sure how they hold up now: "Destination: Void," "The Jesus Incident," "The Lazarus Effect," and "The Ascension Factor." (I have not read the fourth book-- I just found out about while looking up the titles of the first three).

As an adult I discovered the Terry Prachett Discworld series-- those are excellent for thinking about human relationships, and relationships to the divine while being entertained. "Feet of Clay" and "Small Gods" are particularly interesting from a religious standpoint. (Though "Small Gods" might be too grim for younger readers). The thing about Terry Prachett's work is that if you were one of the characters experiencing the events it wouldn't be the least bit funny, but the way he frames the setting his word choice makes his books easy to read, fun, and yet a bit spiky. He has a series that is more specifically aimed at younger readers (starting with "Wee Free Men") that features a young girl as the protagonist. I don't know that they have particularly religious themes in them, but really any fiction contains the seeds of theological reflection.

One book I was giving away to everyone I knew for a while was "Beauty" by Sherri Tepper. It is also better suited for older readers (includes scenes of violence and rape) but explores the human need for beauty and mystery and what might happen to us if we lose both our real and mythological 'wild' places.

I include the "Thomas Covenant" books in the interest in completeness.  It was the first book I read with a (vile) anti-hero as the protagonist and several things about it creeped me out, however it did have an interesting concept of god and free will-- something I reflected on often while in my teens.

Another series that came out when I was an adult is Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy series that begins with "The Curse of Chailon." My favorite in the series is second book: "The Paladin of Souls." In this universe, gods clearly exist, but can only move in the world if a person opens their soul to the divine. A lovely, gritty, exploration of what it means to ask for a miracle.

I'm sure there are more-- but these are the ones I could clearly remember having an impact on how I viewed the world.  Looking back over this list, one of the things it brings to mind is the fact that my parents, while very happy to censor my TV and film viewing, never put any limits on which books I read.  That freedom to choose was a wonderful gift and led me to discover many wild imaginary lands.

Building Together

13 January 2008

Every January, I spend some time reviewing the family finances.  My husband is better with numbers than I am but he is also the main breadwinner in the family, so when I left my previous job in 2002 I took over the day-to-day books.  Every month I pay the bills and balance the checkbooks.  We have multiple accounts (mostly to keep us from accidentally spending money we are saving for another purpose) so it’s a bit of a chore to get through everything.

At the end of the year, as I begin doing the prep work for the taxes, I see how much we spent on various fixed expenses and how much we saved during the year.  This year was not a saving year.  We determined at the beginning of 2007 to take out a loan to pay for two major purchases, as well as some smaller projects around the house.  It was very satisfying to get the work done but also a bit worrying to take on more debt.  We try to live as debt-free as possible– avoiding carrying balances on credit cards and trying to save up in advance for large purchases, so, other than our house, we don’t usually have a lot of outstanding debt.

When we were first married, over 15 years ago, we had very little debt thanks to our parents.  We had both been fortunate enough to have parents who were able to save up and pay for our college educations.  We both worked, as well, but the money we made mostly went to help defray basic living expenses.  My husband got a job right of college.  I did not.  We moved to Texas where his job was and started learning how to live on what we earned.  David made enough to make ends meet and I eventually got a part-time job.  We had one car and were living in a small town with no public transportation.  We saved a little money.

Then David needed a root canal.  That took most of our small savings.  We started saving again.  The car needed work and we were back to square one.  The bank account built up once more.  I had to go to the emergency room.  We had insurance through David’s work, but the ambulance ride wasn’t covered.  Back to square one.

Throughout all of this, David and I had been talking about buying a new, to us, car.  The 1972 Dodge Dart that we had was starting to cost a lot to maintain.  We saved up a few hundred bucks and went looking for a car, but everything we found that we could afford was a death-trap.  I still  clearly remember one car we went to look at that had a gas pedal that stuck at random times.  Even with this experience, I was resistant to taking out a loan.  Our daily financial life seemed so precarious to me that I couldn’t imagine a bank lending us money.

Two things occurred that changed my mind.  The first was on the drive to the airport that Christmas when the windshield wipers on the Dart failed and I had to reach in through the glove box and operate them manually (it was, of course, pouring down rain).  My knuckles were pretty beat up by the time we dropped our pet rats off with the people who had agreed to watch them and our friends gave us a ride to the airport from their house.  The second was when my in-laws offered to loan us the money and give us a longer term to pay it back than banks were at that time.  Normally I wouldn’t borrow money from a friend or relative, but David’s folks have always been very clear about what is business and what is personal.  We signed a contract with them, got the money we needed, went to the used car dealer, bought a car we liked, and wrote the largest check either of us had ever written to that point.

The business we were working for ended up being sold off to another company in another state.  David and I took the opportunity to move back to Seattle.  We moved in with his parents until we could save up for a place of our own, and even with all that upheaval, managed to never miss a payment on the car loan.

We’ve come a long way since then.  We’ve purchased and refinanced our house and seen even larger checks go out the door as various home repair and remodel projects have been completed.  The confidence to handle our finances was built in those first few years when we had very little to manage– when we were living paycheck-to-paycheck and anything unexpected could devour what little we had managed to save.  No matter how little we had, we made the decision together on how to spend or save it.  David was willing to try to get a car loan months before I was, but he held off, waiting for me to adjust to the idea and for us to find a way that would work for both of us.  I, in turn, learned to push myself to take more risks when David was ready to take action.

Being in this together gives me confidence.  So, when I review last year’s finances I see not just a record of money coming in and going out, but also a record of discussions, debates, and decisions that stretches back to before we were married.  We haven’t always been right, but we’ve always known that, not only were we in the same boat, we built it together.

A not-so-merry Christmas

by Ann Fontaine, 2007

The constant barrage of Merry Christmas! and non-stop carols of happiness contrast with the feelings of many people at this time of year. For those suffering from the recent or impending death of loved ones and for those whose families are in crisis it can be a very isolated and dreary time. Every greeting and every song reminds the grief-stricken of how unhappy life is at this moment.

Many churches have begun to recognize that Festivals of Lessons and Carols, celebrations of Christmas, and children’s pageants do not meet everyone’s needs. To fill this gap churches offer a Blue Christmas service, a Service of Solace or Longest Night. People who are not having a very merry Christmas and friends who support them are invited to come and sit with one another in a liturgy that speaks of the love of God for the grieving.

Many of the worshipers who gathered for our Service of Solace at St. John’s in Jackson Hole, Wyoming during the week before Christmas did not have a church home. Christmas vacationers who came to ski or snowmobile were attracted to the silence and space apart from their days on the mountain. We offered a variety of music and silence interspersed with readings from Scripture and prayers of solace and hope. Each person was encouraged to bring readings to share, photos or objects of remembrance 

Sitting together in the warm log church in the midst of the deep star spangled dark of the Rocky Mountains we gained a greater knowledge of the One who loves us in sorrow and joy. We learned that even strangers can share life and love. We discovered we are not alone.

A closing prayer from Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace:


O God of all seasons and senses,

grant us the sense of your timing

to submit gracefully and rejoice quietly in the turn of the seasons.

In this season of short days and long nights,

of grey and white and cold,

teach us the lessons of endings;

children growing, friends leaving, loved ones dying,

grieving over,

grudges over,

blaming over,

excuses over.

O God, grant us a sense of your timing.

In this season of short days and long nights,

of grey and white and cold,

teach us the lessons of beginnings;

that such waitings and endings may be the starting place,

a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born—

something right and just and different,

a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love—

in the fullness of your time.

O God, grant us the sense of your timing.

Liturgies for a Service of Solace, Longest Night or Blue Christmas can be found at The Text this Week Online: Resources for the Season of Advent.

Compassionate Friends is a resource for those whose children (of any age) have died.

Many hospice organizations offer bereavement groups at all times of the year.

A for Effort

3 July 2007

When I was a youngster I had very little tolerance for criticism of other’s endeavors.  Whether it was a school play, a book, or a Hollywood movie, if I heard any critical comments of a work I felt required to defend it– regardless of whether I liked it, simply because someone had made the effort to bring it forth.

I don’t have a good memory for specifics and cannot recall a particular piece that I defended on principle rather than merit, but I do have a very strong sense of what I felt like when hearing criticism of someone else’s work.  The odd thing is, I have no memory at all, specific or otherwise, of how I responded to critiques of my own work. I know I received such critiques– I still have the paper that I wrote for a high school composition class where I received an 'A' for content and an 'F' for spelling and grammar.*

However, I now see a clear connection between my need to defend the works of others and my own struggles to be creative.  I over-empathized with strangers because, while I wanted my work to be the best, I knew that I had a tendency to put assignments off and crank them out at the last minute (as many teenagers are prone to do).   By doing it at the last minute, I virtually assured that it would not be as good as it could be regardless of how much heart and soul I into it.

Over the years I have worked on my writing and on learning to critique the writings of others (with the particular goal of giving constructive feedback).  As my ability to spot plot holes and inconsistencies in a text grew, my willingness to excuse shoddy or inconsistent work shrank.  

This intolerance on my part also stems from twenty additional years of experience with various storytelling media.  In addition to developing my own specific preferences, I learned that my time is a limited resource, and that just because someone made it, doesn’t mean it is either well-executed or worthy of my time.  I can now discern, within the first chapter of a novel, whether it is well written enough to be worth the effort of reading it.  

When I was younger, I would read anything that came into my hands. I wasted a lot of time defending works that probably weren’t that good, on behalf of people I had never met, and who may not have put much effort into their work.  It took time to learn what was creative and what was derivative.  I also did not fully grasp that a work should be able to stand on its own once created.  In my hypersensitive-teenaged-state, I perceived an attack on the work to be an attack on the creator.

Now that I am older and more experienced, I am more picky.  I have certain standards that I use to judge what I am willing to read and what goes into the recycle bin.  However, I do miss the exciting sense of novelty and freshness that I enjoyed as a younger reader.  Then, there were no tropes or cliches because I hadn’t encountered as many variations on the same themes as I have now. 

Seeing writers riff off each other over time is exciting and reminds me that one of the benefits of experience– I get more of the jokes.  I exchange novelty for understanding– which is no bad thing.  I don’t award “A’s” for effort any longer.  I award good and interesting work with my time and attention– two things that are in limited supply and worth more than any letter grade.
______________

* I wrote it long hand the night before, I was pretty pleased with the “A” and not terribly surprised by the “F”– this was before spell checkers.  Also, I still firmly believed that good grammar and spelling were unnecessary– people should ‘just understand’ what I wrote.  While I still make errors in both spelling and grammar, it is not because I do not try to correct them.

Open Hands

27 April 2007

I’ve been taken by street con men twice, to my knowledge.  There may have been other times when I just didn’t realize what was going on but two times now I have given money to strangers in trouble and then found incontrovertible evidence that they had lied to me about their needs.  That hasn’t stopped me from responding to people in need, but it had made me think about the nature of generosity and being open handed with what I have.

I had though of writing on this topic a while back, not long after giving money to someone and then not really being sure that they needed the money.  I thought all the way home about what I had done and what I would do if I ever found out that the person had duped me.

Then, just a few days ago, I ran into the same person, with the exact same story– only this time he approached my husband.  I recognized him and gave my husband a heads up and then sat back and listened as the man made his pitch.  It was word-for-word the same story he had given me many months ago, on the same street.  It was interesting to be ‘along for the ride’ as it were.  My husband, normally a generous man himself, gently deflected the man requesting funds and we were on our way.

Do I feel bad about having been taken in the first time?  Yes, a little.  No one likes to be made a fool of or outwitted.  In my conversations with my husband and in my own meditations on the subject I have decided that I would rather err on the side of generosity.  I would rather be a fool than lose an opportunity to help someone in need.  If this means that the occasional con-man get to feel smug, so be it.

For all my conflicted feelings about religion, one of the cores of my faith is that those with enough should share with those who are lacking.  The rich are rich and the poor are poor not because some god has decided to reward one group and punish another but because luck and chance and free will are active in our lives.  Opportunity comes to some, disaster to others and no one gets to choose when or where the wheel will turn.  Currently, I am one of the fortunate ones but I take to heart the idea that, even though God won’t turn on me, fate might, and one day I might be the one with the open hand asking for help. 

I don’t expect the world to keep a total of my good deeds and have them count on my behalf should the worst happen.  The world doesn’t work like that.  I just believe that what we have should be shared as best as we can manage.   It is imperfect, but it is the best that I can do..

Sunset

6 October 2006

Once, many years ago, I sat on a beach on the Oregon coast taking pictures with the camera my father had given me.  I was photographing the sunset. 

I have always loved the beach at sunset. The rest of the visitors are all packing it in for the day– trying to get home before full dark.  The beach empties out and a sense of isolation and peace descends.  The ocean and the sky lie unbounded in front while the dunes protect my back.

In the time I can breathe in and out once, the sun has dipped a little lower, so bright that even its reflection in the waves is too bright too bear.

That sunset, twenty years past, a man walked up to me and inquired about my camera.  I didn’t know him and wouldn’t recognize him now, but we chatted, sharing the same beach-stranded log for a short time.  Eventually the sun set.  The sand chilled my feet.  I packed up and went home.  He strolled away down the beach.

Why do I remember that day?  I certainly don’t remember what we talked about, other than a shared interested in photography. 

I remember that day because I was a shy teenager who was feeling alone and isolated, who had books for company rather than peers (and, quite frankly preferred the books– they were easier to understand).  On that day, that sunset conversation was window into an adult world, where life happens causally and with a minimum of fuss and drama.

It was a realization that a conversation might be the beginning of a relationship or it might be the entire relationship.

Over time, that conversation has become my reminder that you don’t plan to meet the person who will become a lifelong friend.  Instead you have conversations– some of which end at sunset and some of which last a lifetime.

Enablers

9 August 2006

I reflect on my life quite often.  I think about the pivotal moments that lead me to make one choice over another and I try to follow the threads back in time to see where my path originated.  I think I inherited this tendency from my grandmother, she used to tell my mother how much better a life my mother would have had if grandmother’s first husband had not died.  Mom’s answer to this was to point out that she wouldn’t have been born, so she wouldn’t have had much of life at all.

I recently tried to write out a list of people who, by accident or design helped me make the choices that lead me to where I am now.   I was surprised when I looked it over, that it didn’t include some of the obvious people (immediate family, best friends, etc...) but rather was a list of people who, for the most part, are off having their own lives.  People who I knew in high school or college and have since lost touch with.

Part of the reason I am able to categorize the impact they had on my life, is because they are no longer in it.  When I try to think of things I have learned from current friends and family, I have a hard time coming up with anything specific.  But when I think back to people who were important to me ten or twenty years ago, it is much easier to point out moments when they showed me something about myself or something about the outside world that reshaped my perceptions and, in some cases, caused me to make choices that very clearly led to where I am today.

During that time, the word ‘enabler’ came to mean someone who was encouraging negative behaviour in someone else.  One, enabled a drunkard, or a drug user, or some such trouble.  I’d like to reclaim the word ‘enabler’ and salute the long list of people who enabled me to be the person that I am, living the life that I have.  I learned lessons from them (sometimes painful lessons) that I took into the world with me and that have allowed me to live a wonderful life so far.

Each of us enables other people by modelling behaviour, asking questions, or providing a listening ear but we rarely get to see the impact of our contributions to someone else’s life.  Our relationship to them changes over time or they drift away.  Life is a work in progress and none of us get to see the final product.

All this does make me wonder if any of the people in my life at present will look back in ten or twenty years and see that I had an impact on their life.  If so, I can only hope that it will have been a good one.

Clue-less

4 August 2006

When I was sixteen, I was invited out to see teachers.  At that time there was at least one teacher who would socialize with students who had graduated and the person who asked me out was one of the people who regularly got together with him.  Imagine my surprise when we arrived at the movie theater and my escort bought us tickets for the movie “Teachers.”  

I don’t remember much of the movie because I spent the entire time panicking about what I would tell my parents when I got home, as I was not allowed to see rated “R” movies.  To this day I don’t remember what I told them.  Knowing me, I either didn’t really say anything, or I confessed all and threw myself on their mercy.  I think I did the latter, as I have a vague recollection of them telling me not to worry about it.  Like many teenagers I lacked a sense of proportion, and while I grew out of some of my more dramatic tendencies, I have found through the years that I am still clueless in certain, very specialized ways.

Something like this happens to me every few years.  I mis-understand something so completely that the person I am talking to and I don’t even realize we are talking about completely different things until they are confronted with the evidence of my bafflement.

I should know from my years of dispute resolution training, to ask clarifying questions in such situations.  The problem is, that I don’t realize there is anything to be confused about until I already at the movie theater having no clue how we wound up there (to use my earlier story as an metaphor).

Misunderstandings happen all the time, even between friends who have known each other for years.  I filter words though my experiences and, sometimes faulty, senses and come up with an explanation that makes sense.  I add to the words the my understanding of another person’s body language and other non-verbal cues.  Even with all of that information, I can end up completely off the mark.

I have learned over the years, is to not take it too all to seriously.  It helps that my friends are willing to laugh off such mistakes with me– but even when a misunderstanding happens with someone I don’t know well, a sense of humor helps turn an unsurmountable  mountain of confusion into a mere speed bump.

I’m not saying there aren’t serious issues that should be fought out in the trenches.  I, for one hold the line on issues of choice, gender equality, and human rights.  Some battles are worth fighting.  However, before I suit up for battle, I try to make certain that there is a battle to be fought.  

As a result of my life experience, there are some issues that make me take to the lists promptly.  

As a result of my various, and sometimes embarrassing misunderstandings over simple things, I try to ensure that I am acting on correct information before I get my lance out and charge.

Who am I?

16 June 2006

When I was in High School I wrote a poem by that title.  I still have it.  Somewhere in the attic is a box labelled ‘Teen-Angst Poetry.  

My life is always, on some level, a search for my identity.  “Who am I?” frequently transmutes into “What am I?”  Like most folks I can reel off a list of labels, groups I belong to by choice or heritage that have shaped me over the years.  A sample list would include: Mother, Wife, Episcopalian, Human Rights Supporter, Norwegian-Scottish-English-French-Irish-American (aka Mutt), Bisexual, Monogamous, Reader, Writer.  There are many more, but the entire list would take up a whole page by itself if I put my mind to it.

The one that trips me up the most is ‘bisexual.’  I haven’t mentioned it in previous essays and that is in part because it is difficult to talk about without sharing Too Much Information.  Not that I have any real tales to tell but, for someone who writes about life and posts it for the world to see, I’m easily embarrassed.

I had the classic experience of going away to college and discovering that I was attracted to women as well as men.  I was a late bloomer in that respect– I didn’t really figure out why some of my friends personalities changed so much during Junior High and High School until my junior year.  Then the hormones hit and all the strange behavior suddenly made sense.  When I started college I was still in the early stages of adapting to this new influx of information.

Then I discovered girls and immediately panicked– that’s how strong my feelings were.  It was a life changing experience.  However, I never acted on any of my feelings.  (See still figuring out hormones, above.)  I told my mom what was going on and she gave me the number of a friend of hers who was out as a gay woman.  We talked about the pros and cons of going any further in telling folks about my newly discovered feelings.  She suggested waiting.

Maybe if I had waited, I wouldn’t have felt any need to tell anyone else that I was bisexual.  After all I ended up in a heterosexual relationship with a wonderful man.  We lived together, were engaged for nearly two years and married after we graduated from college. 

I didn’t wait.  I couldn’t wait.  I felt like every day I didn’t tell my family and close friends put more and more pressure on me.  I was genuinely frightened when I decided to tell my father.  I had heard stories of people being disowned for coming out and while I love my dad, I wasn’t certain what his reaction would be.  It was a very awkward conversation but I remember that while he sounded freaked out he also attempted to make a joke and show that it was still okay between us.  To this day I don’t know his side of the story but I’m tearing up as I write this, remembering how relieved I and happy I was to know that I was still his daughter.

I tell this story because, to this day, I don’t really know if I ‘count’ as bisexual.  I am hidden from view, and while most of my friends know (especially the ones who were around in the old days), there is nothing in my life to actively remind people and it is not an easy thing to throw into a conversation.  I have no practical experience being in a same-sex relationship.  Does that lack of experience invalidate what I sincerely went through years ago?  More importantly, as someone who strongly believes in human rights for all and specifically equal rights (including marriage) for gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered people, what obligation do I have to point out to the people around me that I am privileged?  

The person I chose (and who chose me) happened to be male.  If I had been courted and won by a woman I would not enjoy the legal and societal benefits that I do now.  And while I didn’t take that path, the experience I had of recognizing my attraction to women (and looking back to High School, some of the signs were present even then) opened my mind.  Am I gay?  I don’t really know anymore, and given the structure of my current relationship I don’t really think I’ll ever have a chance to find out.  

That shouldn’t stop me from sharing my story.