The Garden of Gethsemane was at the forefront of my mind last week. I'd never paid much attention to those words until reading the Easter story so carefully for (umm...) Easter and for my last post. The very next day, I stumbled upon this place (?!?) and suddenly, almost like a mirage, these words were staring back at me:

 

Curiously, this place was settled by my hometown Transcendentalists, and is managed by someone with a beautiful statement of calling, the kind I hope to be able to make someday:

When I think about my ministry here at The Gardens, I have to thank God for allowing me the opportunity to help people at one of the most vulnerable times in their lives. In the early years at the cemetery, I questioned God about his choice for my career. I told him I could be a dentist, a builder, or even a landscaper. But are you serious God, work at a cemetery? Over time I began to see how important it was for someone like me, who loves every human being, to be here to help families when they lose a loved one. Please believe me when I say... (read more)

My Easter Story

(Warning: Don't read if you're squeem-ish. Do read if you're interested in my experience leading into Easter!)

Two weeks ago - 6 days before Passover, to be exact - my dad was having some issues, so he went to the doctor and was told to drink a lot of water. Being the good Navy man that he is, he followed orders, but the next morning he woke up in extreme pain.

My mom drove him to the ER and en route, a huge gush of blood came out. He was admitted to the hospital and learned that as a result of the radiation he underwent for prostate cancer, he had amassed blood clots in the bladder. He got hooked up to a catheter among other things and everything flowed out into a pouch at his bedside. Every half an hour, someone would empty the bag into a bucket to dispose of the contents. It looked like A1 steak sauce. Blood was literally pouring out by the buckets.

For six days, this blood-flow continued, interrupted frequently by clots that needed to be "irrigated", a painful and delicate process of siphoning them out of the urethra. That narrow channel became like a fiber-optic highway transporting multi-lane traffic. All this is a somewhat predictable consequence ("late side-effect") of radiation, but it went on longer than "normal" so they went in to operate in effort to stop the bleeding. The operation succeeded in reducing but not in stopping the bleeding (trying to keep a good attitude, we joked that the color changed from cabernet to fruit punch, but we were still aiming for rosé). It turned out that his "sling procedure" had eroded and was causing further damage, so the doctors conferred and concluded that he needed to be transferred to MGH.

On Thursday, he managed to shave and wash up a bit, just in time to prepare for the phase ahead. He had waited two days for a bed to become available at MGH, and as soon as one opened up, he was whisked away.

Very early Friday morning (Good Friday), he was transported in an ambulance and prepared for same day surgery. I can only imagine his anticipation as he waited alone to go into surgery. My aunt came to visit but he was already gone. My mom and I came to see him but he was unreachable in the post-operating room. For hours, we wandered around the hospital, going up to his room and back down to the post-op room, anxiously waiting for him to emerge. We kept looking for him, asking the nurses when he would arrive. Where's my father?  It seemed to take forever.

Finally, there he was. Yet he wasn't really there. He was as pale as the white sheets that covered him. Unable to open his eyes or to speak. Where did he go?  We stood at the foot of his bed. I felt his absence. It was a terrible time.

Surely, this was a period of intense suffering. Later, he said that he was in agony. This, coming from a man who never complains. "Please take this cup of suffering away from me." (Luke 22:42)

The only thing he could say was to ask for an ice cube, one of those little medical sponges on a stick, but he wasn't allowed to drink. "I am thirsty" (John 19:28)

I believe the hardest was the suffering of body and mind.  He later said that he was having nightmares and didn't know where he was. "Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say?" (John 12:27)

His body was bombarded from all angles, inside and out, with medication, anesthesia, incisions, tubes, needles, etc. He had a catheter in his side that went directly into the bladder. "One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and immediately blood and water flowed out" (John 19:34)

That night, I was afraid. "I cried out to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy mountain. I lay down and slept, yet I woke up in safety, for the Lord was watching over me." (Psalm 3:3-5)

The next morning, he called me.  His voice sounded good. He looked good. But he couldn't get up. It was more than the fact that he'd been lying down for a week and a half. He was dizzy from having lost so much blood.

Sunday (Easter) he was paler and weaker. Somehow, he managed to get up and walk around. My father got up ! He needed a blood transfusion, a scary (to me) but common and life-saving transaction. That got him going again. I watched those drops of blood going into his veins. The blood of another gave him life.

Monday night - Easter Monday, Marathon Monday - he was discharged, stable enough to go home with a visiting nurse. He came back home.  Praise the Lord and...

Happy Easter!

‘When I light a candle at midnight, I say to the darkness: I beg to differ.’

-first-century philosopher

 

Gently over my dad tonight, please...

After attending yesterday's wedding + nearly 6 months of intentionally not dating, I'm getting ready...

for someone
from You
for me
to make three
in one
I pray
for this
union

Guess who won last night's NCAA game (for the first time ever)? Union. Check out the amazing quote in this article: “I don’t think anyone will call us Cinderella anymore." I hear you ;)

Reclaim, my word of the year, it's time to check-in. This word reaches into virtually every corner of my life. It pervasively touches the whole landscape, giving orientation to every road and rock, leading me back to my goals:

"To get back (something that was lost or taken away)"
"To get (a usable material) from materials that have been used before"
"To rescue from an undesirable state; to restore to a previous natural state"

More than reclaiming my life in general from veering off track, or reclaiming time lost down a black hole, or reclaiming my health after too much toxic exposure, or reclaiming my appearance after the onslaught of rosacea and chronic lack of sleep-water-exercise, or reclaiming my identity and independence from various relationships, or reclaiming my finances from fiascos big and small, or even reclaiming my chance to a life shaped to match my heart...

I want to reclaim my peace of mind. For so long, I felt captive to a negative hold that just wouldn't let me go, no matter how hard I tried to practice gratitude and various other mind-shifts. I felt so much external opposition that eventually "it is your own thinking / that darkens your world" (John O'Donohue). The internal and external worlds mirror each other, and like the chicken and the egg, I'm not sure which came first, but they sure go hand in hand. Inside-out and outside-in, I desperately needed things to shift. I think all that friction and pressure created a little fault line (that's where God came in) and eventually that helmet cracked open.

Now I can actually go to an expansive place where the breeze blows and I travel lightly, swinging freely from thought-vine to vine.

It was tempting for me to get upset about the waste left in the wake of March Forth. That ceramic top table where my first ever roommates and I displayed the goods for our parties. That set of teak units, deemed junk but would have been a mid-century-modern hipster vintage-shopper's dream. The TV console, the imperfect grill and dryer, the bookcases. Someone could have used that stuff. It could have been given away, sold, heck, even used for firewood to keep me warm over the past 2 days when the heat went out.

Determined to persist with my March Forth project, my current strategy is to pretend like I'm  moving. Last summer, I sold $340 worth of my stuff which I used to subsidize my rent during those two months when I couldn't bear to have a roommate. Now I've got $344.18 accumulated from selling a combination of things from my parents' house and my own non-essentials, all with the goal of being free from the burden of stuff, funding a family getaway, and transforming baggage into beautiful memories.

For starters, bye-bye bike, you made somebody's day today.

"God's sense of humor" is something I've heard about before but didn't really get until today. Well, this was a good one, and perfectly timed for April Fool's Day, to boot. Speaking of boots...

I was recently called "chaste princess." It was intended to challenge Disney-inspired notions of a helpless, wide-eyed girl locked in a tower awaiting savior from her liberating prince, and to challenge limiting gender roles ascribed by an antiquated society. In promotion of social justice and gender equality, favorite issues of the Unitarians. Or so he said...

Really, it was to overturn my commitment to chastity, the spiritual discipline I chose 5 months ago and have been enjoying since, to suit his wishes. Liberation seemed to be used as a euphemism for please me ! "Release your repressed self" is a nice invitation but I was not up for this call to the wild. It felt like a different version of the fantasy of a harem of virginal babes awaiting the man in heaven, just replaced with a pack of women who run with the wolves ferociously devouring their prey. Submission and dominance are really two sides of the same coin (control) and this case of repression/liberation seemed to rotate around a similar SON. Thank you, but your wish is NOT my command.

I wondered if I put myself in a role that is a product of a unhealthy society. If I'm hiding under the guise of discipline and protection when really it's just another form of bondage. If this self-imposed limitation is really keeping me repressed and out of touch with my true desires. If I'm taking myself too seriously. If this prim thing is hindering my growth. After all, shouldn't I be out dating and mating with an eye for a spouse? Exploring my longings so as to know myself better?

I'm thinking that intimacy is loving the person "as is", meeting them exactly where they are, joining them in that place (palace), and traveling together wherever you want to go. Not corralling someone your way, and definitely not casting judgements out of one side of your mouth, while pronouncing acceptance and freedom from inhibition out of the other side of your mouth.

The next day, I went to see Boston Ballet's then-current show which happened to be Cinderella. That's when God stepped in with something to say on the whole matter. Perpetually late, my mom and I had to watch the first act from a screen in the lobby, which gave me a chance to wander the gift shop and enter our names into a raffle. It was a treat to go to the ballet, and Scott helped validate this indulgence by asserting that we need to honor our gifts and loves in order to be fully alive and present to God.

Whaddya know, several days later I get a call that I won  that raffle. I was so excited (with a twinge of regret that my mom didn't win). The caller asked for my tee-shirt size and told me that, although they didn't have my size, she'd put the package in the mail straightaway (then I regretted not asking for my mom's size).

Today - April Fool's Day - my package arrived, priority mail, 1-day delivery (better than my birthday!). Inside, there was a tee-shirt for Cinderella in my size, and a shoe-horn, of all things, that somewhat old-fashioned tool used to help shoes go on better. Interestingly, "shoehorning" is defined as "the act of coercing or pressuring an individual into a situation which does not leave enough room" or "to force someone to take one of a limited number of positions." Doesn't sound very liberating to me ;)

I feel like God was having a laugh with the whole thing, especially this hot pink shoehorn. He called my name up and showered me with a gift as if to say: Cinderella, this one's for you. I know your ways . Your favorite blue. Your tendency to overwork (and then resent) like an Enneagram type 1. Here's to you, just as you are. So, to that aforementioned comment, God gave the rebuttal, the sanction, the final word. He extended an invitation that's easy to step into, because after all...

IF THE SHOE FITS, WEAR IT!

He really got the last laugh with this one :)