Category — Polaroids

there is a thing that i need to do. a stack of things, really. a stack of pretty 100-page books i had printed and bound from a ramshackle pile of pages i carefully packed around all over vancouver that comprise my book.

the book about the life and mess and thrill and heartbreak of faith, and the wild and courageous and deeply-flawed and beautiful women i know who live it every day. and i need to send these books to publishers. and to agents. and everything in my pregnant, over-heated body tells me to take a nap. but i really need a kick in the pants.

aggressive/encouraging commenting welcome below.

Parul Arora: You are a genius. A adore these coasters and might try my hand at a similar project. This year’s Christmas gift collection, perhaps?

Thank you, as always, to UPPERCASE (aka Janine) for faithfully leading me to the creative and curious.

A very goofy angel

It took parenthood to awaken me to the fragility of life. 

These days, as I make my way through the world, fearful thoughts dart through my mind: 

“What if that car, racing the red, hit me? I’d be brain-damaged, mangled. Would my daughter recognize me? When they wheeled me out of surgery would her face still crest like the sun at the sight of me? Or would she not know me at all?” 

I imagine her life without her mother and my eyes well with a flurry of tears.

In other moments, I think:

“What if something happened to my little girl? What if she had a life-threatening disease, her body shrunken to a mere few pounds as she fought for life? How would I cope with feeding tubes being laced down her throat? Would I crumble like paper or would I rise up, warring in the fight?”

I find my lips whispering prayers of thanks for life, every day. It’s a new posture for me. For most of my life I have taken life for granted. It was given. I am living it. But now, with a small life entrusted into my faulty hands, I tread lightly. I am mindful. I want to drive slower, look both ways, meander more, notice. 

It’s the way God sees, I think. He watches this spinning globe He made and hones in on a delightful little boy kicking soccer balls in Argentina. He smiles. Delights in this young child, destined for a profession in plumbing, fatherhood, public service. He sees the fullness of a life unfolding beneath dusty feet.

God is a God of love, the Bible tells us over and over. 

Psalm 33:18 reads: “The Lord watches over those who obey him, those who trust in his constant love.” 

How would our lives look differently if we believed it?

I’d be much less fearful, I think.

Tonight my good friend Marisa and I took to the Regional Assembly of Text for a special letter writing night. The CBC was there filming a doc, so basically we were stars. Typing stars. 

Oh yeah, our monthly Letter Writing Party is taking place a week early this month so we can write our mushy, ooey gooey love letters in time for Valentine’s Day. E-mail me for the locale. Julia the Chemist (a famous commenter around these parts) is hosting it at a lovely Queen’s Park apartment. 

Clickity clack, that’s that.

Paris, 2009

Cardus, my favourite Canadian think tank and publisher of Comment magazine, where I frequently contribute, has a new online venture called After Hours. It’s a daily blog interested in ‘issues that affect the architecture of North American public life, including economics, literature, religion, politics, social and scientific innovation (and sundry other things.)’

“Slow for Good,” my first post as a Contributing Editor, went live last Thursday. It’s a bit ‘manifesto-y,’ according to my husband. I get that way sometimes. 

Anyone is welcome to contribute to After Hours. Please, fire off an e-mail if you are interested.

“The devout of this world perform their rituals without guarantee that anything good will ever come of it. Of course there are plenty of scriptures and plenty of priests who make plenty of promises as to what your good works will yield (or threats as to the punishments awaiting you if you lapse), but to even believe all this is an act of faith, because nobody amongst us is shown the endgame.

Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying, “Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.” There’s a reason we refer to “leaps of faith” — because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don’t care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn’t. If faith were rational, it wouldn’t be — by definition — faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be… a prudent insurance policy. 

I’m not impressed with the insurance industry. I’m tired of being a skeptic, I’m irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I couldn’t care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.”

- Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat. Pray. Love.

I love being a mother. The insomnia that plagued me for weeks has been a burden but not one God is too small to bear. I find myself praying: “Lord, you are greater than sleep, than skyscrapers, than galaxies and milk. This is a small thing to you. You can give me rest.” I recite the Lord’s Prayer over and over.

Tonight, for the first night in weeks, I have stayed up after Madeleine fell asleep. Michael and I talked and laughed as I baked date squares and wore an exfoliating mask — two things I have been hoping to do all week but did not have the time. I read in Red Book last night that staying up later than the baby can thoroughly exhaust you enough to sleep. My stepmom suggested tumeric so I am sipping a cup of vanilla steamed milk with a dash of it thrown in. Red Book also suggested writing out your thoughts and worries.

God, I need to write out my worry to you.

I worry I won’t be able to sleep.

I worry I will think too much and it will keep me up.

I worry I’ve lost the ability - THE GIFT - of lying my head down on the pillow and falling asleep.

Madeleine.

I want to write about her but words fail me, and even writing that seems cheap. I adore her. Her eyes are orbits. A kind of muddy, deep blue, grey, green that stare right through you. She is inquisitive, happy, full of wonder.

The truth is, I worry that I won’t be enough for her.

That’s the true worry.

She has so much. IS so much. She overwhelms me. I want to show her everything in the world and also hide her away from every dark corner. I fear for her. Dream for her. I am overwhelmed by her. I know she looks to me, at this time, for all things. I am her world and I fear I’ll fail her.

Just today my mom and I spoke about the disappointment she feels with her family. She is hurting and recognizes her need to heal, change and grow. I don’t want Madeleine to have to heal from her childhood, her parenting. I want her to BE WHOLE.

I want to give her the world… to break open every mountain and molehill for her. I want to get out of her way and stare into her eyes, forever, at the same time. I want this impossibility. I want her to live with an impossible spirit - believing in everything - truth, beauty, love - and knowing nothing, NOTHING, is impossible with God.

I want her to know you, God — now. I bet she knows you already. She does. You visit her in her dreams. You take her to Saturn and back and you whisper your love for her in her ears. 

Like you do to me. Like you did. Like you want to.

Take us to Saturn together. 

Help me to understand, to experience (for this is the only true understanding) how you can love me and care for and see me so fully when there are billions of other people in the world. Help me to stop feeling like I am a fly and help me to start feeling like I am an ocean.

You see me. 

Help me to know it. Know your love like I know it with Madeleine. Show me in a million different ways. Give me eyes to see it, hear it, feel it. Every day. Begin tonight as I dream…

Bring me to rest, God. Nurse me in your arms, as I nurse Madeleine. Staring eye to eye. Staring into love.

The worst thing in the world is for me to look away from Madeleine. Sometimes I have to so she won’t wake up too much in the middle of the night. She gets too excited to see me.

My face makes her come alive. 

She searches out my eyes. Mommy, do you see me?

Daddy, do you see me? Let me see your face that I might live.

Christmas card, 2009 by Christina Crook

I’ve been wondering why I haven’t been writing on here a heckuvalot lately. For me, blogging happens in bursts. Sometimes I am spilling with things to say, and other times I’m not. I don’t want to fake it.

Plus, it has been busy. Christmas is around the corner. (Literally, I can see him peering, wiley, from behind our apartment-sized tree.)

This year’s Christmas baking included the tried-and-true: shortbread (with a red and green twist,) a newcomer: orange-laced date bars (I’ll post the recipe tomorrow,) and the kick-ass: the chewyist brownies you’ve ever laid your teeth into (I took the liberty of adding cranberries which, as Michael can attest, was a spectacular choice.)

I’ve also been back at the crafting. 2009 marked a new tradition — the inaugural year of homemade cards. Not cheesy scrap-booky-kinds but collage-y ones hacked out of magazines and pasted on beautiful cream papers from Granville Island’s Opus. I likey.

Here is one of my favourites:

Also, I made a ton of my little magnets. I love sorting through bins of paper and meticulously cutting circles… It’s a little bizarre considering the fact I normally hate this kind of monotony.

Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

English countryside 2009

I’ve been thinking a lot in the middle of the night, in between the sheets of waking baby…

I have been thinking a great deal about life as story.

Each of our lives follows a narrative arc. Much of life can feel like one-offs. Like ‘why did THAT happen?’ But our lives are telling a story.

Take Jesus for example. Jesus was born as a baby. A little, fragile, pooping baby. He grew up in the family home, the family trade. He was a normal kid (except, of course, he was God.) He went to the temple in his teenage years and wowed the religious folk with his incredible knowledge of Scripture and inordinate wisdom. He did other stuff, but it probably all seemed random. He built a table with his dad, Joseph. He talked with his mom, Mary. He visited the neighbours. He went fishing. And then, when he was in his 30s, he started doing this crazy stuff like calling people to follow him. His ministry began. He healed people, cast out demons, taught a new kind of way — a way where all are equal under God, a way where compassion and love (not religiosity) win, a way where the weak are strong, the first last, the poor rich. And we all know the great ending…

Jesus’ life has an arc, a story line, and it still continues…

So will ours. 

I often look back at my life thus far and scratch my head. Why did that happen? Why did I date him? Why did that relationship end?  How come that career trajectory came to a sudden end?  Why’d I get involved in politics? Why’d I work for a Christian ministry? 

I look ahead and the question marks continue to lay like dominos. Where am I going? How will this all end up? Will I ever end up writing for audiences bigger than this blog, bigger than small periodicals? Will my voice matter? Will I have an impact on people’s lives, bigger than my immediate circle of family and friends?Will I be a good mother, wife, friend? Will I ever make something of myself in public life?

I am beginning to connect the dots, the positive dots. The good things that have happened. The steps I’ve taken. The path of rocks God has laid across the pond of my life. There is an arc to my story. There is a plan, there is a point, I am going somewhere.

Yes we are. We all are.

“One Voice” by Calgary artist Connie Gibbens. Read her artist’s statement, where she describes her Circles theme, here. 

“We love wherever we can love, and the power of that love spreads until the circumference of the circle of love grows wider and wider. At least that has been my own experience, even though I know to my rue that the circumference of my love is still much too small.” 

- Madeleine L’Engle, The Irrational Season