Gratitude

On our short drive to a friend's house today, Addy asked me a question that I quickly summoned an answer to, but then realized - I don't actually know the answer to. Her question and my answer, within a matter of just a few minutes, awoke me from a lifelong state of indifferent observation and jolted upon me a deep spell of true, inspired gratitude - a new, brighter, lighter lens through which to see and love this world.

She asked me: "How do they make roads?"

"Well," I replied quickly. "There used to be just big grassy fields everywhere, and then they removed the grass with big machines and made dirt roads so that people could go from over here to over there. Then, they discovered how to make cement, and now construction workers pour cement and then smooth it out, and then it dries and becomes a road!"

Wow, what a logical yet absolutely speculative answer. I was content with my mediocre attempt - it might have even followed the synoptic lineage of road history. But Addy remained silent, peering out her car window, unimpressed. Or perhaps she had forgotten that she had asked the question. Or maybe, just maybe, she wasn't asking for an answer but just speaking a question.

After I offered my rapid and incomplete answer, I was struck - literally - slammed, into a place of humility. A place of awe. A place of true, sincere gratitude. I don't know why it was this moment, or this question, but it just - happened. I realized - how do I know how roads are made? Do I really know how roads are made? Who made this very road that I was driving on today? Did I sweat their sweat or design their blueprint? And what came before? Who created the grassy fields upon which the farms and farmers and wildlife imprinted their temporary existence that was then, for them, home. Footprints of their toils that were, for them, their whole hard life. In that moment, I realized that I look around my world and act as though I am its creator. As if I paved each road. As if I planted these trees that line my street or that speckle the forest landscape of my highway drive. Accordingly, it would seem, from my indifference to them, that I also erected all the buildings of my life, these stores here or those churches there or that mighty skyscraper here or that shelter there. I do not think, hardly even consider, the life that went into their foundations - the dripping tears and sweat of those real people who conceived of their vision, who gathered the materials, and who poured themselves out, day after day, to raise those standing walls - right there - from nothing but bare earth of the ground and the endless hard work of hands and minds, all working together. This is my world that I pass by everyday, without gratitude. Without care or thought.

I think about how boastful I can be about all the stuff that fills my life. The dressers and chairs and the over-the-counter medicines and the running water and even the walls of my home. How can I be surrounded by creation I don't really see or hardly ever say "Thank You" for? I think about my travels throughout the world - admiring the ancient buildings in Tunisia or the cobblestone roads of Germany or the mighty Alps in Switzerland. I admired them as much as I admired myself for being there, to witness them. But I stood inside those moments without true gratitude. Without simple humility. If I was grateful, it was for the opportunity. It was for having the means to be there or for having a camera to snapshot it into my life book of been-there and done-that. Thinking now - I did not fight the wars to wrestle those lands to freedom, I did not lay those old Bavarian cobblestone streets, stone by stone by stone. I did not love the walls of those ancient towers or cry at the mercy of their wreckage. I did not inspire those mountains of beauty. And I did not paint their cloud-washed view, the miracle of sky - so inexplicably majestic but yet a dimension of nature that needs no science, only human eyes, to discover. From the simplicity of a turning wheel to the intricacies of a thousand languages to the broadness of the starry night sky to the smallness of a computer microchip. This is the stuff that fills our everyday life. This is the stuff of our world that we consider ours, or ours enough to take for granted. For me, I offer such small, piecemeal gratitude, such shallow and temporary gratefulness, that I wonder why it all doesn't disappear in a dream so that I may awake, exasperated by its fullness and awed by its bounty.

Sometimes our lack of gratitude is an abundance of awe that is chaneled toward the wrong things. We scan the grand libraries and wall-to-wall books of a scholar, admiring him greatly for his expansive collection, how well-read he must be, and how much wisdom he must know. We admire him as if he authored every one of those books or imparted by self-endowment the entire wall of his knowledge. And even so, did he wire his trillion synapses or pare the tree for parchment? Did his hands build those shelves or his inventiveness light that lamp above his reading chair? Or, if we don't admire him, then we ridicule him, smirking critically - why does he spend his time so, reading these works that translate so unsubstantially to a life that really matters? Or, if we don't ridicule him, then we envy him - feeling ourselves inadequate, unread, or unenlightened by comparison, wishing in a small private way that we could be more like him, jealous of his accomplishments and depreciative of our meager own. When we judge others, for good or for bad, we are, at the same time, judging ourselves. As we stand on the sideline in observation of others, we are judging their lives, their accomplishments, their doings and their sayings as who they are against our self-judgment of who we are not, or, vice versa. Why, why is this so? Why does criticism, envy, and self-depreciation, or, just the opposite - boastfulness and self-proving, rise so quickly to our surface while gratitude stays locked from our hearts or silent from our lips? Why can we not appreciate the work and life of others, and all the stuff of life, and release that gratitude from our clenched fists?

Yes, gratitude does come to us, even overwhelms us at times. As a mother, it comes - that glowing moment, as we stare deep into the eyes of our newborn babies, these little lives we carried but know we did not by our own labor create. How? How! These tiny fingers, these yearning eyes, this fragile paper skin? It is all too miraculous for answers; it can only be contained in question. Or as parents, watching our children grow into themselves - learning and leaping into life before we can explain to them, or to ourselves, just quite how. Why we are not more alive in this kind of gratitude but instead half asleep most days with indifference, I do not know. Why we do not burst alive with "Thank You!" moments each day for no reason except to throw joy into the air because we must, because we literally cannot cap our wonder - I do not know.

It is difficult, plainly yes, when we are sunk into our suffering, struggling with the madness of complexity, the chaos of details, the annoyances of daily life or the incurable hurt of others - it is hard to envelope gratitude when our hearts are gripped otherwise with pain, anger, or isolation. We look at these dark things as the "stuff of life." But are they, really? Or other times, we are gripped inside ourselves. We become our own scholar - admiring all that we know and all that we have as though they are the fruits of our own toilsome labor, or the brilliant creation of our working mind in solitude.

Knowing that this is so far from the truth; knowing that this world of ours is not truly ours but His; knowing that we should give thanks to each other for what we each add to our world by our talents and our love, and ultimately, giving thanks to God - for the wonder that is life, that is science, that is family, that is nature, that is play, that is art, that is conversation - for that which is the deep and beautiful connection between all things living and all things provided - this is humility. This is love for others. This is joyfulness to God. This is, in its basic and broadest essence, gratitude: true, affectionate, unbridled, jubilant thankfulness for all things, great and small.

I am awake and alive as I look about me, right now, as if I had never seen our world this way before. In this very moment, as Addy lay sleeping on the couch after a long afternoon of play, I thank God that she earlier asked me her question, and that she resides in a place where holy curiosity is her instinct and not in a place where she offers all the answers. I feel called to go there, to run to where she is, inside that vivid place of holy curiosity and instinctive wonder, and to love in gratitude, this world, simply - as if I was a child. Because, in God's eyes, I am.

Undefined

It is undefinable, the conscious knowing that I do not know much beyond a remote absolute nothing really. Thinking about Tripoli. Thinking about Iraq. Thinking about Taiwan. Thinking about Somalia. Thinking about the oppression of entire nations. Thinking about the largeness of genocide and the smallness of genocide. The universal moment of excruciating, unbearable pain inside one small child. Thinking about the solid repression against his innocence, carved into him, a tiny body. That he may be one suffering life over the moon, or decades gone, or just a mile from my own city. I do not know. He remains there, undefined in shadows.

It is undefinable, the thinking about the million complex layers webbed upon our human history where one flashing moment everywhere is changed absolutely by one conscious heart, trying and alive, scattered amongst the billion spread of rising dust and dying stars falling century after century after century. Red blood pumping, trying, living, and dying. Drops of star water. To me, I look to my sky and I see only rain. I feel only water. But I know, it is so much more. Heavens tear open people's anguished skies and pour down rains of so much more. How I can feel water when I know others bear tears of steel and sheets of fire? I know not what to do. I know nothing, not even what I know to write.

It is undefinable, the knowing that a person is suffering my human death, unmine, and living so definitely inside my own cement temple that I do not suffer any pain from unknowing. For most cement moments of my life.

But in these other moments, glass and thinking, paper and feeling, these here, the undefinable ones - it is beyond moral comprehension to know. To know even which one question to ask. It is beyond my trifle science, and limitlessly beyond my single judgment against those in positions who do not decide but who must decide, against those in positions who must defend or who cannot defend, who must defy or who must defect, or even those who must stand up or must lay down and die. I stay still to this chair, aside so far from any such position.

But in this undefinable moment, I find myself yearning, an unbreakable hurt, toward what stands between me and him my one small child, feeling altogether and together, we, helpless against this universe except to write him into prayer: Pray save his heart, that His heavens pour upon him Water of Life, the day's great rains, and to him emerge, undefined between hardened walls of life, into what is eternal - his tiny sacredness, defined, and loved without boundary beyond these shadows.

Evolution of Belief

They believed.
Raised me to believe.

Childlike
Belief.
Naively believed.
What is belief?
Wondered if I believed.
Believed I believed.
Needed proof to believe.

Worried
If I believed.
Tried to believe.
Wished I believed.
Questioned belief.
Doubted I believed.
Forgot about belief.
Why believe?

Revisited
Belief.
Challenged belief.
Frustrated with belief.
Ridiculed belief.
Too good to believe.
Complete self belief.

My children are born.

I asked myself:
Do you believe?
I answered: I don't know anymore
What I believe.
Ran through the motions
As if I believed.
Waited.

Nothing.
Resigned to
Just pretending I believed.
And to my children,
Preaching belief
Without living belief.

Shock.
A simple question.
One day, He asked:
Do you believe in Me?

Terrified. Disbelief.
He knows my simple answer:
No.
I do not believe.

The loneliest torture.
I can't believe.

Waited.
Waited.
Waited.
Wrote.

Realized,
Broken self belief,
And incomplete.

Listened.
The page told me:
You need belief.

He told me:
You need Me.
I answered: Yes.
I prayed: Please.

Opened.
Confessed.
Surrendered.
I see.

Now
By God's grace,

Yes.
I believe.

One Small Soul and Whole

It is perhaps the greatest and most mighty act
In all thirty years of my own life revolution
When I unhitched my orbit around myself to
Unbecome.

To lift my face with two clasped hands to
Re-become.
To recognize a planet self
No more or less than one small soul, and
Whole.

Not ashamed to kneel humbly before God.
To confess in truth that I have sinned.
To ask Him for His forgiveness.
To believe in Jesus Christ, my Savior.

These are my elements.

Today I rejoice in removing myself
From my very center.
And in my place,
His Grace. The Cross -
Gravity of new life given to me.
Sun of a reborn universe.

Letter to John

Dear John,

I feel a true need to thank you for your sermon two weeks ago. To you it was another Sunday, another sermon, and another hope that you might, that day, reach someone's heart. As you stood before all of us, speaking, I felt so strongly that you did just that. I felt you speaking, directly to me. For me. Asking me very kindly to listen to your story. And like a small miracle, I did. I want to thank you for your words, for your ability to preach with humility and a very true love for God.

I was raised Presbyterian and attended church regularly throughout my childhood, but my connection to God was really my connection to the life of my church, my fellowship with the friends and the family and the people of God, and not to the Life of God. I did not know this then. As I left to go off to college, I did not return to God. God was in the walls of a church I no longer attended, and so, God slowly eroded away. Finally, and I do not know exactly when, but I bid Him adieu and propped myself upon a pedestal of self-belief. This is where I stayed until I fell - all the way down, knees to the ground. I did not know that I was falling before Him. I just knew that I had fallen. That I needed help.

For so long I have not been able to quite understand what my tangled issues with my faith were, but I now know - it was simply that I felt - ashamed. Ashamed for trying too hard to pray to God, but never feeling Him listening. Ashamed for taking communion and not being able to concentrate on Jesus' sacrifice for me, but rather, allowing my thoughts to float elsewhere, often - to thoughts of doubt and my private intellectual conversations about the futility of religion in general. And perhaps, most of all, ashamed of baptizing both of my children and having a closed heart as I did. My decision to baptize my children was rooted in my love for my family, and not for my love for God. I did not know why I had been running from faith, but now I know - this is why. I ran from faith because I had none, but I was too ashamed for so many years to acknowledge this. I kept myself from thinking about it long enough or deeply enough so that I would never have to truly know myself or admit that I was a sinner. I was always - too good, too proud. My mistakes were mistakes and never - sins. Now I think - how selfish and how foolish, but this is how the wheels of my life turned.

My parents, bless them both, raised me, nourished me, to believe in God, but I have now realized - no one else can believe for me. Only I have the power to believe. It is mine to turn towards or, to turn away. And for many years, I have turned away, walked away, and resigned to believing that God merely equaled my awe of infinite scholarship and science and nothing more.

Danny, Addy, Joey and I moved to Springfield in October of 2009, and we would sporadically attend various churches on Sunday. Speaking for myself, I wanted to go to church because it felt like the "right thing to do." The right thing for our children. But over the last few years, the shame became too much for me. Each time I sat in church - any church - I felt like a fraud - sitting in those pews, sitting amongst believers, taking communion, bowing my head in silent thought but never silent prayer. I realized a few months ago - I literally could not pray. My heart was shut. My eyes - closed.

A few months ago, we attended Southside while you were having a family sermon, with a really great potluck organized after church. I almost had a panic attack. Danny wanted to stay, to mingle, to eat, and to let the kids play. But I needed to leave, and to do so immediately. I felt intense shame and intense - anger. I had no idea why. But now I know. It is because I could not sit and break bread and enjoy fellowship with Christians when I was a non-believing stranger - walking in at the most convenient lunch hour, no less. And more than that, more than anything - it was because I would be there, committing a lying act in front of my children. To my children. Watching me there, at church, pretending as though I belonged when really I brought them there with such little true faith or belief in anything.

Now I know, God was asking me that day - "Do you believe in Me?" For so long, I felt unaccountable to God. Unaccountable to anyone. But on that day, the day of the potluck, God came to me and asked me: "Do you believe in Me?" and I ran away from Him, terrified, because I could hear myself. I could hear my voice. It was answering: "No." I was angry because I felt caught. I was terrified because, for the first time, I felt the need to be accountable. The need to be honest. To God and to myself.

There are many things that have happened since January that have led me on the path to where I am in my faith as I write you this letter. It began with the simple act of picking up the pen and writing. I love writing, and have always loved it, but I abandoned it many years ago. I was not good enough to write, I told myself. I convinced myself - "You'll never be a writer." So naturally, I stopped. Even though I lived with contentment and purpose in my life - my children, my husband, my family - I still felt so, purposeless. As I began to write, I felt a calling - to return to the blank page, day after day. And so I did. I wrote my anger and my pain and my nothingness off my soul and I saw myself, honest there on the page, and instead of fearing it, or hating it - I held it. Loved it like my own child. I have since realized, and just in the last few weeks, that it was God, holding me. It was God - calling me back. "Come to the blank page and I will help you fill it up." Now, I am listening. I am answering my calling and doing so with an open heart. And I feel an overwhelming need to share it. Not just my writing, but just my honest soul. My blank page today was calling your name, and my need to tell you about the power of your sermon.

In your sermon a few weeks ago, you talked about how the sister of the girl who first brought you to God was in the congregation that day. You explained how you were, at a young age, on a path towards Buddhism and that Christianity merely lined your fascination with all the other world religions. But then you talked about your first real experience with Christianity, and that afterwards you called up this girl - the only girl you really knew who was a born-again Christian and who truly loved God with all her heart - and how she challenged you and encouraged you to read the Bible and wait for your heart to open. As you described how you took that trip up to Chicago, cracked open your Bible, waited for a miracle, and tried to force tears for dramatic effect - I laughed out loud, thinking, "Yes, that's how God calls people, right? Performs a grand miracle and booms His Voice from the clouds and then people fall over and they become saved and love the Lord, right?" I was never sure what "God's calling" would be like, but it never seemed like to could happen in the way it happened to you - sitting in a hotel room, reading the Bible, sliding it on your nightstand, and waking up just feeling a little different. That didn't sound all that spiritually gripping. God didn't part the heavens on the day you were saved. But here you stood, a man whose love for God was so evident in the way you move and the way you speak and the joy you bring to those around you. As you spoke, it hit me, "God can speak to us in the smallest of ways. I must just listen. I must just be willing to soften my heart, enough to let it crack just the slightest bit open."

You also explained how we can serve God in so many ways. We can be active in the church, sure, but we can serve God by doing His work cheerfully, with enthusiasm, with love in our hearts. When you said these words, I thought, "I can write. I can be a writer. Maybe I am not meant to be a Christian writer. But I am meant to write and God is calling me to do so, and I am not ashamed to say that. I can write that as my Truth and do so with passion and enthusiasm. And in knowing what my Truth is, and by living my Truth, I am serving God." I felt like you - by saying that to me - gave me permission to just answer my calling and to do so with love in my heart. I felt, free. Free to answer my calling, simple as writing may be, and know that I am doing what I am meant to do. For so long, I've felt like I needed to volunteer in my community, to be a mentor somehow - but these things did not fill my primal soul. That I can only do by listening to God and by writing what is in my honest heart. I have so, so far to go in my faith, but my heart has been cracked open just the slightest bit, and I am letting in His light.

Thank you, John, for just being an example for me. We have literally only spoken a few times. I have only attended Southside a handful of times. But I will remember that I found God in Springfield, Illinois, and that you were His disciple, inviting me like a friend to join His table. For the first time, I can pray to the Lord, and I will pray for you as you have - without even knowing - prayed for me.

With sincere gratitude,

Stacey Grant

Left to Wonder

There's light easy pleasure left to simple words sitting in grocery cart parking lots, and sleeping children and I wonder if you feel it with me.

There's symmetry of unnoticed curiosity looking up to that four corner lightpost, off until dusk and I wonder if you see it with me.

There's slightly different something perfect in every slow song radio note, background to listening thoughts and I wonder if you hear it with me.

There's that which becomes so nearly captured shy in this, one, word that is so finely close, but never quite and I wonder if you speak it with me.

Why we turn ourselves away to not meet the real eye of each other,
her walking or him standing, all of us looking about us alone or moving together talking yet still missing what it means to really listen to steps inside each others' footprints giving way to passing moments and every time losing just a little something,

Lost intrigue tells our story always simple in moments when we sit small and speechless, everything vulnerable, but never each or all of us at once and I'm left just wondering if you might meet me, here - where I am, and understand.

Here we go again

Knock-knock. Pulling up the covers.

KNOCK.
KNOCK.

Wut.
Who's there?

Voooor-AAAA-cious!

Voracious who-
Whoa what Hey how'd you even get-

The door? was unlocked?
Gotta check that.

No seriously you left me dancing Immaculately
Collected all by myself two in the morning and-

What's this?

You brought three morning shots of Red Bull? For me?
It's not even nine.

Did you drink yours al-?
Oh.
Right. Whoop-dee-do.

Shit-eatin' grin.

Just turn off the light, will ya?
Not that one,
Tha-at one. Yes.

Fine.
Hold the vodka.

Yes, I mean no.
Yes really--No.
Long story.

Here let me at least get up and pee first
Yes, yes, here we go.
Shaky-shaky blah blah -
Get my dancing shoes.

They're under the computer.

Whadda Party Pooper

I MUST without thinking
Immediately
Write
This
Word
Out tonight:

Voracious!

Just before immediately
Read it in a pretty pale canary book and THREW it! mad across
My midnight bedroom.

Oh so saucy and so spiney like tiny baby tooth
Insanity stealing sane drops of

Something gone tersely out of its
P-P-P-Pe-CUL-IAR mind! Oh piracy! Aarrr!
No,
Piracy! Napster! Ooh yes!

Naw, not really. But this is
Fun, hmm?

Relaxing a bath spirit down drifting to a quiet bed-book
Oh, shoot, alright just one calling little night page before every

Light
Goes
Out.

HO-LEEY!
JUMPin' wild woman all lasso crazy skeered me!
Shout'in out rabble rousin' from
Fields of flitting, delicate, litter-RARE-eeeee...sugar, please
You
One
GIANT
Word!

Striking me upon the face fancy as
An olive
Straight up nope dirty martini type
Like - POW!

Eat Voracious put it with N-E-S-S and
Try to sleep with THAT tonight!
Chuggy-chug THAT down and don't
Piss before morning!

Oh no, no, no.
Mama ain't down with That.
Word On Fire.

You woke my house to Let's-get-it-started! Yea!
Let's-get-it-started! Wow!
Party hardy
Me all close to tears of self-reflection
Then -

FLUNG Me! wall to wall
Switching every
Room
Light
On.

Flash

So
I
Wake
You!

We shake-your-bon-bon
Fight Club knuckle blast
Each other to this muscle page, aw C'mon

80's let's Madonna moonlight cone-bra dance
And be
Madly merry,
Shall we?

We shall not?

Oh.

Now you drop.
Dead tired
Nadda
Va-va-
va-voom left
In your
Strung-out innocently vitrol
Velocity.

Hmm.

Even you,
Voracious

Hike my monthly life electric bill never
Turn lights off when you leave

stops.
to
sleep.

Knock, Knock. Who's There? God. God Who? No, Seriously. Open the Door.

A young man's laptop flickered that awful blue warning screen earlier in the day. "Aw shit." Rebooting it three times, and just long enough to save his sermons, he knew his computer literacy skills had met their maker. He knew neither how to fix it nor which new computer on the market would best suit his needs. Best Buy would likely be getting a priestly visit after 5pm.

That afternoon, only one person came to his confessional. A quiet young man entered and sat down. "So, I'm kinda a self-professed computer geek but I don't have real, um, I guess you'd say - social skills. So sometimes, I...will...lie...kinda."

"Go on."

"Well, to try and impress others, I'll say I'm a computer science grad, even though I have never taken a course in my life. I just, you know, get a good reaction from people. But I do really like trying to help'em, you know, give'em tech advice or fix their computers. But, I'm just sorta passin' off internet wisdom as my own."

Sitting up, the young priest cleared his throat. "Oh yes? And what wisdom would that be?"

"Okay so there's the latest gadget reviews on Gitgizmo.com and this awesome computer fix-it website called PCtechbytes.com, and--" He trailed off. "Sorry. I meant - just websites about computers and stuff like that."

Remaining as priestly as possible, the robed man leaned closer, interested, and tried to cloak his question as a whispered statement. "You said PC...tech...bytes. With a Y?"

"Yes sir. Um, I mean, yes Father."

Scribbling silently on his hand, the young priest spoke with quiet definition, under his breath. "God works in mysterious ways." Then, snapping back to his present duty, paused and whispered, "Ten Hail Marys and the Lord's Prayer. And child--"

"Yes Father?"

"Live in who you are, and ask the Lord to help you reach out - in honest fellowship with others."

"Thank you, Father," the young man said, speaking clearly with a new voice of confidence, and thinking about how this was the most talkative Father he's ever come across in confession.

"Your sins are forgiven, go in peace."

After the computer geek left, the priest laughed, said a prayer for forgiveness for talking so much, and went home with God-filled hope of fixing his own computer and saving himself a few bucks.

Only he realized - in order to search the internet to fix a broken computer, you first need: a computer that is, well - not broken.

Heading to Best Buy in street clothes just before 8pm that night, the young priest shook his head, a bit bummed with six hundred dollars of his hard earned cash in hand, and dismissed the notion of godly irony during his car conversation with God. "Of all Your infinite capabilities, bad jokes just happen to be one of them."

Suddenly, he broke hard right. Before he could complete his conversation, he whipped into a dark parking lot, lit by a small blinking red ticker tape sign: "Free PC Diagnosis! Free PC Diagnosis!"

Smiling at the blinking red God wink and His remarkable timing, the priest shut the engine off of his turquoise 95' Cavalier clunker and got out. It took him a decade and a slew of prayers for humility to drive that thing without cringing.

With only two other cars in the parking lot and the building light on, he knew he had just skidded in before closing time. With the side door open, reaching for his laptop, he saw it. Laying there - having flown off the backseat after the harsh right turn and strewn on the floor - was his computer, covered in - a full can of diet Coke, laying aside like an amused freshman prankster and rolling to a stop, completely empty with laughter. The priest, unlike the can, was not laughing.

"Hey, good timing. They're just about to close up shop."

Trying to subdue his anger, the priest turned around, slowly registering the young man's voice as the computer geek from confessional.

"You know what," the priest said, unable to hide his annoyance. "I think it's unfixable at this point. Thanks though." Tired and frankly, unamused by the coincidence, the priest said with half-interest, "So, you must work here."

"Oh no. No, sir, not me." The young man shook his head and pointed to the bank next door. "I'm just their janitor. But some nights I'll walk over, you know, stay late to talk shop with the owner, Jeffery. Guy's a tech genius, I swear. He kinda just fills me in about what's new on the market. My mentor, I guess you'd say." Waving off a smile, he said, "Not that I can afford any of it."

"Oh, gotcha," said the priest. "Well. Have a good night." He began to step into his car.

"But you know," interrupted the janitor. "I do like to fix computers on the side, or, at least try. I could take'a look at your computer for you, if you'd like." He tried as best he could to not look embarrassed, standing there in plain clothes and workboots.

"He's doing well," the priest thought to himself, remembering how the young man had described himself as having no real social skills. "It's not that he lacks social skills," he determined. "Just self-belief."

As the priest was about to respond to his offer, the janitor spoke up again. This time, with confidence. "I have to admit. So...," taking a deep breath and taking his hands out of his pockets, "I am no expert at computers. A lot of it is just me tinkering around, you know, working on old computers that people scrap and learning whatever I can off the internet, but it's fun and I'd do it for free. There's this one site - PCtechbytes.com that's really awesome."

"Oh yeah?" the priest said, a small smile appearing. "Is that bytes, with a Y?"

Feeling at ease now, the janitor chuckled. "That's really funny - you're actually the second person who's asked me that today."

Breaking into a huge grin, the priest felt the weight of anger leave his body. In its place, a tiny joy. "Oh, is that so."

After exchanging contact information, the priest handed over his Coke soaked computer. "Tell you what," he said. "If you're able to fix this bad boy, I'll pay you half of what I would have paid for a new computer." Shuffling dirt with his workboot, the janitor looked up. "Oh. No sir, but thanks. I mean, if I can fix it up for ya and you're happy, maybe you could refer me a friend or two." Thinking of his 1500 member congregation, his large office staff, and all his friends in the area who he knew from seminary, the priest nodded and smiled. "I can think of a friend or two."

Driving home, into the night, the priest thought about the janitor - about his confession and his humble repentance, and said a prayer for him. And he thought about God and His day-long joke, then laughed out loud at the punchline.

Enjoy the Show

I'm begging like a lack-luster MC
To somehow just keep the hilarity in tact
When she tiptoes a three and a half sleepy midnight question
Into our lamp yellow book quiet bedroom: "Can I sch-weep wish you guys?"

It's good enough for standup if I could deliver it right.

Or his twenty-two month midday fit of leg-slapping fury
Furrowed eyebrows and scowling madness.

Better than Belushi.

A miniature wolf boy howl, revealing
Chewed up asparagus green crayon
Waxy bits shooting out with every decibel scream over -
Who knows what.

Gotta love our couch potato rhetorical persistence: "Why are you crying?"
Yes, you're right. I'd cry louder too.
It's a terrible question.

No applause, please.

Almost as awful as overstretched leopard cotton pants
Tripping now, oops - "Are you...?"

Long dramatic pause. Great stage effect.
Okay, she's up and twirling again.
Hair's an absolute Fraggle Rock disaster.

A multi-color polka-dotted hoodie and her--
Wait,

When did she change her pants?

Additional note to self - he's got no pants.
Just a flappy diaper
Those chubby bare stout legs
And that -
Wooden kitchen spoon?

Forgot I was looking for that.

Lost in mismanaged utensil abyss for six months
Somehow
Reappearing in this magic show instant
A musical drum tool tapping a greasy beat
Against a fingerprint window, and him -
Singing, sort of,
An unintelligible rock-beat tune.

Impressive range, I might add.
Operatically high and cowboyishly low
For a boy his age.

Don't chip that Andersen window -
That's $357 + labor, buddy.

Taking...wooden...spoon...Monster grip.

Three, two, one. I win.

Blood-letting scream.

Yup, empty handed crying slapping little legs red.
But I've got back my wooden spoon.

Hmm, a dog bite mark. Suspect.

Wish I could do
These ordinary days justice
Our family run in-house shows
Extraordinarily full of the best unrehearsed jokes
I've ever heard
Deep ad-lib belly laughs,
My walking toy tornado props -
Restricted vocabulary skits and unrestricted
Ingenuity.

Yes, I love them both, my sidekick show.
Unstoppable comic release,
Without end,
Or even,
Relief.

Google and God

Moses and the burning bush. I've heard of this guy in various flashes - a Sunday school handout, a ceiling fan sermon (round and round go the blades in rhythm with the pastor's inflection: "Moses freed his people...from the Egyptian Pharaoh...saw God in a burning bush..."), a summer camp song in high school where we broke out chanting, "Let my people go!" Yes, I have heard of this Moses, poor baby boy, floating down a river, inspiring the name of that carry-all basket that my children slept in between the ages of zero to five months. I was pretty sure, from all the miscellaneous talk about him, this Moses was a pretty swell guy. Must have done something amazing for all the references flung to his credit and name-dropping pastors would do, here and there, for years during my church life. So last night, I read of him, this baby - Moses. This man - Moses. I read of his faith. I read of his fear. His fear of God. His fear of inadequacy. His fear of undeliverance of what God called him to do. I read of his staff, given to him by God, his safe-keeping in his brother Aaron, and all the plagues, and the Exodus, and the Passover. It was, simply, fascinating. A lesson in history, a small beckoning of faith. I will have to read it again. And again, to let it jar my mind and rest in my bones. I freely admit, my first reaction while reading of the plagues was to Google for proof. I still might. This is where I am in my faith. Wikipedia is not god, immortal, divine, or omnipotent. A few weeks ago, damn, even less than that, I might have argued otherwise. But Wikipedia it is. Perhaps it's God calling me, no, downright CHALLENGING me, to Google the shit out of my questions (Go ahead, Stacey - keep on rocking those click buttons! See how far it'll get you!) only to - after four treacherous hours of inconclusive bullshit balking at me like a perfunctory research assistant sporting swim floaties in a dry overloaded sea of half-truth information - crawl into bed with 2AM internet fatigue and eulogize His infinitely hellish humor and conclude that - yes God, you are right - the world wide web is a false blackhole vacuum deity hyperlinked together with shady sources and annoying ancillary advertisements. You're right, you're right, God Almighty. I shoulda just believed. But ah, the road of faith, takes me to Google, five degrees to a Logitech e-commercial, and one more click to, none other than, our man - Kevin Bacon. That is where the buck will stop, but my small ark of faith takes me there, out to dry sea, a Kevin Bacon island, a quick Footloose interlude, and hopefully, back again. He'll be waiting, I'm sure, smirking at me as if He threw me a paddle and then, while I adjusted my oars and admired the beauty, turned the waters upstream.

In the name of creation

Creation is the dust of suffering
Ashes of char blackening our deepest forests
Burning raw life wild.
Blended alchemy
Water and gasoline
Our contaminated mental disaster
To sort humanity
From what it is not.

Creation trickles from intellect's blood
Streaming through the Charles River
Marches nearer east toward revolutions
Entrenches Detroit's drug scene
Clenches million dreams and
Starry bomb nights of
War children.

All which is creation
Is what creation is not -
Uncomplex. A middle-America

Wife, bland
Slouching in a mid-week waiting room
Tapping grocery list toes to
Pastel art stuck to eggshell and
Anxious florescence clicking
Inside a daughter's ear infection.

Creation does not come here
To a middle-America mother
False stranger to unsuffering concrete.

Why then does she gasp, inner ear
Combustion
A gas life underbrush -
The scholars' debate
Dignity rising thousand squares of assembly
Toledo Avenue meth corners
And cries of Kabul.

Why must she plain be neither
Water nor gasoline
When so desperately on Wednesday
She waits for the forest door
A clipboard calling her insolvent need

To give creation away
Pry wide open
Genius minds
Tiny hurt hands
Reach far inside
Burning trees
And give them her name.

How the Daffodils Bloomed

How the daffodils bloomed today
Or was it yesterday
Before sky held sun
A Chinese proverb could tell me
Simple wisdom upon bamboo slats
Ancient shelves and vertical ink
Of timeless century
A man and his pen and a single postulate
Continents away, a meditating life
Patient with his nature
Balancing himself upon a single point
Life of a single flower
Unwrapping its holy mystery
Becoming from nothing
Escaping every eye
Except his two
Still dew in his - a lotus morning
My same sun upon his face
Reflecting awe and light
He remains, a proverb born
Watching existence
Bloom to life
As it is quiet to perish.

Dear Lise and Bree

Dear Lise and Bree,

I want to thank you both for the sacred space you fill in my life. I feel true happiness writing you this letter. Sometimes I compare the people who are in my life - "I can connect with this person on this level" or "She knows this part of who I am but not this part." I realize - it is okay. I'd love to be as honest across the board with everyone in my life, but even if I am different to some than others - it is okay. I wanted to write you both at once because I feel so strongly about sharing these thoughts with both of you.

I read your email, Bree, about starting to write. I am so truly glad. I also read what you wrote about not having the same writing background. About not being a poem writer. I also remember, Lise, you sharing with me some of your drawings in Bamberg. I haven't forgotten them - you showed me for a reason. Because they meant something to you, something that gave me insight into who you are by looking at who you were, years ago, when you drew those pictures. You were drawing me closer into your life by sharing them, and even if you didn't think much of it at the time, it meant something memorable to me. Like Bree, I hope you pick up the pen again - to draw, to write, to just express.

I am not sure where I am going from here, but I can say that I have a stronger center of myself than I've ever had. I feel like I am just beginning my ascent. I literally have no idea what lies ahead of today. But I need to share what is in my writing mind today, and that is, my hope for you. What I hope for both of you is this: To write from where you are and to write from who you are. And always, to write honestly.

Now, I know that writing is something important to me, and perhaps not to you. Perhaps it is drawing, or it is another form of expression. But writing is the place I can speak from, so that is why I think: write, write, write. It is also why I can only explain what I want to say through the history of my own story.

Many times over for many years I have been searching. I would put a name on my search each time I began: "I am searching for God." "I am searching for myself." "I am searching for my purpose." "I am searching for inner peace."

Each time, I would come up short. Not just a little short, but by distant miles. So each time I'd try to find a particular something, I felt failure. I felt like I failed. Failed myself. Failed the God I was trying to find. Failed others for not being the person I was pretending to be, or who I felt I ought to be. But months would pass and I would muster the gumption to try again. This time, searching for something else, and always, I would circle around to the same end - nothing. So I chalked up my existence, my life and my worth as somewhat purposeless. I saw purpose in being a good wife, in being a good mother. "This is who I am!" I would think, over and over, as I claimed each life milestone as my own. "This is who I am." But yet, my soul was restless. My heart longed in pain for more, but I tried to shut it off: "Isn't this enough? Why can't I just be content?" Thinking of those truly suffering, thinking of the impoverished, the poor, the sick, the war-stricken. I felt so selfish, petty, and incapable of maintaining true perspective. I would try to keep perspective, "search for perspective", but yet, I could find nothing. Nothing that would stick. Nothing that would calm me past a temporary moment. So I would turn outward. Outward to the news and the books and the blogs and the world around me, outside of me. I would admire the creation of others. Love the words that others would write, the deeds others would accomplish or success others would achieve. And each time, it would sadden me, anger me, or and push me further away from myself, because I realized - I wasn't loving what others created, I was only sad that I couldn't create something similar for myself, to believe in something for myself. Or to just believe in myself. Instead, I kept turning outward. I kept turning out and never in, towards myself.

I believe the reason why I could never find what I was looking for is because I didn't want to start where I was. With who I was. I wasn't good enough in the moment I was in, the skin I was in, the thoughts I had, the life I lived. I wanted to be more, and so I always began in a place I never was, a place of a distant dream that wasn't really mine. It was like trying to capture fog in a glass - I could almost see it, but then, it was gone. And I was left just holding an empty glass soul. So I let my soul go. No real faith. No real purpose. I'd run through the motions of life trying to love as much as I could and nothing more - "Isn't this good enough?" But my soul would return to me, always, restless and needing me, like a child to her mother.

When I picked up the pen back in January, my writing was ugly. It was cynical. It was satirical and cutting. I was writing like I was pissed off, like I was strangling the world with my pen and not caring who I hurt. But, here's the thing - my writing was for me. It wasn't for a blog post I thought I'd be sharing or for entry into a writing contest. It wasn't for anyone's eyes but my own. For the first time, I could read my soul on a page and say with an abiding, unapologetic "Yes! That is who I am! This is the inside of me coming out, pouring out." Part of me felt sadness for all the pain that lashed onto the page, part of me felt a sense of shame and humiliation. "And you call yourself a good mother? And you call yourself a loving person?" Why would I have these thoughts pumping through my writing veins? It was because I just began where I was. With who I was. I wasn't writing "I wish my purpose was..." or "I am looking for God..." I would not write: "The trees looked beautiful today" if really, I saw them out my window looking as broken and bare as I felt. I would write about their brokenness instead of writing how I wished they weren't. It was just letting the person I was be. Let that person have a voice. Have a purpose in every word. To just exist. I could be who I was because that is who I was. I wasn't God-loving. I wasn't filled with meaning and purpose. I wasn't loving every part of me, or every part of my life. And I wrote about it. I let myself just be. And yes, that is when it came to me, the realization that - I can be this person, in this moment. I can write myself out, line by line by line, and then I can close the computer. Put down the pen. And I can move on to just living. But each time, I felt like I could live more authentically. To speak simply and not to speak as though I knew anything more or was anything more than who I was. Many times, I felt sheer pain. Sheer sadness. I cried tears over my writing, wondering where it was all coming from, and more so, where it would take me. But I wouldn't stop writing because of the tears. I wouldn't shut off the valve because I was angry. And now, I won't pick up the bottle and begin to drink, to forget myself for a night, only to wake up, regretting that I was still the same person. I'd write through it all because there was always the other side. The last sentence of the night. At the other side of my final word, I would be met by a new moment for me to live in, for me to breath in. I could exhale on the page and inhale past it. For the first time I saw myself, honestly, there on the page. My words were not for judgment. They were not for comparison. They were not for God. They were not searching for anything. They were just honest, and I became good enough for myself to live with.

I want to tell you, assure you - you can write in any form and style. Not just a style you like or a style you admire - but the style you are. You write simply, or abstractly, or choppy, or in circles. Write a sentence or a paragraph. A word or an essay. It doesn't matter. Just write honestly. For me, I feel like I can breath in poetry. I feel freedom in poetry. But that is just me. I am not you and you are not me, and always, I would think for many years about how I always wished I could be more unlike myself and more like others. It just doesn't work. It's just a springboard for dishonesty. We can admire others, value others, but I believe we should start from where we are and go from there, and not the other way around. You may sit down and not be able to "find the right words." It is okay. As long as you are being honest, then they are all the right words. Don't write "sad" if you feel "pissed" or don't write "wonder" if you mean "struggle." Of course, you want to think about what you write, to a degree, but there's never a need to overthink it. Just write the words closest to your fingertips and they will always be the right words. You may sit down and many times cannot think of what to write. But here - start with how you feel, in that moment. Or the closest thought to you, in that moment. Are you looking out the window? Have you been thinking about a memory of your dad? Or a sadness over the loss or something? Or happiness about a funny joke you heard? Write about it. It will draw you into something. And last, don't feel like you need to write for a reason or to make sense, to have a conclusion or a lesson that you can impart upon the page. Maybe you can, or maybe you can't. Just let your voice speak whatever it needs to speak and then put down the pen. It's all alright, and it's all good enough.

So one thing I want to address is just this whole blog and this whole journey. To write honestly (putting what I say into practice) - I don't really look at this as a journey at all. I'm just writing, and I'm doing it honestly. It just happens to be that I feel a passionate calling for it - that I want so badly for you to discover that you are good enough through writing - that I need to write about it. I need to share it. I didn't start writing because I thought this is where it'd land me. I began very, very alone. I wrote alone. I didn't think much past the moment. But I realized how much of this I wanted to share. Needed to share. Even though I didn't think it at the time, I know now that is why I would email you my writing and say "Hey, this is who I really am. I want to share this with you." It was a beginning for me, because I'm always glazed over with an even-keel humor and strong sense of self that I couldn't break from that mold, until, I started writing. I realized that writing honestly inspired me to live more honestly. Hence, emails started flowing with my writings that I wanted to share with you.

That is where I'm at right now. I am not looking to change the world. I am just going to write, write, write. And today, my writing came to you. I am thinking of both of you and needing to write about how I hope you write as well. Don't try to force something to happen through writing; write and something will happen, but begin with yourself, because, well, that is who you are.

I love you both,

Stacey

And Just Like That

The forecast called for rain today. Thank God, it did not rain. I have to laugh, thinking about that saying, "Thank God!" and what God must think when he hears that casual expression vaulted up to airless space for spaceless reasons, time after time after time.

Today, I thanked God and meant it, for the first time in years, perhaps, for the very real first time. I believe in Him. I believe that He knew.

I've said many prayers over the course of my life, but my prayers were never to God. I would pray to God like he was my ceiling fan, or my door, or the hard wooden pew in front of me. Instead I believe I have been praying this whole time for God. For a God. For any God. But not to God. I have been praying in a small, closed closet for my whole life, sending a prayer up to the wall of myself and pushing it back down to a place of nonbelief. A place of self-worship. A place where faith lived only in my bones, as if I were my own creation, needing nothing else but my own strong self to stand on. So there I stood, upon myself for years, only to push my life to the ground, into the earth, and without a soul that I could recognize as my own. For years, I have lived this way. Alone and godless, my own muse, my own martyr. But I reached a point, a place so flat and so empty, that there was nothing left of me to stand upon. I could no longer stand up. So, relinquishing scornfully, unacceptingly, I stepped down. Or fell down. Laid down, and cried. A lost child. And before me, it just was there. A pen. A piece of paper. In the beginning - I wasn't saving my life, or saving my soul. Hello, it is just a pen. It is just a piece of paper.

But I began to write. Write life off of my soul. Write the pain, the anger, the nothingness I never gave words to. And to my surprise, they thanked me, ever so slowly, by healing me, by lifting me back to the page, day after day. And within each page, a promise: "You are here, inside this blankness. Come to the page and I will help you fill it up." I didn't know why, or how, but those were promises from God, bringing me back to the page, leading me home with a pen. I would sit, blankness before me, and I would fill it up with words that were not my own. It was like, they were words from another place, or another person, and I was just a messenger, just an ordinary medium whose fingers obeyed. Whose heart, for the first time, simply just listened. Still and quiet, I wrote. Wrote those poems about a bartender whose life was a wasted existence, whose God came to her in the form of an old, old woman sitting at her bar. I wrote about my Pretentious Reader, my wine drunk who sits on the outer edge of my writing closet. I wrote about my poem, wincing in pain, rebirthed as a bird, singing invisible rib dust cries, kneeling in prayer and branching anew upon a tree. I wrote about the light and the darkness, about the meaninglessness of so much of what we spend our lives building, how our last exhaled breath is a prayer to be buried into the soil of the cities of our life, filled with all of the people who we love, and people we were too good to love, and children of generations we will never see with our mortal eyes. We pray for them, and I wrote it, and when I wrote it, I didn't know why. I wrote about old Joe, this homeless man who lives inside the painful, shameful part of me who passes by a living human and forgets he is alive. That he has a name. I wrote about kimchi and how it eats me red and raw, burns me so deep with the question - why? I wrote about hymns of spring singing to me as poems through winter glass windows, peering into my life like rare blue light. And in my very first entry, I write about searching for a sober pen. This is no coincidence. These words were no accident. Over and over and over again, for no reason I can explain, these words have appeared past the fingertips of my logic and I can only read back all of these words in a true, new faith and understand that now, for the first time, I know why, and that at the very same time, so humbly I can surrender to knowing that - I have no idea why. It is beyond me to know. It is only for me to love, to open my heart to, to embrace, and, to write.

So today, it did not rain. Today the sun shone so brightly that I was literally blinded. I could do nothing but laugh and cry. Literally, laugh out loud and cry out loud.

The sequence of the day went like this:

Early in the afternoon, I was talking to Lise about carne asada, and how there is this fantastic Mexican grocery store in Chicago that will slice skirt steak thin and tenderize the meat. I choked on the intersection before I could say the street names aloud. California and Belmont. California and Belmont. It is at that intersection that my homeless man, old joe, stands. His chatter-tap boots, his prawny fingernails, his cardboard sign that no one reads. I wrote of him a few months ago. He came to me on a Saturday morning and I literally spent four or five hours learning about him. Seeing him upon my blank computer page and wondering why he was there. Why was he standing there. Why that intersection. California and Belmont. Why was his name old joe. It was a poem where he received such little attention or affection that I could not even capitalize his name. I did not know why. But today, before I could spit out the words to Lise, to tell her of the location of some grocery store, I thought of my shameful, painful place inside where old joe lives and I almost said a prayer for him right there on the spot. But I didn't.

Later in the day, I packed the kids into the car and headed to Rotary Park around 5pm. Joey fell asleep in the car, so I read my blog, thinking about my weekend, and Addy stayed in her seat, quiet and thinking aloud and looking out the window at the park full of children and parents. The day was unseasonably warm, just beautifully sunny. But we stayed in the car to let Joey sleep. When finally I decided to get the kids out, I saw that Addy had had an accident, and we quickly drove home to change her pants. While at home, looking at the clock tick towards 6pm, I entertained just staying inside. But then, the happy thought of kimchi rolled into my head. Usually, the thought of kimchi comes to me when I feel stressed, when I feel angry. Or alone. I need it, my strange comfort food, to fill me up even though after I eat it, much like after I drink alcohol, I feel an inexplicable regret, a undefinable remorse. I do not fully know why, but the feeling meets me at the bottom of the empty bowl. Or at the bottom of the empty glass. Today, however, I felt peace, calm, and a true contentment. Let's pack up, kids, and go the kimchi store! So off we went, and on our way, I drove, sun to my right, and it caught me off-guard. The sun, setting there. I realized how amazing and sort of sad it is that we blame the sun for going away. We say the sun "rises" and "sets" but really, science and art and life has told us that no, the sun is constant. The sun is always there. It is we, the earth, that turns ourselves away from the sun. It is we who bring our own darkness. We do so that the other side of the world may have light. We know this by science but believe it because of faith. Driving, my car planted to the earth by gravity, my flat horizon stretching like a road beyond an endless cliff, I know that we live on a planet round and rotating yet I feel not a celestial movement nor see a bend in the horizon. My heart is open to believing, because how, how can we look at the sun and see it sinking into night even though we know it is we who are rotating into slow darkness. Logic meets force. We know science but feel faith. As I drive, I think - the sun, maybe, is God. I do not know. I just don't know.

So to Little World Market we arrive, a shammy little place with a funky odor and rotting produce. Yes, this is the only place in Springfield, Illinois where I can find kimchi, so over the course of almost 2 years, I have frequented this market at least 20 times or more. And almost always, there is a man, the shelf stocker, there stocking shelves and lumbering through the crowded aisles, looking very much like an oversized hunchback ogre, a towering old man with a worn camel knit skull cap pulled down to colorless eyes hovering above a thick gray mustache, expressing almost nothing within a body held together with a black back brace and covered in a raggedy gray button up shirt and brown pants and thick workman boots. He is there, always, and I avoid him. Not out of fear, but indifference. Today, I saw him, right as I walked into the store, and literally, truly, my first thought was "What if he is God?" Joan Osborne's "What if God was One of Us" sped through my head in silent fast-forward, a passing thought.

He stood there, unstacking boxes. Walking in a line, I led the way, with Joey and Addy following along as we passed behind him.

"Have you ever heard of imprinting?"

I hear him speak. His tone, inviting. His inflection was like that of a friend.

"I, I'm sorry?"

"Imprinting. It's when a baby bird hatches from an egg and whoever it sees first, it thinks is its mother." I immediately think of my birth mother, wondering how long it took my memory to forget her face. To forget that my tiny baby eyes saw her and believed for some short time that she was my mother.

"Oh. Wow, well yes, I have heard of--"

"Have you ever seen that print of the mother duckling and her baby ducklings all crossing the road and a policeman is standing with his hand out to stop traffic?" Skipping to his new thought, I stood there, smiling, thinking and yes, I admit, hoping:"Perhaps he is God."

"You know what?" I say. "Actually, I know what print you're talking about. It's from a book called 'Make Way for Ducklings.' We've read that book, right Addy?" She nods her head. I can see that she is intrigued by him.

"Oh yeah?" he says, bending his eyes toward her and sounding genuinely interested. Pausing, he skips ahead again, looking up. "Have you heard, there's this hotel in Kentucky, or maybe, Tennessee, where these ducklings wandered in, and they just live there, at this hotel. The people at the hotel, just, adopted them. Fed them and took care of them." He breaks into an awkward smile. "And they stay there, rent free!"

I cling to only one of his words. He said "adopted." What? Why did he use this word? Why is he referring out of the clear blue day to imprinting, a thought that invokes such a strong visualization of my birth mother, and a drawing from a book I've read to Addy many times over? And why did he say "adopted"?

"That's amazing," I respond. But I am walking away, wondering why today, of all days, this ogre of a fellow began to speak. I turn around, needing to ask him. "What's your name by the way?"

Looking up, into me, he says plain as his name: "Joe."

I cannot believe it. I feel like he is not just Joe. And not just Joe as I have named my son. Or Joseph like Jesus' earthly father. He is - my Old Joe. He came to me, from California and Belmont, and found me today. And he spoke to me in spite of the fact that I would not speak to him. Here I have passed him, time after time, never believing him worthy of eye contact. Never thinking that he had a story, or a name. But instead of feeling shame, today I felt - connected. Connected to something that was not mine to question. Just believe, I kept telling myself. Just keep your heart open and believe.

After checking out, I looked down the aisle and saw him, looking into me with not a pleasant or an unpleasant look, just, looking at me, two eyes gazing like he knew that I saw him standing there, my Old Joe, for the very first time today.

I loaded the kids back into the car, and as I did, the back garage door that is connected to the market opened up, and out he came, but this time, he did not look at me, and I did not look at him. I only saw him out of the corner of my eye. I didn't want to ruin the magic. I felt like I could jinx God, somehow, by overstretching the symbolism. Addy pointed and said, very quietly, "There's Joe." And I looked over to him, his back to us, and he shook off a quick wave before he closed the garage door behind him. How he heard her small voice, I have no idea, but he did and I saw him with my own eyes, believing like a child that God had just opened my eyes and waved to me.

Thinking about Old Joe, I drove towards Rotary Park, where I had promised to take the kids before heading home. And there, driving west down Wabash Ave, I saw God shining so blindingly bright. He was there - that big radiant sun shining inside a cloudless band of light just below a full sky of clouds. There was a reason I didn't buy sunglasses the day before. There was a reason why I was thinking about the majesty of the constant sun and wondering why me, fallible earth, has turned away for so very long. There was a reason it did not rain today. I needed to see this sunset moment. I needed to let His full light blind me then give me sight I never knew I had. I almost wanted to cry, not because of the light but because of His Light. At this moment, I was still unsure of why I felt the way I did, but I felt my heart. It was opening still.

I made a right on Koke Mill Road, and as I did, I looked up. Strangely, I saw something that just made me want to laugh. Made me want to almost dance, for some reason. I saw - a swan, flying over me. Just one. But a swan, big and white, its long neck led by that orange beak and casading through the air, wings as wide as a graceful tree, floating across my sky. "What the hell," I smiled, thinking about how I've never seen a swan flying, let alone, driving on a suburban road in Springfield, Illinois. My mind went back to Old Joe at the market, and I almost wished that it would have been a family of ducks, not a swan, that I had seen flying through the air. "Wouldn't that have been something," I thought to myself. But the swan is still good enough. I took it as a sign and appreciated that I looked up when I did.

Getting to the park, I felt freedom. The sky was turning orange and the kids were running, laughing. Not because of me. But because I brought them there, to a place where their imaginations and their bodies could be unleashed like breath into air, souls flying in the wind. I thought of the ducklings. I thought of the swan. I thought of the poems I have written, all my winged and windless poems and I marveled at how, maybe, just maybe, they might all connect, somehow. I looked above me, and I saw, literally, a kite flying in the sky, coming from nowhere. High above, soaring like a bird, its kite tail flapping in excitement, I could not see the string or where the kite was coming from. It flew above us for the whole hour we stayed at the park. I tried to take a picture of it on my phone, but my camera wouldn't capture its image. It was as if believing was enough, having faith that yes, perhaps a Dad in the neighborhood behind those houses, beyond those trees, earlier in the day, tied a kite to a stake in the ground so that his children might look up from their window and see how wind blows life high above us. God called him to do that and God called me there to witness, not to see him but to just believe him. My heart opened wider and I laughed with my kids at the park tonight, believing God was there in the fields and laughing with us.

After getting home and eating our kimchi and rice dinner, I remembered that tomorrow is Addy's field trip at school. I hadn't paid the $5.50 for the show ticket (we are going to see The Very Hungry Caterpillar tomorrow at the Sangamon Auditorium) and I remembered that I have no cash on hand. Wouldn't it be amusing, I thought, searching for loose cash and change in my bedroom, if somehow I just came across a five dollar bill somewhere in these drawers? Shuffling through the junk, I looked, drawer by drawer. Then, opening the top drawer of my nightstand, there it was. Underneath the Bible I began to read last week. A crumpled five dollar bill, and a single. God gave me fifty extra cents, just for shits and giggles. I literally laughed out loud. A real, genuine laugh. A real genuine "Thank you" to God. How in the world...I had no idea.

At this moment, I could not wait to write. Could not wait to get the kids in bed, sleeping, so that I could begin writing. Writing of this day that I will honestly pray tonight that I may remember forever, lyrics of a single day that tell the story of my whole missing life. I wonder what words will come to me tonight. I dance inside, excited to listen and write with my heart open.

After watching videos on the computer, Addy's 3 year old whining landed her one less book. So we had just one book to read tonight. Getting settled in her room, she whines,"I just don't know what book to read." So I ask, "Do you want me to pick out a book?" She nods her head. I get her pillows arranged and walk over to her small bookcase. And there it is. The very first book in front, sitting up inside her book bin on top of her bookcase is 'Make Way for Ducklings.' I hadn't even thought about it. Hadn't considered even looking for it, despite the day's events. But I smiled, knowing, and I sat with Addy and began to read.

On the first page, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard are flying east, looking for the perfect place to call home. Mr. Mallard only wants to make Mrs. Mallard happy, but she is unsure, quite trite in fact, because she doesn't want to live in places with foxes or turtles. She's a picky thing, Mrs. Mallard is. And I think of Danny and me, and I wonder if maybe this story is about us. I turn the page and learn that yes, it is.

Though I have read this story over a dozen times, and probably more, to Addy, I forgot until I turned the page that Mr. and Mrs. Mallard do find a place to settle. A place called...Boston. I read this and I began to laugh again. There is no better reaction. And at this point, there is no other reaction left. I must just laugh. But then, it is the next page, the next turn of words and images that startles me, shakes me so deeply that I break out into a huge laugh that immediately turns into quiet laughing sobbing tears of joy. Pure, real joy and wonder. I turn the page and there before me is a picture of - a swan. This is the reason why Mr. and Mrs. Mallard decide that indeed, Boston is the place for them to live. The place for them to stay. In the Public Garden, through the Charles River, floats this boat, a giant swan statue as its bow, and the people on the boat throw them bits of bread. How kind, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard think. We will follow this swan and stay here in Boston. That is the premise of the book. A few pages later is the picture that Old Joe referred to. Where Mrs. Mallard holds her head up high as she marches her ducklings across a busy Boston street, proud of her ducklings, and, now thinking of it, proud of herself as well. I feel her swelling pride as if it were my own. I wonder if she, Mrs. Mallard, knows that the policeman's name is Michael, a lumbering, protective figure that honestly looks quite similar to Old Joe - did he tell her in a way that she just knew? I think of that swan, flying over me today, taking our life to Boston, that winged poem soaring into my air and onto this very page tonight. Where else will she lead me? I know that I cannot know. That is all that I know.

I can only close the night thinking of last week, when I took Addy and Joey to Tom Madonia East Park on Lake Springfield on a gorgeous sunny afternoon, another rainless day, for three hours full of playing in the hills and swings of a place we won't call home for much longer. We stopped and bought a loaf of bread, and we began our long afternoon feeding the geese down on the dock, there over the waters, throwing bread to them, all three of us loving our lives in that moment. And out of place amongst that hungry flock of geese who were swarming all around us, was a mother and a father mallard, coming to us, literally from nowhere. I was the only one who could feed them, because they swam in waters further than the kids could throw. Only I had the strength to throw bread far enough for them to reach. And so I did, because they just remained there, paddling behind the geese, waiting for me to stand up tall and reach out to them. I remember telling Addy, "Look! They're just like Mr. and Mrs. Mallard!" and wondering where they must have come from. And just like that, I know.

My Poems

For many months now
I keep writing of
Poems.
Finding them
Scattered rocks
Upon riverbeds
In my children's eyes
Through glass
Finding me fragile, a small window
And breaking in.

They have shattered me.
Lifted me.
Challenged me.

Loved me.

Poems,
Upon waters
Rising for air
Breathing, and
Breathing for me.

I have thanked them
These winged songs,
Floating inside my nights
Asking me
For no repair,
Just,

To listen,
Like a Father.

To forgive,
Like a child.

I have placed them gentle
To paper nests,
Held them up by tears
Folding darkness into light, into
Darkness again.

They find me
Alone
To tell me
I am not.

It is not I
Who has given them life.
It is they who have
Given life to me.
Cradled me.
Stirred me.
Called me.

Forgiven me.

Imperceptibly,
A moment or a month.
Or flowing through
All my life

Rivers unknowing
Then, rains
Falling,
Rising waters to
Knowing.

My poems are not
Poems.

They are simply -
Prayers.

Praying for me
When I
Could not pray.

Living for me
When I could
Not live.

Forgiving me
When I could not
Forgive.

My poems are
Prayers,
Air of my soul
Meant to be written,
To love
And then,
To give away.

Amen.

Colette Caron

I picked up the book "The Spirit of Writing" last night in bed and opened it to the writing story of Colette Caron, a Canadian romance novelist who wrote under a pen name of Cara Colter for many years until she realized that she was the author of her own life. She needed her name to prove it to herself. She wrote: "I gave up tobacco and alcohol because I realized they anesthesized my life." I felt relief. I felt - understood. This woman whom I'll never meet, her words carried me through the night and into the morning, a quiet spirit moving me closer towards a better part of me.

Darkness and Light

Calm adopted me today. Not anger. A peace neutral enough to let my gripped heart rest. Sunrise met sunset. But I did not rise. I did not fall. I stayed up upon myself, leveled eye to eye to be equal parts me. A balance of soft motion, a mother's sway, a rocking chair, a quiet story.

Hush. Be still, child.

Life goes on and on and on.

So too, go on and on and on.

Let your life carry your waters when your legs cannot, when your heart is heavy like rock. I continue into the night, embracing the darkness as I do light.

In this Moment

We are who we are in every moment. The moment we lie, we are liars. We tell truth, we are truth tellers. We make love, we are lovers. We teach, we are teachers. We say words to others we wish to tell ourselves or wish were told to us, words we just wish into existence so we say them, and the recipient is the bystander there to witness our moment of birthing life of ourselves into the atmosphere so that we may remind ourselves that YES, I have a voice, thoughts, beliefs, and opinions worth saying, worth hearing aloud into the open and free microphone of someone's ear.

We are in constant movement in and out of each moment. Every moment calculated, known or unknown to us. We are bringing someone closer, or pushing them away. We are giving up or giving in, or not at all giving a damn. We are thinking wheels speaking out of turn or staring beyond the company, trying not to think at all. We are judging, cursing, praising, critiquing, and comparing all that is there, all who is there, inside every moment. In every whole moment, we are whole. Whether we like our whole selves in every whole moment, well, that's saying our shit doesn't stink when it does. See there, I am trying to be funny. Did it work? No one is reading but me, I think I am comical. I achieved it, success. I said what I meant to say, as close to the truth of me in that moment. I can save regret for another whole moment.

This is why I do not believe in contradiction. We are paradox meanings because we mean everything every time we mean something, or don't mean anything at all. We are meaningful only because of that reason. Because we can be everything; not all at once, but we are something in one moment and something else in another and each is who we fully are, sometimes.

I guess what I mean is, it seems kind of enlightening to me to think of every moment as a whole infinity, seamlessly running into other moments with no end or beginning, but yet, separate and distinct. It is inexplicably beyond me to know and understand. I can only try to respect it for what it is - my life in pieces strung together by no one else but me - my words, thoughts, and actions. What I do, what I think, what I am is going to compose the moments of my life and how I live. Align with truth; I can only humbly, and wholly try anew, moment by moment by moment, all my breaths of one whole life.

Letter to my Dear Friend Sun Hee

My Dear Friend Sun Hee,

I am so sorry that I haven't commented on your writing piece yet...I did leave a comment and plan to revisit it before the end of the month. Danny is out with friends tonight so it has given me some time to read your writings. You are an exquisite writer. What makes you so amazing is that you are poetic without trying. It's like, there's a certain space that is lost in translation but wouldn't be poetry without it.

It makes me sad to think of our distance...you know, we are moving to Boston in a few months. I am sorry that it's been so long since we've seen each other or been in touch. No matter what, I will make sure to make a trip up to see you. You're closer to me in my heart like a sister than a friend, it is hard to describe but I know you understand. What is amazing is that we both love words, both love to write, but never really knew. It was like an undiscovered secret we each hid. In a way, I think it's almost more stunning - to grow a friendship through writing in a way that literally living next to each other could never do. You were and are a cherished friend of mine, but it's really through your writing that I love you even more.

I really understand you, your depth and your dreams, your pain and all the things in between that can't be explained in paper dimensions. You are a lovely, lovely mother. I can tell that this is a part of your constant, unmoving center that both lifts you and breaks you. I feel the exact same way so many times. Part of it, a big part of it, is because we look at ourselves everyday and we think about our own mothers, our lives, our mistakes, our pain, our triumphs - and then we look at our daughters, our children, and don't know what script their life will follow. We want to write it for them; only they own the pen of their own souls. We can only urge them to write truth and love. Out of our own fear - fears buried in our past and fears buried in their future - we try to write upon them our own story, erasing those painful, shameful parts of ourselves and then scrambling to replace them with better words of a better life.

What I, and I think, we, have such a hard time realizing, remembering, and embracing is that it is only because of our story that they can write their own. We cannot be more than who we are, we can only live up to who we are; we are miles of paper space still unwritten; every word a beginning, but words do not erase words. We simply are who we are and nothing more. It will be from our beautifully painful self-acceptance that our children will learn to do the same, tears and pain and love and joy - these inevitably are paragraphs of their life, of their own unwritten story. Theirs are words of a future that we can teach but can never write or live for them. Just as we write our own souls, so must they.

You inspire me and I am so happy to be your long-lost adopted Korean sister.

I love you,

Stacey

Remember Me, Dancing

Joey twirls in front of his television reflection, moving oddly. Addy's fuchsia tutu pulled halfway up to his armpits, the silent gray of the off TV humming for him an imaginary child's song, melodic enough to move him into a waddle dance, turning, for another few minutes, until he wants it "off, off Mommy." I leave the page to take off his tutu, and then, return to the page.

On his tutu-less walk to the kitchen, wanting a pen now that he sees is mine, he is distracted by a tiny yellow Nerd, yesterday's inexplicable treat, and eats it. Lovely. No, truly. Really. It's all lovely. Addy is adorned with her own galavanting attire, the cheap gaudy mess that looks as cheap in the packaging as it does on. The tattering hot pink polyester gown, the goldish yellow crown, hinting almost putrid green, candy medallions and feather shoes. She's covered in three years of freedom, uninhibited at home, looking at me like I'm the fabulous center of her tootsie pop universe. How much she knows already. How much she has yet to know. She goes off to dance alone, twirling life around the fingers of her world. I stay on the page.

I often see these times and these moments through the distant lens of a home movie camera, a far-off future. In my mind (not clear and digital but the old fashioned kind, the reel and sliced cuts and vintage overlay of a 1960s home movie - old, but not too old) I watch my children, grown, watching themselves. I study their expressions. The way their eyes shift, looking across or into or down into a place they forgot or buried. I watch intently, the corner of their mouths. Not a tremble, not a movement. I fear that stareless space, when they can't quite celebrate the childhood I provided, can't quite lift themselves away from the distance. I cannot tell if it is sadness or pain or indifference. I cannot tell because I cannot ask them. They are far away inside a place I cannot change, a place inside me I cannot be. I just watch them, seeing parts of who I raised, and watching me, a young woman. Their mother. A figure of life unrecognizable to them. Or am I?

Sitting, I am stunned for a moment. I need to raise myself up and lower myself down. To their life. To their world. I need to dance long and often with my children. But I also must forgive myself when I do not. When, literally, I cannot. I cannot dance because I must write. I cannot dance because I must be a better part of me. It is all alright.

The page calls me. I write. My children call me. I dance. It is all alright. I dance so that they will recognize the woman in their home movies. So that the corner of their mouths turn upward, to the air, like memories gently lifted off the page in child's song. I write so that I will recognize the woman in their home movies. So that I can be there with them, their mother whole, and not absent, an old woman, missing.

Coming from the living room, appearing close, her eyes sparkling, loving what she sees, she says, in her highest and most noble princess voice: "Do you want to dance with me, my Dearest? Will you marry me? Come dance with me." I leave the page. Gracefully, she takes me into that absent movie frame and we fill it with a splendidly silly dance, a marriage ceremony, and childhood love. For ten whole minutes. Until, she removes her crown, her shoes, and opens the refrigerator for her second mid-morning snack.

Joey appears out of his room, unassuming, holding a wooden train piece and a sock. Who is to say where his life has taken him for those ten whole minutes, never to be retrieved again. I hug him when he walks within fingertip reach, because I can.

Because I wrote it here today, I will remember that I danced. My greatest fear is that they won't.

So, I will come back. Return back. Again and again and again. Back to the page. For them, and for myself. And to remember me, dancing.

Beginning

I thought of myself today
As I could be
A morning bloom
Or today's news
Shade of day
My own muse
A child's prayer
A dreaming road
Water's edge
A fisher's boat

I could be
So much, much
More
Beginning with
One tiny
Twist of
My own
Hope

Nothing

Nothing to post. Thinking.
Still.
Nothing.

Not forever

An old friend,
Revisited.
A lost autumn,
Remembered.
A wise, wise book,
Reread.
A cherished grandparent,
Heard.