The bright side of the planet moves toward darkness
And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,
And for me, now as then, it is too much.
There is too much world.~Czeslaw Milosz (From The Separate Notebooks)
I dreamed last week that I saw a white arrow pointing forward. I wasn't sure what to make of the dream when I awakened. It was not an ominous dream.
Then yesterday, I was a greeter at church. A strong wind blew. Rain pelted the sidewalk. People began streaming into the church, some faces familiar. Some not. Then I looked up at the sky, and I noted patches of blue, the sun peering through. Two weather systems in the span of fifteen minutes.
Another parishioner greeted people with me. During a lull in people arriving, we began to talk about our lives.
She told me that she'd experienced a "triple whammy" in the last few years. She and her husband had retired after over four decades of marriage and successful careers. Then he'd died. The "whammies" like a vortex of simultaneous weather patterns. "I've lost my husband, my career identity and I'm getting older." She said it is an uncertain time in her life, that she is feeling her way through. "Some days I'm not sure what to do next." I could relate. Retirement alone can feel as if you may stay unmoored forever. Not to mention the stunning loss of a soulmate. I asked, "What is your best coping tool during this time?"
The lovely parishioner answered, "Taking things one day at a time. I know God is for me and has my good in mind. Remembers my pain. Knows the days sometimes feel directionless. So I get up and say, 'God thank you for this day, guide me, give me a plan. And that's enough. I can trust Him for that day.'"
I nodded. "Yes, that kind of mindset helps me too." I told her about my dream, seeing the white arrow. I said, "Maybe that simple image is a message to keep going. Move forward. Don't stay stuck. Take the next step when there's too much world."
Sometimes I push my thumb into an orange just for the scent of it, and it takes me there; the peace, the spaciousness of an unhurried afternoon, the quality of attention to small things.~Katherine May (From Enchantment, Awakening Wonder In An Anxious Age)
I am often distracted. My focus spins out of control. I get enamored with brightly lit concepts and ideas that steer me off course. Instagram images, video games, movies with too many episodes that I am tempted to spend hours and hours watching all at one time. Scrolling on linked in. There are so many authors promoting books. There must be thousands. There are actually tens of thousands. It is easy to compare myself with others who appear to have much more success. I am squinting into the brightness. I do not pick up my pen in the blinding glare.
One of my sisters taught me the phrase, "pick up my pen." She says, "I decided to 'pick up my pen' and write a book." She writes two pages every day. She is building something. My other sister just graduated from seminary. She is packing up with her husband and moving to Washington state to begin a ministry there. She is building something, too. Step by step. My sisters manage distraction well.
It can be easy to know what we want to build, to sense a divine whisper to begin using the tools He's gifted us with. It is another thing to resist giving up. Last week, I learned of an author who's written several literary novels, yet this talented individual hasn't written another book in ten years. Then I listened to an NPR story about an African man who was wrongly imprisoned for a year and wrote a novel with a pencil on scraps of toilet paper. Two poles. Do these opposite reactions on the parts of these persons have to do with circumstances? Was one able to write because he had no distractions, and the other because he had too many?
I ponder this question. I think, for me, it is not only about becoming ensnared by distractions, but also remembering that to build something--a business, a book, a marriage, a savings account, an education--takes giving attention to small things, to minute steps. One by one. Increments. Taking things in small measure can defeat the mindset that something is too hard or overly complex.
Life is life. We all experience the clutter and the glamour. And most of us feel the pull, that voice, that invitation from God that we are meant for something good, something purposeful. To build something.
I asked God to give me a Scripture for the hard times, when I lose focus. When I've laid my pen down. He gave me Psalm 20:4. And then the next day I was at a department store and found a necklace. A cross. On the box Psalm 20:4 was written in script. May He give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed. I wear the necklace now as I type.
What we run from pursues us. What we face transforms us.~David Kessler
I started writing books in 2005. Writing was a way to face my life and losses, my gains and wins. Writing became a bridge to healing, an unexpected and loyal companion.
Over the last two years I've written another novel. I'm now working on refurbishing the rough draft. The work is intense, and the satisfaction the creative process brings me, practically scandalous. I love to write.
In my second novel, I stick with the topic that interests me. Grief and loss. The possibility of hope to transcend the darkness. I continue to practice one of the fundamental principles I follow in my writing. Write about what intrigues and interests me. What I notice. There are a million books about grief and loss, but none from my perspective. I don't let the volumes already written deter me.
I share an excerpt with you in this post. My protagonist is named Alexandra. Alex for short. She has run from her pain and lives alone on the Oregon coast with her dog, Stella. She has consistent phone contact with her grandmother, Marvel. Alex has been having many dreams in the night watches. She doesn't know what to make of them. Perhaps you'll be able to discover the title of the book as you read. (Let me know if you'd like to take guess about what it is.) Surely, you'll be able to understand where the image and the title I chose for the post comes from after you read the excerpt.
Thank you for your continued interest to read what I write. There is no greater gift.
I’M AT THE BEACH ALONE. I have the day off and Stella’s at the groomers. I miss her presence when I run without her. I imagine Stella now, see the sides of her belly expanding and contracting when she pants, her pink tongue. Even though Stella’s short-haired, her coat becomes gritty with sand. She begins to smell sour and briny from the ocean water. Larkin, the owner of the grooming salon, clips her nails too. I’m afraid, fearful I’ll cut too deep.
I like Larkin. Her hair is long and dark on top. She uses some kind of product to make it swirl up, then dip, just slightly, over her forehead. The sides are shaved and dyed a celestial blue, the color of her eyes. Her lips are fleshy and plump, and her smile reveals gardenia white teeth. A diamond stud punctuates the side of her nose. I want to be like her. Confident enough to dye my hair blue, brave enough to hold a paw in my hand and find just the right place to sever the nail. I like her name too. I asked once if she knew the meaning. And she’d said, “Yeah, actually it means ‘fierce.’”
The sky is glowing umber and gold, the sun an orange disc. The sky is always just itself, no matter if it’s filled with color, or gray and flat as hammered tin. It doesn’t depend on pleasing others.
I didn’t wear my contact lenses today. Instead wore my old round wire frames I’ve had for years. The glasses sit on top of my unopened book. Grains of sand are scattered across the cover, like spilled sugar on a countertop. Could the spectacles be a symbol, a metaphor of some sort? Perhaps if I look hard enough through the lenses, I’ll see what I’m supposed to do, get a glimpse of my future, find the pathway that will lead me to the geography of my longings.
I’m not sure what I long for. I wonder if my dreams are clues. I had another dream last night. I saw a fan, the kind you might hang on a wall if you opened it all the way, its black lacquered sides acting as a frame. In my dream I saw the glossy finish of the black sides, but the fan was only partially unfolded. I couldn’t see the scene embossed between the pleats. I sensed, though, the picture would be something I’d like. I didn’t want to wake up. I wanted to go on dreaming to see what the fan would depict.
I told Marvel, about the “fan” dream. She wonders if the dream might insinuate a new beginning. Marvel collects quotes and says when we talk on the phone, “Hang on, let me get the quote I wrote down just the other day. It’s by John O’ Donohue from his book, To Bless the Space Between Us.” I can hear the pages flip as she hunts for the quote. I can almost picture her bending over the notebook, stopping to press an index finger to her tongue, then touching the paper to separate the thin pages. “I found it,” she says, then clears her throat to read. Her voice contains a slight tremor, but is fierce too. An older version of Larkin. We are never as alone in our beginnings as it might seem at the time. A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open toward the gifts and growth that are stored up for us. To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect.
“Marvel, am I refusing to begin or reluctant to go on?”
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.~Psalm 16:6
Last week I sat with a group of women. The topic of bucket lists emerged. Most everyone spoke of magical places they wanted to visit--a desire to quench a thirst for adventure in fantastical locations that fueled their imaginations.
I had a different reaction. I didn't yearn to go anywhere.
I thought, "I want to enjoy the spot I'm in now. To savor the parts of my life that seem like manna every day." I like to read the Bible and hear the dryer tumbling as I sit in my green chair in the study. I like listening to Pandora and humming a song I remember as a girl. I like spraying Dolce E Gabbana Light Blue on my wrists and inhaling the good smell. The small luxuries of existence are like a bucket list to me. To feel contentment, joyful even, where I am.
To anchor into the day and want no more, not wish for things to change, or for people to be nicer, or the rain to stop, or to be prettier. Rather to gently crack open the spine of a book, hear the rustling pages, smell the fragrance of paper and ink. Absorb the story, drink my coffee.
Not to mention that I've lived to an age I thought I may never see during the bleak days of cancer treatment. Such a cliché, yet "every day a gift." I will ever be grateful for eyelashes, that feeling of twirling black mascara over the fine hairs covering the edges of my eyelids. I didn't know to love them, until I had none. Another trope. "The little things in life." Are they really so little?
Perhaps attaining items on bucket lists is always possible, always available if we look. If we see. What if we merely pull away the veil of believing that those items on the list must take us somewhere else, somewhere exotic? What if the bucket list is within our grasp each day? Let us consider our current coordinates, our divine latitude, our beautiful longitude of right where we are.
Butterflies in winter often chase away the losses.~Phrase a character heard in a dream from my book, Missing God.
Last week a former colleague of mine died. She was young. It felt impossible to imagine that she was gone from this world. I think this feeling fits the word empty. I felt empty. Her absence like someone snatching something precious out of my heart. How could she be gone just like that? I wasn't prepared. No, I wasn't ready for this reality.
And then the truth began to sink in. I couldn't deny (though I wanted to, my brain wanted to) that she was absent from this earth--her absence like a sad presence.
Yet I go on inside this loss. There is not a choice. Life continues to pulse and bustle onward in all its call to sustain a day. There is gas to put in the car. Food to stock the fridge. Bills on the dining room table. Clothes in the dryer waiting to be folded. All the ordinary stuff that packs a day.
Writing is healing. I write to process the death. And I go to God. His Word. In John 6:66 it says: "From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him." Then Jesus replies (vs. 67), You do not want to leave too, do you? Jesus asked the Twelve." Then (Vs. 68) "Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.'" I resound with Peter. To whom else would I go when caught up in the darkness of grief and loss?
Like my character in the book, the Lord's presence is akin to the beauty and comfort of butterflies appearing in the cold, in the dark, in the debris. My colleague, too, a woman of faith, safe now in heaven. This truth, too, brings solace and consolation inside the pain that still resides.