Busy and Fresh

I feel it is written with the same surprise every year.  But December is so busy.  This season is once again upon us.  Every year I think about Christmas and the month of December and wonder about why it does so much to people in both good and bad ways.

  You see it everywhere in this chaotic wintery world.  People can get really stressed out.  Winter driving conditions can be a legitimate new pace to get used to.  But in Minnesota you just shore up and get used to it again and it seems normal until late March. 

I’m talking more about the inner hype.  The expectation which seems to have come out of left field, and quickly.   When this became really clear to me as an adult, I began to ask why.  Sometimes people have really direct answers, and other times, they stop and they say they can’t think of one thing at all.  I tend to think the question in the first place is the relief.  To stop and wonder about something like that takes you out of the bustlings. 

Astonished Attention to Hearts

I stood at the counter in my kitchen this morning and made coffee and thought about hearts. 

About mine.  About people who I love. 

About the things of this world that so quickly go to conversations of the heart. 

Sometimes the most dynamic thoughts of the entire day come to me when I’m standing there in the quiet, early morning, in the few seconds when I anticipate the coffee.  When the coffee is poured, I am suddenly in the mood for writing.  A few short blinks later, and it is time to get ready for school.  And I’m ushered into the business of teaching, and any quiet thought while pouring the coffee comes back sparingly.  But the common trend is that the mornings always help my little heart. 

Yesterday at school I showed the students This Day in History online…it’s what we do for a birthday… and one of the stories talked about the first pacemaker that was put into a person.  He lived for 112 days with this first artificial heart.  And there it was, on the screen…they showed the chest cavity being opened and this machine being put inside.  Just for a second.  My students gasped.  I stared at it, and felt, once again, this profound gratitude that I’m not in charge of medical procedures.  And this amazement at the actual look of this process.  You hear about pacemakers.  You hear about recovery.  You do not hear about the moment when they lower the heart into the body. 

Hearts can mean so many different things.  It can mean a pacemaker, or the things in the margins on the homework I am grading, which is the common doodling practice of some of my middle school girls.  

It can mean Valentine’s Day, or how you reference the goodness of falling in love, or anxiety which makes it race in your chest.  Or, in contrast, the beating of your heart that tells you that the exercise has paid off and that you are strong.

While Walking in the Middle

Since the last post here, I have been wrapped up in the business of life.  And at the same time, I've felt awkwardly removed from it.  This week there were the moments of being born and of dying all around me.  Lots of my friends are having babies.   This week there are three.  Count it.  Three. And last week my grandpa died.  It felt like a lot of things beginning and ending and in general just passing by.  

So you know what happened with things like paperwork or NOT friendly parents at conferences (who ask me to explain that ONE question on that ONE test I wrote 5 years ago....)?  All of it was put in perspective and in its place in 2 seconds flat.  

Some things matter.  Some things so DON'T that it's almost laughable.  It's good practice for the times when life feels more ordinary.  The air clears faster. But this may just be a sign of the times, or the recognition of growing up.  Like REALLY growing up.  I feel this week that I have really lived.  And, as usual, my head cleared a little more when I thought about things through quotes.  Things like...

Glorius Ruins and the Poetry of Life

Today I took time to look back at old journals and previous writing.  Let me tell you, it is both astonishing and humbling to review previous work, especially if you care about it.  And to see the story of your life in general.  Because inevitably you are able to see the good work of God in your life, and hear the nasty comments and thoughts of the inner critic.  Sometimes at the same time.  My life has been interesting and good and sort of obviously raw all at once.  Like many, or maybe everyone.  My journals show it.

I think about writing all of the time.  When I'm teaching, when I'm talking with people, when I wake up in the morning and am trying to make sense of the day.  'Write it down.'  That's what the inner heartbeat says to me.  And I have lately been thinking about this, and why the thing that charges you up and makes you feel most alive also brings you to your own messy soul just as quickly too.  I have been thinking about bravery and mastery of fear and that things in this world that are broken always end up pointing to God.  God is all about broken things. 

This is the surprising sweetness of grace. 

Now

Ah, November.  This is a month I love.  

It's been said before, but here and now, without fail, life feels different now compared to any other time of the year. Things get gray, and it somehow it makes me happier than before.  I have wondered in the past if I am terribly morbid and tragic to crave this season so much.  But I'm ok with it now.  If I am tragic and morbid, something else balances me out.   I have learned that I am not alone in this feeling....a lot of others love November too.  (Do you?)   

What is this anyway?   A quieter time?  Or (for me, at least) the internal rhythm of teaching beginning to make sense? Sometimes I think it's as simple as bracing winds coming to the door, and being awake enough to life to still step out into the world and greet it.  In November, I wake up and settle down all at once.  I also start reading poems by Robert Frost.  

November is also the time of thoughtfully waiting.  And making space.

  
In the midst of the business of life, I have lately been thinking about a lot of wandering things.  Thoughts thought by C.S. Lewis.  Thoughts of my family.  Of my life as a teacher.  Patterns all around me.  Books and the things that are in them.  What is comforting in the fall.  The importance of making space.  How good it feels to have a season change right in front of you.  Why I like certain things and not others.  I feel unfettered and I can't tell if that is making me feel good or mostly alarmed inside.  Unfettered means 'to release from restraint or inhibition'.  (Hmm.)     

Just a Little

Something in life shifted again and I began to feel older.  Not bad older, like I have creaky joints and we all have to just get used to it and not complain if we want to be a certain kind of old person.  Not older like your kid is going to college and you wonder what happened by each decade.  It was internal and subtle and still all about me. 

This is probably the look of the 20s. 

I sat at my desk at the end of the day at school, and felt one notch further away from something and closer to another.  At school, my periphery is perpetually 8th grade.  And as I age, I am so not.  When I was younger I knew certain things that they knew.  But now I don't.  Quite obviously I don't.   So I   listen better instead.  And sometimes I see them shuffle around the way they do and I feel so glad to not be half my age anymore.  These are probably the good things of a growing teacher anyway.   Listening to kids.  What a novel idea.  

Adventures in New York

True to form, here I sit in the morning, with the coffee and the love of words and the silence.  I have just returned from adventure.

The shift back from travel is something I think we all know.  You come back to your life.  To the memory of how your world talks to you when you are not anonymous anymore.  And how the tick of the clock feels different again when you have your own work to do.  And how things like ‘We might miss the subway’ are different conversations when compared to how you all feel about ‘We must once again remember our year-long goals’. 

Last week I went to New York City.  And life lately, New York or otherwise, has been rapid change and movement for me.  As before stated, God and life are changing me, and it’s drawing me back the old things that I used to wonder about and long for a long time ago.  This is a happy thing in my life.   

Centuries in October

It is suddenly new timing, and a new season.   The fireplace in my little apartment is on, and I have waited for this.  I dreamed of this scene a few months ago, in the heat of the summer, when new hopes came to me that I didn’t yet know about fall in a new location.  The fireplace is a pretty posh expression of this change, obviously.  But I am loving it.  Loving it.  Starting the morning in pajamas with books all around me and coffee and silence and this blazing fire feels like the most perfect thing.  Or one of them. 

 I have been thinking of a great many things in life these days, and trying to make sense of where to place it all in the midst of a busy schedule.  A quote by Emerson comes to mind. 

‘I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred.  I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.’

 It sums up the feel of life.  Mine is happily full.  I tend to prefer this though because I have always longed for life to feel this grandiose.  And for my life, lately in October, this has been true. It makes now feels like a good time to think ‘vantage point’.   What has been, and what might come, while still staying very present in this day.   This weekend was time with family, some of it planned and some of it unexpected, life aside from teaching, a time to sleep and rebuild.  The coziest feeling of home while sitting in the pews at Hiawatha.  This is a great place for me to learn, learn, learn.  I love the people there too. 

Beautiful Elemental Things

What do you say when you return to what you love, after being gone for a long, long time? 

As I am sitting here, I am blinking and feeling fairly thoughtless about beginnings.  Not the rest of the story.  Just right now with 'how to begin again'.   I'll say this.  I have learned that writing always brings me back to well being.  But it wasn't that way, at least recently, for me and for Life on the Bridge.   I became embarrassed of it.  Really really really.  And then I forgot that I loved it.

Here we go.  Short and sweet.  Just tell the story.

Quelled

Life is overwhelming this week.  And I have just tried about seven or eight times to put words together to explain this.  It’s not working.  Nevertheless, these thoughts and words must eventually rest in some place.   I woke up with a canker sore this morning and remembered that this is the beginning of my own personal version of complete shut down.   I have a mind that turns and turns, and in the meantime, connects one thing to everything else, and sometimes knowing logical things about history just sucks. 

For example, when I learned about the explosions about Boston, one side of me was horrified.  My best friend was two blocks away from it.  The other was logically beginning to see that social media of this time brings the stressful information to you live, as it’s happening, and the news stations can’t even promise anything won’t be graphic.  I thought of Mathew Brady’s art gallery of war during the Civil War.  Or television coverage during Vietnam.  What a shock to our collective system.  

Sunday Morning

I’m going to a church in South Minneapolis these days that is really a wonderful place.  When I wrote about God cracking me apart, church was a part of it for sure.  I’ve been thinking about the church these days.  And I’ve been thinking about intellect versus the heart. 

            But before even that, I’ve been thinking about Bethel.  What my experience was while I was there, how it prepared me for the world I’ve been in for the past 5 years, what I railed about when it disappointed me, the quiet gratitude that I feel when I think of the place.  Even while paying off…All. Of. That. Debt. 

It was worth it. 

Adventuresome

I wore high heels during three of the five days in this work week.  That was ridiculous. 


In happier news, a substitute teacher in our building, this really lovely woman that we all love for her timelessness and cheerfulness, came all the way across the school to sit with me and talk a little during our common preps.  I learned today that she knows when I have a free hour, and that she is willing to walk across the entire school to have a conversation.  As soon as she came into my room, I happily shut down all thoughts of grading tests, and there we sat, while it began to snow again, and basically we talked about adventures. 

This woman is maybe 70 years old, and had my very job for about 40 years.  She likes to talk shop.  What I love is that she is without guile.  When she forgets things, she turns to me and says, 'Which battle am I thinking of?'  And I will tell her, and she will exclaim loudly with the same word, and she is back on track.  She still likes to be someone's teacher, even at 70, and I find this inspiring. 

Earlier in the week, I admitted to her that I was in a low, depleted place.  I was doing that inner transition from 3rd quarter to 4th quarter, and it was tough.  She knows the feeling, probably 40 times over. And she said a really simple thing that made me laugh really hard. 

'Pardon my language, but once the shitty weather dissipates, things will get better, won't they?'  

Almost

 These lyrics are about as creepy and obscure as it gets but today, every time I had a few minutes of silence, this song naturally came to mind.  It was a good song to listen to when I stared out the window for a few minutes during my prep hour.  Today was overwhelming.  I HAD to stare at the gray clouds and the faraway trees to clear my mind.  This song helped.

Here it is.  Teaching is really rough in April when it’s gloomy.  Lots of things outside of teaching are rough when it's this gloomy for this long in April.  I'm just seeing it from Teacherville.

I’m hanging on to the little things that keep me going.  (Maybe we all are.)  I prayed the Psalms inside when I walked down the hall.  I practiced breathing.  I found my people.  I tried to make the gloom feel cozy…(it didn’t work, but I tried).  I took a break. Later in boldness, I forged on past a break when I thought it would just make me languish.  I reminded myself of my utter dependence on the Spirit of God for anything good.  (Teachers often like to think they can be in total control.  This is false.)  All of the little things that you learn to do.  

Sentiments

Happy Easter weekend.  I hope yours was special.  Mine was.  It was unexpected and good and not like other years, though the other years were good too. Instead of spending time in Iowa with family, we stayed home.  And my mom and grandma weren’t with us.  They were with my grandma’s twin brother.  He was 84, and he died today.  This has been both difficult and good all at once.

            I recently wrote about death on this blog.  What it does to me in a tidal wave, no matter what.  It was especially meaningful to think about this today, on Easter, when Christians celebrate who Jesus is, and what he has done.  Death is overcome.  There is no sting.  But today I talked with my dad about how grief and the shock of death, no matter what you expect in the end, is still hard to deal with.  And I just read this in 'The Screwtape Letters' yesterday…

            ‘The humans live in time, and experience reality successively.  To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change.’

            There we were, eating dinner, and the phone call came.  We heard all of the short details you hear when there is too much going on, but word has to get out.  We took turns shouting the news into Grandpa’s ear, and then, for the rest of the afternoon, we got updates. 

Cracked Apart

Good Friday. I woke up thinking of the song called 'Beautiful Scandalous Night'. About how it's hard to understand just fully what Jesus has done for the world. About how grace brings you to it anyway, and enlarges your little Grinch-like heart and makes you really alive with the fullness of it.


In the last week I have been reading The Screwtape Letters once again. I read them before and was shocked to my core. Last week I knew I needed it again. Talk about eye opening. And heavy. And real.  It has also reminded me of the brilliance or writers in the past, of God's character and how astonishing it is that He loves us, and of the indignation you feel when you see you're being tricked. And what it does to you when you see it and know it and change your life's thoughts because of it.


I've said it before, but I'll say it again. God is cracking me apart. It's bewildering, and surprising, and just like God and no one else to seep into the cracks of my life in this way.

Making It Funny

I just had a conversation with a very good friend on the phone.   A very unexpected, plucky discussion to end the weekend and begin the week.  Amy is always authentic and fresh and funny.  (So are the things Peter says in the background.)  She can say something to commiserate with a story that makes it hilarious instead.    


I am all about forward thinking and pressing on and choosing not to dwell.  However, in the past few days, a story from my life in college, one especially mortifying and filled with decision making I would never make anymore, has plagued me. 

Life and Rocks

When I was little, my brother got a rock tumbler.  Maybe for his birthday, maybe for Christmas....I don't remember.  What I do remember that the neighbors had it too, and for a season, there were days on end that my brother and the neighbor kids would tumble rocks.  In the garage.  It just sat there, wearing down a rock.  It made a terrible sound.  And then it would come out smooth and wonderful, and....? 

I remember wondering what the heck you would do with a smooth rock after you put it through the tumbler.  And why my parents were so ok to let that thing run.  And why I was missing the point.

I thought about this today because the best way to describe my life right now is that.  I'm the rock.  It feels like I'm in a rock tumbler and my prayer life is cracking me apart.  Instead of getting all Christian camp counselor with my vernacular here, I'm just going to say that.  I actually feel like a rock being worn down.  To a good thing.  In response to the things I've prayed about before. 

Why I Am Bad At Laryngitis

Day One: 
I have a really fun morning with my sister.  We sit around and talk and drink coffee.   I drive for 5 hours and enjoy the prairie and the silence and the sky.  I go to a really fun St. Patrick's Day party.  At said party, right around 11 pm, I lose my voice.  I still stay up until 2 am.

Day Two:
At church.  I still think I'm functioning like a normal human.  I totally deny this inside until I talk to my mother on the phone and she tells me not to talk to anyone for the rest of the day.   (I listen, but still don't get it.) 

Day Three: 
Back to school.  I change all my lesson plans to keep my voice silent.  I enjoy the silence in the morning.   All students are awesome about this.  By the afternoon, I'm getting antsy.  I want conversations to happen but my body won't cooperate.  I tell myself I'll be fine by tomorrow.

Day Four: 
I'm not fine by tomorrow.   Students check in before school to see if I'm ok.  I tell them I am and drink lots and lots of water and teach like everything is normal.  Every once in a while I catch weird looks from the students and I hear the strain in my voice.  And I think it must be sort of difficult to listen to me. 

Far Away and Dreamy

 

Two weeks ago, my friend Jamie told me that life is sometimes so strange to me because I am so distinctly logical and emotional inside.  At the same time.  When she said this, I blinked a few times, said ‘Yes’ to it, and some of the dissonance in my life immediately went away. 

After that, I also realized that I live simultaneously between two drastically differently views of time and place.  (Big week, people, lots of thoughts…)  It has a lot to do with what I say about the world and the stories in them.  And how this all gets refined and sorted and lived.  This is, in the end, really, what all of these posts are about. 

What Fills the Room

Well, everything has been moved. And I have a new classroom.

And I guess I just have to say that I forgot about ‘my people’ and how they fill the room. Earlier in the week, when I was sitting there by myself, lamenting about life (sans overhead), I did not remember that eventually the kids would come into the room and we would talk about history. That, despite the chaos, happened today. High schoolers took care of the things that needed change and repair in the old room, and I just walked down the hall with my students and kept them occupied in this new little wing. Which is actually already being referred to as the West Wing. I can handle that. We played trivia, and in one class, all 12 students huddled around my computer and finished a movie about John Wilkes Booth. It was kind of endearingly ‘old school St. Croix Prep’.

And then, at the proper time, the students moved into new lockers. And this was the missing piece. Classrooms feel blissfully empty for about two seconds without students in them. You breathe in and out and hear their voices far away in the lunch room or coming up the stairs, and it’s good to have that solitude before they show up again. But every time, every time, I am really happy that they come. And I left school today feeling really grateful to have a job where I really liked to be around these people.

Yes, it’s the rosy glow of the move, I am sure. But it’s also that I have a calling in life, and it works for me, and I work really hard at it, and it’s what I’ve always been meant to do. 

The Overhead

‘All the art of life lies in the fine art of holding on and letting go.’ – Havelock Ellis 

 That’s the quote that is basically the motto of this week.  We’re moving at school.  I realized this week just HOW nostalgic and old school I really am.  At least in regard to teaching.  One of my students from long ago said it just like that to me, at the end of a conversation in the hall.   ‘You’re kind of nostalgic, aren’t you?’  I guess it makes sense….I can remember lots of things and I AM charmed by history. 

But I can also see that something very good and very new is right in front of me.  New whiteboards, a view of trees and snow, sunlight (aka an outdoor window for the first time in 5 years), freshly painted walls.  The place is just waiting for new memories.  I understand just how huge this is….people don’t get new classrooms every day. 

Hope

"With every rising of the sun, think of your life as just begun."

The Eventual End and Real Beginning of My Story

It’s probably realistic and true for me to say that I’ve been thinking about death, fairly consistently, for the last two years. I’m sure if you were one of the people who sees me every day, this would be surprising. I don’t really talk about it. Death is a deep down thing.

But it’s not even what you might first imagine. I don’t live gasping for air in the fear of ‘what if’ in the middle of the night. My faith in Jesus is all wrapped up in this, and also a very logical side of living in the physical present. Which is what people must do. They must, every day, get up and breathe in and out and do the next thing. Even when they wonder. Even when they’re in incredible pain. At least after the initial shock. Life goes, which can be, sometimes simultaneously a great relief and offense to the pain.

I don’t necessarily wonder all of the time how I will die. I think that is so beyond where I am, and that is the sort of thing that can let in some fear and ruin you. And honestly, since I am alive, the process of death, and my own, is so far away it doesn’t feel like my own storyline. That part of my life belongs to God. And what He knows that we don’t.

While the Coffee Brews

Sometimes in the morning, when I have just woken up and I am waiting for the coffee to brew, I will take out a little book that I own called ’14,000 Things to Be Happy About’.  At some point in my life, during the summer away from teaching I am sure, I looked through the entire thing.  And I underlined the things that really actually did make me happy.  Not what everyone else likes.  Not what they prefer or tell me about or wonder about. 

Just me.    

Jams

It’s the time in winter when I’ve resorted to playing ‘Survivor’by Destiny’s Child, just to be old-school inspired. Every year, without fail. I always forget I do this until it's here. I know it’s about a break up, but it can be about the rest of life too. Obviously. (No current break up to speak of. Thankfully.)

The only embarrassing part was that nearby students could hear the music through my headphones when I really cranked it. Sorry, friend-who-is-teaching-in-my-classroom-but-loves-that-song-too. (She understood. They clearly didn’t. They stared at me like they had never seen me before. Paradox of perception, I am sure. Whatever, kids.) But there are worse things to be inspired by besides ‘Cuz my momma taught me better than that’.

Responding to loads of technical e-mails? Defiant teenagers angsty about winter weather around every corner? Surprise mid-week car repairs? Destiny’s Child. Works every time

Two Things

#1

I do this thing in life where I mull over the big things for a long time. Despite my many words, it's under the surface.  And then one day I surprise everyone (and myself) and make a decision seemingly out of nowhere.  And I'm committed and it happens very fast.  And it's good.   

That just happened.  I'm moving. 

In a few months I am moving.   Not quite yet.  But being like this again, doing life like this, made me once again think about how weird life is with its timing.  It stretches on and on, this apartment search, and then one day I find something, and I give these new people a deposit and they become my new landlords.   I have been thinking about moving. For a while.