[prose #24] Fall Teaches Me About Death

Fall has never been my favorite season. I partially blame it on not being accustomed to the traditional fall - you know, seeing your breath in the cool air while walking under colorful trees. In the Midwest where I grew up, we joked that there were only two seasons: blazing hot and blasted cold. It's funny because it's true. Those temperate seasons - our friends fall and spring - lasted about a week before being shoved out by extreme temperatures. Fall means harvest in that part of the country, and I remember the farmers next door harvesting their wheat or beans in heat so thick you could bathe in it. Welcome to a South Dakota autumn.

Fall heralded the end of summer, which meant good-bye to my ever-anticipated birthday and much-loved freedom. Only a few weeks after my birthday wrapping paper graced the garbage can, I was back in a desk at school. During non-air-conditioned afternoons in late August, my sixth grade teacher would turn off the lights and give us free reading time. We thanked her with placid silence, for those lights being off gave us a few degrees of coolness. I dreamed then of my summer freedom. Granted, that freedom usually had become a burden by the time school supplies were on sale.

Fall also whispered to me of winter. I dreaded the South Dakota winter, cold and long: recesses with snow pants, drifts shutting down roads, bitter wind biting my cheeks. Sure, the snow forts and "tromping" around the acreage with my St. Bernard Mollie, one of us completely happy with below zero temperatures, made the winter enjoyable, but for the most part, I was stuck inside. The same goes for the winters in the Pacific Northwest - just replace cold with rainy, and you have my home sweet home. The summers out here are magnificently moderate and sun-ridden, but winters are terribly dreary. No wonder these days fall seems like a death sentence.

It is, really, a death sentence. Fall does mean beautiful trees turning magnificent flaming colors in an instant. It means acorns falling from trees, and a bite to the air, and harvest time. But all of those things at their core are deat: the leaves are losing their connection, their life force, and are unable to grow any longer. The acorns are disconnected from their parent tree. The bite means the end of the line for many bugs and other plants. And the harvest, while it means life for us, means good-bye to the fruits of a plant. Once you pick it, it is dead.

That sounds depressing, but it's kind of how my brain works. I've always had this idea of mortality buzzing around in my ears, even as a young child. I laugh at it now, but I was a terribly serious child. I drew many pictures of Jesus dying on the cross, with appropriate blood drippage, very concerned about eternal salvation. Also, for a while in late elementary school, I was internally convinced that I would die in a car crash with a drunk driver. Just to be safe, I made wills and envisioned my funeral, the latter which seemed like a pretty sweet party in my head. It's a wonder that I wasn't sent to counseling.

Even now, I am constantly reminded by every bright leaf that falls, every news report, every prayer request that our lives are so fragile. We are walking toward death with every movement. As a Jesus person, that should be okay with me, but so often I do not fear my own death, but rather cling selfishly to those I love. I do not want them to leave me, but I see them coughing or breaking legs or fatigued and I understand that their bodies are weak, only held together with fragile pieces of skin and bones.

Every day, there are less and less survivors of the Holocaust, the bloodiest reminder of how hate destroys and power corrupts and life can be stolen. I watched The Pianist the other day for the first time, and I was utterly devastated, torn apart by the destruction of lives with such cruelty. But then I realized that those who survived the camps, the cold stark days, the hard work and the bitter hatred, are now being taken by disease and old age. Those who lived will still die. And with them dies a little bit of our history as a world. Our children will not know these survivors as anything but a page in a history book. But that is the way it is meant to be.

There is this documentary on YouTube called "Dancing Under the Gallows." I highly recommend looking it up. It's about a woman named Grace who lives in London and who survived the Holocaust because she was a concert pianist, much like the movie I recently saw. She was sent to a camp with other artists, a propaganda piece for Germany to show the world how well they were treating the Jews. She is alive because she played music, and she lives still because she plays music. At over 100 years old, she continues to play on with a joy and a peace. She loves and lives a happy life, despite all of the pain inflicted on her many years ago. She lives with optimism and grace, blessing those around her and receiving blessings from others with great happiness. The film is called Dancing Under the Gallows, because that is what they felt they were doing in the camp - dancing in the place where death could come so quickly. But they danced anyway, and their dancing gave them joy.

And so, even in this season of pain, cold, and death, God gives us reminders of dancing. Even while the world seems poised to persuade us that death is a terrible, horrible, painful experience, the trees show us that death can be beautiful. As each leaf prepares to fall, it turns a brilliant shade of gold, orange, red. They have no choice but to accept their fate and fall with as much grace and brightness as possible. I want to dance as I fall, and I want to shine. I want to know my fate, understand it, and welcome it.

A Response to Isaac's Angry Conversations with God

I wasn't so sure about it when I picked it up. The book had a lot going for it. I mean, Donald Miller recommended it, even going on tour with the author. And Tony Hale, only my favorite awkward younger brother on Arrested Development, gave it high accolades, said the back of the book. And I'm always up for a new memoir, especially one with the word Snarky in the title.

Susan Isaac's Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky But Authentic Spiritual Memoir had to grow on me a bit. I wasn't too keen on it at the start. The writing is incredibly informal, and I didn't know how long I could follow the premise: a woman brings God to marriage counseling. The book flip-flops between the actual, mostly chronological narrative and a fictionalized transcript of Isaac's counseling sessions with God. It seemed kind of hokey to me, honestly.

But the more I read about Isaac's life, the more I saw myself in her story. She struggled with addiction, relationships, the church, but mostly she struggled with herself as an artist and how her creativity fit into God's plan. In the book, she calls it "playing her note," that feeling when she's doing exactly what it is she has been created to do. I completely understood her frustration with feeling like God has given her a passion but she is unable to do anything with it, while at the same time, things are just falling into place for those around her. Isaacs has had a long life full of both personal and professional successes and failures, and she is brutally honest about them all. I respect that, and I ache for that honesty in my own life.

A key point comes in at the end of the book concerning doing what you love "for fun and for free." If you focus on that, then you'll never be disappointed with your lack of financial success. You'll simply be excited and blessed by all that does come to you. I mean, it's what I'm doing right now. Granted, it's mostly because I'm a slacker and completely disinterested in finding markets (i.e. putting in the work to find markets), but I'm glad to do this right now for fun and for free.

The other thing that has stuck with me is the idea of a transcripted conversation with God. I don't know what mine would look like. Isaac's Jesus is her buddy, God her sarcastic and hurtful older father/brother. She's clear to point out that these are manifestations of her own views of God at a particular time, views distorted and damaged by the people around her and the church that had hurt her. As the book went on, she grew to know God more and his voice became less snarky.

I think my God is a older figure, slightly aloof and distant, cocky, a Sherlock Holmes type. And Jesus is the guy who knows me, knows what I'm going through. That wouldn't be a good story at all. But I have been having a few more honest conversations with God lately. I mean, like Isaacs, I know I can't quit him (accidental Brokeback Mountain reference). He's so much part of my life, my psyche, my being, that I can't just eliminate him and I never will. I can't imagine looking at a tree and thinking, Man, that's pretty. I'm so glad science figured out where it came from so there is no wonder at all. But at the same time, there are some things I really don't get. I had a bit of a spat with God over a story in the Bible, where Abram lies about Sarai being his wife, and the Pharaoh basically takes her as his wife and Abram gets a lot of great stuff. When it all comes out, Abram gets a tongue-lashing from Pharaoh, but gets to keep all of his goods. God doesn't even reprimand Abram; he instead gives Pharaoh diseases for sleeping with Sarai. And what does Sarai get out of this deal? To be forced to sleep with a man who is not her husband. Where's her reward, and where's Abram's punishment? God is strangely silent on this issue in the text, and it's a plot hole to me for sure.

But the more I talk aloud to God in my car, the more I get it and the more calm I get, even after I start crying because I don't get it. Because God's just glad I'm talking to him. I can feel his pleasure at me asking him questions or shouting at him or crying in his ear. He's okay with all of that, because it means I'm trying and I'm talking. I don't have to get it. He's God, I'm not. But I know he's glad for our conversations...snarky or not.

[prose #23] And a Children's Book Shall Lead Them

Portland, Oregon has a great many amazing things. It's a city of bicycles and rain, and former hippies sitting next to hipsters riding the MAX train system downtown. But the greatest thing about Portland is Powell's. To say Powell's is a bookstore is like saying Michael Jordan played basketball or Dizzy Gillespie played jazz – the label doesn’t do justice to the actual truth. The Powell’s main store is downtown on Burnside, located in a four-story building that takes up an entire city block of Portland’s Pearl district. It is the book lover’s Mecca, a place to find any type of desired book, silence, and contemplation. Each subject is found in a colored room, and each regular customer has her favorite room. Upon entering the store, I make a beeline to the Blue room - fiction and poetry - before stopping by the Pearl room for plays and the Orange room for spirituality. The whole place feels like a church or a library, the same hush as people sit in the aisles to look at books and read chapters and weigh the benefits of each book. It feels like the best part of home to someone like myself.

Powell's has other stores throughout the city and the suburbs, and there's one close to my friend Hannah's house in Southeast Portland. The Hawthorne store is non-specific, a smaller version of the parent on Burnside. Instead of the huge warehouse-like feel, it's more closed in, more tightly spaced. For some reason, when I visit it, I feel more lost than I do among the thousands of books downtown, simply because I get lost easily in the unfamiliar stakes and thus become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of volumes. Foreign bookstores often overwhelm me. But even just thinking about Powell's and the treasures inside gives me a gleam in my eye, so Hannah and I often stop by after getting coffee and stopping by thrift stores.

I walk the fiction halls, dragging my fingers along the spines of books as is my habit at bookstores. I'm not a tactile person anywhere else, but books are all about the touch for me. I like to feel their bulk, look at their typeset, judge them based on their spine labels and front cover art. And so I wander through the stacks of words, opinions and imaginations of people here and people gone.

Hannah has already disappeared off to the right, to the children's section. These days, she is only reading children's books, or more precisely young adult fiction. It all started with a boyfriend who was a fan of the author Jerry Spinelli, and since that time, she's been making her way through Spinelli's fiction, books that celebrate the offbeat, the outcast, and the pain of every middle schooler.

I hold different thick and heavy books, thinking that I’ll want to add these to my collection of much-loved books, but I see in their covers the sighs of the adult lives. They just seem heavy. So I leave the adult world and join Hannah among the brightly colored and thin chapter books. She’s looking over the Newberry award winners, and as I read titles, memories come flooding back to me. I read nearly all of them when I was younger and reading was my only desire. Each title held a brief memory: my mother giggling as she read Holes, reading Walk Two Moons with my reading buddy in second grade, having my sixth-grade heart torn out in fear and love and other emotions I couldn’t name by The Giver.

But the more I looked at those books, I realized I recognized the covers, the titles, the feel and look of them, but I couldn’t recall all of the stories. In fact, I couldn’t recall most of the aspects of the stories I read so long ago. There is an obvious distance between when I sat down with them for the first time and looking at them today, but I remember these books impacting me, affecting me to my core. Why couldn’t I remember them?

I started remember those years, the frantic rush to finish stories as quickly as possible. So much of my identity was wrapped up in being “the one who reads” that I couldn’t help but chase that with all of my might. In my small school, where my entire sixth grade was composed of 70 students – the largest class in the K-12 school – one might think it would be easy to fit in, but in fact, it was immensely difficult. Everyone saw your every move, and at any moment, one action could ostracize you from the entire class for years. The outcast group was small, only two or three, and there was no mercy there either. I needed to be accepted, and so I chased after being smart and reading a lot with all of my might.

It helped that our school had the Accelerated Reader program, where students read books and took computerized tests afterward that gauged how much they recalled. Depending on the reading level of the book, points were assigned, which you could then spend at the library store. I had the most points every year, due to my ability to seek out the longest and most difficult books our library owned. I learned to read quickly and retain for a short amount of time, just so I could pass the test and get my points, retaining my social status. I wasn’t popular, but at least I was smart.

Somehow, that became my work ethic: work quickly and retain knowledge just long enough to pass the test, write the paper, get an A in the course. It worked – my brain happily gained and dumped according to what was required of it that semester. But then I lost something along the way. I lost the beauty of the story. I rushed through books quickly without thought to what they were, instead just focusing on what they could be for me – a topic for a paper, fodder for discussion, even a conversation starter. And so I used and forgot, used and forgot, used and forgot.

After graduation from college with a degree in English and a deep love for literature, I realized that my old style of reading wasn’t necessary any more. I didn’t have papers to write, discussions to start. I could read for fun. And I had forgotten how to do that. So I didn’t read for a long while. I buried my nose in my computer, watching season after season of stories that I saw with my eyes but not my mind. I started books, but put them down in favor of something that held no identity for me whatsoever: the television.

Until I found myself in front of that bookshelf, filled with stories of my youth. Through those tomes, I could track my childhood and I was filled with memories I had forgotten existed. But I still couldn’t name the main characters or the major plot lines. One book emerged from the rest: A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle. I touched it, as I do with books. And it felt like mine. I can’t explain it. I have this overwhelming desire to own books and to touch them and to make them mine. And so once I saw the price - $4.50 – how could I resist? The book came home with me.

I opened it and I remembered. I remembered why this book won awards, why children adore it, why it is still read by kids today though it was published in 1962 and written without knowledge of the internet or cell phones. I saw myself as a girl in it, while at the same time finding myself as a woman and a scholar. I marveled over the simplistic yet weighty word choice, the complex story line, and the effective characterization. The story works because Meg is exactly how every twelve-year-old girl perceives herself. And it works because it confronts the idea of fear and how it stops you from doing what is right. And it works because it is written with words that matter, and children notice these things, even if they cannot express it.

In that simple children’s book, I started to re-find my love for the written word, for the story, for the act of reading just for the heck of it. I haven’t had that love since I was a young girl, but I’m going to cultivate it now as an adult, because I need to learn to live in the process, in the words instead of the last page, the accomplishment and the need for an identity. I need to not just get through but instead thrive through and because of my life. And this is how Meg Wallace began to change my perspective, a children’s book began to change my life, and reading began to change my whole world…again.

[Prose#6] Furrowed Brow

I glanced in the review mirror last Monday and realized it was never going to go away.

For some reason, this revelation was shocking to me. It was a normal Monday commute, summertime sunshine lighting up the Oregon sky, as clear as a summer in the Pacific Northwest can possibly be - such a contrast to the rain this region is known for. The sun is already up and at'em by the time I start my drive to work, iPod on shuffle, my favorite songs filling the interior of the car.

Warding against squinting through the sunlight bouncing off of street signs, I wore my favorite pair of sunglasses - Aviators, gold frame. I'm not one of those girls that spends a lot of money on clothes. But sunglasses - now that's different. I usually get my sunglasses beyond cheap at thrifts stores, and I struggle getting rid of any of them. This fact explains the seven pairs of sunglasses I have roaming about my station wagon.

Sunglasses on, I glanced in my review mirror. I saw, just slightly above the nose piece of my sunglasses, a crease in my brow. I've always had that crease right between my eyes slightly left of center. But today, it popped out at me as being particularly indented. And permanent. This wasn't any delightful and delicate brow furrowing. No, it was a deep furrow, deep enough to plant seeds in.

My face is a frowny face. It just wants to frown. I've been told I have a lovely smile, but timidity and thoughtfulness were always its biggest foes. This goes back to infancy. From the photos, I look to be deathly seriousI did so, but I didn't carry a smile on my face to just throw out willy-nilly. Part of that could be due to being incredibly sick as a young child and living with great pain for the first two years of my life. But even today, my best friend told me that 1) my face at rest looks annoyed, and 2) that when I narrowed my eyes in thought, I was incredibly intimidating. My dry and sarcastic sense of humor don't help the situation too much.

But for some reason, I didn't realize how permanent the creases would be. For some reason, I figured I'd fall in love or something and smile so much that the brow creases would cease to exist. Instead, I'm sitting at a stoplight, trying to contort my face so that the line disappears. I smile. Nothing. I lift my eyebrows and smile. Oops, too high. I balance it out just right so that the crease is slightly less noticeable, but it's still there. Plus, my face feels like it's been glued on.

I started getting sad. Frowning, actually. It's just going to get worse, and all of a sudden, I'll find myself the scary old lady that looks mean. I don't want to look mean! I want those wrinkles around my mouth that say I've smiled too much freely over my life and look at what it's done to me! I want to have wrinkles in the right places. And hopefully they won't show up until after my 25th birthday.

Once I put my eyes back on the road as traffic started to break up, I took my attention off of the mirror and more on the deeper situation. I realize that I wanted my face to reflect who I am - a loving friend, a kind daughter, a laughing spirit. And someone who frowns when she thinks or when she cracks a joke. I can't do anything about the lines that are there already. They inform my character, who I am both around others and by myself. But, if I want the grandma wrinkles, born out of love and many free smiles, then I need to start earning them. There's no better time than now, I thought, as I pulled into work and greeted a co-worker getting out of a minivan with a huge grin.

[Prose#5] Dancing

"Dancing almost always turns out to be a good idea." --Anne Lamott

Coming from a good Baptist family, dancing was a rarity in my house. Formal dancing, anyway - I have humorous images of my minister father busting loose in the kitchen of our house to Elvis, twisting like a good Christian boy never should. My younger sister and I were never put into ballet classes as children, though this could be due less to our church denomination and more to the lack of potential; I speak for myself, mainly. Around middle school, my sister tried out for cheerleading and was mildly encouraged in this by my ever-supporting parents, as long as all tempting body parts were covered at all time.

I surely can't place all blame on my parents. I was a shy, chubby girl, with little understanding of her body: how it moves, what it does, the power in its cords. Not much has changed, as I often find myself with bruises from misjudging the distance between my desk corner and my knee. Because of this lack of awareness of spacial relations (something on which I score low in any standardized test), I do my best to stay away from any sort of dancing whatsoever.

Yet, in high school, I found myself breaking this norm for - what else - the attention of a boy. A good friend of mine, one of those dangerous theater types who often breaks into song and/or dance for no apparent reason, was taking a swing class as part of a local community theater. One summer night, after a bowl of ice cream and some laughter on the wooden deck, he offered to teach me a few steps. Because this boy was cute and unbelievably confident, he wore down my flimsy defenses - for what girl would actually object to a boy's hands in hers, arm around her waist, with little chance for any funny business while doing a legitimate dance style?

He pulled me to him, and all words I had were spirited away by the nearness of his body. The teacher was patient as he imparted his wisdom to me, demonstrating the most basic rock-step. Nervously, I tried to wrap my mind around the new motions, wanting to pick them up quickly and impress him with my gracefulness. Unfortunately, neither want was realized, as it took me try after try to master even the simplest step and even once it was "mastered," there was little grace - instead, there was uncertainty, which threw off the rhythm with each slight hesitation. I was thinking, analyzing, trying to understand the physics of each motion. Until he looked at me, our faces too close together, brown eyes glimmering with faith in my elephant-esque feet, and said, "Stop thinking so much."

The key. Once I turned off the temples, let the beat and the horns and the bass rush through me like a wind, and trusted in my confident partner to lead me, I was dancing. The motion became something other, something more than feet moving in sync - instead, it was a like an energy that pulsed with the rhythm of the music, coming in even as physical energy was being exerted. No wonder there are so many photos of people laughing while dancing. That rush takes you by surprise, picks you up and lifts you to a place where you feel the physical connection with your partner and also a physical connection with yourself, with every molecule of your being vibrating in time with the beat.

When that boy moved on from my life, so did my brief stint as a swing dancer. More often than not, on the ever-present dance floor at weddings and reunions, I am awkward, using my mind to evaluate how I look and who is looking at me. I'm not good at letting another lead, and I am not good at dancing alone, even within a crowd. But every once in a while, the stars align and I trust my partner to carry me away. Then I feel that unique energy flow in and out, creating a homeostasis within and without, and I laugh with delight along with every molecule I possess.

[Prose#4] Jennifer Knapp Second Opinion Review

Second Opinion Review (the sidebar):

http://jesusfreakhideout.com/cdreviews/JenniferKnappLettingGo.asp

[Prose#3] Tenth Ave. North Review

Here's what I feel about this: Meh.

http://jesusfreakhideout.com/cdreviews/TheLightMeetsTheDark.asp