Category: Life

When I’m 64

Published on by Marilyn6 Comments

Would you indulge me as I reflect and cry a little in this space?

I turn 64 tomorrow. Depending on where you live in the world, it means I’ve either far exceeded the life expectancy, or I have many years to go. Either way, I’m feeling and thinking about many things.

I think it began this morning as I listened to beloved children’s musician Raffi sing “Everything Grows and Grows.” 

Everything grows and grows
Babies do, animals too
Everything grows
Everything grows and grows
Sisters do, brothers too
Everything grows

This song is one of my favorites and as I was listening to it the tears came unbidden, and I let them. I had just finished scheduling some medical appointments online and my body’s frailty despite fairly good health was on my mind. We are immortal beings living in mortal bodies – bodies that face all sorts of indecencies and difficulties. From ingrown toenails to brain tumors, we groan and sometimes lose hope. At 64, the “to do” list on our electronic medical charts gets longer and makes us face reality – our bodies are aging. With this, we know we have some decisions to make, and a number of those have to do with acceptance and attitude. I don’t want to be someone who gives everyone around me an “organ recital” as I age. I don’t want to hate my body or blame the God who created me, and yet I see how easily it may be to go down that dangerous path.

I want to accept my 64 years and what they have brought and taught me with joy, gratitude, and a healthy dose of humor. Because let’s face it – the aging body and process can be funny. Perhaps the funniest is that you see yourself as 24 and all your 64-year-old friends as – well, maybe 84. You can’t believe how much they’ve aged! You pat yourself on the back and then you catch a reflected version of yourself in the blackout windows of the car and you clutch your heart thinking “I thought Grandma K was dead! What’s she doing in my car?!” You think about how you should maybe take an exercise class, get rid of some of those unsightly bulges – and then you think “Nah! I look pretty good. Pass the cinnamon roll.”

Getting older is almost like changing species, from cute middle-aged, white-tailed deer, to yak. We are both grass eaters, but that’s about the only similarity. At the Safeway sushi bar during lunchtime, I look at the teenage girls in their crop tops with their stupid flat tummies and I feel bad about what lies beneath my big, forgiving shirts but — and this is one of the blessings of aging — not for long.

Ann Lamott as quoted in The Washington Post

The physical piece is just the beginning. The harder piece is emotional, for in a society that loves beauty and youth, it is easy to feel irrelevant. It comes through subtly and consistently. Unless you’re famous, like Ann Lamott, your life experience, earned fact as it were, is not seen as important or relevant to our fast-paced world. When at a public event, you can see the eyes of younger people look over or through you. There are surely more interesting people in the room to talk to. You want to connect with people, but do they want to connect with you?

Ready to inhale a massive dose of self-pity, you suddenly stop yourself and think: Hold on! It isn’t about me. Life just isn’t. It’s about something so much bigger, better, and more lasting. It’s about loving well the generations that will follow me. It’s about making sure they know that they are beloved, that they are precious. It’s about showing grace even when faced with those who are not gracious. It is about forgiving when you feel misunderstood and hurt, about forgiving when you are not being forgiven.

What do I want 64 to look like beyond medical appointments and fear? Beyond irrelevance and unsightly bulges?

I want it to be a year of peace and joy, of smiling at the future. I want to invest in my kids and my grandkids – another coming our way in May. I want to love them with abandon. I want to see more of my girlfriends, to go out to breakfast and right the world. At our age, we should be able to. I want to learn how to decorate cakes and become a better communicator. I want to write words that are full of life and grace, that point the reader to something bigger and better than me. I want to walk through crowded bazaars in places I love and drink coffee in unexpected coffee shops. I want to go to a Bollywood exercise class and laugh at my mistakes. I want to love others well. I want to grow more compassionate and meet the unexpected hard things without fear. I want to honor the struggle – mine and others. Most of all, I want others to see the God I love, to witness his work and love his world.

64. It’s a lot of me and a lot of life. Will you journey with me on this? I sure hope so!

Sharp Edges of a Round Globe

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What is it about Sunday afternoons in winter that bring on such melancholy? I remember writing a couple of years ago that if Sunday mornings are a time when Heaven meets earth in Divine Liturgy, Sunday afternoons feel opposite. They feel cold and hard, as though the warm grace of the morning has frozen, leaving only ice and cold.

Truth is, I have felt this way since I can remember. It began in boarding school. Sunday afternoon was the time for resting. The entire hostel was quiet. As I think back on this, it is quite extraordinary. How can that many children in one place be quiet? But we were, whether it be from fear of punishment or just the intensity of the week catching up with us, Sunday afternoons had us in our dormitory rooms, curled up with books, taking a nap with a favorite stuffed animal, or hiding tears of homesickness because that is when we missed our moms and dads so much. As I would sit in my room, a yearning sadness enveloped me, and it has remained that way since I was a child.

Today I feel like that boarding school kid once again, a yearning sadness surrounding me and threatening to overwhelm.

Certainly, there is enough to be sad about. I feel the sharp edges of a round globe, like shards of glass are stuck into different cities and regions tearing into people and places. It is too big for most to bear. Besides the global pain is the individual pain that each one of us knows, some of it too difficult to share with even our close friends. And yet I cannot believe that a silent and cruel giant creator is playing with our globe and us like we are toys, wanting to wound those toys like a child bent on cruelty toward inanimate objects.

I cannot believe in a cruel creator because the thread of goodness that I see, feel, and sense is still too strong. I see it in the kindness of a neighbor. I feel it in a friend putting her arm around me as she sees tears well up in my eyes. I sense it in the beauty of the hymns of the church. I see it in the bravery of men and women who are caring for the suffering around the world. And I see it as the sun rises each day in all these places – whether or not we see color through the clouds. But far beyond what I see, feel, and sense is an enduring faith that God is good, and in his goodness I can rest.

This work of faith brings me once again to pray the prayers of the church – prayers that have been passed down through centuries of faith by people who lived in profoundly difficult times. Prayers that I have gratefully received, knowing that I don’t have the words I need. Prayers that are large enough and strong enough to cover a round globe with sharp edges. I leave one of those with you today, knowing that on this melancholy Sunday afternoon they give me hope and help me move beyond my melancholy to a place of peace and rest.

Remember Lord all your servants who are in pain, who are in despair, who are sick, who are poor, who have lost a loved one, who have been wronged, who are by themselves, who have been slandered,  who are captives, who are hungry, who are refugees, who have lost their ways, who have been deceived, who are unprotected, who are in prison…Remember Lord all the nations of the world.  Keep them in your embrace and cover and protect them from war and evil.

St. Paisios

When the Journey is too Much for You, Press the Pause Button

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There is something about summer. Something in us that needs longer days and slower nights. Something that needs the spontaneity that was put on hold for the rest of the year but is made room for in the summer. Something in us that needs to pause, reflect, let chirping crickets and birds that have come out of hiding interrupt our conversations.

To truly experience summer is to press the pause button on life.

I press the pause button and neighbors walking past our house step inside our gate, able to sit and rest after a weary day at work. I press the pause button and feel the freedom to let things go, realizing chores will always be around but summer won’t. I press the pause button, because if I don’t the journey will be too much for me.

Recently I was rereading one of my old journals. I am a prolific journal writer and God forbid that these journals be found when I die! First order of business for those who love me will be to burn them and then eulogize me. But I digress. As I was reading, I happened on an entry from a couple of years ago in June. I was weary. My journal told a story of grief and exhaustion. In the middle of this I had quoted the beautiful verses from the Old Testament story of Elijah running for his life to escape a wicked queen. He runs for an entire day, finally collapsing under the weight of exhaustion, fear, and discouragement. He sits down under a desert tree and prays that he will die. “I’ve had enough, Lord,” he says. “Take my life…!” and then he falls asleep. We aren’t told how long he sleeps, but at one point an angel touches him, and he wakes to find food and water beside him. He eats, drinks, and falls asleep again. The second time the angel touches him and says some of the most beautiful words that someone exhausted by life could ever hear: “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.”*[1 Kings 19]

The tenderness and humanity in that statement are profound. Stop. Press the pause button. Eat. Let your body be nourished because the journey is too much for you. In my journal I followed the words from scripture with my own: “When the journey is too much for me – I pause, I breathe, I rest, I eat.”

Often, I think that our own and other people’s exhaustion scares us. We want to make sure they will be able to continue to function. We want to give them a motivational speech on how they need to keep going, how trials and adversity will make them stronger, urging them to stay the course when the going is tough and rough. There is indeed a place for that but what if we began with food and rest, with compassion and acknowledgement that sometimes our journeys in this life are too much for us? What if we started with the pause button?

No one needs to stay on pause forever. In truth, this would be boring and annoying. But there are times when the pause button is God offering us a chance to rest and be revived, recognizing that we are flesh and blood, that our bodies and souls are not foreign to each other, rather one affects the other and have done so since creation.

Two years ago, I needed summer and my journal as reminders to press the pause button. I needed someone to say “Stop, breathe, have something to eat, rest – for the journey is too much for you.”

May your summer be a time to press the pause button, to rest, to eat. Otherwise, the journey may be too much for you.

Lenten Journey – Healing Comes in the Trying

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I don’t know when the dawn will break for you or for me, but I know that the healing comes in the trying. And that even in the dark we have to keep practicing our callings. Whatever they are. We have to keep doing the things we were made to do. The daily acts of creativity and honesty and service as much for what they bring about inside us as for the good they do in the world. Practice your vocation and calling whatever you understand that to be because the practice of it will keep you connected and to the God who planted those things inside you. 

Shauna Niequist

Last Monday, on the first day of Orthodox Lent, I had a wisdom tooth extracted. As the dental surgeon’s assistant was giving me instructions, she reminded me that the first few days I would get steadily better, and then by days 3-5, it would feel much worse. “It’s like so many things,” she said. “You get worse before you get better. To heal, you have to go through a process.”

I didn’t think much about it that day, so focused was I on the procedure and on the wads of gauze and local anesthesia that made me sound like a cartoon character. But days four and five came, and though I thought I would be unique and spared the pain of those middle days, the pain came on with a vengeance. The only thing I could do was follow the paper of instructions given to me as I left the dental office. Ibuprofen, rinsing with saline, soft foods, and waiting. I had to keep doing those things because I knew that ultimately, they would aid in the healing, and the healing would indeed come. I had to keep trying.

“The healing comes in the trying.”

But on Saturday I wanted to give up. I wanted to stop trying and call the dental assistant and say “This isn’t working. I need something else. I’m not healing.” In truth, I was. I just didn’t like how it was going. I wanted to speed up the process. I was sick of the pain. I didn’t want to believe the dental assistant’s words.

Today is a new day. In the world of tooth extractions, the dawn broke and with it was a tenderness replacing the pain. I know now that every day will be a bit easier.

Though they are nothing to do with healing from a tooth extraction, Shauna Niequist’s words above are not unlike those of the dental assistant. They are both about process, about doing all those things in the dark that we learned to do in the light.

If you’ve been following along with me, you know that I’ve had some healing going on during the past few years. Healing from pain far worse than that of a tooth extraction. Every time I think the dawn is about to break, it seems the clouds come over and instead of the brilliant colors of sunrise, it’s all greys and muted colors. In the midst of this, I’m continuing to learn what it means to keep trying. To make plans and follow through with them. To cry heavy tears in the shower and then get dressed. To pray soul-aching prayers and then get up and make dinner. To wait for answers and then actively process through writing. The dawn has not yet broken, but God is present, gently reminding me that healing comes in the trying.

Reminding me that someday, the “grey horizons must grow light. It is only the immediate scene that shouts so loudly and insistently.”

Author’s Note: This season is Lent for those of us in Christian Traditions that celebrate Lent. Lent is perhaps a bit like a tooth extraction. You know you need it, but initially you dread it. Lent is also about believing that the dawn will break, the resurrection will come, and with it – a healing greater than we can even imagine.

*Alfred Delp

The Weight of Winter

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In winter, the whole story doesn’t show

Paraphrased from Andrew Wyeth

I’m discouraged. It’s not uncommon for me during the winter months, but it is still hard. I do all the things you are supposed to do when you are low and feel defeated. I light candles, I chase beauty, I seek out joy. But sometimes no matter what you do, you still feel the weight of life, still feel the limitations of candlelight and beauty. Beauty may save the world, as Dostoevsky claims, but it doesn’t necessarily take away the weight of winter.

Some of this has to do with things that cannot be changed – feeling the sadness of my brother’s birthday coming on Wednesday, knowing that he is not here, that a phone call is impossible. In addition, my own birthday arrives later this week and I feel some of the emotional cost of aging, the heaviness of responsibility coupled with the weight of wrinkles and a changing body.

What do other writers do with the weight of winter? They write. They describe and, in their descriptions, I find comfort. The quote by Andrew Wyeth is perhaps my favorite. this idea of the story being hidden, but still present is something I think about all year long, not just in winter.

If you are feeling the weight of winter on this Monday, I invite you to read these quotes and to write or find your own.

“I prefer winter and Fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape–the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. “
–Andrew Wyeth

“How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!”
–Thomas Wentworth Higginson

“I pray this winter be gentle and kind–a season of rest from the wheel of the mind. “
–John Geddes

“The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. “
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness. “
–John Steinbeck

Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”

Edith Sitwell

What are your favorite winter quotes? How do you face the weight of winter?

Comedy & Tragedy

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I’m sitting at a coffee shop in Rockport, Massachusetts. The sky is grey outside, the cold wind from the ocean biting and intense. Inside is warm with low conversation, the smell of toasted bagels and fresh donuts, and a hot eggnog latte. Sometimes the warm conversation of strangers is the best company of all.

I looked back at some of my writing the other day, caught up in the nostalgia of words with memories. 2021 was a rough year on every level. 2022 started out a shade better and quickly took a dark, dark turn. Despite that, daily gratitude, learning about releasing control, and clinging to God as lover of my soul kept joy afloat amidst many tears.

Life is never just tragedy, it is a poignant blend of comedy, drama, tragedy, and joy. And in the midst of this is a God who walks with us, who will not leave us, and who delights to surprise us with good gifts.

Instagram post from 2021

For over 2500 years, comedy and tragedy masks have been a symbol of theater. These symbolic masks began in the city of Athens in 535 BC. The first theater in the world had just been built – Theater of Dionysus. In a much anticipated first performance, the curtain went up and actors stepped onto the stage wearing masks. The masks represented various characters in the play. Masks became commonplace in theaters, often made far larger than life so that they could be seen by the audience. The first theater tickets in Athens were masks carved out of small pieces of ivory bone. Well before the fall of the Roman empire, masks had become a well-known symbol for theater. The only ones that remain to this day are the masks that show happy and those that show sad. Perhaps the happy and sad masks were the only ones to live on because the ancient Greeks favorite plays were, and perhaps still are, comedy and tragedy.

I wonder if it is primarily the western world that expects life to be free of tragedy. When I speak with friends in or from other parts of the world, I don’t get the sense that their expectation is that they will experience a life free of pain, and yet in the west, people often seem surprised at hardship. What false reality or expectation have we created in the west that assumes a life of magic and order, a life of picture postcard images?

These comedy/tragedy masks remind me that life has always been and will always be a mix of both. The more I ponder, the more I realize I would not have it any other way. What is sun without clouds? What is joy without sorrow? What is comedy without tragedy? As humans we are a bit like Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion. We grow and learn through opposites.

As we end 2022 and walk into 2023, we can be assured that our lives will not go exactly as we imagine. We can rest in one thing – that whether we can see it or not, the sun will rise in 2023 bringing with it unexpected joys, unimagined tragedies, and a lot of in between mundane.

Through it all, God is there. He will not grow tired; he will not grow weary. He will give strength to our weary souls, rest to our tired bodies. As we wait on him, we will find new strength. We will run and not get tired, We will walk and not grow weary.* 2023 will not overwhelm us but will come as it always does – one day at a time.

For 2023, I wish you the joy of living fully, one day at a time.

*Paraphrased from Isaiah 40: 28-31

Weary of Walking in the Dark

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At the time of darkness, more than anything else kneeling is helpful.

St. Isaac the Syrian

I’m weary, and I wonder about you. Perhaps you are weary as well.

When I try and get to the bottom of this I realize that I’m weary of doing the next right thing. I’m weary of praying for my enemies and loving those who hurt me. I’m weary of family fractures. I’m weary of getting up every day and working. I’m weary of walking forward with so many unknowns.

Most of all, I’m weary because all seems dark and God seems so very distant.

Job’s friends would stop me right now. “Have you looked at your life?” they would ask. There must be some unconfessed sin. There must be some reason why God is distant, why all is dark. But here’s the thing – to believe that all of the dark and difficult things we go through are a result of our behavior is distorted theology. Jesus’ words in the book of Matthew are clear: “for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” In fact, in the Old Testament, the Psalmist is constantly asking why the evil prosper and do well, seemingly free of trouble, something that turns a health and wealth gospel upside down.

Sometimes there is not an earthly answer. Sometimes all we get is silence. Sometimes darkness is everywhere we turn.

It’s in this season that I have taken to reading the book Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor. This book is an interesting study on darkness. When asked in an interview what her ‘working definition’ of darkness was, she said this:

Darkness is everything I do not know, cannot control, and am often afraid of. But that’s just the beginner’s definition. If I am a believer in God, then darkness is also where God dwells. God may also be frightening and uncontrollable and largely unknown to me, yet I decide to trust God anyway.

Barbara Brown Taylor in Religion News Services 2012

Taylor’s search led her to explore darkness literally and metaphorically. Through exploring a cave; being led in complete darkness by a blind person, physically experiencing life through her other senses; and by spending the night in a solitary cabin with no light to be found, she experienced the physical absence of light. Beyond that is her deep exploration of “dark nights of the soul” and how the physical experience of dark can perhaps teach us something of the spiritual. Her search is not to diminish the need for light, rather, she wants the reader to appreciate the importance of darkness both physically and spiritually.

The book is marvelously free of platitudes and that in itself is a gift for me in this season. But it is also a reminder of a truth I know, but regularly need reminders. When we are in hard, dark places, God may seem distant, but He is as fully present as in the light. He dwells there with us. Psalm 139 verse 12 reassures me of this: “Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

So here in the dark, where I am exhausted in weariness, where I have no words, and where the way forward seems absent of light, will you join me in a quest to believe it is okay, to believe that he is here with us in the dark? To sit as companions, free of clichéd conversation, and know he can be trusted? I don’t have much beyond that for you today – but perhaps that is enough.

“Even when light fades and darkness falls–as it does every single day, in every single life–God does not turn the world over to some other deity…Here is the testimony of faith; darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bright as the day.”

Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor

What Place or People Made You Who You Are?

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“What place or people made you who you are?”

What place or people gave you your fundamental values and shaped the way you see the world?

A number of years ago when I was worried about one of my children, a wise friend said to me “Every chance you can, remind them who they are.” I remember my silence as I thought about what she had said. It was so simple, but so profoundly helpful.

Remind them who they are. Remind them that they belong to a bigger story. Remind them that they are beloved. Remind them of laughter, of fights, of homes and houses, of moments. Remind them.

I’m thinking about that on this Friday morning. Fall is slowly arriving in our area, evident in the chilly air that greets me each morning. Soon we will see the reds and golds that make this area famous for its leaf peeping. apple picking, and cider donuts washed down with hot apple cider.

I’m in a place of needing to remember what shaped me, remember the stories passed down to me, remember the faith of my father and mother, remember who I am, remember that his mercy indeed echoes down through the generations.

Questions of belonging and identity come throughout life in many shapes and forms. When we are younger, they cause more crisis, more angst. When we’re older, it’s more like a subtle despair and deep longing. We silently chastise ourselves for what we feel is the immaturity of our struggle. We try and push it off on other things like our jobs, our friendships, our churches. But a look in the mirror reveals a more difficult truth. And when, as my friend Liz Rice says, our “umbilical cord(s) of identity”* stretch out to cities, countries, and people who are far away or no longer exist, the result can be a profound sense of loss.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to pause, give thanks and move on to the next right thing. Focusing on the losses has the defeating effect of creating more loss. The older we get, the more unbecoming it is to wallow in self pity or despair. Besides, there are walks to be taken, coffee to be savored, sweet rolls to be made, and pedicures to be had. Wallowing won’t give me any of those beautiful gifts.

And so today I pause and I think about those people and places that have shaped me, that have helped me shape my values, my loves, my longings, and the way I see the world.

*Liz Rice in Rituals of Separation