Tag: Life

Sacred Spaces

Published on by Marilyn12 Comments

On Saturday, my youngest daughter, my mom, and I shared laughter and joy in an unlikely space – a women’s fitting room.

We began with tea and decadent sweets at a European tea house and restaurant. In an elegant space we sipped our tea while whipped cream, chocolate, raspberries, strawberries, almond cream, and meringue mixed together in fruit tarts, chocolate mousse cups, and Viennese Torts. It was delightful in every way.

Satisfied and full of whipped cream we headed off to shop for dresses for my mom. Some may say that dress shopping after whipped cream is not a good idea. They would be wrong.

Earlier in the day my mom looked at my dad and said “I’m going to buy a dress.” She added, slightly defiantly “I might even buy two dresses!” He looked at her from his recliner, nodded, and without hesitating said “One for my funeral and one for your birthday.”

Just one day prior, my father had officially gone on hospice. Hospice – where you know the end is near, but you don’t know how near; when what you’ve done all your life to keep as healthy as possible changes. Instead, you weigh the options with the goal to be as comfortable as possible as you journey toward the end.

It doesn’t matter how much you have sat and talked with friends who have lost parents, when it happens to you, it’s all new. It is a new map with a final destination. The stops along the way are sacred and hard. They include both hard talks and soft moments; funeral plans and sipping tea.

So this weekend held the hard and the soft. The tea, whipped cream, and dress buying was the soft.

We marched in to the store with a purpose: Two dresses. One for a funeral. One for a birthday party. My daughter and I scooped up florals and plains, ones with little jackets and others with none; navy, teal, tan, and burgundy. We loudly found the fitting room and the fun began.

The old clothes came off and the new were tried on. Over and over we erupted into oohs and aahs followed by laughter.

“That’s beautiful Grandma!”

“Well, it would be if it zipped up.”

“Oh.”

“Try this!”

“I look like an old lady!” (My mother is not old. She is 89.)

All three of us looked in the mirror. Three generations stared back.

“You’re right! You look like Grandma K!” (Grandma K is my maternal grandmother.)

“And I look like you!” (That was me looking in the mirror.)

“And I look like Marilyn!” (That was my daughter looking in the mirror.)

We women know what it is to watch our bodies change. We have watched this all our lives. We see ourselves in mirrors and sigh, even as we know that mirrors can never tell the true story of our bodies; will never reveal true beauty. True beauty is revealed through the eyes of another.

Women’s fitting rooms can be horror shows or sacred spaces. When we are alone with our own thoughts and imperfections, it’s like watching a horror show unfold. The aging female body, with its bulges and bruises, scars and wrinkles does not do justice to the lives we have lived, the loves we have known, and the sorrows we have wept over. But when we are with those who love us and see us through the eyes of love, those horror shows become sacred spaces of laughter and love. Each bulge and scar is a badge of honor, for battles won – or lost, but at least fought.

The same is true as we walk through death and the dying process. It can be a horror show or a sacred space. We, along with the person dying, bear witness to bodies that betray their owners. We can no longer laugh about bulges and scars, because each breath is a labor. But when we walk this same journey and see it through the eyes of love, it becomes a sacred space, a sacred journey.

My mom now has a funeral dress. When she put it on my daughter and I gasped and said “You look like the queen!”

The truth is that I wish she would never have to wear it. I wish that life didn’t include death. I wish that all of this was easier. I wish our world wasn’t broken. I wish there was no Aleppo.

But my wishes will not make it so. Instead, I will choose the sacred space. I will walk this sacred journey with all the love I can. And while I do I will drink tea, eat whipped cream, and thank God for the joy of generations in a women’s fitting room.

The Resilient Orthodox – Explosions of Life

Published on by Marilyn10 Comments

There are times when I feel like life has exploded, as though all parts of it collide and nothing goes the way it is supposed to go. From unexpected expenses to surprise illnesses, life laughs in the face of our careful planning, mocks our ideas of control, and smiles sarcastically at our shocked expressions.

I’m left wandering aimlessly, feeling like this is all a big, fat joke authored by a pre-teen boy who can’t get enough of cheap joke books.

These are the times when my cynical side says “Why pray? Why read daily scripture? It won’t make a difference so why do it?”

I walked into Divine Liturgy yesterday feeling this way. Our church is in the middle of a busy city neighborhood. Parking is difficult and no matter what hour we are there, life is teeming around us. As I walked up the steps, a friend met me and stopped, asking how I was. In the middle of the noise of the city, I found myself pouring my heart out to her, touched and healed with her empathy. On those concrete steps, the questions of what is this all about, the whys, the anger at the suffering of those close to me all poured out of me in a flood of words and tears.

I entered the service comforted and heard by the presence of another.

I went through the motions of the service: Venerating icons, crossing myself, singing the Beatitudes and all the while I was saying the Jesus Prayer, an internal plea for mercy and grace.

It was during the homily that I began to relax. Our priest, Father Patrick, talked about being away on vacation with his children and six grandchildren. “I saw what your life was like,” he said. All around him were explosions of life, he was not in his study surrounded by his books and icons. He was not in church serving the Eucharist or praying before icons. Instead, babies with diapers and toddlers with messy faces were ever present. “I saw how hard it is to continue the disciplines of prayer and scripture reading in the midst of this,” he said. But he didn’t stop there. He went on to say that he also saw how absolutely imperative it was to continue these disciplines in the midst of this, how we can’t go on without these practices. Because these explosions of life demand so much that we can’t do it alone.

I have tried to do it alone the past few weeks. I rationalize that I am too tired to stand in front of our icons and pray. I rationalize that nothing will change even if I do pray. I make excuses, I blame, I dismiss – but all the while, life explodes around me and I have no tools to cope.

These explosions of life call for explosions of grace, but I can’t see grace because I’m to caught up in trying to do it by myself.

I found myself deeply comforted by Father Patrick’s words, by his acknowledgement that this is hard. None of this is easy. And it’s precisely because it is not easy that I need these beautiful and grace-filled disciplines of prayer and scripture.

Life comes with its explosions and the only thing that can withstand it is grace.  Beautiful grace, that hard to define something that we don’t deserve but we get anyway. That good word that has not been corrupted through time, instead it shines through dark days, and says “boo!” as it surprises me around hard corners.

Yesterday grace met me on concrete steps and through a homily. Today is a new day. Life is still an explosion, but the explosion of grace is at the ready. I open my hands, ready to receive. It’s all I can do and somehow it is enough.

“Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.”*

A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. – Frederick Buechner

*Frederick Buechner

The Full Time Job of Healing 

Published on by Marilyn15 Comments


I am on medical leave. For the first time in many, many years I have time. I am not moving. I am not job hunting. I am not on limited vacation time. Instead, my full time job right now is to heal. 

It is one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done. 

Here’s why: 

  1. Healing takes discipline. It takes discipline to set aside time for physical therapy. It takes discipline to eat properly, discipline to not just veg out and binge on television shows. It takes effort to get up in the morning when you hurt, discipline to put your feet on the ground. I am not disciplined and at heart, I’m pretty lazy. I would far rather have a quick fix then a slow, steady process. But healing has its own agenda and schedule., and it demands discipline. 
  2. Healing takes rest. So much of physical and emotional healing is about resting. And true resting is when both your body and soul are at rest. I find myself trying to rest, but my mind buzzes anxiously with thoughts about what I think I should be doing, how I think I should be reacting. Rest is uncommon in the Northeast. Instead, what is applauded is achievement, academic success, graduating from top schools, busy and successful career paths. Rest is something that we don’t talk about or give permission for, instead opting to glorify busy. But healing demands rest. Our bodies have undergone trauma – whether it be from surgery, from illness, or from an accident. The body’s needs for rest increase. Our bodies also need proper nutrition to augment the rest. 
  3. Healing takes humility. Giving up control is hard. Having to have others help you dress, bathe, cook, drive, clean, even put on your shoes is deeply humbling. Actively watching out for self-pity is also humbling. It’s easy to clothe self-pity into “well I’m just being honest about how I feel..” But at the end of the day, it’s still self-pity. It takes humility to follow the guidelines and restrictions of others, to trust medical personnel. It takes humility to allow strangers into your home to see how you live, and to give you suggestions and ideas of how to live better. It takes humility to accept that healing doesn’t happen on the timeline we request. It takes humility to respond to questions about our bodies, to use assistive devices when we go out the door. 
  4. Healing takes time. Above all, this is true.  Neither physical nor emotional healing comes quickly. Instead it’s a long journey.  Yes, there are things we can do to heal as quickly as possible, but ultimately it still takes time. 

And so I have time – and my only job during this time is to heal. 

Years ago, I listened to a recording of a woman who spoke on suffering. It was a powerful talk and I probably listened to it over fifty times in the course of the next few years. One of the many things she said was this: 

Our churches are full of wounded and hurting people who have never taken a season to heal. 

These words are profoundly true – true for the ones who need physical healing, true for the ones who need emotional healing. 

So I will not fight this season, nor will I wish it away. Instead, I gratefully accept my season to heal, and the gift of time. 

Hospital Time

Published on by Marilyn4 Comments


I’ve woken early today. Only the birds sing outside, alerting me that it is spring. 

I have been on hospital time since Friday. It’s a strange, twilight time where what we think of as important vanishes, in its place comes a subdued submission to all of life. 

Hospital time is well-known to many – the cancer patient going for weekly chemotherapy; the dialysis patient praying for a kidney; the family of the child in an accident, an induced coma taking the child away for a time. 

Hospital time is part of the human experience, a definite part of aging. We are seen by doctors, recommended to surgeons, and humbly, like sheep being led, go to classes and appointments, lest we be the .3% who doesn’t do well. 

On Friday last week I entered into hospital time. I had a 3-week lead time, so in a sense, hospital time came on slowly, incrementally. 

But on Friday, it was real. Friday I was stripped of my normal identity and became a woman who was being prepared for surgery. With the signing of my paperwork, hospital time began. 

Outside, the world rushed on. Social media erupted over something, the stock market rose and fell, news stations put their overly dramatic news teams onto things both menial and important. 

But none of that mattered. What mattered was hospital time. 

When I think about Eternity, I think about hospital time redeemed; a time when all creation is healed and time surrenders to the Creator. No longer are our moments filled with rage at injustice, fear of the unknown, sadness of loss, or worry about the millions of things that are out of our control. Because time is redeemed and reconciled to our creator. 

In the meantime, I am still in my other world of hospital time, taking the moments to heal and rest, realizing that life will go on without me at its center. And in this time, I am enveloped in grace. 

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That Holy Ache

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Spring 2017

 

I awake with that Holy Ache.

If there is any time I feel this acutely it’s on Monday mornings, where I try to move between a resurrection Sunday and the real-world Monday. Where I move from the weekend rest and peace, to the week day chaos and problems.

We who are human know this Holy Ache. It is something that transcends cultures and generations, something that will be part of us until our life on this earth is complete.

It’s the one that reminds us that we are in between. We are in the not yet; the messy middle. That place where we know what we see is only a fraction of the real story, yet we ache for that real story to be revealed, to come to fruition. We are ‘between the lost and the desired’.

A Holy Ache.

That ache we feel when we read or hear the news and our hearts stop with the horror of it all, the longing to make all right, to gather up all the orphans, the widows, the sinners and show them the love of God. The holy ache that acknowledges we are capable of so little in comparison to the great need. That ache we feel when we are at a funeral of one we love, knowing we will never see their faces, hear their words, hug their bodies again. That ache we feel when the rich thrive and mock while the poor struggle to survive. That ache we feel of injustice and wrong and all those things that remind us we are in the between.

It used to be that the holy ache would direct me to despair. It’s all too much, I thought. It’s too hard. Seeing through a glass darkly is not enough. But lately I have embraced the holy ache as an integral part of my faith journey – a critical part that brings me to a greater love and desire for God.

Yesterday our priest said it well. We are caught, he said, between irrational joy and sorrow.

I have embraced the holy ache as an integral part of my faith journey

Irrational joy and indefinable sorrow.  Waking to the smell of spring, knowing we are alive, seeing new buds coming out on trees and bushes fills us with joy, even as we face the sorrow of a world that is not as it should be.

So welcome to today’s Holy Ache – may we walk in faith that aches will be redeemed and in the middle of Holy Aches we may know Holy Joy. 

“The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast.  We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy.  It is not hard to see why.  The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency.”

Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” from The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis

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A Brief Reflection on Airports and Life

Published on by Marilyn1 Comment


I am bleary-eyed at the Orlando airport. There’s a reason why the infamous “they” tell you to get to the airport early – long security lines extended far into the lounge area. We sighed as we inched our way through, a bright green electronic sign informing us that the process would take 35 to 45 minutes. 

Earlier we dropped off a rental car. As I handed the gentleman the keys, he asked me if I was Parisienne. I smiled “no” pause “but is that a compliment?”  “Oh yes!” He replied. My children laugh at me as the glow of an early morning compliment radiates off my 57 year old non-Parisienne skin. 

And then we trudge our sleepy way to security. Unfortunately, the compliment did nothing for a bad hip, so my ego has been kept in check. 

A busy, international airport is an odd way to end a family funeral. You go from familiar to anonymous; from engaged in conversation to people-watching; from significant to one more passenger in an enormous travel machine.

Yet somehow it works. It’s a bridge between worlds, and I am not expected to communicate on this bridge. I simply cross it. 

Death and funerals are a pause in life’s paragraph. A pause before continuing into more sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. They are an important pause, sometimes changing the rest of the story. Many resolutions based on the brevity of life have happened at the death of a loved one. 

Many would voice sadness over this – the question of why it takes something as permanent as death to make us pause and reflect. I think it is a gift. We are usually far too busy with the ordinary to realize that perhaps change is in order. But then, in the middle of the ordinary, the everyday chores stop so that we can remember a life, and in remembering reflect on our own. 

So in this airport moment between worlds, I stop. I pause. I pray. 

I thank God for the gift of life, and the gift of death – the circle of a broken world on a journey to redemption. 

The moment passes, the flight is ready to board. We are on our way home. 

On Snow Days and the Waste of Hate

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This piece was written last Thursday morning, when I had an unexpected and delicious snow day.

It’s a Thursday morning and I wake up to a world of white. Snow has been falling steadily since the early hours, providing much needed excitement for weather people who have been increasingly bored this winter by the warm temperatures and happy humans.

I have an unexpected snow day. It’s hard to describe how welcome this is — it’s like Paschal cheese after Lent; like your first meal after you deliver a baby.

Snow days are pure grace.

I used to hate snow. I couldn’t bear the flakes, the cold, the wet. I hated the shoveling, the scraping off of ice, the misery.

And in a way, all of those things are still true. Snow does wreak havoc. Snow does cause disruption, it does slow things down. Snow is not convenient.

As I look out on this world of white, I can’t help thinking about all the time I have wasted hating snow, wishing it away. I can’t help being reminded of the times that I have  hated that which life brought me.

Hate is such a waste. Hate takes so much energy. It exhausts your body and your mind, it plants itself and needs little water to grow. It is nourished easily and depletes us of that which is good. The roots need little encouragement to go deep, and they are painfully pulled. Hate depletes the soul.

Hate is a giant waste of time, and I have fallen for this trap. I have wasted time in hate – not only in hating snow, but other things. I have wasted time fighting life instead of accepting it. Hate destroys creativity and limits our minds. Hate takes away our motivation and leads us to settle for less.

Supposedly hate is the antonym of love, but I think hate is the antonym of life. Because you can’t really live if your mind is filled with hate.

I sit in complete quiet, the white world around me. Hate feels far away, its roots pulled, replaced by something so much better. And I am grateful.

Until Next Time

Published on by Marilyn13 Comments

baby-hands

His eyes are so much like his mom’s that I am startled. He nestles into my shoulder, knowing that I’m not his mom, but that somehow – I am safe.

I stare and stare and I have no concept of time. I realize that I could stare at this wonder all day.

This wonder is my grandson.

I look in the mirror and I am somehow less concerned about getting older. I know that this is the way it will go, season after season, year after year. The proverbial circle of life is continuing, and somehow this is right.

He is all sorts of perfect. His soft, clear skin is a contrast to my sun-spotted aging arms. Yet my arms are still strong enough to hold him, to cuddle, to be there as an extra set when parents get tired or need time away. His eyes follow me, then crinkle up. For a moment I’m unsure – will he cry or will he laugh. He laughs, proving our connection in more ways than he knows.

I get chuckles and grunts, coos and yawns. I am smitten by this child of my child, baby from my baby.

Too soon our time comes to an end. The house is empty – only shadows remain as the day wears on.

I smile at the memories. “Until next time Baby” I say softly. Until next time.