Go out with Joy

Lethargy mocks your attempts to work. Loathing nit-picks like a research tech. Anxiety bites off its muzzle. Depression bangs its tin cup on your cell bars.

Gaze out against the skyline. Can you see it? The edges of winter-bleached trees have taken on a haze of green.

Now look near you. One of those giant skeletons is beckoning. Go ahead, grasp a low-hanging branch, and the distant lime smudge will come into focus. New individual buds break out from their bony props in search of energy.

Clasp a twig of buds in your palm. How like a infant’s fingers they are, small and vulnerable still to cold and frost. Yet every digit extends fully to the elements in reach for the sun. Not long now the fingers will unroll their banners and wave you into Spring.

For as the rain comes down,

and the snow from heaven,

and do not return there,

but water the earth,

and make it bring forth and bud,

that it may give seed to the sower

and bread to the eater,

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;

It shall not return to Me void,

but it shall accomplish what I please,

and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out with joy,

and be led out with peace;

the mountains and the hills

shall break forth into singing before you,

and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

(Isa. 55:10-12)

Homage to Mercy

The slogan of my blog site is: “Writings of a fellow voyager in search of wisdom.” The first article, Blogsite Purpose, referred to “a desire to entrust the ambiguities of being to the God whom I believe fashioned the depths and intricacies of human life.” A large mouthful, that statement. It alludes to a lifetime of wrestling with what it means to be human. Most authors do not write in a vacuum, personal or otherwise, and the essays you read here are shaped out of my particular milieu. What has your “fellow voyager” experienced that drives her reflections? Perhaps a glimpse into my history will help you better understand my line of thought. More importantly, whatever differences exist between my life and yours, I hope that portions of what I share will strike a chord within you.

I have lived in the West “where the mountains touch the sky” and in the Southwest where the sky touches the sand. I’ve propelled skinny white legs down school halls filled with the lush brown skin of Native Americans. I have lived in the Bible Belt where fundamentalism cinched me up a little too tightly and in the Pacific Northwest where the rain completely suited my mood. I’ve spent summers with my parents pitching a tent across America. I have ridden my ATV in the deserts of Utah and maneuvered it along Colorado’s mountain cliffs.

I have huddled with Navajo buddies in Anasazi ruins unknown to archaeologists and passed working elephants sauntering along the roads of Thailand. I’ve body-surfed ocean waves of Bali and played a trumpet-harpsichord duet with a Catholic monk in Northern Sulawesi. I have knelt in awe before the gigantic mosaic of Christ in Paris’ Sacre Coeur Cathedral and eaten strawberry torte in a German Konditerei. I’ve slept in a thatched-roof Dutch cottage and craned my neck at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I have made love with my husband in a Swiss army barracks and sipped local wine in the Alpine village where my ancestors lived.

I have survived emotional, sexual, and spiritual abuse, narrowly escaped drowning, paraplegia, and suicide. I’ve spent years in psychotherapy, ultimately coming to accept chronic depression and the medication it requires. I’ve wished to belong then longed to jump off the grid. I have broken my dignity trying to fix broken loves. I’ve been abandoned by people and betrayed a few in turn. I have been bereaved of, estranged from, and reunited with family. I’ve been blessed with friends who teach me to laugh, hope, and dare.

I have feared men only to come to love one deeply. I’ve relinquished my girlish dreams to marry the man of my woman’s heart. I’ve learned that passion ebbs and flows, while committed affection endures. I have surrendered the possibility of bearing children and nurtured our two mothers in their old age.

I’ve been fiercely devoted to Christ and fiercely angry with him. I have believed Christianity was the best faith going and yet questioned its validity. I’ve loved the Church and been thoroughly irritated with her. I have endured hangovers from getting drunk on Pentecostal youth revivals and seminary theological debates. I’ve been bathed in healing that I can only attribute to the Holy Spirit.

I have dropped out of a missionary vocation, showed up too late for an academic career, and returned to writing, my first love. I’ve been addicted to religiosity, obsessed with being correct, and humbled by the earthy insight of a Desert Mother. I have tempered my conservative politics, embraced the sensuality of music, danced naked alone in a meadow, prayed in tongues, and wept during Holy Mass. I’ve been forced to confront my shortcomings and cajoled into acknowledging I might be a saint in the making. I have been sustained by a Divine Mercy beyond logic or comprehension. In spite of all, and because of all, it is good to be human, it is good to be alive.