a little seasonal humor

I followed the truck in yesterday's entry at a safe distance, not wanting to risk dodging logs. I think I'd just as soon be a ways behind anyone with a car full of snakes as well!

We had a four hour training on HIV, with more than we really wanted to know, and my drippy nose and I haven't been able to get far from the Kleenex box today. So I was ready for this cartoon when my husband sent it to me.

are you on overload?

When you look at your datebook for the week, do you feel like this?

This truck was seriously overloaded. The picture isn't as sharp as it might have been, had I fit a car wash into my schedule. I snapped it through the front window as I sat at a stop sign.

Seriously, it doesn't take much to overload me. I feel overwhelmed by too much structure, too many notations of places to be at certain times, while I try to fit my patient visits into their schedules, and the schedules of nurses and CNA's.

Today was a wonderful exception. I slalomed through the scheduled visits posted on my computer at work, making it to my first patient in Dayton shortly before the CNA arrived to give her a bath. Made it to my second patient just as her CNA left, and reached my third front door fifteen miles farther up the road, at the end of her CNA's shift.

Great visits, a beautiful day for driving, all in all a big Woohoo!

Part Two about Cork's Place

I’ll continue to describe the rooms of Cork’s Place, a grief center for children. For the first part of the article, see below.

The next room is geared to an older level, with foosball and air hockey, shelves of games and books, the piano and other instruments. Teens sometimes sit and talk on the couch or floor pillows, with or without the diversion of activities.

The third room we toured has a wall filled with craft materials of all kinds for all age levels. There’s a rectangular table built like a sandbox but filled with rice instead. Many little toys and figures, including tiny caskets, are there for the children to play with.

The next room was the paint room. Only three children are allowed in there at a time, and there are many smocks and shirts hanging on pegs on one wall. There’s a table of big jars of washable paint, and a canvas drop cloth to protect the floors. The walls are fair game, and they are covered with handprints, splashes, hearts, stick figures, anything the child wants to do.

The “volcano room” was the final spot we visited inside the house. It too can only take three children at a time, plus an adult, and its floor is covered with a thick foam mat. Shoes stay outside the door. A huge mound of large pillows takes up one end of the room, and above them is a “heavy” bag, a long punching bag that is suspended, hanging securely from the ceiling. Little children like to try to climb up on it, we were told, or bury themselves in the pillows. Older ones put on boxing gloves and whap away at it.

Outside the house, in a fenced back yard, there are more activities. A wonderful playhouse has been decorated with a fireplace and rugs and chairs, all painted on. A replica of an old panel truck like the one Cork’s Pharmacy used to deliver medicines 70 years ago is a favorite of the kids. The adults almost always have to ride in the back, the social worker said. Cement has been poured for a basketball hoop, and there’s a great sand area with a large scoop shovel.

All the painting and the toys and equipment used to furnish this house were donations. It is a community project, and one to be proud of. Our own town will be looking for ways we can offer something similar in the near future, maybe in collaboration with the children’s museum and hospice.

Yea! A field trip!

Yesterday we went on a field trip, two social workers, the other chaplain and me. We visited Tri-Cities Chaplaincy, which has a hospice program with an outpatient count of about 90, plus a 10-person in-patient house. They are a large agency with many programs, and we wanted particularly to hear about their grief groups.

The part of the tour that was entirely new to me (having been on the chaplaincy board and in several of their programs in a previous life—twenty years ago) was Cork’s Place. It is modeled on a house in Portland called the Dougy Center, a place that works with grieving children.

Cork’s Place is an average 1980 vintage rancher with a daylight basement. Adults who bring children to the grief group, which runs all during the school year, have a group of their own upstairs. Since the loss is often a parent, sometimes a grandparent or sibling, the person who brings the child usually has their own grief to cope with, in addition to that of the child’s.

The Dougy Center began in 1982 as a tribute to Dougy Turno, a 13 year old boy who died of an inoperable brain tumor. Its founder, Beverly Chappell, was a registered nurse who worked in the area of death and dying. She saw that most people were uncomfortable with the subject, and that hospitals, churches, and schools had very little to offer children in their grief. She began to educate herself on grieving by attending seminars and lectures given by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who wrote much about the until-then neglected subject.

Dougy wrote a letter to Dr. Kubler-Ross, asking why no one would talk to him about dying, even though he was facing his own death. Dr. Kubler-Ross corresponded with Dougy, and encouraged Beverly Chappell to meet him and his family when they came to the university hospital for treatment. Watching him, Beverly saw how compassionate he was with other children in the unit, and how they helped each other. She grew to have faith in children’s ability to process their own grief in the way they need to, as long as they have the freedom and safety to do so.

Children in the grief program at Cork’s Place begin each session by meeting in a downstairs room that is rimmed with stacks of pillows. On one side a huge stuffed gorilla sits, inviting a child to sit in its lap and wrap its arms around him. The group begins by going in a circle, each child stating their name, age, the name and relationship of the person they lost, and how they died. Then they go over the rules, of which there are just a few. After that, the children go to whatever room they want, or outside, to play and maybe talk.

The children range in age from three (I think that’s right) to eighteen, and they are divided into four age groups which meet on different nights. Well trained volunteers plus two staff people are there for the children at a one-to-two ratio of adults to the younger kids, a lower ratio for the older groups. The adults are specifically trained not to teach. That isn’t what they’re there for. They aren’t allowed to direct or guide, to criticize, or even to praise or affirm the children. The point is that the children don’t need anyone’s approval, and they don’t learn how to do what they need when they’re trying to please adults. The adults become more of a resource than anything, someone to listen, to help if asked, to play with if invited.

The social worker in charge of the program gave this example: if the child wants to bang on the piano, the adult might bang on it too, or might simply reflect, “You’re playing the piano.”

One room has all kinds of playthings, doll houses, dress-up clothes, toy kitchens, and, startlingly, a casket that the funeral home would use for a real infant. I asked about that, and the social worker told me that the youngest children like to climb into it and lie down. One ordered her and another adult to pick it up and carry it, and they had a mock funeral procession. Other children will put dolls or stuffed animals in it, and, of course, they often talk while they’re doing this.

Mourning, as Dr. Alan Wolfelt refers to it, is the work you do relating to your grief, the talking or writing about it, the visiting of places and memories, the paintings and sculpture, maybe even mud pies, that help you express what you’ve lost and what you’re feeling about it.

This is becoming too long, so I'll finish it tomorrow night. I hope it's interesting to you. It certainly was to me.

Reaching Out

Searching Faces

Visiting the old folks
I strain forward in my seat,
trying to coax from them
stories of who they are,
where they’ve lived,
what they’re proud of.
Sadly, and too often,
pictures on the night stand
tell the only tale I’ll hear:
him in his uniform,
her in her wedding gown.
Sometimes, the best that I can do
is whisper in an ear,
“You’re beautiful,”
or pat a shoulder saying,
“I’m so proud to know you.”
Later, in the paper, I may read
of an extraordinary life
I never got to know.

Loss of memory, loss of self,
are barriers greater than time.

This bi-weekly prompt for Christine's poetry party is a graceful picture from her family album. Maybe I'll try again sometime to make a poem from it, but what comes to me today is the difficulty of reaching out to connect with others, not only across time. What I've written is more prose than poetry, but you can try your hand at it at
Invitation to Poetry

a better day

I am still dragging a little, and the idea of investing myself into new relationships with four new patients and families sounded taxing. The new patient I met yesterday had not been able to communicate; but his family was there visiting, and they were delightful.

Today's first visit was with a man who had been dying last week, but is now making a speedy recovery, a fact that he seems cognizant of without any show of emotion. Since he has no family around, I can't tell if his frequent answer, "I don't have it," means he can't hear me or can't recall the information. Too bad, since it included his name. "That might be it," he said, but without any sign of recognition. He did agree to prayer, and said "Amen" at the end. I left puzzled, wondering if there's anything I can do that will feel supportive to him. Sometimes I worry that my questions and their loss for answers may cause distress. I asked him, though, if it bothered him to not remember things, and he said no.

My second new patient was asleep in his recliner and wakened only when I was standing in front of him. He looked neither startled nor welcoming, but indicated that I should sit on the bed, at least that's what I thought. He was very difficult to understand. When I made out that he wanted his hearing aid, I found it for him and then tried sitting in a chair on the other side. That time he was clearer that I should sit on the bed, evidently near his better ear. He told me there wasn't much use getting to know him because he won't live much longer-- he'll be 99 on his next birthday. He was one of eleven children, seven boys, none of whom ever married! He worked as a maintainer in a TB hospital, and he built a greenhouse for them because he enjoyed plants. He also likes animals, and his young kitten kept attacking me playfully.

I might have put off the fourth new patient until Monday, since she lives far out in the country on a farm and it was getting late; but I'd heard she might not survive long. She is a beautiful woman in her early 50's with breast cancer. The noise and activity of her family were bothering her, and she was restless. They had obligingly moved their piles of photographs to label and organize several rooms away. The kitchen counters were covered with cupcakes fresh from the oven, and the smell of bread baking was inviting. The daughters-in-law had been busy.

Her husband took me back to the family room where she was reclining. He said she'd told him weeks ago that she didn't want any people coming in. He'd told her, he said in his quiet voice, that her friends needed to see her and talk to her, and he let them in anyway. They were always glad they'd come and had done what they could, and she was always glad afterwards that she'd seen them.

He wanted the three of us to pray together, and we did. On the way out, he showed me a marvelous scrapbook which people at her work had put together for her. It included all the cards she'd received, and messages reprinted from emails, all beautifully laid out and decorated with some children's pictures and scripture verses interspersed. It was a work of art. He said he couldn't look at it closely or he would cry.

This house, and this family, was filled with and surrounded by love.

It was a good day.

Whenever you connect with people, it's a good day.

the apres vacation blahs

Yes, we had a wonderful time. Sorry I can't get more excited about it at the moment. My jaded nature has the upper hand tonight. I'm tired, and we both caught some bug that new daddy John had and brought it home with us. Ick!

Yes, the baby was an amazing little soul, so different from my babies and their babies. He has such black hair, and even the backs of his ears are hairy. He looks very solemn most of the time, and then a grin will raise one lip and give him a drunken leer.

Now I don't want to offend anyone, but, as a species, three-week old babies aren't all that much fun. They nurse, and they sleep. Some of them cry. Mine did. This one doesn't get much chance to. His parents don't know a lot about babies, and "the book says" they should eat every two hours or so, play a little and then sleep. The parents are distressed that it doesn't work quite that way. They're used to a life they have control over. Well, ha!

Ordinarily, the sight of palm trees thrills me, and the tall oak trees with the Spanish moss. I guess they still affected me that way, but I was inside most of the time. We didn't even get to the beach! Every day went about the same way. I petted the dogs, who are feeling left out; and I did some laundry, and some grocery shopping, and read a couple of books. Bill played games with his son John on the Play Station 3, and helped with some plumbing and wiring and other manly chores. I baked Elizabeth a birthday cake, and we went shopping and out to eat many times.

It was lovely to be with them, and I wish we could see them more often, but Florida is clear across the country from us. We got up at 3:30 a.m. to get to the plane, and arrived in Jacksonville three airports later in time for bed. Coming home, we opened our front door at 10 p.m., which is 1 a.m. Florida time; even though I got a good 9 hours of sleep, I'm pooped. I'm tired of traveling, tired of shopping, tired of eating out, tired of spending money. Just plain (plane?) tired. Tired of being in somebody else's world.

If I could have done anything I wanted today, I don't know what it would have been. I didn't have time to really dig into anything and see it completed. The suitcases were emptied and back downstairs, most of the laundry done and put away, but I felt no satisfaction in it.

After reading a good poem in the blog of Sunshine Sister, I tried to think of some words to describe the foggy day and how I felt as I drove toward town to go to work.

the day was stuffed with fog and mush,
and I, undone by things undone,
was captive in a paper bag of gloom.

I didn't get any farther with it than that, but by then I was having a good time. My creative tinder had caught her spark. I began to look with a poet's eye, and it makes all the difference.

In the thick fog, I noticed one of the plant nurseries along the highway, looking drab in its midwinter, not-in-season way, all boards and pipes and muddy ruts. And then I saw the palettes of primroses, cheerfully alive; and I remembered, from somewhere, that God is in the Now.

Owyhee Crack

The picture above is one I took from our little plane on the way back from Oxnard, California, last summer. I was looking through my photos, hunting for a winding road, when I found this one. It amazes me how much twisting and turning a riverbed takes, even when it's at the bottom of a steep canyon, as is this one from the south of Oregon.

Today was the first Sunday in Lent, with its lengthy litany that brings to our minds all the ways we've fallen short and asks for the Lord's deliverance. The Great Litany was the first part of the Roman Catholic liturgy to be translated, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, into English; and people were worried that it might attract the Lord's vengeance. It did not, and England's defeat of the Spanish Armada gave them reason for relief.

My prayer for all of you during this season of Lent is that you'll take the time to be introspective. Look over your life, where you've been and where you're headed. Do what you can to make amends for things done wrong or left undone. Make peace with your family and your friends. Make peace with yourself. Open yourself to peace from God.

Not timeless poetry, but poetry in time

I have written several poems to prompts from Christine's Poetry Invitation, but never before in time to enter them in her bi-monthly contests. Thanks to Sunrise Sister, I now can post the actual picture above my poem. Thanks, Sister!

To take up her invitation to poetry, which happens every other Monday, check the link below. You'll enjoy her wonderful site any day of the week. http://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/category/poetry-invitation/.


Opportunity

Only when the flouncy sea has hiked her
skirts up high and left to meet her lover
in the daily deeps,
only then can we see, on the beach,
what’s left behind.

Only when our buzzing lives are sidetracked
by the weather, death, some accident
of time that leaves us stranded, makes the
pass impassable—
only then can we hear, in the pause,
what’s possible inside.

I think I'll write another verse sometime, but not tonight. :)

U R A P? I R A P 2! o-o

Many of you will be familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a test designed to predict a person's personality preferences, as first suggested by Carl Jung in his descriptions of typology. One pair of possibilities is the 'J' or the 'P' type. P stands for Perceiving, J for Judging.

J's and P's are often the bane of each other's existence. J types are decision makers. They work well with structure, time limits and specific goals. P types are more open-ended. They prefer the process to the outcome, are often unaware of time and space, and the details necessary to reach a particular goal.

I am a 'P'. It is definitely my preference to take whatever time is necessary to gather information or finish a task. How can you stop, just because the clock hands are straight up, when you're getting such good data, such interesting responses?

The other chaplain I work with is a 'J'. She is always on the move, quickly, getting from here to there, finishing this and that. Quantity seems to attract her more than quality, but that may not be fair. When we work together, I try to do my part to organize, be timely, plan ahead, so that I won't drive her crazy. When we led a grief group together, it worked out all right. When we do another, I will take a little more latitude to do what I do well. We'll have better snacks, more thoughtful questions, a little more leeway in our agenda.

I'm doing a grief group for children now, with a social worker who is new to our agency but has lots of experience with children. Now that we have done four weeks of groups, I can see that he is a 'P'. He leaves all the snacks, set-up and planning to me, not by agreement but by default. The curriculum-- I don't know who chose it, but it isn't very age appropriate. I suppose we didn't know who would show up for the group when it was first set up.

It's a strange feeling to be a 'P' and be responsible for getting things begun and ended on time, set up effectively, etc. I had an EFM group for four years that had many 'J' members, yet I was the one who had to round them up to get them started on time and herd them along to finish the evening by 9. I am more sympathetic when it's another 'P' I'm working with, but still, it's a surprise to find myself needing to fill that role.

half way to something new

Here are some pictures I took yesterday that you might enjoy.

After the game was over Sunday, Bill was grumpy because he had wanted me to be watching the Super Bowl with him, and I had been trying to get some pictures into my blog.

(I have heard this particular whine before. "I want you to be doing things with me" means "I want you to be doing what I'm doing.") I told him if he wanted to share, next time he should try sharing what I'm doing for a change! So last night I invited him to help me put my pictures up on www.weatherunderground.com

You can guess how that went. He throughly enjoyed himself, but they're all under his name because he was the one logged in! (BeechSportBill) He didn't help. He did it himself while I watched. Rolleyes Sigh. Anyway, it was fun, and I'll do it myself next time.

The picture of him, by the way, is, thankfully, a few days old. He was growing the hair for his part in H.M.S. Pinafore, but if that's going to happen it won't be till April; so I convinced him to shave it off. Funny picture though.

http://www.weatherunderground.com/wximage/myphotos.html

I'm really a hedgehog

You probably noticed. That was really a hedgehog picture, but it was the best that I could do. What's fun about her that I just discovered is that if you click her, she jumps. If you click several times, she rolls into a ball-- hedgehog fashion!

Trying new things--hmmm...

I don't know how to make my little map wide enough to include other continents, which it did in the sample. I haven't figured out how make my "ground"hog full width either-- his full width, that is, not the column's-- or how to drag him to the right side. He's determined to be at the top, or at the very bottom of the page beneath all entries.

Can anyone point me in the right direction to fix, or even read about, this difficulty?

P.S. Never mind-- this time any way. I changed the template, and it made room for the whole map, although I tried unsuccessfully to change the dots to red. I reduced the size of the hedgehog, and she fits now. Isn't she cute?

miscellaneous February thoughts

I've had a variety of odd topics go through my head today but no time to elaborate on any of them yet. I did get them jotted down though.

When I was grocery shopping for green onions and black beans to make some more couscous salad to take to a nurse friend whose father just died, I noticed something odd in the bakery. In fact, I asked the baker behind the counter about it. There were lots of Valentine choices for sale already: cookies, cakes, heart shaped doughnuts. But not a single Ground Hog Day cookie to be had! She stared, and finally laughed, but I'm not sure she realized I was making a joke.

Can you believe there's a holiday we haven't commercialized yet? I see great possibilities here, although Hallmark is probably already in the market. But cookies, cakes, tiny lights on strings, groundhog costumes, special issue celebratory champagne for the days he doesn't see his shadow....

Several groceries were enticing super bowl shoppers with specials on Coca-Cola and Pepsi. If you bought three 12-can packages of Coke for $12, you could have two more for free. Or, if you bought just two packs of Pepsi for the same price, you could have three more packs free! Confused What a deal! I think they're both trying to convince us that a 12 pack is no longer regularly under the old $3 top price.

It's bad enough to have gas go up, but please, not my Diet Coke!

On my way home, there was a pickup truck ahead of me chock full of unsplit wood, of which there is an ample supply after our big windstorm. A flurry of traffic went by as we sat at the stop sign, long enough for me to estimate the fore-mentioned tree was about thirty-five years old. Think of all the shade it's given, the birds it's been home for, and all the good warm heat someone will have. That's one more thing we forget to give thanks for: trees.

Have a good weekend, and I hope you don't see your shadow.

Looking Back at Our Life's Journey

A new friend-- who did not know I love, and write, poetry-- lent me a book by Maren C. Tirabassi called The Depth of Wells. She knew I work for hospice, and she thought I'd find some something of worth in these poems.

I am amazed at how many of these poems are so very like my own experiences. One is of a woman who relates having been accidentally shot by her husband, with no lingering damage. “I promised I would never tell,” she says. I've heard similar confessions. Another is of a man dying in a hospital bed in his own living room, surrounded by loved ones on Thanksgiving who were watching the football game. I've urged families to keep their dying in their midst.

The poem that particularly struck me is of an old woman at a senior center, putting jigsaw puzzles together. Onlookers theorize she's enjoying the beautiful scenes and wishing she were there. Instead, she is trying to make sense of her own life. “Finally she remembers to start with the borders.”

Ever since I read that, I’ve been trying to understand what the borders of my life might be. Here are some of the things that came to mind. (Apologies to Kay, who is through with being introspective.)

What are my boundaries, places I would not go outside of, inner rules I would not overstep? Do I always stay within my comfort zone? Or do I push at the growing edge of me, both frightened and attracted by that which I feel most passionate about?

Something I learned from a high school photography class, so many years and so much technology ago, was how to vignette a picture. You could either cut a hole in a piece of cardboard with, say, pinking shears, and shoot the picture through it; or you could actually apply Vaseline to the edges of the lens to soften and blur the parts of the picture that weren’t necessary. Those ideas have always been for me metaphors for how I sometimes look at life, choosing to see only what I want.

How do we focus in on our lives, in reflection; or does it matter if our view is ten degrees off center? Don’t we frame and reframe ourselves, as co-creators of our lives?

The mood I’ve been in too much lately, the worm-eating, poor-me mode, feels like a retreat from my growing edge, much like the brain atrophies within the skull. Now that’s a terrible picture, isn’t it? This is a better one: sometimes when we are in pain, we double up into as small a ball as possible, holding ourselves and literally rocking. When we are comforted enough, we can return to our full stature, resume our activities, prepare again to grow when the time is right.

I do believe that we have to grow, in wisdom or in spirit or love, or we retreat. We can’t hold still for long.

The question is, do we have the courage stretch out toward that growing edge again? Growth is painful. But failure to grow is death.

When I work with the dying, I hope to help them think about their lives: to validate themselves, to teach their families what they've learned, maybe to try to make amends. There isn't much they can do to change the course of their lives, but sometimes they can change the ending, the meaning they leave for others.

We, in the mainstream of our lives, can do even more by pulling back and taking a look at where we're headed. We still have time, maybe, to change, to alter our course.

This is a Lenten theme, and Lent begins next week! Blessings to all of you, and thanks for putting up with my solemn side tonight.

children's chaotic lives

I thought I had just enough time to take Seamus for a walk before sunset, and he was very pleased with the idea.

Heading out the door leash in hand, I had to pull him to a halt so I could come back in and answer the phone. It was the leader of the writing group I go to sometimes, letting me know that, due to the snow, we wouldn’t be meeting tomorrow. I told her I’d be busy for the next eight weeks with the children’s grief group on Tuesdays, so I wouldn’t be able to be there for some time.

She asked if it was a group for children who have experienced a loss due to death, and I said yes. “Children need something like that for other kinds of losses as well,” she said. Divorce was the first thing to occur to me, but she said more than that. “Children lead such chaotic lives now, they can’t even verbalize what the loss is. It’s stability, trust, being cared for. Too many children don’t have any of that. They may have plenty else, but not those basics, and they act out. Then people say to them,’Why are you acting like that?’ and they don’t know.”

It turns out that she’s a retired professor of childhood development. She went on to talk about men who are out of control. “Ever since Mt. St. Helens exploded in 1980,” she said, “the amount of violent behavior from men has gone way up. It’s because they feel helpless to protect their families, and that’s their job. Like drunks, as my mother used to say, they either get angry or they cry like babies. They’ve lost their manhood when they can’t take care of their families.”

I said something about personhood, trying to take the gender issue out of it, because I believe we all do react to powerlessness, although maybe not in the same ways. What I was really reacting to, I realized as she brought the conversation to a close, is the idea that men are supposed to take care of their families, men and not women. Then I remembered that she lives in a little town that has a church sponsored university, and most of the inhabitants of the town belong to that church. It has a very patriarchal view of family: the man must be the head.

Even though Bill is from a younger generation and a very different religious tradition, he expressed the same feelings the other day, that it was his main duty to protect and take care of his family. I like being taken care of and protected, but I also rail at the idea that it’s a man’s job and God intended it that way. I don’t agree with that; but, weren’t families stronger when more people believed that? What do you think?

waiting for an ephiphany? do something!

I don't know why, but I feel a whine coming on. However, I'm going to try to reframe it, because I don't like myself when I feel like a victim. If I'm in any way a victim, it's a victim of my own making, helplessness that I ought to be able to fight my way out of like a paper bag.

The phrase, "See how you are?" has popped into my head several times this week. I need a new vision of how I am, how I could be. An epiphany would be just fine, and it's the right season for it.

I keep thinking that when the repair man comes and I have a workable laundry again, things will be better. But will they? Last week I thought that when I'd given my talk on hospice, I'd feel better and be able to tackle some other things. Then the windstorm came up and left me some very other things to tackle, but still I didn't feel good about it.

Today I helped lead a grief group for children, the first we've tried. I like the co-leader, the leader, really. He has lots of experience with children's groups, and my experience, other than with teens or family, goes back to Cub Scouts and Brownies-- a very long time ago.

I haven't been dreading it, not anything like that, so it's not quite like the hurdles I often find in my weeks. Like, oh, when I can finally get appointments to see the folks in the town sixty miles away, I can breathe easier. Or the woman who wants to tube feed her husband and tells me, for no reason as far as I know, that I ought to buy a copy of the Catholic catechism and listen to Catholic radio if I want to help her. I don't know how she'll let me help her then, and suspect she won't ever, but it's another mental bump in my road.

Sometimes those bumps in the road have a salvific effect, that is, I find the dreaded task to be a source of joy and accomplishment when I've gotten into it. Not this time. It went okay, was sort of fun, sort of frustrating.

What I need is something to feel good about. Not just passable, but good. Enthusiastic. Spirited. Challenged. And appreciated for it would be good too.

A counselor came to hospice yesterday to talk to the group about compassion fatigue. I didn't think I had it, because I don't feel very compassionate, at least not that hooked kind of teary identification with people going through their difficulties. I don't get very attached. Then, as I thought about it, I thought about how that may be a symptom in itself. I have a couple of patients now that I will miss and will feel real grief about, but, in a way, I haven't gotten close to them emotionally. Self-protection, or a symptom of burn-out, or both?

One of the things that came out in our discussion was expectations. I have very low expectations of myself at this time, and that isn't good. It isn't good to have them too high to reach either, but so low they won't trip you up isn't high enough to feel like you've accomplished anything.

I'm just babbling. Now, to work on some goals, that's what I need to be doing. I'll give it a try. Wish me well.

Wrestling with Holiness

The Renovare group which I joined a few weeks ago studied the Holiness Tradition last week. We were asked to pick an exercise and practice it this week and report on it tomorrow night. The question, then, will be, What did you learn about yourself and God as a result of this exercise?

I realized that the Holiness Tradition is the one I was brought up with. My grandparents were Methodists, and that was the church I was baptized in. My grandmother worried some about sin, and was unhappy that my grandfather very occasionally smoked a pipe or a cigar, and that he sometimes played cards on Sunday. She was a great card lover herself, but had been taught that to do so on Sunday was a sin.

My mother must have railed against that tradition, at least a little bit. She told me about tent meetings she had to attend as a child, and how disgusting she thought it was to turn around and kneel facing the seat cushion she’d just sat on, or someone else had.

Even though she did not believe the Bible to be literally true, (and I don’t know what my grandparents believed about that,) she was a stickler for rules. We didn’t talk about sin though. She did consult Emily Post’s and Amy Vanderbilt’s books of etiquette for the proper ways to behave, but she was strangely quiet about the Bible. The Book of Common Prayer was in her hands every morning when I got up though, so I know she was grounded in the goodness, and forgiveness, of God.

Back to the Renovare question, what I learned, on reflection, was that it wasn’t at all easy to separate the “shoulds” and “oughts” that came to me in Mother’s voice from the true meaning, to me, of God’s commandments. I’m certain I frequently sent my mother to the end of her wits and patience by saying, “Yes, but….” I had, and still have, a burning desire to think things out for myself and to find my own understanding of what is true.

Is that “sin,” wanting to understand and make sense of what I read on my own terms? Instead of accepting God’s word in faith? Maybe so. Maybe not.

If I want to think that my desires are God’s, then yes. If I’m puzzling about it, hunting for what God wants for me, with a willingness to entertain his will for me at least, before I actually choose…that seems okay to me. In fact, it seems important to do so, to believe that God cares for me and wants the best for me before I commit.

Saying Goodbye to Butch

Today was Butch's funeral, and it fit him perfectly, although his pastor said Butch would have been embarrassed to have so much attention. I think that is true. At least thirty people were standing in the small church, which was missing a back pew because Butch had unscrewed it and removed it a few months ago. He’d noticed that there was no good space for people in wheel chairs; they had to sit behind everybody or in the aisle until he made a place for them. He paid attention to things like that.

Butch and his family did more for me than I did for them, and it was such a simple thing they did. They were glad to see me. You may think that isn’t much, but it doesn’t happen all the time.

When people are dying, they don’t usually have a lot of energy; and they don’t have a lot of reason to want to spend what they have getting to know strangers. That’s a fact.

Butch made the effort, and so did his family, even though their pastor came frequently as well. It was as if life was a banquet to Butch, and he didn’t want to leave any dish untried.

His nurse came back to the office a few weeks ago with chocolate peanut clusters he had made. She told me to try to get his recipe. When I asked him, he offered me a box of the clusters too. The pastor said today that Butch never gave out the recipe to anyone, and he supposed God was trying to get it out of him now.

In the eyes of the world, Butch was not an important man. He lived in a modest house filled with many tables and book cases he had made. He loved to work with wood. He held several different jobs, and I’m sure he did them all with honesty and fairness. He managed to get an AA degree, and wanted to finish four years of college, but hadn’t been able to. He had children to educate by then. Those children asked him recently how he could give up his dream like that, wasn’t he sorry. He looked at each of them and said, “You are my dream.”

There’s a saying that goes something like this: Your life may be the only Bible some people read. I’m glad a lot of people ‘read’ Butch's life.

Trying new things

A woman who I do not know well, but whom I admire greatly, gave me the address to her blog this weekend. Because her husband, some time ago, made a disparaging comment about people who blog, it surprised me that she was among them. I'm guessing she hadn't started it yet, because it wouldn't be like him to pooh-pooh any activity of hers. I thought she was going to ask for the name of my blog as well, but if she did, I missed it.

I began this blog over a year and a half ago, and didn't give it a fair chance. I had just started one at writing.com, a site which was very easy to navigate. My blog there is called Ten-Finger Exercises, because my intention was to practice writing every day. Two blogs were too many, and I hadn't figured out how to use this one yet. Still, I should say.

A blog is, by nature, not private. It feels that way though. I can't imagine anyone stumbling on either of mine by accident, but it could happen. My children read Ten-Finger Exercises fairly regularly, and I've learned which topics appeal to the rest of my readers, as well as which topics do not.

Most of the people who read it and leave comments are not religious; in fact, many are not even people who consider themselves to be spiritual. Nevertheless, they have become my friends. They live in several different countries, come from very different economic circumstances, and are a variety of ages, mostly younger than I am.

I'm taking up this long abandoned blog to try to go a little deeper into spirituality without losing my other audience. At least, I'll give it a try. I'm in the need for something new. I've recently joined a Renovare group, and I don't know if is for me or not. It's not all that hard to find others who want to be religious together, but not at all easy to find people who want to explore and dare to doubt. An old prayer of unknown origin came to my mind in the past few weeks: Give me a doubt to doubt my doubt. I don't say it all the time, but occasionally it fits.

I don't know if anybody will find this blog unless I give them the address. So, if you've wandered here on your own, or especially if you've come hunting for me, please let me know. Otherwise, it's as if I've left a message in a bottle and tossed it into the waves.

Did anybody find the bottle? Was the message legible?

Is anybody out there?