Water from the Rock

As I was meditating yesterday, I kept getting the same image—that of a rugged, grey rock face with a tiny trickle of water coming from a crack in the stone. I could hear the sound of a loud, rushing stream, like an echo coming down from the future, but for the present, the flow of water was barely more than a drip.

For months, I have been sensing from God that he is about to bring about something new in my life. I still don't know what exactly what that new thing is, but I'm waiting and trying to listen. I'm reminded of the verses in Isaiah:

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. Is 35:6a-7

I want to know so badly what that trickle of water represents. Is it a new course for my writing? Some new form of service? Something I haven't even begun to imagine? But I don't want to be like Moses—when God told him to command water to come forth, he became impatient and struck the rock instead. I do not want to try to force this process.

And so I wait, even though it is difficult. God will bring about this new thing in his own time. The more I can quiet my heart and discipline myself to listen, the more likely I am to recognize it.

The Joy of Color

Meet my new socks.

These are the same socks I was knitting ten days ago. (Knitting Life in the Round) I just finished them Sunday, and I wore them yesterday to cheer me up on a cold, rainy day.

I'm addicted to color. For years, I have bought far too many clothes because I crave a lot of color in my wardrobe. The color that I put on each day is an expression of my mood and often an expression of my persona. Knitting socks has become my new way to incorporate color into my life. It's a lot cheaper than buying a cashmere sweater!

I'm really grateful that God created color. I'm not sure he really had to; we could have functioned perfectly well in a black and white world. But color adds beauty to our lives and emotion. It helps to differentiate things that otherwise look alike. To me, it's a demonstration that God cares about more than just utility. He longs to provide us with abundance.

So I praise him for the wonderful colors with which he has painted the world.

And my next pair of socks will be varied shades of pink.

Memorials of Growth

True confession: I have an irrational fear of bears. When I was in my 20s, my roommate and I went backpacking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One night, we heard a bear rummaging around our camp, looking for food. I remember lying in my sleeping bag in terror, consoling myself with the idea that the bear would have to rip through three layers of material—tent, sleeping bag, pajamas—before it could hurt me. (Like that would make a difference. My PJs weren't made of Kevlar.) The animal wandered off, however, and no harm was done except to leave me with a major bear phobia.

A couple of years ago, Michael needed to do some wilderness research for a screenplay he was writing, so we drove (yes, the whole 2,000 miles across the plains of Saskatchewan) to Jasper National Park in Alberta. (For photos of Jasper, see yesterday's post.) We hired a guide and took a couple of hikes. The night before our first hike, I woke in a total panic because of my fear of bears. The brown bears who live in the Smokies are one thing. Grizzlies still live in the Canadian Rockies. I had to get out of bed and go write in my journal for an hour or more until I could master my fear. I ended up convincing myself that I ran far more risk every time I drove the Dan Ryan, a notorious 12-lane highway in Chicago that locals call the "Crash Ryan."

A few days after our hike, which went off without incident, I bought myself the bear figurine in the photo. I wanted it to remind me that I had stared into the face of my fear and conquered it. In the 20 months since our trip, the bear has sat nearly forgotten on the desk in my office.

Until Friday. Writing jobs in our specialty have been scarce this year, so Michael recently applied for a part-time job. The interview went well, and we thought he'd be offered the position. We found out Friday that a current employee at the job asked for more hours—after the interview took place—and so Michael isn't going to be hired after all. For a few minutes, I panicked. I'm so tired of worrying about work and finances week after week. The job wouldn't have solved all our money worries, but it would have provided some relief. I wanted the anxiety to end.

Then I went back to cleaning the house in preparation for dinner guests. Moving something from the dining room table (which functions as a giant in box/out box) to the desk in my office, I saw my little bear. And I remembered that fear and anxiety don't have to paralyze me unless I allow them to.

Now I know why people in the Old Testament used to pile stone as a memorial to important events or encounters with God. Sometimes these reminders can help to keep us going during out next difficulty.

I hope the memory of past victories gives you new strength today.

Hmmm . . . I've been tagged.

I've been tagged. Thanks, Anne. So I have to give you seven fascinating facts about myself, but then I get to tag seven of you.

(Note, if you want to skip this and read my regular "Sunday Inspiration" post, just scroll on down.)

Here are the rules if you decide to play along:
1) Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3) Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4) Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Seven fascinating (or not) facts about me:

1. I worked at a job preparing people's income tax returns when I was still in high school My mom worked for H&R Block, convinced me to take the classes, and so I got a part-time job. I was a very young-looking 17-year-old so I think it must have freaked people out to see me doing their tax forms, but no one ever challenged me.

2. When I was in my early 40s, I developed allergies to soy and fish. No going vegetarian for me.

3. Among all the miscellaneous family photographs on my refrigerator is one of my cousin's daughters and presidential candidate Barack Obama. They met him at a fair when he was running for Illinois senator.

4. I've been an aunt since I was 7 and a great-aunt since I was 25. The current count is 7 nieces and nephews and 11 grand-nieces and grand-nephews (with one on the way).

5. On our wedding day, my husband and I had time to kill between the ceremony and  the reception, so we went out to a frozen yogurt store, in our wedding clothes, and bought a snack. (That's a photo of a photo at right, so it's not especially clear.)

6. My birthday is on the same date as the great Swedish actress Greta Garbo and the great Chicago Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg.

7. Not only have I been tagged in the last 24 hours by another blogger, but I have also been challenged to a meme. So my 7th thing is a really dreadful poem about some of the people on my blog roll.

There once was a blogger named Ruth

who like to muse about truth.

But things aren't what they seem,

Moohaa challenged her to a meme

While Anne said, "No, follow me,

Get Out of Jail Free

But I'll have to ask the warden,

who's enjoying Gin's View from the Garden.

Then we gazed at Newfoundland at Bitstop;

the photos will make your heart stop.

Diane says, "Let's Coexist,"

Well, I think you get the gist

of the thoughts carried in my pocket,

as we go pick some Sweet Rocket.

Then we'll drink Corona and lime

at Mark's blog Marking Time.

Finally, let's all pursue more unity

by discussing Faith in Community.

That's not all the bloggers on my list

but the others barely know I exist.

At least I got my seven,

have I earned a star in heaven?

Sunday Inspiration: Psalm 21

Psalm 21

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come?

2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.

4 He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.

8 The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.

(These images were taken in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. More about our trip there tomorrow.)

Discipleship—Draft or Discovery Process

I'll be wearing my #23 Chicago Bears jersey today because it is the opening day of the NFL draft. Hundreds of college football players across the country have declared their intention to play in the National Football League. Experts have analyzed and evaluated their athletic careers, in many cases since the players were in high school. The athletes have interviewed with teams, attended special workouts to show off their raw athletic ability, and taken tests to prove their football intelligence. Scouts and coaches have investigated their character and family background. Today and tomorrow, during the long hours of the NFL draft, these young athletes will wait for the phone call that tells them whether they were good enough to be chosen, and if they were, which team has chosen them and in what city they will spend the next portion of their lives.

Too often, I find myself thinking of Christian discipleship as a sort of celestial form of the NFL draft. I see God as giving us certain gifts, telling us where to use them, and evaluating how well we do. In my case, one of my gifts is an ability to write, and I've met with success as an educational writer, yet I've often been frustrated in my efforts to publish fiction.

My response? Sometimes, I admit, I fall into the trap of thinking that my small number of published stories means that God has decreed I should do one kind of writing (educational) and not the other (fiction). I wonder if I would be able to sell more of my work if I found the right niche, the one that God has predestined for me.

But truly, when I step back from my emotional investment in this issue, I realize that such thinking is childish. Hebrews 11 praises the many who persevered in their faith even though they encountered difficulty and never in their lifetime saw the fulfillment of God's promises. As I mature, I come to know that God's values are, in many ways, the antithesis of NFL culture. What matters to him is the process, not the scoreboard. If I persevere in exercising my gifts, if I dedicate myself to growing as a writer and writing material that supports my Christian values, then that is enough. When I meet God face to face, he isn't going to ask for the list of my publications.

In the movie Chariots of Fire, the Christian athlete Eric Liddell says, "When I run, I feel God's pleasure." That is the best description I've ever found for what it's like when I write my fiction, and surely that should be reason enough for me to continue to do it. Whether my novels find their way to print or not most likely has to do with market forces and whether I've tapped into the broader tastes of the American consumer. It does not mean I've failed to figure out God's will for me. And it doesn't mean that on draft day, I failed to be chosen.

The jersey I wear, #23, is for a Chicago Bears player named Devin Hester. For the last two years, he has been the most electric kick returner in the NFL. Currently, the Bears are trying to see if Hester can expand his role by becoming a wide receiver too. The process reminds me a little of my own repeated attempts to expand from being a textbook writer to a novelist. If Hester can learn the intricacies of this position, he will increase his value to the team several times over. If he cannot make the necessary adjustments to master this second role, well, the public will focus on what might have been. His reputation will perhaps be a little bit dimmed. But I think that I will honor him for having the courage to stretch his gifts and to take chances venturing into new areas that have no guarantee of success. And I hope that I will always push myself to do the same.

Friday Foto-Essay: Friends

Last night I received an e-mail from someone I've known since high school and college. We've been out of touch for a couple of months, so it was good to get her news. Tonight, Michael and I are having church friends over for dinner; we haven't known them long, but we have much in common, and I'm looking forward to the conversation. And then there are the people I've "met" on the Internet, through forums and now blogging, and their support has come to mean so much to me. So today's post is about friends.

When I was a little girl, this big yellow trumpet jonquil was the only kind of daffodil I knew. The only people I knew were white, middle-class Illinoisans. Except for a few relatives, the only Christians I knew were Baptists. And everyone was straight because I didn't know other orientations existed.

Then I went to college, and later I moved to Chicago. I made friends with people who were passionate about urban ministry, people who were committed to Christian community, and people who were pursuing their vocations as artists. My own jobs ranged from English teacher to gasket expediter to personnel assistant to textbook editor to freelance writer. And I went through a strange spiritual journey that took me through the Baptist, Mennonite, and Catholic denominations before finally (I hope it's finally) landing me in the Episcopal Church.

Now I have friends from my past, friends from career, friends from several churches, and friends from the world wide web. They aren't as homogenous as they were in the days when I was a young girl in Kankakee, Illinois, but they all have one thing in common. I see the image of God in them. As Gandhi used to say, we are all children of God. And so I thank God for the variety of people who bless me, just as I thank him for the variety of daffodils in my garden.

Before I go, I'll leave you with two gifts—links of other places to go.

The recipe for the orange-mushroom chicken that I'm making tonight is at this link. It's very good, very easy, and it's my own recipe, so I can give you all permission to copy it. :) Orange-Mushroom_Chicken

Last, my cousin sent me this YouTube link the other day. Normally, I don't care much for videos with a message, but I liked this one, and it fits today's theme: "Get Service" video

Have a blessed Friday.

His Eye is on the Sparrow

A robin has built a nest in the arborvitae outside my office window. (In the photo above, it's the barely visible horizontal mesh of dry grey grasses in the center of the shrub.) For days, I've been able to sit at my computer and watch the male robin hop around the yard gathering dried grasses and stems to use. I've been wondering what it will be like to try to write when I hear the cheep, cheep, cheep of hungry baby birds.

Then I remembered the cat. A few years ago, an abandoned black cat took up residence in the neighborhood. The people across the street feed it, but that doesn't stop it from hunting. It stalks my yard for birds constantly. It must get into fights too because one eye is perpetually shut.

So now I'm worried. That arborvitae will be so easy for the cat to climb, and there isn't much I can do to stop it. You can't go outside and talk sense to a robin, and if I move the nest, the birds will abandon it. I can run outside and chase away the cat if I happened to see it lurking, but I'm not at my computer desk 24/7. I just have to accept that I'm not in control.

The last day or so, my own life has made me feel a bit like that robin. I learned yesterday that the writing job I was offered last week might have to be split with another freelancer. (The publisher's schedules might necessitate having two writers.) I won't know the answer for a week or so, but I felt very discouraged about the possibility. Last night, I was wakeful and had to get up to pray for a while. If this assignment is cut, we'll need to find even more work to get through the summer than I thought we would.

So I feel like a robin, perched on a flimsy structure of dried straw, my whole future gathered in this nest with me, while a one-eyed black cat slinks around the garden below.

And yet . . . Jesus reminded his disciples that not even a sparrow can fall to the ground without the Father knowing of it and that we are of much more value than the sparrows. So instead of keeping my focus fearfully on the danger, I guess I'll have to lift my gaze to the heavens and trust our future once again into his care.

I'll keep you posted.

"In my end is my beginning"

I've had that quotation running through my mind for a few days, without remembering who said it or what it meant exactly. It is a bit of a conundrum.

Strangely enough, the reason I started thinking about beginnings and endings was because of my knitting. The deacon at our church loaned me a great knitting book called The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques. She wanted me to read about a certain method of casting on she'd recommended, but as I looked through the book, I found myself humbled by all the techniques I'd never tried. Even though I've been knitting for more than 40 years and I've accomplished some fairly complex tasks, I'm not as good at the various ways of beginning and finishing sweaters as I am at the knitting part. Probably because they aren't as enjoyable. The end result is that I have a few beautifully knitted garments with lower edges that are too tight or seams that are too bulky, and my enjoyment of them is tainted.

It's so easy to want to jump into the fun part that we skip the hard preparatory work, and it's just as easy to grow weary of a task and rush it at the end. I wish I could be more Zen and live in the present and value the importance of what I'm doing at each moment, but my mind keeps racing ahead. Living in the present is just one more thing I think I need to work on.

So how does all this relate to the quotation I posted above? I looked it up and found that it was attributed to Mary, Queen of Scots. She embroidered it as a motto while she was in the Tower of London awaiting her execution. To her, it was a reminder of the promise of eternal life. After her death, her life in heaven would begin. Because she was a condemned prisoner, the afterlife was all she had to anticipate.

My situation is different. I have hope in a future life too, but I don't want to focus on it to the extent that I ignore the here and now. Because I still have work to do and choices to make, I don't want to coast through my life in the belief that everything will be better in the hereafter. I want to appreciate the beauty that surrounds me, and I want the things that I do each day to be worthwhile. Maybe not earth shattering. Maybe not even noticed by others. But aimed toward growth or creativity or generosity.

"In my end is my beginning." I do live in the hope that one day I will be with God, but it would be a shame to wait for heaven to see peace, healing, justice, equality, righteousness. Maybe I can make a new beginning each day by pursuing those things now, one tiny step at a time.

Fertilize . . . or Finish?

I'm not the best of gardeners. Oh, I do a lot of gardening, . . . but I don't think I'm really that skillful at it. I have strong ambivalence about using chemicals, and because of that, my roses suffer. Blackspot skips gaily from rose to rose, weakening them so that they have difficulty surviving the winter.

This spring, I still haven't worked up my courage to take inventory of the ones I've lost. It's getting to be late April, I should be out there pruning, and I continue to procrastinate.

I know I'm going to have to make hard decisions about some of them, like the one pictured above. This rose is three years old, but it's never grown more than about ten inches. Yet look at it, struggling to start over. Do I cut away the dead canes, fertilize it, and give it one more year? Or do I dismiss it as a weakling, dig it up—shovel prune it, as my Internet friends say—and start all over in that spot?

Life hand us similarly hard choices. For three years, I struggled with my novel. I couldn't hear the characters speaking in my head. I couldn't figure out how to make the book start in an interesting way. In those three years, I wrote only eight or nine chapters. I was almost ready to give up. Then last year, Michael and I took a writing sabbatical. We went to Florida for the month of March and did nothing but our own creative writing. I took long, long walks on the beach. Suddenly, after two weeks, I heard my characters playing out scenes in my imagination. I could hardly get the words down fast enough. I wrote three chapters in that one month. After we came home, the book continued to flourish. In the year since we came home, I've written another 22 chapters and finished the first draft. The fertilizer of concentrated writing time worked.

Sometimes, however, no matter what we do to save something, we have to give up. I tried for six or seven years to restructure my staff editorial job into something I could manage. I went to four days a week. I decided to plateau and not seek promotion. I made other choices to keep from being caught up in the corporate grind. My employer was wonderful in allowing me to make the changes. In spite of all that effort, the day came when I knew that I would do better as an independent contractor. I wasn't going to be able to meet my goal of staying with the corporation until I reached the age of early retirement. And so I quit.

So the lesson that I'm learning from my garden today is that there are no easy answers. I need to face the difficult task of going out into my yard and evaluating each and every rose bush according to its own merits and its own condition. I'm not looking forward to it, but I know I'll feel better once it's done.

Blood Brother

I had a new insight during the Eucharist Sunday. Disclaimer: I'm not a theologian, nor do I play one on TV. But I saw the wine offered during communion in a new light yesterday.

First let me give a little background. Two things played into this thought process. First, as I've mentioned before, I'm writing a book on modern American Indian leaders. The first chapter of the book gives an overview of the status of American Indians today, and one of the things I address is how tribes define who qualifies to be enrolled as a member. Probably the most common definition is how much Indian blood a person has. Usually, at least one-fourth of a person's heritage must be from the tribe in question to qualify for membership.

Second, the main character of my novel in progress is one-eighth Chinese, which causes a subtle but ongoing issue in the novel. She looks more Chinese than she really is, but because of family circumstances, she knows nothing of the heritage, and the dichotomy between her appearance and her reality has made her touchy about her identity.

So these are the things that have been running through my mind lately connected to the issues of blood and heritage. They unexpectedly combined with my faith yesterday morning. When Reverend Kate raised the chalice during the consecration, I had one of those Ah ha moments. Jesus is giving us his blood, thus allowing God's own blood to be a part of us. He is making us a member of his race, a member of his tribe. To use the term we bandied about when we were kids, he is giving us a way to claim him as our "blood brother."

I think it's a very cool thought.

Sunday Inspiration: David Salmon

I think (maybe) that Sundays will be my day to write about people, books, movies, or songs I come across that I find inspiring.

I'm currently in the process of writing a children's book about modern American Indian leaders. While doing research, I came across the story of Chief David Salmon of Alaska.

He was born in 1912, and his mother died of tuberculosis in 1923. To escape the disease, Salmon's father took the boy with him into the wild country to live according to traditional Athabascan ways. After a couple of months, the boy was put in an Episcopal boarding school. He remained there two years and then returned to the back country with his father. They stayed there for 18 years, coming into town to trade once a year but spending most of their time living in a tent in a region where it could get 50 below in the winter.

Eventually, David Salmon and his wife moved to a village and almost immediately, he was elected chief. He alternated this post with another man for years. He built a school for the village and  a log church. He was also a man of deep faith, and the Episcopal Church sent him to Bible schools. In 1962, at the age of 50, he became an ordained priest.

Not only did he travel across Alaska preaching, sometimes in his native language, he also helped preserve Athabascan culture by teaching his people the traditional skills that his father had taught him. He helped to found a council of chiefs.

When he died last October, flags were flown at half-mast in his honor. Those who knew him spoke of his humility, his humor, and his positive attitude.

His story helps me to remember that sometimes what's important about a person's life isn't a huge accomplishment like inventing a cure for some disease or winning an Oscar. Sometimes what's important is a life well lived.

Vision

Good morning. I couldn't find my glasses when I got up. Last night, when I took them off so I could pull my top over my head, I laid my clothes down on top of the glasses, which I had set on top of the dresser. This morning, feeling around in the semi-dark, refusing to turn the light on because Michael was still asleep, I couldn't find them. After searching the bathroom, the kitchen, my office, I finally figured out what must have happened.

It's a helpless feeling not to have vision. For the longest time, that was my trouble with the novel I was writing. I just didn't have clear vision. I sort of knew where I wanted to go, but I didn't see how to get there.

Well, I finally finished the first draft a month ago, and after letting it sit for a while to gain some perspective, I'm going to shut myself in my office today and read the whole thing straight through. Or at least attempt to do so—it's about 470 pages long. After that, I'll be able to see if the vision held true.

I hope you all find clarity today.

Knitting Life in the Round

I've become addicted to the process of knitting socks, perhaps because knitting in the round reminds me of going through life. To make a sock, the knitter starts with a certain number of stitches and then distributes them among three double-pointed needles. I'm using bamboo needles, which look like oversized toothpicks. After casting on all the stitches, you join them into a circle and begin to knit. Using a fourth, empty needle, you knit the stitches from needle 1. When needle 1 is empty, knit the stitches from needle 2. When needle 2 is empty, knit the stitches from needle 3. When needle 3 is empty, knit the stitches from needle 4. And so on, round after round after round.

Recently as I worked on a pair of socks for my 88-year-old mother, the process reminded me of the cycle of seasons. Every time I used my four needles to work through a round of stitches, it felt like traveling through winter, spring, summer, and fall, with the round itself representing a single year. Just as in life, the addition of each round seems insignificant, and yet they accumulate until a pattern begins to emerge.

Socks have two other features that remind me of a human lifespan. Halfway through the sock, I will reach the stage known as "turning the heel," a process by which you decrease, knit short rows, and then pick up stitches in order to knit a three-dimensional corner. It enables you to start knitting a foot that is perpendicular to the cuff. In other words, turning the heel involves a change of direction. In that way, it's a bit like mid-life—the stage I find myself at now. Two years ago, I left a job as a staff editor for a large educational publisher and began to work as a freelance writer. At first, this move wasn't much of a change of direction as I continued to do assignments for my former employer. As time passes, however, I move into new areas—working for other publishers, writing about new subjects. I'm still in the process of turning this heel, so I don't know with certainty what the final direction of the change will be. Yet I work at it, day by day, stitch by stitch.

The other feature of socks that reminds me of life is the toe. When the foot of the sock is long enough, you begin to combine stitches so that you have fewer and fewer of them. The rounds become smaller and the sock narrows, tapering down until only a handful of stitches remain. Then you weave them closed, and weave any loose ends of yarn into the fabric you have created. My mother is in this stage now. Her health is failing, and her world has narrowed to the confines of a nursing home. Nearly all of her acquaintances, friends, and siblings are gone. Someday, perhaps soon, her life will close, and it will be up to my brothers and me to weave up the dangling threads that she has left us.

In the meantime, I want her to be warm and comfortable, and to have a tangible reminder that I love her. And so I am knitting my mother some socks.

Signs of Spring Where I Live

Signs in My Yard . . . 

Signs in the Stores . . . 

When You Need It

Aren't crocuses hopeful? Sometimes, when that last late blizzard strikes, it's hard to believe that the world will ever bloom again.

I wish I had more faith, the kind that would enable me not only to take chances but also to be calm and refuse to worry so much. The last seven weeks have been really stressful, and even though I managed the anxiety better than I would have in the past, I wish I had done better.

About a month ago, I was finishing the first draft of my novel. And I had a chapter that took place mostly in an emergency room. Well, I've been blessed so that I haven't had to spend much time in emergency rooms, but that left me with a dilemma. How was I going to make my chapter realistic?

As I mused over that problem, I went down to the basement to do my treadmill workout and switched on the TV. I was bored with my usual programs, so I started flipping through the directory. DiscoveryHealth was showing a show set in an emergency room—not a made-up situation, like ER, but a real, honest-to-God functioning hospital. In that one hour, I observed enough concrete details to make my chapter seem real. And as I walked upstairs at the end of the hour, I sensed God assuring me, "Life will give you what you need, when you need it."

That promise has been hard to cling to these last few weeks, but once again, it has proved true. Maybe next time we go through a dry spell when work is scarce, believing will be just a little bit easier.

Lost in the Fog

Sometimes when I pray or meditate, I receive a symbolic image that represents what is going on in my life. Often it is more than a single image; what happens is more like a film clip. It's not a hallucination. I'm always aware that the image is in my mind, but whether it is supplied by God or my own subconscious, I'm never sure. I don't think it matters because I have found both to be reliable guides.

One image that has recurred through my life—especially the last two years—is the image of walking on water as a metaphor for living in faith. Last week, I had a new variation on that theme. This time I was walking on the water alone (usually, I picture myself with Jesus), and I was surrounded by a cold, heavy fog. It was one of those damp, chilling mists that cut to the bone and make you feel dank and miserable. I was terrified. I literally could not see anything but a blank wall of grey fog, and yet I had to keep walking. That's the thing about walking on water. In my visions, anyway, you have to keep going with the forward motion or you will eventually sink. But because of the fog, I was almost paralyzed with fear. The only thing I had to guide me was the sound of a foghorn, so I would take a step, freeze in terror, realize that I couldn't stay where I was, and force myself to move again. Eventually, I did make enough progress that I reached the place where the Lord was waiting for me, and I fell into his arms.

That's how my life feels right now. Freelance writing jobs in educational publishing—at least in our subject areas—are scarce, and we can't see when the next one will come. It's not that we aren't looking; it's just that the industry seems to be blanketed with heavy fog. So we are moving out into the unknown. We're both working for a children's publisher and looking for other work. Last night, I felt so anxious about it that I was wakeful from 2:30 to 6:00. But worrying does no good except to rob me of sleep. Today I have to go back to putting one foot in front of the other and listening for the hoarse bellow of the foghorn to give some idea where to turn.

As I prayed this morning, I was reminded of a passage that has long been important to me: "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11.

P.S. Just as I was uploading this sunrise photo, the phone rang. I have a new assignment, and it's a decent-sized job! Thank you, Lord.

Making Meaning from Scraps

This shawl is the project I finished yesterday. I knitted it completely with leftover yarn. A couple of months ago, I finished a short cardigan, and even though I bought exactly the number of skeins the pattern called for, I used only half of them. At first, I thought I would knit a matching hat and mittens, but really, where am I going to go wearing a brilliant grape-colored ensemble like that? And in northern Illinois, I would have only about a two-week window to wear it before it would be so cold that I'd have to add my leather jacket.

So I made this shawl instead. I have a couple of warm weather outfits that are turquoise and deep purple, so this can be something I throw over them on chilly nights. And of course, it will stay in my office with my other two shawls to keep me warm when I type. My office is located on the northwest side of the house, and the winter winds hit it harder than any other room. It gets COLD in here.

The thing I am most proud of is that I created the shawl pattern myself. It's not especially complex or stunning, but it's mine and I love it. While making it, I did think of giving it away, but I guess I'm like the Yarn Harlot--I'm a wool pig. (For anyone who doesn't know, the Yarn Harlot is Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, an author and blogger who writes endlessly and delightfully about knitting. If you're interested, just Google "yarn harlot.")

Today, I realized that this shawl is a lot like my personal writing. I take scraps of experience from my own life and try to work them into a pattern that makes it something useful and (hopefully) beautiful. In the last couple of weeks, as I have been experimenting with news paths for my writing, I have been sending out articles to various magazines. A narrative about how I learned to cope with being childless, an explanation about how praying the Rosary helped me through a transition, a meditation about how knitting a sock is a lot like life (sorry, Stephanie, it's only a temporary trespass on your turf). We'll see if any of the publishers like my stuff enough to buy it.

Looking at the closeup of my shawl reminds me of a poem I wrote 26 years ago. It's as true for me today as it was then, so I'll close by posting it.

LIFELINE

I follow your lead, Lord,
this time-tangled string
known as your will—used to beckon me on.
Most days I scarce see
past knots in the thread
that seem to be blocking my view of what's next.
Knots hard to squeeze through
climb over or round
to land in a hole
where the threadway seems gone.
Places of emptiness
where I linger for days
when I let loose the lifeline
the pulls me your way.
In time I regain it
that delicate span
drawing me over the void
to tangles again.
Why can't my path
be simple and straight
a line for my life
made clear from the start?
From here all I see
is snarled thread and gaps
marring my present, my future, my past.
Only your viewpoint
too high for me yet
sees all the knots and the holes and the tenuous threads
weaving a life of obstruction and space
into a pattern of intricate lace.

Blessings on your day.

Synchronicity

The dictionary defines synchronicity as a coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related. I'm a big believer in synchronicity. I think life does its best to point us in the right direction. And today, I experienced one of those strange convergences.

After logging off last night, I was thinking about what I wanted to post on my blog today. And I decided to write about something that happened a year and a half ago. The story seemed relevant because it relates to the theme I've decided to focus on for the blog: the theme of change.

At the end of the summer, I was digging up an iris bed because of an infestation of iris borers. Borers are insects that rot out the rhizome (the fleshy root that looks like a yam). After digging up the bed, I sat and cut away all the rotten parts and divided the remaining pieces for replanting. As I sat there slicing through rhizomes and tossing away rejects, a sudden flash of insight hit me. I grew up in a church that emphasized salvation versus hellfire and damnation. God is portrayed as eager to separate the sheep from the goats—or the incurably rotten from the good, as I was doing with my irises. Sitting there in the warm August sun, I concluded that I don't view God that way anymore. Instead I see him more as an overall gardener: feeding and watering plants, pruning a bit here and there, propping up weak stems with support, and providing restraint where needed. The purpose of all this activity is not to sort out the good plants from the bad. It is to try to help each plant in the garden grow as full as possible and bear the most fruit.

So here is where the synchronicity comes in. Today, in the Episcopal Church, we observed Good Shepherd Sunday. The gospel reading was from John 10, in which Jesus says, "Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. . . . Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."

In the sermon, Rev. Kate, one of our priests, said she doesn't believe that Jesus is a gatekeeper, standing there saying, "I want this person, but that one is no good, so Satan can have them." Nor does she believe in a God who accepts everyone just as they are. Instead, she believes that God wants us to grow and change so that we can do more of God's work of bringing peace and justice to the world.

As I said yesterday, I believe that I am going through a new set of changes, and I still can't see exactly where I'm being led. So I'm going to write about the transformation as I go through it, step by uncertain step. Hopefully, someday, my life will be as bountiful as this:

Do I dare?

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

The name of my blog comes from those lines within "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," a poem that I love. Written by T.S. Eliot, it tells of a middle-aged man whose life hasn't turned out quite the way he wanted, probably because of his own timidity. In the end, life overwhelms him and he never asks the "overwhelming question" that weighs upon his heart. The poem ends with his defeat.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

(To read the whole poem, follow this link: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")

As my 50th birthday approaches, I'm doing what I can to make sure I don't end up like Prufrock. So for the last three years, I have been in the process of change. In December 2005, I left my job of 17 years as a staff editor for a major publisher and launched my boat unto the uncertain seas of freelance writing. This year, jobs in my field have dried up, and I'm pushing out into new types of writing. Hence this blog. In it, I will experiment with anecdotes of personal experience and manifestos of personal opinion. With any luck, I'll learn which types of writing suit my voice best. My posts won't always be this serious; I have my witty and sarcastic sides too. But there will be times when I muse about life's meaning.

I guess this is enough of an introduction to serve as my first post. My husband Michael will be home with our supper soon. Tonight, we're doing carry-in to celebrate a writing assignment he just received. So for this evening, the question isn't "Do I dare to eat a peach?" It's "Do I dare to eat buffalo wings and risk indigestion?"

Heck, yes.