The last few days have felt like bootcamp around here. Baby wakes at 4am, and then fights every naptime tooth and nail. I will say it hasn’t been hard to feel gentleness toward this creature who is cause for so little sleep (including his own). He doesn’t know how to sit down yet, and is programmed to be only virtical now that he has the skill to get that way, so the dear just stands there, exhausted, crying. Lie him back down, and up he goes again, ad infinitum.

Last night as I lay exhausted in bed (I won’t even tell you how early it was), I wanted to pray. I wanted to ask for a blessing on all of us–of peace, of deep rest. Of bars of a crib that won’t beckon Pied Piper-like at 4am. I wanted to ask for help with my writing, too, and knowing how to talk and think about who I am and all the other things bouncing around my brain.

I tried, but the words wouldn’t come. I’m in an awkward stage with the All, if that’s what I might call God. Awkward in the sense that, well, to whom am I praying when I pray? Something that hears me? Something that has feelings about me? Or is it to myself? I believe that each of us has more resources, more depths of wisdom inside ourselves than we can ever know, but even knowing that is little consolation in the face of feeling helpless or small. In the face of sleep deprivation and hopes and dreams that sometimes feel way out of reach. Is it me to whom I pray?

Or is it something much bigger, something like The Universe, and are my thoughts percieved by this All, then, like that butterfly line, and somehow incorporated into the ongoing flow of creation, maybe even in such a way that what is created after that prayer is somehow different than if it weren’t prayed? I like that way of thinking of it.

All in all, sometimes it feels much easier, maybe even despite all the suffering everywhere that has such unsettling implications on its own, to pray to a personal consciousness, a person sort of God, that’s somehow distinct from everything. At least that would feel a little more possible lying in bed at night, at the end of a full day of mothering, when I’d really like to be mothered myself. When I’d like to be listened and tended lovingly to.

Maybe blogging is a kind of prayer, and all your ears are the real and personal, embodied hearing of God.

Buddhalijah, so named for his adorable belly, decided at 1:15 this morning–that’s A.M. for anyone who’s interested–that it would be a good time to stand up in his crib, the crib whose mattress we haven’t adequately lowered yet because who knew he could pull himself up like that already, and call for attention.  This by the boy that sleeps through the night.  Every night.  11-hour clockwork.

I stumbled to his room, opened the door, and watched as he, in the dark, like a newly felled tree, tipped backwards.  THUNK.  Yes, it was inside the crib, but it scared him and woke him up more thoroughly, and caused me to realize that this kid, the kid who just learned to crawl yesterday, is not only capable of curling himself over the rails of his confinement, but also falling, hard, indescriminately.  I had visions of those sweet cheeks and that santa claus belly only slightly cushioning a very long fall to the hard wood beneath them.

So the mattress had to be lowered.  Right that minute.  And by the time the light was turned on and the lowering done, and a round of rocking, and wailing in the crib, and nursing, and rocking, and wailing in the crib, and bedtime music, and rocking, and wailing in his sleep, because the whole ordeal, we think, was started by gas, he finally conked off before 4.

All you parent readers?  I’m sorry I ever thought you ought to be more cheerful or well-rested.  Or well-adjusted.  I’m really sorry.

Blogs are interesting animals. Unlike face-to-face connecting, with blogs there’s no specific “other” to picture as you speak. And let’s face it: all of us tailor what we say and how we say it based on who we’re with. We talk differently to say, our mothers, than we do the guy next door, or the boss at work.

So this is one thing, among many, that makes it difficult to talk about my spiritual path: my readers are diverse. Some are like me and some not. Some are religious, some not. Some assume I’m who I’ve always been and others never knew the me of my past, don’t know anything about me but what they’ve learned here. And I don’t want to scandalize any of you.

Why, you ask? What’s your hang-up? Simple answer: I’m insecure. Longer answer: I want everyone in my world to think I’m great and just the right amount of spiritual and unspiritual, religious and a-religious, belief and unbelief, action and re-action…

I don’t want to be written off. By left or right. On whatever spectrum you want to bring up. Okay, so I DO want to be written off by huge chunks of them, but all the rest of those lines, not so much.

Maybe I need a stiff drink before sitting down to write.

A long time ago I wrote about the Tao, and how “going with the Tao” can be a way of describing the feeling of knowing the dance by heart. I’m sure literally too, but I’m speaking figuratively here–that feeling of sliding along with life, knowing when to turn, when to dip or twist, when to stand perfectly still or take a bow. I think another metaphor for this could be ripeness, knowing when the time for a particular thought or word or action is now.

I’m feeling a strong sense of ripeness for something these days, like the dance of my life is tugging at me, and I want to join in. I think it has to do with more openly talking about my spiritual life and the path this has taken in the last decade. I’ve been guarded about this. I’ve needed to heal and get distance from a lot of stuff that’s hurt. Unveilings has been a wonderful place, after years of roiling depression, to put words to the hope I’ve felt and/or reached toward since then. The generally positive spin here has been intentional, a way I’ve tried to move past my habit of defining myself always as what I’m not, or as what I’m all torn up about. Defining oneself that way is totally necessary sometimes, often for years at a time, so I’m not critiquing it. I had simply (ha!) reached a point where I could tell I was spinning my wheels, and I was tired of it. I needed a more directional movement to pursue.

So I exited stage left.

I exited almost entirely the kinds of conversations I had been addicted to for so long (it isn’t in my about page anymore, but I got Master’s degrees in Theology and New Testament, and was on track for a few years to either pastor or pursue a PhD and professorship in some form of Theology). My drug was discussing what about many forms of Christianity wasn’t working for me, and why I thought the same wasn’t working for many more people than that. I’ve touched on these things here (and once I get all my archives re-categorized, it’ll be easier for you to find where), but not often, and usually in such a way that I avoided conversation. You know those yippy dogs that run up behind you barking, but all they do is nip before running back away? That’s how I’ve felt sometimes about talking about religion here. Nip and run.

I’m not itching to dive back into that fray (the one I exited), and even less in spinning my wheels. But I am feeling ripe for at least talking more about my experiences of both things. Or rather, about my experience of being a Christian, and my experiences since then of being hard to define. And I’m interested in talking with you about them too, rather than just to you, and in more than tiny spurts…I think. :)

So. In the midst of other sorts of posts, you can probably expect a few more than average on the topic of religion and the complicated relationship I continue to have with it.

Okay, so here I am again.  I’m soul searching this week, trying to figure out what mix of things is sustainable for me, and so far I’ve gotten one clear answer:  not this one.  I’ve packed every minute to the brim lately, and feel something deep inside of me, some important place where children run barefoot and there’s time to watch clouds and what you do isn’t groomed for resumes, was never meant to be–I feel that place wilting and shrinking and getting overshadowed by this other place, a place that isn’t bad or even something to be wished away, but a place that must be held in check.  A place that wants badly to produce.  To matter to lots of people.  To have tangible things to show for my time, and not just things, but really wonderful amazing wiz-bang kinds of stuff.  Stuff that impresses people.  Lots of them.

And guess who suffers, besides me, when that place starts growing beyond itself?  The people who matter to me most.  Isn’t that ironic?

I have a non-fiction book I want to write.  I have a new and more complicated blog I want to start.  I have a novel that’s itching to see the light of day.  And I also have an 8-month-old who needs me quite a lot at this point, and deserves to be seen far, far differently than as a roadblock to some race track I’m trying to ride.

I’m realizing that life isn’t something you wait to live until the kids are grown or even just in school.  Life isn’t something you put off until your resume is long.  It isn’t something you hold like your breath, or keep locked in a cage, feeding but once or twice a day. 

It’s here.  Right now.  It’s this week, and this spring, this night with all the trees in bloom, and the crickets cricking, this lamp spilling golden light across my lap, my hands, the little scar where I accidentally poked myself with led in seventh grade.  I don’t want to fill this glorious life I’ve been given so full that the glory fades, and it doesn’t even matter because I don’t have time to notice anyway.  I don’t want to be so preoccupied with the next ten things I’m trying to accomplish that the one right in front of me gets only half of me.  The little boy whose eyes are so blue and smile is so big and heart is just bursting with eagerness to be mine right now.  Not half-mine, but all the way.  And that goes for N, and the other dear ones in my life, too.  My own face in the mirror.

Be still, I hear, and I feel that place inside of me expand.  I feel my feet on cool, green grass, and see clouds start billowing by.  There’s one the shape of the book I’m writing, and it’s whispering all in good time, and another the shape of the book I hope to write next.  There’s one the shape of fear, the fear that I’m losing time on a race I need to win, and if I don’t catch up now, today, or at least by the end of this year, some important thing will get lost forever.  Something I really want.  That cloud is shifting into some new thing, a new mist that looks like gladness, and it’s coming down to catch me up inside itself, catch me up and make me laugh like Eli, when all he can do is glee (if that’s not a verb it should be).  Because glee is what a lot of life calls for.

When it finally sets me down I see the landscape of my life, and realize I don’t want to get everything done I set out to do if that means missing out on here and now.  I don’t want to if it means not living in the fullest sort of way, thinking living will have to happen later.  Because later sometimes never comes.  And even if it does, there will never be this night again, this season, this dear one on the phone or at my neck or lying next to me in bed, at this age, with this sort of love.

So I’m here on my blog right now because it makes me happy, and because speaking publically helps call a thing to life.  I’m trying to imagine my way into a lifestyle that’s slower paced than the one I’ve lately tried to live, that still finds ways to honor the hats I truly love to wear:  writer, soul-nurturer, mother, wife, friend.  I want to honor these things in a much more liveable way.  As far as posting goes–here or on a new blog–we’ll have to see what this might mean.

I consider myself contemplative–one who thrives on time to ponder.  Multitasking isn’t so much my thing.  For this reason (and surely a hundred more), having a child and pursuing a beyond-home career are stretching me.  At the end of most days I feel it, that combination of exhaustion and reved-upness, where my mind is still trying to puzzle together the things I wanted to do today but will need to do tomorrow (or the next day) instead, while my body is saying ENOUGH.  EAT.  SLEEP.

In an attempt to get a handle on when to do what, and when to tell my mind enough already on trying to figure it out, compulsively, I have officially turned into the guy from About a Boy who has his days divided into units.  His life is way too empty, so our motivations are different, but you should see the weekly schedule I’ve created for myself.  All the non-childcare moments are divided into blocks.  I’m super excited about three projects, simultaneously, that all require huge amounts of time, so here’s me and my gangbusters looking way more like the drip, drip, drip (i.e. an hour during this naptime, two before bed) that look like nothing, but slowly, tenaciously, get canyons made.

This all is to say that for a few weeks, I’m closing up shop.  Here.  Not for good, but until I can get some marked headway made on these projects (and thus have units to spare).  One of them is a new blog, so if all goes well, you will hear much, much more of me after the break.  In a different venue, but one I think (hope) you’ll like.  I can’t wait.

So stay tuned, and take care of yourselves, and much, much love to all of you.