Family photo, November 15, 2007

Well, she’s here!  Charlotte Makenna was born last Thursday.  Surgery went very well, and we’re home now, embarking on that joyous and perilous journey called “adjusting to a new family member”.  So far Elijah is hanging in there.  Day one wasn’t pretty.  Days two and three were much better.  N and I both read “Siblings Without Rivalry” this fall (thanks to those of you who suggested it!) and are SO glad we did.  We both can’t recommend it enough.  Whether you have kids or not, or even whether you have a significant other or not, it’s so helpful for understanding the ways that we shape and are shaped and *were* shaped by dynamics in our homes.

But that’s a tangeant!  I’m feeling so grateful to be home, to have the scariness of surgery over, and for the initial plunge into new babyness to be made.  And not least by any stretch at all, to get to see dear Charlotte, daily, face-to-face.  I feel like I’ve emerged from a long, dark tunnel (pregnancy is unquestionably miraculous, but honestly, for me, this one was very hard), and the parts of myself that were necessarily on hold for so long are returning to life.  I can’t wait to begin exercising my body and mind and soul again in the ways that I used to enjoy.  Such things feel wonderfully imminent.

Thank you again for your thoughts and prayers and good wishes!  I hope to return my own offerings, by means of essays and conversations in this and others’ spaces, in the very near future.  For now, I will let this adjustment journey continue its new course.  From what I hear, the paved part begins a little further on.

Much love to all,
Kristin

Me and Elijah at last Saturday’s Halloween parade

Hello again, dear readers. I’ve missed you! My mode these days has been survival (baby’s due in two weeks!), and it’s been all I’ve been able to do to wrangle our little clown and keep our family clothed and fed. I’m looking forward to the day when naptimes and evenings are freed from sleep for things like, oh, engaging the world that I only assume still exists beyond the walls of this confinement pregnancy.

The good news is that I’ve been able to maintain my novel-writing sessions throughout these crazy months (would you believe that sitting in front of a computer is actually easier than watching a 2-year-old?), and last week I completed a revised outline of the whole thing. I have to say that out loud to buoy me through all the things I haven’t been able to accomplish…like emailing and blogging and reading and keeping up with the people I care about! To those of you whose emails have gone unanswered, or answered after great delay, I send heartfelt apologies and all my best intentions of being back in touch soon.

Our c-section is scheduled for November 15, so barring unforeseen labor, that’s when my body and heart (and lungs and intestines and veins and…) will be breathing big sighs of relief and embarking on the new, but, at least from where I sit now, more appealing challenge of caring for a newborn.

Thank you so terribly much for your love and prayers and words of support through these months. I’ve treasured them all.

Until soon (I hope!), and with love,
Kristin

It’s evening and Elijah’s asleep. The dishes are done, and the air outside is cold enough to warrant closed windows. So it’s quiet. Much more than usually so.

I came here to check my email quickly, to browse a few blogs, to put some music on an iPod I’ve never used, which N won in a raffle, with the aim of tackling, to music, more things on my list. The time it just took to figure out the iPod makes me feel old and a generation removed from cool. And then this, a Ben Harper ballad from a CD my dear friend made me, starts playing in my ears:

Beloved One

I’m feeling vulnerable these days, daydreaming, often more subconsciously than consciously I think, of being loved and rocked and tended like a child. Elijah’s been teething this week, waking often before dawn, needing to be rocked and sung back to sleep. And I have often been awake already, tossing and turning in this body that won’t sleep. I want a mama to help me to sleep, too. I want to be sung to. I want to be smiled on, throughout my days, and have meals prepared for me and activities chosen. I want to know viscerally that this body, with its burgeoning belly and veins, its racing heart, its squished up lungs and the aches that make me feel 80, is beautiful. Miraculous. A thing of awe. All things other than what I now feel.

I want to be able to sing Beloved One to myself.

Christine wrote a beautiful post today at her Abbey of the Arts, about bathtime. Its womb images, so poignant to me in this “season of expansion”, sooth me. Vicariously I feel the love I want to be given, the love I want to give myself, and feel myself surrounded by.

I press repeat on Beloved One, offering it as a prayer. Receiving it as an answer.

There’s a place inside of me I miss. A place where wonder pulses like a heartbeat - now quick with in-loveness for everything - a word, a sight, a sound, a person - now slowing with the lull of the crickets outside, or the fans that make these summer nights bearable. It’s a place that’s full with beyond-mere-survival, or rather, that knows survival as integrally related with music and contemplation, good books, deep thoughts, conversations with friends. It’s where words and the unworded stuff of experience mingle, tickling each other with the joy and utter frustration of remaining mostly, but never altogether, “other” from each other. The place from which my writing springs.

I’m in it tonight, though, miraculously. My body creaks and groans still with this pregnancy, a wooden ship made better for the wiry frame of a single captain and few supplies than for barrel upon barrel of rations: blood, fluid, tissue, fat. And this not even mentioning my second passenger. I love her already, and know it a privilege to navigate her passage.

But I creak. I groan. I bail water (four? five times a night?). And rarely get to that part of the ship I so treasure.

But.

Here I am tonight. I have no idea when I’ll return again, and even less what tomorrow’s winds or seas might bring (fortune? pirates? peace?). But for now, I’ll light a candle. Dip pen in ink. Open a scroll. Try to forget the fatigue that makes my heart beat strangely, the stomach that doesn’t want to hold my meager offerings.

The sun sinks well below the western sky. The pines that guard this strip of dwellings blacken. I hear crickets, fans, a distant plane’s propeller. The click of N’s keyboard.

Past place and surroundings, I hear groanings of people I love - strong people whose strength is pressed to breaking with sufferings they don’t deserve. I hold them in the Light of this flickering wick, this quickening heart. I pray the womb of this Ship, this Mother that’s bigger than all of us, this Sea that we all of us sail, will give them safe passage. Will take them through their night. Will birth them and rebirth them as the tender, beautiful, honest, beloved creatures I know them to be.

And I hear joy. The paradox of it! Joy and suffering both on this Ship. And my own little vessel. Just now joy’s un-words resist being worded, though. Fair enough.

I try to move on, but the winds upstairs have shifted and I need to check my sails. More stores must be unpacked. A belly needs filling.

I give my candle an earnest stare, my quill, my surroundings. Be well, dear room. I love you.

Hi everyone! Just checking in to say hello.

I’m now half way done with a challenging pregnancy, which is both wonderful and also unnerving, considering I still have 4 1/2 months of challenge yet to face. The nausea of the first trimester subsided wonderfully at about the 3 month mark, but was replaced by a heart problem that handicapped me until we could do the many tests and appointments necessary to discover its remedy. I am on medication now to slow down an over-active heart. The risks of NOT taking this, to me and the baby, far surpass the risks of taking it, so…pills I will take.

Our mid-pregnancy ultrasound also revealed what looks like the development of something called placenta accreta, which means the placenta may have imbedded too deeply into the wall of my uterus. If this is the case, it is very likely that the uterus will have to be removed at delivery, in order to avoid life-threatening bleeding that could happen if the placenta and uterus are attempted to be separated. We go back in a couple of months for another ultrasound to determine whether this condition continues to be present, and if it does, to more concretely plan for what we’ll do about it.

So…I have been a little preoccupied lately.

In between sleep and doctor’s appointments and novel-writing and trying to keep up with a lively toddler, I’ve enjoyed a few books that I’d love to tell you about sometime soon. Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die (an exploration of sanity and insanity) and his Eleven Minutes (an exploration of love and sex) are two of them. I’m mid-way through Reza Aslan’s No god but God: the origins, evolution and future of Islam as well, which has been a wonderful read for this mostly Islam-ignorant girl. I’m amazed and intrigued by the similarities between Islam and Christianity, or more specifically, between the people who identify with these traditions. Humans look and act like humans no matter what, I think.

But that’s for another review…

Mainly just saying hello. Hope you’re all enjoying a summer rich with the things you love!

Do any of you remember this post? - the one in which I practically danced off the screen and kissed you all? I have to chuckle at how true the last part of it is - how all that (broadly-defined) sexual energy just can’t sustain itself forever. How it seems to come in seasons.

Since writing that post, and expressing its inspiration most viscerally, N and I have discovered that another munchkin is on its way! This was a much desired discovery, so we’re happy, and happy to share the news. But as for energy - sexual and otherwise - mine’s greatly altered from the writing of that post. Our due date is Thanksgiving, so I’m 2 months along, and feeling very much that way (read: tired and nauseated).

My heart is bursting to get my book written sooner than later, so once again, in light of my energy drain, I’m stream-lining my activities to try to make that possible. I’ll post here when inspiration hits, but if the last few weeks are any indication, I’m largely out of line of fire these days.

In the meantime, please be most welcome to explore the archives, or the essay links on my writings page. And drop me a line any time! I’m always happy to engage that way.

Much love to all, and blessings on your Spring!

I’m currently on the search for a good book or two on the topic of sexuality and/or sexology.  The discussions of the last few posts have been wonderful, and I’d love to broaden my knowledge on these things, benefitting from folks who have given entire careers to studying and contemplating them.

So…please feel free to offer suggestions.  I’d love to find a book that gives an overview of perspectives on sex and sexuality that have been held through time - maybe something sociological?  anthropological?  Jenell (or anyone else…) - anything from your teaching or studies come to mind?  I’d love the book/s to be current, too, as things even 5 or 10 years old can be based on outdated research.
Once I settle on a book or two, I’ll let you know the titles so that if anyone else is interested in reading them at the same time and discussing them, we can do that too.

I’m still thinking about sexuality and would love to talk more with anyone likewise interested. Specifically, I’d love to talk more about the “about sex” part of it. I was raised as an evangelical Christian, and formed my early views on sex in family and faith communities deeply shaped by that tradition. As a child and adolescent and young adult, I trusted that sex was a special thing that God invented for husbands and wives to share – for procreation, of course, but also for pleasure. Glue was the metaphor used for sex a lot in my childhood – a special kind of glue that keeps marriages together. Having sex outside of marriage makes the stickiness of sex inside marriage less so.

Sex was also compared with the relationship between God and humanity, a gift God has given us to more tangibly experience the ecstasy of union with God’s very self. And as such, something to be protected in the same way relationship with God was to be protected. Sharing sex with multiple partners would be like two-timing (or three or four-timing) God. Shameful and hurtful to God.

I no longer live in religious or evangelical Christian contexts, and so would like to work more consciously through what I think about sex today, as the me of this context. My intuition and experience say it is AND isn’t magic glue. But beyond that, things get fuzzy. How does sex affect relationships? What changes between people when they make love? What are arguments for saving sex for committed relationships and, conversely, for being more sexually free? My hunch is that more clarity on such things could benefit all of us, whether or not we’re religious or sexually active or monogamous or have children with whom we want to talk about such things.

I’m still mulling so much over from our conversation. Thank you all again! I feel like there’s so much more to explore in all of this, and also, simultaneously, the need to come up for air. Does it feel that way to you?

Maybe some pictures of a trip to a farm that N, Eli and I took last weekend can bring a little more levity. I imagine every one of these could depict the wonder and curiosity and newborn lamb or crazy chickenness of ideas involved in the things we’ve been discussing.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

There are something like 50 rabbit trails from the last conversation that I’d love to pursue. (If you haven’t read the comments from last time, that’s where all the good stuff is.) Where in the world to start??

How about with these two: the sexuality/spirituality connection, and the sexuality/creativity connection. Which, when it all shakes down, means speaking of the spirituality/creativity connection too, then, right? Three for the price of two.

Last time Christy said the second chakra in Kunadlini yoga has to do with sexuality and creativity. Both. She said, “I think it [sexual/creative energy] has something to do with being comfortable taking up space and being seen and being naked - creativity and sex both require a certain amount of self-revelation, and in a lot of ways it’s the same sort of energy.”

This makes a lot of sense to me. The periods in my life where I’ve been most creative and/or most horny (is there no more elegant word for this??) have been the times when my shame has been the smallest. When self-consciousness has fallen away, and I’m not thinking, “Will I look stupid?” or “Will this seem silly?” or “What if I’m wrong?” but rather, “I really, really want to do this!” Thinking probably isn’t the right word to use here, either, because feelings have been much more salient. I’m not thinking, “I really want to do this!” I’m feeling it. And by “do this”, I’m speaking here of more than sex. Writing, painting, dancing, and creating music have all been involved for me.

So to reiterate, I think shame and abandonment to any sort of passion are inversely related.

This feels (!) like a pivot point, to me, for talking about the sexuality/spirituality connection. Spiritually alive people from across religious and non-religious traditions seem to have in common the capacity for abandonment - to wonder, to smallness, to not knowing, to Love. Could it be that spiritual abandonment and sexual abandonment aren’t entirely different things? - that when abandonment blocks (like fear, shame, self-consciousness etc.) are introduced into one’s sexual relationships (fear of what the other thinks of my body or “performance”, of what this act of sex actually means to me or to my partner, of being used, of getting a disease, of getting pregnant) - that when these blocks to abandonment are introduced, our capacity for abandonment more generally takes a hit? Including our abandonment to God or beauty or wonder or whatever other spiritual thing you want to name? (I recognize that I’ve just turned the conversation from sexuality defined broadly - as per some of the comments from the last post - to the actual act of sex. Probably both deserve many rounds of discussion. I wonder whether the point still stands, though, when speaking of sexuality more broadly.)

I wonder whether sex in the context of security (a safe and committed relationship, for example) allows sex, and all the complex vulnerabilities and fears that can be associated with it, to be outside the realm of “things that block abandonment”. And not only this, but actually inside the realm of things that grow one’s capacity for it. Maybe every sort of abandonment block there is - sexual and intellectual and artistic and otherwise - has tremendous implications for the abadonment we experience (or yearn for) spiritually.

What do you think? Are all these things (spirituality, creativity, sexuality) related?