Just popping in to say hello.  My week has been full, and every attempt at putting to (virtual) paper the thoughts I’m eager to explore here has been met with interruption.  So…soon.  In the meantime, I will continue, with the help of equally sleep-deprived N, to try to help dear Elijah stay in his crib when it’s time for sleep.  I think the contraption I sunk $69 on this morning might help.

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?

To build on Heather’s comments from last time, I’m thinking life force has a number of flavors–sub-categories, if one dares attach a hierarchical word to it. Like maybe one person has a strong spiritual life force, and another has a strong force of innocence or purity, and another has a remarkable well of anger or grief that is the force behind the things that they do. Maybe some have a commanding presence that begs to be heard, no matter how quietly or gently or infrequently they speak–like Galadriel in the Tolkein books. Maybe some have all of these forces at once. Or more. Maybe all of us have the potential for them but only ever realize one, or a few. Or none.

I’m interested these days in the force that’s connected with sexuality. I’m just coming out of a two-year season of pregnancy and nursing and the intensity of care required for an infant and new toddler, and a couple of months ago I finally realized, consciously, that I felt back to myself. The pre-pregnancy me, with all of her curiosity and love of learning and eagerness to create (music! painting! writing! dance!). And, as you might guess, a sexual life force.

I think sexuality is far more than “having to do with sex”. I haven’t talked or read a lot about this, so I hardly have words for what I mean (those who have, please be free to share your thoughts!). But I think those with a strong sexual force don’t always fit the stereotype of someone looking to get laid. I think they can be people that turn heads, for sure, but not necessarily because their bodies fit the images of beauty pumped out by our entertainment and clothing and cosmetics industries, or because they’re dressed scantily or have cleavage flashing fancy neon lights. I think they can be fat or too thin. I think they can be dressed as monks or nuns. I think they can be clean or truly odorous. They can be wearing clothes from distant pasts.

In other words, I think their sexual life forces can have little to do with externalities, unless by that one means only the way that what’s inside of them interplays with the bodies their life forces inhabit (or the clothing, etc). These are people you can’t help yourself but watch. They’re embodied. Radiantly. Their weight, pound for pound, weighs more than the rest of ours, if that makes sense, as though they’re more real. They laugh and smile a lot, genuinely. They miss very few jokes. If you could paint them with color alone–no lines for legs or arms or faces or waistlines–their colors would be deep, vibrant, rich, bold. Connected with the earth somehow. They’re a lot like my character’s mermaid.

Is there language I don’t know about for exactly what I’m speaking of here??

Of all of the kinds of life force, this, to me, is the one that makes life so worth living. It’s the one that makes falling in love and being in love so euphoric, and what spills into so much else about life, whether you’re in love or not. I think it might even be part of loving the earth, and the deep, tear-producing wonder that comes from watching sunsets or thunderstorms or thousands upon thousands of birds in a cloud of flight. It’s the force that makes you want to make love, or holler on a hilltop, or create some kind of masterpiece. Or burst completely wide open.

Can you tell I’m feeling it right now??

There are seasons in life, maybe lives in their entirety even, when a person cannot help but go under–under the surface above which there is all of this Life, this sexual force, to be lived and played and danced with. But oh, the glory of rising like a whale from the deep, twisting into the wind and sun and air! Taking the feel of all of it in–the scent, the sound, the sight, the sparkle–to carry one through the depths (to which surely one will again return) more gladly. That much more Alive.

One of the things I’m exploring in my novel is life force–that hard-to-define force in all of us that is sort of tied to sexuality, but not entirely. My narrator, a 14-year-old boy, has a dream about a mermaid, in which this captivatingly beautiful, sexually-charged mermaid beckons him toward something terrible and beautiful. He can’t make out what it is, but he knows there is danger there, as well as something more wonderful than he’s ever known.

I think life force is a lot like this mermaid. Not exactly, of course, but in this sense of being charged, and full with potential. People whose life forces are large and strong have been responsible for some of the most beautiful and heinous events in history, some of the most breathtaking artwork and tragic losses, the most sinister plots and unworldly acts of sacrifice and kindness. I think Obama’s life force is strong right now. I think those of the Dixie Chicks are too. Any of us could probably name actors and politicians and musicians and convicts who have followed an inner mermaid’s lead toward their darkness or their light, and indeed found something more terrifying or more beautiful than they could have ever dreamed. Than we could have ever dreamed.

There is a child at one of the parks I frequent who I’ve seen three times now. And every single time I see her, I am struck, almost literally, by the strength of her presence. She’s a sweet girl, short for her age. Maybe four years old. But I swear, her life force extends at least ten feet in every direction. You get the sense that whether she’ll be a typical leader someday or not, she will move mountains. She will stand with her feet as pillars in the ground and no one will break her. She probably won’t have to bully anyone, either, because all you have to do is look into her eyes, or watch her move, and you’ll want to be near her. You’ll want to listen to her, and you’ll find her interests more sparkly and alluring than the next person’s whose interests are virtually the same as hers. I wish you could see this child.

So what do you make of this?–of life force? Do you have other words for it? What factors make some people’s so strong? Are we born with it? I want to understand this better.

One of the high and low points of my month away from blogging was a trip N (my husband) took to Memphis for a conference. It was a high because normally N and I spend a lot of time talking in the evenings, but with him gone, I was able to get a ton of writing done. I cranked into productivity mode and just glued myself evenings and naptimes to this screen. The result was an enormous boost of momentum and morale on my book.

The trip was a low point of the month because, well, who wants their sweetheart gone for 5 days? And to be 100% ON for childcare for that long? Please don’t pick me.

The first day N was away I looked at the days of his absence stretching off toward the horizon and got a little woozy. Our son is 17 months old. That’s old enough to know how to climb and reach and object vociferously to whatever he finds objectionable, but young enough to not have words to explain himself, or reason with which to navigate the many decisions with which he finds himself confronted. Will I eat any of the ten things offered me at dinnertime, or will I rub them into my forehead? Will I unroll the entire roll of toilet paper while mom is grabbing something from the bathroom, or will I bolt into her bedroom and try to wedge myself between the wall and the weight bench? These are the types of dilemmas the average 17-month-old is bound to face.

So you can imagine how necessary it could feel to me to have physical and moral support around the house every day. At least a portion of every day.

So like I said, I looked ahead and felt woozy, and then looked down at my son, whose forehead wound from where a seed pod punctured it is almost healed. He patted my knee sweetly and smiled like I was the best thing since the watering can he discovered last week. And I thought to myself: this is a really sweet moment. Just a sweet, sweet moment.

Things went remarkable smoothly as that day progressed, and a couple of hours later another moment happened. I was sitting on the living room floor, eating an apple, and Elijah came and straddled my knees, which were extended out in front of me. He waited for a bite of the apple and quietly nibbled until it was time for another, when he opened his mouth like a bird. He was so sweet, and so happy to be sitting there, that I could not help laughing. “This is another moment,” I thought.

And would you know it? but moments kept happening all over the place, and before I knew it I had a sack full. I did this every day of N’s absense, and discovered that the more moments I recognized, the more they began bleeding into each other, so that by late afternoon of even day four, I wasn’t thinking to myself, “Wow, that’s 7 moments today,” but rather, “This is turning out to be a really great day.”

Isn’t this magic? How you don’t have to have grandiose hopes for the best day ever, or even the best hour, but can just keep your eyes open for moments, and maybe discover that all those tiny insignificances–often only seconds or milliseconds long, maybe just the way the sunlight catches a tree, or that lady’s bright red laces–actually turn into something you’d only ever dreamed of: a way more than tolerable day?

I think parents and caregivers need magic like this, but I think everyone else does too. I think moments are what can make lifetimes beautiful.

Well, a month has gone by, and the keys on my computer are looking very well-loved. And I’m missing you! It’s been a great month of writing, but lopsided, and I’m ready to spread my writing chi around a bit more. My book has sucked all of my writing chi up, and I’m (almost) at a good place to keep fistfuls for myself, to have plenty on hand for sprinkling over things like blog posts and emails and short stories.

So first things first: an update on the book. After a difficult fall of trying in so many ways to come up with an angle for the story that I liked (I had a completed draft at that point that needed much tightening), and a narrator’s voice that could truly pull it off (”it” being the angle I was still trying to find), I have finally created a detailed outline of the entire project, and (re)written a first chapter with a voice I’m pretty sure will work. That I can say all of that in one sentence brings tears to my eyes, since it does so little justice to the volume of work involved in such a feat. I’m sure most of you can understand (haven’t we all accomplished things we cannot begin to capture in the time it takes to report on them?).

This week I will make two packets of these documents (the outline; the chapter), and drop them lovingly into the mail to two dear readers, who will help me make sure I know my true north on them. I’ll let my novel-mind rest for the weeks it takes my packets to return, and try to get a short story written in that time. And some blog posts.

So that’s my writing update. While I’ve been away, others have been hard at work, too! You must be sure to take a look at my friend Jen’s newest zine, which she’s calling Beginnings, and which is filled with her lovely artwork and hope-filled worldview. It’s a treat for anyone, and especially inspiring for people who have felt a little stuck in the beginnings department.

My blog friend Sage is also embarking on a month of writing, and if any of the poetry she’s published or posted thus far is any indication of the kind of beauty and poignancy she’s capable of, this month’s work will not disappoint. Keep tabs on this woman. She is amazing.

Other blog friends have been churning out stuff, too! Christy Lambertson of Dry Bones Dance recently published an article in PRISM (Jan/Feb 07) called “Handmade Hope, Homegrown Faith”, about a women’s cooperative in Juarez, Mexico. Jenell Paris wrote a chapter in recently-published This Side of Heaven: Race, Ethnicity, and Christian Faith, called Race: Critical Thinking and Transformative Possiblities. Cindy of Quotidian Light (and of 2006 Pushcart Prize nomination infamy) will have two poems run in next month’s edition of Relief. And Heather of Fumbling For Words has been nominated for best writing over at Share the Love Blog Awards (put in your own vote here).
Have I missed anyone??

I am inspired to know these people, and to feel as though my silent hours behind this screen are actually joining many others’ to become one ginormous writing party! Woohoo! Write on, dear friends!

It’s cold outside today, and windy. The sky is the royalist of blues. Last night this same wind blew a storm away until all that was left was the kind of sunset that bursts my heart wide open. There were just enough clouds, half of them streaked with blacks and grays, to bounce back all the color–pinks and tangerines, yellows and white. And the moon watched with me. She was huge. I came out of the library just as it was all happening, just as the wind and sinking sun and sky were in mid-stride, and felt this rush of gratitude and gladness. I smiled and wrapped my coat tighter and said thanks for the chance to be alive. I pictured the vast universe around it all, and me on this tiny rock, orbiting the sun, getting to take such a moment in. I felt small in the best way, and unfathomably lucky.

I’m on a kind of role with my novel this week, yesterday’s pre-sunset session not excluded, and am hungry to give myself the added boost of more progress than I can make during my few afternoon sessions alone. So I’m knitting time together from other places in my days, and have decided to take a short break from blogging as a way of putting time and focus more directly on my book. I have months to go before this project is through, and I don’t want to step away from this space for that long (I love it here, and would miss it here too much), so let’s start with a month of sabbatical and see what kind of progress I can make on the book in that time.

Much love to all of you, and a wish for winds to blow into the distant sky what you most need cleared away right now, to bring the kind of beauty and perspective your heart most needs to take in.

Kristin

I’m still trying to make sense of what happened a few weeks ago when I got word of the second death threat to an AJS worker. Something broke inside of me. It still feels a little bit broken. Every so often this happens, and to this day I’m not clear how the thing gets fixed again. Or whether it ever does. Maybe it’s always broken, and one-two punches of very dark things are just enough to remind me of it. To make its feelings grow conscious.

Its feelings are a lot like those I’ve had around sports competitions, where both sides really, really want to win. The inevitability of one side losing takes the fun out of playing or watching for me–at least a lot of the time–because I hate it that everyone can’t win. What’s the fun of winning if you know there will be people devastated by it?

Hope feels this way to me sometimes, too. Like dancing on the sidelines of a funeral procession. There are people living horrors every day. And I don’t mean only minimal horrors, either. I mean the kind that make your bones turn cold. The kind you don’t ever want to talk about, let alone see.

The reality of this is what knocks me flat on my back sometimes. Is what makes my happiness and hope feel like masks I wear, or any of us wear, to cover over what’s true. I know darkness is only half the story, give or take, but sometimes it feels like a hell of a lot more give.

So. Here’s a shot at a paradigm shift that seems like it holds promise–of helping hope seem totally called for, every single day:

What if instead of expecting that humans should be nice, should know how to share, should not throw sand in one another’s eyes, or bullets at one another’s chests, we expect that humans are just another part of the animal kingdom. They’re a part with far more destructive weaponry than any teeth or tusks could bare, but still: they’re animals. They operate by instinct. They rise and fall as top dogs and peeons. They spawn offspring and run around trying to get theirs without thought of offspringing consequences. They kill when they think it’ll benefit them. They don’t when that seems better. They do whatever it is their instincts push them toward.

The beauty of this view is that it makes me far less scandalized by the reality of our world. We’re animals, for crying out loud! Who holds animals to standards of morality? It’s the absense of morality, isn’t it?, in places where we expect it should be, that causes all our scandal.

The greater beauty of it, though, I think, is that humans don’t actually always act like animals. There are spots of un-instinct-like behavior everywhere. People loving each other deeply, past thought of reproduction or the status it might bring. People forgiving. People caring more for the common good than themselves or their tribes alone. People thinking about long-term consequences. People writing and painting and composing and organizing things that inspire us to live more equitably, more beautifully. More fully at peace and at rest.

Rather than some expected norm, these spots of behavior become sources of gladness and wonder. Reasons to think “Wow! What a world!” with a smile, rather than despair.

Maybe, in a world such as ours, we need to push the dehumanization that’s destroying us far further than it’s ever been pushed, so far that it inspires the kind of wonder and joining-a-renegade-mission mentality that I think it’ll take to save us from ourselves.

Hi again, after a brief hibernation! I hope your holidays have been full of good things, or at the very least sprinkled with many of them.

N and I went back to our home town, where both of our parents and some of our siblings still live, and enjoyed a week full of family and friends. We’re home again now, though, and after all the busyness and time away from routine, and as the year comes to a close and the wings of a new one flutter only meters away, I find myself restless. I’m hungry but not. Tired but not. Lonely but peopled out. I’m homesick for something I can’t quite name.

Do any of you feel this way?

Maybe a blessing is in order for all of us, as we sit in this strange post/present holiday, pre-new-year spot…

May your day today, and the days that follow it, be in some small way like a seed sending up a fresh, green sprout. May the places in you that ache and feel small or dark or lonely or cold get touched by fullness somehow—the kind that makes you feel warm and loved and like maybe it’s gonna be okay. May the questions you carry that do and don’t have answers, and the fears you have that can and can’t ever be comforted, and all the ways you wish that you or your life could be different—may you discover a layer of living that happens right alongside these things, where there is hope, and a gentle sweetness, and beauty, and wonder.

May your year ahead, and even the days of this week, be marked by a new kind of rest, and whatever it’ll take for you to find yourself falling into it.

Bless you.