Slacker Christmas

Four of our five children are home for Christmas. Today will be our big dinner, and the day for gathering the boyfriends into our weird family circle--a true test of their mettle!

The menu is leg of lamb, rice, sweet potatoes, asparagus, tossed salad, and caramel cheesecake with some white wine that the kids are picking up at the same time as the boyfriends.

Last night the girls and I played a silly game called MadGabs, a gift from our youngest son to our middle daughter. It's been a very long time since I've laughed so hard.

Yesterday morning I returned from the 9 am Christmas eucharist and at our house people were just getting started. The four kids and I were soon sitting around the living room, too lethargic even to get the stockings off the mantel. My husband, who loves his work, was (no kidding! on Christmas!) happily at work on his laptop in the dining room. Our youngest son cracked us up by commenting that we were having Slacker Christmas. I admit that I feel guilty about how minimalist our Christmases are. Our tree finally went up the night before Christmas Eve. There are four pathetic red bows tied on our front porch and --finally! as of Christmas Eve!--a wreath on the door. Slacker Son cut our tree down from our own vast collection of little pines, brought it in, and decorated it with lights and light-weight ornaments. We draw names and buy one gift for the person whose name we draw, with a $25 limit. So there's little to do in the way of wrapping gifts. (I send a few other gifts out to godchildren and a couple of dear friends, but that's it. ) So just before noon on Christmas, we dragged Daddy away from his computer, opened our gifts, and headed into the kitchen to make waffles. It was peaceful and happy.

I cried when I opened my gift, a collaborative effort on the part of all the children who had created a scrapbook of photos, letters, memorabilia from their childhood. They promise to expand it as more grandchildren join the family.

Christmas afternoon, seriously sleep-deprived Mama Priest was taking a long nap, when two of her youngsters bounded in and tickled her and attempted to drag her from the bed. They wanted her to join them and the dogs on a long walk. Ten years ago the kids used to do this. But they were smaller. Now they are taller than I am and most weigh more than I do. Fifteen or twenty years ago they used to do this, and my husband and I just laughed at our litter of human puppies wriggling all around us and called them "The Young of the Species." One of the kids, a toddler at the time, giggled and said, "We're NOT Young Peachies!" In 2008, the 17 year old baby and the 23 year old oldest daughter succeeded in wrestling Mom out of bed, and the two older girls and I and the two shelties headed out. The skies were freshly scrubbed after a lot of Christmas Eve rain. Everything smelled wonderfully damp. In the hour we walked, only two cars passed us. We also said "Merry Christmas!" to two neighbors sitting on their front porch with a banjo. This was definitely North Georgia Christmas. The temperature was around 60. (Eat your heart out, Chicago!)

We made and ate supper, played games, and called it a night.
Slacker Christmas!??
Maybe, but it was one of the most wonderful days we've had together as a family in years, with no agenda but enjoying one another's company. I'm not normally a weepy person. But I had to excuse myself in the middle of the MadGabs game to run off and shed tears again. It's been so long since we've been all together like this. I think it was the combination of missing our oldest child and my beloved granddaughter, and remembering all the years of raising these amazing children who have become wonderful adults.
"Those who go out weeping, carryng the seedd,
will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves." (Ps. 126:7)

"Oooh, Child, things are gonna get easier..."

I'm listening to Beth Orton singing: "You just wait and see how things are gonna be..." It's a beautiful song that is somewhere between a lullaby and a spiritual, offering the kind of hope that gives a person the courage to get up again after being beaten down, and not give up in the face of adversity. It is exactly what I needed to hear. It reached just the right spot in my heart. I'd order it from itunes, but we had a little scare with a missing pocketbook over the weekend, and cancelled both our credit cards. The replacements haven't yet arrived. It's weird being without plastic. But that's another story...

Here's why I need that encouragement.

Today our youngest son, who is a senior in a high school for kids with learning disabilities and emotional issues, was suspended for a fight he had with a classmate when they were spending the night at the home of a third boy. Our son struggles with learning disabilities and bipolar disorder, as do a number of members of my husband's family tree. He had significant absences for psychiatric reasons in grades 6,7,8, and 9. He was hospitalized more than once. He tried to kill himself more than once. He and his doctors tried many different medications. Lithium was what we finally thought of as the "magic bullet."

Also, we found this amazing school that he attends. My husband has an apartment in Roswell (an Atlanta suburb about 45 miles from our home) so that our son can go to this school. It has very literally saved his life, we believe. In the last 2 years, our son has missed no more school for psychiatric reasons. His grades moved into the "A" category. His teachers' comments made us proud to be his parents. He was recognized for his leadership. He played on a varsity sports team each season where before he had never been able to focus or get along with other kids well enough to complete a season on a school team. He was wondering about a career in the military, after seeing how his older brother loved his work in the Navy. He needed to be off his meds for that to be an option. Last spring, with his psychiatrist's supervision, he was weaned off them, and he had a pretty decent summer. But about a month after school started, he began to have a lot of trouble focusing and staying out of trouble at school. He came to us and admitted that he was feeling depressed. We got him to his psychiatrist right away. He was able to participate in a clinical trial for a mood stabilizer in addition to his lithium. Due to his depression which has always been made worse by stimulant medications, he was taken off his Focalin. (I think he needed to be off also to be on the clinical trial.)

Our son's impulse control and ability to regulate his behavior has been a problem that we'd figured he was handling pretty well, until this fall. Even at home, my husband became aware that our son was on about a two-minute "interrupt cycle." It was hard for Dad to get work done (he works from home), and it was hard for Son not to feel constantly squelched as he was rebuffed for his unwelcome interruptions and random brain core-dumps.

He wasn't supposed to do overnights. My husband was up in Jasper for the weekend with me when the friends called and convinced him to come over and spend the night. Our son is a year ahead of the other two boys, though they are more skilled at sports, more popular, and more physically skilled. Our son can drive other kids around (in Georgia you have to have had a drivers license for a while before it's legal to carry passengers), so he is wanted for his driving skills, even though he doesn't have a car of his own. He also has virtually no pocket money, because we simply have put all our resources into his school expenses. He talked his 21 year old sister into driving him over, convincing her that we had given our permission. (We hadn't.) I guess both the other boys and our son were feeling annoyed an used by the other. Our son said he'd drive the other boys for food (in the car of his host friend's mother) only if they would buy him some food, too. They thought our soon was being a mooch. Our son was imagining sitting at a Waffle House with a glass of water while his friends ate eggs and hash browns. Names were called, words were exchanged, and all of a sudden one of the boys punched our son in the face. He grabbed the kid and shoved him across the room. The host boy separated them. Our son called his sister and left. He was very upset. He felt hurt, embarrassed, angry, disappointed in his friends and in himself. He thought that the "trash talking" that he alleges happened constantly on the basketball team behind the back of the coach probably needed to be brought out into the open.

So this morning he went to school and reported it to the coach, who immediately involved the principal. I don't think our son knew how serious this behavior was in the eyes of the administration, or he might not have brought it up. The upshot was that he was informed of the zero-tolerance policy that had been articulated in the behavior contract all students of the school sign each year. The three boys were all brought together. The two boys who fought are both suspended for 3 to 5 days and it would be within the rights of the school to expell them. The third boy is not suspended. My husband went to the school to pick up our son and heard from the authorities. The principal said it just about broke her heart to apply those rules, but she had to adhere to policy.

My husband emailed me sounding totally disheartened. He reminded me of a time I'd said that parenting kids with mental illness means always wondering when the rug is going to be pulled out from under us. (I think I'd said it was like waiting for the next shoe to drop--same idea.)

It is my hope that the school will remember its mission, see how phenomenally effective it has been in bringing hope and focus to our son't life, and provide him with a chance to try again. Indeed, the principal just called me and told me that that is their plan. She told our son, "You let things pile up until they reach a point where you are no longer able to be in control. You need to step in and change things sooner." What a wonderful, supportive place that school is to learn life's difficult and important lessons.

Election

Yesterday's election was the most exciting one of my lifetime.
Just after 11 last night it became clear that Obama had won.
We were at the home of some Democratic parishioners, about 15 of us, in our small rural county that voted about 80% for McCain.
I brought champagne to the party in an act of faith.
We'd been switching from station to station on two televisions since about 8 pm. The big screen in the Great Room toggled between CNN and MSNBC, with a single foray into FOX territory to see what the conservative spin would be. The smaller screen in the sunroom had BBCAmerica and then, in a stroke of brilliance, someone switched to Comedy Central. The news we got was based on the same numbers, but we were hooting with laughter and (occasionally) scooping the official news in the other room. "Wooohooo!!! Obama got Ohio!!!" The comedy station was somehow cathartic. All the vitriol that the Other Side had poured on Our Candidate somehow poured out of even the gentlest of our group as it became increasingly apparent that the last 8 years were nearly over.

Everybody moved into the same room once the race was called for Barack. We listened with amazement to the irenic and generous words of McCain's concession speech, and several of our number commented that, had he run his whole campaign in that spirit, the race would have been far, far closer. (And, okay...if he hadn't made the monumentally stupid choice of a running mate.) When some McCain supporters booed, McCain's rebuke was sincere, and his statements about how he valued being American more than a member of any party rang true. Then we waited, almost afraid to believe the good news, for Obama's speech.

When it came, it was worth waiting for. Finally, we have a president-elect who may be able to use his breathtaking eloquence to lead our country through the difficult times ahead. There was no place in our little group for cynicism. My desire to disparage the Other Side simply evaporated. It was as if I'd realized I was full and no longer felt compelled to stuff my mouth with handful after automatic handful of potato chips.

We departed in what could almost be characterized as solemn joy.

Then this morning on the news I heard comments from several folks leaving the gathering for Senator Saxby Chambliss. Not just one of them said that the news of Barack Obama's election was as devastating (yes, that was the word they used) as 9-11.

I was thunderstruck.
Then I felt physically sick.
Then I got angry.
Then I decided to let it go.

There is important work to do reunifying the country. I am blessed to have lived to see this day, and I pray to be effective in whatever part I am to play.

Saints and the (not-so) Faithful Departed

Warning: what follows really rambles and may never settle down in a reasoned direction!!

Well, Saturday I did get going on tidying my bedroom and kitchen, and finished doing laundry. It was truly satisfying.

Saturday was the feast of All Saints. In the more traditional churches, there's a distinction between All Saints and All Souls. I'm not sure I'm quite comfortable with such a distinction. I guess I think that God's grace is for all, and who cares whether other human beings notice the work of grace in a person's life or not?

I mention All Saints because, in the Communion of Saints are my two grandmothers and my mother, all of whom had in this life gifts of organizing and perseverance that I may never have, unless the "continual growth in [God's] love and service" that our Anglican prayer asks for those who have died results in my acquiring them for some heavenly purpose. I felt like those august ladies prayed for and encouraged me Saturday. Each had enormous flaws. But what formidable saints they are?/will be?? when Christ's transforming power is fully evident in their lives!

So today as I am preparing to preach next Sunday I find myself continuing to think about two ends of an important spectrum along whose entirety, I expect, God is present. That is the spectrum that has "Grace showered on the undeserving" on one end, and, perhaps, "The intrinsic rewards of becoming the good person God intends" on the other. (Note: Good beyond our imagining on each end of the spectrum!)

People who make a sharp distinction between All Saints and All Souls recognize that there are, for our learning and encouragement, people whose lives were lived with such profound integrity and courage and joy and goodness that they are rightly examples for the rest of us.

People who resist the distinction between All Saints and All Souls recognize that there are dangers to imagining that anyone deserves God's grace, that it is always given freely and fully; and that we all are so utterly dependent upon the reconciling power of God's forgiveness that any distinction between a "good" person and a "bad" person is really rather trivial. For them the great divide is between "Redeemer" and "Redeemed".

This may sound like a line of thought that pertains to last Sunday's lessons. But I think that the reading for next Sunday, about the Sensible and Silly Girls, begs for us to consider that same spectrum. One the one hand, there are behaviors that amount to ignoring what's inevitably coming; and those behaviors are foolish or silly. And there are behaviors that amount to being sensibly prepared. There are three parables in Matthew 25, and I think they're mutually reinforcing. The third parable, the one about the sheep and the goats, makes it clear that there are behaviors resulting from compassion and a vision of being able change the plight of the hungry, thirsty, sick, and imprisoned. These behaviors are praiseworthy. Yet People don't do it because they think God will like it and praise them. They do it because it is the right thing.

What troubles me about each of these parables of judgment is the possibility of exclusion. The door is shut and the Silly Girls are on the outside; the buried talent is taken away and given to someone more deserving; the clueless and self-centered are not harmless, but are confined to "eternal punishment." Perhaps the possibility has to be there (even if, please God! the set of those on the outside is the null set) in order for the loveliness of grace to be apparent.

I wish we were reading these parables in the context of St. Paul's ruminations on grace in his letter to the Romans.

Piles of Work

There are piles in my bedroom.
Piles of laundry
Piles of paper
piles of things on the dresser I don't want my dog to eat--like my sheepskin slippers that he used to try to snack on when he was a puppy, or a box of crayons.

I need to get going on picking them up and putting them where they all belong. But I'm not very motivated to do so.

I'm at that embarrassing and trivially miserable intersection between sloth, depression, and chronic disorganization, with an overlay of election anxiety.

Nothing for it but to put a good book on disc on and start tidying up...

why "sharon ruth"?

No, it's not the name on my American passport, or on my drivers license. It's the name given me by my birth mother. It's the name on a Canadian passport with a small photo of a two week old baby with a sad, far-away look. It's the name I didn't know I had until I was nearly 40 years old.

My parents adored their two adopted daughters. They showered us with attention, affirmation, and love. We were the answer to their prayers.

I heard "fair" when, in answer to the question, "How did you get me?" my mother told me that a lady from the welfare agency brought me to her and put me in her arms. I pictured a sort of gazebo at the county fair, near the displays of pies and vendors of hot dogs, with babies on a shelf on the perimeter. I imagined my mother (and sometimes my dad) walking around, looking at all the babies and finding the best one--me!

I also spent some energy wondering about why the lady who gave birth to me couldn't keep me and loved me so much that she wanted to find a family that could take care of me. Was she dead? Did she die in a car accident? Did she die of a terrible illness? If she was still alive, what if her circumstances changed and she was now okay? What if she came back for me? What if she was mean? Could I claim my parents as my "real" parents and cling to them? What if she was nice? How would I figure out then where my loyalties should go?

One of the less obvious gifts of being adopted is that there is a secret alternative identity that might perhaps be re-appropriated some day. Maybe, I'd think, I really am a princess, and my father, the prince, will come and claim me. Maybe they were very rich, and would step out of their limousine to reclaim me. My father would be tall, in a pinstripe gray suit, have lots of wavy hair. My mother would wear a tailored suit, a small hat, and gloves. They would stand there, beckoning, perhaps with an armload of presents. My adoptive parents would stand empty-handed, but with hearts full of love, eyes imploring, in the doorway of our modest bungalow. Would I go? Would I stay? As I grew older, my fantasies changed. Maybe my parents were young and madly in love. Maybe they had a falling out, went their separate ways. Maybe I have a birth father that doesn't know I exist. Maybe they reconciled and would return to reclaim me. Maybe my birth mother was mentally ill, crazy, institutionalized somewhere with a terrible disquiet of mind that I would inevitably inherit...

The real story of my birth mother is largely untold. I spoke with her twice by phone, once my mother gave me my adoption papers, which actually contained her name, and the name she had given me: Sharon Ruth. It was the name on the Canadian passport with my baby picture, that my sister had discovered (along with another one with her baby picture in it) when she helped my parents move out of their big house to a retirement community. My mother had lied, the only bald-faced lie I ever knew her to tell, and said she didn't know the name of my birth mother. When I asked her about that, I think she said she'd "forgotten." That didn't seem plausible to me. I think she was afraid for me, and still more afraid for herself.

Sharon Ruth still is a name with possibilities, an identity into which I sometimes imagine slipping if my present life becomes too unbearable. It's a sort of secret escape route, or a Superman costume in the back of my closet, or a spy's cache of extra passports.

why "day is a-breaking"?

I discovered Pandora a couple of months ago, and I've been creating "radio stations." My most eclectic station has all kinds of stuff on it now, and I like virtually all of it, especially now that I've added several doses of variety.

Every year our Easter sunrise Eucharist begins with our folk choir singing "Bright Morning stars are a-rising," and one guy who grew up in Mississippi sings the most beautiful, plaintive chorus: "...and day is a-breaking in my soul." It's cold and dark when we begin, and the sun usually comes up in the first half hour, often as geese honk and fly overhead.

I also recently heard Bright Morning Stars on Pandora, and then, in a characteristic stroke of brilliance, our organist decided this would be a fitting song for All Saints. He's absolutely correct.

When I hear this song, I find tears close to the surface, and sometimes feel a catch in my breathing, an incipient sigh. This song captures hope and longing and love and solidarity and the Communion of Saints in a haunting tune that stays in the heart like Holy Muzak.

So that is the name of this blog. Because I want to keep alive the hope that "day is a-breaking in my soul." Even when I feel the tug of cynicism, sloth, depression--3 overlapping states of being that I experience all too often. I long for the reign of God to break in my soul, the day when "mercy and truth will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other" (Psalm 85).