I feel like this shouldn't be news.

My sister Chloe and I discovered the other day that a woman we know struggles with an eating disorder. I wouldn't normally mention something like this in a public forum, and I do not do so lightly now. I share it only because of the conversation this discovery prompted between Chloe and myself.


I don't remember the entire course of the conversation, but I remember saying, "well, refusing to love yourself until you deem yourself worthy of love is never, ever, ever going to work. That's just not how that works."

I said this expecting something along the lines of a nod of assent from my sister, but instead she said "Oh."


She didn't know.


Is this a thing that people don't know? Have I somehow been lucky enough to stumble into this patch of truth by accident?  Do you punish and withhold love from yourself?

I asked her whether this was something I should have said years ago, and she told me that I should write it. So hear is what I need you to understand:

Refusing to love yourself until you are "worthy" is never going to work. It is never going to make you better. It will never work because it isn't possible to build yourself up while you are tearing yourself down. It will never work because you will never deem yourself worthy until you are perfect, and you never will be. It will never work because people don't reach their full potential when they are living in the shadow of disgust and disapproval and criticism--they reach their full potential when they are forgiven, loved and encouraged and supported. So try this for a change: love yourself. Respect yourself. Forgive yourself.

When you royally screw up--like you will and like I will and like everyone else--apologize, set right what you can, and carry on. What good comes from flagellating yourself?

Forgive, encourage, and support yourself--as you would a beloved child--and see how you grow. See what you can do.

Perspectives

Sometimes I live my life in a swirl of smiles and affection--the sometimes-dreary trudge of days is highlighted for a time with shining memories or glimpses of my cousin's beautiful red hair, my best friend's smile, my best guy friend's hugs, gorgeous slanting rays of sunlight and the earth warm beneath my feet--and those are the things that matter. Those are the things I hold onto.

But other times, other days, other moments, it doesn't matter how much time I've spent with the people I love. It doesn't matter how much they love me. It doesn't matter how great I felt or didn't feel earlier in the day. The beauty of the sunset slides right off my temporal lobe and disappears into the cold river, and all I feel is bleak and alone.

A sleepy reflection

A new (to me) love song came on the radio as I drove home today from Camp, and suddenly it seemed like such a great time to fall in love*. The world just felt like things were clicking into place, and (despite the fact that I rarely meet new people) this could happen any time. Bam. Soulmatehood.

I mean, this shouldn't be too difficult, right? I'm pretty awesome. You, theoretical mystery man, are pretty awesome too. We'd be great together. So it's cool, you can go ahead and show yourself now. No need to be shy. Just step right on up. Let's buy some finger jewelry and make a whole bunch of babies.



I say that like I'm good at relationships. Love songs (and the effects thereof) are so ridiculous. Annnd just a little bit frustrating.



In other news, this:

It was 7:40 am. Eye circles are my prerogative. Taken post-staff-morning-yoga, and at the swim hole, obviously. I've gone to morning yoga twice now (that makes two and then three times in the past ten years that I've intentionally woken up before staff meeting), and each time at the end I leave and walk toward the creek. I stop fifteen feet shy of the water and take off my shoes as though I'm stepping onto a holy ground of old concrete and grass and gravel, and walk carefully to the ladder, descend three steps, and sit down with my feet in the water. The slanting sunlight is savoury on the water--rich and delicate. And when I run my hands along the skin of the stream, it feels like cool silk. I've been late to staff meeting both times.

And this:

This is Daniel, and he is magical, and this picture took us about fifteen tries to take. We ran out of time during snorkeling interest group time, and then finally succeeded (with a camper behind the camera this time) at Pool Night. 

And look where I get to work:

I like this picture. Please don't steal it.

*Yeah, I know. Weird.

Volunteering.

I have no cabin this week--I'm not technically on staff--and it's been a blur of velvet water and morning yoga, big hugs and secret missions and smiles and fireflies in the trees. There has been love and new understanding, and (unfortunately, though perhaps unavoidably) anger between campers, between staff, and between staff and campers. I hate this. I suppose I am blessed in my ability to hold my temper longer than most, but what I feel is disappointment and frustration with my friends and coworkers. (I love them wildly still, but, I suppose, no longer beyond all reason.) Maybe I should be more sympathetic with the need to vent and process, but there is such a fine line between venting and meanness, I feel. And for me, conversations of that kind feel like a tar baby. It all seems so harmless at first, and then I find myself stuck further and further in the mire. I want to make it better, but so often I end up enabling or even participating instead.

On the plus side, regarding campers (present and former and future), God, I love some of them so much. I love them all, but some really have holds on my heart. As I said, the CiTs can get me every time. And one that I've known for five years gave me this lecture, though (for this repetition, at least) he delivered it to JP:
"JP, if you had a favorite counselor, one who had always been there for you, who had always been there to meet you at the bus on the first day, and who had been there every time to say goodbye to you at the end of the session, but this year they weren't there at the beginning and then you found out that they were leaving early, how would you feel?"
He has always been an excellent camper, comes from an excellent family, and has been a wonderful CiT. I so hope to work with him next year. And I hope he isn't too upset.

Our only junior counselor this session, who honestly does not seem like a junior counselor at all, has given me a very similar hard time, which makes me feel quite guilty and sad (more so than I already did), but which also makes me feel so loved.

In any case: hugs and secret missions, cicadas and fireflies and warm velvet water in the early morning. It is heaven here in these woods.

Greatest of the season

Smells:

honeysuckle, rain, damp dirt

and peony and gardenia

fresh cut wood and fresh cut grass

campfire (and burnt marshmallow)

pine forest

tomato plant, and warm, vine-ripened tomato fruit

watermelon and honeydew and a charcoal grill

a house with all windows open

washing brought in from the line

thunderstorm, rain and clean river water.

Sounds:

frogs of all sizes

crickets and cicadas

owls calling from tree to tree, and the almost-imperceptible rustle

and silence of their wide, graceful, dangerous glides.

Rain and river water,

ceiling and box fans

and happy birds in the trees,

distant rolling thunder and working bees

and live outdoor music from down the block,

and children laughing outside.

A balmy February evening. And my lonesome.

It's gorgeous tonight. It really is. Not in a dramatic way--it's a little boring if you're looking for fantastic skies, but the moon is full and bright, and the sky is clear. There's a warm breeze blowing from the West, and the smell of damp leaves and dirt is in the air. It's a wonderful fresh smell. I am trying to bear in mind that March is going to come along soon and crush my hopes, but I love this, still. I wish I could sleep out tonight. (I guess technically I could, but I'm too much of a wimp to sleep flat on the hard ground with no mat, and too lazy to set up my hammock. Also, considering how much my body temperature drops when I go to sleep, I'd probably freeze.) After I brought Miley in from our walk, I went out into the back yard and squatted down beneath the moon, and brushed away the top layers of leaves, and pressed my palms into the thawing earth.


I get the feeling that I should write about people--in poetry, that is: I have the urge to write poetry--but I don't like them. Don't like people. Or don't like them close up. I am largely content to brush shoulders with humanity in my day-to-day life, working or going to the grocery store, and then to spend much of the remaining time alone. Lately. Mostly. I don't feel that I have the necessary focus to watch closely enough to write anything of value about a real human interaction. Not these days, anyway. I just like to be alone a lot.

I don't know why this is. I am torn between wanting to embrace it and wanting to fight it. I sometimes worry, in a small corner of my mind, that I will become an eccentric, crusty old woman, self-absorbed and with a misanthropic bent.

But there are people I love. Close up, even, though I often still do better with distance. With occasional real contact.

But is this something wrong with me, or is this just who I am? Is it okay for me to be so solitary and distant? Is it okay for me to feel so cold toward people? It isn't that I don't love; it's just that I would usually rather (or feel that I would rather) love from further back. Maybe. Goodnight.


(Desperado, why don't you come to your senses? Come down from your fences. Open the gate.)

Quotes on a common theme

From today.

"Keep on loving what is true, and the world will come to you. You can find it in yourself."


"Connection is love. Love is connection. Every time someone pisses me off I look at them like they are my newborn baby in my arms. This is my new practice. To open my heart to every single person I encounter like I did when I pulled my children from my insides to my chest. I really suck at it. I do. But I refuse to stop trying. Because when I get it, it’s good. it’s so good. Right when I am about to tell my man he’s an asshole, I see his baby face, new and fresh. And. I just. Can’t. Do anything but love." 

Observations on a Sunday

Today, this morning at church, was one of those days when I realize how truly closed off I am. When I get a bit of a backed-up view of myself. I am imperfect. I am solitary and self-centered. I feel like I want to reach out and be a part of a community, but when it comes down to it, I start to dislike anyone that I suddenly feel obligated to talk to. I am a lot of contradictory things. But it's alright. I mean, it isn't alright forever. It isn't something about which I should be complacent. But I am not beyond repair. Not beyond love.



Last night around 11, my mother put a pan of the sweet rolls into the oven to see how they would turn out. Answer: heavenly. We think that this was due in part to the fact that they had been rising for an extremely long time. All day yesterday, and for quite a while the day they were made. (In between they had been in the refrigerator downstairs.) I ate too many, mainly because it seemed like a sin to let so many of them sit and get cold and be eaten later in such a decidedly inferior state. They are small, but still, we each had at least two.


Written last night, after the sweet rolls and before bed:
Hartley gave me a ride home from babysitting tonight, due to the light, cool rain, and I am sorry that I accepted it. People think me eccentric when I do things like refusing rainy rides home [and I suppose they have a right], but that's okay. I was thinking at the time that I'd have to (get to?) walk Miley anyway, and that I didn't have a hat, and I was giving in to the soft peer pressure of friends who couldn't imagine my wanting to walk home.
I got here, and Jack ribbed me a little about it--"She specifically asked for you by name"--but it soon came out that he had just taken her.
I complain often about having to walk Miley every night before bed, rain or shine, in sickness or in health...but tonight I am forced to admit that I feel lost without my usual dose of cool midnight air, wet or not. I went and stood under the sky for a few minutes in my nightshirt and sweats and decidedly not-waterproof slippers, but it wasn't quite the same.

It's my blog, and I'll be cheesy if I want to.

Usually after a walk with Miley, if I write, I come home and gush about the magic or brightness of the moon and stars; the way they shone down and dazzled me. Tonight, though, it was my heart that shone. I was just walking along and suddenly, as I turned a corner, I was floating. I have been debating whether to write about it. I was thinking about what I said about David earlier... I'm already losing it. The train of thought that lead me there.

Ah! Tonight I was wearing scarves on my head (as head scarves) because I couldn't find my hat, and I was thinking how funny it was that when I was in Turkey, when I was supposed to have a head scarf, I never did. Every single day I left it in the house or my hotel room, and thus always had to borrow the head scarves from any mosque we visited. And I thought of how wonderful Turkey* was, and how happy I was there, and how it's one of my most treasured memories. And then I was imagining a conversation between us:

Of course I love you.

But the wonderful thing is that I can just say that, mean it, and move on. Not say it and expect to get back together. Not say it and be sad that we aren't together. Say it with no strings, with no fear. Speak love with love.


Then I just floated for a few minutes, grinning at Miley and loving the cold night air, humming to myself and smiling up at Orion, my favorite constellation, whom I almost think of as a friend.

No strings; just love.

And that's all for tonight.






















*Every single time I type "Turkey," I want to type it the Turkish way: Turkiye. But then I feel like I'm acting all elitist or something. That's not the word I'm looking for, but I'm not sure the word I'm looking for actually exists. But do you know what I mean. It's the same on the rare occasions that I discuss in print the Aya Sophya/Sophia. In America, it's usually referred to as the "Hagia Sophia"--but that's so ugly in comparison.

This ended up with a lot of verses. Bear with me.

I don't really have much to say, except that I love Anna Tuckweiller. A lot. I went over to see her for breakfast this morning (which is a testament to my love, really, because she lives 20 miles and two tolls away), and left around 5:40 pm. She does this thing where we talk about each other's stresses lately and then she restores my faith in God and humanity. It's pretty nice. The side effect of all this though is that I now feel compelled to have lunch with David and apologize for walking all over his boundaries (or trying to, though he held the line pretty well in most circumstances) for the last three and a half years or so. I feel pretty bad about it. I have to admit though that some of the time there is a small part of me hoping that he will see my contrition and decide that maybe a relationship isn't such a bad idea after all. I feel that I should admit this in the interest of honesty and healthy self-sabotage.

We talked for a while about all of the arguing and disagreeing and selective interpreting that goes on within the church, and came, perhaps, to the wavering conclusion that when Jesus stated that he came not to abolish, but to fulfill the law, this fulfillment came in the teachings of love. I don't know, it's a confusing verse. But I have long been irritated by the fact (and evidently so has Anna) that people get ALL UPPITY about the, what, four? verses in the Bible that make reference to homosexuality, and skillfully ignore any and all verses that speak out against things like cheeseburgers, polyester, overeating, backtalk, and so on. Some people also spend a lot of time making cases against women acting as ministers (often, largely with verses taken from the writings of Paul), though there are also verses like

"Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all and in all. As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as Christ has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." (Colossians 3:9-13)* Of course, a few sentences later he (Paul again) says, "Wives, be subject to your husbands. Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly." So maybe we should work with what Jesus said instead. I mean, I'm sure Paul was a great guy and everything--he was a disciple after all--but he was also a reformed Jew-murderer. Also, disciples were known to say things that irritated Jesus at times. So let's backtrack to the gospels.

Jesus says probably just as many things I don't want to hear as Paul does, such as "enter through the narrow gate, for the the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. The gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)
But then, he also says "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30)

I am as guilty of selective reading, I suppose, as anyone else. Unfortunately this whole thing seems to be set up to require such an approach. Anyone who says otherwise is, in my opinion, blind, lying, or more poorly educated even than myself. But if I am going to have to either read selectively or give up faith, I much prefer to live a life of faith and of LOVE, above all. I choose to refuse to live out a faith of fear, though there is certainly still quavering in my life. I accept and act to the best of my ability "judge not, lest ye be judged" (Matt 7:1), and "Then Jesus cried aloud, 'Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. I do not judge anyone who hears** my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save it.'" (John 12:44-47)

Lastly, I carry this around in my mind: Jesus was asked, "'Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?' Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.'"


























*It continues in verses 14-15, "Above all, clothe yourselves in love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful."

**Hears/accepts. That's key, as you'll see if you read the next verses: "The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me."

I think I reserve the (highly controversial) opinion though that Jesus, as a human, might have been the slightest bit fallible. I am not really sure about this, but it does seem as though he may have contradicted himself once or twice. Regardless, I don't really think my convictions about unconditional love are hurting anyone. It makes my life better. I will hold onto it.