tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76933905931881228912024-02-19T23:54:28.708-08:00Beautiful rubbish:everyday art of learning to seeAmber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.comBlogger605125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-81695669922198914432016-04-20T07:11:00.000-07:002016-04-20T07:11:30.562-07:00Where words come to rest in the peace of wild things (a goodbye and hello)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wr8-BWfI798/VxFux01ltPI/AAAAAAAAHt4/h5TDT2IiqKQ-tbYox1hM9kZ8CtcLUUY5wCLcB/s1600/20140414_101310.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wr8-BWfI798/VxFux01ltPI/AAAAAAAAHt4/h5TDT2IiqKQ-tbYox1hM9kZ8CtcLUUY5wCLcB/s400/20140414_101310.jpg" width="300" /></a></span></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>[<b>A goodbye to Beautiful rubbish, hello to new blog</b> attempt, Take Two. I published my new website on Friday, only to have to recreate it in Wordpress. So sorry for the confusion, friends. It's with readiness and sadness I leave you with my last BR post. Thank you for joining me for different legs of this journey. I hope to see you as I continue new paths.]</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>. . . . . </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the last few months, I found myself in a space where I no longer
wanted to write. Not for "a season," or a break; I didn't want to write <i>at all.</i>
I considered walking away from blogging and book writing to pursue
forms of art that got me out of my head. But I gradually came to see
that my aversion to writing was not so much to writing as a whole, but
to the toll writing the chronic-pain-in-process stories had begun taking
on my mental and emotional health.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'd grown weary of
vulnerability. Vulnerability of the depth and extent I'd grown into as a
writer and storyteller. Since starting <a data-mce-href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com" href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><i>Beautiful Rubbish</i></a>
in 2010, I'd told numerous stories of grief in different forms. Death
of a loved one. Injury. Depression. Relational heartache. Environmental
and climate changes. Spiritual trauma. A complete shift of faith and
beliefs. I told these stories within a search for beauty in the
messiness of life; it felt beautiful for awhile. But within those
stories, I'd reached a place where there was more I felt I needed to
keep quiet than I felt free to voice. Writing eventually became another
area of my life that silenced my voice, rather than unleashed it.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I
finally admitted to myself that I've lived in crisis for the past four
years. That I'm bone tired, soul tired, of writing a story that I live
daily as unresolved, told in metaphors because it's not ready to be
shared. The problem was, I knew now what depths and extent of courageous
vulnerability I was capable of going to in my writing. Anything less
than that felt like playing it safe.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thankfully, I remembered that
on this journey of learning to love myself, really truly love myself as
I would another person, there had to be another way of understanding my
reaction to writing. If I only listened, looked a little deeper, with
no judgment. I ended up rewriting my personal definition of "playing it
safe" to mean extending myself compassion. Self care. Kindness. I
didn't need to stop writing: I needed to tell the stories that fed my
soul and gave my voice an outlet.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And I knew that those stories
were my observations, encounters and relationships with the natural
world. With my wild neighbors, my wild family. I needed writing to be a
place where I could focus my passion for conservation and hopefully meet
like-minded souls along the way. I needed a new home for my stories.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Enter, my new blog.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Old readers will find a few familiar remnants of <i>Beautiful rubbish</i>
here. These reflect the parts of me that are static: A deep
appreciation of the natural world. A love of lyrical writing. Drawing
metaphors from the world around me. Diving deep into the stuff of life.
And just as I have changed drastically from the person who began
blogging in 2010, much of what is expressed here in this new space is
dynamic, like me. I'm mostly fluid, still transforming. And this is my
fresh canvas.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">New readers will see less of my personal life and
more of my observations and interpretations of the world around me. I'm
not completely shying away from vulnerable topics; not hardly. You'll
likely find them woven in more gently against the background of nature.
I've learned that who I am and what I'm about is best understood in this
context.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Welcome to <i>My wild family</i>, where the human and
nonhuman worlds collide, intersect, and inform each other in foreign
languages that must be studied and learned over a lifetime. I hope
you'll come back to visit, make yourself at home, engage as you feel so
inclined.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><i>Care to join me there?</i></b> (click <a href="http://mywildfamily.com/"><b>here</b></a> for new site)</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-35264962945293986832016-04-17T18:59:00.001-07:002016-04-17T18:59:18.944-07:00The ghost blog?<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If you read my last post (which has now been reverted back to a draft), you're probably wondering where it went and why my new website looks, <i>well</i>, unfinished and different. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, good. And also, I'm working on a new website. I published it and soon after (much to my frustration and amusement) found out I'd created it in a format not conducive to blogs. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ha.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I've never claimed to be technologically inclined, whatsoever. But yes, I'm working on my own (simple) website for a brand new blog.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">More details to come... I hope to have the new site reformatted and live in the coming week or two. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Please stay tuned!</span>Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-50525695862889554552016-03-05T15:38:00.001-08:002016-03-05T15:38:21.674-08:00An unconventional truth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bpFVFlp12YI/VtttAqD8PFI/AAAAAAAAHtM/jd94eZvNN8k/s1600/pepita.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bpFVFlp12YI/VtttAqD8PFI/AAAAAAAAHtM/jd94eZvNN8k/s400/pepita.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I am a mother.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This truth is starting to penetrate a culture-imposed shame:<i> The defining moment and culmination of womanhood is in bearing children. </i> If a woman does not desire children of her own, there is something wrong with her. She is selfish, immature, afraid of responsibility. She is not whole. She cannot be fulfilled. She will deeply regret this.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I have never carried a sustained longing for children of my own. It has flitted in and out as quickly as it came only a handful of times in my thirty-five years. I always expected it would stay, one day, when the time was right. When I was ready. This is, more or less, what I was taught by Christian culture, by American culture at large. And so I've harbored a quiet shame, because it has never been my truth. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">At least, not on the terms laid out for me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But when I stayed up through the night caring for a baby squirrel, my heart was full. I felt whole. Alive. A receptacle of love and nurture and fierce protection. I was undone by this fragile ball of fur on my chest. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And when I plant trees, tuck new plants in with burlap and mulch, extend a forest, I am sowing life back into the earth. Leaving behind a legacy, the fruit of which I will not live long enough to enjoy. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When I pick up garbage from the lake, I am quietly fighting for the lives of creatures and habitat that I love. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When I bring a lost dog into our home, bathe and brush and feed him, take him to the vet, stroke his face and speak soothing to him, I am offering myself without condition.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When I hang our feeder of sugar water out for the hummingbirds, I am feeding my family. Hoping to lighten the load of daily survival, offering a place of refuge.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When I frequently rearrange Pepita's habitat based on following her behaviors, I am listening to her needs, learning from her. I am affirming that she has a voice, however different it is from my own.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * *</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We never expected to go to the Seattle Home Show this past weekend and come home with a baby. But that is precisely what happened. We were wandering through the expo in search of models of tiny homes and were sidelined by a tiny furball in a lady's hand as she addressed a small crowd. Curious, I pressed in. I'd never seen this animal before: a sugar glider.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r0QyppOAy9c/VttqlW905BI/AAAAAAAAHtE/J-wcE-NsxTw/s1600/f05c48133586b607de7c1bfcb9002a66.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r0QyppOAy9c/VttqlW905BI/AAAAAAAAHtE/J-wcE-NsxTw/s400/f05c48133586b607de7c1bfcb9002a66.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f0/5c/48/f05c48133586b607de7c1bfcb9002a66.jpg">photo credit</a></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I moved closer to the woman with the sugar glider, and she handed him to me. He fit in the palm of my hand, his tail wrapped around the perimeter of his head like a scarf. His dark brown eyes took up half his face. I relaxed my hold on him and he scurried up my arm onto my shoulder, then hopped over to Ricardo's. Soon he disappeared inside the sleeve of Ricardo's jacket and my husband danced around laughing.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I looked at Ricardo with wide, shining eyes and breathed, We cannot leave here without one of these babies.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There are seven babies left, the woman announced to the crowd. I stepped up to her side and raised my hand, I want one.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I had just enough in savings to bring a baby home. The kind of spontaneity that makes me nervous, but might as well have been planned for how right it felt.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What should we name him, I asked Ricardo that night. Nothing seemed to quite fit our little marsupial. We went to bed and when we awoke in the morning, Ricardo read me a list of names. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I chose Tarzan.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hu1eN1MH72s/VtttQvigMGI/AAAAAAAAHtQ/0w-K8e076AA/s1600/tarzancito.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="361" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hu1eN1MH72s/VtttQvigMGI/AAAAAAAAHtQ/0w-K8e076AA/s400/tarzancito.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Tarzan, with the wings of fur that one day may allow him to glide up to 150 feet through the air. Tarzan, whose intricate hands, the size of an almond, allow him to climb the sides and ceiling of his cage like a king of the jungle.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The bonding process with a sugar glider requires time and patience. He does not immediately trust us. In fact, he is frightened of us. Every day in the afternoon, when I get home from work, I reach into his cage and firmly grab hold of him beneath his blanket. I transfer him to his zipper pouch, hung around my neck, and tuck it underneath my shirt, in my bra, right next to my skin. He needs to acclimate to my scent, feel my heartbeat, be snuggled tight and safe. He chatters at me anxiously. With my hand pressed flat against his body, I apply pressure until his chattering subsides.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He is like a crying infant. And I am a new mother. For the next few hours, we move about as one. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We are a family of four: Two humans, one tortoise, one marsupial. As this kind of mother, I can only ever imagine expanding. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span>Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-4972078143011748192016-02-13T12:10:00.000-08:002016-04-21T17:14:51.991-07:00The piece of soul on my skin<br /><div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z4ASgNVegJ8/Vr-K64AF3KI/AAAAAAAAHsM/BjeSDHXFI8w/s1600/20160201_165622.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z4ASgNVegJ8/Vr-K64AF3KI/AAAAAAAAHsM/BjeSDHXFI8w/s640/20160201_165622.jpg" width="360" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I am seething. I am in agony.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've slipped away to the laundry room, siting in the dark hugging my knees, and I want to slam my fist into a wall. A wall of human arrogance. Greed. Self-entitlement. That wall of <i>we don't fucking care about another living soul unless it profits us. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My husband just showed me a video clip of a fresh atrocity in Mexico. A group of rich entrepreneurs decided to overtake a wetland habitat in Cancun and bulldoze it in the middle of the night. They're going to build more resorts. In the process, they destroyed ninety percent of the wildlife population in the wetland. Killed them, while they were sleeping. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the video, a young Mexican man is talking passionately, gently cupping a dead bird in one hand. It was buried in the dirt for two days before they uncovered it. The little bird is the color of the sun and the sky, and one wing is nearly torn from its body. He peels back the wing to show the gaping wound in the bird's lifeless body. I stare at it and my stomach clenches in pain, on the verge of retching.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A this point, I leave the room.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">* * * * * </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On our walk down by the lake this morning, we can't escape the depression of the landscape. The low water level exposing garbage. The birds fishing as usual in a lake that is slowly ebbing away. The birds, the trees, the water, continue to emanate beauty.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But it is a searing beauty. An ominous beauty. It catches that elusive crevice between my ribs where I feel heavy things that can't be put into words. It sits there and quietly thrums its lament. And I can't do a damn thing about it but listen, refuse to shut it out, work diligently to undo a speck of the damage that's already been done, vow to do better in all the daily small ways that add up to something bigger. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And here, again, the rage boils over. <i>We've done this.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are days I loathe being human.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">* * * * *</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xY0PeKuckDw/Vr-LJAV13bI/AAAAAAAAHsQ/2M7DPjPhQIM/s1600/PART_1453170128991_IMG_20160118_172857.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xY0PeKuckDw/Vr-LJAV13bI/AAAAAAAAHsQ/2M7DPjPhQIM/s400/PART_1453170128991_IMG_20160118_172857.jpg" width="300" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I cradle my newly tattooed arm in my hands as the tears continue to fall. It seems since I got myself inked, I feel these violations against the natural world even more acutely. <i>They are violations against me now.</i> Maybe because I cared enough to have my own flesh engraved as identification with this nonhuman world that has already tattooed itself on my insides. More than beautiful artwork, which it is, it is expressive of one of my most deeply embodied beliefs: <i>We belong to each other.</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My arm hurt so bad at certain points while the artist worked, instead of trying to escape the pain (which I couldn't do), I went into it. I imagined myself as a tree being carved. It didn't take the edge off the pain, but it did channel it. <i>I wonder what a tree feels when its bark is etched with a knife. Is it anything like piercing through a layer of skin with a set of needles? </i></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ma_UFdmuCEI/Vr-K2NRlF2I/AAAAAAAAHsI/atj3zJH0E6w/s1600/20160122_154408.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ma_UFdmuCEI/Vr-K2NRlF2I/AAAAAAAAHsI/atj3zJH0E6w/s400/20160122_154408.jpg" width="225" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And now I have birch trees etched on my forearm. With a great blue heron flying through, a big wooden door set in the background of the trees like the entrance to a secret garden. It's a stunning work of art. And it's much, much more than art. It's one of my deliberate responses to the rage that boils up in me. <i>Harness this, translate it into art,</i> it says. <i>Plant life where you can in all this death.</i> The world is a festering wound of rage, filled with the voices of suffering, injustice, grief, violation, despair. I can add yet another angry voice to this, and it will quickly be lost in the noise.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i> </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Or, I can find another way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This tattoo is my vow to love these others - all these nonhuman others that share the world with us - as I would myself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At the end of the day, the end of a life, the most stunning works of art are those which have been wholly embodied. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O9W3pijIbgM/Vr-MSwebh_I/AAAAAAAAHsg/bOUBnwM2kBA/s1600/wingspan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O9W3pijIbgM/Vr-MSwebh_I/AAAAAAAAHsg/bOUBnwM2kBA/s400/wingspan.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">* * * * *</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>I wrote that shortly after I got the line work done on my tattoo. Yesterday, I went back to finish it, and it is a glorious painting on my arm. More glorious even than in my imagination, which is saying something for an artist. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>I woke up this morning, swollen and still in pain, popping another 1000 mg of ibuprofen. I gingerly washed my arm and rubbed lotion on it, standing back to see myself in the mirror.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>I feel, somehow, like this tattoo is a huge piece of my soul that is now visible on my skin. It's hugely vulnerable, especially when most people look at it and assume "we belong to each other" is referring to my husband. </b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><i>What does it mean, then,</i> only a few people have asked. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Enough to write a book about, I reply.</b></span><br />
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Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-78766238069538756712016-01-12T10:11:00.001-08:002016-01-12T10:11:50.393-08:00Bringing on thirty-five<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm thirty-five today.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I say it again, <i>I'm thirty-five years old</i>, let it roll off my tongue without fear or judgment, regret or nostalgia. I just <i>am</i>. All these years of life and all the ages I've ever been, rolled into one unfinished number.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Thirty-five-glorious-messy-pieced-together-years-young-and-old.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I was grieved to turn thirty, for a lot of reasons that felt painful at the time. I don't know how or where I'll be when I turn forty. But here? At the age of thirty-five? I'm content to own my years.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">To <i>really</i> own them, the way I'm learning to own my body through all its changes. To treat it more gently, kindly, respectfully, instead of beating it up. To appreciate all we've been through together. To (try) to eye it less critically, to see it more as a watercolor painting and less like a chiseled sculpture. Instead of running miles and miles, which my knees will no longer allow, I walk for miles and miles of wide-eyed seeing. Instead of sweating in a boot camp class, I stretch and pose and feel my strength grow, my muscles lengthen, on my yoga mat in the living room. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The
theme of my life lately has been coming into my true self, my real
skin, and I am loving that skin with all its history held in billions of
tiny cells. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I started loving myself for the first time at thirty-four. I'm going to love myself more fully by the end of this year.</span><br />
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<br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * *</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ricardo and I celebrated our birthdays together this past Saturday, his fortieth and my thirty-fifth, among dearly loved friends - of the non human variety, that is. Driving an hour and a half south of Seattle, at the base of Mt. Rainier, we greeted all kinds of delightful friends at a wildlife park. Bison, moose, elk, big horned sheep, mountain goat, deer, cougar, wolverine, beavers, river otters, raccoons, lynx, grey wolves, snowy owl, barn owls, turkey vulture. Aspen, Douglas fir, Western red cedar, hemlock. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We loved them all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And I felt more at home among these ones than I do among most people these days. These are lean years of friendship, and I'm learning to live in the tension of that ache, and also to find friends in other forms and places. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The cold nipped at our noses and fingers and we awed at the frozen glory of the lake and the forest. We clasped each other's gloved hands snugly and basked in the warmth of companionship, the gift of another year together and the glow of dreams kindling fiery orange.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These are true riches.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * *</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I haven't had much use for written words these days. Most of my words have been coming to me in the form of paintings, and so I've been picking up my brushes and letting them speak.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">At the age of thirty-five, I'm coming to see that living into my art is more than being a writer. I have more inside me than words. It's like learning a new language, expanding my speech, this growth of creative expression. Painting takes me beyond the limits of my words; words and painting <i>combined</i> open up a new world of speech. It's exhilarating.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So I lean into this inclination toward painting, even though I know nothing of technique. I haven't studied styles. I don't know the proper terminology. And for once in my life, I don't give a damn. For a change, I'm not doing this to try and <i>be the best</i> or <i>get it right.</i> I'm doing this for the pure joy of creating. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Just as I'm not doing yoga daily with the expectation of ever being a yogi. Or doing the splits. Or looking as graceful and altogether flexible as the instructors I watch in my online yoga classes. No, I'm doing this because when I get on my mat, I can feel this is growing both body and soul. And because as months go by, I find myself doing things I said I couldn't do or at least inching my way closer. And it feels good, real good. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * *</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I used to hate that my birthday was in the winter. As a kid, it made outdoor birthday parties impossible. But at the age of thirty-five, I'm loving my January birthday. In fact, I'm loving winter for the very first time. While I hear people constantly looking forward to summer months and warm sunshine, I'm wishing time to slow these few months of winter. To savor the crisp cold and, yes, even those dim gray days. To open more to the raw beauty of this season with all its mysteries, to its invitation to hole up inside and create.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And this, too, feels like acceptance. Contentment. Creativity. Growth. Hope. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I am leaning into winter, into loneliness, into beauty, into creating, into kindness, into exploration, into what <i>is</i>. Leaning into thirty-five and falling forward with curiosity and anticipation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Bring</i> it. </span><br />
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<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-61189344812520034702015-12-15T21:35:00.000-08:002015-12-15T21:35:43.272-08:00Resurgence in review (of sorts)<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wj3rtnKBndc/Vm9ltsoWGqI/AAAAAAAAHnk/bgXpz9Vxwec/s1600/wispy-feather.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wj3rtnKBndc/Vm9ltsoWGqI/AAAAAAAAHnk/bgXpz9Vxwec/s320/wispy-feather.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zji7ILj2YEc/Vm9n5zygA6I/AAAAAAAAHn0/Y642Fk_iZ-s/s1600/magnolia%2Bcone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zji7ILj2YEc/Vm9n5zygA6I/AAAAAAAAHn0/Y642Fk_iZ-s/s320/magnolia%2Bcone.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">The feathers have fallen, scattered in mournful disarray, an entire story trod by the feet of people who rarely look down in haste. But I look and notice. I can't help but notice - and wonder - from which body they fell. A pigeon, I believe. How many there are. And the way they've fallen, as if each ruffled strand tells of a struggle I did not witness. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">I am curiosity brimming over, crouching on my haunches in the rain,<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> on a downtown <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">city sidewalk,</span></span> as people step around me and the feathers. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">I collect them as treasures, tuck them gently in my lunch bag. And I marvel, at the treasures that have always la<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">id</span> hidden in plain sight</span>, when I was one of the haste- driven ones who rarely looked up or down to see. I keep them in an empty porcelain flower planter on our kitchen-table-converted-to-art-<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">w<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">orkshop</span></span>: feathers, leaves, conifer cones, strips of birch bark peel, shells, the fuzzy cone of a magnolia tree with red seeds hanging through slits by the tiniest of filaments. I carefully drop these treasures in small glass ornaments, a few of my favorite reminders of the world I love in microcosm. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">* * * * *</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">I love books, always have. They have been among my favorite friends and teachers through the years. But I find myself in a larger, more rugged classroom these days, reading stories not in print but in wood and filament, leaf and cone, feather and bird call, wind and rain. These are my friends, my teachers, and it's taken more than two decades to bring me back around to this classroom. To the ground I began upon. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Th<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">is instinct as deep as <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the deepest roots, that</span></span> each creature, each created thing, no matter how small, has something to show me. To teach me. But I forgot how to listen, how to see, how to slow, how to wonder. I was never taught to see <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the sacred</span> here, in all these beings, in all these things and places. <i>We worship the Creator, not the created</i>, I heard for years, nodding my <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">head in agreement</span>. As if I had permission only to notice their beauty, then look quickly away, lest I fall into the temptation of worshiping the wrong god. <i>It is not a feather, after all, that speaks sacred things to us, but God who created the feather and the bird from which it came. </i>And so for many years, I looked away, looking for God in acceptable places, resolving not to love the created world as I did the Creator.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For. They. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">M</span>ust<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">. B</span>e<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">. K</span>ept<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">. Separate.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">* * * * * </span></span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"> And, alas, th<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ey cannot. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The year w<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ore on</span></span>, and I grew <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">more weary</span> of the dichotomies. The division of soul and flesh from trees and feathers. Can God not be found on the wind and in the water, stretching through the arms of a tree, in the quiver of a flower petal, the wing beats of a hummingbird, the drumbeat of rain, the stretchmarks of a drought blighted land, the DNA of a pine cone, the bleat of a goat, the penetrating eyes of a tortoise, the warmth of a donkey's neck? Is <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the Divine</span> so small and insecure as to separate things so incessantly as we humans? Or is <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the Divine</span> not also like a tapestry: colorful, distinct and yet inseparable<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">; </span>bound together <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">from and in </span>and through all things eternal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">I sought to know God also in the meditations and practices of Buddhist monks, who honor all life as sacred. The prayers of Native peoples, who love the earth and the spiritual world as one. The art and traditional celebrations of Mexican Catholics. The questions and ever-unfolding journeys of agnostics and atheists. The language of the created world, revealing to me spiritual treasures everywhere I look. Not as a choose-your-own-religion as much as a flinging off of religion to choose the <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One</span> who cannot be contained by <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">a</span> label. Nor<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> can I. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">As this year comes steadily to a close, I see: <i>this</i> is my <b>resurgence</b>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">[My word for 2015 has been <b>resurgence</b>. For more posts on this, you can read <a href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com/2015/01/in-which-i-jump-on-bandwagon-oneword.html#.Vm9pbHsWA7A">here</a> and <a href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com/2015/01/this-beautiful-broken-old-road.html#.Vm9ps3sWA7A">here</a> and <a href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com/2015/05/on-touching-squirrels-and-mystery-of.html#.Vm9qAXsWA7A">here</a> and <a href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com/2015/03/gathering-courage-fmf.html#.Vm9p0nsWA7A">here</a>.</span><br />
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<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-80592736495617837392015-11-21T13:06:00.001-08:002015-11-21T19:21:20.870-08:00What lies behind the quiet<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k7GH9ZoVjiQ/VlDYBbzjOtI/AAAAAAAAHmo/ndkNJ-Nzf5Y/s1600/Ampersand-multimage-2014-contributors-16x9-1280x720.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k7GH9ZoVjiQ/VlDYBbzjOtI/AAAAAAAAHmo/ndkNJ-Nzf5Y/s400/Ampersand-multimage-2014-contributors-16x9-1280x720.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://forterra.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Ampersand-multimage-2014-contributors-16x9-1280x720.jpg">photo credit</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">While the wind and rains kicked up a blustery November gale outside, a large group of us packed in the Town Hall auditorium for <a href="https://forterra.org/event/ampersand-live-2015">Amperstand Live</a>, an event hosted by a conservation organization called <a href="http://forterra.org/">Forterra</a>. We came with at least as many reasons as people present, but one shared reason drew us close to hear stories: our love of wild places and the Pacific Northwest. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And stories came these two and a half hours, from poets and wildlife photographers, a paper artist and children's book writer, a chocolatier and a wild mushroom hunter, a conservation canine (i.e., black lab) and his human coworker, architects and a classically trained singer, a dancer and a gospel choir, an ecologically-minded clothing designer and two radio talk show hosts. They st<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">oo</span>d up and sp<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">oke</span> of place, through words and pictures, through song and story, through dance and poetry. And I sat these hours on the edge of my seat, leaning in as these voices howled like an emerging wind inside me. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I looked around the auditorium with a swelling pride of place. <i>I live here, in this beautiful region, and I love it down in my bones. </i>I feel less alone. <i>These are my people, strangers though they may be. We are lit with similar flames. </i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sitting there, I knew, I'm coming home to myself. <i> </i></span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://greenseattle.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Forterra_FrinkPark_HannahLetinich-2-e1443221429197.jpg">photo credit</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Being the introvert I am, I’m not too keen on socializing. Period. I hate small talk and ice breakers and being thrown in groups where the pressure to connect with people creates a sense of forced relationship. That, and I have no clue where to go to find more like-minded, open-hearted people, after more than two decades in the church.<br /><br />So as I’m walking to our neighborhood community center in the rain at eight o’clock a recent Saturday morning, preparing for a morning of planting trees in Seward Park, making new friends is the very last reason I’m doing this. The social aspect of participating in Green Seattle Day is not a perk for me, more a nuisance I have to endure to get to the real pleasure: giving back to the forest, the birds, the park. The satisfaction of hard physical labor, of smearing dirt on my face and pants and shirt. The tiny hope that these trees we plant today will one day be towering members of the forest, extending its borders. <br /><br />Arriving at the community center, I draw a deep breath and walk inside to a small group of people gathered in the waiting area. Within five minutes, I’m chatting with a single woman in her fifties, Lisa, fully relaxed. Ten minutes later, we’re in the gym with a growing group of people and I’m having a conversation with Ted, who works at a Trader Joe’s, about the perks of our kind of jobs. Thirty minutes later, I’m walking out to a school bus with Tamira, a single mom, and her two adorable boys, Luke and Jonah. Luke, five, wants to sit with me on the bus, and he sticks close to me the rest of the day. <br /><br />“Are you sure you’re ok with this?” Tamira asks with a raised eyebrow. “He isn't usually drawn to people like this.” <br /><br />“Yeah, of course. He’s super sweet,” I assure her.<i> I’m not exactly what you’d call a kid person, either,</i> I think. That is, they aren’t usually drawn to me. But this one is and I have no desire to fight it. This little boy with the rocker haircut, one side flopping in his big brown, long lashed eyes, with Spiderman pajamas peeking behind his ripped jeans, is an unexpected delight.<br /><br />When we arrive at the park and climb off the bus, we gather in the rain beneath a tree for introductions and directions. Luke wants to stand by me and I reach out my hand to him. He takes it and all I’m aware of is the soft warmth of it, the smallness of it, in mine. The wonder that he took it at all.<br /><br />We divide into groups - planters and mulchers - and I’m a mulcher. Which means I will make multiple trips from the planting site to the mulch pile with a wheelbarrow to fill and distribute around potted trees and shrubs. Again, Luke wishes to stay with me, so each trip down and back is peppered with puddle splashing, attempts to help steer the wheelbarrow, the removal of a rain boot to search for pesky pieces of mulch that inhibit his walking, a stop by the drinking fountain, instructions not to throw mulch on our heads as we’re shoveling, encouragement to hurry and catch up with me, and reminders not to play with shovels. I’m not used to being slowed down. And yet, somehow, it comes more easily today, adjusting my pace to include him.<br /><br />We’re sweaty, streaked with mud, wet from rain, winded from the back and forth with heavy loads. I’d envisioned a morning that was more quiet, more reflective, more focused on the beauty of our surroundings, soaking in the peace of the trees and the songs of birds. But this, this was all about people working together. People caring for the forest and the birds. People of all ages, from babies to elders, showing up early on a rainy Saturday morning to give something back to the city parks. And a little boy tagging alongside me as I trekked and hauled and muscles ached, and all I could do was settle in and enjoy the companionship with strangers who quickly felt like friends.<br /><br />It’s time to go and Luke and I climb the steps of the bus first, heading straight to the back where he says it’s his favorite spot. He squeezes in next to me on a small seat and heaves his jacket and water bottle across my lap, then turns to stare fixedly out the back window. Tamira calls to us from the front of the bus and asks me to take a picture of Luke and I with my phone and send it to her. I’m taking fish-faced selfies with a five year old at the back of an old school bus, covered in mud, and I wonder if maybe something was planted in my soil today, too. Something like joy. <br /><br />Back at the community center, I’m chatting in line for a hot lunch with Emma, a twenty-three year old software tech who was on my team. We sit with Tamira and the boys, who have saved us a space at their table, and laugh through our delicious meal of Ethiopian food and hot chocolate. Luke and Jonah are stabbing apples with their forks and calling me silly names, with their boyish giggles and mud streaked faces. Emma and Tamira are making plans to help out again next weekend to finish the tree planting, because Tamira says she wants to volunteer like this with the boys nearly every weekend, and I wish I was going to be in town to join them. <br /><br />I leave the community center with two new names and numbers saved in my phone and a genuine desire to see them again, these ones who also love parks and forests and getting dirty and giving back.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You know that feeling in your gut, perhaps especially after months and years of not knowing its dwelling, of finding your people? The core, the heart, of your life's work? I've known this, or thought I did, for brief periods of time in my young adult life - and it's been a long, long time since. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The last time I felt a deep sense of purpose would have been in my twenties, when I thought mostly of Africa. It consumed me, to some degree, enough to shape my two years in grad school and aspirations beyond. But all they amounted to were aspirations, in the end, blowing away in the rubble of loss. This sense of purpose and ambition that consumed me was all about where I was going, who I would be when I arrived there, and what big things I would do with my life. It was so very well-intentioned - and largely theoretical. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But this new-and-not-so-new sense of clear purpose is not about theory for me. It's not about arriving. Nor is it about defining identity, proving worth, warding off guilt or shame, or a deep-seated fear of failure. It's about <i>living into</i>: seeking, questioning, acting with intention, evolving, becoming. It's rooted in smallness, instead of bigness. The smallness of daily life choices. Of where and how to invest my time; of what to read and what to write; of what to eat and what to buy; of what to give and who or what to give to; of whether to walk or bus or drive or bike; of how to practice authentic faith and spirituality. The smallness of one human being showing up for life each day, as best she can, determined to leave evidence of love behind when she goes. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">* * * * *</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rFruGnQNfnU/VlDXfBadRoI/AAAAAAAAHmg/947ijZifb3w/s1600/jardins_des_martels_coutoufly_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rFruGnQNfnU/VlDXfBadRoI/AAAAAAAAHmg/947ijZifb3w/s400/jardins_des_martels_coutoufly_3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.jardinsdesmartels.com/userfiles/images/jardins_des_martels_coutoufly_3.jpg">photo credit</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've felt these colorful strands of story flapping in the breeze for more than a few years, side by side, not yet bound to each other. <i>Crumbling of religion. Environmental stewardship. Advocacy. Deeper connectedness with the natural world. Artistic development. Insatiable curiosity. Slower pace. Sharper sight. Communion. Love of non-human beings. Rumblings of a new faith.</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And I need you to know, those who have read me for some time now especially, that I am truly well. I don't even remember the last time I felt this good. And while not much has changed in certain life circumstances, some big changes are abrew and hope is pushing its way out of the ground. That, and <i>I</i> am constantly changing in ways that are expanding and liberating and healing me. Ways that are helping me feel deeply rooted in the tumult of change, connecting me more with my true self. My blog may be more quiet than it's ever been, but I am still writing. The words are just not intended for this space. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And that's a big part of why I'm not here on my blog much anymore: I'm shifting my focus. Most of my writing is being accumulated for what may or may not culminate in a book one day. While the essence of <i>beautiful rubbish</i> is one I carry inside me, wherever I go from here, I also sense a honing in of my voice in accordance with my life's work. I wish to keep these writings separate for now, my blog and this honed in place of writing. I also know that my audience, if it hasn't already, is likely to change. As my faith has shifted, I know some (or many) of my readers may lose a sense of connection with my story. While this does not need to be the case, I also understand and respect it. And you are free, always free, to come and go as best suits you. The door is ever open to you; and also, I cannot remain the same in order to keep anyone from leaving. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The truth is, I don't have any idea where my blog is going from here. And I'm at peace with that uncertainty. But for now, I'm still here, and I wanted to say hello - and thank you - to whoever is still reading.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Peace to you. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-56092428666058013622015-10-31T09:37:00.000-07:002015-10-31T09:37:10.913-07:00In which I confess on faith in a guest post<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Back in September, I was asked by a friend and fellow writer, <a href="http://lizvone.com/">Liz von Ehrenkrook</a>, to participate in a 31 day series of confessions she would be hosting on her blog in October. I thought about it, tentatively said yes, sat down to write, and soon changed my mind. Thank you, but I'm good, I told her. I've confessed my guts out this past year or more. I don't think I have anything more to say on the matter of faith.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But I was wrong. At the beginning of October, when her series was already in full swing, a confession started brewing in me. I wrote it down and offered it to her, for she still had a space to fill. While each writer in her series is kept anonymous, I felt the tug to open this up to my blog readers, too. This is all part of my journey, as a writer and a person transforming in her faith, and I realize as I grow more comfortable in my new skin, I have nothing to hide. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This is what Liz has to say about her series, before you head over to her blog:</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There is something every single one of us keeps inside out of fear of
what others may think; maybe it’s a choice you’ve made that
has dramatically shifted your life or a personal belief that doesn’t
align with the organized religion of Christianity.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It is because of this I chose to craft a series of confessions
written anonymously by 31 friends. I wanted to create an opportunity for
Christians – current, former or questioning – to share a confession
they don’t feel the freedom to speak aloud for fear of being judged or
outcast. Each piece is written by someone I know and care about; someone
who chose vulnerability and invited me on their journey. Each piece is
honesty at its finest, and part of being a collector of stories and
words is to honor authenticity even when I might not fully agree.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The comments will remain closed. Writing a confession to be published
online has been a tough exercise for most of the writers, but it has
been a necessary step toward healing and growth for each person. I want
my friends to understand their value; to know it’s okay to feel what
they feel and say what they are saying without worry of judgmental
comments. If you’d like to respond to any of the confessions, you
can contact me via email (there will be a form at the end of each post),
or you can share on your own social media outlets to create discussion.</span></i><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more or any less.</span></blockquote>
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">God loves every one of us, no matter what we’ve done or what we
question or what we choose to place our belief in. I do not think – as
humans – we know love without condition, so we will never fully
grasp the true depth of God’s love. As we hold to our own versions of
faith, religion and Christianity, we should not forget there are very
real people behind these confessions. I hope this series inspires
you not to fear sharing your journey with others, and I hope it
encourages the practice of being open-hearted towards those whose lives
and beliefs don’t align with our own.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></i>
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And now, if you'd like to read my confession - or peruse the <a href="http://www.lizvone.com/31-confessions/">list of others</a>, brave and beautiful - please continue <a href="http://www.lizvone.com/god-is-greater-than-christianity/">here</a>.</span></b><br />
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Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-58367217272454139382015-09-11T19:39:00.000-07:002015-09-11T19:39:03.633-07:00This little slice of same<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The light at dusk spills through our bedroom blinds, yellowed as the faded cotton of a vintage quilt. And there is dust. Copious dust, clinging to the blinds. The scent of freshly laundered clothes drapes like a curtain in the doorway. A red hummingbird feeder hangs from a copper chain outside the window. Feathered neighbors zip in and out, pausing, sipping, chittering, diving. Green and brown silhouettes against a backdrop of golden light.<br /><br />It is the same light and it is never the same, each day a few breaths shorter. And these are the same birds, as much as I am the same, as yesterday, each of us several thousand breaths older. Together we inhabit this little slice of same, under an awning of rotting wood and concrete, beside a hanging basket of dying geraniums and a sycamore swaying in the breeze, on the corner of York Road South, on this ever-revolving, ancient earth we call home. </span><br />
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<br /><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></i><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Linking up with <a href="http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/">Five-minute Friday</a>, to the prompt of "<a href="http://katemotaung.com/2015/09/10/five-minute-friday-same/">Same</a>."</span></i><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></i>Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-91227490998309820682015-09-05T14:50:00.003-07:002015-09-05T14:50:56.178-07:00Meditations on yes <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Growing up Christian in America, I was thrown into overlapping cultures of a <i>yes</i> mentality. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In American culture, <i>yes</i> is often associated with positivity; possibility; hope; risk; openness. In Christian culture, there is possibility and hope, but <i>yes</i> is more often synonymous with faith; obedience; selflessness; service; discipline. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There is a bit of a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach to yes in Christian culture. Say yes, whether or not you feel like it, if that is the Right Thing to do. Your emotions will follow, but more importantly, you will reap the spiritual rewards of obedience. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So I grew up saying yes. Yes to weekly and twice weekly and sometimes thrice weekly church gatherings. Yes to daily bible readings. Yes to Christian books and Christian music and Christian friends. Yes to abstinence and promise rings and True Love Waits. Yes to mainline doctrine and theology and everything I was told to believe. Yes to raising my hands in worship. Yes to one-sided relationships with needy people - the more, the better. Yes, in fact, to whoever wished to be my friend. Yes to giving people second chances and third chances and endless chances, always the benefit of the doubt, no matter how they hurt me. Yes to volunteering, to leading, to ministry commitments. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Yes, ultimately, to God.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Still, I thought this was the way I was choosing, all these yeses. I want this, I told myself. It's what I've always wanted.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Until I landed in my counselor's office in the midst of a spiritual breakdown and utter life unraveling. And she said to me, more or less: "You can't say a genuine yes unless you've first been given the freedom to say a genuine no." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Because sometimes yes is a liberation and sometimes yes is a captivity to fear; we need to have the maturity to know the difference.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * * </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">All along, many of those things and people and belief systems I was instructed to say no to were out of fear. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">No, you cannot ask those questions. No, you cannot read that, watch that, enjoy that, listen to that, participate in that; they will corrupt you. They will rob you. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But what if yes, in itself, can rob us of freedom? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And so, I started learning to say no. Tentatively, quietly at first, growing steadier in my voice as time and ground grow firmer beneath my feet. No to saying yes out of fear. No, I won't be in church anymore. No, I can't read the bible right now. No to so many certain beliefs. No to Christian gatherings that trigger spiritual unrest. No to hiding who I am in order to make others more comfortable. No to friendships that no longer feel safe or life-giving. No to offers of friendship that feel counterproductive to my healing. No to endless games of catch-up in relationships. No to doing so many things out of obligation alone. No to a constant battering of self-doubt and shame. No to ignoring, stuffing, annihilating my needs. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">No, even, to God.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That's right. I said no to God. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Not the no of a hard-hearted rebel (because haven't we Christians loved to paint people with such broad strokes?), but the no of a weary soul working out her faith with fear and trembling. <i>No, I cannot be close to you right now, I say. No, I don't know what I think of you or what I believe, but somehow I know that is exactly where I need to be right now.</i> No has become, for the time being, the most honest, courageous, soul-searching word I've said. A spiritual milestone. A practice of deep faith. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For surely, a God not big enough to hold me in my no is not big enough to sustain me in my yes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Surely, a God this big deserves a yes coming not from obligation, fear, upbringing or familiarity, but from a woman having stared her nos in the face, wrestled with them, made peace with them and decided what she can say yes to. And so I give myself permission to hold these nos without condition. Some of the nos will remain, and others may transform, with time, into yeses. But I will know each yes coming from my heart, for they will be my own, honest and firm and unreservedly free. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * * </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's been a long, long while since I linked up with <a href="http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/">Five-minute Friday.</a> But here I am, writing way more than five minutes, to the prompt of "<a href="http://katemotaung.com/2015/09/03/five-minute-friday-yes/">Yes</a>." </span><br />
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<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-90452840977142670122015-08-26T17:07:00.000-07:002015-08-26T18:17:50.037-07:00On converging stories and hearing voices<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I grew up with an intermittent longing to play piano. Not until I got older, however, did I hear songs - or snatches of them - in my head, like the words on the tip of the tongue, not quite formed. If I was near a piano, I would sit down and let my fingers rest on the keys, poised between mounting desire and frustration, consumed by my inability to give musical expression to what I was hearing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Sometimes, the same is true with writing. The difference is, it carries a heavier weight, deeper pain, greater cost, to not find expression. Instead of hearing music, I hear voices; voices inaudible to all but the ears of the soul. These days, the core of who I am feels inextricably bound with giving voice to what I'm seeing, hearing, sensing, in the world around me and how it intersects with mine. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I grasp for words, not unlike I've done many times as a writer in the past. And at the same time, utterly unlike any grasping in the past. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There's an urgency to what I find myself compelled to write. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There's an overwhelming lack of words to wrap around it all, to know where to even begin. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There are two stories converging, parallel voices. I am seeing the transition and turmoil of my inner world reflected back to me in the natural world I fiercely love. It's as if we're both groping along in the dark, clasping hands tight, in this journey together for better or worse. To hear one speak is to know, in some facet, a curve of the other, for we belong to each other. But I am the one with a voice that carries through the noise of a human-centric world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And there's confusion and fear, over whether it should all tumble out as a rant or dirge, prophet or poet, mystic or madwoman, another voice drowned out among the many. As if there's only one way this voice <i>should</i> sound, instead of the natural rise and fall of inflection and tone and cadence and style that voices tend to have throughout the telling of a story. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It feels too big, too vulnerable, too painful, too unresolved. Too sacred to do justice to the depths of beauty and raw ugliness of it. So much so, these days, I don't even want to try. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's a magnificent, terrifying racket in my soul and I fear that, sitting down to write it, I'll once again find my fingers on the keys with no sound coming out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But still, I try. I begin here, and I begin again and again, as many times as it takes to start. And when words fail, as they often do, I come with pictures.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These images come from one of my favorite places in all of Seattle, down by a corner of the lake in the neighborhood I call home. After a mild, dry winter and a hot, dry summer, we are in the midst of drought, ravaged by numerous wildfires in other parts of the state. I choose to let these have the final words of this post today, as I have no way of wrapping things up neatly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And neither do they. </span><br />
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Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-89914928864326114662015-08-10T16:41:00.000-07:002015-08-10T16:41:31.666-07:00As ash in the wind: On long goodbyes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In April, my
family spent two nights at a beach house, in a quaint little town on the Oregon Coast we
retreated to many childhood summers. Since long before Papa died, we
hadn't returned to this place together. But this is where we decided to
scatter his ashes, nearly seven years after his death.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This scattering was to be our goodbye. I knew in my heart, somehow, it wasn't mine. Not yet. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When
I saw his ashes, I couldn't believe how they looked like sand. Sand in
an hourglass, bleached white; I'd been prepared for them to resemble the
remains of a fire. It was surreal, seeing him reduced to nothing more
than what fit in a modest plastic bag, to hold him in my hands, to feel him slip away.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I
took a portion of him home, in the beautiful ceramic urn I bought a
month after he died, at Saturday Market in Portland. It's sat empty for
all these years on my wooden chest, waiting to hold him. Waiting, for who knows what. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * * </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eu3zB9lXU_g/VcK-CAoIyzI/AAAAAAAAHg8/bjPL1NTAQVc/s1600/Pana%2B%25281%2529%2B316.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eu3zB9lXU_g/VcK-CAoIyzI/AAAAAAAAHg8/bjPL1NTAQVc/s400/Pana%2B%25281%2529%2B316.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I will forever remember him in a handful of cashews. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Buried in the chest of artifacts of Papa is a plastic bag of cashews nearly seven years old. I brought it home from Guatemala, from the peddler shuffling the streets of Panajachel along Lake Atitlan. He approached our table, four of us girls, as we sat dining outside with our cheap wine and flan, hauling his sacks of roasted nuts to sell. I answered him quickly, as I'd grown accustomed to doing, "No gracias, Señor." </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He
didn't press us further, didn't hardly seem to register us, as if he
were suspended between one world and another, then turned and walked
away.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Papa had been less than two months dead. He hadn't yet shown up in my dreams, but I caught my first glimpse of him sitting on the steps of an open shop at the end of this day. Wearing a familiar tattered green sweatshirt, white socks, black shoes, sacks of roasted nuts at his feet. This memory of him is a watermarked photograph, singed around the edges.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We passed him by as the darkness spread through streets, hurrying back to our hotel. And he, wearing the weight of the day, of life, of dejection, of who knows what, on his shoulders, sunk into me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I turned back to him with haunted eyes, this ghost of my Papa in the flesh of a Guatemalan man on the steps.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">His name was Fransisco. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This time I really looked at him, looked at the lines on his face and deep into those weary eyes with cracks of light filtering through. I looked until my soul broke through its windows, spilling down my cheeks. Until I had to turn away. But not before I bought a handful of cashews with the remainder of my coins from the day and we locked eyes for a moment, and he smiled, faint and piercing, into my pain. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Back at our hotel, I excused myself and disappeared in the dark lobby, pressed into a corner, doubled over in waves. A flash flood of grief and questions.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DWstQYRj914/VcAK76mHHfI/AAAAAAAAHgQ/xjDTokcuhZA/s1600/IMG_2582.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DWstQYRj914/VcAK76mHHfI/AAAAAAAAHgQ/xjDTokcuhZA/s400/IMG_2582.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> <br />* * * * * </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's not normal, I think, to catch his reflection, like a peek of his nose or bat of his eye, a swath of his skin, in such unlikely places. In such unlikely people. Because it's troubled me. Since that day of meeting Fransisco, I've only ever seen Papa in the faces of homeless men. Impoverished men. Men bent over, hidden in quiet masks of sadness. This is not how I wish to remember him. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But while the Papa of my childhood is fuzzy and nostalgic, endearing and hauntingly distant, the Papa of my adolescence and young adulthood is mangled, crushed in spirit, an ache in my gut. He is a storm battered ship, leaning into the wind, even as the hull is cracking. He is a set of blank journals, like those left behind by her mother in Terry Tempest Williams' <i>When women were birds</i>, speaking volumes and mysteries in the absence of words. This is how he's come to me. As if I've been entreated by the grief he left behind - his lonely ache, his unfinished dreams, his hopes deferred, his unspeakable pain - to see what he bore. To bear witness. To lay his pain to rest, as we have his ashes, save for the ceramic urn of what remains of him on my wooden chest. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I didn't know all these years, the depths of layers of grief. How his grief has haunted me in a cast of many faces. And I've searched to see him, to listen to these faces, to let go, as ash in the wind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * * </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Seven years of sands have slipped through the glass. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And now I see, as I write this story, that these words <i>are</i> his ashes, scattered again and again. Through seven years of grieving and storytelling, digging deep, exposing layer after layer, slowly mending. This is my long goodbye. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I've written this <a href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com/2011/10/holding-onto-cashews.html#.VcktHUUWA7B">story of the cashews</a>
twice before, and with each telling, I release him to the wind, to the
sea, to the earth, to the heavens. Until today, when I do what I wish I would have done at the coast with his ashes, now with my words: I build a sandcastle, dig a moat, lay his remains in the trenches, watch the word-ashes
carried slowly out to sea.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He must be at rest now, no longer haunted or haunting, no longer entreating me to listen. There is no grave, no grave marker, but this moment. <i>I've born witness here</i>, it says. Now, rest in peace, sweet Papa. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I will always love you. And my heart concurs,<i> It is enough.</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u0MWZWsTSho/VckvbI4OliI/AAAAAAAAHhw/43Ky5p92_gA/s1600/papa-urn.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
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Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-53012952323529420392015-08-01T11:30:00.000-07:002015-08-01T11:30:34.102-07:00Till all that remains is soul<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xlDChdcnDGY/VbxQyokAGfI/AAAAAAAAHfM/SlqR2Ggw2ew/s1600/forest-fire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xlDChdcnDGY/VbxQyokAGfI/AAAAAAAAHfM/SlqR2Ggw2ew/s400/forest-fire.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm running through wooded trails on creaky knees. Cocooned in quiet, under umbrella of shade, in that middle space between light and dark. Each step radiates warning through my legs, axles grinding. But I can't stop. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Because the sun has lit her match and I'm racing the ring of fire.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In the heart of the woods, I see. The flames dancing on tree trunks, across forest floor, through fingers of peeking branches. They point toward the fire and I turn to follow their gaze. To the edge of forest, where all is set ablaze, burning yet not consumed. Here in these woods, I, too, burn. From head to toe and underneath my skin, as if to say, <i>I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Reluctant, I exit the fire. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UPOSgoOIe4I/VbxQ9OEcXhI/AAAAAAAAHfY/BW3T4EjQMeM/s1600/seward-on-fire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UPOSgoOIe4I/VbxQ9OEcXhI/AAAAAAAAHfY/BW3T4EjQMeM/s400/seward-on-fire.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The air outside the forest is a wool blanket on a summer night and a sheet of breeze flapping on the line; it is both. I gulp air, limp toward water, shed shoes as fast as the sun has smudged pink ash across lake shoulders. The water welcomes, soothes radiating skin, a cool hand brushing across my cheek. I plunge in head first and still I'm racing toward the edge of smoldering fire. Eyes squinting through curtain of water, enough light to see ahead, one breath to three strokes. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In the middle, I flip over to my back and I'm staring now at pale blue mystery, baptized in bigness. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">My husband waits for me at the shore, holds my towel up and wraps around my shoulders. Dripping wet, I'm still burning, and I don't want to leave this place where flames dance on my skin, too, till all that remains is soul. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We drive the lake perimeter home, all traces of fire dissipated, until I look back at forest growing distant. A naked moon glows, bold and sheer, in bare chested sky above the woods, strikes a new match and sets me ablaze.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Burn</i>, she says, <i>and carry on.</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.es-static.us/upl/2013/09/moon-harvest-9-18-2013-Amy-Simpson-Wynne.jpg">credit</a></td></tr>
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<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-16515648132435215752015-07-03T15:47:00.000-07:002015-07-03T15:47:05.715-07:00How brave comes to be<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vD-gG6d65I4/VZcL7OK2d3I/AAAAAAAAHeg/8dbY9C5ULKE/s1600/be-brave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vD-gG6d65I4/VZcL7OK2d3I/AAAAAAAAHeg/8dbY9C5ULKE/s400/be-brave.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I never once considered myself brave. Some people, I think, are born into it and others meet it face to face in a turning point moment, when the scales tip and they plunge headlong into courage. But me, I've baby-stepped my way into bravery. One foot and then the other, day after day after day, for months now. Until in one day, one moment, with shaking hands I force my quivering voice to steady and speak, to shatter a terrible silence. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I did that today, with a male customer who has spoken words and given looks and caught us in embraces that, for at least a year now, have made our skin crawl. And we have swallowed it, absorbed it, with indignation and that lingering self doubt we've been taught as women in our culture. <i>Maybe we're over-exaggerating. Maybe he's just dense. Maybe he doesn't mean them the way they sound. Maybe he's just touchy feely. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Until, <i><b>no</b></i>. Not a second more could I bear to swallow this pill, bear the violation of self and others. And so I looked him in the eyes and spoke, watched <i>him</i> as the one squirming and flushing and walking away embarrassed. And I was glad that finally, <i>yes, finally,</i> I spoke up. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I wanted to run whooping through the store, for now, the magnificent reality of who I have become settled upon me.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>I am brave.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * * </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's been a hard won bravery. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And I can't tell you where it started, some while back. But that <a href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com/2014/10/in-which-this-is-what-counseling-looks.html#.VZcKJ6YWA7A">first time I stepped into my counselor's office </a>and wound up crying in the bathroom stall afterward, knowing I was crossing a threshold and it was painful and scary, holy and good; yes, this, perhaps, was a first step.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And in the months to come, staring down the questions of faith that had haunted me a long time. The anxiety trailing me. Letting myself fall into the questions, sit with them and come unraveled. To allow myself to wonder if this tower of beliefs, like a game of Jenga, could withstand another piece pulled, or if it might all topple for good. This was the bravest thing I'd ever done.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Bravery came in slowly, like shards of light, as I learned to stare into the darkness and to parce through the guilt and fears. To find my own voice among them, and here, to know the difference. To find, in the unraveling, that here is the Divine Presence and I am held and we are good. Yes, this is bravery.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Here, all these steps, all these bricks laying a new foundation of courage in my soul. I have found my voice. I am finding my voice, still. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I am finding it in facing where I've come from and altering where I go from here. And I'm finding it in the trenches of marriage, the vulnerability of keeping my heart open in the midst of deep pain and hard-to-see hope. I'm finding it in setting new boundaries and holding to them, pushing aside guilt even as it presses from my belly up to my chest, that old onslaught of self doubt and accusation that says to have a self is selfish. That to <i>not</i> meet people's needs, even at the expense of mine, is unloving. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm learning to open my mouth and speak from my heart words that are tough and clear and laced with grace. To risk rocking the boat, even to the point of losing friendships, losing respect, being misunderstood. I'm finding courage in no longer hiding who I am.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And here, I'm learning I'm not responsible for keeping other people comfortable. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * * </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Months back, I was heading into a difficult weekend and had to coach myself, with deep breaths, into going through with it. I packed a pair of earrings I had painted, goofy looking birds on bottle caps, with a word on each one: <i>Be Brave</i>. I wore them, not only on my ears but on my heart all weekend long, and now, each time I need to coach myself to courage, I put them on. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I wore them the weekend I headed across country with five women, four of them I'd never met, to attend a writer's retreat far outside my comfort zone. I came home with a new little tribe of friends who continue to inspire me to greater bravery and love. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I wore them last week, when I posted <a href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com/2015/06/my-long-walk-to-pride.html#.VZcKa6YWA7A">my story of learning to love without strings</a> and the journey of affirming same-sex marriage and homosexuality. Because I knew there might be harsh words, or just as painful sometimes, silence. And I needed to remind myself of who I am regardless.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And when I contacted an author I admire, who lives in Seattle, and inquired about her being my writing coach - and she responded yes - and my mind hissed back at me, <i>What the hell have you done now? You're not good enough for this! </i>And I took some deep breaths, told my mind to take a flying leap and stepped forward to jump off the cliff anyhow, wherever I may land.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And when I called Animal Control to report neglect of a dog I found wandering last weekend and returned to his owners, who are neighbors, and worried if this was the right thing to do, even as I knew that it was.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And when I gave myself permission to step back from a friendship of many years and let my heart recover from the pain of multiple hard conversations and not being heard, even as I shook inside and cried at the tearing of it all, and prayed for grace to light the way through. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>You're brave</i>, I whisper to myself these days. <i>I'm proud of you. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These are not words that have come easy, goodness no. But here they are now, settling in to stay, a beautiful echo in my soul.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So, too, may you hear this echo grow in your soul, in your own brave steps, whatever they may be. </span><br />
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<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-66127775068626566882015-06-24T06:10:00.000-07:002015-06-24T21:13:57.739-07:00My long walk to Pride<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/30600000/-3-lgbt-30631556-200-171.jpg">photo credit</a></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://3a09223b3cd53870eeaa-7f75e5eb51943043279413a54aaa858a.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/7f3ca09d004d771f749a07a9f18fd1982960731899-1358411199-50f7b5bf-620x348.jpg">photo credit</a></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This is not a story I sat down and wrote in an hour or a week or a year. It's the kind that's been writing itself on me for longer than I've known to pay attention. My journey to love without strings.<br /><br />Here's my honest confession: there's no way to write this story without stepping on someone's toes on either side of what is painfully still a deep, inflammatory divide. There's no way to tell where I've come from without hurting gay friends who may read this and, perhaps, feel betrayed that I ever stood where I once did. And there's no way not to offend friends and family and other readers who resonate more with where I used to be. It requires an inordinate amount of grace from all of us, grace to myself, and some amount of grit and courage in admitting where I've been and where I now find myself. And in the end, knowing I'm tired of cowering when it comes to things that burn like a fire in my bones, regardless of the response or lack of it.<br /><br />I can no longer be silent. Because, friends? People are <a href="https://thoughtsfrombravo.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/im-gay-other-people-are-too-lets-move-forward/"><i>dying</i></a> because of this.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And the thing is, it's no longer only a matter of theology, as the rag tag Jesus follower that I am, and all our differing interpretations of obscure references to homosexuality in sacred texts. It's a matter of justice. It's a matter of impact.<br /><br />It's about looking deep within ourselves and challenging our definitions of love.<br /><br />* * * * * <br /><br />You see, this week is Gay Pride week here in Seattle. It's honestly not a festival I've paid much attention to in my fourteen years of living here, except for knowing what times to dodge the crowds. And for many of those fourteen years, feeling discomfort gnawing at me regarding people I didn't understand in the slightest. I wouldn't have called myself a homophobe - I had gay coworkers I hung out with on occasion as the only straight person in the bunch, and I felt genuine care for them and enjoyment of their company - but deep down, I rumbled with tension over my quiet beliefs toward homosexuality and what it looked like to love and be in relationship with gay friends in light of those beliefs. <br /><br />I felt I lived a double life. I lived in dread of ever having The Conversation about homosexuality with gay friends or customers, doing all I knew to do to communicate love and respect while privately holding the belief that, as a follower of Christ, I could not support what is commonly referred to among evangelical Christians as the homosexual lifestyle.<br /><br />* * * * *<br /><br />I remember sitting across from a respected friend of mine some years ago when she shared her coming out story with me. I was completely thrown off guard. Nearly three decades of my religious upbringing had taught me, in explicit and implicit ways, that being gay was wrong, gross even. I'd been indoctrinated in "Love the sinner, hate the sin," a phrase that now makes my skin crawl. And here I was, hearing that someone I knew and loved and respected as a person of faith was gay.<br /><br />My theology, at the time, did not allow me to respond to this news without a great deal of inner anxiety. I did not possess a worldview, faith, or view of God that encouraged me to question outside the clear-cut lines I'd seen drawn. Even though a growing part of me ached to. Even though sitting here, listening to her story, trying to piece together the notes that rung in discord within my heart, I felt myself tear in two. It was the early stages then, but I was feeling less comfortable in the skin of my religious beliefs.<br /><br />Oh, the tension! <i>Love</i>, but remain detached from her identity change. <i>Love</i>, but do not communicate interest<i> </i>in these changes or acceptance of them. <i>Love</i>, somehow making her feel she is supported without supporting her lifestyle.<br /><br />So, I did the only thing I knew to do. I listened, trying not to convey my tortured insides, and probably made a few vague, empathetic statements like, "Wow, that sounds hard," but mostly remained quiet. I couldn't say, "I'm happy for you" or "I'm proud of you." I distinctly knew this was not the time, if ever there would be a time, to say, "I love you, but I don't accept this." So I said it very, very quietly through all the things I didn't say or do to show my support for her. All the ways I silently refused to be open and curious about her life and romantic relationships and her deepening sense of joy and contentment in embracing herself as gay.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Let me just go ahead and tell you how that worked out: it's a fucking exercise in futility when this is what <i>love</i> looks like.</span> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />Over time, I think, our scope of safe topics to discuss in friendship became so small as to not fit much of her in them anymore. After all, you can only divorce someone's sexuality from who they innately are for so long before realizing it's woven into every piece of their lives.<br /><br />No matter the deeply genuine intent of my heart to love her - truly love her - the impact was to minimize her. <br /><br />* * * * *<br /><br />I wrote something on my blog, more than three years ago, about my intent to love liberally, even though I identified with more conservative beliefs*. Including my inability to support gay marriage. It felt liberating and terrifyingly brave, at the time, to write those words in the place where I live. And even though I wrote them edged in grace, and even though they resonated with the bulk of my evangelical readers, they wound up being read by my friend who is gay. And they angered and wounded her.<br /><br />I invited her and her now wife to our wedding shortly after and never heard back from her. <br /><br />Months passed, and finally, a message showed up in my email. She found the words and courage to share her anger and hurt with me. And while initially it stirred my defenses, as I sat with her voice, her words, they began to seep through those defensive places, right down to my heart. <br /><br />Because, deep down, even though I was still formulating words and shifting beliefs, I knew she was right. I knew, on some level, I was wrong. But a change of belief that deeply ingrained does not happen in a wild jump, at least not for me. The most I could do was listen. Ask for forgiveness. Search out and read or listen to other stories told from the experience of what it's like to be gay, bisexual, transgender or queer in a world that has not largely been kind and receptive to these voices. Open my heart to the possibility of being wrong about homosexuality, of not having black and white answers, as I'd been taught.<br /><br />I came to see, with a lot of time and wrestling, that I did not have to be confined or defined by the system of beliefs I'd grown up in. If I was no longer convinced, on this issue and others, these beliefs measured up with the ways of love, I could choose a different way. I could stand up and confess: I've been wrong.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * *<br /><br />It was right around the time that I decided <a href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com/2014/12/five-minute-friday-dear-church.html#.VYqrxaYWA7A">I was done with traditional church and Evangelicalism</a> that I had my first real taste, small as it was in comparison, to what it's like to be on the receiving end of a Christian friend's conditional love. My husband and I were called out by this friend on our lack of commitment in church attendance, among other things, in what was a very well-intentioned manner. But it reeked of judgment. It left this taste in my mouth: <i>You are loved, insofar as we attend the same church and see eye-to-eye on things of a biblical nature. You are loved, insofar as your beliefs and who you are don't make me uncomfortable.</i><br /><br />With all due respect, I wanted nothing more to do with this sort of love. I began to see myself as the one, unwittingly, however well-intentionally, spreading this gospel of love for so many years. With all due respect toward where I've come from, I wanted nothing more to do with propagating this manner of love.<br /><br />It was here I began to see: <i>intent does not trump impact</i>. No matter how good someone's intentions are to love, if the impact is the opposite of love, then it is not truly love. It's just not.<br /><br />No matter how much we protest that love is the driving force behind our theology, if the fruit (or impact) of any theology is alienation, insecurity, judgment, fear, minimization or reduction of a person, oppression or compartmentalization - it is not love. It's just not.<br /><br />If our theology stems from words on a page - even pages we consider sacred - and yet is detached from relationship with the flesh-and-blood people whose realities we are taking a bold stance on, it is lifeless. <br /><br />If our theology is not open to being shaped by the narratives of the ones who are not finding welcome in our communities of faith, it is stagnant.<br /><br />* * * * *<br /><br />This road has been long, my friends. I have scars to bear from the journey, and I have also been the one to leave scars on people's hearts. It has taken years of soul-searching, years of reading and listening and questioning and sitting in the unknown. It has taken laying down my defenses, laying down my limited understanding of scripture, laying down my need to be right, laying down my fears of the disapproval of others as my views have changed. It has taken forgiving myself and forgiving the Church, our great failures of love, and receiving forgiveness from one of the ones I've wounded. It has taken being on the receiving end of criticism, of judgment, of rejection, of losing friendships, of being misunderstood, for being true to who I am. <br /><br />But I am here.<br /><br />And I want to weep at the grace of it all, for truly I have never felt so freed to love as I do now. To know with a conviction that transcends the tits and tats of so many theological debates: love trumps all. <br /><br />So I look forward to Pride week for the first time. To honoring the lives and stories, the joys and heartaches, of those I know and love in the LGBTQ community. I enter it with a sense of grief and profound gratitude, for the suffering they've endured, the victories gained. For the forgiveness I've been shown. For the freedom to walk together.<br /><br />* * * * *<br /><br /><i>* The blog post in reference has since been deleted. Though it reflects my journey of transformation, I have no interest in causing additional pain to those it disrespects.<br /><br />I've intentionally left out specifics of how my understanding and interpretation of passages in the bible regarding homosexuality have changed. That is beyond the purpose and scope of this post and has been much more articulately, thoughtfully addressed by people more qualified than myself. Like, actual LGBTQ people, and those who love them well. But here are a few good places I've found, if you're interested (because the best way to enter a conversation, I've found, is to open-heartedly listen):</i><br /><br /><b><a href="https://thoughtsfrombravo.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/im-gay-other-people-are-too-lets-move-forward/">Dan Bravo's</a> "I'm gay. Other people are, too. Let's move forward."</b></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/gender-binaries">Rachel Held Evan's</a> "The false gospel of gender binaries"</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />Open letters between <a href="http://extraordinary-ordinary.net/2012/11/09/an-open-letter/">Heather</a> and <a href="http://uppoppedafox.com/2012/11/an-open-letter/">Vikki</a></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />An <a href="https://medium.com/@adamnicholasphillips/an-evangelical-pastor-at-his-first-pride-parade-cb0b1ce69c15">Evangelical pastor</a> at his first Pride parade</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />The writings and mission of <a href="http://www.soulforce.org/">Soulforce</a></span></b>Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-34305850312541326742015-06-20T10:35:00.000-07:002015-06-22T17:55:51.228-07:00When finding our voice is a meditation<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://mikaeladuhs.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/girl.jpg">photo credit</a></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A dear friend told me her recurring childhood nightmare, of opening her mouth to scream and no sound coming out. Of being rendered voiceless. But this nightmare betrayed her waking reality, as a girl growing up feeling unheard, seeping in to haunt her dreams at night. <br /><br />I wept when she shared this with me. For her as that little girl with the soundless scream. And unexpectedly, for me as a little-girl-now-grown-woman who is still learning to open her mouth, let alone project her voice. To name her needs, her hurts, her anger, her fears, her desires. I was - and still am - the girl who muffled sobs in her pillow, trying to contain sound before it reached someone’s ears. Who learned, for one reason or another, to make herself smaller, quieter, more agreeable. Who learned to read everyone else's needs and not her own. <br /><br />You see, I was nearly born a listener. But I’m just now practicing how to speak from the depths of me, without editing and cushioning words until my voice is swallowed. <br /><br />* * * * * <br /><br />Finding our voice begins, as yoga meditation does, on the mat. That place where we are fully present, coming home to ourselves. That thin cushion between our sit bones or the soles of our feet and the earth, which holds us up, and our awareness of our full weight bearing down upon it. Or just as likely, it can begin in child’s pose: face down, fully resting pose, arms outstretched in surrender. Here, with eyes closed, we’re ready to come awake.<br /><br />It starts as a flutter of knowing. An awareness of heart beating, blood pumping, emotion coursing through veins and pathways of flesh and bone. We are a cauldron of life and we are starting to pay attention. The way we begin to listen to what our bodies are telling us, we scavenge for words to pair with feelings, to give form to the opaque masses. We call forth words from the deep of us in the form of breaths and our chests expand and contract, ever lengthening as voice emits. Even without words, the sound releases courage in vibrato. <br /><br />The breath, the word, the voice generated from deep in our bellies slows, slows, slows - and we expand. <br /><br />This finding our voice is a journey of curves, high arches and low dips, not lines drawn in perfection from here to there. It’s a bending and a stretching, a bowing and a rising, a breaking and a mending, an opening and a lifting of our hearts upward. It’s an unfolding into vulnerability, to that very real pain of being unheard, unseen, misunderstood. It’s an unstifled cry, a scream that empties our lungs and fills us back up again, a plea from vocal chords on fire. It’s anger and forgiveness, learning when to hold position and when to release. <br /><br />It’s a merging of body and soul, our past and present selves, cradling us in the now as we forge the way of becoming. <br /><br />We practice breathing-speaking in the daylight and in the dark. It matters not because when our eyes are closed we see more clearly, lit up from the inside. Still, we light our candles, turn our mats to face new directions, open windows and prop our backs against the walls. We balance, we fall, we bruise, we rise again.<br /><br />We gather words in breaths of quiet strength, and open our mouths.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><i>Joining these words with the <a href="http://afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com/">Kelly</a> and the <a href="http://afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-wink-blink-and-nod-smallwonder-link-up.html">Small Wonder</a> community</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><i> </i></b></span>Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-84961415947334271202015-06-05T17:14:00.001-07:002015-06-05T17:19:21.689-07:00From outward momentum to inward momentum: living the artisan way<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"The creative act began </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">with God creating the universe in which we live. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">when we allow God to re-create the universe within us."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Erwin McManus, <i>The artisan soul </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I began the headlong plunge into midlife crisis at the ripe old age of twenty-seven. Literally on the cusp of finishing two years of intensive graduate work and training - weeks away from launching out into the nitty-gritty pursuit of fleshing out the dreams I'd worn myself into the ground for - my dad died unexpectedly. And with him, the framework of my life and all I'd become to that point, fell with a deafening roar. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I remember, some time after, writing at a coffee shop near work when an old customer walked in. A man with whom I'd resonated in our fairly brief interactions, drawn to the depth of knowing in his eyes. He'd walked through <i>pain</i>. I invited him to sit down with me and, in the course of our conversation, he shared words that haunt me still. Somewhere in the midst of walking through the darkness of his own midlife crisis, a number of years older than mine, he'd commissioned an artist to do a painting for him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"Paint me a picture of the moment in a man's life when he realizes all his young man dreams will not come true."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He described the painting to me in heart-wrenching detail. The man cradling his face in his hands, red dominating the canvas. But it's the words I've never forgotten. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I was already living into that moment. And I lived into that moment another five or six years years before it truly sunk in: losing some of those younger woman dreams, in some way, saved my life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Prior to losing my dad, the reference point of the most transformative season of my life, I was a bit of a mystery to even my closest friends. I lived with all my guts securely locked up and only occasionally, with painstaking self-control and intention, made them visible to a very few. I'd mastered what I later came to call the "illusion of vulnerability." I knew how to say as little as possible, enough to appear I was being revealing, to make the other person feel I'd bared my soul. I never, and I mean never, broke down and cried in front of anyone, unless it fell under the category of Worship or God Moments. Those were safe, because they were really <i>spiritual</i> and not about my humanity (or so I compartmentalized it).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But there came a moment, in the ICU, staring at my comatose Papa hooked up to a respirator, when I could no longer outrun emotion. I didn't have enough fingers, any more, to reach and plug all the cracks that threatened to leak all my insides in a mighty, terrifying flood. And for the first time, I didn't fight it. For the first time, I began to allow people to witness my anguish, unedited. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I gave them a peek into my brokenness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And therein began this long, beautiful journey to authenticity and wholeness. To becoming fully human.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * *</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Whenever I come across someone I haven't seen in awhile, someone who used to know me and doesn't anymore or never knew me at all, I can imagine what crosses their minds in our brief catch-up conversations about life. I went from someone with admirable, active life pursuits to someone who seems, by cultural standards, to be going nowhere. From top of the class in grad school to over six years at Starbucks and no ambition to work in my field of study. From passionate-worship-leader-Jesus-lover to happy-church-drop-out (still Jesus-lover, of a different sort). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I went from outward momentum to inward momentum. From performing to being. From striving to resting. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's no wonder I cringe at the thought of attending reunions of any kind. Few people have a grid for the types of conversations where the stuff of a life is more about how we're coming into the fullness of who we are instead of the outward manifestations of identity: career success, marital happiness, children, houses, vacations, positions of leadership or church-sanctioned ministry, physical achievements. I'm still figuring out how to explain to most people that the things that make my life eventful, or not, are the things happening below the surface. The things that feel too sacred to bring into casual conversation, too vulnerable to share with anyone who doesn't really want to know your heart. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">How do I explain to anyone who simply hasn't been there that the apparent lack of movement in my life belies far more seismic movement in my inner life, in my soul? That my priorities, beliefs, faith, relationships, identity - my universe within - are being utterly re-created. That the work I am putting my hands and heart to is the work of living my entire life artfully, wholeheartedly, and cannot be reduced to what I do for a paycheck.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I am almost unrecognizable from that twenty-seven year old that finally crumbled in the ICU room nearly seven years ago. And thank God, honestly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I have so little to "show" for my life in tangible terminology, according to what our society values and deems worthy. But year by year, the crevices of my soul are being excavated. Year after year of doing the painful work of pressing into the rough edges of suffering and coming more fully alive; of learning to trust the Master Artist who carves beautiful valleys out of utter collapse; of discarding anything about me that is false and saying <i>yes</i> to those places of truth; of heading straight into the fear and finding this is where courage resides; who I am is beginning to emerge, and you know what? I <i>love</i> her. I don't always love her well, but I am growing to love her more. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Because I don't know how to quantify her life, but I know that she is the real deal. </span><br />
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Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-13893865745931122182015-05-29T16:46:00.001-07:002015-05-29T16:46:34.802-07:00Our peeling skins: on friendship and the Everlasting<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm drawn to them as I am to birch trees with their peeling skins, this handful of women in my life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These ones whose roots are mostly hidden deep under the earth, in love's sacred soil, and in part, erupting above ground where feet can tread their coiled arches.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These ones who have drunk the sky's tears to the dregs, tasted the abundance of grace, and who have waited, are waiting still, in months and years of drought.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These ones who have known the battering of winds, the pelting of rain, the tearing of branches, the toll of seasons, and still remain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Their skins map lives of varied, exquisite textures. Gnarled knots, beauty marks of pain, of loss, of heartache, full of mysteries untold. Strips of bark, peeling back in layer upon layer of weathered parchment, reveal stories in scripts of flesh, falling to the earth. These layers exposed leave behind silken spaces, of soul and courage, open to the elements of life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">How I love their scars, their invitations to pause. To behold. To trace the rough and smooth with my fingers and linger in the presence of redemption-in-the-making. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">They are reaching toward the sun and tucking into shadowed places. Straight-backed in parts, bent and twisted in others. They give birth to leaves and buds, shelter to birds and all manner of creatures, and spread their arms out to me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I come as I am to these women and I am known and loved in all my bare and peeling skin. We read each others' fallen parchments in holy hush, with tears and fits of laughter, without judgment. We gently hold up the broken branches and call out the beauty of scars and, at the end of the day, stand a bit stronger in the darkening night. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These women, as these trees, carry the scent of the Everlasting.</span><br />
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Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-53549902845579694862015-05-16T17:35:00.000-07:002015-05-16T17:40:42.168-07:00On touching squirrels and the mystery of rebirth<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If we allow ourselves to touch our bread deeply, we become reborn, because our bread is life itself. Eating it deeply, we touch the sun, the clouds, the earth, and everything in the cosmos. We touch life, and we touch the Kingdom of God.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Thich Nhat Hanh</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">She showed up outside our door the very same day I confessed to God, to the skies above, my hidden, yet unspoken fear: “I’m no longer sure I believe in resurrection.” Not in the Resurrection, as in Christ's, but in resurrection within the casualties of hope. Resurgence. Rebirth. The dead of circumstances, of a marriage, of dreams, of faith, trembling to life again. Did I still believe in <i>that</i> kind of resurrection? </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />I didn’t know. So I sat in the hollow space of that confession, feeling nothing but the weight of empty.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />* * * *</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />We heard her cry, thinking she was a bird and finally opened the door to the night. To our great surprise, at our feet sat a tiny gray ball of fluff with the promise of a bushy tail. A baby squirrel. How she ended up here, at our doorstep, from a flight of steps and parking lot below, we may never know. But she looked up at us with bulging brown eyes and squeaked loudly, without a mama to be seen, and we knew we couldn’t do anything but pick her up and bring her inside.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />From the start, everything about her was magical. A work of art only just begun. Her perfectly cylindrical ears. Her tiny mouth ringed in white with two slivers of bottom teeth. Her soft gray fur. Her penny-sized paws, itty bitty fingers ending in black pricks of nail. And her tail, <i>Oh</i>. That tail. How it already held a baby curve, light and wispy, flicking about her face as she slept and wrapping beside her like a feather. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />She utterly mesmerized me. It took no more than a second of time for her to blow past all my defenses and seize my love-parched heart.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />* * * * * </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />I wrapped her in my oldest, most precious towel, one of the few remaining childhood artifacts. She remained there, close to mine or Ricardo’s chests, the next hour as we figured out what to do with her. My face aglow, I told Ricardo I’d sleep in the spare room that night with Little Squirrel (my intentionally uncreative, non-name for her). He must have already known this because he smiled, as if to say, <i>Of course you will</i>. I placed a bowl with Pedialyte and a syringe nearby, set my alarm to wake me every three hours, and curled into the futon with her on my chest. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />I never felt more joyous or alive at the prospect of a night of little sleep. I wasn’t about to miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime moment.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />I drifted in and out of a light sleep, always aware of her half pound body resting atop my own, rising and falling with my chest. Her breaths, squeaks, clicks and sighs flitting in and out of my dreams. Maybe, I thought, this is what a mother feels like with her newborn. Even though I possessed no grand delusions of being hers, nor a smidge of desire to imagine her as a human baby instead of an animal. Even though I knew this would only be for one night. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It was deeper than that. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">More like stumbling upon a wild mystery baring its beauty only long enough to wreck the heart, yet never long enough to be grasped. The kind where the most you can do is be fully awake in its presence and pray it imprints your soul before passing translucently through your fingers. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />In this sacred moment, a baby squirrel curled in the innocence of rest on my chest, my heart began to tremor.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />* * * *</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />The next day, Ricardo picked me up after work and we drove Little Squirrel up north to a wildlife rehabilitation center. I stroked her face as she lay in a ball on my lap, breathing so faintly I gently roused her every few minutes to make sure she was still alive. I couldn't bear the thought of her dying there, in my lap; of being so new to life, so near to help, and not getting her there in time. I carried her into the center, still wrapped in my old towel, and handed her over as an offering. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />The woman who took her from me came back to ask, with some curiosity, where we found her. She looks like a type of squirrel that’s not from these parts, the woman explained. We told her how the squirrel showed up out of nowhere outside our door, uninjured, no other squirrels in sight. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />A mystery? Perhaps.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />When we came home, I cried. Not because I wished we had kept her, but because my whole body ached with a feeling I couldn’t put words around. The familiar emptiness no longer felt dull, accompanied this time by an acute hunger. And all the next day at work I thought of her, sneaking glances at pictures of her on my phone and feeling a knot in the back of my throat each time I did. At home in the evening, I reached to pick up our tortoise from her daily soak, wrapped in a towel, held her to my chest and had to set her down soon after as the tears fell stronger. I sat in the laundry room with the door closed, sobbing into my knees, wondering from where all this emotion flooded.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />It only kept coming and I kept whispering, <i>What is the point of all this? Of feeling alive only for a night, only to be emotionally wrecked?</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> </i><br />And in the stillness, the darkness, of our laundry room, I felt a faint imprint of hope respond: <i>Resurrection</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * *</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Almost a month later.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I saw the letter from the wildlife rehabilitation center, addressed to me, sitting on our dining room table this morning as I lay out breakfast for us. With a mix of dread and curiosity, I tore it open and read:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"Dear Amber</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Regarding the Eastern Gray Squirrel you brought to us on 4/20/15</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Reference # 15-0583</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We at PAWS Wildlife Center are sorry to inform you that this animal was humanely euthanized after careful consideration of his or her condition...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Thank you for taking the time to help an animal in distress."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Humanely euthanized. </i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I shuddered at the words, and wept.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">At the loss of life. The stabbing pain of hope. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The yet-unresolved question of resurrection. </span>The mystery of her brief, inexplicably disruptive role in rearranging my insides. My inability to convey to Ricardo that this was not "only a squirrel," as we humans are so quick to say to minimize the value of a life, any life, that is not human. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The unmistakeable impression of, in this squirrel, having touched the cosmos, the Divine Presence, the Kingdom of God, and in them, an invitation to rebirth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And so I wait in the mystery, and I honor this little life. </span></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For more on resurgence, my choice for OneWord 2015, you can read </span></i><a href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com/2015/01/in-which-i-jump-on-bandwagon-oneword.html#.VVfNnWYWA7A"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">here. </span></i></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-23022735513284857342015-05-09T15:46:00.000-07:002015-05-09T16:01:56.094-07:00When I learn to fly<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-e_4CKVgQg8U/VU6L5_k0sMI/AAAAAAAAHZQ/rGoGP6a8ZD4/s1600/great-horned-owl-skeleton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-e_4CKVgQg8U/VU6L5_k0sMI/AAAAAAAAHZQ/rGoGP6a8ZD4/s400/great-horned-owl-skeleton.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> It's hard for me to tell stories these days, without the aid of birds. And so I start here. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I wanted to die a little, of embarrassment, of self-consciousness, the other night when my I asked my husband to take these photos of me. We visited the Museum of Flight for the express purpose of seeing a tiny exhibit tucked against a wall, below all the impressive historic airplanes: <a href="http://www.museumofflight.org/exhibits/how-birds-fly">How birds fly</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">From one end of this wall to the other, we watched videos and beheld stunning photographs, studied artifacts and framed wing displays and skeletons, honoring the sacred mystery of flight that has existed long before airplanes. My eyes misted over as I watched a short video clip of <a href="http://www.operationmigration.org/">pilots</a> raising Whooping Cranes from hatchlings to young adults, flying 1,200 miles with each flock to teach them their migration route, in hopes of raising their population to greater numbers. I held my fingers up to brush against photos of birds I may never see in person, to trace the edges of wings. I took this all in, breathless, that no matter how sophisticated our technology becomes it will never compare to the innate intricacies of bird flight. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And then, I saw these graphics on the other side of the walls. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gQcNd1vyp30/VU6CX3dp4aI/AAAAAAAAHYo/eBAaTpFtFB4/s1600/wingspan.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="332" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gQcNd1vyp30/VU6CX3dp4aI/AAAAAAAAHYo/eBAaTpFtFB4/s640/wingspan.jpg" width="640" /></a></span> </span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pyofefPoLQ4/VU6CjKOPqnI/AAAAAAAAHYw/BPZwcQS3eak/s1600/flap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pyofefPoLQ4/VU6CjKOPqnI/AAAAAAAAHYw/BPZwcQS3eak/s400/flap.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Something in me rose up to hush the dissenting caw of embarrassment. I needed to meld myself to these backgrounds, allow myself to become one with them, or part of them, because this is my not-yet-visible reality that I'm leaning into. <i>I have wings and one of these days I will learn to fly. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We belong to each other, these birds and I. This whole of creation and I. In ways I yet have no words to convey but know so much deeper and more primal than many of the things I claim to know. And any chance I get to participate in this reality, even in the form of a painting on a wall, I will. Because I must.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Because birds, for me, tell a parallel story of my own unfolding journey, and sometimes the most I can do is speak of myself in metaphors, mirrors of them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But, <i>oh</i>. How there are things I'd like to share here, discoveries to quietly utter, stories to capture in words, transformations to pay my respects to in writing, relationships offered to me as gifts, from this past month of life. But even as they are being written on my insides, in the darkened places not often privy to the eyes of others, I find that words elude me. As they often do when so much is taking place right on and far below the surface of the everyday. I used to fear, and sometimes still do, if I didn't transcribe them from experience to words they might slip away forever, forgotten in their un-telling. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm learning to get over that paralysis. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And yet, perhaps I'm learning to tell these stories through mediums other than written words. Through photos and laughter and tears and voxes and painted bottle caps, through road trips and binoculars and walks and yoga poses and all the quiet, pregnant spaces where life expands to fill. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's only a matter of time before these wings are formed enough to fly. </span><br />
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<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-50717226850951822702015-04-24T17:34:00.000-07:002015-04-27T19:48:52.354-07:00Where I'm coming into braver skin (#fmf)<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If I could describe my insides these past seven months or so, probably longer, I'd say they resemble a house torn apart on every floor. Like a tornado passed through, but instead of a natural disaster, it's more like The Spring Cleaning of Spring Cleanings. <i>You know what I mean?</i> No item - in the closet, the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen, the laundry room, the garage - left unturned. Every piece of furniture examined, every item of clothing, every decoration and scrap of paper and household product. Piles everywhere: what to keep, what to donate, what to toss, what to store away, what to fix, what to finish, what to hang. And the empty spaces that open up, where art is re-imagined, re-assembled, re-created, or created for the first time, or left empty. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Except, it's not a household. It's my <i>life</i>. It's me. Who I am in my guts, in my soul, in my beliefs, in my relationships, in my skin. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If you're nodding your head, you know what I'm talking about. You know, too, how utterly exhausting this process is. How it takes, most often, everything you have and maybe a little more than you thought you had. It's equal parts invigorating and terrifying; mourning and healing; chaos and peace; clarity and fog.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's a death and a resurrection. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * * </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In this season, I've harbored a strong instinct to hide away. To let the work happen in the shadowed places, for they've been too fragile to withstand the glare of light quite yet. To allow myself this space to wrestle, to know myself, to grieve, to heal, to transform, to become. I'm learning how much judgment I've passed on myself throughout my life and how pressing it is that I learn to be gentle and kind with myself. To love myself, if I am to love others from my truest self.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Yes, I'm learning many things, too many to unfold here and many beyond the scope of this post. But one of those things I'm learning is that I'm just beginning to allow myself to need. I've <a href="http://jasonandkelliwoodford.blogspot.com/2013/04/brave-words-i-need.html">written of this before</a>, but I had yet to know how to go there in practice. How to even identify my needs, let alone learn to accept and express them. And to express them, I'm learning to be brave in ways that stretch me far beyond my comfort. To take risks. To stop apologizing for my needs. To allow myself to need something other than what I'm given. To not annihilate a need if it cannot be met. To not automatically take what is offered me if it is contrary to what I need. To say no. To face off with guilt. To listen to my own discomfort more than I try to perceive someone else's. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In my faith, in marriage, in friendships, in offers of friendship, in work, in rest, in play, in the invitation to live wholeheartedly, I am learning to step into braver skin. Even when I'm hidden away, to be hidden there in brave authenticity, not fear or shame. This is where I live these days. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Linking today with <a href="http://katemotaung.com/">Kate</a> and the Five-minute Friday community of writers, to the prompt of: <a href="http://katemotaung.com/2015/04/23/five-minute-friday-hide-plus-a-new-video-and-the-top-ten-reasons-you-should-come-to-the-fmf-retreat/">Hide</a>.</span></b><br />
<br /><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Joining also with <a href="http://afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com/">Kelly</a> and the community of <a href="http://afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-center-smallwonder-link-up.html">Small Wonder</a>, for the learning I've expressed here seems to fit well within an experience of wonder. </span></b><br />
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<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-17292045559588382502015-04-12T19:59:00.004-07:002015-04-12T19:59:52.843-07:00Return of the swallows (#SmallWonder)<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The swallows have returned. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I saw them today, swarming from a distance as I stood on the bank of the river slough that tumbles through one of my favorite parks. I saw them, electrifying the sky, dancing with paper wings and split tails through layers of blue and white and charcoal. I saw them, and my heart soared.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I don't know the exact date they left. It must have been sometime in the fall, as looking ahead toward winter, their biological clocks chimed their departure. I'm told that from here, they often migrate south to California, Arizona and Mexico to winter, where food sources are more abundant for songbirds. All I really know is that one day I noticed they were gone. The fields lay still in the parks, the meadows absent of song. And I missed them, these birds that enliven the backdrop of my world. And what am I to them, but a giant form moving through their own cyclical backdrop? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Surely they don't know: I am an enraptured observer. A mysterious relative, bound by something more sacred than DNA. A grateful benefactress of their song and dance across the earth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">They came home by the hundreds and thousands. They came home against fantastic odds, obstacles and hardships I am not privy to, inclement weather conditions and sheer exhaustion. They made it, the ones that filled these skies, and I stood on the ground below witnessing their celebration.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />Their triumph.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Their dance of wonder.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And it gave me a glimpse of hope.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Joining these words with <a href="http://afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com/">Kelly</a> and the<a href="http://afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com/2015/04/my-grandmothers-lap-smallwonder-link-up.html"> Small Wonder</a> community. </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Also, if you share an appreciation or love for songbirds, I'd like to pass this onto you. There is a brilliant film in its final stages of production, called The Messenger, about the steady decline of songbirds worldwide. Its goal is to raise awareness, to share a glimpse into the beautiful mystery of migration and its challenges, to promote dialogue and actions that may benefit the conservation of songbirds in our world. If you would like to check it out, you can visit this website (click <a href="http://songbirdsos.com/">here</a>). </b></span>Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-74215712760069184302015-04-03T18:02:00.000-07:002015-04-03T18:15:59.154-07:00On learning the art of self love (#fmf)<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A <a href="http://afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com/2015/04/seeing-psychiatrist-i-dont-want-to.html">friend wrote this week </a>about the hardness, the goodness, of remembering where we've been. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I want to remember - and I don’t - the feeling of my own frailty when I held my leg in my hands as if it were the torn wing of a butterfly. As if it were somehow detached from my body. I held it lightly and struggled under the weight of its brokenness.<br /><br /><a href="http://amber-beautifulrubbish.blogspot.com/2013/05/tearing-mending-and-turning.html#.VR8zLWYWA7A">It was almost three years ago.</a> I had just returned home from the doctor. The visit where my cast was cut apart, after more than a month of seeing my leg post surgery, and I came home with a walking boot I wasn’t allowed to walk in yet. No, walking wouldn’t come for another three months, and that, ever so slowly, like a baby. I came home, gathered courage and strength to shower, and sat cradling my leg as tears spilled down. <br /><br />I’d never felt or seen myself so fragile.<br /><br />I didn’t know it then, but this was the beginning of a gradual journey I'm on toward loving myself. All my life, I’d been primed to offer compassion and love to others; I really had no foundation for how to extend the same kindness to myself.<br /><br />* * * * * <br /><br />Christian culture, in general, is very good at preaching (though not always acting on) love for others. The Greatest Commandment has been summed up in this, many a time: "Love God first. Love others." All good things, except it completely cuts out the last phrase of the commandment: <i>as you love yourself. </i>We love ourselves too much, this is the message I’ve heard taught and written and spoken in a million different versions. Self love is the root of pride, the root of most sins, after all (or so I've been told), and so we’re never taught it. Or, at best, we hear the last words of the commandment mumbled quickly, as if to say, <i>Don’t linger here. It’s dangerous ground. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i> </i><br />But how can we have made it this far cutting off the legs of the vehicle through which we know love and learn how to love others, modifying Jesus’ words into something we think he meant? <br /><br /><b>How are we to love others if we do not know how, have not even received permission, to love ourselves? How have we so confused selfishness with having a self?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I don't know. But I can say, it is no easy task unlearning a lifetime of teachings. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I know we cannot cut ourselves out of the picture and say, “Well, God is love. We love others with God’s love, not our own.” We don’t need a self, in essence, we say. God is all we need to love.<br /><br />And I say, we have strangled and buried our selves for far too long in the soil of this dangerous ground. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Love must start here, in our own skin, and permeate from the inside out.<br /><br />* * * * <br /><br />On my walk from work to my weekly counseling appointment this week, nerves gnawed at my stomach. I knew a hard session awaited me, for I’d felt it growing the past few days, pushing up below the surface. I dreaded the spilling of pain and longed for the safe outlet for it, all in one. And I wished for a close friend walking beside me, walking me there.<br /><br />But then I realized, I have everything I need to be that friend to myself. <br /><br />So I imagined myself, walking alongside me. An arm laced through my arm, tucking in close in solidarity, not saying much. Not saying everything was going to be ok. Not changing the subject. Not berating me for being consumed in the pain of all that’s been pressing in, for feeling weary and overwhelmed and withdrawn . Just walking, gently telling me to breathe deep. Reminding me I can do hard things, that we’ll get through this one step at a time, that I'm brave.<br /><br />I walked myself to the office and sat down, breathing deep, trying to wrap myself in compassion. And I got through the appointment, breath by breath. <br /><br />When I stepped on a crowded bus with headphones in my ears after my appointment, holding onto a rail to keep from swaying too far, my eyes were shot through with the same look I often have when I catch the bus home from this appointment. The whites a hazy red. My emotions raw and spent. <br /><br />I nearly hopped off the bus as it crawled through downtown traffic, wishing for a corner to hide in instead of this group of strangers, as the music swelled their notes of peace in my ears. It was almost my undoing, right there on the bus. Until I had the sense of - <i>Jesus</i> - hanging onto the rail opposite me. He wasn’t there physically, of course, but in my mind he was. I imagined him traveling home with me, not saying a word, his presence saying all I needed to hear. <br /><br />And it said something like this: <i>We’re ok, you and I. We’re on this journey together, and I’m not going anywhere you aren’t. </i><br /><br />I nudged myself to awareness, <i>Did you hear that? Hold onto this, Self. This is good. </i><br /><br />And so I stayed on that bus, receiving great compassion from God, from me, until we made it all the way home.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Joining <a href="http://katemotaung.com/">Kate</a> and the Five-minute Friday community with so much more than five minutes worth of reflection on today's word, "<a href="http://katemotaung.com/2015/04/02/five-minute-friday-good-and-a-brand-new-video/">Good</a>." </b></span><br />
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<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-32721676002692311762015-03-25T06:23:00.001-07:002015-03-25T06:23:58.254-07:00The irony of peace (#SmallWonder)<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I nearly laughed out loud when I saw it this evening. The beautifully rusted ship anchored alongside the shore, it's side bearing the painted name: Angelic Peace. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Yeah, <i>right</i>?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'd fled here in a state of desperation bordering on anything but peace. More like the thirst for peace. Or even a sip of it, a whiff of it... or, the sight of it painted on an old metal ship.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ok, sure. I'll take it in whatever form I can get it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So I came, bearing all the names that press in with their paint brushes to define me at any given moment these days; many of them, part of the process of healing, transition, becoming; others, names I barely give a nod to, hoping they'll not stick around. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Weary. Impatient. Overwhelmed. Anxious. Alone. Grieved. Numb. Disconnected. Distracted. Not enough. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And I sat down on a fallen tree, in the presence of an offshore Angelic Peace, and soaked from a distance, breath by breath, its invisible strokes across my skin. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Peace.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Peace be with you.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Peace be in you.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Peace anchor you.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Peace. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I watched a flock of coots, their black bodies peppering the water around the ship. And the few stray cormorants, bobbing and swimming and fishing, alighting in a propellant of ash colored wings. It was this sight that finally did it, bringing me to tears at the end of the day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">How they flew with such grace and freedom and skill, the way they always had; the way they assumed they always would. And I thought of <a href="http://audubonportland.org/news/march20-2015-cormorants">the 11,000 like them</a> in Portland that may soon be shot from their nests, shot in flight, because of humans refusing to assume responsibility for human error. And those birds have been marked to pay the fine. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Still, tonight these cormorants swim and fish and fly beneath a beautiful, rusted proclamation of peace while the weary-hearted world goes on and cars inch along traffic-clogged streets and humans plot violence against each other and all manner of created things. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And still, peace hovers close by, anchored in the waters.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Let it be</i>, I whisper. <i>Let it be so. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Linking up with <a href="http://afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com/">Kelly</a> and the <a href="http://afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com/2015/03/god-was-everywhere-smallwonder-link-up.html">Small Wonder</a> community.</b></span><br />
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<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7693390593188122891.post-32504696481451884982015-03-16T18:04:00.000-07:002015-03-16T18:13:46.952-07:00Cathedral yoga (#SmallWonder)<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We start by setting our intentions. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>To be kind toward our bodies. To be gentle.</i> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">To withhold judgment or expectation in favor of observing where we are in the moment and supporting ourselves where needed, in the weaker places. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I imagine my body, unbalanced in its distribution of strength, the stronger parts coming underneath and alongside to aid the weaker, working together instead of fighting against. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And then come the breaths.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">As always, yoga flows from an awareness and direction of breathing. Slow and deep, lower-bellied, rib-expanding inhales, pausing to hold, then drawing-belly-back-inward exhales. After we've directed our breaths, we inhale and push out a resonant <i>aaaahhhhh oooooo uuuummm</i> in unison, three times. It's a gutteral, primitive song, unlike any we humans utter in social interactions, but here it is escaping now, soft and vibrant and liberating. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Our bodies flow with the minutes through this hour, inside this vast sanctuary. Stretching, holding, sitting, bending, rocking, balancing, lowering, lifting, opening, closing. Not only bodies, but spirits, too, flow and hold, rock and rest. I feel the tension in tight places, one side of the body weaker than the other, learning to lean in at gentler angles and roll out of positions slowly. I recognize different parts of my spirit as strong and sturdy, others as tender and tired, not yet capable of bearing my full weight. I'm having a difficult time concentrating. My eyes roam the stone floor with its beautiful cracks and up the walls toward the expansive canopy of wooden beams. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Near the end of our hour, we're holding a balance </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">tree pose and I'm wobbling on one leg. Our instructor gently c</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">alls out, "Find a focal point that is not moving or changing," and my eyes latch onto the cross directly on the wall in front of me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I breathe in. Yes, <i>this</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And just following yoga, my eyes focus in on the table where Eucharist is spread and we all are invited to come.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I breathe out. Yes, <i>this, too.</i> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Let this be my unmoving, unchanging focal point in a swirl of faith upheaval and shifting of balance. None other than this God-feast, this table where all our invited as we are to come and dine on Love. To bring our unbalanced strong-and-weak selves, to taste of kindness and gentleness, to find ourselves in the flow of a more beautiful song. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Joining <a href="http://afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com/">Kelly</a> and the beautiful community of <a href="http://afieldofwildflowers.blogspot.com/2015/03/as-good-as-it-gets-work-and-love.html">Small Wonder</a>.</span></b><br />
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<br />Amber Cadenashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16495600314886616325noreply@blogger.com8