Creativity and "The Northernness"

If you've ever read C. S. Lewis' Surprised by Joy (which I had to for a class in college--these days I'm nowhere near that ambitious in my spiritual literature) you might recall a concept he calls "the Northernness." When Lewis was young, he came across a headline and an image in a book that inexplicably filled him with a sense of longing of the profoundest kind--"a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of Northern summer, remoteness, severity…almost like heartbreak, the memory of Joy itself, the knowledge that…I was returning at last from exile and desert lands to my own country." He named this visceral emotion "Northernness" and, deeply inspired, wrote a poem on the spot (which, with typical self-deprecation, he in retrospect essentially called garbage).

Though I remember very little about the rest of Surprised by Joy, I have never forgotten the Northernness because I, too, have had experiences of it--almost impossible to describe, those rare moments in life when a pin pricks the universe and you feel utterly transported, standing on holy ground. The stillness of a frozen lake in winter; a first discovery of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry; the moon rising over empty desert. The other reason I recall this concept so clearly, though, is that Lewis goes on to discuss later in the book his disappointment in the course of life that this mystical emotion or experience, the "old thrill" seemed to become rarer and rarer. "To 'get it again' became my constant endeavor; while reading every poem, hearing every piece of music, going for every walk, I stood anxious sentinel at my own mind to watch whether the blessed moment was beginning and to retain it if it did. …But far more often I frightened it away by my greedy impatience to snare it, and, even when it came, instantly destroyed it by introspection." This, too, I have experienced first-hand. The desire to capture a moment of mysticism can overpower the experience of mysticism itself and thereby tarnish it, obliterate its natural occurrence. Still (and forgive me, I can't find the reference in the book) I remember Lewis going on to say essentially that the desire for the Northernness is, in a sense, the Northernness itself. In other words, even if we're not being struck by these thunderbolts of awe on a regular basis, and even if we feel lesser and lower for having lost the ability to consistently have such experiences, it is our desire to have them that matters, that attests to their existence and our connection to them.

Lately I have been feeling this same way about creativity. Anthony and I have long talks these days about how much we want to be creative people. He wants to write and perform music; I want to write something, create something--I just don't know what. Neither of us feels inspired at this time in life. We repeatedly attribute it to the constant stress and drain of having two small children and another on the way, not to mention work and church and sick parents and selling our house and moving into another. (As I mentioned in my last post, this window of life feels like a bit of a holding pattern.) But I've come to relate this situation to Lewis' summation that the longing for the Northernness is the Northernness. Meaning that even if Anthony and I are not currently living out our potential as creative people or are not currently feeling that creative spark very much, it doesn't mean we've ceased to be, deep down, creative people. The desire to create, in essence, is enough proof for me to keep believing that we are creative people. Not that I want to sit around making excuses and clinging to this claim of creativity with nothing to show for it. After all, I am also a big believer in what Anne Lamott calls the "shitty first draft"--as in, sometimes, you've just got to park yourself down someplace and crank out something, anything, and go from there.

Hence this blog post.

Regardless of how I feel (or don't feel), how inspired (or uninspired or unmotivated or just plain lazy), the show must go on. Though the longing for creativity represents the genuine creativity underneath, I've still got to sit myself down and create. So, in the midst of this gap of boredom, I've determined to make at least a weekly habit of creating, be it a collage for a friend, a nonsensical comic strip, or...yes, even a blog post. The "shitty first drafts" will continue until morale improves. ;)

Bored, Season One

It almost defies belief, but lately I've actually been……bored. After finishing a giant, months-long transcription project that consumed most of my children-sleeping hours, I found myself somewhat uncomfortably awash in a sea of time. Weird, right? After any stretch of busyness, having time feels like paradise found, and you loll about in a contented, deep-breathing haze of movie watching, book reading, and neglected house cleaning. (At least that's what I do.) But after awhile, the movies you've been wanting to watch get watched and the books you've been wanting to read get read. Your house gets clean to the point of acceptability, so that what remains is the really deep cleaning stuff you didn't really want to do anyway. This is what's happened with me, and now I find myself unsure of what to do next. Two nights ago, telling myself I might as well, I actually spent a good thirty minutes cleaning my kitchen cabinets. Right, the exteriors of them. I can see your finger poised on the back button of your internet browser as you think to yourself, "Get a life, woman! Go make some new friends! Get a job or serve the poor!" I know, I know. That's what I tell myself half the time.

And yet….maybe this season of boredom is an unexpected gift. Being six months pregnant, I'm not exactly in a position to get a job, train for a triathlon, or start a new ministry with guns--er, spiritual gifts--blazing. Maybe bored--for now--is a good thing. Maybe bored is a privileged, sacred break from crazy. A break I shouldn't go stuffing crap into just to re-create a comfortable chaos. When my kids are blessedly napping during the day and I have no pressing tasks to complete, I've been trying to simply remember that silence is an experience I am usually whining about not getting enough of. Well, here you go, Miss Whiny Ungrateful-pants. Oh, yeah…thanks, God.

So even as I sit here on Sunday night wondering if it would be just plain lazy to watch yet another movie or read yet another book, to choose something leisurely over something constructive, I realize that all too soon my life won't look like this at all anymore. Three more months and a little pink-clad person will be demanding my time, my energy, my sleep, my milk. And sooner than that, more freelance work will probably come my way and I'll be wondering how I'll ever manage to finish that novel before the book club meeting…let alone clean the pee stains off my guest bathroom toilet. So for now, my hope is to shake off the guilt of un-productivity and enjoy this free gift of time. To just be okay with just being.

TV Without TV

People's responses vary when I tell them we don't have TV at our house. Some people give me an awkward smile and a look that says they think I'm probably also still breastfeeding my four-year-old and growing some mary-jane in my back yard. Sometimes, it's, "What, did your kids break it or something?" (Not an illogical assumption, but not the reason why.) Others give me a once-over to ascertain why I'm not wearing a long skirt and my hair in a bun. Still others make consolatory sounds, understanding me to mean that we simply don't have room in our tiny budget for anything pleasurable.

The reason we don't have TV at our house, though, is none of the above.

We're not trying to be revolutionaries; we're not trying to be saints. We possess neither a hydroponic garden nor a 12-inch mid-90s Sony in our basement for the purpose of viewing Veggie Tales. Our kids also did not break the TV, though one of them did recently scratch the screen (oh, that big, beautiful, last-year's-Christmas-bonus screen!) beyond any hope of repair. And, fortunately for us, our budget could stand to include a cable bill.

Truth be told, the story of our transition from TV to no TV is not terribly exciting, and actually reveals more about our moral failings than our moral superiority. When we first moved into our house 4 1/2 years ago and had the cable installed, we noticed that we were suddenly getting about 50 channels more than we had gotten at our previous residence. I justified this by telling myself that in Mesa, everything is cheaper than in Gilbert. (Badum-ching for East Valley residents.) So for four years, we blissfully enjoyed 70-some channels for $22 a month, never bothering to find out exactly why we had been blessed this delightful free upgrade…UNTIL my dear husband had to go and get the cable company to send a guy out to fix a problem with the internet. This astute employee happened to detect the extra channels, and our tidy little setup was nixed. Lo and behold, for four years, we had indeed been receiving $50 worth of cable for free every month.

The loss was sudden and shocking. I think I actually went through a few stages of grief. I specifically remember, that first night, watching a full five minutes of a soundless, fuzzy, black-and-white Lifetime movie--the only remnant of the former glory that used to stream gratis into my living room at the touch of a button--before accepting that it just wasn't coming back. A decision had to be made: would we now pony up the extra $50 a month or do without? Well, if you know us very well, you probably know we're way too cheap to may $1.50 a day for ANYthing other than food or rent. So no, we decided we couldn't justify paying to get the channels back. Then we realized that we were still paying $22 a month for the basic channels we never watched anyway. Well, heck, that's almost $1 a day for something we wouldn't use at all! And so, in an act of either defiance or frugality, we cancelled cable completely.

This was six months ago. Since then, for the same price we paid for cable, we've opted for a combination of a Netflix streaming plan and the TV shows we can get on hulu.com. (If you haven't heard of it, don't worry, it's legal.) The transition has been oddly meaningful. While I miss TV on a regular basis (like, um, every single day) I get the feeling that my life is much better without it. There are several reasons why.

-Since I'm now the master of my own viewing destiny, the stuff I watch these days means a lot more to me. Nothing is left to chance.

-Therefore, if I'm going to watch anything, it's a complete show or movie that I've picked out--it's a commitment. Since I can't just sit down and watch 5 minutes of something, I don't.

-When we had cable, I could totally justify watching trash. Like, "Oh, I just turned it on and it happened to be The Girls Next Door, and it was lewdly fascinating, so I kept watching it." Without TV, there would be several more (probably devious and sneaky) steps involved for me to end up watching anything so raunchy.

Overall, without TV, I waste less time and feed my brain less garbage. And as much as I miss my old pals the Real Housewives, that's an outcome worth keeping…for one LOW-LOW-LOW payment of $22 a month!!! Call in the next ten minutes and receive a genuine leather Chia Head juicer ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!

The O.T.

Wow…it's been awhile. If you've noticed a lapse in posts around here, let's just say that life is crazy AND I've been reading through the Old Testament. (Both are true.) I always try to keep myself reading a particular book of the Bible--I'm more likely to stick with it that way--and one day in September, I sat down and started Genesis. And like Forrest Gump, who "decided to go for a little run" and ends up running across the country for three years, I just kept on reading. Truth be told, after almost four months, I'm only at the end of Numbers. It would appear that, like Forrest, I'm on the three-year plan…however, one of my New Year's resolutions is to get to the finish line of Malachi by the end of 2011. I'm pretty sure I can do it. If you can get through the Pentateuch, I think you've pretty well proven your commitment and the rest is a home stretch. It's been 12 years since I read through the whole Bible, and from what I recall from back then, my 10th grade self did a LOT of skimming. Like most of Leviticus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel…well, probably most of the entire Old Testament. So this time, four books in, it's provided several eye-opening insights.

Here is a chronicle of my revelations. I'll try not to include too many lamentations. Yuk yuk.

The good/easy to swallow/fits in nicely with my faith paradigm stuff:

- Getting the whole picture of who the Israelite people were--their overarching story from the beginning--gives me a much better lens through which to view Jesus, the early Christians, and the Bible as a whole. I'm even learning significant little factoids, like that they're called the Hebrews because Abraham lived in Hebron. Never knew that before.

- A lot of the rules and regulations in the Law make a lot of sense in ways the people of that day couldn't possibly have understood, like not eating certain animals that probably carried numerous diseases or not touching dead bodies, which would have of course caused contamination. Obviously, God was protecting His people, and they just had to trust Him for His good reasons....much like I have to do about a lot of things today.

- Such a huge sense of relief--and a sense of just what a big deal it is--that Jesus' death on the cross constituted THE ONE sacrifice acceptable to God for ALL sin. When you read 100 pages of all the offerings and sacrifices the Hebrews had to perform, it really leaves an impression of what a burden we as Christians are freed from.

- Certain stories are really exceptionally moving. I developed a whole new affinity for Joseph after reading his story straight through. His continued depth of love for his brothers, even after they sold him as a slave to a foreign country, is challenging in the best way. I love the fact that he's always running off to a corner to weep with love for them.

The bad/challenging/kinda faith-shaking:

- Is it just me or was Moses a total megalomaniac? It's hard for me to buy that he was "more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3). To me, he appears pretty ego-driven and power-hungry, and since he's the only one hearing directly from God, it seems somewhat suspicious that God is always on his side. When Miriam and Aaron dare to oppose him, God yells at them and strikes Miriam with leprosy (why only Miriam, by the way?)

- The blatant sexism, such as the "Test for an Unfaithful Wife," in which if a man suspected his wife of infidelity (he didn't even have to have any reason; maybe he ate a bad quail taco and was feeling cranky) he could bring her before the authorities. She would be forced to drink a bitter liquid intended to make her barren or miscarry. If God intervened and the concoction didn't work, the woman was innocent. If the liquid did indeed function as expected, she was deemed guilty of sleeping around. (Numbers 5)

- Having to make atonement even for sins that were unintentional. This really rubs the wrong way against my understanding of God as gracious and compassionate, or the gentle Messiah who wouldn't even break a bruised reed (Isaiah 42).

- The number of times God totally destroys people, even His own people. With all the references to God as "slow to anger" elsewhere in Scripture, He sure is depicted as a hothead in the Pentateuch. It seems like Moses is constantly scooting off to the Tabernacle to pacify this volatile God who is about to wipe everybody off the face of the earth.

Anyway, these are my honest thoughts. I'm sure I should probably be reading with a good scholarly commentary that would explain some of the passages I find offensive--add that to my New Year's resolutions, I guess. I still believe, of course, that the Old Testament is the inspired Word of God…but it does seem to raise almost as many questions as it answers.

Where thou art - that- is home

--Emily Dickinson

We're getting ready to put our house on the market. Its 1200 square feet, which seemed like so much space to own after shared dorm rooms and a small apartment, are now growing tighter and tighter. With two boys and baby #3 on the way, we are fast approaching three little people in a vaguely rectangular room with one dresser, one bookcase, one rocking chair, two beds, and only one closet. I don't know how long we could sustain this 3:1 ratio, especially if baby #3 happens to be a girl. Then there's the issue of the living room. I don't so much mind all three kids playing in that relatively small space, but since we entertain a lot, there's a certain point (about 6 people, maybe 8 if they're children or very friendly) at which everyone else is just going to have to sit on the floor. I know in college, this was the kind of thing that made for great parties--everybody crammed into one tiny, probably crappy space--but as we look toward our 30s, I'm not sure this is the kind of situation our friends and family are really digging. Then, in addition to the issue of capacity, there's the glaring issue of the fact that this house is currently valued at about 37% of what we paid for it. Keeping this house long-term would likely mean decades, which, with our family and some other factors, is simply not a possibility.

Still, it's been a difficult decision to make, whether or not to move. It's heartbreaking, in some ways. Despite its limitations, this house has held so many memories, hopes, and firsts that I picture them all ballooning up, filling the vaulted ceiling and spilling out through the chimney. Our First Place. When we bought this house, it was being rented by a couple in their 70s who apparently thought all the original fixtures and decorating from 1984 were A-OK. We threw ourselves body, soul, and bank account into remodeling, repainting all the peach walls and ceilings (yes, peach ceilings), removing every scrap of rattan, and completely overhauling the kitchen. Once we had kids, we closed off the loft to make a nursery and put in grass in the yard. We used to sit in the gazebo in the yard at night and just behold our home, illuminated. We would say to each other, "Can you believe we own this place?" And now, as surely as our things begin to get packed in boxes and bags, packed inside this house are five years of dinners around our table, of crying babies, of White Elephant Christmas parties. The thought of someone foreign owning OUR house and calling it home warps my brain.

Eventually, though, I knew we would be leaving this place. Somehow I just held to the illusion that when you own a home, it's truly yours, forever. To marry the concepts of "own" and "home" provides a profound sense of security--like pretending this is heaven and not earth. Like anything is really permanent; like a good thing would never go and change on you. And it's funny, because I know that leaving this house is the best choice for our family. It's another, different good thing--a better thing, even, than staying would be. But it's that famous C.S. Lewis sandbox vs. beach analogy. If it feels comfortable, it must be best, and la-la-la I'm not listening! I don't want to think about what else out there might actually be better!

So now we're in that surreal stage of looking at our home with different eyes: potential buyer eyes. I'm asking myself how long that applesauce stain has been on the wall and whether people will notice the postmortem-style outline on the ceiling where the kitchen cabinets used to be. And now that we're trimming stock and taking names, I'm also asking myself why I ever thought of a gold and black sequined shirt in the closet, But I might wear it someday, or why I still can't part with the quick-drying camping towel I used on European backpacking trips. (We haven't gone camping in 6 years.) But at the same time, looking around here, I think, Wow, these people kinda have it together. The lighting is ambient; all the furniture fits in all the right places; there's a color scheme; and (at least since I finally took out the trash yesterday) it doesn't smell like diapers and old salmon. And those are the aspects of home we'll take with us anywhere we go (can't promise on the diaper smell). We've come this far in five years, turned this hodgepodge ode to the 80s into a place comfortable and inviting. Wherever we go from here, I know we will carry that same spirit and create a home where we can continue the life of our family.

So if anyone tries to feed some cheesy line like "Home is in your heart" or "Home is where the heart is," I'm going to shoot them now and ask questions later, but secretly…..

…..you know what I mean.

Thanksgiving and Lent: What Feasting and Fasting Have in Common

I'm starting to view November as a holy month. That might sound odd, as the one event most of us associate with this month is a festival of gluttony unrivaled during the rest of the year, but go with me on this one…It started in an unlikely place: my three-year-old's preschool calendar. Along with the shape of the month and clip art of cornucopias, the calendar exhorted parents to discuss with our child things that they're thankful for. In our family, we have a Thanksgiving notebook that we all write in on Thanksgiving day (well, those of us who can write--those who can speak just tell us). We jot a couple of pages of all the things we find ourselves grateful for this year. I love this tradition--I love that we have any Thanksgiving tradition that pertains to the actual giving of thanks. But Gabriel's preschool calendar started me thinking about taking the entire month of November as a devotion of thanks to God. I've heard of people doing this before, and it always sounded a little cheesy and overdone to me, but really, what could be wrong with being more thankful? So every day I am trying to call to mind and give thanks for the innumerable blessings and gifts God has so graciously poured into my life. And once I purposed to do this, I began to realize how such an exercise could prepare me even more fully for the Christmas season.

Christmastime, as we all know, seems to begin in a headlong rush to the mall no sooner than the giblets have been wiped from the good china. (I know, I know, the cliche of Christmas commercialism is rivaled only by the cliche of our bemoaning that commercialization.) But truly, as much as I love the season, it can be at times a going-through-the-motions that leaves me feeling more weary than worshipful. But my hope this year is to turn my November, as Lent is to Easter, into a pre-Christmas preparation of heart. By focusing every day on the things I am thankful for, I believe I am readying my heart for the great gifts the Christmas season holds: gifts of time with family, material gifts (not gonna lie!), and of course the gift of the child in the manger. If I can train my heart and mind now, maybe I will also even be better prepared to weather the storms of stress and strain that are also bound to come with the Christmas season. If I can begin to shape my own attitude, maybe I will be more likely to bless and less likely to curse the people that inevitably cause some of that stress and strain.

As a Catholic, I am (sometimes painfully) familiar with the value of Lent--that time of abstinence and sacrifice that whittles the soul into a shape of humility for Easter. Though it's a time of fasting, I think it parallels with this time of feasting. Both are powerful activities that draw us nearer to God. Both are instructed by and practiced in God's Word. Both prepare us to receive even more abundantly of His goodness. And interestingly, I noticed yesterday that Philippians 4:6 (which is basically the biblical recipe for peace) includes thanksgiving as a key ingredient: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." I hope this path of thanksgiving will lead (bonus!) to an increased peace in my life.

And if it does, thanks be to God!

Who Were You / Who Are You--Reflections on the Ten-Year

Last night was my ten-year high school reunion. The San Marcos Resort back ballroom played host to somewhere between 100-150 late-twenty-somethings with one thing in common: we were all eyeing that amazing margarita cheesecake. Oh, and we all happened to graduate from Chandler High School a decade ago. I thought I would write a few words about the experience, partly as a way for myself to process the evening (because wow, it was a lot to take in) and partly for those who might read this who did or did not attend.

Soooo, high school, you crazy big fish, you. You spat us out onto the shore of adulthood, and look at us now………exactly the same as we were ten years ago. Well, maybe not quite. But the thing that struck me the most about the reunion, upon reflection, was actually how little people have changed. By which I mean that the midgets and dwarves are no longer midgets and dwarves--isn't that weird? Just kidding. By which I REALLY mean that the girls who were popular in high school--at least the ones who attended--still mostly look amazing and all showed up in runway-worthy cocktail dresses. (I'm starting to think that some people are just born with style genes. I have no other way to explain how they were born dressing like stars and I am still shopping at Target.) Also, the people who brightened up my boring chemistry and civics classes have remained witty and intriguing--have become even more interestingly so as adults. And then the people I just could never seem to find much to talk about with…you get the idea. The same gaggles of girlfriends who did everything together in 10th grade are the same gaggles cramming into the photo booth like the Japanese getting packed on the bullet train. The same gangs of guys who beat up on each other in wresting are, come to find out, still good-naturedly beating each other up. And to me, all of this is really sort of heartwarming. My group of friends more or less fell apart after high school, so I'm glad to see so much camaraderie remains among my classmates.

Going in to the evening, I had very few, if any, expectations. But there's one thing I had been warned about: posturing with a capital P. After hearing about my brother's reunion two years ago, I expected people to pad their accomplishments like a white-lying resume. But they didn't. Because guess what? No one became an astronaut. No one has their own VH1 talkshow. No one invented Post-Its. The fact that our class has (frankly) achieved only modest success was actually a big relief. Because of this, I felt last night was a very gracious evening. I'd be surprised if anyone felt like they didn't measure up, because most of us are doing rather average, normal things. A lot of people seem to be on the verge of something--they're in law school, they're studying for a certification, they want to go abroad. Maybe that's what it means to be 28 and an American in the 21st century. We're a bunch of late bloomers who are still searching, still looking to get it just right. And fortunately for us, we live in a forgiving culture--or perhaps we've created that forgiving culture by our lack of trajectory.

In my case, I went in thinking I wouldn't have much to show for myself since my career never got off the ground and I "just" stay at home with my kids. I figured everyone would have expected more of me. After all, I was Vice President of National Honors Society, by gum! I did not take the gravity of that immortal office lightly. (Ha.) But the more I heard myself repeating out loud my own little sound byte of what I do and why, the more I was reminded that I genuinely believe in what I'm doing with my life. I believe in the importance of making a loving home and being my children's primary caretaker. I don't want anyone else to spend more hours in the week raising them than I do. And I've spent so much time wringing my hands over jumping ship from my career and wishing I had something more impressive to put on paper, but in the end, I would so much rather spend this time in my life building the foundation of my family than building the foundation of my career. There's nothing wrong with a career--I want one, desperately! please! eventually!--but I have been given children, and I am doing what I believe I am called to do in their best interest.

Lastly, I have to say how truly hard it is to condense ten years into a few sentences--you tell people what you're doing now, but what about everything in between? There's a part of me that wished I could have explained all the transformative events of my twenties to these people. The tragic: my step-father turning out to be a pedophile, a stalker, and a larcenist; the melon-sized tumor in my body that traumatized my early days of motherhood. The joyful: the thrill of months traveling Europe; the blessing of how far we've come financially since our first apartment (where your housewarming gift from the management was a "club" for your car); the miracle of becoming a parent. But in the brevity of the moment, you get only about as much space as fits on your pin-on nametag. For me, that's "I stay home with my two kids and I'm having another." And that's okay. I know there's more to me, my life, and the last ten years than that--and I know the same is true for everyone there last night. I only wish I had time enough to hear it all.