Wherever There Is Water

In one way this post could be about Amy Su, how friends this faithful and good rare. We share the ease of roommates (Vive La Bartlett St!),similar love of peculiar detail (Bonacci's and Michael Bolton!), and picked up again easily after 11 years of not. We know each other's twangy tune. I get her love of Ulysses, cross-body bags, graphic prints. She shares my love of Gilmore, eats as slowly as I do, and points things out about my kids that I overlook. She invited us to this amazing little night.

Or this post could be about Grandma Millie. Everything lately has been punctuated by her absence. How the parade we were part of last night was the opposite of a funeral. Okay, I guess birth is the opposite of a funeral but last night there were no placentas to analyze, and no Apgars to rate. The parade is linked above. Amy Su works at the Museum and invited us to an art event that was simply magical and in perfect contrast to our grief. To paraphrase the story:

It is a modern epic about Huberta, an old woman who is separated from her husband. For economic reasons, their children decide that Huberta will stay with one child in Florida. And the husband will stay with another child in Maine. A distraught and disoriented Huberta asks her husband, "How will we see each other?" He replies, "Wherever there is water is where you will find me." So one night by the pool, she remembers this, grabs her handbag, ups to go in search of her husband." Well, we went on a night parade in honor of Huberta and her quest.

First of all, that story. Who can't rally around that story? Someone in search of the love of her life, guided by clues of water? An elderly couple who is marginalized and minimized by the demands of modern economic life? Someone with a child-like scrutiny, out in the world in search of water and what ways it might guide her to find her husband?

I think this might be sounding surreal. Put simply, it was an event of artists who had made lanterns, dressed in white and paraded a 10 block radius led by huge luminous floats. People wore masks of sea creatures, umbrellas turned into jellyfish and fish heads. There was Korean drumming. Break dancing. Vellum lanterns on bamboo rods. And yet nothing to buy, no merch. We got there just as the parade was assembling. We got the last four lanterns. Amy Su greeted her friends and helped us into the queue.

I counseled the kids, "Try and expect the unexpected." Benicio was like, "Is it starting? Are we late?" Manny had a faraway look in his eye and played with the battery-powered lights in his lantern. Clara commented on face-painting, was rapt during the break dancing. Calliope zoned out in the stroller. And later, during a shoulder ride sang me her song, "Look at What I Made." It was a late night for them. Geoff kept saying things like, "This is like 'Wake Up the Earth. It's like the Lantern Parade meets Wake Up the Earth." Both are festivals we went to in Jamaica Plain put on by a group called Spontaneous Celebrations. When we lived there, he had talked about doing a documentary on them. But we both love that-- civic festivals that are seasonal without being political or pagan. Where there is public playfulness, communal joy without religious pamphlets and vegan food. Okay maybe sometimes a little vegan food (tikki masala!) and an occasional tract table. But last night's event being fairly new was not so laden. The air of "maybe no one will show" mixed with a wild and festive whimsy made such a nice vibe. There were tons of arty singles like Amy. But then there were families like us.

The highlight of the night for me- seeing Geoff. In procession, face to the wind, carrying a kid on his shoulder, a lantern in the other. He walked to honor the story of an awesome old woman. Someone living on her own terms even late in life. Someone in pursuit of her marriage, making a pilgrimmage for it. I like thinking about that: Did Huberta find her husband? I like to think that she journeyed to the funky little swamps, serene lakes, the grand Atlantic. She shuffled along, greeted by the wildlife, greeted by her reflection. Then I like to think that by a cool stream, she sits down and finds a picnic where her husband was there waiting for her, in search of her too.

http://www.fleisher.org/exhibitions/water.php

What if Grandma Millie and Grandpa are doing that now, they are sitting down on a checked blanket with pulled-pork sandwiches on soft rolls? Their bodies whole, their unity restored? Oh, wow. Please let that be true. If so, "Guys, listen. You should use Grandpa's shoe as a blanket-weight for your picnic just like in the picture. We miss you both and think of you every day."

Mildred Beatty, 1919-2010

I cannot believe that you are gone, Grandma Millie. Clara says that she knows that Pepop can take care of himself now. Calliope hopes that your wheelchair goes to someone sicker than you. Manny still prays that you will get better so that you can be with your friends in your room. Benicio says that he's sad that you have died.

I liked you right away. You had an anchoring presence in our family, unapologetically feminine, and with an eye for detail, and so much love. I have hung your dishtowels in the kitchen. The ones you appliqued with the scene playing out between the rooster and the sunflower. I cannot look at them without weeping, your handwork, your sense of humor. Geoff is writing a paper on Dr. Zhivago and is taking a break to pack lunches. You would be so proud.

Your Pharisaical Ass Is Mine

Okay, so maybe I thought taking counseling classes would make me wise. It would enlighten me to cope with my relationships, not the easy ones. I thought it would help me find clever and quippy ways to navigate the little family pond here, the sometimes swampy larger family, and the rough and raging sea of relationships beyond that. It would help me cope better, manage stress, give me new and tougher skin.

Well, I was wrong. I am only a few weeks in, and I am treading deep water.

I have written three papers. Read 2 case studies. Now guess who is my case study. Yep, it's me. 25% of my grade for the class will be my Self-Counseling Project. Right, I have to cross-examine myself based on a bad pattern I have. You can choose road rage, gossip, sarcasm, grumbling, anxiety, fantasizing, among others. This is when I am glad my first course is online. I don't have to stand in front of people and recount my lame behaviors. And having them go ahead and discuss, oh, that would do me in.

This first class is the Dynamics of Biblical Change. It sounds like physics or something-- the laws of thermodynamics or something about torque. My cousin Marky advised me, in physics, the answer is always either pressure or friction. Well DBC is not about physics. But at this point I'm pretty sure the answer is always our brokenness or said better, our junk. In our class, we study what it means to change. How the Bible might help advise us to become different. You could say help us to heal, or help us to break a pattern, or help someone see things in a new way.

The class' first tack is this examination of ourselves. If we examine our actions closely, we will conclude that we are not an end to ourselves. That alone, we will not change ourselves. I am learning that not only do sinners need to repent of their sin but that the Pharisee must repent of her rightness. (A Pharisee was a member of an ancient Hebraic sect, distinguished by strict observance of the traditional and written law, and commonly held to have pretensions to superior sanctity. From dictionary.) I can see how the scaffolding of my heart is so dug in--these things make me a good person. These things make me superior. Thank God I'm not as bad as that. Constantly shifting my gaze and shifting my blame, I build my perceptions around these assumptions so I can go and live a tidy existence, where I never am never questioned.

Of course, then the essential and inconvenient linchpin of all theology --BUT GOD-- breaks in and does major upheaval. God breaks through and invites me to take down the scaffolding, look at my brokenness-- the ways my sin is woven into my fabric, the ways my pride is dug down deep, the ways I like to keep others at bay. Psalm 119 and St. Paul's letter to the Phillipians this week have confronted me with God's invitation to lay my junk down. And just observe how unwilling I am to look down into my motives, my wiring, my leanings.

If I want to help anyone, how can I illuminate anything if I am not in the practice of facing my own junk? So if you were wondering what I've been up to, it's been doing really fun stuff like that.