landing in ordinary time.

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I took it as gospel truth that it would always take a week at least to shake off the school year. In the past, after one of the Bad Years, it took two full weeks for the sun to bake the frustration away until suddenly I felt human again. We are the luckiest people in the world to have all this time to spend together, but I hope it makes sense to say that it can be stressful to shut everything down in June and then start it back up in August.

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This year, I did pretty well. I have learned to schedule things like inventory and ALL BOOKS DUE earlier (always earlier) so that I am not scrambling those last few days of school. I switched off the library lights, locked the door, and walked into summer. The good and the bad floated away as I walked out the door.

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It helps to be better prepared, to know the rhythm of the school and the school year. But it also helps to know that I need a landing pad. That’s why I posted poems and prayers and books and songs last week, because I know that I don’t transition so well without a little help and I needed someone to share things with.

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The landing was relatively smooth this year. We have eaten burgers and built sandcastles and maybe having a two-year-old doesn’t give you a lot of time to wallow. Here we are in summer, in the extraordinary of our ordinary time.

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Published:
6/19/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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what we are reading.

We have started doing our story time on the front porch because Atticus loves to be outside more than anything else. Other than that whole humidity thing, I enjoy this because the people who are walking and driving by can see us reading. Parent points are multiplied if other people see you being a good parent. Reading the same book over and over and over also gets you parent points. And did I mention that we signed Atticus up for summer reading at the library? What I am saying is, I basically have infinity parent points. I can’t wait to cash them in for a plastic slinky.

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At the beginning of the year I said to Mike that I wanted to post more about what books Atticus likes. We read books about snow on our snow days and books about Dr. King for his birthday and books about the sit-ins on February first. We read books about love at Valentine’s Day and books about spring and Easter. There were books about construction sites and trains and we loved all of them (ok, I get really bored with the ones about trucks) but I never remembered to actually post about them. Here are a few that he’s been into lately.

Sam and the Firefly by P. D. Eastman

Mike has a knack for making inappropriate jokes at the wrong time. Not dirty jokes, just maybe not the most sensitive ones. I am used to it, but when Mike tells Atticus that bears eat people right before we are going to the zoo, well, you can imagine how well that went over. This spills into the idea of introducing topics, because Mike doesn’t always think through how something might sound to Atticus. Take fireflies for example: Atticus already hates flies, so what might make them even worse? Fire, of course. Let’s casually drop the concept of fireflies into a conversation, shall we? There was a lot of crying. To atone for his sins, Mike checked this book out of the church library, and Atticus loves it. He loves the words and he loves the bad tricks and more than anything he loves the phrase “cold dog.” Recommended for: anyone who is afraid of fireflies.

The Boy and the Airplane by Mark Pett

This is a wordless picture book and the little boy looks like Atticus and it’s sweet and funny and all of us love it. Mike used it as a writing prompt in his classroom. Highly recommended by all of us, even for people who have hearts of stone.

It’s a Magical World by Bill Waterson

Obviously making sure Atticus loves Calvin and Hobbes is a big priority for me. So far, so good. He likes the scenes where they ride in the wagon and he likes it when Calvin burps and he especially likes it when Calvin runs around naked. My work here is done. Recommended for: anyone who likes to run around naked, obviously.

Olivia by Ian Falconer

I don’t know why Atticus likes Olivia so much. But he really really does. He pulled it off the shelf the other day and said, “This is a great book.” Recommended for: anyone who has ever tried on a bunch of different clothes or wanted to paint like Jackson Pollack on the wall.

As for me, I borrowed a Kindle from my school for the summer, and I have been trying it out. Sober Mercies was the first book I had ever read on an e-reader. As usual, I am cutting-edge with my technology. It was great how small it was, but I tend to skim a little bit more when I am reading online, so it took a while for it to feel like “real reading.” I have tried a few others since then.

Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian by Bret Lott (via NetGalley)

This book of essays is difficult to talk about, because although it sounds like something that would be right up my alley, I don’t think I am the target audience. I enjoyed the discussion of art and Christianity, but Lott seemed a little bit aggressively conservative to me, especially in the first few essays. The essay at the end where he discussed his father’s death was wonderful, and I wished that had been the whole book. I know a lot of thoughtful Christians who are more conservative than I am who would enjoy this very much and I recommend it for them. (available later this month)

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How to be Black by Baratunde Thurston (a physical copy from the public library)

I don’t know if I have talked about this explicitly, but I work in a school where I am a minority among the students and staff. I have learned a lot about black culture and my own privilege as a white person, and I am trying to learn how to be a better listener. Baratunde Thurston was interviewed on an episode of The Confab, and I decided to check out his book, which is hilarious. Part memoir, part instructional manual, it made me laugh until I cried more than once. I kept reading passages to Mike but then I couldn’t finish because I was laughing so hard that he couldn’t understand me. Thurston’s story is also engaging and he has insightful things to say about the ways we in America talk about race. Recommended for: people who like funny and uncomfortable things, aka people who enjoy the idea of me carrying this book around.

Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein (via NetGalley)

So, Code Name Verity? Code Name Verity! That book was awesome. This is Wein’s new novel and it is also awesome. This one is not about spies but it is about girls who fly planes, specifically Rose Justice whose plane ends up over enemy territory during WWII and who ends up in Ravensbruck concentration camp. Ravensbruck is a camp specifically for women (it’s the one Corrie ten Boom and her sister were sent to, which I did not realize until after I finished this book) and Rose ends up befriending a group known as the Rabbits, who are the inmates who had medical experiments performed upon them. Listen, this book is partly set in a concentration camp, so it is not an easy topic, but it is a great story. Like Code Name Verity, one thing that sets it apart is the strength of the heroine, the humanity of the characters, and the focus on female friendships rather than romance. Recommended for: fans of WWII stories, people who like to cry. (available in September)

If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan (via NetGalley)

This book is about a teenage girl named Sahar who is in love with her best friend Nasrin. They live in Iran, where it is against the law to be gay or lesbian. Part of the story was about how Sahar is considering a gender reassignment, because her relationship with Nasrin would be legal if she became a man. I enjoyed the contemporary look at life in Iran for teenage girls, but I never completely understood why Sahar loved Nasrin or whether Nasrin actually loved her back. Recommended for: fans of LGBT YA fiction, people who like acronyms. (available in August)

The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs (via the used bookstore)

I read this years ago when it first came out and enjoyed it, but I picked up a copy at our used bookstore and I am so glad I did. I liked it even more this time. I have read other books about spending a year doing something and what puts Jacobs in a class of his own is that he takes the time to reflect on his journey (not to mention the fact that he appears to actually be on a journey rather than simply moving towards an already established conclusion). Recommended for: people who like the Bible, people who like immersion journalism, people who like laughing.

What are you reading these days?

—

I received free copies of Letters and Life, Rose Under Fire, and If You Could Be Mine from NetGalley. My opinions are my own.

Published:
6/14/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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books for ordinary time.

When I started thinking about ordinary time, one resource I came across was At The Still Point: A Literary Guide to Prayer in Ordinary Time. I gathered inspiration from that book and found Enuma Okoro’s poem there. Here are some other books that I recommend for ordinary time.

The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon

“Every real thing is a joy, if only you have eyes and ears to relish it, a nose and tongue to taste it.”

The Quotidian Mysteries by Kathleen Norris

“The Bible is full of evidence that God’s attention is indeed fixed on the little things. But this is not because God is a great cosmic cop, eager to catch us in minor transgressions, but simply because God loves us–loves us so much that we the divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life. It is in the ordinary, the here-and-now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew-laden grass that is “renewed in the morning” or to put it in more personal and also theological terms, “our inner nature is being renewed everyday”. Seen in this light, what strikes many modern readers as the ludicrous details in Leviticus involving God in the minuitae of daily life might be revisioned as the very love of God.”

An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor

“People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay. Whoever wrote this stuff believed that people could learn as much about the ways of God from paying attention to the world as they could from paying attention to scripture.”

New and Selected Poems: Volume One by Mary Oliver

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Published:
6/13/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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two songs for ordinary time.

“High Hope” by Glen Hansard (special guest Moji)

“I’m gonna make it across this tight rope
Then I’m coming for my prize
No more I’ll be waiting around
While life just passes by”

–

“When It Don’t Come Easy” by Patty Griffin

“I don’t know nothing except change will come
Year after year, what we do is undone
Time gets moving from a crawl to a run
I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home
You’re out there walking down a highway
And all of the signs got blown away
Sometimes you wonder if you’re walking in the wrong direction

But if you break down, I’ll drive out and find you
If you forget my love, I’ll try to remind you
And stay by you when it don’t come easy
When it don’t come easy”

Published:
6/12/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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words for ordinary time.

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Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

—

“The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.” -Brother Lawrence

—

“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I’d look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just feel a prayer.” -Anne Shirley

—

…for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins

—

“The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.” -Annie Dillard

Published:
6/11/2013 –
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By Kari
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a reading for ordinary time.

Kairos. Real time. God’s time. That time which breaks through chronos with a shock of joy, that time we do not recognize while we are experiencing it, but only afterwards, because kairos has nothing to do with chronological time. In kairos we are completely unself-conscious, and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we’re constantly checking our watches for chronological time. The saint in contemplation, lost (discovered) to self in the mind of God is in kairos. The artist at work is in kairos. The child at play, totally thrown outside himself in the game, be it building a sand castle or making a daisy chain, is in kairos. In kairos we become what we are called to be as human beings, co-creators with God, touching on the wonder of creation. This calling should not be limited to artists–or saints–but it is a fearful calling. Mana, taboo. It can destroy as well as bring into being.

In Our Town, after Emily has died in childbirth, Thornton Wilder has her ask the Stage Manager if she can return home to relive just one day. Reluctantly he allows her to do so. And she is torn by the beauty of the ordinary and by our lack of awareness of it. She cries out to her mother, “Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me . . . it goes so fast we don’t have time to look at one another.” And she goes back to the graveyard and the quiet company of the others lying there, and she asks the Stage Manager “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?” And he sighs and says, “No. The saints and poets, maybe. They do some.”

-Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

Published:
6/10/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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a poem for ordinary time.

“Passing Ordinary Time” by Enuma Okoro

It is a hard art to learn,
catching quiet
by palms raised
cupped in
air shifting location
here and there like
trying to guess the pattern of falling leaves,
and hoping to feel
the soft descent of moments
when silence slips

This ordinary time is
gifted with days,
weeks of mundane grace
routinely following the liturgy
of hours anticipating creation
tuning its prayer and praise to the
rhythms of incarnate love.

I am used to the uproar,
the Holy drama,
the appetite’s gnarled discord
of fasting and feasting on borrowed, time,
the knocking of angels,
the blubbering piety of waiting,
appointed seasons for guild and grief, tears of joy and disbelief,
the birth of miracles, the passion of virgins,
the mourning of a love so divine.

This ordinary time is
gifted in its quiet, marked passing
Christ slips about
calling and baptizing,
sending and affirming,
pour his Spirit like water
into broken cisterns,
sealing cracks and filtering our senses,
that we may savor the foolish
simplicity of his grace.

Published:
6/9/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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1 Comment

a prayer for ordinary time

A Prayer for Ordinary Time by Rev. Susan Bock

God of seasons and Sabbath,
God of our days and our hearts;
You bless us with greening time,
that we might be renewed.

Teach us to live slowly,
and taste the goodness of your love.

Show us how every moment
is alive with you,
far from ordinary,
trembling with hope,
shining with glory.

Through Christ,
who found you in corners of quiet,
and in whose arms we find rest.
Amen.

Published:
6/8/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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1 Comment

ordinary time.

It is the last day of school and the long lazy days of summer are finally upon us. For the church, this is ordinary time. I was first delighted by the phrase “ordinary time” on a bulletin in church a few years ago and every year I am delighted to see it come around again. Not “ordinary as in plain or uneventful, but ordinary as in without special emphasis: rather than looking at one aspect of Jesus’ life, we are looking at the big picture.” The church calendar helps us make space in our lives for grieving and hoping and remembering and celebrating, but summers are for ordinary time.

My life is ordinary in both senses of the word during the school year: I shelve books and sweep the floor and roll trucks down the hall. But to say that our summers are without special emphasis is to put it mildly. We do little projects around the house and we wander over to the pool for some serious lounging. One day blends into the next without feeling wasted.

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“Atticus is a child of his own. He makes choices and sticks to them,” his progress report said this week. Apparently he refused to pretend to play the drums while on a bear hunt and instead insisted upon playing air guitar. Now his class can pretend to play any instrument they want, thanks to Atticus. I was fiercely proud when I read that–my child is creative and he is a leader! (But my heart sank a little bit, too, because I know that his teacher was really just saying that he is stubborn.)

It’s a mom cliche, I know, but I was sitting on the floor and he flew past me with his wild hair and still-chubby ankles and I was struck by how foolish it was to ever think that he was mine. Of course he will always be mine and I will always be his, but now I see that he was, from the beginning, his own little person. A child of his own. I worry a little bit about wasting the days we have with him, and for this reason the season of ordinary time feels like a gift.

We spent the last few weeks of school testing testing testing and I spent a lot of that quiet time thinking about the summer ahead. I am not one to cannonball into the water or throw myself off the high dive. I prefer to ease myself in. Over the next week, I am posting some of my favorite poems and prayers and words and songs and books for ordinary time as a way to slide into summer.

It’s true, ordinary time began a while back, but I mark time with the church calendar and the school calendar. I look forward to syncing the two over the next few days. How do you transition into summer?

Published:
6/7/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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1 Comment

saving my life.

Every week after the bread is broken and the wine is poured, these words are spoken: the gifts of God for the people of God. The ordinary made extraordinary when we share the meal. In the Bible, Jesus is portrayed as physical and practical. Take and eat this food. Shake that dust from your sandals. Pull up those nets. Does someone need your shirt? Give them your coat, too.

I like that Jesus prioritizes physical needs, and over the past few years I have learned about listening to what people need rather than assuming that I know already. But here’s the rub: Jesus was a model of both casting a vision and meeting practical needs. I prefer the “boots on the ground” version of Christianity and lose interest when a church talks about “winning the city for the kingdom” but never does anything to make that happen. The big picture people probably think that my faith looks too much like works. We need both parts in order to carry Jesus’ message: the people who see where to go and the people who will make sure we get there.

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This week is testing at my school. We are required to secure proctors to ensure that the tests are administered correctly. Often, schools recruit parents for this job, but many of my students have parents who work or don’t have transportation or don’t speak the language or aren’t too comfortable in school themselves. This makes finding parents to proctor for our testing even more difficult, but I believe very strongly that my students deserve the same ideal testing environment as in schools where volunteers are more plentiful. I called in all my favors trying to find people. Friends generously gave of their time or recruited others for me. My church, as they did last year, stepped in immediately to help.

There are miracles in my faith tradition, but in the end isn’t it about the ordinary things? Water and bread and wine. Regular people showing up and pitching in. I helped organize the proctors on testing mornings, and I saw familiar faces and friends of friends. I was at work, so I couldn’t say what I wanted to say: Those of you who took the time to be here, who have kids at other schools but who came here anyway, who used your connections, who jumped in when we expressed a need, you are the hands and feet of Jesus to my students. It was tiring and boring and probably a little frustrating, but you were participating in holy work. You are the grace of God to me. You are what is saving my life this week.

What is saving your life this week?

Published:
5/30/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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i might have finally learned how to quit you.

(With apologies to Brokeback Mountain.)

Josh Ritter says that every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied, and I think he means love, but maybe he’s just talking about what life and other people do to you. How do we survive that tight feeling in the chest when we are hurting? The one that makes it hard to breathe, difficult to cut ties even when you want to?

Ritter’s words resonate with me because I consider myself a tightly wound person. There different ways to talk about forgiveness, but these days I think of forgiveness as an unwinding. I close my eyes and see myself following the path of a labyrinth, letting my heart loosen as I find my way out. Step by step by step.

I bought into the lie that forgiveness is a one-time deal. Of course it’s not. Of course you can’t decide one day to forgive someone and be done with it, just as you can’t decide to love someone and never have to revisit the way you feel about them. If you manage to unwind even part of whatever is tied around your heart that is keeping you from forgiveness, you should be aware that it sometimes mysteriously manages to wrap itself back up. You haven’t done anything wrong when this happens. It’s just one of the hazards of life. In fact, I think it might be a good thing because it means things are not stagnant, that you are dealing with a different aspect of what hurt you. It’s a reminder that we can choose, again and again, the posture of forgiveness rather than thinking of it as something in the past.

Over the weekend, I read Sober Mercies by Heather Kopp, and while I am not an alcoholic, I related to many parts of the story. Heather had the idea that a magical genie god would swoop in and fix things for her, and when that didn’t happen, she felt shame because her faith didn’t save her from alcoholism. I recognized myself in the need to do things to numb the pain of everyday life, whether it’s reading too much or eating too much or drinking too much or spending too much time on the internet. Heather’s story is about about grace and taking things step by step and learning to need other people. When you choose to admit addiction, you are saying that it’s part of who you are, but you are also opening yourself up to let God work. My favorite line was when she said, “Maybe surrender has to happen more than once.”

In truth, I think it has to happen every day. Not only because putting practices in place helps us be more disciplined, but because it helps us to open up space for God to move, for us to see our deep need of something greater and to give God a chance to fill it. This is where the magic happens for me, when I know that I am part of something bigger than myself.

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I have given up diet soda a couple of times this year, and then started back when there wasn’t anything else available or it was a stressful day. But I have been on the wagon again the past few weeks, and part of that has been because of active planning. I bring a mug and a box of tea bags with me every day, and when I need extra caffeine in the afternoons, I turn to that instead. If God’s mercies are new every morning, then perhaps we should accept that other things are reset as well. We get a chance to start over, but we also have to fight some of our battles again.

In January I declared that this would be the year that I would focus on being soft-hearted, and also that I didn’t really know what that meant. Almost halfway through the year, I am starting to believe that it has something to do with not feeding the thing inside me that wants to numb my pain and to do everything on my own. There are some areas where my heart is tied up in knots. Whether it was my doing or someone else’s or just the way life works out would be difficult to say. I wish the pain was over, that I could just be over it, but the flip side is that I get more chances to untangle my heart and try again. Unforgiveness, Diet Dr Pepper, that person who completely misunderstood me: I might have finally learned how to quit you, if that means that I get to try again tomorrow.

–
Netgalley provided me with a review copy of Sober Mercies, but my opinions are my own. I recommend it for people who like faith memoirs that aren’t afraid of being a little messy.

Published:
5/29/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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2 Comments

a poem for sunday (accidentally posted on a monday)

I know, I know, a 30-something white Christian mommy blogger posting Mary Oliver–especially this poem in particular–has been done. And yet. It is so great that I am going to post it anyway. I will be honest and say that we watched the whole fourth season of Arrested Development yesterday, which is why I didn’t remember to get on my computer and post.

“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Published:
5/27/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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1 Comment

a steady quiet pentecost.

I meant to do something to celebrate Pentecost. Something with strawberries to represent tongues of flame. And balloons. I would probably have instagrammed it.

But this is a busy time of year for teachers. Our whole family was still recovering from Atticus’s surgery and subsequent grumpiness. And, if you must know, I feel a certain amount of ambivalence about Pentecost. On the one hand, there is the presence and the mother-comfort of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand there are things like speaking in tongues and flames and a wind so strong it can knock people down (or not). Not to mention that this is a difficult week to talk about rushing wind.

What I like about Pentecost is the reminder that God can go and be everywhere. Surely God’s presence guides us every day as we strive to bear a message of love and justice and righteousness and forgiveness into a world that seems unjust and unforgiving. There is beauty in the idea that God, like the wind, will not be contained. I recognize that wildness and restlessness within myself, as part of being an image-bearer, and I am reasonably comfortable with the idea that God’s pursuit of us is reminiscent of wind in speed and persistence. But I have never experienced God in dramatic or violent ways, and for that reason I think I will stick with quieter metaphors: a still, small voice. The refreshing breeze that signifies the arrival of summer evenings, when the heat edges off and you lift your hair to feel the cool on the back of your neck. I am content to celebrate God’s presence and the beginnings of the church in a quiet way, to light candles and hold the knowledge that I am beloved.

In my life, there are moments surrounded by books and others spent chasing behind a boisterous toddler. I feel the steady presence in a sacred place, carry it with me in my heart. For there is no place we can go that the Holy Spirit will not go with us. Happy Pentecost, friends.

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(us, at church, on Pentecost)

Published:
5/23/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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1 Comment

on being a helper instead of needing one.

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The helpers have been in the news a lot lately: the people who ran towards the bomb blasts in Boston, the neighbor with McDonald’s. As much as I would want to be the person who runs to help after a bomb goes off, the truth is that I think I might have run the other way looking for safety. To follow this train of thought is disconcerting. Would I have helped get those women out of that house in Cleveland, or would I have held back and not wanted to get involved? What would I do if my students and I were actually in danger? Am I content to report to my superior or will I be the person who calls the police? In retrospect it is easy to say of course I would have done the right thing, that I would even have known definitively what the right action had been. The truth is that I probably see smaller-scale tragedies every day and let them slide. I fear I would be out of practice if I encountered something greater.

My unwillingness to dive in could probably be attributed in some ways to my introverted nature, but as I have thought about it the past few weeks, I wonder if there isn’t something else going on as well. I was raised in a church that taught certain things about men and women. Women’s lives should center around the home. They are to submit to their fathers or husbands or their church leadership simply because of their gender. Men have certain roles and women have certain roles and neither the two shall meet.

This was a damaging message for me to learn as a young girl. When we teach–whether implicitly or explicitly–that women are weak and passive then we are directly creating an environment where young women don’t learn how to stand up for themselves or to stand up for others. When we teach girls and women that they are the weaker sex, that men are the leaders, that they have to submit, then we are teaching them that they are less than. I believe this is why I am not the first to jump to help others: I was taught to to think of myself as someone who needs help, not as a helper. I see myself as vulnerable while others are strong.

Even Mike was surprised when I brought this up. I don’t present myself to the world or consciously think of myself as someone who needs to be rescued. I knew even as a teenager that those princess in the tower books were not for me. But I absorbed those messages just the same, took in the idea that I should wait for directions.

This is also a damaging message for boys to learn. There is a lot of talk in churches about depending on God alone, but the truth is that we are teaching both men and women to depend on men. When women must rely on men to make decisions it is surely no surprise that they learn to need help rather than being helpers themselves. It’s also no surprise that these same men learn to treat women as inferior instead of as equals.

As I listened to this week’s sermon that focused on courage, I thought about how Biblical heroes like Daniel and Esther were brave and flawed. I have no idea what I would have done if I found myself in those stories. My husband is someone who advocates for me by encouraging me to stick up for myself, and the support I have gotten from him and from my church has helped me to realize the importance of being an active helper. At the same time, I know that not everyone has such a wonderful partner who will walk beside them and shine a light when things are dark.

When I ask myself whether Jesus would have wanted me to hold back from helping others because of my gender, I have to answer that question with a resounding no. As I try to learn a new way, I see that we as a culture still have a lot to learn.

Published:
5/21/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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a poem for sunday.

“You Can’t Have It All” by Barbara Ras

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this.

Published:
5/19/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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saving my life.

Last Tuesday, Atticus and I showed up at the surgical center before 6:30 (yes, that is in the morning) for him to get a second round of tubes. He’d had three ear infections in the two months since his first set fell out, and those ear infections were making all of us miserable. So, tubes. And, for good measure, let’s take those adenoids out, too.

I was less frightened this time, knew better what to expect. He snuggled into me on the surgical bed, and I laughed at him as the medicine started taking effect and he went from normal to WOAH to MUNCHIES in about 30 minutes. The only time I got worried was while I was waiting for him to wake up, when I heard other kids crying. After they released us, I stopped to get him a milkshake and then we had a low point when he threw up on the way home.

couch

The truth is that I like taking care of him when he’s sick. I made him comfortable on the couch, got him whatever food and drink he wanted, and set him up with the iPad. I have less patience for that in-between stage, the cranky time before he is actually well again. That in-between stage lingered for about a week, so my Mother’s Day started at about 4:30 in the morning, when I forced Atticus to take a pain reliever and then settled into his (too small for me) sleeping bag on the floor of his room. As I listened to him sleep, I felt sorry for myself and thought up facebook statuses about how breakfast-in-(sleeping)bags should totally be a thing. Also mimosas.

And then I spent a fair amount of time staring up at the ceiling and wondered if I had made a wrong turn somewhere. He’s being awful to me, is this because I am a terrible mother? Am I a terrible mother because I want him to go away so I can get some sleep? And how terrible am I for feeling these things on Mother’s Day of all days?

In the give and take, ebb and flow of daily life it is easy to forget that what we are building is a relationship. Not a one-way system of parenting where I funnel my (questionable) wisdom into his brain and he does what I say. We are playing the long game, where we learn from each other, get mad at each other, forgive one another, love one another. A relationship is a long conversation. Thankfully our conversation has resumed and no longer consists of one person yelling NOOOOOOO a lot.

The crazy monster beast levels of stubbornness and orneriness (his and mine) have receded to normal toddler/parent levels and it is so nice to have my boy back. That is what is saving my life this week. What is saving your life this week?

Published:
5/17/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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lived in.

One of my pet peeves is when teachers tell students to be quiet because this is a library. Not anymore, I say! These days the library is a dynamic learning environment. Despite the silence you remember from your childhood (when I got in trouble at both my school library and the public library for volume choices), libraries aren’t the fortresses of quiet that they used to be.

As our students’ use of technology changes our schools, the ways they use the library have shifted. This spring, as I did my inventory, I focused on moving books and furniture around to make things more inviting for my students. At one point it looked like this:

image

But now it looks more like this:

image

Things are a little bit tidier and I am happy with how the space is being reinvented, but a few weeks ago I realized that my students don’t like for things to be too organized. When the books look too nice on the shelves, they are hesitant to mess with anything. All of us are afraid of what it looks like in that first picture, but my students don’t really like the second one, either. I have higher circulation and more students making connections with books when I keep the library somewhere in between. Not too cluttered but not too organized. Lived in.

“Lived-in” was also the phrase I used to describe the feeling of inhabiting my own body a little bit more. I needed the reminder that the goal is not perfection but being welcoming and comfortable while allowing for change and progress. I will take my loud and slightly messy library any day over a perfect, quiet one. Thankfully, it seems like my students feel the same way.

Published:
5/14/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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3 Comments

a poem for sunday.

I had planned to find something other than this, but it’s really my favorite poem for Mother’s Day.

“The Lanyard” by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Published:
5/12/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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1 Comment

reckless trust.

photo (64)

Where are we going, Mama?
Where ARE we going, Atticus?
To the library!
That’s right!

Atticus is in a phase where he asks questions that he already knows the answers to. Here’s a random sampling: What are you doing, Mama? What’s in your mouth? What’s that noise? Where’s Daddy? Librarians patiently answer the same questions over and over, so I am particularly well-suited for this part of the job. (Random sampling: Where’s the bathroom? Why isn’t my projector working? Do you have any Diary of a Wimpy Kid books? Answers: The door by the exit. It’s not plugged up. They are all checked out.)

He has questions about Big Bunny, too. Where’s Big Bunny? When I turn it back on him, he knows: She’s under a rock. Back there. I buried Big Bunny before Atticus got home that day so he didn’t see her body (or the box). He looked for her cage and confusion crossed his face. We were careful to say things like, “She died,” and, “She won’t be here anymore,” because we like to use real words for things. His little hand held mine trustingly as we walked to the back of the yard, his bright eyes searching our faces for answers about what he should do next. When Mike knelt down next to the grave, Atticus imitated him. He’s proud of the rock he put on her grave and he likes to visit it every few days.

I assume these questions are a security thing, that he wants to be sure that nothing has changed, or he likes asking when he already knows the answers (me too, kid). Maybe it’s like hiding when you know you are going to be found or reading the end of the book first. He has faith that we will answer him, over and over and over. We hold him when he cries, we pick him up when he falls, and we say the same things time and time again. He trusts recklessly, inspiring us to respond without holding back.

Published:
5/6/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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1 Comment

a poem for sunday.

“On Turning Ten” by Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light–
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

Published:
5/5/2013 –
Author:
By Kari
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Comments:
1 Comment