Next To Nieveaux- Part One

Last week, I told you about a story I told at the general meeting of my church women’s group.  I mentioned that the story I told was the extremely abridged version of a longer narrative I wrot a couple of years ago. I asked you if you would be interested in reading a serialized version of the original story.  One person responded with a resounding “Yes, please.”  To show you that I do not need to be asked twice, here we go…

Part One: Introducing Princess Picclopena

There is no dark in the kingdom of Nieveaux. The sun and the moon and the stars all shine simultaneously around the clock. It snows there frequently, although most of the silver white fluttery powder melts before it leaves the sky. Only a thin layer of snow blankets the ground, but that blanket never goes away. It does not matter how warm the sun gets, that layer of snow never quite recedes. The people in Nieveaux live with sparkle in their eyes.

Nieveaux’s government is virtually nonexistent. There is no need for one. People keep to themselves, meticulously following the laws of civilized society wrought over centuries of Nieveaux culture. No one ever comes from outside the kingdom to cause trouble. In fact, no one ever comes from outside the kingdom, period. Nominally, King Noble and his wife Queen Theodora rule the kingdom as benevolent, if somewhat indifferent, monarchs. Their daughter, Princess Picclapena, is the culmination of their lives’ work. The only real job for the monarchs of Nieveaux is to produce and preserve more monarchs.

When Noble and Theodora married, there was a collective sigh of relief in Nieveaux. Noble was the first in line to the throne but had shown no interest in marrying throughout his twenties. Right after his 30th birthday, he met a beautiful, kind, accomplished young lady named Mariette. Mariette had a pure, open heart that generated love effortlessly. Noble began to pay court to Mariette. This scandalized his parents. His actions also scandalized the small fraction of the Nieveaux population who paid any attention to anything beyond their own  front doors. Mariette was not of royal blood. Also, Mariette and her family lived at the Edge of the Curve, the official boundary of Nieveaux. No one in Nieveaux knew what lay beyond the Edge of the Curve, but the people of Nieveaux believed that citizens who lived too close to the boundary were tainted by the kingdoms of the Outside.

Noble defied his parents and the community by continuing his courtship. He finally proposed a union between his royal house and Mariette’s humble family. While such a marriage of unequals was the closest thing to trouble that Nieveaux had seen in generations, the families eventually agreed. The work of a monarch is to produce monarchs and, at 30, it was long past time that Noble got to work.

Noble and Mariette floated along on the amazement of their love for some months. There were elaborate preparations for a wedding worthy of a prince of the realm. Mariette’s family was not able to match the opulence of a royal wedding, but they gathered flowers and ribbons and lace to make gorgeous bouquets for every pre-wedding event. The day of the wedding rehearsal, Mariette went out to gather fresh flowers to grace the altar. A severe snowstorm arose. That day, the snow did not melt quickly. The storm raged and flurried all around her for hours. She never returned. Mariette’s family and Noble went looking for Mariette, but it was useless. All they found was a bouquet of white roses, trimmed with icicles and evergreen. The bouquet appeared to have been dropped next to the largest tree in Nieveaux, thrown from Mariette’s hands as the wind and snow threw her against the tree. Her people had to assume that Mariette was blinded by the snow and disoriented. They believed she sustained a blow to her head that caused her to lose consciousness and freeze to death. They decided that they must wait until the snow in the area melted to a reasonable level so they could excavate to find her body.

The snow in that area of Nieveaux never melted from that day forward. Elsewhere in Nieveaux, the topography returned to its pre-storm state. There was a thin layer of snow all over the ground all the time, but it would have been easy to unearth anything covered beneath it. In the Curve of the Edge area, however, the snow stayed mounded. Another strange coincidence was that the bouquet of white flowers stayed as fresh as the day Mariette picked them. The evergreen never wilted. The icicles never melted. Her family kept the bouquet in a protective case to always remind them of Mariette’s beauty and pure goodness.

Noble locked himself away in his castle for a month after Mariette’s death. When his family and his people told him he must marry, he refused. It was as if all the vibrancy and power he had within him died with Mariette. As time went on, though, he did tire of living within his own head. He came out of his locked room and began to go about the normal daily routine of a dashing young monarch. He was rich, popular, and quite the catch. He knew that he was born to marry. He also knew he would never love again the way he had loved Mariette. He decided that he might as well marry to please his family and his kingdom.

Noble decide to propose to Theodora. It was a highly satisfactory match in the eyes of the people of Nieveaux. Theodora was Noble’s third cousin and was fifth in line to the throne in her own right. She lived in the third castle on the right from Noble’s palace. She was beautiful and accomplished. She was poised and intelligent. She was born to be a queen. Noble found her to be an attractive and pleasant companion.

Once again, a royal wedding was in the works in Nieveaux. This time, everything went according to plan. The bride was stunning. The groom beamed. The decorations of gold and silver and precious gems gleamed… but the flowers were not quite as special as they had been for Mariette’s wedding. That night, when Noble and Mariette arrived at the Palace in the Pines, where they were to honeymoon, Noble found a fresh white rose bouquet, trimmed with icicles and evergreens, on the doorstep.

Time passed. Noble ascended to the throne. The kingdom celebrated a magnificent coronation for King Noble and Queen Theodora. They were the “it” couple, lauded at every turn. It seemed that the king’s sad romantic history had retreated into nostalgia. King Noble and Queen Theodora seemed very happy together. The kingdom ran just as it always had, to everyone’s satisfaction.

Everyone became even happier one day when the royal herald announced that Queen Theodora had given birth to a healthy baby girl. Her father named her Princess Picclapena. Princess Picclapena went to live in her own household, meticulously cared for by servants appointed by her parents to keep her safe. Her governess, Lady Agnes, guarded her fiercely from all things ferocious. Because Princess Picclapena was so precious to the royal house and no one wanted to risk her getting hurt or sick or endangered in any way, she only left her personal palace on rare state occasions. Even in the gardens of her palace, servants watched her play to make sure she stayed happy, healthy, and safe. King Noble and Queen Theodora visited her each day in the early evening hours. Picclapena loved that time of day. She always put on her coziest nightgown and wrapped herself in her quilted satin robe. Her queen would bundle the princess onto her lap in a rocking chair and quietly rock her to the sound of silence. The atmosphere was silent because King Noble and Queen Theodora did not speak to their daughter for fear of scaring her or hurting her. Since her parents did not speak, Picclapena did not either. She just snuggled close to her mother while her father looked on with an incredulous smile on his face. When Princess Picclapena went to bed, her parents went back to their castle until the next evening.

Princess Picclapena’s world was not always silent. Every day, her tutors came to teach her the great history and culture of Nieveaux. Picclapena learned the story of the royal succession, the importance of safeguarding the monarchy, and the need for caution in all things. She learned not to open the door to strangers. She learned not to question the great truths of the Nieveaux philosophers. She learned not to play too hard or jump too high or laugh too loudly. She learned to never leave her palace grounds without her parents. She especially learned that she must never, ever go beyond the Edge of the Curve. Picclapena would often watch the world of Nieveaux pass by outside the palace gates and wonder what it would be like to wander the kingdom on her own. Sometimes, she even thought she heard the far-off sound of music playing.

Whenever she mentioned her dream of life beyond the gates to her tutors, they explained that such a thing was not possible, nor even desirable. Clever, well-brought-up  princesses understood that they could have everything their hearts desired inside the palace grounds and there was nothing to be gained from the risk entailed with leaving her sanctuary. Picclapena was not sure this was true, but she liked to believe she was clever, and she knew she was well-brought up. After a while, she stopped asking about the world outside the palace gates.

Finally, an exciting day came. Princess Picclapena was going to join her parents for her very first official public appearance since her christening. She was to cut the ribbon at the opening of a new ice-skating rink at the center of the kingdom. The ceremony would take place in the evening when the second star twinkled. All day long, people came to the princess’s palace to prepare for her outing. Her tutors came to instruct her on her royal duties at the event. The seamstress came to fit her new dress. The hairdresser came to freshen her curls and change the color of the ribbons in her hair. The cobbler came with brand new slippers to match her new dress. A florist came, delivering a corsage of beautiful flowers to wear on her wrist. Princess Picclapena saw more people on skating rink day than she had seen in the entire year combined. She watched excitedly by the palace gates, as they swung open and closed multiple times. Once, she even jumped on the gate and began to swing on it. Her governess, Lady Agnes, quickly and gently removed her from the hazard.

Not to be deterred, Picclapena kept watching the hubbub at the gate. As she watched, she noticed a small white puppy just outside the gate. Delighted, she rushed to pet him, but he ran away before she could reach him. At first, she did not even notice that she was outside the gate completely on her own. Then, she noticed a man standing a few feet from her gate.

“Hello,” he said. “I am Ezra. How are you?”

“I think I am okay,” replied the princess. “How are you?”

“I’m very well,” Ezra responded. “Who are you and how did you get here?”

“What do you mean? I am Princess Picclapena, and I am standing right outside my palace,” responded the princess a little irritably.

“Are you sure?” Ezra asked politely, “I don’t see any palace.”

Picclapena looked around and was surprised to see that, in fact, the palace was not in sight.

“Oh no,” she cried, “I must have followed that little white puppy further than I intended. I have no idea where I am. And I am supposed to cut the ribbon at the ice-skating rink opening this evening!”

“Well, I might be able to help you,” Ezra said. “I can tell you that you are just next to the Edge of the Curve. It is quite a pleasant place to be. It may not seem like it to some people, but I think you will like it if you give it a chance.”

“But I am a royal princess! And I am not supposed to leave the palace grounds by myself. I am certainly not supposed to get this close to the Edge of the Curve!” Princess Picclapena retorted.

“Why not?” asked Ezra, quite reasonably.

“I’m just not. It isn’t safe. I have to be extra careful because I will one day be the monarch of Nieveaux. In the palace, there is no danger. Everyone is kind to me. Everyone makes sure I am comfortable. I know exactly what to do.”

“Oh, so what do you do?” Ezra asked.

“I, I, I, uh, I can’t explain it very well. Mostly, I am attended by my tutors to learn things so that I can be a good queen of Nieveaux… you know, history, culture, how to behave properly. I am particularly good at behaving properly,” Picclapena replied doubtfully.

“Hmm… it doesn’t sound very interesting.”

“It might not always be interesting. My governess tells me that it isn’t important that life be interesting or fun or exciting. It is important that I remain safe, learn how to do my duty, and be a good queen one day.”

“And what does a good queen do?” asked Ezra.

“There are Things.” Picclapena proclaimed importantly.

“Like what? Your father is king, right? What does he do?”

“He mostly just proclaims things. He is a very smart man and knows the answers.”

“The answers to what?”

“What is Right. He never talks to me, so I do not know exactly.”

“He never talks to you? At all?”

“No, my mother and father want to make sure I am not hurt or scared. If they talk, they might tell me something that will harm me. I did hear them talking once, though, as they left my palace to go back home.”

“What did you hear them say?”

“Hmm… let me think. I don’t remember exactly. My father was talking rather loudly. He sounded angry. My mother was crying. It had something to do with me, but it was not exactly about me.”

“That sounds confusing.”

“Yes, it was. After that day, I always waited next to the door when my parents left to see if I could hear anything else. I could not hear the words clearly, but I often heard snippets of tones. It was like faraway music. Sometimes, their voices tinkled like bells, and I could hear laughter. Most of the time, though, my father’s voice was like timpani and cymbals, crashing percussively against the halls of the palace. My mother’s sound was an oboe- mournful and piercing.”

“Did you ever ask anyone about what you heard?”

“Oh no, I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“It just isn’t done in Nieveaux.”

“Well, that’s true enough. Don’t you think it would be nice to know, though?”

“Yes, but I am sure I never will.”

“Hmmm… maybe not. What do you want to do now?”

“I don’t really know. I should go back to the palace. I would like to find that puppy, though, before I go back. Could you help me do that?”

“Sure. I know exactly where that puppy would be. It wasn’t a puppy, though.”

“It looked like a puppy!”

“Yes, but things are not always what they look like.”

Picclapena thought things were always what they looked like, but she did not want to be impolite and contradict.

“So, if it wasn’t a puppy, what was it?”

“Oh, those creatures are called churlas. They live right outside the curve.”

“OUTSIDE the curve?! Oh no, am I outside the curve? I thought you said we were at the Edge of the Curve.”

“Yes, yes… you are still inside. The churlas often creep into Nieveaux from the outside to check us out and then scuttle back outside the curve.”

“They must be very dangerous.”

“Do they look dangerous? What makes you think they must be dangerous?”

“No, they don’t look dangerous at all. They look cute and fluffy and sweet, and I want to pet one. I am sorry, Ezra, but they could not actually live outside the curve. Nothing but dangerous things live out there.”

“Well, you know best, of course,” replied Ezra, looking quite bemused. “Perhaps we could go over to see the Curve and you can show me how I am wrong. I am fairly certain we will see some churlas right beyond the Edge.”

“Is that safe?” asked Picclapena doubtfully. “I mustn’t go outside the Edge.”

“You should still be able to see those churlas, even at the Edge. However, if you don’t want to go, I quite understand.”

Ezra began to walk away towards the Edge of the Curve. Picclapena hesitated and then followed.

“After all,” she said, “there can’t be anything too dangerous as long as I stay inside Nieveaux.”

“You can stay as far from the Edge as you wish,” Ezra reassured her.

They walked in silence until Ezra exclaimed, “There it is!”

“What?” asked Picclapena. “I don’t see anything.”

“The Curve! Look, it is right over there.”

Picclapena looked quite carefully but did not see anything. Slowly, she moved forward until she finally noticed a small shimmer in the sky above her, creating a prism of multi-colored melted sunlight all around her.

“Is this it? Is this the Curve?”

“Yes, it is. Be careful, though; you do not want to get too close.”

Picclapena stood with her head bent upwards and squinted at the beautiful designs the prism of the Curve made. At first, they seemed to dance and morph and tease her senses. Then, as if by magic, her eyes cleared, and she could see outside the Edge of the Curve. Sure enough, there were churlas playing in the field right outside the Edge.

“Oh, there they are! You were right. They do live out there. Oh, how cute! I want one! I want to pet one!”

“Well, you can if you really want to.”

“How?”

“You could try calling them and see if one will breech the Curve and come inside. It probably will not work, though. Churlas only go where they want to go when they want to go. If you really want to pet one, you’ll have to venture outside the Curve. I do it all the time. It isn’t so bad. You can do it if you want to. Oh look! There is one of the churlas right outside the Curve over there.”

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment- Part Two: Princess Picclopena Breaches The Curve!

Have a royal day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Inquiring Minds Want To Know

Last week, I presented a storytelling entertainment for the general meeting of my church women’s group. I am not really sure why the program chairperson thought that random storytelling should be on the program for this kind of meeting or why I was the person asked to provide said storytelling. When our program-scheduling chairperson asked me to do this last June, I debated with myself, but ultimately agreed. I kept telling myself, “You don’t have to worry about it- it isn’t happening until next May.”  I told myself that for eleven months. I stopped saying it only because “next May” was suddenly in two weeks.

Despite my apparent procrastination, my brain did mull over the project regularly in the eleven months during which I was in conscious denial.  The first and most critical decision I had to make was what story I wanted to tell. Something in me really wanted to tell a particular story, Next to Nieveaux. I wrote Next to Nieveaux a couple of years ago, at the suggestion of my life coach. There is a lot of history behind this story, so part of me felt squeamish about sharing it. Although it is fairy tale and is certainly fantasy, it is MY story in many ways. While very few people would recognize my life episodes behind the veil of the story’s plot development or understand the “inside jokes” (“inside” meaning “inside my own little world,) the idea of telling the story left me feeling very vulnerable and exposed. Something in me, however, could not quite retreat from the idea. I decided to lead with the weakest part of me and let Princess Picclopena of Nieveaux make her public debut.

The next hurdle I faced was that my original story was, depending on your viewpoint and generosity of spirit, either incredibly rich and intricate or incredibly wordy and tedious. Frankly, the short story was more like a novella. Now, I am not always generous in spirit towards myself, but I have to say that I saw the story as incredibly rich and intricate. That made cutting it down to a digestible smidgeon of narrative suitable for a verbal retelling in the context of the final Episcopal Church Women meeting of the season much more difficult. I liked it all. I couldn’t decide what to excise. After numerous fits and starts at editing, I finally took a step back. I decided which of the several key themes I most wanted to communicate. I ruthlessly released charming sub-plots and witty character-developing repasts. I wrote down four or five episodes that had to happen for the story to present the key theme in a sensical manner. Then, I let myself go. I stopped writing stuff down. I stopped editing. I stopped obsessing over some random time constraint I had in my head. I told myself the story a few times during the week before the presentation, just to get a feel for the flow and rhythm. Then, I trusted I understood my story well enough to be able to tell it just from what I knew without needing more structure. After a, Next to Nieveaux is my story in the sense that I wrote it and it is my story in the sense that I have lived some version of it.

The day of the storytelling, I just started talking- telling the story and reading the audience. They seemed to absolutely be coming along for the journey with me. As it turned out, I did not have to worry about time. I spoke for a little over 20 minutes and the audience seemed engaged and willing to keep listening. Instead of mourning the richness I left out, I actually kinda enjoyed having so many random “inside joke” Easter eggs that no one would understand except me. I found out that I like being a woman of mystery.

Now that the event is over, I have been thinking about sharing the original Next to Nieveaux story in all its questionable glory.  I could do that by serializing the full-length version over several weeks on this blog. What do you think? Is that something that would interest you? What are your thoughts? Please send me a sign from cyberspace!

Have a fantasty-istic day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

So what’s the verdict? Would you like to read the unvarnished and unabridged truth about the trials and tribulations of Princess Picclopena of Nieveaux? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, please email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Mother Maybe

As we approach Mother’s Day this weekend, I wanted to acknowledge all the mothers in my life. As those of you who have read my book Puppies, Guppies, and Letting Go by Dorry Curran (Puppies, Guppies, and Letting Go: Curran, Dorry: 9798842188574: Amazon.com: Books) are aware, I had a fantastic mother with whom I was very close.  Since I never had the experience of being a mother, I find observing and admiring mothers to be an intriguing pastime. In past blog posts, I have discussed the diversity of being a good mother. The notion that women can approach the job of mothering so differently and yet be so beautifully effective at raising good people fascinates me. Motherhood is a vocation. It is a vocation of many different emphases and priorities. I think it is fair to say that almost all mothers do their best to raise their children to become self-sufficient people who live with integrity, purpose, satisfaction, love, and joy. I know that all the mothers I know definitely fall into that category. Certainly, no mother is effective ALL the time. And I suspect that all the mothers I know are doing a much better job than they think they are.

Some mothers may not try their best and, of course, even the ones who are doing their best might not be effective. This is a heartbreaking truth, but it is a truth. For those women, I hope they find grace in the larger community to help them and to help their children. Good individuals create a good society. Therefore, all of us have a stake at supporting moms.

One thing that I have really learned in my own case is that the need to be mothered does not go away when you hit a certain age. Or when the mother who raised you dies. Most of the people in my social circle no longer have their moms with them in this life. Most of us went through a process over the years, maybe especially those who had children of their own, of loosening our grip on being mothered and taking on a more independent and then a more caregiving role. For many of us, that caregiver role extended to providing care to the mother who used to care for us. It is a natural and necessary process. It still doesn’t mean that our souls do not yearn for mothering.

So how do we fill that need to be mothered? U am 65-years old. My mother mothered me for many, many years past the day I turned 18. In the last year of my mother’s life, she lived in a skilled nursing facility. She was bed-bound due to a catastrophic stroke. Even before the stroke, she was physically impaired to a great degree. After the stroke, the cognitive disintegration was constant. Most of the last year of her life, she could not speak at all. The only way she could communicate was through body language. Even in that compromised state, my mother mothered me. I remember coming to visit one day and tripping on the concrete outside the facility. I fell to the ground and spilled the chocolate milkshake I was bringing her. When I got into her room, I was obviously distressed, although trying to remain composed. My mother, even in the belly of her decline when speech was almost completely gone, summoned all her remaining ability, and said quite emphatically “Go home.”  It was clear to me that she could see how exhausted and defeated I was and wanted me to rest. Sometimes I think that one moment was the reason she struggled and lingered in the shadowland between life and death for so long. We both needed to have that re-assertion of our mother/daughter dynamic before she left me.

After my mother died, I leaned into other mothers to fill the gap for me. I can think of several older women who treated me with the gentleness, wisdom, and validation that my own mother lavished upon me. However, as I have aged, so have they. Several of them have also died in the last seven years since my mother passed. To some extent, I am again experiencing that awful tearing away as they declined. I pour love back on them. I’m privileged to do so, but it is still a mournful process.

I’m learning now that I don’t need someone old enough to be my mother to be mothered. There are several women around my own age or, in some cases, YOUNGER, who gather me to themselves to protect, teach, support, and love me in a way that satisfies the yearning my mother used to assuage so organically. It feels instinctive and unconditional. It has been hard for me to understand it, but I lap it up like a starving cat will lap up milk. It is also teaching me that I, too, can be that for others. Most people think I have a very motherly energy about me. It is something that I hid and tamped down for a long time because it felt somehow audacious and intrusive. What right and what qualifications did I have to presume to mother anyone? Now, as I have basked in the benefit of being on the receiving end of that mother energy from others, it strikes me that many people have such a strong need for that kind of love, I’m better than nothing. The response has become organic and instinctive for me, as well. When I stop editing that response, the caring overflows and I mother adults. I hope I am not overbearing or intrusive about it, but I figure that I should listen to my instincts and be led by the Holy Spirit.

I have never birthed a child.  I have never adopted a child. I don’t even have much experience with children. But, in some ways, I am still a mother… maybe.

Have a wonderful Mother’s Day, everyone! Especially to all of you who mother me!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Do you have someone who mothers you as an adult? How do you feel about it? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Caught Up

Sometimes, I think I am ticking things off my “to do” list and begin to believe I am “caught up.”  In reality, I am “caught up” all right, but not in the sense I am deluding myself into believing. I am “caught up” IN something much more than I am “caught up” WITH something.

As I have shared with you, these past few months have been very busy. I was designing and teaching a spiritual formation course at my church, continuing with my normal volunteer duties, establishing and nurturing new relationships with some very special people, finding ways to keep connected in important existing relationships, continuing to publish the blog, coming to some realizations about my own personal growth that are just beginning to manifest themselves, completing all the necessary tasks of  normal life, and planning a trip with Max in May. I recently calculated that I have been involved in teaching at my church for 23 of the past 36 weeks. It has been wonderful.  I seem to be experiencing an expansion of joy in my life right now. The time, work, and challenges that are hallmarks of this growth spurt are paying off big time.

The problem, if there is one, is that I do feel like I am constantly running and jumping and stretching and changing, all the time trying to remember to breathe in the random pauses in the self-constructed chaos.  I do not want to do anything to risk the momentum of this exciting time, but I do think it is necessary to find a balance where “breathing” does not end up as priority C-24 in the Franklin Planner. Call me crazy but doesn’t “breathing” have to be an A-1 priority?

I’ve noticed a few wobbles lately that I think regular oxygen in my lungs might help resolve. For one thing, I am having a tough time finishing the housework that I usually easily complete in the course of a week- even while still engaging in my normal activities. I find myself trying to do a task that is most efficiently completed in one 45-minute time slot in 10–12-minute spurts. There are a number of problems with that. First, I often have trouble remembering where I left off after each spurt. I am sure I repeat or miss steps.  Another problem is that I can never capitalize on the momentum of a job well-done. Instead of basking in the satisfaction that I have finished a big task, it is time to start it over again by the time I finally finish it. I feel like I am chasing my tail instead of making progress. Many of you were probably troubled to learn that my Christmas wreath was still on the door and Duffy the Disney Bear was still wearing his Santa suit.  That is the kind of thing that taunts me when I am feeling breathless.

Another problem is that I tend to prioritize “to do” list items over sleep. It is not unusual for me to go to bed at 10:00pm but juggle, stew, and cram undone tasks into another two hours so that I don’t actually try to sleep until midnight. This is clearly singularly pathological. Obviously, sleep is important. Going without a few hours of sleep is a temporary solution to a permanent problem. If I try to make it a permanent solution, I will soon find out that any time I gain by skipping sleep is likely to be lost the next day or days when I try to do tasks in a sleep-deprived, irritable state.

I have also noticed an insidious resurrection of my natural shyness. Most people do not know how shy I am by nature. I seem friendly, warm, and outgoing. I like to think I am friendly, warm, and outgoing. I want to be friendly, warm, and outgoing. In fact, I have worked extremely hard and very intentionally to liberate the part of me that has the potential to be friendly, warm, and outgoing because I value it so highly. It would make me incredibly sad to return to the me who was too afraid to break through the shyness. I would miss so much beauty and richness if I reverted to that person. Having said that, I recognize that there is a rope of shyness that threatens to tighten around me nearly every time interact with people- even people with whom I have a long-term close relationship. I didn’t get to liberate the friendly, warm, outgoing me once and have an end to it. I must do it repeatedly if I want to live lusciously. It is worth it.

Recently, I’ve seen signs of allowing shyness to bind my life. I’ve avoided anything requiring a phone call, even things I want to do- like checking in with old friends who have moved away. I am finding that I am tempted to skip fellowship activities that I typically look forward to. I find myself worrying about how to keep everyone’s needs balanced and forgetting about my own. I find myself feeling guilty that I am spread too thin to cover everything in a way that feels satisfying to me and to others. I know I am starting to get into the danger zone when I hear myself bargaining with myself about “taking my turn” when I put off something for myself so that I can do something for/with someone else.

I find all this disconcerting. As I said, I have been walking in a wonderful garden of growth these past months, and I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to say “no, not now” because I am afraid it will be heard as or come to mean “no, not ever.”  I don’t want to say “I need a break” without having a comprehensive plan about how long that break will be and what I will tackle next. I am afraid that, if I give up tight control on my scheduling, the joy and fulfillment I’ve enjoyed over the past few months will disappear forever. Of course, such an outcome is not likely to be real, although my fear that it will feels very real.  I believe in a God who leads me and does not forsake me. I believe it is my responsibility to lay my life before Him to use as He wishes. That doesn’t mean He does not expect me to be a good steward of the life He has given me. It also doesn’t mean that His plan is to always involve me in His work…. Or always involve me in His work in the exact same way. My biggest struggle with faith is trusting that God is flying the plane. He doesn’t even expect me to file the flight plan. That’s His job. All he expects of me is to sit with Him, keep Him company, and respond willingly when He asks me to do something. That feels like it should be relatively easy to do, but I have the hardest time with it. Why would God want to do all this for me? For us? It feels like I am letting Him down if I let Him work harder than I do.

So, you can see, despite my spiritual growth spurt, God still has work to do in me. And I am trying to be patient. Maybe the problem is not as big as I fear. After all, this week, I did manage to replace the winter wreath on the door with the summer one and changed Duffy out of his Santa costume back into his sailor suit.

Have an oxygen-enhanced day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

What do you do when you feel like you can’t get caught up with everything that needs doing? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirment@gmail.com.

The Bunnies Aren’t Running

My mother bought me my very own elf on the shelf a year or so before she died. Kringle was not even a proper size elf. He was a mini elf. I realize that is like saying a “pygmy grain of rice.” I never knew that the small humanoid characters working for Santa come in gradations of “little.”  Kringle was as big as my thumb.  Every year, Kringle would appear on the first of December. Max hid him for me each morning. He got a great deal of satisfaction from keeping score of who won the daily game of hide-and-seek.  We have a lot of fun with it.

One year, we decided that saying good-bye to the game for an entire year on Christmas Eve was just too sad. We acquired an army of small bunny figurines (there must be an army of them- they are rabbits, after all) and Max started hiding them each morning about thirty days before Easter. That has been going on for about three years. We decided that, if “elf on the shelf” was a thing, then “bun on the run” should also be a thing. Sadly, the idea has never caught on with the international marketplace.

This year, the bunnies have not been running. I never did get Easter decorations out this season. I don’t know if it was because Easter is so late this year and I could not figure out when to shift gears into spring, or if it was my energy investment in the Spiritual Formation Course I was teaching. Somehow or another, I never quite got around to Easter home décor. If I am being completely honest, I must admit that I still have my winter wreath on the door and my Duffy the Disney Bear (another idea that never really caught on in the international marketplace) is still wearing his Santa costume. The bunnies are still in their basket in a cabinet, where they typically reside for eleven months of the year. I guess they have put down roots.

I feel like the Easter version of the Grinch. However, if the Grinch could discover that Christmas is Christmas- even without the roast beast- then I could certainly lean into the idea that Easter is Easter, even without the running bunnies.

The past several Lenten seasons have been true desert experiences for me. God has brought me through some critical times of despondency and rebirth. I watered the seeds of new plantings within me with tears. They grew into beautiful, strong trees that are now pillars supporting new levels of spirituality. As much as these refining times have hurt, I would not change a thing because they have ultimately led me to more creative, more nuanced, and more joyful faith. My pastor preached about this experience recently in a sermon. He talked about how God periodically explodes our image of who and what He is, in order to build an even bigger, more amazing, more complex understanding. These spiritual growth spurts are often chaotic, humbling, and mysterious. It makes sense if we understand them as the incomprehensible divine creative inspiration bursting with energy. I am blessed to have been the receptacle of that divine creative inspiration in some real and dramatic ways.  I am even more blessed that I could perceive the Divine igniting within me even through the destruction.

This Lent has been quieter and more solid. The ground may have been moving beneath me, but I have felt steady and rooted. My Lenten growth this year has been more about receiving, accepting, and appreciating than about burning the chaff. I have worked hard on my Spiritual Formation Course. I have given up Facebook to allow more time in my day to breathe, sleep, meditate, and pray. Both Lenten disciplines have felt more like abundance than sacrifice. It is like my own year of jubilee.

As we approach the Triduum, the holiest time of the year for a Christian, I bring myself to the cross with such a sese of gratitude, not just for the most precious gift of salvation, but for the wonderful work God has done in me. I lay my everything before the cross this Holy Week- my pain, my shame, my brokenness, my reconciliation, my love, my faith, my hope, and my gratitude for whatever process God decides to use to grow me into the person He created me to be. 

This Easter, I will be standing beside a new Christian as she receives Baptism. I will be sponsoring her as she takes this next step towards God. This is a daunting prospect because I don’t know how to do this. I don’t think there is an instruction manual for being a baptism sponsor. However, I strongly suspect I don’t have to do it; I simply have to be it. And, even more, I suspect it isn’t me that must do or be anything at all. It is God being within me who will do the guiding. He may use me to do some of it… and, in guiding I will also be guided.

It is a miracle.

Happy Resurrection Sunday!

Terri/Dorry 😊

The Energizer Bunny Lies

I am discovering that everything you see on television and everything you read on the internet is not always correct. My latest revelation is that the Energizer Bunny lies.

I have spent my life believing that emotional energy is an infinite resource. If I wore down, it was because I was obviously doing something wrong. If I only had the right motivation. If I only was not so lazy. If only it didn’t take me so long to complete tasks. If only I had the right batteries. If only something, I could keep on running endlessly, beating my bass drum, and bopping across surfaces.  If only something, I would never halt suddenly and flop over on my side. Unfortunately, in the real world… at least in my real world…. I seem to flop over on my side with an alarming degree of regularity.

This Lent, I have been teaching a course at my church. Several years ago, I adapted some material I learned in my working days and that I have picked up along the way on my spiritual journey to create a class on stewardship and ministry. That course focused on stewardship and ministry, but it also covered other subjects such as prayer and working together as a church. My church offered the course as the world was just cautiously emerging from our COVID cocoon. As you may recall, that was a gradual process. It took a lot of people longer to feel safe enough to occupy public spaces than others. The class consisted of four weekly sessions. I taught each class twice each week, to allow for different schedules and to create opportunities to allow for some social distancing. Between the two offerings, I hosted about thirty people.  The feedback from the class was highly positive, suggesting that it might be worth trying again when breathing the same air as our neighbor began to feel a little safer. Since the course was much broader than simply stewardship, the pastor and I toyed with the idea of making it a more foundational class for people who were new to our congregation. Time passed and stuff happened. The timing just wasn’t right to hold the class again. Last summer, I began working on an expansion and adaptation of that course. Finally, we launched the new St. James Spiritual Formation Course the Tuesday after Ash Wednesday. We are again presenting the classes twice each week, on Tuesday evening and Thursday midday, plus one Saturday session.  This represents 33 hours of teaching time between March 11 and April 10, plus prep time. It also represents exposure and focused interaction with 50-65 people each week. For someone as introverted as I am, that is very peopley.

I will share more of my observations about this experience in another post once I’ve finished the course and have time to reflect on it. For now, let me say that it has been immensely satisfying, rewarding, nourishing, and growth-creating  It has also been exhausting.

Knowing that the journey was going to require all my energy for the duration, I purposely tried to structure the rest of my life to minimize competition for my emotional energy. I intentionally “protected my introversion” by limiting any other people-focused activities in my schedule. I once had a colleague tell me that I am a “closet extrovert.”  Most people see me interacting with others, especially when teaching a class, and assume I must be extroverted because of the way I present myself. They don’t realize two significant factors. One factor is that much of my success in teaching has to do more with listening intently and mindfully, not talking. I can connect and help people towards discovery because I notice signals and listen to everything everyone says to steer the presentation in the direction the students most need to go. The other thing is that, when I finish, I am exhausted. Actually, it is even more than exhausted. I am almost catatonic. I stagger around the room in a trance, unable to hold a thought or frame a sentence. I understand, on some primitive level, that I should be packing up and helping to clean up the debris from the learning party over which I have just presided. However, I can’t seem to figure out specifically what to do. The idea of simply unplugging my computer and putting it in its case is overwhelmingly difficult. I have no judgment about how much I can carry at one time. I forget things as basic as remembering to retrieve my purse from the seat where I left it before leaving the premises. I have a little team of keepers who have made it their personal mission to keep me away from sharp objects after a session. They have taken over the mental load of food wrangling, kitchen duty, and general maintenance to protect me from myself. I am very grateful.

Even with this emotional safety net, it is a marathon. We are more than halfway through now and I may be winning. It is, however, requiring me to carbohydrate load. I fear the beat of my little bass drum is well and truly out of rhythm. I get depleted. I wouldn’t have it any other way, though. The huge rewards I am reaping are more than worth a little depletion. Besides, creative energy is a renewable resource, and God is a great recycler. Still, I don’t think it matters which brand of batteries I have installed in me. The Energizer Bunny is a fraud.

Have an energetic day!

Terri/Dorru 😊

Do you have experiences that deplete your energy in the short term but create energy in the long term?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Hole In The Wall

When I first moved to Florida, I shared many of my frustrations and challenges around home maintenance. I owned a small condominium in California. I thought that would have given me at least a clue as to what I was in for when I purchased my house in Florida. Anyone following me around for the first year or so I lived in “my pretty little house” in the Sunshine State could tell you that I was completely wrong. I had no idea what I was doing.

I don’t think I have become any savvier in the past ten years, but I have become more adept at managing my ignorance. It takes more disaster to rock my sense of stability than it did when I first moved here. I have survived ten hurricane seasons, renovation of two bathrooms, the demise of virtually all the major kitchen appliances, the complete replacement of the air conditioning/heating system, and warfare on several fronts with the screen garage door. Oh… and the one event that I try extremely hard to block from my memory- the Great Rat Invasion and Attic Insulation of 2021. I’m not sure I have ever recovered from that one, but I have to say that, in general, I am much more able to take these routine catastrophes in stride.

The other day, Max asked me if I had noticed the hissing sound the hot water heater was making. I had noticed it. It was the first thing in the morning, and I assumed it had something to do with the water heater starting when we turned on the showers. I had not noticed it before, but I wasn’t worried because… I now take things in stride!

The hissing noise did not stop when the hot water heater stopped. We looked all around the area and did not see any water anywhere. It didn’t seem like it was leaking. Max was concerned that the gas might be hissing and that we would be blown to smithereens. I called the plumber and scheduled an appointment for the next afternoon.

That evening, we both went to the Spiritual Formation Course I am teaching at my church. When we returned, there was a fair amount of water on the floor of the garage near the water heater. I guess the good news is that it wasn’t a gas leak causing the hissing sound. Still, it took a minute to figure out from whenst the hissing came. Finally, we realized it wasn’t hissing so much as spraying. A fine mist was spraying from the pipe above the water heater, onto the wall. It was such a fine mist; we could not see it. As the wall saturated from a day’s worth of fine spraying, water ran down the wall and pooled on ground. It was like the wind. You couldn’t see the mist, but you could see the effects. We followed the trickle trail of water back up the wall and found the leaky source in the pipe. After trying to mold several catch devices into the space under the leak and going through about 183 feet of duct tape, we were able to patch things up enough to get through the night until the plumber came the next day. Cleaning up the concrete-bottomed swamp on the floor under the water heater was challenging, but we knew we were saving those raggedy old towels for something.

The next morning, it was clear that our makeshift repair job was not going to be permanent. The damage was manageable, but we were both glad to see the plumber that afternoon. The plumber expressed admiration for our ingenious use of duct tape. I think he probably wondered if we owned stock in the company, given how much duct tape we used. When he unraveled the duct tape to begin working on a more permanent fix, a piece of the wall unraveled right along with it. Apparently, having 14 or 15 hours of fine mist trapped in a humid, confined duct-taped-based ecosystem is a recipe for complete drywall annihilation. We had a literal hole in the wall.

The plumber fixed the pipe for about $150. Max pressed him on how to resolve the drywall issue. Neither one of us is handy at all, so my inclination would have been to throw money at the problem… to pay someone to patch the wall. I was still kind of riding high on the knowledge that I did not need to buy a new water heater and that we had not made an unintended trip to Smithereen. Max, however, thought he could manage the repair. He thought it would be hard to find someone competent and trustworthy who was willing to come out for such a small job. Max consulted that well-known home renovation guru- YouTube. He made a list of everything he needed. We went to the hardware store and spent another $120 on the materials. I figured that, if we ended up having to find a handyman, he would probably want us to get all this stuff anyway, so I cheerfully jammed my debit card into the Lowe’s checkout station. I was still blessing my lucky stars that I wasn’t paying $1500 for a new hot water heater.

When we got home, I started my mental clock. I tried to decide how long it would be before Max would tackle the job. I also had a running bet with myself that, while I deeply desired Max to take on the task and complete the work when I was out somewhere, he would want me around to be supportive.

Oh, me of little faith! Max was on it. Within two days of acquiring all the necessary paraphernalia, I came home from some activity to find the wall repaired. The next day, again while I was out doing something, he painted it. It was amazing. Some people are probably confused about why this is such a big deal. I am mystified by home repair. Max is a little less mystified and a lot less intimidated, but neither one of us can boast “repair skills” in our wheelhouses. I think Max himself was pretty surprised by his deftness.

Today I am a happy camper. I did not have to pay a huge plumbing bill. I was without hot water for less than 24 hours. I have not been blown to Smithereens (wherever that is.) I have no hole in the garage wall. I have discovered that my very beloved partner is a man of mystery with impressive skills I have not previously uncovered. What a bonanza!

Have a satisfying day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

What surprising skills have you discovered in your partner? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Max did a great job on the holy wall!

Fasting And Feasting

Fasting And Feasting

Lent is the forty-day period before Easter during which most Christian denominations observe a season of penitence, preparation, and spiritual renewal. The forty days commemorates the time that Jesus spent in the desert being tempted by the devil before He started His public ministry. Lent has always been a momentous time of the year for me. Today is Ash Wednesday and Lent begins.

As a child, I “gave up” something for Lent. The idea was to sacrifice some pleasure to show devotion to God, as opposed to devotion to worldly desires. In the Roman Catholic faith, in which I was raised, there were institutional days of fasting (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday) and days of abstinence from meat (the Fridays during Lent.)  Again, the idea was to embrace some outward sign to demonstrate sacrifice and devotion to God.

As I matured, I began to question whether what I did in Lent truly resulted in the desired outcome- spiritual renewal and growth. Giving up chocolate did not make me feel closer to God. It just made me feel cranky. And it made me feel an insatiable craving for vanilla ice cream. Abstaining from meat on Fridays did not seem to be too much of a sacrifice. I could eat shrimp, lobster, peanut butter, cheese pizza, and any number of delectable non-meat alternatives. I tried to frame these observances as “intentionalities” instead of sacrifices. I told myself the fact that I was doing something different, whatever it was, would bring me closer to God if my intention in doing it was to focus my attention on spiritual matters. That philosophy helped me embrace Lenten observance for many years. It still felt a little like pounding a square peg into a round hole, however.

I finally decided to forget about “giving up” something for Lent and, instead, actively embrace some positive action. A couple of years, I wrote a letter each day to someone who had contributed positively to my spiritual journey to thank that person. One year, I began going to the weekly anointing service at my church. Another year, I began reading through a “Bible in One Year” process, recording verses of Scripture that particularly spoke to me. All of these endeavors have been fruitful and fortifying… certainly more helpful to my spiritual development than giving up chocolate. When I converted to the Episcopal faith, the whole “no meat on Fridays in Lent” thing was no longer a requirement. It was easy for me to let that tradition go by the wayside of my new spiritual path.

The last several years, I have not had to look for my Lenten desert experience.  God brought the desert to me. The work of Lent in those years was for me to bear the difficulties, challenges, and pain that those swaths of desert presented.  I did embrace some special Lenten observances, but the bulk of my growth came simply from allowing God to lead me into some dark, difficult places in my soul. I leaned into Him and into the experiences He brought me. I relied on Him and kept my spirit open to what He had to show me and what He needed me to do. These past few Lents have been my own personal miracles. This Lent- and I say this with a certain amount of caution and trepidation- God does not yet seem to be throwing any particular desert in my way.

The past year or so, I have been attending a discussion group in which we are exploring the book Celebration of Disciplines: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard J Foster. The book discusses how we can use intentional spiritual disciplines, such as prayer, meditation, service, fasting, and others, to strengthen and deepen our connection with God. Since I have often heard Lent described as an observance of spiritual discipline, I thought it might be a promising idea to intentionally tune in to how this book could help frame my Lent this year.

One of the ladies in the group identified the idea of “fasting to feast” as a key component in her current journey. Her comment helped me better understand the value of fasting. I had always thought that the best kind of fast is a fast that creates opportunity. For instance, if I give up eating sweets, then it is more meaningful if I donate the money I would have spent on sweets to a local food bank so that people living with food insecurity might have nutritious meals. I don’t think I’ve put that philosophy together with this pithy “fasting to feast” mentality.

After some musing, pondering, and doing warfare against my own resistance (probably a clear sign that I need to make a change, by the way,) yesterday I decided to fast from Facebook for the next forty days. I was very late to the Facebook party- my brother and several friends nagged me for years to enter the social media world. I resisted until 2018, when I published my first book. As the years have gone on, I find Facebook creeping up on my time, energy, and mental health. I notice a much more prominent level of ugliness on Facebook than in real life. I have been able to ignore the vitriol and the pettiness for the most part, but things have become so much more heated and toxic in the wake of the 2024 presidential election season. I am losing sleep, peace of mind, and joy.

Scripture tells us that, as Christians, we are not “of this world” any more than Jesus was of this world. However, we live in this world. Lately, exposure to the world as reflected on Facebook has begun to infiltrate my ability to not be of that world, if that makes any sense. The internal world God wants for me is not a world infected with the anger, hate, anxiety, and sleep deprivation that Facebook presents. It is time I fasted from Facebook, so to better steward the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health God gave me.

If you are a person who follows me on Facebook or uses my posts announcing new content on this blog as your trigger to visit this website, please do not fear for my safety or think I’ve been abducted by aliens. Please let me know if you’d like me to notify you of new content by email. You can contact me a terriretirement@gmail.com. I may or may not be back on Facebook at the end of Lent. We will see where God leads me.

So that takes care of the fasting. What about the feasting? With what will I fill myself when I am not scrolling happily or not-so-happily through Facebook? I have been working on a new project. I have created a new spiritual formation course that I will be facilitating at my church during the Lenten season. The course will cover the following topics: Knowing God, Communicating With God, Recording Faith, Following God Together, Collaborating With God, and Sharing Faith. This is a project that will take all my focus, strength, patience, faith, and prayer. I think God wants me to be at my best- at peace, well-rested, open to His leadership- as I travel this path. It is a huge emotional and mental commitment, especially for a girl who is about as far on the introvert end of the scale as one can get. 

Creating curriculum and teaching are passions of mine. This is certainly not the first time I have done something like this- and I have faith that, powered by the Holy Spirit, the course will be nurturing, fulfilling, and fun. However, this is definitely the birth of a new creation and there will be labor pains. Given my desert experiences and Easter miracles of the past few years, my intention is to embrace the process and rely on God to take the reins. He will teach me what I need to know and will shape me into who He needs me to be.

If any of you are local and would like to join me on this adventure, I hope you will reach out for more information or… just show up. There are five regular sessions, which I will be teaching twice each week to accommodate people who prefer daytime classes and people who prefer evening events. There will be a Tuesday evening class, from 6:15-8:15pm starting on 3/11. We will have a simple soup and sandwich supper beforehand at 5:45pm.  The other option would be to come to a Thursday midday class from 11:15am to 1:15pm, starting on 3/13. There will also be a Saturday mini-workshop day on 3/29. The course will be in the parish hall at St. James Episcopal Church at 204 N. Lee Street in Leesburg, FL 34748. Please consider joining my “feasting!”

Have a blessed day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Are you interested in having a desert experience this Lent? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Trippy

It is probably a good thing that I have always carried substantial extra padding on my body. I am a klutz. Given the frequency with which I fall over my own feet, my body would be in shattered shards by now without the organic protective gear God gave me. Okay, maybe it was ice cream and not necessarily God’s design. I’ve always said that God can use even something awful to create something wonderful. I guess the fact that I am still standing reasonably upright most of the time is a testament to that philosophy.

This is not something new for me, so I can’t blame it primarily on aging. I agree that I need to be more careful as I perambulate around the planet since I do notice some slight changes in my physicality in the last year or two. It isn’t anything major, but those changes do exist. I know I am less agile. My bones and joints are less able to absorb shocks. My eyesight is not as sharp or as broad. My body more often seems like an alien entity quite removed from my brain. These small signs portend a day when the physical changes may become more limiting. I am also pretty sure that, at some point, I am likely to become more brittle. I will have a harder time bouncing instead of breaking.

Still, my klutziness has been a part of who I am for as long as I can remember. When most children learn to walk, climb stairs, jump, balance, and rearrange their bodies to do the darndest things, I learned to fall. It has been a valuable life skill.

When I was six, I fell off a jungle gym because, contrary to my brain’s perception, my arms were nowhere near long enough to swing from one monkey bar to another. When I was nine, I went to a roller-skating rink. I hugged the railing that surrounded the rink, inching myself, hand over hand, around the circle. I was not inclined to release the rail. At some point, I hit a traffic jam. Two older boys stopped in my way, ready to rumble. They were having a bit of a heated argument. I waited for them to finish their discussion and move away from MY railing. My hands needed inching room.  After about an hour and a half- give or take 87 minutes- one of the boys reared back his arm to punch the other kid in the face.  Unfortunately, I took that moment to release the rail to bravely try to go around the situation. In pulling back his arm, the puncher ended up elbowing me with enough force to send me toppling to the ground. I would have been fine if my butt had simply hit the floor. However, the other kid had also fallen, putting his roller skate wheel directly in the path of my arm. All the damage (which necessitated a traumatic and painful trip to the hospital) resulted from the collision between my wrist and the ill-placed roller skate wheel.

I didn’t grow out of this clumsiness of mine. Fortunately, I am blessed with pretty good bone density. I stopped breaking bones after age nine. I didn’t stop falling, however.

Max has called flip-flops my “fall down” shoes for years for rather obvious and embarrassing reasons. Despite some spectacular evidence that remaining upright while wearing flip-flops is not one of my talents, I went on wearing them for way too long. Finally, he convinced me that I might better preserve both my body and my dignity if I stuck to shoes that were not built to come off quite so easily. Now, I only wear flip flops to the beach. And, yes, I fell in them while at the beach.

Even after I retired the flip flops, my feet seem to have a mind of their own. Years ago, when making my daily visit to my mother in the skilled nurse facility where she resided during her end-of-life journey, I tripped on uneven concrete and smashed myself down onto the sidewalk. Not only did I go down, but so did the chocolate milkshake I was bringing for my mother. I was so disheartened and on the edge of a breakdown my mother, who was living in the shadowland of vascular dementia and had lost just about all her ability to process language, took one look at me and clearly and alarmedly said, “Go home!” 

I fell a year or so ago when delivering food to the homebound. I somehow missed the last two steps backwards when descending the steps to a client’s mobile home. The poor gentleman was horrified and insisted I come in so he could doctor my wound with Neosporin and ply me with hydration. I am so glad I have the opportunity to serve.

Last week, I encountered my latest fall from grace. I say that because I definitely fell without grace. I was hurrying back into the house from the garage after taking out the trash. Something in me snapped and I had a moment of absolute irrational panic. A fight or flight response took over my brain and it compelled me to rush madly back inside the house, completely missing the small step that loomed between me and safety. I caught the tip of my shoe on the step, which launched me directly into the drywall and hall closet door that is directly across from the garage door. That was not good enough for me, though. I am not your everyday klutz. I had to earn a score of 10 in clumsiness. I ricocheted off the closet door and was propelled to the ceramic floor tile. I am happy to report that the tile survived the onslaught.

Max heard my crashing and crumpling but could not see me. He called out, “are you okay?” My subdued, muffled, out-of-body “no” brought him running to me. I don’t think he expected to see me on the floor. This little unintentional gymnastic move caused me to twist my waist, hit my head on both the closet door and ceramic tile, smash my arm against the drywall, tweak my shoulders, and become aware of parts of my body I did not know I had. I lay on the ground for a few minutes, trying to regain my equilibrium and sense of self. Finally, I asked Max to bring a kitchen chair over to me so that I could use it to pull myself to a standing position once more.

When I was upright, I took a more disimpassioned inventory of my injuries. I realized I had escaped without any significant harm. I just couldn’t seem to talk or even think. All I could do was feel- feel old, feel stupid, feel scared, feel unappealing. As the emotional tide began to rise, I could sense the tears beginning to form. The defeated feeling was familiar- I remembered it well from the Fall of the Milkshake outside the skilled nursing facility. I felt helpless and hopeless. Max could see that I was hurt in the personality, but I could not respond to his questions. He finally asked gently, “are you a little bit scared?” He hit the nail on the head as surely as I hit my head on the floor. With a llittle acknowledgement and a little cuddling, I was okay.

I did expect that I would feel worse a day or two afterwards. However, a few days have passed, and I still don’t feel too injured. I have a little stiffness, but no concussion or headache or anything like that. Heck, I don’t even have any bruises. I am a notorious late bruiser, however, so they may still be coming.

However, it is trippy how talented a tripper I am!

Have an upright day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

What is your superpower?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com. 

The Charity Of Selfishness

The other day, I attended our mid-week worship service in our church chapel. I started attending this service a few years ago as a Lenten devotional. Attending that service gave me so much spiritual renewal, I decided to continue the habit throughout the year. God and I have been through a lot together over the past years at that service. I have sobbed uncontrollably. I have begged for forgiveness. I have prayed for strength, patience, protection, courage, and endurance. I have asked for guidance on how to walk in love in a world that seems bound and determined to hate. I have laughed at some of God’s little jokes. I have processed experiences I had outside the service and made sense of them in the context of God’s will for me.

As I spoke the words of the liturgy the other day, I became aware of the voices around me also praying. It reminded me of something that Rumer Godden said in her novel In This House Of Brede. In describing the role of the nuns at a cloistered monastery, she referred to the religious house as a “powerhouse of prayer.”  Yes, the nuns had avocations that the abbey monetized to be able to support itself. The nuns wrote books, did illustration work, gardened, and other day-to-day activities. That is how they paid the bills, along with donations. Their job, however, their real vocation, was prayer. Every day, the abbey received letters from people all over the world asking the nuns to pray for them. The nuns did so- in an orderly, intentional, specific, and methodical way. The abbey was a factory. The product generated from that factory was prayer.

One might unwittingly think that a cloistered order of nuns living tucked away from real life beyond the abbey gates would be about the most inner-focused thing in the world. It is easy to think of a bunch of women praying individually and together solely as an exercise in spiritual self-development. In reality, though, that inner-focused action is extremely outer-purposed. Because of the prayers of those women, the Holy Spirit ignites to power the world at large.

The same is true for our own spiritual devotions. As all our souls combine to worship and pray in a church service, we are asking God to bless us and our work. We are focusing on ourselves and our own spiritual development. There is a strong element of selfishness, or at least self-care, involved in the act of praying. However, that spiritual observation that we embrace to expand our own souls contains abundant charity as well. In the same way the nuns of Brede created a powerhouse of prayer to ignite the entire world, our prayer also raises sparks of spiritual electricity to ignite our global community.

I think the same is true for other spiritual exercises. When I attend a discussion group about elements of Christianity, I go because I want to develop my own relationship with God. However, the combined work of all the members of the group produce something much more wonderful and powerful than any one of us creates individually. When we leave the room, I would guess that each of us leaves feeling uniquely enriched. I don’t know if we ever realize how what we ourselves contributed enriched the others.

I have been retired for over 10 years.  I had an excellent job- it was interesting, important, and paid generously. I got to do some exciting, impactful things in my career. I was good at my job and my job was good to me.  Still, I was never one of those people who loved my job. In short, the job just did not fit my temperament. There were many parts of my job that were stressful and unpleasant. There were a few parts of my job that were painful but immensely rewarding. A lot of my job was neutral. There were a couple of adjunct parts of my job, however, that I did love. I got to spend a few weeks each year teaching and developing courses. When I left my career, this was the only part of my job I mourned, aside from the people with whom I worked.

In my retirement, I started looking for opportunities to do that kind of work again. I was not looking for a paying job or the kind of long-term obligation a paying job entails. I just wanted to do what I loved doing… and one of the few things for which I genuinely believe I have talent. In my new church, I have found opportunities to indulge that piece of me that reveled in creating courses and facilitating classes. That has not always been a comfortable or easy process, but the pay-off for me has been beautiful. I feel like my spiritual life is richer, stronger, and more profound because of the energy I’ve invested in these education products. It truly feels like this investment is filling my need for spiritual development rather than addressing the needs of anyone who engages in my spiritual formation classes. It feels like a privilege and an opportunity from God to do this work. It often feels selfish and completely unmerited to be the one who gets to do this stuff.

Then, I remember something I read when I first became an Episcopalian. One author said that effective ministry happens when a person’s passion, skills, talents, and intuition intersect with the needs of the people of God. Perhaps finding the perfect way to use one’s spiritual gifts in ministry is only possible if we lean into our selfishness a little bit. What do we love doing? What gives us pleasure? What gives us confidence? What are we good at? Can other people benefit from it? Perhaps that is what God always intended us to do. Perhaps that is what our most perfect charity looks like to Him… when we are most wholly the unique people He made us to be, fulfilling the unique purpose He gave us the gifts to fulfill.

What charity have you contributed out of your “selfishness?” Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a selfish day!

Terri/Dorry 😊