Day One

Here dies the first day of this grand adventure. For as much as I've done that may seem crazy to an outsider, up to this point the moves I've made and risks I've taken have been quite measured. I double and triple check safety gear, I do not quit a job until another is secure. My ducks are kept firmly ensconced in the row in which I've placed them. I am not reckless. Today starts a shift away from those habits, and my ducks are clumped, frightened and facing every which way.
This morning I awoke, made coffee, showered and dressed for work as I have done for the past two years (though I gave myself an extra half-hour of sleep). I made an office space for myself and a schedule, written in sharpie like it was the word of God. My hands rested on the keyboard in the way I learned to hold them back in typing class. I breathed, said a prayer, and began the day.

It was a full and productive. I am brimming with ideas, most of which will prove to go nowhere. I've had encouragement from unlikely sources. I am 90% sure this is the move I'm to be making. I have no evidence to support this theory.

My mind keeps going back to planting. At my old job, we worked with restoring old mined sites. These sites were certified cleared of mining influence, but were old areas where the soil had been so compacted that only scrub plants could grow; nothing long-term or healthy could survive with soil that hard and compressed. Roots couldn't penetrate the unnatural hardpan. My former company would go in and rip up the scrub plants. They would till the hardened soil over and over again, breaking up the clumps and once again adding air to the earth. And only when the soil was loosened was it ready to be planted with the seeds of the long-term, the seeds that would take it from scrub land to healthy forest, that place it was supposed to be all along. There was destruction in the process of construction, something I'm realizing is almost universally true.
I can say that on day one.

Diving Board

I lost my job this morning.
I wasn't expecting it consciously, though I think somewhere in my mind I suspected a change was coming.

I was a novice grant writer, hired to find funds based only on my gumption, my charisma and my writing skills. I successfully got grants but they need someone with more experience and I simply can't provide that. If it were a bigger office and I could be mentored, this wouldn't be a conversation, but unfortunately, they are small. I don't blame them for the termination; I'd do the same thing. I'll miss them all terribly. I love—and I mean LOVE—my coworkers. I love my bosses, love the board, love the members. My office was a truly fun place to work; they are friends and they matter to me. I haven't a single bad thing to say about them, and I'm assured that feeling is mutual. I leave with great recommendations and the knowledge that I'd be an enthusiastic rehire if they could find a place for me. All of that is good.

Here's a secret: when people ask me what my dream job is, the answer has always been a writer, but I've felt like it was insensible to say so. I love to write; I love words. I love forming thoughts and arguments onto paper. Writing breathes life into me and I want to believe it does the same for my readers. I don't know if it is my gift, but given the choice I'd like it to be.
And so, I finally admit it: what I want to be when I grow up isn't a grants manager for a conservation nonprofit (though that was great), it's to be a writer. A real one. A published one. But what to write? I haven't a clue. I want to speak truth. In a quiet way, I am relieved to be let go.

Maybe this is it, the kick off the diving board toward doing what I so dearly love to do. I'm terrified. Right now the lake looks cold, I'm unsure of my swimming skills and that water's surface is coming fast.

No Distinction from the Stars

I became a member of my church yesterday. Never thought I'd be one to consider committing to something like this, but I'm happy I did it. As part of my membership ceremony, I was asked to speak about how I feel called to serve. Frankly, I don't know how I'm called, or what I have to offer. It is a glorious notion made impossibly complex in action.

Anyway, here is what I said:
Several years ago, I worked for an adventure camp based in Virginia, and would spend much of the summer on an old school bus, taking kids around to various sites in the region to do different activities. I was on the younger, 8-10 year old trip when we pulled up to our campsite in rural West Virginia. The site was situated in a beautiful cove, on the flood plain of the south branch of the Potomac River. Looking up was mountains, looking around was lush grass with the river just beyond it. It was gorgeous. That night was cloudless and moonless, and we let the fire die down and all the campers lay on their backs to look at the stars. The milky way stretched across the sky like a great, glowing ribbon, and to our left and right the fireflies twinkled and danced. Seemingly thousands of fireflies flew around us and when they floated overhead they made no distinction from the stars.


It was a great scene of wonder. It felt like we were blanketed by the stars; those living and breathing insects around us, and the endless heavens above. The kids were left speechless, a miracle in and of itself.
The next morning we were packing up camp, and I heard a little girl scream. She came running toward me, yelling about a horrid insect that had landed on her shirt. She demanded I kill it immediately. I gently pulled it off her and saw it was a firefly. I told her this but she didn't care. A firefly in the daylight is just another beetle.

That image has stuck with me for years, especially when I think of God's calling on my life. Something that shone like stars in the right setting was unspectacular in the wrong one. How very much I feel like those insects when I am not where I'm supposed to be. I am nothing when I am not in the place to which I am called. I inspire no sense of God's mighty creation with my life. And so God calls me to leave the safe ordinary nature of the daylight and proceed into the night to be a light. The creator calls me to be more than just a beetle. What a terrifying prospect.
I know that I am not called because I am particularly talented; I am called because I am not. When I think I am qualified, then I believe I can do the job myself and I leave no space for God to guide. It succeeds on my qualifications and not God's. It becomes about me.

And so I don't know what I am called to do as a part of this community. I'm more often than not completely unsure of what I have to offer at any given moment in the first place. But I desire to serve, to discuss, to engage—I desire to learn and to teach, to root and to bloom. I desire to be a light, as you have been lights to me. I think of our church community as that West Virginia flood plain: the purple ink of the night sky full of stars, the blades of summer grass dotted with each one of us, shining in the way we were created to shine, serving as a light in the darkness, signaling to each other that we are recognized, we are known and we are loved for being precisely where--and how--we are supposed to be. We answer the call to our purpose.

(my church is Land of the Sky United Church of Christ)

The Safety in the Setting

There are certain events that still exist so close to the surface that to pull them out with words would be akin to itching a dangerous scab. Words work best on scars, not scabs; on the parts already cut and healed and marked, not on those so fresh that to prod them is to open up the bleeding. Scars are set and there is safety in the setting.

Much of 2010 is still scabs, those wounds where I’ve managed to stave off infection but haven't yet dealt with the long-term. All that is to say: I can't quite write about this year, because much too much of it is still too close. There has been progress and for those progressions I am thankful. I've built rich and meaningful friendships in places I didn't expect and have gotten better at my current job and my career. I found a fantastic church body and have relished getting to know it. I became more secure in my faith. But I make no bones: it's been an exhausting twelve months. The quaint, quivering little heartache that started the year seems so comical in light of the thunderous and lead-filled bombs of the summer. They simply can't compare.

I learned that there are as many ways to die as there are to live, and that death changes the core of those left behind. I know it's changed me. I learned that death takes bodies and leaves souls but depression takes the soul and leaves the body and no matter which robbing occurs there are those left to deal with the newly empty space. This year both of those losses found me.

I have a coworker who has been a sort of pen-pal these past few months (he works at another office) and lately we've been discussing the concept of community. He brought up the idea that communities are just like ecosystems: there are those who are consumers and those who are providers, and without a balance the community (and the individual) crumbles. I'm struck dumb by his use of ecological terms to describe one's place. 2010 has been a year where I've been a straight consumer. I haven't given anything to anyone this year, and I usually love to serve. I haven't had the energy to encourage or empathize or work at relationships or pursue friendships, haven't had the emotional capacity to look outside myself and I know that I—and those I love—have suffered from it. (To those who stuck with me this past year I offer my deepest gratitude and love. It didn't go unnoticed.) At the beginning of 2010 I predicted it'd be the year of sweetness. I just didn't know the sweetness wouldn't start to come until the very, very end.

2011: the year of renewal: of the mind, of the spirit, of the soul. Let the transformation begin.

The Following, The Progress

This past weekend my roommate and I had our annual Swanky Christmas party (I wrote about it once). 2010 was my fourth year hosting one (Jane’s sixth) and putting it together has become a familiar process—decorations, lights, furniture movements, purchases and requisite cleaning—so the stress level has decreased dramatically, even as the cost has risen. We had time to reflect a little bit on the purpose of the event. Part of the fun of the party is dressing to the nines and having some of our dearest friends over to get ready together. I rarely dress to impress; it requires way too much time and energy and I don’t care enough about my appearance to do it except in rare instances. But once a year the Swanky party comes around and all is on the table. I love to see the dresses and tuxes that come through the door, as if my friends and I were all bringing our bests together; the Voltron of beauty. Often I feel for first-time attendees who, in the day and age of dress casual, don’t quite get the true concept of elegance attached to the party. They stand out and not in a good way. This year, I went for a dramatic look. I wore the shortest dress I’ve ever worn (or probably ever will wear), dramatic makeup, upswept hair and big eyelashes. In a way, I transformed and I felt abnormally good about it. I didn’t do it for anyone (there wasn’t anyone at the party I particularly wanted to impress or attract) but rather because I could. The experience of transformation was my favorite part; to feel progress as if I got prettier with each step. At the end I felt like I shined, a feeling I haven’t had all year.

(Told you it was short! Blue lips due to a ring pop)

I don’t get to feel progress much.

My essay that got me into Syracuse was about slugs; how when watched closely they seem to make no progress, but how, when left be, the distance they cover is remarkable. This was a year of slugs.

I’m finalizing my annual best and worst list and marveling at the changes that occurred. I’ve lost friendships and habits but gained even more in a way so slight I didn’t feel them occur. In January I hoped that sweetness would follow the darkness that colored much of the year. In December death has not yet let me be. But sweetness has, for the most part, followed.