The Tension of Opposites

The New Day that began two years ago has had a long hiatus.  The intervening years have brought many changes and settled me into long held places where there is familiarity and comfort. They have, as well, brought very big changes. I have retired from my years of work outside my home. I have embarked on being a single grandparent and mother and miss my partner in all of that. I have moved into my first home of my own.

This morning, the view from my home is of a brightening sky above the woods of the ravine that lie below me.  The brook is fierce as it runs fast with a winter thaw.  Its sound is much like the ocean around which I grew up as a child. And all this in a world where a quake and tsunami have invaded the morning of another nation so far away. 

I thank my God for the goodness I have.  I weep for the ash covered around this world.

Our instant world coming through our blue-screened televisions brings into our consciousness the fact that we share a planet full of beauty and terror and I wonder at the holding of the tensions of those two opposites.

On this morning I believe that only a Great God of the Universe can hold this task and I arch forward toward seeking the understanding of that with merely a glimpse of what that may mean.  In my now older years, I am more and more content with questions, and the wait for the answers that will attend.

We approach the First Sunday of Lent 2011 with much to contemplate.  We live in a churning world that needs us to incline our hearts and lives toward thoughtful compassion.  This calls for bravery and we need Angels around us.  On this coming First Sunday of Lent we hear and believe:

"He will command his angels concerning you
and with their hands they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Lord, have mercy on us and hear our prayer.

Moving Day

It is moving day in my family. My sons are leaving the home they have lived in all their lives. In their twenties and thirties this is not a small leave taking. It is a move necessitated by time and circumstances. They had shared this place with their father. His death three and a half months ago precipitated this new change in their lives.

Moving therefore, has been on my mind. Life brings all kinds of moves. We move in, we move out, we move around, sometimes as though in circles, but movement is the motion of life. As the earth moves so do our bodies and souls.

I've watched my sons prepare for this change. They went right up to the end before attacking the huge task of packing. One of them loves the things of his father. The old books, the old records, the stuff of his Dad's mind. He loves to keep things. Just like his father. I suspect we hold on to these things, as if treasures, so as not to fully let go of the person who was so soon ago right there, laughing, giving life directions, being a pain in the neck, being real.

The other, a bit more pragmatic but just as much pained by his loss approaches it in his own way. He is the truck driver, the let's get rid of this, let's take this decision maker. It seems he does this with barely a glance. But my mother's eyes see him wince each time a closet is opened or a box is closed. The sweetness and the burden of memory is very present. Like his brother he does love the things of his father and I hope he remembers to take Dad's fifty year old scout shirt that he wears like a badge of honour and will never wash lest it too disappear.

We have talked before and after their father's death of the complexity and yet the simplicity of it all. "Big Al" lived his whole life believing in God. He knew and fully accepted that we are born, we live, and then we die. All the while we belong not to ourselves or to one another, but to God. He fully believed this is the great circle of God's creation of us.

The transcendence of what their father taught them will help them in countless ways as they start this new day in their lives. It will help me too. They live so close to me that I can see the light on at night and know that they are safely home. In the nights to come it will be dark. The good thing is that I will be able to tell them how much I will miss them, how in the ways of God, forever I am very near, and that their Pappy is with them too and perhaps glad he has not had to pack. He could move peacefully toward death but packing would have driven him crazy.

I'm cooking a meal for the journey. They can take that to their new home. I won't give them advice. Our parenting, so rooted in faith, has given them inescapable treasures deep within them. They will know, as Henri Nouwen said... When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope. And so it is that we begin our leave taking and move toward yet another new day. I wonder what it will bring.

Hockey on Easter

In the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church this is the most important season of the Church year. Easter is upon us. There is new life, new hope, a new day. What was dead is now risen and gives us new life. This is our hope, this is our belief.

The rituals of Easter were true to form this year. Church time, preparing the feast, conversations with like minded friends, and hockey, yes hockey.

The mere mention of hockey on Easter often draws gasps of incredulity from the more traditional of my Catholic acquaintances. But it is really very Catholic. By Catholic in this instance, I mean, of God. For my sons and my son-in-law this was a weekend of great experience. I was reminded as I watched them, shut my eyes as they headed for the boards or one of the other men on the ice, of a great line from the film, Chariots of Fire. The main character in the film is asked why he runs. He is, as many will know, a fierce man of God, and his response echoes that truth. He says, I run, because when I run, I feel His pleasure. So it is that my men have since boyhood, on the surfaces of countless Canadian arenas, felt that one of the purposes of their created beings had its foundation in some very much larger Power. We were truly celebrating the new creation.

Here they were assembled with their friends in a league that is made up of people in the Arts. There were actors, musicians, and friends of those who entertain us; those who give us metaphors and music for what is so good, so sad and so important in life. Often those things we cannot articulate or sing in our own words.
The ice surface was full of testosterone, and adrenalin the stuff of which sport is made. The tribal and primal like yells that began games, the physical contact and then in the freedom of this generation, the tears of defeat and victory.

As a gesture of goodness and sympathy, pucks were distributed to all the teams. It was the Tenth Anniversary of The Exclaim Tournament. A fabulous logo was on one side, (designed by my son-in-law) and on the other, the simple white letters on the back of the puck, "In Loving Memory of Al Mazeika, 1941-2007." My boys' father. He was a man who long ago decided that hockey on Easter was not a big deal. Praising God and being with family was. With that symbolic puck, everyone participating was able to pay tribute to a fabulous hockey father. His sons celebrated in their own way, one on a championship team with his brother-in-law, and one with a heart pumping goal. Pappy celebrating Easter in his new place, and we in ours.

Following the tournament finals there is perhaps the most special game of all. The children of the participants have their very own game. Little ankle skaters to the very proficient house league team skaters. The fanfare begins with great music. Sean Cullen had a great tune this year. Enough to bring a tear to your eye. The announcement that elevated the little ones to the status of players at professional arenas all over the world. A thrill for anyone with a heart. All this followed by a family skate on this a great family day.

And so it goes that we have hockey on Easter. There is so much that is not good in this life that must be judged. Let not hockey as comraderie, as sport, as celebration be among these things. I celebrate the New Creation in diversified ways. The Great Canadian Game is one of them. Let it bring us together to dance the dance that calls us to Easter's new life.

Living on Life's Terms

It is futile to try to live life out of sync with life's terms. Ah, those terms! Consequences to actions, sunny days, rainy days. Days when the wind of it all just gets you off balance and fighting the fall. Then there are smatterings of happiness, even exhilaration. But try as I will to set my own terms, outcomes and finally, balances; I just can't do it.

The day that cancer announced its name in my house everything changed. At first there was the conscious numbness that had absolutely no voice. Quickly though came a new resolve to give my heart to it and to pay attention. The heart of the waiting was centered in a decision to just be there. Most of the time I was.

First there was the surgery. It is not difficult to care for someone who has over forty sutures in their chest. This demonstration of vulnerability, invasion and near destruction are hard to ignore. I can remember sitting by his bed knitting. I was new at knitting and new at all that surrounded me. Oddly, it was an adventure, and a sort of creation. Just as the wool slipped through the needles revealing some degree of turning into something, so too did the caring for the beloved who was sick.

Our relationship had suffered some brokenness and we were living apart. The new changes brought us back together. While disease ravaged his body, healing entered our souls. The dichotomy of it was clear. The living of it exhausting. Time was the enemy as well as the great gift. There was no plan to "work" on things, it just happened.

Once out of the hospital and during months of Chemo, giving became the plan. I gave care and shelter. He gave gratitude. These became the hinges that kept life in us. It was and still is profoundly personal. So much of life was unknown and fearful that we set ourselves a shelter that was visible only to us.

Now in my grief, I still pay attention to living on life's terms. Sometimes it seems unbearable but I'm standing still waiting. Today is a waiting day. Tomorrow shall reveal itself.

The Beginning

It is Sunday, the beginning of the week, the beginning of the blog. And the beginning of a completely new life.

My husband died two months ago. All is new. My emotions born of the gladness and the sorrow of that journey. The living in my bones the cancer diagnosis, trying to tell myself it was not my cancer, but of course it was. The cliched rollercoaster existence of hope and the firmness of reality.

Just yesterday, I watched my two year old grandson put together a difficult puzzle never before seen by him. All its random pieces were spread out. There was however, nothing random about his concentration as he inched his pieces together. His gaze was of pure concentration, looking ahead and looking back. He was figuring it out as he made the big picture fit. So it is with life.

As I begin this Sunday work, I make it into a Sabbath recreation. I will bring to you pieces of what my experience has taught me. This year, last year, all the years. Some good, some not so good, better than a novel, and as holy as a Sunday as one begins again.