Author Archives: admin

Church was GLORIOUS! I am in love. I can’t wait to go back. Nothing bothered me. The people were super friendly and I met a lot of them. They have brunch after the service in the nave. Even the body and blood didn’t bother me. I couldn’t sing for shit. I had trouble keeping up, constantly looking at the bulletin and the prayer book. It’s been TWENTY years. And I believe. I believe. I believe. It is glorious. I found out that on Thursdays I can work in the soup kitchen. And I’m sure there will be other things I can do. Dale didn’t go with me today, but wants to go when we get back from Disney. He wants to try Grace church, which is closer, which is where his mom goes, but I think, based on today, that I have found my church home. I think they may need me there. There weren’t a lot of folks in attendance. Maybe next time there will be more. I can’t get over just how friendly, and genuinely happy, the folks seemed to be.

None of the sandwiches were vegetarian. That’s something to work on right there. Oh I am just so THRILLED. If anybody had told me a year ago that I would have been in church today, I would have scoffed at them. But God has called me back. I think it’s pretty much that simple. I still can’t believe it myself. This last week, I felt like a divining rod, and God was the water. I have tried praying, which feels very, very strange. But I’m sure that will get better.

You know what’s funny? Before Dale and I got together, I dated this guy for five months, was in love with him, and he dropped me like a wet rock, from out of nowhere it seemed to me. I was devastated. So, feeling that I was at my wits end in the search for Mr. Right, I prayed. I told God I was sick of it, sick of looking, sick of all the bullshit. I told God that if he had a man for me, that he needed to send him my way, or else I was just going to give up. Two weeks later, Dale showed up at my door. We drove to the top of a mountain and talked for hours. He told me he was an atheist and I told him that was silly. (I don’t think this now.) After we finished talking and I had drunk all my White Mountain beer coolers, we drove down the mountain and met up with Dale’s girlfriend and my best friend. The next morning when I woke up, I couldn’t stop laughing because I knew, I KNEW, that I was going to marry that “boy.” He was just nineteen. I hardly knew him, but I knew I would marry him. And he felt the same way. We met Sunday and talked about our future. We were married five months later.

All that started with a prayer. All my life, all these prayers. But all that guilt, all that terribleness. But now, it’s different. I feel at peace. I feel stirred up for God. I am happy and secure. I am happy.

In a few hours, we will hop on a plane for Florida. I am excited. Everything fit perfectly into my tiny suitcase. I will update as time permits.

~r.

So today is all about preparations for our trip. Dale has mountains of laundry to do, and he has to do a thorough job on the yard. I have to take Lulu to the Ark for boarding, and make sure that the house is at least somewhat clean. Annette is house sitting for us and I want it to be pleasant, though she probably wouldn’t care. I need to look over the finances and make sure they are in order, too.

Today I don’t feel so full of God as yesterday. Yesterday I called two priests and neither of them has called me back. That shocks me, it really does. I bet if I’d called a preacher they would have called me back. Maybe I sounded crazy on the phone. I don’t know. But I did find out that the church that I was thinking of going to, which is where Rick and Terri go, only has worship on Sunday mornings. That is a real disappointment. There is another, big church that has worship every day, except, of course, Saturday. I feel the need to go often, which is probably just a lot of hot air, but that’s how I’ve been feeling. I can’t really explain it.

So if I don’t get to talk to a priest, I will just go Sunday morning and see how things FEEL. I will go to the big church. I’ve been there before, years and years ago, back when my hair was shoulder-length. So, so long ago. Well, maybe I will go to the little church. I can’t decide. Maybe by tomorrow all this will have blown over.

~r.

I found out today that my poetry manuscript, I Will Not Give Over, was a finalist in Alice James Books’ Beatrice Hawley Award for 2012. I am very glad about this, but of course I wish I had won.

The winner was Jamaal May for Hum. Another poet was also chosen for publication—Jan Heller Levi for Orphan.

I am jealous, as always, of their success, but I feel that I should look at the upside. Surely, if I was a finalist in this major contest, someone will publish this book. Years ago, the full-length of The Terrible Baby was a semi-finalist in the Kathryn A Morton Prize from Sarabande Books. I was so pissed that I didn’t win, and so disappointed, and had spent so much money, that I just gave up and didn’t send it to anyone else. I got the chapbook published instead. Which was not a bad move, but I shouldn’t have given up on the full-length book. It’s a good book. Anyhow, this time, I am going to send the book out, and send it out again. And again.

~r.

So I talked at length with Dale and Annette last night. They don’t think I’m crazy, which is good news. But the more I talked, the crazier I felt, the nuttier. It’s all so very strange, passing strange. But as I wrote yesterday, it’s really no surprise.

BUT. Last night I started reading the Gospel and Matthew was very sobering. I had remembered the weeping and gnashing of teeth, so I knew hell was in there, but  I had forgotten that hell is mentioned over and over again, out of Jesus’ mouth. True, he only says once what hell is, that one will burn. At least I think he said that. It was late when I was reading. And so much of what he said is obviously metaphor. I can’t believe that people take this stuff literally. Anyhow, it was very sobering. I must act with measured steps. I don’t need to dive off the deep end, just because I want something. And I do WANT it, so very much. My heart flutters in my chest.

There’s a story in C. S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy that has always delighted me. The mare, who is central to the story, meets Aslan and says to him, “You may eat me if you want to.” It’s a sort of prayer, a sort of knowing. In the Little House books, Mary talks about just knowing that God is good, that that is enough. Perhaps worrying whether I am good is beside the point. I TRY to be good, whatever that really means, but I fall short. That is the very meaning of sin—to miss the mark.

In the end, doesn’t it matter more what you “do” than what you “believe?” That’s not exactly counter to the Bible, though to hear lots of preachers you would think it is. No, in Matthew, Jesus talks about trees bearing fruit, and he says, as Plato said, that a good tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. We discussed this very thing in rhetoric class. My teacher believed this wholeheartedly. I did not. A bad tree, a bad person, can most certainly produce good fruit. That’s what makes us so confusing as a race. If badness were so easy to spot, things would be simple. So the story of the trees is faulty at best. But the kernel in the middle, the idea of a bad TREE not being able to produce good fruit, that is true. And it is true by extension that you can often tell a person’s true colors by what they do, or don’t do. But modern psychology has taught us that it’s just not that simple. So, therein lies the problem with the Bible. It’s just not simple.

In Girl Meets God, the author writes about how she takes comfort, and puts stock in the fact that for centuries people have been wrestling with the Bible and what it means, with God and what he means, and the Episcopal church honors that tradition. She trusts in all that tradition and wisdom. I think she may be right. But it would be wrong to trust blindly. It would be right to investigate closely, and that’s what I intend to do.

So today I will read. I will read more of the Gospel. I got the NIV on my Kindle. I am also going to get Diane Keaton’s memoir, which I think will be great. Tonight we have a birthday party for a couple of friends, which should be fun. Then tomorrow we will be planning, and washing clothes, getting ready to go. Lulu has to be dropped off tomorrow. Whenever I take her to be boarded, she freaks out. I hate that, but it can’t be helped. They say that she’s okay by the second day and has a good time. She’s a gentle dog at heart.

So on to it then. I get a massage at 2:00. All is well in my world.

~r.

How to say it? How do I feel now? I just finished Girl Meets God. Where am I now? Who am I now? Who is God?

I have always known, and said, albeit in jokes, that I would go back to church, that God would take me back. For years, I wrestled and wrested with God and theology, mulling and polishing and pounding question after question, trying to be logical, to make sense, to be reasonable. About ten years ago, God gave me a dream wherein he told me that I was free, that I could do what I wanted, that I was released, free to make my way in the world. I was released from guilt and agony, released from wrestling. And it was wonderful. I stretched out and moved around and saw that life was good. I no longer prayed as I had always prayed, which was from obligation, and fear. I no longer prayed before every meal, prayed by rote. I no longer prayed at all. And it felt good. A terrible burden had been lifted. I have no regrets. I have loved myself and my life these last few years.

But I have written about God, about coming back to God. And over the last few months, I have begun to think of God again. And I feel myself being tugged, if that makes any sense. And that’s the thing. It makes no sense at all. There is nothing even slightly logical about it. God, the very notion of God, is not logical. Lanie and I talked at length yesterday while we were working out and she kept mentioning how religion, miracles and all that rot, just doesn’t make any sense and I kept saying that logic/sense is not the point at all. It, religion, miracles, are about something else entirely.

Years and years ago, I was standing in my kitchen and I saw myself there and there was a shaft of bright light entering my chest and coming out through my back. I could see it, clear as day. It was divine. It was God. The logical thing is that it was all in my mind, that it meant nothing. But it never was meaningless to me. It meant something beyond words. And there have been dreams, and visions, all through my life. And it is just very easy to dismiss them. I suffer from a mental illness. That is enough to explain every religious impulse that I have. I am unhinged. Of course I have visions. Of course I have dreams. Of course.

Until today, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could go back to church even if I don’t believe, that believing is somehow beyond the point, that I could return to church, return to God, simply for the joy of it. Simply for the joy. And at this point, what do I have to lose? I can do anything I want. God has shown me that, he released me into that sort of joy. He released me. I was in a cage that my mother, my culture, my church, put me in. I was bound, and it was God who set me free. And I flew away from him, but now I’m wondering if I ever flew away at all. Maybe I just stopped paying attention. Maybe I dwell in God now, just as I have always dwelled in God, just as all creatures dwell in God.

Life is metaphor. Life is a story. And religion is a big part of that story. And the religion that was given to me was Christianity. That is my heritage. That is a huge part of who I am. And who cares if I don’t believe? What does belief have to do with it?

If there is one thing I’m certain of, it’s that God doesn’t much care what we think of him. He doesn’t much care if we cleave to him, or if we denounce him, or if we argue about him. He is much too large for any of that nonsense, that I’m right and you’re wrong bullshit. He is so large he takes my breath. He is the universe, all that swirl of stars and light and dark matter and the little bit of human beings who fit into his eye. The apple of his eye. I am the apple of his eye.

So that is where I am. I don’t know if I will do anything about it. I don’t know if I will take any sort of action. I don’t know if I’ll pick up the Bible, as I am tempted to do. I don’t know if any of this matters, but the thought of joy, of joy for joy’s sake, of God for God’s sake, of just being and relaxing into the knowledge of what is, I am drawn in and down and under and through. We will see what we see.

~r.

So on Monday I submitted to a few places. Today, I got rejections from two of them. I’m not kidding. Rejected in TWO DAYS. How’s that for a kick in the teeth?

And, I’m really getting sick. I feel like an underwater sea creature, except that I don’t belong here.

~r.

So today has been better, because I’ve gotten out of the house. Maybe that’s the key. I took one of the dresses back and exchanged it for a different one. Then I went to the doctor, because I have this sore throat and I wanted to be sure that it doesn’t get worse before our trip. So they gave me antibiotics, which I probably don’t need, but….I think I caught this from James, who was sick a couple of weeks ago. But he seemed to feel bad, and I feel fine. I just sound like death. Anyhow, I got this magazine at the doctor’s office, with their permission of course. I love it. It’s Chattanooga City Scope, splashy, full of photos of area homes to lust over and local stories that I love for some reason. I am going to have to get a subscription to it. I LOVE looking at photos of lovely living spaces. It makes me dream of what I may have someday. I think I would love a condo on the north shore. I am lusting over the thought.

I have begun reading a book, an actual book, called Girl Meets God. A student gave it to me a couple of years ago, but I am just now getting around to it. I have already learned so much about the Jewish faith that I didn’t know. The thing is, she is a Christian Jew and the book is about her struggles leaving Judaism behind. I think that I’m going to like the book, but I wish it were on my Kindle, that I haven’t used very much yet.

Last night we made some dinner reservations for Disney. We have bought the dining plan and need to plan accordingly. Both of us are getting really excited. I am mostly looking forward to being back at Epcot. I just love it. There’s something soothing about it. But I will of course love the other parks as well, especially Typhoon Lagoon. The only problem with going there is the fear that I will run into someone I know while wearing a bathing suit. But that can’t be helped. While I was at the doctor, the nurse who saw me said that the All Star Music Resort is fine, clean and adequate. He says, you don’t say in the room much anyway, so why would you need a lot of bells and whistles? I am sure that this hotel will be much better than the place we stayed last time, which had terrible beds. It was ultra cheap, but in the end it was fine because we just weren’t in the rooms that much. We are getting a suite, which means Dale and  I won’t have as much privacy as we had when we had adjoining rooms with the boys, but I think it will be fine.

So I have time to do whatever now. I think I may do some more submissions. Or maybe just read.

~r.

Already they are at my back, already the doomsday doctors are poking me with their pointy fingers. It’s only been one day. ONE. Actually, it happened this morning as soon as all my grades were turned in. The yawning mouth of the universe looking square at me saying, now what? Now what will you do, you useless you? You useless, lazy, lukewarm, boring, fat, lazy, fat, crazy mess of a woman. This happens every single time! Bam!

Anyone else would stretch their arms up over their head and relish, yes RELISH the free time. But me? Did I watch TV? No. Did I read? No. I did submissions for a few hours, then I did my EDO for work, then I fretted because I didn’t know what to do. I showered. I fretted. Then I went out and closed out our account at the credit union and took the cash and bought a suitcase. Then I went to Cato and bought three dresses. Retail therapy. But tomorrow will come. Tomorrow will come without a plan, with nary a shoe to wear.

Why oh why is it like this? Is it because every Saturday when I was growing up I wanted to read books and do nothing but my parents wanted to work, work, work and I never wanted to work? Is it my mother’s voice in my head? Get up, Sally Sue! Get up! Listen to that. Just listen. That is her voice, singing “Heavenly Sunshine.” I am just sixteen. My belly is flat and my butt is high and my breasts are pretty perky and no one has put their fingers inside me and no one has opened my mouth with his tongue. I am in love with Skipper and my head swirls with fire and loneliness and if I wasn’t wound so tight I would hear voices. Instead, I hear words, something almost sane, because I must, MUST be sane. It wouldn’t do to be crazy, not like him, not like the loony-toon who walks the floors at night. It wouldn’t do to let them crawl inside me.

Damnit. I wish I could just stay awake forever and outlast this feeling. I wish I could wish it away. Or I wish I could go to sleep and dream delicious things that would follow me into the morning. I DO NOT HAVE TO FEEL THIS WAY! DO I????

Well. What will I do tomorrow, after I wake up? I can read if I want. I can workout if I want. I can watch movies or cook or write or do more submissions or watch TV mindlessly. I can do anything I want. And that is the problem.

Oh, bust a move. They are at the door. That’s what they’ve come for, for you. Two by two they walk up the plank. The boat is grey and shaped like a shoe. There are babies floating in the water, face-side down. This is the flood. This is the water creeping up the sides of the mountain. Everything you think about is true. There are thorns in her hair. She is squeezing into too-tight jeans. See her yellow tee-shirt. She is flagging down the cars for the carwash. She is fourteen sexy almost ripe. Her hair is stringy brown, sometimes curls. Watch her cross the street with her cardboard sign. This is nineteen-seventy-eight. I am done. I have washed out the kitchen rag. I have emptied the slop bucket. Again. There is no more time for chicken feed. Or worms in the can. I am walking to the lake all by myself. I am casting my net. I am full of baby fish. I am swallowing the river. God has broken me. Again. God has tacked me to the study wall. See how the old men pass by and peer at me. See them stroke their chins.

Damnit. Tomorrow I will move, something. I must keep it at bay. I have two months before I go back to work.

~r.

So I have finished my grading. But I haven’t recorded the grades officially yet. I’m waiting for a few students to get into touch with me. I’m missing some papers, from some good students, and I’d like for them to get into touch with me before I record the grades. I sent out an email and told everyone that they have until midnight tonight. That’s the best I can do. There’s just no accounting for not doing work, at least nothing that I can think of. I always do my work, and if I don’t do it, I expect consequences, though I can’t think of a time recently when I haven’t done my work. Well, maybe I can. I could have done a better job cleaning the basement and maybe the fact that I didn’t will affect the appraisal. We will see when we see. Perhaps my students feel like that, that they are just too tired to do another thing. I will say this. Perhaps I have over worked them this semester. For each piece that they read, they had to write a two-page response. They read two pieces every week. That isn’t a lot of writing in a given week, but over time, if you don’t do these responses as you go, it really adds up. So next semester I’m going to require this writing weekly, and will accept no late work. I think that these written responses are very important because it forces you to analyze written work, to really take it apart and think about it. But maybe two pages is too much? What do you, kind readers, think? A lot of these students just didn’t do the work. They wrote a page, or a page and two lines. They did half-assed work and their grade reflects that. So. It is what it is. Next semester I may have them write less, but I’m not really inclined to. But maybe I will. It would certainly be less work for me. That should, I suppose, be a factor.

Now that I’m done, or mostly done, I can begin to think about vacation. We leave next Sunday, so there’s much to get done this week. Alex needs new sunglasses and shorts and we need to buy another carry-on suitcase. We need to make sure everyone has swimwear. Oh yes, it’s just around the corner. I am eager, eager, eager.

Just now my eyes are tired from working. I need to rest them.

~r.

I think I have a toothache. Anything that has to do with my teeth, I take VERY seriously. So if this is still here tomorrow, I’ll be at the dentist’s on Monday. I hope I don’t have a cavity. I always feel so guilty about my teeth. I don’t floss regularly, and I always expect them to get on to me when I go to the dentist, but they never do. They say I take great care of my teeth. I have these awful dreams where they fall out, whole gobs of teeth at a time. It’s maddening. I hope that this turns out to be sinuses.

I finished grading two of my classes today. Tomorrow I have two more classes to do, though not actually that much work, just reading journals. I finished all the critical papers today. So I’ve made very good time. I just hope I feel well tomorrow, enough to get everything done. And then, tomorrow night is HBO night. I have been watching Game of Thrones, which is becoming more and more difficult to watch because of all the sex and violence, mainly the violence of course. I have to shut my eyes and ears for some parts. But I have fallen in LOVE with GIRLS. This is just a marvelous thing that has happened to TV. I am in LOVE with the creator/main character. Lena Dunham, I think that’s her name. She is ordinary and luminous and wonderful. And SMART. And just twenty-five years old. Or something like that, very young and smart and I envy her. So I have to get all my grading done, and get to the grocery store, so I can relax and watch TV tomorrow night.

I will sleep good sleep tonight. I’ve been at work most of the day. Dale and I went over to Rick and Terri’s for a bit of wine this evening, but didn’t stay very long because Dale had a bitch of a headache. But we got some Subway and came home and now John is over, but I just had to retire for the night.

I feel words in my head, reading all these poetry reading journals. I feel close to words and music. It’s a good place to be.

Jenny and I are starting our literary journal. It should be up and running in a couple of months. I am getting really excited about it.

So now, unto the night…

~r.