One of my daughters asked, “Why did he have to take her?”
The kids’ Sunday School teacher, Joyce Mwanalushi Landu, died suddenly while visiting her family in Zambia a couple of weeks ago. We learned the news last week. And it hit us very hard. I think Joyce was probably near 50 and the cause of death was heart-related.
Joyce was a beautiful, creative, spiritual person.
In a tribute at church yesterday, Laura talked about how Joyce never raised her voice or was physically affectionate or demonstrative, yet the kids were drawn to her and knew they had her respect. And she had theirs.
I believe Joyce truly loved my kids. Losing someone who loves you and whom you love is always crazy. It calls to mind all those people you’ve loved and who’ve died. A death makes you wonder about your own death and what kind of legacy you will leave. I would like to be remembered as someone who loved unconditionally, as Joyce did.
Australian hospice nurse Bronnie Ware, in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, said that a top common regret from every dying man she tended was “I wish I didn’t work so hard.” I know I work very hard, sometimes too hard. But then, I play hard too. (This book was quoted in that Atlantic article Why Women Still Can’t Have It All)
I understand nothing of God’s plan. Why did Chris have to get Parkinson’s? I am tongue-tied when my kids ask “Why?”
the kids at Rutgers Church during prayer time
All I know is that I have to love the people I’m traveling through life with. I have to make art and love my peeps.
I have to remember:
Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that — but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself. –Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet (1903)
I was really psyched that my friend Lorenza stopped by last night and my daughters got to meet her.
Lorenza Andrade Smith journeys around North America, voluntrarily homeless, offering kindness and communion to the people she meets. She and I met after the United Methodist Communicators (UMAC) conference last fall. I’m glad she’s loving New York and its beautiful diversity. She has to leave NYC at 5 pm today, arriving in Texas two days later via Greyhound bus.
Lorenza inspires me because of her simplicity, her non-traditional life and her ease with people.
She travels with one backpack and one rolling cart.
photo by Catherine Jones
We talked about Facebook, (of course!). We talked about how we use our phones to take photos. Lorenza talked about having her iPhone stolen at a $3/day hotel in Mexico. We talked about not being able to find Cath’s iPhone somewhere in the house.
We looked at and laughed with Lorenza about her Facebook photo folder, “Tall People and Me.” She may be small in stature but she is a superstar to me.
We talked about camping. And how the kids and I are planning a camping trip to Fire Island in a couple of weeks. We have no idea what we’re doing. We wished she’d come camping with us. She invited us to camp with her on the streets.
After such a nice relaxing conversation, it was time for Lorenza to go. She wasn’t sure if she’d be sleeping again in Central Park. I wondered if Riverside Park might be better. In Central Park, the previous night, they’d turned on big lights and hustled people awake and into the middle of the night. Lorenza thought that was due to the Tony Awards nearby. But I think they do it all the time.
I walked her to the subway station where she was looking for a single woman she’d met earlier. (She can engage in conversations better with women when their men are not around.)
I felt sad to see her walk away from me. I worry about her. This is one problem (of the many) when you love people. You worry about them. (She said she worries about herself too.)
Not long after I returned home, Char said she liked hearing Lorenza’s stories. Even though the stories are not easy to hear — they are honest and inspiring. Stories are what keep us going.
Lorenza connects with people, sometimes by telling stories and sometimes just by listening and laughing.
I rode my bike very fast across the walkways in Central Park to get to my day of rest. (I note the irony.) I thought I’d take a short cut behind Belvedere Castle. But I hit Shakespeare’s Garden and endless steps. Shoot. I had to slow down. I had to bounce my bike up and down the steps.
I do not like being late. Yet I am frequently late.
I got to 95th Street and Fifth Avenue but felt lost. I’d expected a church. Instead, I got a mansion, a beautiful retreat center, the House of the Redeemer, just off the park.
Our small group from Rutgers Church talked about times we’d felt refreshed. We reported that we’d felt relaxed during a storm with the lights out, while laid up in the hospital, on vacation in the Caribbean, or pausing for a moment when we ran near the ocean. I felt relaxed just talking about relaxation.
But I could not rest long. At lunch time, I had to bike again back across the park to meet the kids at the post office to renew and reapply for our passports. (I avoided the gardens.) I don’t know where we’re going, but I know we must be ready to go.
We will probably be late for wherever we are going. We will probably go the wrong way. We will probably hit steps when we least expect them. But I bet the place will be better than we had imagined, once we do arrive.
We all need a healthy dinner and time to savor it. Family dinner time is a sacred space to sit down together, to chat, to chew, to lean back in your chair, (even when you’re told not to).
Sure I say all this, but do we do it? Last night, I ordered pork fried rice, chicken with broccoli and spicy dumplings from the Cottage. I grabbed a few bites. Then I yelled, “Chinese food on the kitchen table,” over my shoulder.
I was running out the front door as my three kids ran in. I was going to my non-fiction class. The kids were coming home from math club, play practice and track team. My husband was working. That is how we roll — busy, busy, busy.
I believe in family dinner time. I really do. So we started a Friday night dinner ritual. We’re Christian, but our ritual is based on the Jewish tradition of Shabbat dinner. (Thanks to my friend, Joe Little, who suggested this as we sat on the sidelines of our girls’ Westside basketball league and to my upstairs neighbor Ran, who has invited us to many Friday night Shabbat dinners over the years.)
On Friday nights, we turn off the computer screens and phones, we meet in the kitchen and light a candle or two, we drink grape juice, and someone cracks open the Bible (we use the brilliant translation, The Message by Eugene Peterson).
We usually read one of the Psalms, because they’re poetic, dramatic and understandable. It takes all of ten minutes, but it’s an awesome way to decompress from the week and enter the weekend. And then we have dinner and just hang out.
Last week, after our Shabbat prayer and dinner, we played the card game, Spoons. Then we watched a movie. No biggie, just chilled and relaxed.
We should have Shabbat again tonite, but one of my girls has a statewide math competition, the other is going on a sleepover, and my husband has rehearsal. That just leaves me and my son. It’s fine that it’s just the two of us.
We’ll light a candle, read the Psalms, and savor some left-over Chinese food.
Thousands of people sing and worship together in this intentional community in Taizé.
I wrote an article for a Christian magazine a couple of months ago and mentioned that a young missionary lived in an intentional community with other missionaries.
I thought it was cool, because the missionary said the four young women had weekly meetings and talked about any cohabiting issues that’d come up — like cleaning out the fridge. And then they’d pray together.
This minor reference to an intentional community was edited out of the article. I wondered why. But, as usual, I didn’t make a fuss. I never asked the editor, Was there something wrong with that information?
And then, last night, I saw the movie Wanderlust. The leader of the hippie commune corrects Paul Rudd, “No, not a commune; We prefer intentional community.” And everyone in the audience laughed. And then I got it. Intentional community is perceived as hippy, dippy, grungy, suspicious, free love, attractive but not sustainable.
Briefly, I lived in intentional community. There was hardship and friendship. (That's me on the right, with Lee, our wrangler).
Tell that to the monks and religious orders. Religious people, like monks, priests, nuns, and, even young adult missionaries, live together and care for one another in communities all over. And it makes good sense, especially as people age and do not have children or spouses to care for them. Human beings are social creatures. We crave community, intentional or ad hoc.
Is being one half of a married, straight couple the only sanctioned way to live? I don’t think so. I thought a lot about this when I went to Taizé a few years ago. In that monastery, the brothers seemed to care a lot about one another and they cared a lot about the thousands of people visiting and living with them. That is intentional community too.
Brother Roger, who founded the Taizé community in 1940, said, “I think that I never lost the intuition that community life could be a sign that God is love, and love alone.”
If an intentional community is based on love – and figuring out who cleans the fridge – that does not seem to be so crazy. That seems to me to be the point.
Some mornings I only get out of bed because of the coffee. And my journal. And my friends. Okay, and my family. But coffee comes first.
Today’s Valentine’s Day. Perhaps it’s a little depressing for many? Like my family of origin, my husband’s not too big on gifts, cards, remembering holidays. I, on the other hand — the one who overcompensates — made every one a personalized Valentine’s Day card. And though I didn’t get much — or anything — at home, I did get some little cards with fair trade chocolates and a pink Valentine’s dish towel at work. I love my work peeps!
It was an ordinary day. I worked my job, did Pilates at lunch, worked again, then taught a session of comedy/improv at the Middle School, made dinner, shared dinner with the fam, went to the theater with my husband, (we saw The Broken Heart a play from the 1620s by John Ford — it was a bit of a slog). I took the subway home alone (I couldn’t stay for the second half). I shooed the kids to bed. I did the dishes.
And tomorrow I’ll do it all over again (though I hope I don’t have to see that play again).
I want to be grateful for every single day. I want to have an open, loving heart, especially on Valentine’s Day. And I did find one moment of deep calm and contentment in my day. At the end of Pilates class, Shayne, our teacher, turned off the lights. We lay in the Yoga corpse pose, Savasana. Then, Shayne read this poem by Hafiz:
The Sun Never Says
Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.
Is that amazing, or what? Meditation is almost as good as coffee.
Last night, I went to the opening night of A Christmas Carol, sitting beside my husband who had played Scrooge for at least four years about ten years ago in this production at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey.
It is unlikely, due to Chris’s Parkinson’s Disease, that he could still act a huge theater role like Ebenezer Scrooge. We reminisced in the car about how he was making the M. Night Shyamalan movie The Village at the same time he was in Princeton performing as Scrooge.
Chris as Scrooge, watching himself as a boy.
Acting is an art, like painting or playing the cello. But in the US, unlike maybe Russia, the performing arts get short shrift in a culture that worships celebrities (and then delights in their demise).
Acting is hard work. It is physical labor. It is not putting on make up and posturing. It requires depth of emotion and focus and athleticism.
In this production, Chris as Scrooge flew down from the rafters and flew back up again. He foisted Tiny Tim on his shoulder and jumped on the bed. (He particularly disliked having to do those last two things.)
So watching the show last night, I think Chris felt pride in his past work, but also sadness, and a sense of letting go, a resignation to having physical limitations.
I have seen this production at the McCarter a billion times. Still, it makes me cry. Why? Because, like Scrooge, I discover again the reality that we are made to love another, not to dismiss our loving tendencies by criticizing Christmas or other people. I remember that I am mortal and my time is limited. I must seize this day. There is so much joy in the scene when Scrooge realizes it is not too late to live — never too late to love.
The play is so good. This adaptation by Tommy Thompson is beautiful and simple and elegant, as is the direction by Michael Unger.
Chris has recently had a lovely success with a play he translated, Cherry Orchardby Checkhov at the Classic Stage Company, so I don’t think he was not sitting in the audience wondering, Why aren’t I up there, playing Scrooge?
I drove back and forth from the city. Chris fell asleep, off and on in the passenger seat beside me. When we talked, I told him, “You have had a great life in the theater and I’m so glad I got to see so much of it.” And yes, his theater life continues in a different direction.
My take-away from last night? Be like Scrooge, seize the day, buy the biggest turkey, jump on the bed. Or be like us, see a play, reminisce, have a life in the theater, have dinner with friends, (thanks KP and Wayne!).
The best part of travel is not the places you go, but the people you meet when you get there.
Lorenza Andrade Smith, Kathy Noble and MB Coudal talking about technology while waiting for the commuter train in Albuquerque. (Photo by Neill Caldwell)
After the conference, I was on the Rail Runner train with a dozen old and new friends, including Rev. Lorenza Andrade Smith. She was our keynote speaker at UMAC (United Methodist Association of Communicators). I was glad to get to know Lorenza on the commuter train trip for an hour and a half between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
In her address, Rev. Andrade Smith had told us how she went to prison to stand with immigrants who were rallying for legislative passage of the Dream Act in Texas.
She went to prison wearing her clerical collar and heels without stockings. At the prison entrance, she had to turn in her heels, “Because they could be weapons.” Every time she sat in the prison cell’s communal toilet to pee, someone would kneel beside her and ask for prayers. She had to learn to pray while peeing.
Finally, when she found space alone in the cell, she fell asleep, cold on the floor. When she awoke, she was wearing a coat and socks. (Sometimes prayers are answered, even when we don’t know we pray them and we become covered in someone else’s warmth.)
Lorenza is a veteran and a pastor. After our conference, she was visiting a homeless Facebook friend in Boulder, Colorado, then returning to San Antonio, Texas to live among homeless female veterans for a while. She was given a bus pass on Greyhound. Lorenza has renounced her salary and her belongings to live among the homeless and to advocate for immigrants. She has speaking engagements all over, but looks forward to a silent retreat months from now.
She wears a long, but somehow-stylish, black or grey tunic-type outfit that seminary students have made for her. She keeps all of her belongings in a small rolling cart. In it, she keeps a change of clothes, a sleeping bag, a wool blanket and a small amount of toiletries. She said she uses panty liners to preserve the wear of her undies.
“That’s probably too much information,” Lorenza said. Not for me. I love TMI!
She also carries a communion set, a plate and a chalice, but was refused admittance into one shelter because, “It could be used as a weapon.” (Communion cups and high heels, you see, are dangerous!)
So that night when she refused to give up her communion set, she slept on her favorite bench in the park at the Alamo in Texas. She slept too late, and was ticketed for camping. At the courthouse for the hearing, the judge fined her 10 hours of community service to be served at the shelter, coincidentally the one that had turned her away for carrying the communion set.
Lorenza has a smart phone and updates where she is and where she’s going on Facebook. Her bishop had insisted she do this for her safety. I have befriended Lorenza Andrade Smith on Facebook and suggest you do too.
Being a huge fan of sleep, I asked Lorenza if she sleeps well on the street. She answered, “No,” with a laugh. It takes two nights of sleeping safely, like in a hotel, before she can sleep through the night. The nights at the Albuquerque Hotel were restorative, she said, yet they reminded her, as many such opportunities do, that she is privileged and cannot escape her privilege.
“The sleep deprivation is the hardest part,” Lorenza said.
Every time she speaks to groups, she is asked the same questions –
“What’s in your bag?” And sometimes she empties her bag to show them.
“How does your family feel about this?” She speaks openly about being in the process of separating from her husband whom she had already lived apart from. “People who are homeless have to be open and so do I. I have to live honestly.”
Wow. I was blown away by Lorenza. Talking to her has made me question myself, my attachment to my things, my place of privilege and my honesty.
When she decided to divest herself of everything, “The big things were easy to give away, but the small things, like the photos of my son when he was little, those were the hard ones.” She found a home for her photos with extended family members, who, by the way, are supportive.
Lorenza chats with Lester under a bridge in San Antonio. Photo by Mike DuBose.
I asked Lorenza about this photo, taken by Mike DuBose. I have been lucky to work with Mike on assignment and we always have a lot of fun. Before Mike took the photos, Lorenza asked if the people minded being photographed. She said that two out of three of her friends were agreeable and even spruced up a bit before the photos were taken.
Mike has an easy-going, friendly, and respectful manner with everyone. Mike DuBose is one of my heroes. And so, too, is Lorenza Andrade Smith.
I’ve wanted to visit Ghost Ranch forever. I’ve heard it’s a wonderful retreat. I’ve wondered if they need writers in residence. I could report on what goes on there.
Here are a couple of things I would report on from this weekend:
A Men’s Wellness Group
There was an Iron John feeling when we pulled into the retreat center. Maybe 10 men sat in about six circles talking. And it looked, from a distance, although it’s hard to tell, that they were talking about their feelings. Love it! Men talking about feelings. Go figure. So cool and sexy.
The group meets annually, one of the women told us. A previous topic had been Fathers (capital F). This weekend’s session was on Women (capital W). So, for the first time, the men had invited the women to the Men’s Wellness Group to discuss relationships, sexuality and expectations. I would’ve liked to be a part of those conversations.
A Funeral
Another group was leaving. They were dressed in western wear. Yes, this was New Mexico but it was dressy western wear. There was a lot of hugging too. They seemed more familial than the Men’s Wellness group.
It turns out the dozens of dressy/casual folks were attending a memorial.
“I’m sorry,” I told the woman who was loading a saddle into her car.
“No,” she said. “It was his time. He’s in a better place. We’re going now to spread his ashes on the bluffs.”
The Meditative Path
My sister in law and brother in law and I talked about death as we walked down a sandy path.
We walked the labyrinth. At the center of the labyrinth, you can leave a talisman or a symbol. There was a feather, a pin, a tea bag, a rock. I searched my pockets, thinking I had nothing on me.
But then from my back pocket, I pulled out a scrap I had ripped out of the New York Times a few days earlier. I’d been carrying this quote around with me.
If there is any positive message at all in the narrative it is that life is a tragedy filled with suffering and despair and yet some people do manage to avoid jury duty. – Woody Allen
I left Woody Allen in the center of the labyrinth at Ghost Ranch.
***
The sky was brilliant blue in Abiquiu, New Mexico. The one narrow cloud might have been the cloud stream from a high-flying jet. One of my daughters calls that white line in the sky, a skyscraper. I don’t have the heart to correct her. That trail of white cloud looked exactly like it’d been scraped into the sky.
At our social media mania workshop in Albuquerque yesterday we had an awesome group — a lot of knowledge and a lot of support for each other.
Outside the San Felipe de Neri Church in Albuquerque
When Beth (Buchanan) asked for questions on post-it notes, one participant, S., wrote, “My mom cyber-stalks me…I’m scared to blog-because she’ll read it.”
After the workshop, I looked for S. but didn’t find her. I wanted to chat about her question and reassure her. Then I realized I hadn’t called my mother in a week so I called Mom to tell her how great I’m doing.
But Mom had feedback for me. She’d read my recent post on Getting Help. And I have to admit I put the phone on speaker as she spoke and pushed back my cuticles. She said, “You should get more help. The Michael J. Fox foundation will help you get care for Chris and the kids.” She is always after me to contact the Fox foundation for help.
“Mom, I think it’s true that the Fox foundation is a caring organization,” I said. “But I think their money goes into research and not into hiring home health care for people with Parkinson’s. And, as I mentioned in that blog post, I am getting help for Chris. Although, yes, it’s hard for me.” (Did that sound defensive? Um, yes, a little.)
Mom said she’d seen Michael J. Fox on Letterman or some late night show and that Fox reminded her of my husband. “He is not doing well,” she said.
Hmmmm. Here I am at this wonderful UMAC conference, wanting to brag about how great my presentation went. And I want to be worry-free (and free) from my little family for a few days and now I’m getting worried all over again. And I’m worried about worrying, because what if Mother reads this? If you do, you know I love you and I thank you for having good ideas, concern and love for me! 😉
But here’s the thing — worry is contagious and I don’t want to catch it.
The view from my hotel room. The sun was so bright, I had to look down.
I stopped writing this post this morning to think. I went out to my little patio to look at the sunrise. The sunlight blew me away. The sun is much bigger and brighter and closer in Albuquerque than in New York City. There is something valuable, beautiful and worry-free in a big bright morning sun.
I did find S. after this morning’s session. And S., Beth and I talked about the challenges (and joys?!) of having tech-savvy mothers who read our blogs, tweets or updates and then praise, worry or comment.
I vowed to Beth and S. to be a mother who does not cyberstalk her kids on social media. It may be impossible. Like my own mother, I want to protect, get help for and read them well.
The kids’ Sunday School teacher, Joyce Mwanalushi Landu, died suddenly while visiting her family in Zambia a couple of weeks ago. We learned the news last week. And it hit us very hard. I think Joyce was probably near 50 and the cause of death was heart-related.
100 Days of Poems and Pics 