An Unchecked List

A storm's coming.

No, that wasn't a metaphysical statement spoken in a hushed tone. A real storm is coming. According to the online radar, it should hit right around the time I will walk out of this building to my car and drive home. Convenient. I do love a good storm though, especially one with plenty of volume.

I didn't sign in here to talk about the weather so let's move on. I signed in to talk about a list. The list. The "do before I get old and/or die" list. Some might call it a bucket list although my aversion to anything Jack Nicholson related keeps me from adopting the term. I've kept such a list for ten or more years. It's been revised a handful of times and each version is kept for posterity. Occasionally there's an item that doesn't make the new list as the desire to fulfill it has passed and it no longer holds significance for me. A few nights ago I retrieved all the versions from my desk drawer and read through them.

Hold a master's degree in English or writing
Live near the ocean
Kayak in Lake Michigan and Lake Superior
Publish a novel
Learn to play piano
Visit England, Ireland, Italy, France, Hawaii
Hike at Porcupine Mountains and Grand Teton & Yellowstone National Parks
Get married
Ride in a hot air balloon
Write a non-fiction faith-themed book
Write a biography

These are some, not all, of the ones still to be fulfilled.

So few lines have a checkmark beside them...
Sail on the ocean
See U2 in concert
Live by myself
Hike at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
Teach RCIA at a parish
Travel to Niagra Falls
Crochet a blanket
Write a novel

I decided not to revise the list this time around. The desires that have been left unpursued, not just unfulfilled, sadden me the most. I know that not every wish and endeavor will come to fruition. Certainly I'm learning to live with a bit of failure from day to day and that helps me keep my hope firmly anchored where it belongs. Not to have tried though, not to have pursued... I can't live with that from day to day. I won't.

Words to Live By

"Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset." (St. Francis de Sales)

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"And let the peace of Christ reign in your hearts." (Colossians 3:15a)

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"We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self denial, anxiety and discouragement." (L. M. Montgomery)

Quite unexpectedly, God came through with that clarity and assurance I've been praying for in recent days. A simple observation by someone outside the situation and voila! Clarity. I almost started laughing as the peace I'd lost hold of started coating my heart once again. All that I've allowed to erode under the anxiety and discouragement and sorrow, I want back. I want to be myself again. What joy has arrived as I take steps to leave behind things that are in no way easy to leave behind. A friendship, a ministry, a role in which I have found much reward... it is not a matter of rooting out some terrible thing but of discerning the wisdom of a sacrifice.

Aiming

"The line is thin between a selfish act and things you do to keep yourself intact." I consider that one of the most insightful lyrics of the countless songs I have heard. It's from "Same Mistakes" by Sara Watkins and the song is a beauty. That particular line resonated with me the first time I listened to it and does so again, perhaps more, this week.

I have a decision to make. It involves work and friendship and priorities. The direction to which I lean changes from day to day. Sometimes in life, thank God, clarity and peace of mind determine a choice and I am able to move forward in that choice with confidence. Sometimes not so much. After feeling convicted to turn in two completely different directions from Sunday to Monday, I began Tuesday with my Bible open on the kitchen table. As there is logic and good reason behind either choice, I felt convicted to seek the choice of love. Which way allows for loving as I should, while which way, valid as it may be, is the more self-serving? "Make love your aim," was St. Paul's reminder to me. Make love your aim...

This doesn't uncomplicate things. This does not even decide things with desirable certainty. But I am given a lens through which to survey the problem, and a purpose to prevail over the handful of other tension-building purposes presently motivating me.

After Midnight

What am I doing here at 12:04 a.m., listening to She & Him and sliding open the patio door before I sit down at the kitchen counter? Blogging for the first time since Easter, for one thing. I've begun and deleted a few posts in the last week and a half. Each time I begin to gather my thoughts they scatter before I can finish a paragraph, so I'm not promising any coherence in this attempt either.

My sister, with whom I live, is in China for two weeks. This leaves me with a home to myself and plenty of quiet in which to think. I haven't decided if that has proven to be a positive or a negative. It's a bit of both, quite likely. On several occasions lately my mind has been consumed by the idea of living honestly. Easter night and last night were the greatest contributors to this theme, each due to very particular and separate struggles. Let me see if I can explain. It is not the simple opposite of telling lies. Rather, it is the appeal to be honest - stripped, to lack a cover or veil - in answers, in reactions, in interplay. I have this heavy sense of wasting time with pretending. As I catch myself at the start of a pretense, whether with another or with myself, I cannot follow through on it.

It's a terribly unsafe way to live. Vulnerability, risk, misunderstanding - these are its results. But maybe more will come besides... maybe courage, maybe integrity, maybe fewer regrets and more glad-I-took-them chances. Truth faced, even in its bitter or thorny forms, is to be preferred to pretense, isn't it? If nothing else I think I might stand surer in who I am and who I am not, in what I need to give and what I need to receive. Heroines parade through my mind and I see what I'm aiming for in this. Cassandra Mortmain, Emily Byrd Starr, Lily Bart as an antithesis... Lucy Honeychurch most of all.

"...let yourself go. You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them."
(E M Forster, A Room With a View)

Alleluia!

I am spending the first hours of Easter morn baking a few dozen cupcakes, dancing to David Crowder Band in my kitchen and basking in the lingering jubilation of the Easter Vigil Mass. Tonight I witnessed 8 children be baptized and 5 adults enter the full communion of the Catholic Church and receive Confirmation and Eucharist. Tonight I remembered exactly why I love serving in the RCIA ministry. It was a glorious night. It is a glorious morning. I hope you find it so as well.

"Yesterday, I was crucified with Him;
Today, I am glorified with Him;
Yesterday, I died with Him;
Today, I am quickened with Him;
Yesterday, I was buried with Him;
Today, I rise with Him."

(from an Easter sermon by St. Gregory Nazianzen)