Faith

Faith is a beautiful word that didn't mean a great deal to me when I was younger. Then I pigeonholed it to narrowly define an unshakeable belief in supernatural beings and events. As the still inchoate development of my belief system moved this way and that, it morphed into a "going inward" not a "looking outward" for strength as I continued to search for who I am on a deep level by reaching into the core for the Divine Within as explained by Jung.


I have touched the Divine Within on a number of occasions, sometimes it merely flickers, but other times it glows from the place where I imagine my soul to be.  Still, it begs the question: what do I have faith in? What thoughts or deeds give rise to the divine?  It's hard to imagine looking at nature and not feeling a responsive glow. Perhaps a recognition of pantheism?  Kindness to others--and self--fans its flames, too.  The ongoing success of Humanitas which is now in its fourth year is held in place by the compassion and empathy shown by my fourteen colleagues who volunteer each week, and who show up, rain or shine, with the desire to help others.  Is this a faith in people? I guess so.


I am not the same person I was before my son died. It's as if a layer were peeled off my psyche through numbness and anguish, through denial and fear that this terrible event had come to pass. My dear son. How I miss him.  No longer will my genes be carried forth as proof of my life continuing after my death. I struggled and still struggle sometimes to find another meaning to my life. However,I am beginning to realize that life is simply not about procreation but about evolution as well. It's about how we develop--how we change--how we demonstrate our values in the way we live our lives.


Faith is a warm, comfortable feeling, bringing an awareness and a mindfulness of day to day interactions, a willingness to participate in modeling a way of kindly living.


Do I think I will live on after death? No. Do I believe in energy I can't see? Yes. But I am unable to make the leap from the electrical signals that emanate from living beings to ongoing stimuli when the body shuts off.  I understand that electrical signals travel forever through the atmosphere, but once the TV or computer or body is unplugged, no new signals erupt. Am I afraid of death? No, as long as I can hold on to my faith until the last moment.


I have faith in science and I also have faith in the arts. They go hand in hand in producing a well rounded education and thus a well rounded human being. They are also how we find inspiration and pleasure.  I also know what I doubt--rigid dogma, religious or otherwise--and I know I will never understand how we can look at other living creatures who are suffering and not want to do something about it.


My faith in some Americans has been sorely shaken in this election cycle but I cannot make the leap to "what's wrong with this country?" because I know many people who are as appalled as me. Americans can do much better than the current hateful atmosphere that has been wrought--and I have faith that we will.


Lives are made up of small acts of trust and I have been the recipient of many acts of friendship and kindness. This is probably the ground on which my inner core rests, so that I can allow my faith to thrive. It is important to remember that faith is a living force, at once moving or sedate, quiet or noisy and sometimes it flies completely out of reach for a while before it floats back to embrace our imaginative soul.  It is a bulwark against neediness and a comfort in distress, and at times it dances with the daffodils.

Oh, The People You Meet

They had a little travel trailer no more than 12 feet long, towed with a truck that was twice its size.  He was a pleasant little man with a comb-over who had difficulty climbing out of the cab--kind-a slid down the outside of the seat with his feet splayed beneath him, Chaplin like, coming to a jarring stop when they hit the ground.


The next morning I saw him taking a walk around the place accompanied by a woman who was even smaller than him.  From the back, I could see her long, iron-gray hair fanning out over her shoulders reaching below her hips.  She listed to one side--with a limp.  She turned, in profile, and I noticed, with a little shock, that her nose was long with a downward hook and her chin was sharp, arcing upwards toward her nose.  She's a witch, I said to myself, then I looked guiltily around as I realized I had said it out loud.


Shortly afterwards, they came into the store.  He stood at the counter and asked for a jar of coffee and four Mars bars.  She hung back.  I was aware of her staring at me as he paid.  She gave me a little grin, revealing only four teeth in her upper gums and none in her lower.  I did my darndest to smile back nonchalantly, but again I felt that little shock at her appearance.


I saw quite a bit of her that morning through the store window.  She seemed to be everywhere.  First in the swimming pool in a shapeless bathing suit, then playing horseshoes, and then sitting in a camping chair outside their trailer.  She appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared.  Could this be my imagination?


I saw her walking among the trees at the top end of the campground as I stepped into my golf cart to deliver firewood to a couple at the lower end of the property.   On the way, I smiled and waved at the kids in the play area, and promised they could ride with me on the way back.  As I pulled up to offload the wood--I saw her walking through the trees ahead of me.  A frisson of alarm ran through my entire frame.  There was no way she could have made it to this end of the campground on foot so quickly, was there?  She must have used--a broomstick.


Ignoring the cries of the kids on my way back, I went as fast as I could to the store, just in time to see her entering her trailer.   Not possible, my mind protested.  Was I delirious--or under some kind of magic spell?


The next morning, as I was preparing to clean the bathrooms,  I again saw her taking a morning stroll through the campground with her husband.  They were so small they reminded me of salt and pepper shakers.  A few minutes later, as I was filling my bucket preparing to swab the bathroom floors, she limped in and politely asked if she could use the facilities before I began to clean them.  I agreed, and afterwards, in dulcet tones, she sweetly said that our campground was the cleanest and one of the nicest they had ever visited.  Then her identical twin came through the door--and I fainted.

Tomorrow Is Another Day . . . .

Do you ever tire of clichés?    "Tomorrow is another day," declared Scarlet O'Hara as she put off thinking about her immediate quandary. 


In real life, sometimes that's a fix--but usually only temporary.  In the midst of trials and tribulations, it portends darkly.   In the throes of depression when I was in my thirties, who would have thought that those few words would send me into a panic?  The anticipation of yet another day to feel black despair sent me immediately under the bed covers.  Emerging from those days and determining never to allow myself to suffer like that again, has thankfully returned those words to a benign light.  


The secret is easy to understand but often difficult to carry out.  When depressed, stay in the miserable moment until fear has been faced and understood.  When all is well, then, like the dormouse, it's safe to pop up from the teapot to check out a wider world and soak up the sun.  Of course, if you don't care for the sun, then you're free to bathe, dance and sing in the rain.    Choices abound in a comfortable psyche.

Before I Was Here, Part V (final)

Albeit under the cloud of war, Ernest and Gerty had been happily living in their home in New Farnley for a little over a year.  Ernest was working as a dispenser at John Ridsedale's Chemist Shop in Armley, and Gerty was working in the woolen mills on Wellington Road as a cloth checker.   Like everyone else in England, they were following the news of the Nazi takeover of Poland and then Czechoslovakia with mounting fear.  When war was finally declared in September, 1939, Ernest, along with many of his friends, immediately volunteered to fight.  His preference was the Royal Air Force, but he was rejected because he was part of the medical profession.  He was very disappointed, but Gerty was elated, as she discovered she was pregnant.   Their joy was short lived, though, when she miscarried at three months, and she and Ernest grieved the loss of a son-to-be.

Within a few months, however, Ernest's protected medical status was withdrawn, and rather than wait to be called up, he took his older brother Tom's advice and volunteered for the Military Police.  Both he and his brother were excellent motorbike riders;  Tom had been accepted as such, and Ernest felt he could be useful in this regard.

1940 was a tough year for both Gerty and Ernest.  As a married but childless woman, Gerty was ordered to work in an ammunitions factory, to take in boarders, usually men deployed to Leeds for war work, and after boot camp, Ernest was ordered south, just in time for the Battle of Britain over London.  As part of the military police motorcycle squad, he was to ride as quickly as possible to the site of any shot down enemy aircraft, take any prisoners at the scene, cordon off the area, and prevent any papers from being destroyed.

Two War Stories, c. 1940

Ernest: A German plane crashed in a field in Ernest's sector.  He set off immediately on his bike to the scene.   Riding along a dirt side road, he noticed that there were regular puffs of dust on the way ahead of him.   It took a second or two to realize that an enemy plane was strafing him.   Without any hesitation, Ernest stepped off his moving motorbike and fell straight into a ditch filled with water.  He saw the saddle fall apart just before the bike itself ran off the road.   He was traveling at over 50 miles per hour, but he escaped without a scratch.    Except for the saddle which was riddled with bullet holes, the bike was fine, too.

Gerty: Once again, the siren warned of an imminent bombing attack, so Gerty followed the rest of the factory women to the designated air raid shelter.  There, as usual, she met up with her sister-in-law Lily, and joining the others, they danced to records of Glen Miller as they waited for the all-clear.   A strong waft of very hot air suddenly blew them across the shelter, and, still standing in shocked silence, they realized that the factory had taken a direct hit.

Everyone was dismissed from their duties, and Gerty wended her way to her parents' house which wasn't far.  The sky was bright with flames from the factory, and her parents' street was backlit from other area bombings, but it looked all right.  Sadly, it was a strange illusion.  All that was left of the buildings were the facades--the front doors led right into--a deep pit.  Gerty was frantic with worry, but an air raid warden with a hooded torch reassured her that her mother was safe.   Milly and George had taken shelter in the cellar under the heavy oak table that housed her father's crop of mushrooms.   Milly and Gerty, accompanied by the warden, had to step over blackened beams and ash-covered stairs to coax George from under the table.  He thought he was back in World War I.  Shell shock it was called then, and it had lingered within him since he was gassed in the trenches of France in 1916.  The next day, Gerty discovered that the road she had taken from the factory was littered with unexploded bombs--unseen in the dark and flickering fire light.

In early March, 1941, the entire family, Chattertons and Balmforths, gathered for dinner.  Home on leave, Ernest offered a toast.  He looked at his wife and then his older sister Emily and her husband, Harold Kingston, and their young son Brian; his older brother Tom and his wife Lily; his parents Thomas and Emily Chatterton;  Gerty's sister Beaty and husband Tom Vickers; her two younger sisters Laura and Kathleen: her parents, Milly and George Balmforth.  "Let's remember how pleased we are that we are  together tonight," he began.   "It is very possible that we may never be together again in this life."  He lifted his glass, "Safe passages to us all."*   Then, he asked everyone to raise their glasses one more time.   He had just learned that his best friend, Ronnie Briggs had been killed in action.  "To absent friends," he proclaimed sadly. 

This is the toast that Ernest offered, time and time again, over the next 47 years.

According to Gerty, the song she used to sing most often in 1941 was, "Please leave me something to remember you by."    And Ernest did.   Before he was shipped out to the Middle East on the Queen Mary in January, 1942, where he remained until the end of the war in 1945, I was born at St. Mary's Hospital in Leeds on December 30, 1941.

*In this instance, Ernest's fears were never realized.  Everyone who was there that night survived the war and returned home to Leeds physically intact.

The Muddled Process of First-Stage Writing

Knowledge is the key to the universe, isn't it?  It is never--as with any form of education--wasted.  Apart from the fact that our brains need exercise in order to flourish, we need knowledge in order to grow and reach our potential, don't we?   Hmm.   This could be the genesis of a thesis statement for a thoughtful essay, but at the moment I am in the middle of the most difficult part of the process for me--forming ideas, juggling ideas, sifting ideas, organizing ideas, and finally making sense of them--to myself.  To reach this stage, I have to write my ideas down, willy-nilly, in order to find their logic.   Otherwise, how can I know what I think until I see what I say? 

Knowledge is not only important to personal growth, it is important in any leadership role, isn't it?  To understand what needs to be done and the ability to state it to others, despite the idiosyncracies, strengths and weaknesses of the folks you're leading is paramount.

Editing, my favorite part of the writing process,  begins, of course, after I write everything down.   At this stage, I can come up with a cogent thesis.   I learned about this process from one of my English professors, and it's interesting, perhaps only to me, that I can effortlessly recall how to go about writing a paper, but I can no longer recall my professor's name.  Perhaps it will float up to my consciousness before I'm through here.

 If I were to write a paper on this topic, I think I would first define knowledge and then decide if it needed dividing into categories, such as information and insight and maybe intuition.   Then the whole would need to be organized so that my brain can grasp what I'm struggling to say.   Right now, my ideas are so amorphous that they are ever-so-slightly out of reach.     This is always the state of my brain at the very beginning of any essay.

Can knowledge ever be detrimental?    I wonder if my mother would have supported my father's desire to emigrate to Australia if she'd known the hardships that lay ahead for her?  But this is not knowledge, is it?   I am attempting to look into the future and then to roll around in 20/20 hindsight.   What on earth am I trying to say?  

Donald P. Hall, Ph.D.    My professor's name.

Sacred Spaces

Our state of mind informs our reality, does it not?

I recall the impact of what I called "a special place" even as a young child: how I tiptoed when I entered the local church, a concert hall, a ruined abbey.   I instinctively felt the need to speak softly, to allow my eyes to rove across every niche, to tune my ears to the slightest sound, while being aware of a growing sense of awe in my little chest.   The church, blessed and consecrated for worship,  its very essence taken from its soaring nave, candlelit apses and impressive altar, marked it as the place to meet the divine.  The concert hall, echoing when empty, but later resounding with glorious music, also inspired that same heart-swell, accompanied by a feeling that I ought to be good.

The ruins of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, sacked during the reign of Henry VIII under his Dissolution of the Monasteries decree, were my early introduction to pantheism.   Nature has overtaken the site of the deconsecrated abbey, although some of its stone walls still stand, and breaths of its former glory remain to stir the breast: a ruined wall rising starkly against the sky, a flowering shrub at its base on which briefly rests a butterfly, along with the soft notes of the droning bee.  William Wordsworth wrote, in both his beautiful poetry and thoughtful prose, about the hallowed relationship between nature and spirit, and I am persuaded.

But what about retaining that feeling of awe in more lowly spots?  I had heard about cloistered nuns who believed that the most menial tasks were sacred because they were offered to their God, which inspired a transcendent feeling as they scrubbed.  I sometimes thought about that when I was cleaning toilets in the campground we owned for several years, but could never get myself into a contemplative state of mind.   The noise of faucets being turned on and off, the flushing of the toilets, the sound of the mop splashing in a bucket, did not nudge me onto a higher plane.   It was a chore to be finished as quickly as possible.  Not only that, I  resented the campers who came in right afterwards to use my newly scoured facilities, leaving soap scum in the sinks and wet footprints on the floor.   So much for my feeling that I ought to be good.

One summer, a man and his wife stayed for a while in our campground.  They remained longer than they originally intended, because they believed the surrounding woods was a haven for fairies.   They observed their tiny faces peering over the boughs of trees, smiling through the leaves, and peeking under the ancient roots.   The couple were also very conversant about nature, particularly wild plants and flowers, made their own oils and unguents from rosemary and lavender, and were altogether charming and generous in their sharing of the lore they claimed as their own.    When I was with them, I confess I found myself wanting to find an elf beside the mushrooms growing plentifully in the dank, moist earth.   However, although I never glimpsed one of the little folk, I did enjoy a feeling of innocence for a little while, along with the "hail-fellow-well-met" feeling in my heart.

A variety of places and experiences over the years have filled me with both reverence and joy, and I am open to the idea that the most unremarkable areas can evoke such deep feelings, even though the communal bathroom was a stretch for me.  For example,  I believe that Robbin Island, the notorious prison in South Africa that housed Nelson Mandela for so many years is now sacred.  The essence of this good man surely remains there: his faith in his anti-apartheid cause, his love for humanity, and his courage in the face of years of injustice, torture and imprisonment, either dwells in the air within the compound or is imprinted on our minds when we visit the site.   Does it matter which?

I now think of my little house as a container for the sacred.  The window seat, built so lovingly for me by my husband, lends itself to meditation, tender thoughts and, yes, comfort in difficult moments.  At times, I view my dog Bertie's trusting, sleepy little body between my knees as a beloved icon.   And having been prodded in the following direction over the years, I've also discovered that not only spaces, but certain times of the year also lend themselves to deeper contemplation.   As part of our collective unconscious, pagan themes of darkness/light emerge in our psyche over and over again.

At Easter, for example, this old story and its accompanying rituals which overlay even more ancient tales,  allow us to publically embrace death--of self, seasons, loved ones--either within religious movements or without, but always with a sense of hope.  Winter is nearly over--spring is on the horizon.   Of course, darkness can hover at any time of the year, but it is a comfort to be able to ritualize it or speak it out loud as a sacrament.   As I have aged, I've learned to move towards sadness when it comes upon me.   I no longer flee from despair, but, like Persephone,  allow myself to descend into the Underworld.   It is not pleasant, but it's there that I have always absorbed the emotional lessons life has had in store for me.   By greeting them, I am able to rise up again, a little wiser and filled with gratitude,  aware of the naturalness of the yin and yang of life. 

I don't really know if I've ever experienced the divine or if I'd recognize it if I did,  but I have come close to transcendence in places other than a church, a concert hall or a ruined abbey.  I've also experienced a spiritual renewal in the presence of loved ones--or in the memory of them.   The sacred waits to be discovered in the most unlikely of spots.  We simply have--to be.

Ode to Mashed Potatoes

My friend Alexandra
Fixed the best mashed potatoes--
It was
Her raison d'etre.
At fifteen years old,
We spent Saturdays together.
She lived in a three-story home;
Kitchen in the cellar,
Tiny work bench,
Small white cookstove.
At four p.m. we'd descend
The steep dark staircase
To peel potatoes
Stored in a wooden bucket
Behind the sturdy oak door.
Big white Idahos,
Thick brown peel,
With eyes.
She examined closely
Every potato I pared;
Made sure
All specks were removed,
Then cut them up
Just so.
Popped them in cosy salt-water
To boil.
Softened to perfection
Out they came--
And the magic began.
I've never seen anyone beat potatoes
With such elan;
First with a fork
Until all the lumps
Were frightened into submission,
Then with a whisk
Until they were
Air-downy--
Adding gradually
Soft coverlets of
Golden butter and
Creamy milk. 
Such fluffy potatoes,
They grew in size
As she whisked
And whisked.
I swear her right arm was
Twice the size
Of her left one. 
When the glorious concoction
Was spun
To her satisfaction,
They were cradled in a warm oven
So they could
Be eaten
At the correct temperature.  
Sometimes I stayed for dinner--
Beef Wellington? filet mignon?
I don't recall
The rest of the menu.
But those potatoes,
Mashed with such care,
Peeled and eyed
Under such loving
Supervision,
Resting comfortably
But briefly
On our plates,
Were the gustatory stars.