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Tag: finding courage

May 17, 2013

morning prayer

morning prayer

dispatch from 02139 (in which we troop to the last morning prayer of this year of thinking sumptuously, moi and the long tall fellow who brought me here in the first place….)

he doesn’t often make requests, the tall bespectacled fellow now known around these parts as “the professor.”

but he did last night.

“would you please come to morning prayer,” he asked. “it’s the last of the year.”

i had a million and one things i thought i needed to do this morning, but i (a.) either got them crossed off the list before eight bells, or (b.) shoved them aside till 10 bells.

we loped together, the professor and i, across the cobbled lanes, up the hill, across the fresh-mown yard and up the steps of memorial church, that great steepled block of faith and prayer that looks out over the huddled masses of harvard college.

morning prayer is one of veritas U’s golden secrets.

each day at quarter to 9, the prayer chapel tucked behind the altar, the one with steeped rows of well-worn wooden pews, the one where eastern light pours through a two-story stretch of panes and glass, fills with a hodge-podge of harvardians and everyday cantabridgians (the latin-derived name for cambridge locals).

as the bells way up high in the bell tower clang their final call to prayer, the choir files in, their black and crimson-edged robes flowing. a wise soul steps to the podium, and the prayerful bow their heads and wonder what faith tradition we might draw from on any particular morning.

oh, i’ve heard suni prayers, tibetan chant, and a short story by amy hempel (that would be from the great church of literary fiction). i’ve listened to anglican prayer, and hebrew scripture. i’ve absorbed leviticus and the lord’s prayer.

and, by nine bells when the last hymnal is tucked back into its perch, i always waft out, lifted.

i’ve started many a day at morning prayer, finding deep grace there in the dappled light of a cloudy cambridge morning. or, as this morning, nearly blinded by the blazing rising orb.

i am moved to know that the great minds all around me are humble enough — and enlightened enough — to turn to the pews for truer higher wisdom. i find it sweet that so many professor emeriti shuffle back, as backpacked undergrads stumble in.

there is God at harvard, indeed.

that the man i married — a man whose prayerfulness is not widely broadcast — chose morning prayer as one of the closing rituals of this year of thinking sumptuously was indeed a grace note i’d not let slip away.

as the rev. jonathan walton, a soulful professor of divinity and minister of the memorial church, stepped to the podium and began preaching with a story about his 9-year-old son’s obsessions with greek mythology, and his tendency to pretend he is one of his pantheon of heroes — one day zeus, one day hermes, another day apollo — i caught a glimmer of a tear well up in my professor’s eye.

he is finding this leave-taking among the toughest ever.

and the rev. walton’s words, and the prayers of petition, were precisely what we both needed.

“life comes at you fast,” the reverend reminded. “how will we equip ourselves for the insecurities and anxieties that surely blow with the winds of change?”

he spoke of courage to go forth and to be seen as we are. he encouraged us “not to navigate under a cloak of invisibility, not to pretend what we’re not,” but rather to “wear our vulnerability.” only then, he said, can we own “what God would have us be.”

and then we bowed our heads and prayed for “core courage,” to face whatever lies ahead. and “for hope, to hold our heads up with dignity even in the face of despair; for love, to strengthen and embolden us to love fearlessly even in our vulnerability.”

we all shuffled out, trailing behind the reverend onto the broad front porch, where urns of coffee and baskets of bagels awaited. under the chill breeze of this fine may morning, we huddled in conversation with the wise minister.

my professor, i do believe, had breathed in essential courage.

i know i had.

it’s a breathtaking dollop of wisdom, to hear that we needn’t be fearless to go forward. to look around and realize that all that is asked of us is that we embrace the whole of who we are, and take our humbled, unfinished selves out into the world, beyond the walls of the steepled church, beyond the gated yard and cobbled streets, and get on with the business of making our life’s work whole.

amen to that, and to this holy blessed year. and to “the professor” who brought me here in the first place, and who accompanies me home, forever deepened by what unfolded here….

and to all of you, who came along for the journey, humbling as it was, bless you and bless you. we are off to the berkshires for a weekend’s romp, the last as the class of 2013. and then, come wednesday, it’s closing ceremonies and words of wisdom imparted in one final blessing. 

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January 27, 2012

holding hands

it’s been a long time since i leapt off the high dive, felt the whoosh of my body — bare skin, wet suit — free-falling through air.

it’s been a long long time since i last mustered the courage, flung myself out into the unknown.

but, i was reminding myself, i’ve done it plenty before.

i can do this.

there was the time, long long ago, when my mama and papa drove me downtown. to the hospital, they told me. you are going to get better, they told me. and i did. but not before being scared out of my wits.

and there were long nights in college when i had no clue where i was headed. but one saturday night in the library i decided i knew. and i decided that to get there i was going to snare myself a solid line of straight As. so i did.

there was the night my papa died. and i never wanted to exhale the breath in my lungs from before he was gone. could not bear to take in a swallow of this new oxygen, depleted of the great love of my life at the time, my hero, my papa.

but i did.

not too many weeks after that i picked up a telephone and told a man on the other end of the line that i was a nurse, but i wondered if maybe they’d have room in their school to teach me a thing or two about writing.

he did. so i did.

and then, not long after that, i walked into the great gothic tower of a newspaper i’d grown up reading. i bumped into a fellow who wore purple high-top tennis shoes, and spilled chunks of oil-drenched salad all over the pages, my pages, that sat on his lap. he read along, looked up, said, “i think i can use this.” i let out a yelp. said, “i think you just made my life.”

not long after that, the lady in charge of plucking recruits out of the masses, enlisting them in the summer army of interns, she called me up, called me in for an interview. last thing she said to me in that tiny broom closet of an interview room was this: “around here, you sink or swim.” i looked her straight in the eye and said, plainly, “i’m a swimmer.”

and so it’s gone, over and over and over again.

we forget sometimes, until we need to remember, just how brave we can be.

and then, once we remember, the oddest most curious things start to happen.

once we stare our fears in the eye, once we decide, okay, universe, we’re not going to be bound anymore. not going to stand here, frozen in time and space, thinking of all the things that could go wrong, might go wrong. we’re going to step off this ledge, and try that free-falling move once again.

once we do that, just as goethe, the great german philosopher, long ago said, “at the moment of commitment, the universe conspires to support us.”

in other words, all around, from out of the darkness, folks start extending a hand. taking our shaky one in theirs, and holding it soft and tight.

the phone starts ringing, and people say things that give you tingles up your spine. because how did they know–out of the blue–that you needed to hear those very words at that very moment?

emails pop into your mailbox. and you click here or there, not really thinking what you’re doing, and next thing you know you are reading something that slides right sweet into the place where you needed it to be.

might be that the fellow you married — a guy known to be plenty cautious and not keen on rash, irrational moves, pretty much the life-long grounding rod for your high-wire act — keeps telling you you’re doing the right thing.

might be your 10-year-old boy, who lets out a whoop, pipes up during dinnertime prayers, “dear God, thank you for the bravest mommy there ever was.”

trust me, i’m not launching myself into space. not about to set up a colony on the moon. not tackling a cure for cancer.

just putting one foot in front of the other.

but, for the first time in a long time, headed in the direction of my heart. instead of the way that’s been slow-dripping, leeching the pink right out of my cheeks.

and once i got through the talking to myself, reminding myself i’ve moved my own personal mountains before, i have been utterly and joyfully buoyed by the power, the knowledge, the wisdom, of the universe to make like a marvelous tunnel of hands and hearts, each one reaching out, giving me the nudge, the squeeze, the full-throttle embrace i need to keep this free-fall from feeling like a death-dive.

instead, i am slowly, solidly, catching the wind.

and one of these days, i just might look down and realize i’ve started to soar.

what a bummer. can’t let you in on specifics. not yet. will when i can. but in the meantime, what freefalls have you knowingly, bravely, stepped into in your life, and who were the great good souls who reached out and let you know you were going to be all right, and no one was letting you splat flat on your face? what are your moments of personal courage?

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May 6, 2011

“…always an act of courage.”

maybe it happens to you, too, sometimes. you are reading along, and words reach out, like some sort of net strung between trees in a thick jungle. they entangle you, stop you in your tracks, don’t release you, really, for days and days.

so it was, as i was reading along in tina brown’s new newsweek, reading a story about barack obama’s mother, when i stumbled on the words, at the top of a paragraph, nestled inconspicuously into the rest of the black-on-white sentences.

i read: “Motherhood is always an act of courage.”

just like that, it caught me.

as always, the best writing is stitched with wisdom. it catches you unawares. elegant french knots of deep truth tucked in among the narrative.

one minute i was reading that obama’s brave single mother, ann soetoro, a cultural anthropologist by training, was as curious about men as she was perplexed by them, the next i was entangled in a thought that would carry me for days.

“motherhood is always an act of courage.”

indeed it is.

from the moment that seed of life burrows deep into the womb, makes its way to connect to the richness that is a mother’s blood. will feed, will sustain.

from conception on, there is no going back, if God is willing, if prayers are answered.

we move on, one corpuscle tied to the next. we are in this, literally, together. we are forever entwined. though birth will begin the separation, there are separations deep down inside that will never truly be cut with any knife.

from those blurry days of daydreams, before the labor comes, when in hazy fuzzy terms you try hard as you can to imagine this someone, to imagine how it will be.

it will be nothing like those dreams.

it will be nothing like anything you have ever known.

and the one sure thing, the only certainty, is you’d better tap deep into a tank of high-octane courage. no watered-down concoction can take you where you need to go. this trek has no roadmap, and too often, no shortcuts.

it’s courage that will carry you round the skinny mountain passes, where the edge is steep, is precipitous. it’s courage that will carry you through unrelenting passages, when you’d rather turn in swift retreat.

after all, they send you home with this squirming, hungry bundle–and no instructions attached. you shake as you sit in the back seat, the baby’s father driving so cautiously you fear you might be rear-ended, the car behind you not understanding just how deep a journey home this is, this long trip, the maiden voyage.

then, the first morning you are left home alone with this babe, you break out in sweat. or tears. more often, both. the baby squawks, you try to figure out how in the world you will do this. how will you spoon the cereal into your own mouth, so you, in turn, can feed your screaming infant?

courage? oh, mother courage, you came to me, you filled me. shaking, quaking deep inside. uncertain, scared, somehow we carried on.

all along the way, it’s darkness up ahead. we never know what might be around the bend. we simply keep putting one foot out, before the other.

how in the world can you take on the task of mothering if you are not filled up with courage? if you do not gulp it for breakfast, inhale it like undiluted oxygen?

i consider, in a slide show that makes me weep, the moments of courage of mothers i have known:

the mother, just this week, who watched her little girl’s legs be strapped into braces, braces for a year.

the mother who sat outside the OR while oncologists poured hot chemo in her daughter’s belly, a last-ditch hope to stop the unretrenching cancer.

the mother, so many mothers, who bravely steps into the school conference room, where so many minds–and unknown faces–are gathered to map a plan to help the struggling child, the child for whom learning doesn’t come in straight lines, or quickly.

or what of the mother who took the call, from a stranger, who listened to the voice telling her that her bike-riding son had fallen, been found unconscious, limp and bloodied. that mother who drove, trembling, who carried her son to the ER. who listened as the doctor said his vertebrae, high up in his neck, were fractured, one for certain, another most likely. an airlift would be arranged.

and what about the less dramatic, but no less daunting frame: the mother who drops her child off at the classroom door, who hears the cries from in the room, as she cowers in the hallway, barely breathing, wondering, how in the world will he make it–will she, the mother, make it–through the next endless hour?

i think of the mothers i admire most, the ones whose unbroken, unwobbling faith makes me stand straight, breathe deep, reach down and get a grip. i think of those mothers and realize every single one is a profile in pure courage.

you take on life when you bear a child, when you become a mother through birth or love or law.

and when you cradle that child in your arms, rock him or her through the night, on the nights when fevers soar, and cries grow shrill. and you are terrified inside, but you whisper to yourself, “this child needs me, stay strong. don’t waver.”

i’ve been the mother who talked to my knees, instructed, “don’t buckle,” when i thought they would, when i thought my firstborn might be with severed spinal cord. when i needed to wheel his cart down a long lonely hallway, when i could not look into his eyes, for fear of breaking down and falling into pieces. when i saw his life, and mine, pass before my eyes.

“…always an act of courage.”

is it not an act of courage, on any old school morning, when we wave our child down the sidewalk, watch them bravely board the school bus, when we know that there are kids on that school bus who taunt our child, who call him names, who make his schoolday an exercise in humiliation?

and what of the times we pick up the phone, tell the principal in no uncertain terms that we will not let this go on?

when we walk up to the baseball coach, when we tell him what just happened was truly painful, and he had better make it right, for this is no way to model grace under pressure?

even though, deep inside, we are shaking, quaking all the while. not so practiced at this standing up, and being counted. except for when we look around, realize we’re the one who’s being depended on. we’ve become, after all, the grownup. the one who will not let our children out in the rain, to fend for themselves, to march unshielded. we lift our voices, if need be. make decisions. stand taller than we’ve ever stood. because it is our children for whom we are called to be more than we have ever been before.

i think back to my own mother who, at 50, found herself a widow, with five children. who huddled us by the door as we were about to step outside to the long black car sent by the funeral home, who looked each one of us in the eye, who told us, “make him proud,” the father we were burying that morning.

it is courage—the hot wind of heaven that fuels our trembling wings.

it is courage—that makes us reach down deep inside and pull out muscle where we never knew we had it. it’s where the backbone is. it’s where, when we need to, we find the voice that speaks up, that won’t relent, that settles only in solid resolution.

we are charged with much in this lifelong journey called mothering.

the one piece of armament sure to go the distance, is the unfettered, unadorned, magnificent holy breath called mother courage.

how do you spell out mother courage? what profiles fill your bookshelves?

the picture above, curiously, captures my first act of mother courage, and not at the front of the frame, not merely cradling a newborn baby minutes after birth. it’s the nutrition book on the shelf behind; i was so afraid somehow that i would screw up the feeding of my unborn child, i followed along, unwilling to falter one iota. when i laid eyes on his chubby thighs, his thighs with gorgeous folds of fat, i heaved a sigh. i knew my deepest prayers had been answered. which is why i have never thrown out that old nutrition tome. it carried me across a bridge that demanded pure courage.

and, of course, happy blessed mothers day to the mothers among us, in whatever form we find ourselves mothering on this earth….

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December 3, 2010

hero of the woods

in perhaps the bravest move of his nine short years, my little one took to the woods this week. for three days and two nights.

which, to him, felt like forever. or at least that’s how it felt going in, how it’s felt for the last three years. ever since he first heard whisper of this fourth-grade ritual, called outdoor ed.

now, the little one that we love around here, he’s not such an adventurous boy. he prefers his own bed to any bed in all the land. likes to be surrounded, at least upon nightfall and wake-up time, with those he knows and loves.

he has stumbled through a trio of sleepovers in recent months, all in training for the big adventure in the woods.

at long last, december 1 arrived. as dawn peeked through the windows, as the sky shed its indigo nightclothes, pulled on rosy-fingered trousers, from the ankles up to the knees up to the hips, the boy awoke. eyes fluttered. tummy did too.

he showered, dressed in layers, sat down to oatmeal. he was spooning quietly when i looked up and saw his big hazel-brown eyes begin to moisten. then the cheeks wobbled. and, well, the bowl of porridge was soon saltier and wetter than when i’d plopped it from the pot.

kisses from all sides–from mama, papa, and big tall brother–got him o’er the hump. then, bravely, he slung on his duffle bag, zippered up his coat, and stepped out into the frigid morning air.

soon as he and i and the old wagon pulled up to the schoolhouse, we saw the caravan of buses. big buses. open-mouthed buses. buses idling at the curb.

he walked tall, that little one. slid his bag into the bus’s mouth. accepted one swift kiss, and was off.

just like that, i was alone.

motored home, stepped inside an eery quiet empty house.

it’s been that way all week: eery. quiet. empty.

will this be what it feels like next year when the tall boy is off at college? will i live to know how quiet it will be when even the little one is gone?

quiet is among the tonics in my medicine chest. it does me good. soothes me. settles me. brings me back to whole, instead of frazzled, torn, ragged at the edges.

quiet is the door through which i slip into sacred places. it’s when i hear the whisper of the Divine. it’s when my angels talk to me.

even now as i type i am surrounded by a chorus of quiet. so quiet i can hear the gurgling of the chili-sauce-brown-sugar-red-wine-cloves-and-bay-leaves bubbling away in the pan of brisket. so quiet i can count the ticking of the clock. can hear the muffled chirp of the sparrows out the window.

but this week, the lack of footsteps from the room above… the gloves that never moved from the basket by the door… the bed pillow that sat plumped all week…

it was a hollow sort of quiet.

it was a quiet that stirred me in a lonely way. a quiet that made me wonder how that little one was faring. was he feeling lumps and tumbles in his tummy as he lay down to sleep? was he looking up into the same starry canvas that i was, as i wandered home one night, late from work, late from the train, and wished upon a star that it would twinkle down on him? did he know that i was holding him in my heart at every turn all week?

did he remember that i’d whispered in his ear: “dig deep, sweetheart, you can do it. remember, you’re the egg that wouldn’t take no for an answer. you are the blessed child the doctors said we’d never have, but here you are, determined, triumphant.”

it’s friday now. he’s made it. two nights, three days. the call from the woods never came, the one that might have come had he crumbled.

(oh, by the way, after one sleepless night, night before last, the phone did ring, shook us from the bed, at 5:50 a.m. i swore it was the school nurse, calling to say he’d gotten the flu that’s sweeping through this town, or the principal, saying ‘this boy has a bad case of the homesick blues.’ ’twas neither. it was WGN, the radio station in town, calling to see if the little one’s papa would talk on the radio at 6:15 A.M. ((note the not-oft-employed capital letters there, signaling my complete dismay that they would think to call before even the sun was up for work)). oy.)

it’s friday now, and the brisket’s in the oven, as promised to the little one. streamers are strung, a spider’s web of triumph, this way and that up-and-down-and-sideways through the front hall. posters, welcome-home signs, you-made-it signs, line the walls and doorways.

he’s my hero of the woods, and it’s a hero’s welcome.

when, for three years, you’ve been worried sick, but still you fling the bag over your shoulder, feed it to the bus, and march into school, wobbly but undaunted, you deserve a marching band. and latkes. and a mama’s arms who won’t want to let you go, once they’re wrapped again around the little boy with all the courage. who, sure as sure can be, grew up mightily this week.

dear God of the bliss-filled quiet, thank you thank you for watching over that tender heart. and bringing him through the woods.

have you had adventures that scared the behoozies out of you before you left? but then, somehow, you mustered up the courage to make it through the woods?

4 Comments
September 28, 2007

a prayer for the grownups of children who struggle

prayer for grownups children struggle

this is communal. there is, far as i can tell, not a soul who doesn’t at one time or another come into the ranks. there is no corner, sadly, on this market. no me-me-me thinking you are the only one who knows what it is to lie deeply awake–and not that you’re counting the holes in the ceiling.

hardly.

you’re racking your heart and your soul and your brain, even your belly, trying to figure out, devise some plot, to push back the struggles that threaten to swallow your little one. or maybe your big one.

you are no less than moses at the red sea, i tell you. you and your rod, standing there, palms raised, as if.

as if you, who does not possess any magical powers, can reach into the brain of a very young person, reach in and straighten some wires. get synapses connected. make them see. make them hear. make them not be afraid. make the letters that spill on the page line up in some sort of sense. instead of backwards and jumbled and utterly, thoroughly awful. so misbehaved, that alphabet.

as if–oh, God, please–you could stand in the halls or the lunchroom, or off to the edge of the playground. make the mean kids go away. stop the big ones from picking on little ones. or the other way around. splinter the words being hurled, the ones that are ugly and poison and might sting forever.

it is hell and it’s lonely besides.

barely a soul is willing to advertise the truth of the matter: not a one of us is merrily sitting back, watching little people skitter through life. as if it’s a pond and they were on skates and they’re gliding. making true loopdy-loops.

nope, i am no researcher, or taker of census. i have not knocked on doors asked, excuse me, is there suffering here?

but chances are good to better than good, the answer is yes. very much so. why, thank you for asking.

in my own little world, in just the last week, for instance, i’ve heard all of this: a child who tried to jump out a window. twice. one who died. one who can’t hear very well and it’s making her mad. you would be too. if all day you struggled to make out the words on everyone’s lips. and the lips didn’t move very slowly. not at all.

i’m not done: a boy afraid to turn out the light. another who won’t. a child who cannot see the big picture and hold onto a small fragile thread. it’s one or the other. and sometimes you really need both.

there’s a girl who keeps having seizures; no one knows why. but do you think, for a minute, her mother rests easy, whenever she’s not in her sight, whenever the phone rings? there are two boys who are watching their lives rip in half, as their parents divorce and it’s not always pretty. and two girls i know who won’t eat. no more than an apple cut in very thin slices. and she’s the one making progress.

my point here is not to make you feel drowning. my point here is just to take a deep breath. whisper a prayer. maybe think twice when you next feel alone. when you happen to think you can’t bear it. when the waves of your worry, and your lack of solutions, pull you down under.

i got to this notion the way i usually do. i thought and i thought. i listened and looked and tucked away stories. i jimmied my heart to the wide-open valve.

and all week i rode the waves of a sea that’s not far from despair. there is a boy who i love who is utterly stumped by parts of the school day. the parts where the words and the pencils are. in first grade, as you might imagine, that is a fairly good chunk of the day.

it is, at this point, still a mystery. as if there’s a fog that isn’t yet lifted. we can’t quite make out the landscape. i asked him last night, when word after word was coming out backwards, what it felt like inside. he took his hands and scrambled them all through the air. i heard my heart crack then.

and i know that that crack is not only mine. i know it rises up from the houses, all over the towns, all over the hillsides and valleys below. all over the world.

it would be headlines, i suppose, if there were a house where never a worry there was. or maybe the grownups in charge are made of something other than my flimsy cloth.

i am not, however, one to cave in to worry. no, i find it a friend. an ally, in fact. it stirs me, propels me, gives me whatever it takes, to take on the very steep climb up the waters that will not be stilled.

the prayer that i pray then is this: that even in the depths of our darkest night shadows, when all that we fear comes out of the closets, leaps ‘round the bed, bangs on the pillows, we might picture each other. know the communion of trembling hands. hearts that will not surrender.

that whatever it is that haunts and plagues all of our children be kneaded away. by heads that are wise. and hearts that are deep and filled with infinite chambers.

that we don’t wrestle alone. that the great and tender hand of our God settles quite firmly at the small of our backs. fills our lungs, too, with the breath that it takes to blow back the winds that are chilling. settles the waters. gives us a chance, and a hope, of making the climb, to the crest of the wave.

where, if we’re so blessed, we can look out at a sea of children who have managed to swim. and are stroking and breathing. and making a magnificent splash.

that’s what i pray.

how about you?

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