I went to the church office and saw two women I used to know. They smiled and seemed genuinely happy to see me. I explained our situation and asked about using their restrooms, and the women said, sure, go ahead. Then they went back to their computers. Neither of them looked up again when my relative and I passed their window coming and going.

I had a familiar pang of emotion. Often, attending that church, I felt like the people treated me in such a manner — they didn’t look up at me in reassurance at times I considered it would have been nice for them to do so. Around that group, I felt rather ignored and small.

Later the other day, I reconsidered my reaction. Maybe there was a fuller context to try to examine.

I have learned, from the best teachers over my life’s decades, that context is king. We long for fullness. No one gets a full picture of reality in this life, but each of us was implanted with the desire to know, to apprehend. Context is the (mostly invisible to others) stuff surrounding what we say, what we do. It’s also the “stuff,” or the reality, surrounding what God says and does. Reality is God’s business. No one knows why God does what He does in reality without understanding, without a fuller picture of the context. Only God can give that fuller picture.

How does God give a person more fullness? I can, of course, only speak for myself. If I didn’t believe God “revealed Himself to men,” I would be a very different person living a very different life. My children wouldn’t have been born. As I said to someone recently, “I would so be a worldly academic.” By implication, from what I have seen of worldly academics, I would no longer believe God exists. I might go through the motions of believing; I might belong to a “faith community.” But the context of my existence would probably not really include a Creator who is a Person and who might reveal Himself to men, to me.

The past year has given me what I consider glimmers of a fuller picture of God’s context. From this small awakening, as I see it, a bit of creative understanding might be starting to emerge. Regarding the church office women, maybe they weren’t ignoring my relative and me. Maybe, out of deferential kindness, they were leaving us be. Maybe they were meditatively working for the Lord, to their fullest.

Pondering this my brain says, don’t forget that back when you went to their church, you saw other things that helped inform your suspicion that people like these women didn’t care about you.

And then from a new context I conclude, so what? What if I’m supposed to, what if I’m now allowed to, give a person a creative context, a view toward the longing each of us has for God, for Christ, for bowing to His longings and His love? Maybe this is what love demands. Maybe I would rather have people, in various sorts of contexts, do so unto me.

Above is the note I left on a file this morning after my early writing time. I need such a reminder. My tendency is to edit soon into the writing, because, you know, things should become perfect. Sooner.

Reality reminds me that things are in process. I truly like reality, even though it requires patience.

This sort of thought about writing in reality came up Friday afternoon, when I stopped in Newberg and spent lovely moments with Lisa Ohlen Harris.*

She treated me to a gluten-free lemon bar at the Coffee Cottage. Groups of Newbergians ebbed and flowed through the cafe, as people buzzed and prepped for their First Friday Art Walk. Amid the surgings, Lisa and I talked essay work. What inspiration.

This morning, after writing, I was on my treadmill thinking. Jogging, too, but predominantly pondering the desire I feel sometimes to make everything right between everybody. To edit reality (as if I could) soon into every process.

From my stereo came Don Henley’s lyrics about processing a break-up. All the things I thought I’d figured out, I have to learn again.

Earlier this year, I began (not a break-up, but) learning again all the things I thought I’d figured out. I toddled into one more day and was lifted outside the latest paradigm. Predominantly I wished all at once to bow repentantly to everyone.

But I think it’s about…
Forgiveness…forgiveness…

A process (far from perfection sooner), it is still becoming.

Sunday morning I wandered beside a lake at Tilikum Retreat Center, my shoes crunching islands of gravel between mud-stretches on the road, my skirt aswish above my ankles. Reality was mirrored, despite the fog.

You know, things will continue their process just fine.

So I’m thinkin’ about…
Forgiveness…forgiveness…
Even if…

*Here’s an interview with Lisa on OSU’s Back Page. Great job, Lisa!

Music of Español, batted between women choosing baby clothing. Language-melody, launched in sequence, unfurled like little banners.

Skin scent when a loved one, lotion-tinted, gently day-heated, opened her arms.

Warm, dark wine’s presence inside smooth gold cup, inviting a small swallow.

The fact that, despite myself, my life includes a well, a wandering, a search.

Seeing how often I’m befluxed by living.

Words of textured resonance meeting my soul: “Christ did not die in order to make bad men good — he died in order to make dead men live.” (Thanks, Fr. Stephen Freeman.)

Half-dreamed, before my alarm announced the morning: “Hold people close; a shade of closer.”

In early July at the local amphitheater, a curly-haired symphony conductor flourished in his sheer joy. The orchestra responded, each person and instrument a striking synergy. There were two vocalists. One, a diminutive man like a character in that TV show we like, lifted the music, held it aloft, cradled and lowered its tones. His and the woman singer’s formal attire weren’t out of place, in the near-rain in podunk Oregon. Their absolute skill commanded refinement.

In August along the highway as I drove to work, Queen Anne’s Lace beneath the blue-gold sky held fine white faces. Whether or not a face like mine ever passed, they would continue their elegant struggle against dirt and the billows of wind.

September weeks allow burnished lawns and crumbled corn husks to raise a scent ripe for smoky horizons. I lift a rag, dripping, wring its chill as small ripples chant, and swipe the dusty roof of an icon.

Time’s carriage is a mosaic of graces, each in its own place, unashamed.

Forty minutes later, the Tracfone lady who clearly understands a limited number of English phrases and I were still trying to correct the problem. I repeated a third time to her that I had to go now and start work, and she said, “Oh, I see,” and went through the hours they’re available and what number to call back and then corrected herself on how many days a week they’re open.

I considered huffing and giving her a taste of America — I don’t deserve this treatment, you less-than-capable foreigner.

I would love to tell you I refrained because I’ve been in a joyful space lately inside my soul.

Frankly, I knew simply following the Tracfone lady’s script along with her would get us done quicker.

Sometimes lately, though, the space inside this me has carried a reminder of a lighter, truer knowing than the too-often sense that I am right, I am deserving, misunderstood, or superior.

Pride and I can be such buddies.

The other day there happened a moment — stepping forward like I did at age seven when I stood in front of Daddy and he asked, softly and tenderly, Do you believe, with all your heart? — and it was somehow the right move to make over again, this time with oil dabbled on forehead, eyebrows, ears, feet, and hands, palms up and then palms down.

Yes, Daddy, I believe.

Today, in light of the coming reminder of the one anointed by spirit and truth who took the punishment I deserve, in a humble office on the phone to across the globe, it’s not important that I don’t get what I might be entitled to from the Tracfone lady.

In the middle of highway 99 I stopped, pulled out my wide angle lens camera, and carried on in click heaven, traffic piling up behind me.

Well, no.

I only wished I could have. Wished I had the equipment, spot, and time. Never mind, though — dazzle me it did, in the gifting way that life accessorizes.

It is a dark existence, this. Maybe my melancholy makes it seem so, but as I’ve been reminded lately by friends who can’t believe in a personal God who would allow horrors and tragedies, there’s a cloud of historical witness to the awful. It continues all around us, a present reminder. The more I learn, the worse it gets. Even such beauty beneath the gray bowl can’t make up for it, can’t make it not so.

I used to try and look at a contrary scene — everything’s really all right, I’m just peering in the wrong places, this is happening so I’ll be that much more happy next time, next year. I think I strove against reality. Some days the pink was nowhere. Long times passed between light and glimmer. They still do. And there’s a big perhaps that I’ll reach a point where gloom settles completely.

Here I am, old, and thinking these things. Yet
I remain captivated by the tiniest pinprick.

As if it were on purpose.

As if darkness has its place.

I keep longing for more of the journey and the promise and the next bright bits of surprise.

I gain a lot from them, throughout the year, as I revel in second-hand experiences of knitting, crafting, cooking, shopping, raising chickens, and so on. Since it’s now, and they’re there, I’d like to tip my hat to these hardy bloggers.

Last November–a year ago today, in fact–I went to a job interview for Managing Editor at Midwifery Today, a national magazine based here in Eugene. The week leading up to that Monday had been a blur. I’d noticed the job on Craigslist and then revved into high gear, polishing up a resume and soliciting referrals. It was the first outside-the-home employment to catch my interest in a long while.

Writing and I were a little burnt out with each other.

I parked near the MT office, a converted mobile home, and tripped up the front steps 15 minutes early. I was ushered past friendly faces in the front office to a sagging, comfy sofa near a tiny kitchen. A roly-poly chocolate lab greeted and kept me company whilst I tried to sit up straight and keep my wits. I had no chance at this position, no great experience, just that editorship for a pregnancy center newsletter way back when. But I had to try, because I could. I’d been invited. The doggy kept reassuring me it was fine.

I loved every moment, speaking with Jan, the publisher, and another staff person. They liked me. Sunshine came in the window and made me sweat. I imagined heading into the back office to learn their routine, and I posited my schedule with 20 hours here a week, plus however many more it would take me at home. It was way over my head. It was all a rush.

On the way out the door, after the receptionist said goodbye, I answered, “Good night.” Good grief. It was only noon.

Jan called me the day before Thanksgiving to let me know she’d hired someone else. She had loved me, she said, but the next five people in the door carried far more experience in their briefcases.

Though a year ago I was disappointed, today I’m grateful I didn’t get the job. In February a nonprofit group hired me for 10 hours or so a week, and my training and actual experience have been invaluable so far. Best, there are times available in which to think. Some days I can even write while waiting for clients. There’s every-morning essaying at home before work or whatever’s on my schedule. And I can share our car, for now, with my daughter, until she buys her own.

Writing and I are easier bedfellows today, though we still have our off-moments. While I’ve worked on this blog post, a rejection has arrived. I guess I often try for acceptance above my head, and someone with more to offer is often preferred. Probably again it’s nothing personal.

I guess we do those things we were made to, and we pursue the stuff that, just maybe, we were destined for. Even burnt out or disappointed, giving it a good go bestows fun and that love, that rush. For this I do my best to keep giving thanks.

Students, like a herd on the move, passed our table, with its small, felt-lined case containing fetal models, and then they passed the table over to the right, which was sprinkled with colorful buttons and condoms.

We had candy (some Hershey bars melted before we scooted the dish to the shade). They had suckers. Both of our tables–Pregnancy Support and Planned Parenthood–were manned by two women. I looked their way many times, curious as to whether we could smile at one another. They didn’t make eye contact, or if they tried, they only caught me looking away, as well.

The University radio DJs set up and turned on music. Between classes, students and older people, maybe professors, trickled past. Being my usual analyzing self, also conscious of my recent thoughts about generational differences, I watched for signs that people my age were sending me condemning stares. It was hard to tell; they glanced away real fast. The younger folk paid little attention at all. So much for research.

“Frog,” a local man nearly everyone knows, stopped at each table with his hand-made joke books. We all smiled at Frog. He pulled a wagon filled with rubber chickens of more varieties than I knew existed. Both of us at our table declined his offer, but we gladly offered him candy, and Frog was pleased. He stopped back later in the day for more.

Finally, I stood and stretched and awkwardly moved closer to the Planned Parenthood lady closest to me. I wanted to say something. We’re really so similar, you know? We care about young people. We wish things in the world were better. In a sense, we’re both cogs in machines of war. And in a sense that’s really silly. But it’s human nature. I think the differences between us boil down to one thing: you believe abortion is generally helpful; I believe abortion is generally harmful. All the other services we share with women and men are incidental and overlapping. In the lyrics of the song by (of all bands) War, “Why can’t we be friends?”

I didn’t say any of that. I looked over my shoulder at the snickering sun. “It’s really warm today, isn’t it?”

The woman squinted at me. “Yes, it sure is.”

Goodbyes tend to be that way–the tension, the ghost of regret (should I have said or done more? differently?), the release. Even when they’re short-term. Even when all is well between us.

This weekend I read the new anthology in which an essay of mine appears; its full title is Saying Goodbye: to the people, places, and things in our lives (the link takes you to its official Goodbyebook.com website).

As might be expected, many entries deal with the loss of a loved one, usually a parent, but sometimes a friend or pet. I think Dream of Things publisher Mike O’Mary expressed well what’s in the book in his foreword, saying that “in the midst of the most solemn of goodbyes, there is sadness, yes. But there is also irony and humor and in some strange way, a sense of continuity.”

I chuckled plenty of times, and often my reaction at the end of an essay was a sound of recognition. Compared to others, I haven’t lost a lot in my life, but these authors wrote their grievings companionably; I felt with them more than for them.

My story fits in differently. In it I say farewell to, I drop off, a relationship and a place. For many years a negative tension held me there. As did the ghost of regret. But as with other goodbyes, I continued forward and found–continue finding–release.

Sales pitch: If you’re thinking about a selection for a reading group or about Christmas (already), there are several places online carrying the book, in print and PDF format. Look here. And here’s my author page (w00t).

She sat on the kitchen stool. Dishes remained piled at the sink. I leaned against the refrigerator–though it was late–still too wound up. We both were. Talk mingled with tears, as we processed more of the day.

I had tried to weave a relaxed plan. Tried to make things flow smoothly before the drive north about 70 miles for the memorial service. Not all of us could go. Though Victoria tried to get out of working, Saturday morning is a hard shift to cover.

“Well, you would have missed the service either way,” I told her when we got home.

The reader board above the freeway just past Albany warned us an accident had happened ahead. I was driving Mom and Dad’s car, so I had Mom call Tim right away. I wished to hold back the shudder, the immediate mental pictures. Tim and James had left early with his parents. Surely they were already well past the tragic place in the road, but I needed to know.

All was well with our loved ones. They were nearly to the church, where so many were soon to gather to remember Tim’s aunt. Rosie had made her best effort to live well despite the cancer that messed with her body and now has made a family smaller.

Mom, Dad, and I tried to think of alternate routes, while hoping the road would be clear when we got there. It wasn’t. We crept along with everyone else, six miles from our exit. The clock showed we could still make it if…there, moving now we’d have ten minutes still…no, now we’ll only be twenty minutes late…oh, well, we’re going to miss it.

Finally, down to one lane, we passed the emergency workers. Two cars, in tatters. The people were already taken.

The freeway opened up again, three lanes across. Freedom. My heart lingered behind, still seeing the wreckage.

People die on tropical islands from coconuts falling on their heads. I almost said that into our hushed space, but I didn’t.

At the reception they gave us grace, though how it’s mustered in such moments I don’t yet understand. Still I needed to receive. I stood near people I don’t make the effort to see often enough, and I pictured such a crowd after my own service someday. May they, especially those on the periphery, enjoy themselves a little. Remember with stories, like my mother-in-law telling them at the table to my son. Embrace the untidy moment.

There were pictures in the morning of a spider in the sunshine building her web. Later I noticed that the strands were not perfect. The orb is gaping in some places, where the breeze blew the spider off-course, and she had to hang on, head-down, and just continue working.