Category Archives: Life at Home

Nap Party

21 Thursday Jan 2010

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I admire how easily dogs fall asleep.

Is it their freedom from worries?  Or could it be their lack of preoccupation with tasks that lie in wait for them?  Or perhaps it’s their constant practice at the fine art of good sleeping?

As I contemplate my morning readings, Maddie snores by my side with nary a care.  Her body forms to the sides of the chair, her head rests on its arm.  I look around to see that it’s this way with my other dogs too — all are completely at rest.

I wish I could rest this easily.  I didn’t sleep well last night, though I have no worries or preoccupations that I can point to as sleep-nappers.  Sometimes I just wake up at the indecent hour of four a.m. — and no matter how much I toss and turn to put myself back to sleep, sleep evades me.

Often, Max hears me stirring, and when he’s not already in bed with us, he jumps up to keep me company.  Without need of invitation, Max  drapes all forty-six pounds of his body on top of mine.  I wonder if he’s trying to anchor my tossing with his weight or trying to bring me the comfort of his presence.

Perhaps Max just desires the comfort of my presence, since a minute later, my poodle comforter is snoring comfortably while I lie underneath him hot and wide awake.  I feel Max’s body form to mine, with the full force of his weight shifting to me.

With no intention to do so, I begin to think thoughts.   Thinking removes the last hope of my return to sleep.   But thoughts come and this one was important to me, as I compare Max at rest to prayer at best.  My dark night encounter with Max invites me to grow still, settle into a warm, comfy spot and allow whatever is weighing me down shift to God.

With prayers expressed and forth-six pounds of weight shifted, I shake awake Max to begin my day.  Max is always happy to get an early start, as my day begins with his food bowl.  I feed the dogs, make my coffee and find a comfortable chair to hold me.  And there, resting in God’s word, I too fall sound asleep, in spite of the coffee.  Thirty minutes later, I wake refreshed, ready for the day.

Now, with morning chores behind me and no worries or preoccupations pressing upon me, I’m wondering if I might indulge in a dog nap or two.  Already I’m missing one good nap party behind me.

With the day still young and my dogs true party animals, I’ve no doubt there will be other nap parties to crash.

Like a River

20 Wednesday Jan 2010

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“I’ll wait for you no more like a daughter
That part of our life together is over
But I will wait for you forever
Like a river…”     –  Carly Simon, “Like A River”


Like a river of life, Carly Simon’s music courses through my veins.

It has been this way since the earliest days of high school.  Carly shares her life so freely in song that it has always brought me comfort — she feels no need to cover-up the love or joy or pain.   I believe she grew stronger for the sharing of all her ups and downs;  and if not, I can say for sure that her openness made me stronger.

Carly’s songs invite me to lean into her experience, which prepared me to ride across similar rough waters of my own life.  So it is with Like A River, a song Carly penned in the mid-nineties about the fresh passing of her mother.  I listened to this song, along with all the other recordings released on Letters Never Sent, as I commuted to and from Houston in the late 1990’s.  Even now, I can see myself turning off of State Highway 288 on to south US Highway 59, listening to Like A River with tears in my eyes, as I got use to the idea of losing Mom long before I stood on the precipice.

Listening to Carly’s loss evolved into a longing to listen to others facing similar losses.  Though there are informal ways to offer the gift of a listening ear, I chose a more formal path, one that prepared me to become a Stephen Minister.  I sought training because I grew weary of feeling inept and uncomfortable around those grieving the loss of a loved one.  I wished to comfort however I could.  While I had no intention of becoming commissioned in the beginning, it  felt right to do so in the end.

Over the course of thirty months, I provided care to two different women.  Odd enough, both were facing the loss of their mother.   I cried with them and I prayed for them and with them.  But most of all, I just sat and listened and invited them to express their grief and their fears and ultimately their love, the love that would flow into eternity with their mother.

Long after the formal grieving period was over and all the family had returned home to pick up the doings of their own lives, I continued to visit them.  I came to listen to my care receivers, to offer them a safe and confidential space to express their grief in whatever way they wished.  And I didn’t stop coming until they felt their grief work was finished.

I gave up the ministry when I moved to Oklahoma.  But the Stephen Ministry led me to to explore spiritual direction which led me to create a contemplative prayer class, which has led me to pray for Connie, another daughter preparing to say good-bye to her mother.

Like a river, the stories of a mother’s passing are part of life itself — and like all life, the stories deserved to be shared.

Morning Office

19 Tuesday Jan 2010

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I am officially christening my “Daily Office” as my “Morning Office.”

I no longer dream of spending time with all the biblical readings prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer, though last fall, I had thought by now I would have worked up to three-square meals of biblical reading a day.   But no.  As I have settled into this new spiritual prayer practice, I find my morning readings create enough work to fill my daily life.

Each morning begins with the prescribed Psalms for the day.  I do not like reading the Psalms, as reading a Psalm is like taking some bad-tasting medicine that I pray will somehow do me some good.  It’s a half-hearted reading at best, though it does make me grateful for the Gospel and New Testament readings that follow as second and third course.

My problem with the Psalms is that they remind me of those days when I use to supervise a group of employees.  I always found it hard to manage people, mostly because no one ever dropped in to tell me that work and life was grand.  Instead, my employees would come to lament over the state of our office or whine about what was wrong with whoever or whatever.   And of course, they wanted me to fix it.

The psalmists want God to fix things too.  They hold nothing back for the sake of propriety.  There is no middle way; depending on the number, they burn hot with love or hate — life or death —  or wonder or misery.  I am left to wonder whether these people are too good to be true — or just too true.  Sometimes I just want to close the book on them and say, “Too much information — keep it to yourself, will you?”

When life in the Psalms is bad, prayers sound an awful lot like whining to my ears.  But somehow, I can’t think anything but that God just embraces it all, whatever it is we have to say.  The Psalms show people at their best and people at their worst and as long as people are being true to their experience, I can’t imagine God seeing anything wrong with it.

Created in the image of God who calls himself “I Am Who I AM”, as long as “we are who we are”, then everything is right between God and us — even when everything else is going to pot calling the kettle black.