What do you pray for when life is good?

Ice cream in the morning. Photo by Stephan Geyer, Flickr

What do you pray for when life is good?

What do you pray for when the rain is dripping off the storefront window, mere inches from your chin in hand, giving you a glass raincoat with a cozy, caffeinated lining?

What do you pray for when all your screens go dark and you have magic paper in your hands -- black and white and blinding all over with a creative spectrum invisible to those passing by the quiet reader in the corner?

What do you pray for when the noisy silence of a warm Saturday twilight carries you, all alone save for the cuddling breeze, to dreamland on the deck?

What do you pray for when you pluck sprigs of refreshment, Italy, and Christmas from the rooftop garden and stick them in jar cups to perfume the kitchen you haven't gotten around to cleaning?

Spent. Photo by thart2009, Flickr

What do you pray for when someone seems to want you, and seeming is enough to push tantalizing optimism through the sneaky leaks in your emotional dam, and you let it pour for the simple pleasure of feeling it flow again?

When do you pray for when the job is well done, and you're the one who did it, and while you have not shattered the earth you have at least nudged your own hesitant land mass a couple inches to the left?

What do you pray for when your lower register is shot because you finally stopped caring who heard you screech/belt/be imperfect?

What do you pray for when you catch your eyelashes casting shadows on a gallery wall -- a fleeting installation meant only for you?

What do you pray for when you know in your most certain heart -- that delicate poached egg balanced in a cup in the middle of your chest -- that good is all around you, that still more good things are coming, and that for once -- for a brief, breathtaking moment -- you're patient enough to wait for them?

Gushing. Photo by theilr, Flickr

Prayer #258: When Life is Good

My future is uncertain. My times are scary. My life is fluctuating. My mind and my hours are occupied always.

Yet my moments are crystallized -- perfect prisms hanging in an open window, slave to the elements, banging against the glass but never flying off.

Keep me attached to these refractive moments; they redeem the twisting in the wind.

Amen.

The conversation poet Matthea Harvey and author Edward P. Jones didn't know they had

Hidden selves. Photo by d e x t e r, flickr

They appeared before me two days apart -- one a notable poet, artist, and picture book author; the other a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. Yet what they said met in my brain as one fluid conversation, a bite-size master class about imagination, creativity, and gumption in writing.

First was Matthea Harvey's keynote at the Barrelhouse Conversations and Connections Conference on April 13. Her meditation on the creative process was a thing of beauty, as much meant to be read and seen as heard. Two nights later Edward P. Jones sat down with my Contemporary American Writers class to discuss his novel The Known World. We'd already spent weeks sifting through the novel and analyzing its craft elements; now we had the chance to ask him, in the flesh, if all the genius we perceived therein was invoked or involuntary.

I spent the last month vaguely recollecting their comments, which is a polite way of saying I was busier thinking about writing than actually writing because after several rejection letters and not-exceptional grades I was seized by a crippling fear I would never be interesting, much less published. Yet when I went back to my notes to compile this post, I remembered the flush I'd felt when each of them spoke -- a warmth spreading to my fingertips, my brain nodding, my subconscious saying, "You know what they say is true."

The following quotes are real; their arrangement is patently false. I present them only as they've been bouncing around in my mind, glomming onto each other in weird combinations, waiting for me to internalize their wisdom and return to my own pages. So, here goes.

An Imagined, Short Conversation Between Matthea Harvey and Edward P. Jones

Matthea Harvey: There's "wonder and weirdness of being a percieving human being -- aka, a writer."

Edward P. Jones: People seem to downplay the importance of imagination. ... We're born with imagination -- we might as well use it.

MH: Write like the self you hide and can't convey when you're speaking.

EJ: I myself am the only reader I have in mind.

MH: Our fingerprints are all over our poems and stories.

EJ: I am wedded to the idea of telling the best possible story I can.

EJ: The story should be captivating and the language be engaging. ... In the end, your job is to entertain.

MH: Expand your emotional palette. Try what doesn't come naturally to you.

EJ: A little bit [of symbolism] can do the job, but sometimes you have to carry it further.

MH: Get unstuck using formal or traditional forms. You dance different waltzes with different partners.

EJ: If you have an ending in mind, it guides you like a star in the sky.

MH: If I listen to my own work hard enough, I will figure out how to revise it.

EJ: It's the way it has to be done, so you do it.

MH: Keeping on when you feel hopeless is hard -- but worth it.

---

My lesson: Make the least obvious choices and follow them to their "logical" conclusions. Surprise the reader. Risk yourself. Watch what happens.

Prayer #247: "Write Like the Self You Hide"

Help me write like the self I hide,
the part of me that steeps in shame
or whoops, elated, at moments
captured only in a writer's sights.

Help me write like the self I fear,
the part of me too terrified
to fall in love with what I love
so deep I'll lose my sense of "should."

Help me write like the self I want,
the part of me that longs for blurbs
and prizes, yes, but more the part
that craves transcendence above all.

Amen.

What happened when I crossed the bridge to Selma

The bridge leading into Selma, Ala. arcs across the Alabama River with a length of 1248.1 feet and a width of 42.3 feet. The central span is the most decorative element, a silver flourish over the otherwise basic arches. Its name is the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It's also US-80. And it happens to be a flashpoint of the Voting Rights Act, the civil rights movement, and my all-too-human cowardice.

Edmund Pettus Bridge. April 2013.

I never thought I'd see this bridge in person. I recognized it only from textbooks and documentaries -- the background for helmeted state troopers facing off against determined young black men in the Deep South. I remembered a future Georgia congressman was among the marchers. I knew it had turned violent, and that U2 had written a song that vaguely touched on it. I thought, as I do about so many markers of history when I encounter them without cropping or voiceovers, that it would be bigger.

The area around the bridge didn't seem to match its significance. On one end was a series of abandoned and run-down strip malls, hodgepodge memorials, and a Voting Rights Museum that didn't appear open. On the other was historic Selma, a pretty little downtown that at first seemed quaint until I realized the main drag was empty, despite it being a sunny spring Saturday. The entire scene felt like it was grasping, almost desperate.

The disconnect gnawed at me. Where was the uplift? Where was the dream fulfilled, the redemption story I'd been taught every February during our Black History Month curriculum when I and my (mostly white) classmates acted out a struggle that (we thought) had ended two decades before we were born?

I was as desperate as the boarded-up shops waiting for tourist dollars. I wanted that bridge to sing to me. I craved a sign that it had all come out ok, that the struggle and bloodshed had been worth it. Instead, the town seemed thwarted, as if its sadness -- the heavier of the elements -- had squashed its hope. Had Selma given up its present and its future to the cause? Was it worth it? Did it work?

Over the Bridge Records. April 2013.

Later I stood along the river walk and looked at the bridge from afar. Such a generic span, without the technical wonder of the Brooklyn Bridge or the evocative grandeur of the Golden Gate. Yet I was drawn to it with a ferocity I've never felt at those other places. It forced uncomfortable questions on me: Would you have marched across me? Would you have held the line? Or would you have watched on TV?

Of course I can put myself on the side of right in theory. But values and courage don't work that way in real life. The issues of our time are often ambiguous and almost always contentious. Taking a stand requires work, moxie, and Teflon skin. You have to prepare for hurt and heartache, and hope that it amounts to something meaningful in the end.

I want to be someone who marches across the bridge to defend what I believe is right. I want to embrace the risk that maybe my cause won't win, and then fight anyway so it doesn't become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I want to participate, not spectate. Is that urge half the battle? Is it enough to get me at least to the edge?

I never thought I'd see this bridge in person. I never expected to be in Selma. But I'm glad I did, and was, because it took being there -- crossing it, observing it, experiencing it -- for me to finally grasp what my teachers had been trying to drum into my heads during all those February lessons: that conviction is nothing without action.

Joshua 4:21-22. April 2013.

Prayer #246: On the Bridge

A bridge is not a conveyor belt. It will not roll beneath my feet or glide me forward. It will enable me to get from Point A to Point B, but it is not responsible for the getting.

Help me get to getting, Lord. Move my feet, leaden with fear. March me toward right, and stand with me in the crossing.

Amen.

Wanted: Time, three times as much

Time turner. Photo by Natalie Barletta, flickr

But Hermione was fumbling with the neck of her robes, pulling from beneath them a very long, very fine gold chain.
"Harry, come here!" she said urgently. "Quick!"
Harry moved toward here, completely bewildered. She was holding the chain out. He saw a tiny, sparkling hourglass hanging from it. ...
Hermione turned the hourglass over three times.
The dark ward dissolved. ...
"We've gone back in time," Hermione whispered, lifting the chain off Harry's neck in the darkness. "Three hours back..."
Harry found his own leg and gave it a very hard pinch. It hurt a lot, which seemed to rule out the possibility that he was having a very bizarre dream.
"But --"
"Shh! Listen! Someone's coming! I think -- I think it might be us!"

-- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Prayer #245: Time's After Time

Someone's coming, but I think it isn't me.

My frantic pace sprouted its own legs last week and now runs rampant through my life, divorced from my control. Swept up in it are my once-lustrous ambitions, the flickering beacons I thought were steady enough to eschew temporal limits and lead me to productive glory.

I was wrong.

The constant piling, the quadruple booking, the never-saying-no -- it's lard on a grease fire, a conflagration that threatens to consume what little headway I have made and instead beat me back into a bunker to nurse my wounds with aloe and ice cream.

God of egg timers and morning alarms, hours and seconds, cause and effect -- I won't ask you to slow my man-made 24 hours. Instead, slow me. Slow my feet, my brain, my incessant drive to do do DO.

Doing does not equal accomplishing. Going does not equal arriving. Show me the common sense of these non-equations, and free my spirit to move through time as You intended -- with a gentle swoosh and slide, along no lines.

Amen.

Use what you have: An Easter meditation

Photo by Summers, flickr

This year, for the first time in ages, I had a productive Lent. Not because I sacrificed something (though, in a way, I did). And not because I added something (though, in a way, I did). What made the difference this Lent -- the Christian Church's 40-day period of penitence and fasting from Ash Wednesday to Easter -- was that I practiced something.

Now, this wasn't practice in the sense of "spend 30 minutes with your violin each day." I vowed at the start of Lent that my practice -- my intentional application -- would be to use what I have. This meant: Eat what's in the pantry. Wear what's in the closet. Mend what's broken. Pick up what's neglected. In essence, I would do my best to honor what I already possessed.

Did it work? Yes. But not in the way I anticipated.

Every day, at every decision point, I said  to myself, "Use what you have." So I drank the tea I had at the office instead of stopping at Starbucks. I dug clothes out of the back of the closet and gave away what I knew I wouldn't wear anymore. I scoured my cupboards and freezer for forgotten ingredients and learned new recipes that incorporated them.

Soon, however, without me realizing it, the practice expanded beyond tangible possessions. I considered the moral implications of what I purchased, if it had any hidden environmental or social justice costs. When making plans with friends, I did my best to find activities that were free or inexpensive.  If I ended up eating out, I tried to order simpler, lighter food. I even scrutinized my time more -- how was I allocating it, for what, with whom? Were those precious hours productive? Fulfilling? And if not, how could I make them so?

Most of all, I was struck by how often I was repeating my Lenten mantra. Looking back, I probably invoked it at least 200 times over forty days. I never noticed before how many opportunities I had throughout a day to make a different choice, to pause for a minute and truly consider what was before me.

The result? I felt lighter. Less clutter, both material and mental, surrounded me. Without intending to, I had made room, giving my life some much-needed margins again.

Which brings me to today, Easter, the highest holy day in my faith tradition. I was sitting at services this morning, listening to the homily, when the priest started talking about our constant human quest to figure out what the hell our lives are all about. He said (and I paraphrase), "From the moment your parents created you to today, God has prepared you to be who you are for this moment. So why hold onto our pasts? You are ready now. You have what you need."

And there it was, the lesson that took me forty days to understand: Use what you have to find what you need.

In my case, I needed to make space for contemplation and reflection so I can check in with God on where I am and what I might do next. And now that I have it, I'll use it. And once I use that I'll discover a new gift, and then I'll use that, and on and on I'll go in a gorgeous virtuous cycle, never alone, never abandoned, never unloved.

May we all use what we have. Happy Easter, everyone.

Prayer #244: Use All That I Am

Possess me, God, threadbare rag that I am, in a way that's not about having, but releasing. Pull me from the back of the closet, dunk me in the hottest water You can run, wring out the calcified crust I've gathered, and drape me over the balcony rail to dry, where I'll have nothing to do in the warm sun except flutter, and think, and wonder how I can earn being washed so clean.

Amen.

One day your life won't be like this

West Virginia snow? Or Narnia? March 2013

Last night -- somewhere in between working late to prep for a day off, squeezing in homework on the treadmill at the gym, planning two menus yet food-shopping for three, scurrying around giving small tasks great import and important tasks undue smallness -- a thought came to me:

One day my life won't be like this.

I thought about my possible children -- how many? what color hair? how often will they get stomach viruses? -- and how I'd finally have someone around to help me fold fitted sheets. I thought about my possible husband -- just one? what color hair? does he like The Dick Van Dyke Show? --  and how he'd add his hands to the never-ending to-do list and also force me to sit on the couch. I thought about writing, about finally being published, and how I'd be able to drop that juicy tidbit into cocktail hour coversations. I thought about where I might be living, and what my routine might look like, and what might be driving me crazy and what might be astounding me and what might have fizzled away not even into memory, and I wondered: How will I pack lunches and be a listening ear and get my work into Harper's and help with carpool and retire by 65 and travel the world and call my friends and keep the house clean enough to avoid vermin if my very existence already overwhelms me?

Then another thought came to me:

Why not try living this night first, in all its guts and glory?

And then tomorrow night.

And then every night thereafter, until the nights are gone.

Prayer #243: Going, Going, Here

God of a million tasks and must-dos and nice-to-haves,

Show me what is worth pursuing. Show me what is worth fretting about. Show me what demands action and what needs setting aside.

Remind me that stopping -- really stopping, as in putting down objects, turning off devices, looking up and around me -- anchors me to my present. Ground me in my current dreams and frustrations, as well as in the wisdom that every personal epoch has benefits and drawbacks. Slap me silly until I remember that now is already a good ol' day, simply by virtue of the sun rising.

But more than anything, douse me in the grace of perspective -- that for all my annoyances and tired moments, for all my panics and tirades, I am free, the driver of my own destiny, accountable only to myself and to You for what I make of this life.

Amen.

Share the lasagna: A useful lesson for co-grievers about grief

Good grief. Photo by mrlerone, flickr

Last month, in the span of 10 days, two of my close friends each lost their father to cancer in a far-away state. They quickly melted away into a haze of preparations, family, and grieving. I disappeared into a Cheezit box.

Yes, it's true: When major life events like a parent's death happen to people I love, I resort to eating my feelings of helplessness and inadequacy. I'm never sure my actions are enough. Should I call? Send flowers? Donate? Fly out to the funeral? Give them space? Bake eight lasagnas, put six in their freezers, and eat two myself?

My touchpoint on such matters is my experience with my best friend, who first lost her father and then, two years later, her mother. I was with my friend in the days immediately following her mother's death as she planned for the funeral, made arrangements, and welcomed visitors to the house. We looked at a lot of photo albums together and shared memories at the dinner table. We cried at innocuous triggers and wallowed in occasional gallows humor. There was a lot of hugging. A lot of listening. A lot of wordlessness, not because we ran out of things to say, but because what we wanted to discuss was beyond conversation.

In the midst of that long weekend, a package arrived for my friend via FedEx. Another friend in a different state, afraid that my friend hadn't been able to pack enough clothes for her now-extended stay, bought and mailed several casual outfits to her "just in case." My friend cried when she opened the package. I did, too -- because I feared that I would never be so insightful or proactive for someone I loved.

These past couple weeks, as I struggled to keep tabs on my friends in their far-off states, that selfish fear resurfaced. I didn't know their parents' mailing addresses. I didn't know the final funeral plans. I felt remote and disconnected -- an unsettling, foreign feeling in an age of instant status updates. But this wasn't the sort of thing I wanted to see shared on Facebook or through texts anyway. I wanted to see my friends right in front of me. I wanted to hug them. If I was going to feel inadequate and helpless, I might as well do it with them in my sights.

Comfort. Photo by williamhartz, flickr

Add to all this my grief-by-association, my own fearful sorrows bubbling up through empathy. Part of me can't accept that I've now had several friends lose their parents. It forces me to confront my own mortality, the passage of time, the randomness of illness and suffering, and the fact that, yes Julia, you are almost 30 years old and losing the generation right in front of you is no longer as unusual or untimely as it once was.

Extend, then, these feelings to my own parents, who at the moment are healthy and fine and God willing will stay that way for a thousand years to come. Nonetheless, my friends' losses make me want to be with my mom and dad. They make me afraid I'm not doing/loving/hugging/visiting/calling enough, that I'm not making the most of the time we have. (The rational part of me knows that living with these hyper-aware emotions always at the surface would lead to head explosion, and not to worry because we make a practice of living in love, but still, I want lasagna.)

It all boils down to this, my big question as a co-griever: Is doing nothing better than doing the wrong thing? Or does "the wrong thing" not even exist in such extraordinary circumstances?

Stone faces. Photo by Eva the Weaver, flickr

Then one friend came home to DC again. And the other friend returned my phone call. And they answered my question without knowing my heart was screaming it.

Hearing their voices, listening to their stories, making them laugh, finally hugging them ... I grasped all at once that I was not doing the wrong thing at all. I was doing the right things that derived from our unique friendships. I was being present. And there are as many ways to be present as there are relationships on this earth.

I will probably never think to send clothes to a friend. But the ways to be present that reflect who I am and what I'm feeling for my loved ones -- in my case, cards, listening, and food -- are perfectly acceptable and all the more sincere because they're true to what I can offer.

The best part is, all their other friends and family are doing the same thing, each in their own way. At any given moment, someone will know what to do and step up for their loved one. Our collective force, these intricate and emotional human webs, are catching and bearing up the people who need it. It doesn't relieve us of our individual responsibility, but it does relieve us of the pressure to be everything.

So that's what I'm taking forward as my friends continue to grieve, celebrate, and love their parents: Be present. Act in thoughtful love. Share the lasagna.

Prayer #242: To the Griever, From Your Co-Griever

I called because I missed you and wanted to hear your voice.

I hugged you in the hallway because I couldn't for weeks and wanted to be sure you were really back.

I joked with you because I have the brain space to see right now that life is still funny and wanted you to see it too.

I cried with you because I ran out of words.

I am selfish and nosy and pushy, probably full of fixes you don't want and solutions you can't have. But if I do manage to hit on what you need -- the exact right thing at the exact right moment -- then grab it with both hands and don't let go. Be selfish, nosy, and pushy right back. That's where we'll meet in the middle, and that's how we'll push through this, together.

Amen.