Gratitude, Forgiveness, and Humility

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At one point during Rosh Hashanah services, our rabbi asked us to hold in our minds a moment from the past year for which we were grateful. Gratitude, after all, is one of the most pure expressions of faith; it requires recognizing that something wonderful happened to/for us because of someone else without insisting that we deserved the wonderful thing.

Nine days later, at Kol Nidre, the service on the evening that Yom Kippur begins, the rabbi talked about what it really means to atone. Asking for forgiveness, she said, has three components: the "I'm sorry," the "it's my fault," and the "here's how I'm going to fix it."

I'm good at saying "thank you." I'm good at saying "I'm sorry." But too often I think that I earn the good things that happen to me and too often I refuse to acknowledge that the things for which I apologize are truly caused by me and me alone.

You know what both faults come down to? Arrogance.

During the High Holy Days, we thank God for everything He has given us despite our faults and we apologize to our friends and family for hurts we provoked despite their love. Our prayers remind us of our humility, both before God and before our fellow man.

And you know what I'm not good at? Humility.

Before the High Holy Days, Sixth & I, my synagogue, asked what we're going to welcome in with the new year. I wrote down "patience," "generosity of spirit," and "benefit of the doubt." I know we hear what we want or need to hear in sermons, but I swear the rabbis were speaking directly to me at Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur, for each of those things is rooted in humility. When Rabbi Shira told a story about how fear and control often go hand in hand, when Rabbi Miller talked about accepting the unknown of Plan B when Plan A fails, when we prostrated ourselves during the Aleinu and beat our fists against our breasts during the Al Chet - when I prayed and when I listened, I understood the direction I needed to take when I left the synagogue.

So there you have it, dear readers: my new year's resolution. May I take responsibility for both my arrogance and my humility in 5776, and may I go to High Holy Day services next September much lighter of the former and much richer in the latter.

Sunday Meditation

A friend of mine is dying.

I didn't know until I saw something worrying from a mutual friend on Facebook that made me send an urgent message. "Is he ill?" The answer, devastatingly, was yes; very.

Near the end of my run this morning, I noticed a small sign by the steps of the meetinghouse around the corner from Nana and Pappy's that read:

All Saints Episcopal Church

service 8am

I thought of my friend, a choirmaster devoted to the Anglican liturgy, and crept through the open door. I slipped into a seat at the back just as the second reading began and closed my eyes, letting the rhythms of the scripture wash over me. I stood with the small congregation as they chanted the Apostle's Creed and bowed my head during the prayers of intercession. When I opened my mouth to join in singing the doxology, I found tears streaming down my face.

After the service, the priest welcomed me and introduced myself. He glanced at my wet cheeks and red nose and took my hand. "Can I offer you comfort?" he asked. I smiled at him shakily and replied that I had found all the comfort I needed in the service.

As I walked back home, though, I wondered: how often do we need to hear that? And how often should we be the ones offering it? More than we admit for both, I think.

Minimalism on the Offensive

When we feel stuck, emotionally, we hope that making tangible adjustments in our lives will cause internal shifts. We get new jobs, we end relationships, we move to other cities or even countries - often, we make the biggest quantifiable changes when we feel we need massive qualitative change.

So I get the concept that emptying our homes will open up more space in our lives for ideas, experiences, and creativity. I do. But I don’t agree with the premise that this is the essential way to live.

That’s why the cult of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up frustrates me. I don’t reject the theory of the KonMarie method - that everything in your home should bring you joy - but I think that it’s way too easy for a strict reading of the book to go irreparably overboard in trying to create room for happiness.

As the recent New York Times article Let's Celebrate The Art of Clutter points out, "The stuff we accumulate works the same way our body weight does. Each of us has a set point to which we invariably return. Each of us has been allotted a certain tolerance, if not a need, for stuff; each of us is gaited to carry a certain amount of weight in possessions." Many of the most vocal proponents of domestic minimalism that I follow online have also historically been the most visible proponents of consumerism, either curated or spontaneous, and I can't help but imagine that the hundreds of dollars' worth of things donated or trashed will be re-spent as soon as the magic of purging fades.

Of course, a central tenant of Marie Kondo's philosophy is that your entire way of life will be transformed once you've conquered your home with her method, but I just don't think that'll be the case for most of us who are active in blogging and social media - not when trends change so quickly, new belongings are so cheap, and, to be quite honest, our attention spans are so short.

I also wonder what negative effects this organization, taken to extremes, has on our relationships and our social lives. I've seen tweets boasting of bare cupboards, explaining that a childless couple needs no more than two of each dining item. Instagrams display more empty walls than books or photographs on shelves; memorabilia is photographed and stored on a hard drive for reference (and then disposed of) rather than kept within eyesight for unproductive enjoyment. But what if you want to entertain? What if you want to bond with someone over a text you read in college, a picture of a place you've visited, a collection you've spent years amassing? As Gesci and Lola have eloquently discussed on Twitter, the ephemera of these memories are irreplaceable.

Yes, Marie Kondo argues that anything that brings you joy should be kept but, from what I've seen shared online, we're having a hard time defining that. She writes, "If you can say without a doubt ‘I really like this!' no matter what anyone else says, and if you like yourself for having it, then ignore what other people think." However, I'm afraid that many of us have a hard time ignoring what other people think in favor of simply liking ourselves, which is why we're reading a self-help book, and a method that lends itself to black-and-white interpretations makes it easier not to have to choose between the two. Perhaps not accidentally, this has become yet another way of proving to the world how committed we are to finding our true selves according to others' standards.

And there is a reason this book is shelved in the Self-Help rather than the Home section of bookstores: it's not about changing our spaces so much as it is about changing ourselves. A Wall Street Journal piece exploring the trend of tidying up quotes a publisher specializing in self-help books: "There’s a dreamy quality to it,” she said. “It’s a book that promises something that is almost beyond imagination. It’s magic.” That result of that promise isn't tangible, but the means are, and all you have to do is live minimally. The next step, of course, is more difficult. Once you've emptied your home of objects, you should fill it with the abstract. "Go ahead," suggests the unabashed accumulator writing in the New York Times, "call me materialistic. I’ll just wonder what you think you are made of."

We want the magic that Marie Kondo promises so badly, and I understand why. I see the appeal of Kondoing your home as a way of tidying your soul, and I also realize that there are thousands of people (probably less active on social media and therefore less publicly visible) following her philosophy who don't take it to the absolute limit. (As a commenter on a Racked.com post noted, "I didn’t find it painful to decide to part with stuff as long as I had plenty of leeway to keep things, too.") But I'm afraid that we'll spend so much energy being proud of ourselves for not having much that we'll come to define ourselves by what we don't possess rather than by what we do.

Social Media Anonymous

via The New Yorker

My phone had been dying over the last few weeks. I took it to the Verizon store, where I was told it was a glitch in the new iOS, and then I took it back a few days later, at which point I was told that only the Apple store could help me. Fast forward past two missed Genius Bar appointments to Wednesday, when I finally managed to make it to the Apple store when I was supposed to, and the woman there informed me that I needed a new phone, was two months past warranty, and would have to contact my insurance provider.

And then my phone well and truly died.

My new phone arrived in the mid-afternoon on Thursday. I was without a phone for a total of 24 hours. Dear readers, you can imagine how bereft I was. No, that’s not the right word. Here’s what it was: I had fierce FOMO.

It’s funny, because I knew that anyone from my real life who needed to get in touch with me would, and that if it took longer for me to respond – because I couldn’t check my email anytime from anywhere or because they were going through Jon – it wouldn’t be the end of the world. The people I know in real life would wait, and they wouldn’t really wonder why I wasn’t replying instantaneously.

My FOMO was entirely social media-based. While there are very few scenarios in which I’d miss anything crucial by not having Instagram and Twitter at my fingertips while on the go, I knew that my feeds would move too quickly in my day without a phone for me to ever catch up. What if someone was sharing something that everyone else would see except me? And then everyone else would move on to the next thing, and I wouldn’t even know that I’d missed it? How would I know to miss what I didn’t know I’d missed?

Yes. It’s absurd.

Has someone started a Social Media Anonymous group in the DC area? I might need to go to a meeting. Perhaps Faceook knows where I can find one…

Sunday Thoughts

Over the last few weeks, I've drafted a couple of blog posts - mostly just in my head, but also in a growing chain of emails to myself of quotations from relevant pieces from around the web - about some lifestyle choices that, in attaining cult-like followings, seem to have consumed every corner of the internet I visit.

"Every corner of the internet I visit" is an interesting phrase, though. We self-select the communities in which we participate based on how we self-identify (or how we want to self-identify), and what we read and hear from the echo chambers of our communities can overwhelm everything else to the point that it becomes hard to imagine that there is anything else.

I've been thinking about that recently as Jon and I have embarked on tangled conversations about misogyny on Reddit and in gaming. He sent me an article the other day that summed up his thoughts as a redditor and, interestingly, the last paragraph can serve to support both his participation in and my hesitation about the website:

In my experience, Reddit is just a microcosm of humanity. It’s a generally tech-savvy and scientifically inclined sliver of humanity, sure, but a much more diverse group of people than you might think. Any other Reddit user could write a completely different piece than mine, detailing his exploits on various subreddits that I've never even heard of. Just like any group of people, some of them are immature, insecure bullies. Some of them are people I would never want to associate with in reality or on the anonymous Internet. But most people IRL are great, and most of Reddit—or at least, most of my Reddit—is, too.

It's easy to forget that, just as this writer has "her" Reddit and Jon has "his," I have "my" blogworld, a strange bubble in which every lifestyle decision becomes not just one to make for yourself but one to defend to others. It's easy to forget that many of the trends I can't seen to escape online, amplified by groupthink, probably haven't even been noticed by my offline communities. It's easy to forget that even oft-maligned Millennials, with our self-absorption and exceptionalism and hunger for recognition, don't participate in the exact sort of navel-gazing that's the hallmark of the blogging community that I (and many of you, dear readers) choose to belong to.

This isn't subtle at all, but I know I should keep perspective on the things that get me worked up around here and I just wanted to share my thoughts on it. After all, I can't be the only one who needs the reminder?

Whimsy at Work

I have a confession to share: I have reached peak hand-lettering saturation.  I totally recognize that the artists who create the prints and other products you see on Instagram are truly skilled, but my social media feeds need a little break from the whimsy.

Here's another confession, though this one is less likely to ruffle feathers: I can't remember the last time I uploaded a desktop background on my personal laptop.  The last two backgrounds I've used have been chosen from amongst the standard Mac options and, in fact, I think the one that's there now is still the one that appeared automatically when I booted up my new hard drive for the first time.  (It's called Galaxy, in case you were wondering.)

But, in a stunning exhibition of contradiction, I love having a rotating selection of carefully chosen hand-lettered background on my work computer.  I have so much fun scrolling through the illustrations and typography that, if the sentiments of the women I follow online are any indication, were created as a labor of love, picking the perfect inspiration for my work day, and then taking a minute at the start of every morning to admire both the words themselves and the artistry that went into shaping them.  Maybe it's because my day job, although in the arts, is very Arial and Times New Roman and I want one small contrast at easy reach - I'm not sure.  But this little frivolous reminder to do my job well is lovely to have to hand no matter what's going on at work.  Thanks, letterers.

Type and Title

The Nectar Collective via The Wonder Forest

POMMEL lane

Her Lovely Heart

The Collative

The Fox Is Black

You Don't Say

When Lean In launched their Ban Bossy campaign nearly a year ago, my heart sunk.  As this NY Mag article points out, "the campaign is an heir to that earlier type of activism, which sought to restrict bad stuff rather than create a compelling alternative."  Empowering women - empowering anyone - is about giving them more options, not taking them away.  If a girl wants to be the boss, we should teach her that being assertive can be a strength, not that her confidence is overbearing and needs to be contained.  Beyond that, though, it's important to remember that a word like "bossy" isn't gender-specific.  Anyone can be bossy, and it's condescending to try to protect girls and women from an imposed victimhood that they don't want or need.

However, there are plenty of gender-specific words and phrases we do use that marginalize, disparage, and invalidate girls and women in particular.  I know I'm guilty of using some without thinking; we probably all are.  And, just like women were divided on the merits of Ban Bossy, not everyone is offended by gender-specific insults.  (Jon mentioned that he thought "don't be a pussy" originally came from "pussy cat," so it's equivalent to saying "don't be a scaredy-cat."  I looked up the phrase, and some also claim it may have come from "pusillanimous," which means "showing a lack of determination or courage."  I doubt that many people who taunt their friends with "don't be a pussy" think of that, but okay.  Point taken.  Language changes.)  That being said, I find the Duke You Don't Say campaign incredibly powerful.  It's really making me consider how easily we throw around words and phrases that come from deeply gendered attitudes - and what we can do to change that.

What do you think?

Goodbye, 2014

2014: what a year! It’s been quite a few years, actually…

May 2012: quit my job in London, got engaged, repatriated to DC from England
June 2012: moved in with my parents in the Maryland suburbs just outside of DC, started one job
July 2012: adopted Charlie
November 2012: resigned from the job because it wasn’t the right fit, ran my first 10k
December 2012: was offered another job

January 2013: started the second job
April 2013: moved out of my parents’ house into a studio apartment in the heart of Washington
June 2013: was laid off from the job as the organization began the process of dissolving, celebrated my five-year college reunion
August 2013: got married
September 2013: ran a half-marathon
October 2013: submitted Jon’s visa application, ran my second 10k

March 2014: hired by my current employer
May 2014: celebrated my ten-year high school reunion
September 2014: welcomed Jon (and his green card) to the United States as a Conditional Permanent Resident
October 2014: moved into a new one-bedroom apartment, ran my third 10k

I’m glad 2014 is over. It brought a lot of joy, obviously, in that it was the year Jon and I were legally reunited and began making a home together in America and it was the year that my career got back on track with a job I really love.  However, it also forced me to confront many realities I never thought I’d have to face and, in doing so, really challenged me to examine what makes me who I am. It took me three months to apply for unemployment benefits and Medicaid because I was too proud to admit I needed them at the beginning; I never imagined that I’d be included in government statistics as one of the long-term unemployed. I didn’t expect that being long-distance for more than two years would provoke introspection on what I can contribute to a relationship and what I need from my partner more fundamentally than it might have if we had been together, but it caused me to doubt my capacity to be one half of a whole. I was also unprepared for how my relationship with my parents, which was more dependent that it should have been in Jon’s absence, would change once Jon immigrated. And, to be honest, I underestimated the steepness of the learning curve as I navigated sharing myself and my space with Jon again after living alone for 18 months. On top of all of that, I treated my body really badly, gaining back the 25lbs I’d lost in the year before our wedding and essentially abandoning my running.

2015 will be different. It will be calmer, I hope, with much more stability. My fingers are crossed that there won’t be many changes, self-inflicted or otherwise, in my life, with the exception of a renewed investment in my physical health. (I’ve signed up for a 10k in March and a 10 miler in April already with my eyes on a May half-marathon, and intend to continue the momentum of the last nine weeks on Weight Watchers.) My goal for 2015 is that it’ll be a year in which Jon and I can put down roots so that when we do change in the future it’s with depth and maturity.

I’m reminded, as I write that, of a passage in A Wind in the Door, one of my favorite Madeleine L’Engle books from the Wrinkle in Time quartet. The context is irrelevant; the message perfect regardless:

"It is only when we are fully rooted that we are really able to move… Now that I am rooted I am no longer limited by motion. Now I may move anywhere in the universe. I sing with the stars. I dance with the galaxies.”

I felt utterly limited by motion in 2014. In 2015, I want to settle in and get comfortable - though never complacent - so that we're ready for change in the years following.  Here's to that!

Walk Inside

The other day, I told you that I was working on an essay - a rant, really - against the use of the word "hustle" by 20- and 30-somethings in a professional context.  I've written and rewritten it over and over again; with every draft, it went in a different unproductive direction.  Once I discussed millennial arrogance, another time I talked about the pros and cons to having an office job and working your way up the corporate ladder as opposed to going freelance and/or starting your own business, and in another draft I talked about what it meant to be creative in your career no matter your title or field.  It was a mess, and all it did was get me more and more worked up.

And then I saw this quote from a TED speaker named Brené Brown and I realized that it doesn't matter who hustles or why or if it works for them.  It only matters how I work - how I devote myself to my career, how I develop my professional identity, and how I balance that with everything else going on in my life.  If people out there want to hustle, that's their choice.  It doesn't affect my decision to stand inside my own story.  And, if I'm really there, I won't let all the hustle rhetoric bother me.

Inspiration for Work/Life

The end of our financial year is coming up at work and it's crunch time.  We're drowning in spreadsheets, letters, and phone calls; development at nonprofits is (or should be) consistent throughout the year, but there's always a push just before the budget closes no matter how well the department has been doing.  I scrolled through Pinterest last night in an attempt to escape from the numbers, but our goals and projections are filling practically every waking moment of my life these days and so I read each inspirational quote as though it were specifically about arts fundraising.

Here are five that I'll be keeping in mind between now and July 31.  Do any speak to what you do professionally?

allison wyn design

Sycamore Street Press

Indie Foundry

Sycamore Street Press

Lisa Congdon

May You Live

Encouraged by your sympathy and support on my post from Monday, dear readers, and inspired by the affirmation and love we experienced today at the funeral of a dear family friend, I'm going to try to focus on this from here on out.

Show Me Now

A quotation is a handy thing to have about,

saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself,
always a laborious business.

- A. A. Milne

You know I love a juicy quotation, dear readers.  After all, I have a whole "musings and mantras" label on this blog!  I even Instagrammed one yesterday.  But I have to tell you that I'm feeling a backlash against inspirational sayings.

Okay, that's not entirely true.  I have no problem with the quotes themselves, and I'm obviously guilty of using them all the time.  What I'm getting irritated by is the seeming over-reliance on these borrowed thoughts.  At this time of year, holiday wishlists alternate on many lifestyle blogs with posts either reflecting on the past year or looking ahead to 2014, and almost every single one includes an inspirational line from a writer or philosopher or religious figure that, in most cases, the blogger discovered while searching for "quote about ambition" or whatever on Google.  (Like I said, I'm totally guilty of having done this before, though I actually have read some of If I May, the series of essays from which the above A.A. Milne line was taken.)  But even that doesn't get at the root of what frustrates me; you don't have to be familiar with a wise person for his or her wise words to strike a chord with you.  Here's what it is, I think:

I feel like I keep seeing the same quotes shared in a never-ending loop by the same bloggers.  Of course it makes sense to use deep thoughts to motivate us because inspirational words at the end of a year are an organic quantification of how we've grown and they're an obvious launching pad at the beginning of a year as we set off to accomplish new goals.  But when the same lines are used repeatedly, the words become empty.  They lose their meaning.  When I notice that the same sorts of quotes being published on a blog over the course of months or even years, I wonder if the blogger is actually taking any lessons from her own posts.  It makes me think of a song from My Fair Lady where Eliza Doolittle, faced with continued declarations of love from Freddy, tells him, "Sing me no song, read me no rhyme / don't waste my time, show me!"

As you know, one of the reasons I love blogging is because of the support the community provides no matter what sort of encouragement we might need.  And I absolutely get that it can be easier to ask for help through a tough situation by appropriating another's words; often, we're sharing these quotes not for our readers but rather to inspire ourselves as we blog about them.  At a certain point, though, we need to stop relying on them.  Eventually we need to go beyond repeating motivational sayings and we need to put them into practice.  As Eliza sings, "Tell me no dreams filled with desire / if you're on fire, show me!"

Meaningful quotes are everywhere.  But what I've learned from this year is that finding the inspiration within yourself is a hundred times more powerful than any quotation.  Like I said, I'm guilty of using them, too, and I do think that they can provide a productive framework for understanding what you might be going through and how you'd like to come out on the other side.  But, at the end of the day, they're just words.  We're here for whatever support you might need, but a quote will only get you started.  After that, you have to find the motivation inside yourself.

So show me.

To Live Greatly

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In the grand scheme of things, I'm doing pretty well.  Regardless of the parts of my life that aren't ideal, I have a supportive family and loyal friends and a roof over my head.  I'd love for Jon to be here permanently already, but there are probably thousands of people around the world in a similar situation who don't have access to the resources we do to ease the frustration of separation.

If you're wondering where this is coming from, I'll tell you: I had a little talk with myself after publishing Saturday's post on gratitude because, all in a rush, everything I listed seemed horribly superficial considering what others have to be thankful for.

But everything is relative - that's basically my point today.  Everything's relative, and there's no reason to belittle our successes or underestimate our struggles.  Sure, it's good to keep things in perspective, but we all deal with the good and the bad at times.  I think it's important to remember that, no matter how small our troubles, disappointments, and triumphs may seem, we should always face them with grace.  After all, each little piece is but one that makes up a much larger whole and, on the balance, our lives should be lived greatly.

A Sunday Meditation

The magical thing about quotations is that they can mean whatever you want them to.  We read a phrase that someone wiser once put to pen and we find our own truth in it; we make it applicable to our own situation and glean from it what we need for comfort. It's a testament to how flexible words are that they can be so easily contorted to our own purposes without losing any of their original meaning.

However, being aware of the original intention of a quotation doesn't stifle its possibilities, and I think that an appreciation of the context in which one was written can actually enhance rather than limit its wider relevance. So, since I'm feeling a bit contemplative on this Sunday morning, let's talk about a line that's been floating about the internets since before the term "lifestyle blogger" was coined.

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Did you know that C.S. Lewis was one of the great Christian apologists of the 20th century?  Born in Belfast in 1898, Lewis became disillusioned with Christianity as a teenager but then, after serving in World War I and studying literature and classic philosophy at Oxford, re-embraced the faith.  As a professor at Magdalen College, he joined a collective of intellectuals known as the Inklings - which included JRR Tolkien, who influenced Lewis' integration into the Church of England - and went on to publish dozens of books, most of which dealt with religious issues in one way or another.  In 1941, when England was threatened with the inhumanity of war, Lewis gave a series of radio addresses that spoke to the central issues of Christianity; they were later complied into a three-volume work titled Mere Christianity.  And, although C.S. Lewis denied that his famous Narnia series was a direct allegory to the real world, many readers and experts understand Aslan to represent Jesus and interpret strong biblical themes throughout the books.

I began writing this post with the intention of telling you that the quotation above was about dying and that the "better things" to which C.S. Lewis refers are in heaven.  It would certainly fit with his identity as a Christian writer and philosopher who had experienced quite a bit of death, wouldn't it?  But I couldn't actually find the context to this quotation anywhere online; I couldn't find the work from which it was taken or even an academic website attributing the line to C.S. Lewis.  It's entirely possible that he never wrote this at all, or that it's a distillation of a few things he wrote in different places.  But I still think the intro to this post, above the graphic, is valid.  In fact, my point may be even more appropriate if the quotation isn't actually from C.S. Lewis.  But as I searched for this line or any like it, I came across the end of The Last Battle, the final book in the Narnia series.  The story starts when Jill and Eustace are jolted into Narnia from England while on a train, and finishes when they meet Aslan in a glorious place.  He greets them and their companions:

"You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be."

Lucy said, "We're so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often."

"No fear of that," said Aslan. "Have you not guessed?"

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

"There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother and all of you are - as you used to call it in the Shadowlands - dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Isn't that beautiful?  I don't believe in the theology with which Lewis suffuses these books - and, honestly, I'm not even sure if I believe that anything happens to us after death - but I think it's full of hope and love and promise.  What a wonderful thing to remember when we see that quotation wandering around the blogosphere, don't you think?

Updated: Georgia left me the correct link to this quotation in the comments below - it is C.S. Lewis, and it's from a letter he wrote to comfort a dying woman.  Thank you, Georgia!

Lessons from Jon: Choose Love

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On Thursday, we'll be exactly three months out from our wedding.  I'm really excited, obviously, but we're now down to the wire when it comes to the visa and license we need to get married in the UK.  I've also started preparing for the spousal visa that we'll apply for after the wedding so that Jon can live in the US with me.  It's a lot - there are a million details that need to be worked out, a million pieces that need to be coordinated, and a million loose ends that need to be tied up.  Obviously, because I'm taking the lead on everything, it's stressing me out.  And when I get stressed, I make sure that Jon is stressed too - after all, misery loves company.

We've had some bona fide arguments over how to manage the practical side of our wedding process, but we've also had our share of those frustrating fights where neither is right but neither can let go and the whole thing just escalates until, finally, there's some sort of metaphorical explosion over Skype and then a few horrible seconds (or minutes) of silence before apologies are muttered and, haltingly, accepted.

I don't hold grudges; usually, I'll have lost the motivation to be angry after just a few hours.  But, even after we've said our "sorry" and "I love you" peace-makings, I do need to be left alone to sulk/glower in my head for a little while in order for all the strong feelings to dissipate.  The more intensely I can let those emotions run loose, the faster they'll wear themselves out.

Jon doesn't work that way.  In his mind, once the apologies have been accepted, we can immediately snap back to being madly adoring of each other.  And, bless him, he doesn't accept that I have a hard time switching gears as quickly as he can.  He pleads, "Can't we just speak lovingly to each other?"  I resist as long as I can, because I'm stubborn and I want to wallow in feeling everything, but he wears me down eventually.  How could he not, when his choice to find joy in our conversations even when I'm being a pain in the you-know-what is such an obvious delight to him?

Sitting Uncomfortably

photo taken at Washington National Cathedral; January 2013
Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his last Sunday sermon on March 31, 1968 from the pulpit on the right.

It may be that I'm more aware of uncomfortable realities than I used to be because I've gained compassion as I've made my way through my twenties.  That, or my world is shrinking and the rosy glasses that I wore even a few years ago no longer shield me from the conflicts that had seemed far away.  Regardless, I don't remember feeling such a sense of urgency around difficult issues as I do now.

There are so many things I'd rather not have to discuss.  I wish we weren't forced to wonder why it's necessary for former Representative Gabrielle Giffords to beg Congress to enact responsible gun control legislation two years after she was shot with weapons that were purchased legally.  You'd think we wouldn't have to redefine democracy in the Middle East every five minutes because the will of a nation would be respected by its own leaders.  It would great if we weren't still arguing about what constitutes sexual harassment and/or assault and if women in the workplace didn't have to tolerate casual sexism alongside inequality.

But we do have to discuss these things.  The above stories were taken from The New York Times' website over the past few days - you know I could go on if I went back even a week into the archives or scrolled through other publications.  Our world is broken, and we have to confront the fractures in order to heal them; without taking responsibility to right the wrongs we see, we cannot expect to ever better our own circumstances or those of our fellow men.

Tomorrow would be Rosa Parks' 100th birthday.  I cannot imagine how uncomfortable the situation must have been on that December day in 1955, but she knew that it had to be endured to make an difference.  In her honor, think of something that you'd rather not discuss - and do until it's no longer an issue.

Happiness Is Here Already

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I was kind of a nightmare to be around last Christmas.  You probably wouldn't have noticed here - because we bloggers like to keep things sparkly even when we're keeping it real - but it was a tough time for me.  By Christmas, I had decided to quit my job in London which, we knew, meant that I'd almost certainly have to move back to DC before summer.  Jon and I had begun talking about what that would mean for us as a couple, but nothing was decided.  And, on top of all that, my grandmother had started to very seriously not be doing well.

So yes, there was a ton going on, and I was stressed out.  Although I'm ashamed of this, I admit now that I took a lot of my frustration and confusion and sadness out on Jon and those around us.  (You remember how I deal with stress, right?  They do say that the first step to solving a problem is realizing you have one...)

Things have really fallen into place since then, though, so there's no excuse for that sort of behavior this Christmas.  Yes, there are still changes afoot (some of which I'll be able to share soon!) but, relatively, life is great.  So this year, while I'm surrounded by Jon's family for two gloriously chaotic weeks, I'm going to make the above quote from Robert Holden my mantra.  I wish I had known of it last year, as it would have made a huge difference, but it's never too late to start with this kind of attitude.

Tell me, dear readers - where is your happiness this season?

All Saints, All Souls, and All The Company Therein

I've been feeling a bit morbid recently, dear readers.  It's because of a combination of things, I think.

Sleeping Angel, Highgate Cemetery; London

text: Requiem mass (translation: Lord, give us eternal rest)

My grandmother passed away in April, and we've spent the last few months disposing of her estate;  when my father and I went up to New York to pack up the furniture and personal items that we wanted to keep, I found myself caught over her books.  Grandma was an English professor and I knew that her interests were wide-ranging, but I had no idea that she had shelves upon shelves of political theory or classical psychology.  I took classes in each of those subjects while at college, but it never once occurred to me to discuss Hobbes or Freud with her - I wish it had.

Now that I have Charlie, I imagine my future more vividly.  Because he's here, right now, so full of personality, I can picture upcoming moments of my life - five years from now, or ten - in a completely new way.  He jumps up on the bed in the morning, his tail thumping the duvet, and I almost see Jon on the other side, grumbling about being woken up early but secretly loving the kisses the Charlie lavishes on him.  I pull on Charlie's ears and think of my child doing the same, Charlie rolling his eyes and grunting affectionately.  And then I think about how, after these things have happened, he's going to die, and I'm going to have a very long time left to live.

And for some reason, it suddenly hit me the other week that Jon's going to be my main person in ten months.  If something bad happens to me on August 23, the police or the hospital or whatever will call my parents. Once we're married, though, they'll call Jon.  In ten months, Jon's going to be my person, and I'll be his, and we'll have to make choices for each other, and that's a lot of responsibility.  Life is a lot of responsibility.

Love is a lot of responsibility - I think it boils down to that, actually.

It's strange to bring this up now.  We're in a time of joy - Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas are weeks of festivity and laughter.  But it's a time, too, to think about those who aren't here.  Today is All Saints' Day and tomorrow is All Souls' Day in the Anglican calendar, so it seems appropriate to remember and honor those who have gone before us.  It's also a reminder that the responsibility of love is also a gift - it's an amazing blessing to have these people in our lives, to cherish them so deeply and to be held the same way.  It's a gift in the same way that faith is a gift; I don't know how to put it into words, but, as I think about it, love and life and faith and trust and responsibility seem to bleed into each other more and more.

In Judaism, as in most traditions of Christianity, the mourners' prayer (or Kaddish) is full of praise and thanksgiving.  I like that.  In the midst of death there is joy and love and exaltation.  As you grieve, you rejoice in the blessing of life.

Arlington National Cemetery; photo via

text: Mourners' Kaddish (translation: exalted and sanctified be His great name)

Today is also the Royal British Legion's Poppy Day, when poppies are sold all around London to support and respect those who have served in conflicts past and present.  If you're in the UK, please consider buying a pin to remember those who sacrificed their lives for Britain.

A New World

The historian in me gets twitchy about Columbus Day; I'm not quite sure what it is that we're celebrating exactly, but I am pretty confident that it's historically inaccurate.  However, I'll take any excuse for a federal holiday and, as you know well, I'll take any excuse for a musing.

Sometimes, when I drive out into the countryside, through the rolling hills of Virginia or the darkest forests of Connecticut, I imagine I know how the English felt when they came to North America.  It's hard to picture war or hunger or hardship when gazing upon such a glorious abundance of unsullied land, seemingly removed from anything contemporary even in this day and age.

Both of the first two English settlements in what is now America - Jamestown, founded in 1607, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1620 - were based on the hopes and dreams that nothing but a new world could inspire.  The settlers in Virginia pursued untapped wealth; the pilgrims at Plymouth sought spiritual purity.  Only the virgin earth of America could have provided such fertile ground for the boundless optimism that has come to define this country.

personal photos, Sept-Oct 2012

And the best way, I think, to honor those who came before us - the pilgrims who first set foot on our shores to create a city on a hill, the settlers who struck out west through vast swaths of unknown dangers armed with manifest destiny, the refugees who fled persecution and hopelessness with the burning need to find opportunity -  is to maintain that optimism.  This land has been and can continue to be a new world, a world where anything is possible if we work hard and we work together, not only for our own benefit but also for the common good.

I hope you're having a lovely long weekend, dear readers, and I wish you the best of weeks ahead.

Chasing Sunsets

Because of all the political nonsense that's been swirling around for the past few months, I felt compelled earlier this week to reread Inherit the Wind, one of my very favorite pieces of literature.  It was assigned to us in middle school and, like Dandelion Wine, it migrates from my bookshelf to my nightstand every year or so, each time giving up another secret as I explore it with more maturity.

The play, about a high school biology teacher on trial for telling his students about evolution, grapples with timeless issues - issues that are as unresolved now as they were in 1925, when the real-life case the story uses as its source occurred, and as they were in 1955, when it was written during the height of the McCarthy era - of faith and science and patriotism and loyalty.  At this reading, though, it was the theme of progress that jumped out at me.  Progress is inexorable; it is unrelenting and uncompromising and, yes, it does come at a price.

But it also gives us possibilities that we never dreamed of, opening doors that we never knew existed and showing us worlds that we never before imagined.  Who could have known, when we first took to the skies, that one day we'd be chasing sunsets across oceans above the clouds?

photograph taken over the Atlantic, westbound; September 20, 2012