It's been just over a year since my last "now" posting.  This is now:

I'm working out my faith as one who hears the MADWOMAN's call. 
This is what I believe, today.

I am a hot pink heretic.  I worship god as the MADWOMAN in the attic.  I honor and heed the Divine according to a metaphor of female madness versus a manmade structure of order and restraint. I honor and heed Her call in my emotions, the natural world, the good work of both cultural heroes and the unsung volunteer, my own intuition and discernment, in books I read. ​

I am a hot pink heretic.  I honor and heed teachers and prophets in the myriad places they appear.  I receive their guidance in holy and secular texts, each sacred in its own way.  I observe their good work in documentaries, newsletters, and intentional communities.  I support their work with donations and sharing the good news of their good work.  I aspire to live more like they do. ​

I am a hot pink heretic.  I believe in repentance and redemption of ordinary human lives in our ordinary world.  I believe we honor the Divine best when we tend to each other, in all the ways.  I believe that “all the ways” includes immediacy of family and friend circles, the wider circles of neighborhoods and municipalities, the circles of governance and economics, the circle of our living planet. ​

I am a hot pink heretic.  I am here, with you, in a messy world where very little and very rarely is anything crystal clear, black or white, good or bad, in or out.  We are in this messy ambiguous world together.  We live with wise teachings and wise teachers who illuminate how we all might live well together.  ​

I am hot pink heretic.  I hear the MADWOMAN’s call.  “Burn it down.” ​

We're pretty content, right now.

J and I have been married for almost a year.  Yes, life as a blended family, who are together all the time due to a global pandemic, includes some ongoing challenges. Yet, life as a family, in our own home, with garden beds in the front and back yards, with neighbors who are friends, is good.  

Which makes me wonder... what's next? For each of us? For the family we are becoming?  What will we choose and how will we support each other in achieving those new goals?

I feel like it's time for me to push through and out of another shell.  I list possibilities in my journal of what my "next" could be.  I'm thinking in two directions: outward into the community of my son's school and our district, and inward into some special reading and writing. Both of these directions have been calling to me for a while, but I've always felt too tired, too distracted, too small to begin.  Things needed to be stable and I needed to feel better, energized, ready.  Now, I think that if I wait any longer I will become cemented in my contentment.  

I wonder how many people feel ready for what's next.  I observe some folks who make tidy paths of milestones, each achievement qualifying them to pursue the next.  How do they do that?  What guides them or fuels them for such a course? My path is scribbled and overlapping.  I am often disoriented and simply road weary.  

I ugly cried, last night.  I'm grateful for a partner who comforts me.  I'm still a little shaky, today.  I'm grateful for a quiet house and softly snoring kitties. I look out over the computer monitor, now, to see patches of blue sky and a brightly lit backyard bearing signs of spring.

The pandemic, the changes in our routines and movement, the people falling without a safety net, the essential workers on all fronts, the powerful accepting collateral damage in exchange for wealth and security... the situation is so BIG. I am so small.  I am ineffective.  I am isolated and meaningless.  These facts and feelings spin and rage in my mind and my emotions.  My sleep is one long nightmare.  My body is aching and tired.

The storm inside me will pass.  It has before and it will again.  For now, I tend myself gently with nutritious food, a warm shower, napping in the sunshine, and so much gratitude that I can tend myself in these ways.  

Making some meaning of the BIG storm, for me, is not contained in taking care of myself, my family, my home...  Making meaning is reaching beyond my yard.  I am small.  I am not ineffective or isolated.  I do see both people in need and people in power.  I am not content, not really.  I'm looking for ways to make a difference, make daily life different, liveable, in the midst of crisis, and between them.  This is not the only storm.  

My Christian faith started evolving 25 years ago, but the kernel or promise of change was embedded in my heart since childhood. The catalyst for my transformation was the fire of grief, which cracked me open and left me exposed.  Community, in the form of women’s friendship and wisdom, tended me, planted me deeply in cool soil, and gave me room to grow. ​

My father died when I was 18.  I was in college at an Evangelical Christian school.  In the following year, I attempted suicide. My family of origin slid into a state of alienation from each other.  I was angry and bereft, rude and out of control. I struggled against everything and everyone. ​

Something essential in me prevailed and was witnessed.  Other women saw it. I received compassion and insight from female professors at the college.  They brought me to church, a woman-lead Episcopalian congregation. They taught me about feminism, new-to-me theologies, women’s perspectives and experiences conveyed by women authors in narratives and poetry.  I learned about the entanglement of Christian religion with colonialism. I reached out and met other female students wrestling with the same ideas and stretching into their own awakenings. I prayed and played with God alongside the guidance of an eclectic and faithful spiritual director.   ​

A few weeks before my thirtieth birthday I moved across the country to Seattle for graduate school.  It was my fresh start, far from my family, my personal history, the church I grew up in, the politics I did not subscribe to.  The Madwoman resurfaced in my graduate studies and occupied a central role in my thinking and writing. As I drafted my thesis I heard Her call.  She did not reveal Herself to me in the upper room of the house, which I had hoped and expected. Rather, She bid me retrace my steps and meet Her in each person I met as I traveled back down through the house. ​

There’s still no “there” there, for me.  I don’t have a local community that I can simply join for resonance and support, teaching and service.  I miss that. I understand, now, the best parts of a house of worship. Even so, I proceed. I am making it up as I go, one step at a time, down from Her attic and into the company of Her people, who are everywhere. ​

"Where is balance in your life?" the question is our homework assignment from the circus lessons coach.  I've considered my answer and I'm happy with it.

I am seen, known, and loved for who I am.  I dwell in my close relationships with my husband, son, and besties.  I enjoy my home.  My daily routine generates only a minimum of stress for me.  My life is safe, secure, and stable. 

Rooted in this place of comfort and warmth, I'm reaching out, stretching, and challenging myself. The vital tension between comfort and growth is how I'm balanced.

At 45 years old, my heaviest weight, and lowest level of physical fitness, I'm enrolled in circus lessons and enjoying them.  I just received my A1C (blood sugar) test results - my highest/worst numbers to date.  So, J and I have embarked on a focused and intentional diet to bring my blood sugar back within healthy boundaries and maybe shed some pounds in the process.  I'm walking in the evenings, inconsistently but persistently.  I'm tending to my body, my physical self care and presence, in new and supported ways.

I've planned a solo adventure.  In October, I'm attending the Evolving Faith conference in Denver. The ideas, experiences, and emotions of how one's spirituality and/or religion may change over time is one of my passionate interests. Ultimately, I'll be traveling alone to meet and engage with strangers, pushing through the membranes of my introversion.  

It's been almost a year since I created and hosted my first retreat.  It went smoothly yet it left me exhausted and sensitive to all the areas for improving the event.  It also reminded me of how much I value and enjoy small gatherings of women talking together about substantive, real-life, heartfelt topics. This year I'll host more of these group conversations in my home, starting with one this month.  And, I'm revising the retreat for a new participants.  

There are more ideas for stretching still percolating through my mind, but this is where I'm balancing, today.  It's a vibrant, creative, growing space between the comforts of home and the unknown out there.  

Now is a good time and place for me.

Here are a few things that make Now so good:

• counting down the days until I marry to J, my beloved, kind, thoughtful, smart, funny, comfortable, and challenging partner
• anticipating and responding to the needs and interests of young N. enrolling him in an alternative school "Big Picture," circus lessons, summer camp, maintaining weekly visits with his dad, providing lots of listening, hugs, kisses, encouragement, and, yes, correction
• working my day-job as an executive assistant with a local school district. enjoying friendly, supportive coworkers, participating in a team, grateful for down-to-earth bosses
• resuming and recommitting to positive habits for my physical health. seeing initial results that encourage me. setting big new goals
• simmering my vocation on the back burner. I facilitated my first Madwoman retreat this year, which left me with mixed feelings and a stew of thoughts. since then, the pragmatics of daily life reclaimed my focus. what do I want to try next - more events, revise the program, resume writing, all of this, more or other than this?
• savoring home ownership and homelife with J, young N, and four cats.

I wanted to be alive for my son, especially.  Now, I add to that my partner and future husband.  My friends. My garden. ​

Do you see the pattern there? ​

​As a child, I accepted the faith and its religion in earnest.  But disconnects between the words we said as a congregation and the way we lived in our homes and daily lives, occasionally broke through and concerned me.  Those concerns developed into a heavy tension as I matured. If the spiritually faithful were in action unfaithful, what was the point of the faith? If the congregation lives according to the prevailing culture rather than its proclaimed savior, which demonstration of their faith is true?  Ultimately, I judged culture the winner in this competition.

​It was a relief.  I cut loose from the tension.   I freed myself of the obligation to follow Jesus’ example.  I chose values like personal security, private property, physical health, and my immediate relationships.

But Jesus’s life, and that original tension, hovers around me.  ​