Sigh. (In a good way)
I know this is already old news but I love this picture: Papa with kids
We spent Saturday of Father's Day weekend at Lake Compounce thanks to free passes from Lincoln's department and had the best time. You'd think this would be one of those things that are fun for the kids but a drag for the parents, but it wasn't. The fact that we didn't have to pack food probably had something to do with it or maybe that there was no whining involved...
This is one of those pictures you look at years later as representative of what your family really is and the kids will go: Remember when...
Posted at 08:22 AM on June 29, 2006 | Comments (1)Religion Is For Losers
It's a little bit lonely for a Christian in the blogosphere. Maybe if you stick to Catholic blogs or religious blogs in general it isn't, but otherwise the mainstream blogs usually display a very sober (as in non-delusional - unlike Christians) and humanist (as in pure and untainted by religious politics) attitude. This has to be so, because in today's media notions like "impartiality" and "independence" in thinking and living cannot be combined with strong religious affiliation. "Spiritual" you can be, "religious" - no. Even more appealing and convincing are individuals who have "been there" but now are "never again" in their views on religion. If there is a painful, ugly childhood story about hypocritical church members or family, the circle is complete and there will be lots of cheering in the comments as the person is embraced after her or his sad but brave and liberating journey from religious torture to atheist or agnostic bliss. Religion is for the weak, the dumb and unenlightened. Atheism or "spirituality" is for the strong self-determining man and woman of the new millenium. Behold, the warm water, it is discovered! Life without God and especially church has never been attempted before, but we will do it now! We are pioneers of the new beautiful and peaceful land that the earth will be once we embrace the spirit and discard the stupid stupid religion. There!
I get tired reading that stuff. I don't want to diminish anyone's experience and even though you might find it hard to believe given my sarcasm above, I am devastated with all those who had Christianity shoved down their throat or were hurt by not at all well-meaning priests, nuns, pastors, teachers... or their own parents. It's not easy to hear how someone turned to hate something that saves your own life daily, because they were lied to or simply ignored. What I'm tired of though, is the attention it receives because it gives a distorted picture. I'm also tired of people using their bad experiences for years and decades in order to avoid morality, to avoid the confrontation with the lies they tell themselves. Mostly I am tired of it all for personal reasons because I really crave a community of people, who are ready to look for answers and are ready to be honest ... and humble.
Life is hard. The longer I live it, the more it's becoming clear to me there are two ways to deal with it: numb yourself or live in pain. Both are ultimately not satisfying but one of them is real (Guess which!) and therefore at least has the potential to provide meaning. I have less and less patience for the philosophy of "everything is grey - so let's party". There are too many things staring me in the face... the need to not fail the people around me, the imperative of giving my children some sort of decent life, the commitment to become and stay the kind of person I'd at least want to be friends with, the demands of improving this world for other people etc. etc. "Sure, you can do ALL of that without religion!" I hear them say. I guess so. Honestly I haven't tried, so I can only assume... and I assume you can, but I firmly believe it is harder. Much harder. I don't see why I should make my life even harder though. The argument here is again, that you don't need anybody to tell you right from wrong, there is no black and white, so you just swim along and do what seems more or less ok. But unlike people would expect my counter-argument is not "Yes, yes, there is someone to tell you right from wrong! (The Church)" or "I find religion to make my life easier because I don't have to think for myself". First of all, religion doesn't make life easier (one could argue the opposite), but it facilitates a relationship with the source of everything and the creator of black and white - which immediately gives orientation as to where you are and provides you with a tool to wade through the grey of life. Life is just as hard with religion, but you have hope and you have the chance to succeed... even if you fail. Religion is indeed for losers - which is ultimately so off-putting I suppose, because you will not fully understand it until you are ready to accept that part.
I am tired of people saying "I'm just trying to figure things out" while at the same time they have set clear lines around themselves and their life as to limit just how far they are really willing to go in order to "figure things out". Mostly it ends when their own frog perspective tells them that if they go any further the sky will fall and crush the earth. Ironically our own perspective never exceeds much the one of the frog, but having faith helps us to live our lives with the perspective of God which is the only actually accurate picture of us and the world. And so... I cling to that faith desperately. I might be weak but I'm not dumb. It's not for reasons of pure comfort or mental abandonment but for survival, not of my body but of life as it is only worth living.
All of this is hard to live by yourself. A church helps with that tremendously, although unfortunately it also can help with the perfect concealment of truth. It's hard to believe in something if you have never seen the fruit of it and even harder if you were scarred in some way. I can't blame people for leaving communities where they only experienced lies and cruelty, where compassion and mercy were avoided like the pest. I do blame them though for leaving the search for truth and creating their own two-dimensional cut-out version instead and infecting a bazillion other people with their pseudo-spirituality and immature hippie-concept of love.
We're at year 2006 - plus. It's all be done before. Wake up.
Posted at 09:58 AM on June 26, 2006 | Comments (11)Growing, growing... grown. Up.
This is us at Jennings Beach in Fairfield, CT on Memorial Day weekend (end of May). When I first saw this photo, it really hit me: We are the parents now! I know, like: DUH! It's just that I remember photos like this, but I'm the kid in them, usually in some funny pose or activity and there is always a bunch of parents, aunts, uncles etc. busy doing something else in the background. I never really paid attention to it, but now it was the first thing I saw: us being busy in the background (ok, not background, but unaware of the photo-taking). It is very representative of our life: Children. Children. The taking care of the children. And also, the children. It includes so many details, things. God, the packing and the unpacking and the cleaning and the stupid SAND! Of course, both Lincoln and I had packed reading material for that day. Of course we also never even touched it. Not like I didn't expect it, I just had to bring it anyway. There is so much silly work, but with children you just do it, because their existence is enough to make it all fade into oblivion, so that when you look at the picture years later... it's all in the background.
Posted at 02:31 PM on June 14, 2006 | Comments (2)Lifting Weights
The demands of my daily life have reached a point where I am beginning to feel like a professional athlete and it's not because I get a lot of exercise or am particularly fit (ha!) these days. It's just that there is so much to do and the demand for my full attention is so constant that I'm thinking this is what a marathon must feel like... if it didn't consist just of running from point A to point B but also included laundry, diapering and getting someone to sleep over and over. I find it increasingly difficult to be organized and focused but at the same time I realize that those are the only things that will keep me afloat. Every day it all seems to come down to the basics: endurance and endurance. Ideally I would have a coach, taking me to the next step, monitoring my nutrition and sleep, so that I could every day do the same thing but with more strength and less breakdowns. There is so much self-control involved, so much patience, it is a training as much, if not more of myself than of little kids. It's very basic, but it is essential. The amount of strength that's necessary to say the same things over and over (Put your shoes on. Put your shoes ON. PUT your SHOES ON!) or to tend to a crying baby all day or to make the damn dog shut up already... can't be achieved by some sloppy periodic exercise. This is the Olympics, people.
Funny thing that this situation reminds me just of... labor. The further you are into it, the less there is to "manage" but more to just endure. There is no "solution" to the pain or a break or a regrouping of sorts, there is just the focus on the task at hand and... endurance. Giving birth took me all the way down to the "end", to the point where you are sure you can't go on and all the strength has been used up. Usually that's the point where one needs to start the real work - pushing. Then a funny thing happens, which is unexplainable to me even though I've been there twice: you will yourself into this most impossible task and your body follows. I suppose it's similar to those situations, when people were able to lift cars all of sudden, in a desperate attempt to save a loved one underneath.
Since then I am aware I have hidden powers. I'm not sure if they are a gift to mothers or just anybody, but I know that when I hit the wall, there is the emergency button and with a will the size of a pinky I am able to lift myself up and get on with it. I am convinced part of the reason one gets to experience this in labor is so that later on they can use it when raising children on pea-size amounts of sleep for 24/7. I have stopped counting the times where I woke up in the morning, exhausted already, convinced! that I! cannot! do! this! today! NO! And then I got up and did it.
There is a problem though. One must not abuse the emergency button. Spending my day with those two little ones is not only physically exhausting, but mentally as well (Crazy! I know!). If I start living on the emergency supplies, my world turns dark after a while. I am unable to focus and I can hear myself falling apart as I forget things, fail to notice things, gaze into space a lot and cry for apparently no reason... and you know me, I am made of stone, I do not cry.
Another sign of having spent too much time living off the emergency supplies is that I can't stop. I have pushed myself so far into endurance mode that relaxing is not really possible. I don't know how to do it and it almost requires too much effort to figure it out. I'd rather wait for someone to take pity and hit me over the head with a bat so I can rest in oblivion. You could say that this is probably not healthy.
I remember an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" where Raymond catches his wife Debra crying in the living room and freaks out worrying what could have been the matter. Eventually she explains she was just "having a good cry". The first time I saw that I wasn't really sure what she meant, although I could guess. Now I have children and well, let me tell you, I know a good cry. Sometimes there is no other way to release the tension, to finally start relaxing, to feel your arms and neck get heavy and to... breathe. There's no fuss to be made about it, no need for solutions so it doesn't happen again. It's just a good way to calm down... so I can get up again.
Posted at 01:49 PM on June 09, 2006 | Comments (3)