Finally Some Unpacking Among the Packing

On June 15 I boarded a plane with no real idea of what I was heading for. This was not the first time God had put me on a plane with spiritual destination unknown, but for some reason I thought I knew what to expect. I was going to spend four days with other young Christian leaders, doing some sort of service project and learning about where the church seems to be heading. Pretty simple. Except that all I really knew was that I was going to New Orleans and everyone told us to pack for heat and to bring bug spray.

It has taken me nearly a month to begin to unpack the lessons and experiences of those few days in New Orleans as part of the Fund for Theological Education 2011 Leaders in Ministry Conference. Sure, I had the experiences. I had the notes I took and the notebook with handouts and schedules. I read blog posts by others who had been there and listened to the recordings of various talks. I also pondered. There has been a whole lot of pondering.

The first day with all of the travel and assorted confusion of checking in and getting situated took me completely out of my comfort zone. The group I was assigned to arrive with was late, so we were unable to check in prior to beginning the conference. This meant that while everyone in our Round Table groups were forming the foundations of those small communities a couple dozen of us were down in a stuffy office while staff members continued the struggle to find acceptable housing among the apartments we had all been assigned to. Jocelyn Sideco, one of the leadership team members, finished off any expectation I had that this would be just another conference when she looked at us standing in line for apartments that may or may not be ready for us and said “at least you know you have a place to stay, even if you don’t know where it is or if it has linens and toilet paper waiting for you. That is more than some people in New Orleans still have even now”.

As I stumbled off the shuttle with my fellow students into the dark courtyard of the apartments we had been assigned to I realized that I needed Jocelyn’s very honest reminder of my surroundings. As I would discover later the physical scars of the storm were everywhere, including these apartments where we lived and gathered as small Round Table groups.

Worshipping with 108 enthusiastic young leaders from across all denominations was truly inspiring, as were the discussions it often started. It was also a way to discover that there is so much more common ground among Christians than we often give ourselves credit for. I can’t even begin to count the times in my life where worship styles have drawn lines in the sand that have caused argument and dissention where there should have been peace and compromise. I am not saying that I would like to worship in that style all the time – I am, after all, a cradle Episcopalian who loves high church liturgy – but it was truly refreshing to find a middle ground that was nourishing enough that it seemed that everyone could not only participate but learn something new in the process.

New Orleans itself became our teacher outside of worship. The heat and humidity forced many of us to slow down even more than the usual disorientation of a new city, and New Orleans embraced the chance to really force us to pay attention. Our first full day we were out and about getting personally involved by taking a bus tour on our way to various service project sites. It was an incredible experience to stop at various churches and ministries to hear their stories of ongoing recovery and struggle as well as their stories of hope and everyday miracles. As I listened to these stories wash over me and stood in places where so much change was taking place I was able to begin to wrap myself around the scope of the disaster. Like so many people I remembered watching the news about Katrina and the disastrous flooding that had destroyed so much of the city, but I also remember being utterly baffled at the sheer size of what was happening. Now I had no choice but to see the reminders everywhere. The houses still damaged and vacant in so many parts of the city; the marks still spray painted on homes that had been searched one by one for dead bodies, even homes that were inhabited still bore these marks; the contrast in recovery from area to area.

We traveled to the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest hit in the flooding and still one of the least recovered areas of New Orleans. I spent that afternoon at Viet New Orleans, a group that is working to provide a safe place for the children of the neighborhood. In this case it is a primarily Vietnamese population, with the recovery effort led by Mary, Queen of Vietnam church. We picked up debris from when this location had served as a construction dump during the rebuilding of the neighborhood, cleaned playground equipment, painted a volleyball court, and installed fake turf on the beginnings of a mini-golf putting green. Other groups in other locations were helping to cut back overgrown vegetation from lots where houses had been swept away by the flooding, picking up trash, and helping a congregation prepare for a Vacation Bible School. For so many of us, we felt that it was a small drop in the bucket of what was needed and that our efforts wouldn’t have much of an effect. For the communities it was an affirmation that they were not forgotten and that somebody still cares about them even if the media has moved on. In the end it was a potent lesson about the gift of presence. It may not seem very big or important to us, but to the person or community we are with our mere presence may be the biggest gift God could give them at that moment.

The rest of the conference was spent on the campus of Dillard University in discussions, practical workshops, and small groups. Within the context of disaster and recovery we learned about new ways to help make the church relevant to a world that increasingly describes itself as spiritual but not religious and sees churches as irrelevant. In a potent video we watched a couple of times during the conference and is still posted on the FTE website Rev. Dr. Lois Dejean tells us that “I am not just here to talk a scripture. I’m here to do a scripture. To be a scripture. Ministry is no longer just at the pulpit”. This became a powerful reminder that sticks with me as I move forward in my discernment and ministry journey.

One of the tools the conference put into our toolboxes is the VocationCARE practice, which provides a framework for taking a community as well as an individual deep into discernment and acts as a catalyst for ideas and action. CARE is an acronym: C, create space to explore Christian vocation together; A, ask self-awakening questions together; R, reflect theologically on self and community; E, enact ministry opportunities. This formed the foundation not only of the small group discussions but also our large group times and even the way the conference was shaped.

My workshop time was spent with Enuma Okoro, who taught us about writing not only as an agent of community building and storytelling but also of being a faithful witness to the community. We did some writing exercises and discussed the role writers have often held as a reflection back to the community of what it is doing both right and wrong.

In the end, it is the experience of the community as a whole that was the most dynamic piece of this conference. Within that framework God took me and turned many of the things I thought I knew on their heads while also confirming things where I had felt so much doubt and concern.

Once again, God placed me on an airplane home with so much more than I expected and more than just my luggage to unpack. In the chaos of returning home and the sorting and packing involved in my preparations to move and begin seminary I have been quietly unpacking the lessons learned from four days in New Orleans. I have been changed by this experience and I am only now beginning to see those changes emerge. With God’s help they will grow and lead me closer to the heart of the purpose God has laid out for me in this path.

Since Blogger is not allowing me to embed the link to the page with the video and conference information I will do it this way: http://www.fteleaders.org/events/detail/2011-leaders-in-ministry-conference/

Lace Preview

While I was gone, a friend profiled a picture of a doily I made for her on her blog. Kimberly Shaw makes some beautiful cards, and I love being able to share them with my friends as a suprise in the mail.

I have enjoyed the challenge of doilies and finally got some pictures of a few of them, thanks to my dad and his light box. I'll throw a few around on my blog now and then - like this one:

More to come...

Quickie Updates

No, I haven't fallen off the edge of the planet. I've been keeping myself busy - or should I say my mom has been keeping me busy - these past few days helping me to clear the clutter I had surrounded myself with. Two more rooms to go, but those are going to be difficult. We are planning on switching our current "office" and guest bedroom locations so that I can finally have a desk in the office in a room that isn't likely to a)trigger migraines with heat and glare and b)is a favorite room of mine to begin with! Our guest room is less frequently used, so it makes sense to change it out with a room that we can close off if we need to.

All of this sorting and separating, moving around, rearranging, and purging has taken time. But oh! the cottage is feeling so much better that it has in a very long time. Last summer we did some organizing, but I was in a place of endings and trauma and so my ability to purge what needed purging was certainly not at it's sharpest - I held on to all kinds of things and moved things around in a way to close off a lot of space. This time things are finding homes where I look around and think "ah... space and openness!" which is rather like breathing a sigh of relief.

This has kept me from much blogging as I have been taking my rest time to work on some doilies - yep, I'm making lace again! I hope to have a few new pieces blocked and pictures taken so I can post them soon. At one point I swore off of lace because of the fineness of the thread, but now am finding that the challenge of the small thread combined with the complexity of the patterns is really stimulating my brain. I guess it is a crossword and word search for the fiber minded!

Lessons from a Prayer Shawl

With all of the time I am spending recovering from surgery, I find that my mind is working overtime! Mostly I have been observing myself and seeing if I can root out where my illnesses have grown into my identity. Once I find that, I can go about blooming more freely as I know where to watch for the weeds that try to choke out the good, healthy growth.

Perhaps that sounds a bit dramatic, but I have always had a rather dramatic streak - though it usually keeps itself confined to my imagination. One of my projects that I have been working on the last two weeks is a prayer shawl based on a series of granny squares using bits and pieces of yarn left from various other prayer shawls and baby blankets that I have made over the last few years. As I crocheted the squares from small leftovers I saw myself putting my life back together. There was a time in this most recent month of conventional treatments that I began to wonder if I were really being called to be a healer, especially one drawn to natural modalities. I mean, with such a powerful tool as Reiki along with proper dietary changes and other work shouldn't I have been able to take care of the gallstones without surgery? What kind of healer am I that I couldn't heal myself?

So I stitched and I thought. Squares were made and stitched together to form a rectangle, and I began to work on the border stitching that makes this one big shawl, and I began to realize that I am like those squares. Many different parts coming together from who knows what to form a cohesive whole something new. I had yarn from a baby blanket next to yarn from a shawl I crocheted for a dying person next to some that had been in my stash so long I no longer know what it was originally used for. Reiki sits beside the new pills I take to help control the debilitating headaches beside the drug intolerance that led me to embrace natural healing in the first place. Embracing all of those strands and all of those squares are the basic truths I know about myself - even though I am finding that those have been hidden for so long behind illness that I seem to have forgotten their names.

Today I read over at Unfolding Your Path To Joy about her choice to live in love, to know herself through her experience of nature and nature's moods and another strand was added to the shawl I am making. Her words reminded me of how I used to be so in tune with nature as a child, embracing the windy afternoons that sometimes threatened to blow me away or the soft and tender touch of fog or rain on my cheeks. Coming home from the beach or the local pool, or after running through the sprinklers and lying out in the sun on the brick porch to dry. I have missed that connection, and though I have tried to return to it over the years since I have grown up I have never been able to embrace the depth of truly knowing myself as a child of the earth. I have hidden in my head and tried to be totally and completely a child of the culture and utterly failed. Especially since I have never had much love and admiration for the culture I have been surrounded by.

So today, although I am still taking it easy and working on allowing myself the leisure to recover fully from the surgery, I am opening my heart to those small whispers that tell me to listen ever deeper to myself and my heart and to wrap myself in the story that is unfolding as I crochet this prayer shawl.

An Update and Some Felted Flowers

Things have been busy around here... I have an appointment with a doctor in a couple of weeks to start the process of getting to know them and developing a new network of specialists. When I was first diagnosed with IIH I had a team of caregivers including my optometrist who first noticed something wasn't right, my primary care physician, a neurologist, and a neuro-opthamologist. Doesn't that sound exciting? In all honesty, it was the best care I have received so far. Once my insurance changed I was assigned to a doctor and neurologist who told me that "it was all in my head" and that I was simply making all of this up to get attention. The neurologist even scheduled my therapeutic Lumbar Puncture (aka spinal tap) just to make me stop telling him something was wrong. It was such a horrible experience of care that I have avoided doctors for the last three or four years and successfully managed to convince myself that I wasn't feeling any of the symptoms again. Thank you to everyone who expressed support for me on this journey of learning to be compassionate with myself through all of this. I do suspect that I will be keeping you somewhat abreast of what happens as there is little out there about living with this condition. If it can help someone else who is living with this then I will do what I can. Perhaps it will even keep me honest with myself about taking care of it.

I have also been crocheting flowers like crazy. The flowers turned out quite lovely, and I even managed to remember to take a before picture of the last two before I felted them! Below is a picture of two white roses - one large and one bud, that I took prior to felting along with two similar felted flowers.

Below is the collection of flowers I delivered to At Home With Laurie Ann, a local design store that I made this particular batch for. We had lots of fun dreaming up places to put felted flower pins, and I did in fact put one on a felted hat that I had made a while ago. It looks really cute! To the center left you can see the large white rose from the above picture while the white bud is next to the turquoise flower to the right, both after the felting process.
I hope to have some more pictures up soon of the projects I completed as Christmas presents this year. I know it is a bit late to be showing of Christmas projects, but I used my dad's camera to take the pictures and then forgot that they were there until recently!

The Return of the Sun

It seems almost anticlimactic to be posting this morning with the sun streaming in the windows and not a cloud in the sky (at least that I can see from where I am sitting with my computer). Especially after all of that drama last week! More is predicted, but I will wait and see instead of getting all excited for it and being disappointed when the currents shift it's path.

Instead, I am currently focused rather intently on finishing up an order of felted flowers. It has been great fun to crochet up dozens of flower patters and then felting them. The transformation they undergo is pretty fun. Perhaps as I am working on them today I will be able to remember to take pictures of before and after! (No promises, as I am notoriously bad at remembering to take pictures until it is too late, but I will do my best to remember). With today's sunshine it makes me feel as if Spring is just around the corner. Then I remind myself that really, here, we don't have Spring. We have Rainy Season and Dry Season. On bad years we add in Fire Season. So with all of this rain, I am already having my Spring and Winter all rolled into one!

There are a great many projects rolling around in this little brain of mine... a pillow for one of my rocking chairs embellished with a doily crocheted in large fuzzy yarn; a garland for my mantel of crocheted stars and flower motifs; several baby blanket ideas; some crocheted lace chargers for my table, probably in a chunky wool and felted but maybe just in worsted weight instead of thread; and a felted plant pot cover for my windowsill garden. I'll just have to get really busy if I'm going to get all of this done along with any of my other, more pedestrian responsibilities!

Speaking of which, it is time to return to those duties: today is housekeeping day and the laundry is ready to go into the dryer so I must be off. Have a lovely day!

A Project Update

As part of the general busyness of this past weekend I went to a baby shower for a family friend. She is doing the nursery for her baby boy in a Dr. Seuss theme, with the colors being red, white, and navy blue. So, since she is a family friend whom I have known since she was born, I made a baby blanket.

Since there is no such thing as baby yarn in true red or navy blue, I decided to go all out and use a really nice, very washable acrylic yarn. This, with my mom's help, ended up being Lion Brand's Homespun in Colonial, Candy Apple, and Deco; which made a very nice, warm, heavy blanket that will be able to transition well into the baby's childhood years. I used the pattern Baby Granny Three Ways, which I found online as a free pattern from Coats and Clark.

I think it turned out quite well! (Yes, I know the picture is sideways, it fit better this way!)

I have lots of other projects in the works, but since they are Christmas presents for people who read this blog I can't show them to you until after Christmas!

Gift Giving at the Cottage

Over at Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op today there is a post gathering Simple, Green and Frugal Christmas Gift Ideas. Since I've already started on our gifts for this year I thought I'd add my two cents to the gathering.



Over the last few years I have been leaning more and more towards gifts that will be useful and not end up gathering dust somewhere. We are presumably giving gifts to people we care about, so why should we give them something that they will never use and perhaps may not even want?

For most of our friends and associates we will be giving "goodie bags" consisting of homemade goodies that are consumable, whether it be cookies, candies, nuts, or other treats with homemade jam or marmalade and perhaps some hand-blended tea added as well.

For the really close people in our lives like parents, godparents, and (bonus) daughter I am making some kind of useful item such as a collection of scarves or an afghan. Something tangible but most definitely usable. These will complement our "goodie bags" for these people.

Several years ago I began a tradition of writing a personal "gift" to each of my loved ones each year, expressing a special prayer for the coming year. Very often when I sit down with a collection of special cards to do this I am not at all sure what I will be saying. I put on some quiet Christmas music, light a candle, wrap a blanket over my legs and meditate on each person before I begin writing. Letting my love for this person flow onto the paper creates a gift that has become a cherished tradition for those I share it with, even the younger ones who I was afraid wouldn't care!

What do you do for your holiday giving?

Yarny Fun

It seems early to some, but I have begun working on Christmas presents recently. It all started with a coolish day a few weeks ago, when I pulled out some yarn and began on a special afghan. Then I remembered a baby shower coming up in early November and that got me going. The blanket for the baby is finished and I have my patterns picked out for almost all of the rest of my Christmas projects.

I have to admit that it feels really good to have my fiber projects going again. Over the summer I focused on small cotton projects - sets of cleaning cloths and a few hair ties and kerchiefs. Of course, my list keeps growing of all of the crafts I would like to do around the house! A pillow or two for my living room chairs, finish a doily or two that I have been working on for what seems like forever...

Almost all of this is exclusively crochet, which is my strongest skill. I'd love to pick up the whole knitting thing again, too. I keep thinking about all of the beautiful sock patterns I've seen (though I've seen quite a few crocheted ones popping up) and how there is so much fun sock yarn out there just waiting for me. I've also admired the knitted sweaters with all of those fun cables and different laces that I haven't been able to reproduce in crochet. I guess this winter it will be time for me to focus on using two (or more) pointy sticks instead of one hook!

Perhaps this winter will also be the time I finally open my Etsy shop. I've been talking about it for almost a year now but have been afraid to take the plunge. Much of it is fear that people won't like my work, but I need to get it out there so that I can find out!

My Summer Vacation?

I've been absent from my computer recently. It really doesn't have much to do with my relationship with the computer. It has to do with the sudden, intense, deep excavation I have felt the need to perform on my home. I've been contemplating this for a while. I've even talked about my tentative beginnings here in the last months. Last week I finally dove in. Friday afternoon I was able to sit at my dining room table for lunch for the first time in (I'm ashamed to admit this) at least three months. Saturday and Sunday my little family enjoyed our meals at a real table instead of on our laps. This has inspired me enough to tackle part of the living room and kitchen areas today.

Okay, this is my house, but even I am revolted by the state of things that I am discovering. Ick. I hadn't realized just how much of what I can only call guck has been hanging out here in my little cottage for way too long now. It feels great to be cleaning it up and making a true home sanctuary here. I'm even getting excited to rediscover just how revolting the faux tile of my kitchen counters really is. Which I consider a sad statement of the reality of the way my mind has been (non)functioning in the clouds of an unacknowledged and untreated depression for many months.

Summer has always been associated with deep cleaning for me. My mother was a teacher (now retired) and so that was the time when we would wake up, eat breakfast, and start taking down everything on a wall or out of a cupboard, washing it, telling stories about it - where and who it came from, what memories are associated with it - and putting it all away again. Those summer mornings with my mom meant a lot to me, even though at the time I thought it was a drag and would do my best to escape from cleaning detail. Once we finished the assigned cleaning for the day we would go to Sea World, or as I got older, the beach or a local swimming pool for more traditional summer fun. Looking back, I treasure the stories and the way those mornings cleaning helped to form the wonderful bond my mom and I now share even more than the afternoons of fun ever did.

Summer is the time to set up the ability to keep your nest clean for the rest of the year. With my mom's need for a neat, clean, tidy home the deep summer clean was essential. I find that with all of my windows open, music playing loud enough to be heard over the dishwasher, washer and dryer and a soapy sponge in hand my mind is clearing even as my kitchen counters are clearing. Perhaps a little bit of Brother Lawrence in me - he believed that all work was spiritual in nature and is often quoted as saying that he could worship God just as well among the pots and pans as he could in chapel. My mom is just a phone call away for support, and I am praying my way through the clouds of depression in a way that is reminding me of God's everlasting embrace in ways that I never imagined. Healing is here. Home is here. God is here.

I am coming home in more ways than one, and my little cottage is turning into a sweet little nest and sanctuary in a way that it has never been.

Taking out the Trash

I wilt in the heat, watching the thermometer climb toward it's peak. I find that lethargy marks my days now; I wake up in a rush to get things done before the heat of the day begins to sap my energy and my mind slows to match the humid haze growing to the east over the mountains.

I have my goals for cleaning but struggle to cram them in as early as possible now. Today it is to carry the same momentum that has helped me to recover the kitchen island counter top from clutter to at least one other area - I hope either the dining room table or the raised bar on two sides of the island. This recovery of my home from the invasion of clutter, crud, and corruption that has taken over has given my days purpose recently and I am thankful. I never thought I'd be thankful for the very same clutter that has been driving me out of my mind for these past many months, but having a purpose and daily "job" has been a gift as I am adrift and trying to find my compass.

As I clear out the clutter and junk the trash I am forced to focus my mind on what is truly important. I don't want to waste precious storage space on something that is not useful, helpful, or does not mean something so deep that it would be painful to not have it in our lives. So it is with my heart and mind. I am sorting through old perceptions and roles I have played, finding which ones are truly a part of me at my core and what I have created in order to fit in somewhere that I don't really belong. It is a comfort to take out an old idea or belief and be able to say that it does not belong to me at all and is safe to discard or to realize that it is a firm part of the foundation of my being and to tuck it safely away in my heart where it will continue to give me strength. With each bag of trash I dump in our trashcan and with each box I fill up of things to donate to various causes I am lightening my soul's load as well, stripping myself down to what matters most and moving forward from there.

Recent Projects

Things have been busy here at the Cottage. A while back I promised pictures as soon as I figured out how to get them out of my camera. (Sometimes I have to remind myself that technology is a friend) and here they are:

These two are baby blankets I made for family friends who have had babies in the last couple of months. The star was especially difficult for me because I kept losing count of my stitches, but it turned out great!

From left to right, above: Ruby Grapefruit Marmalade (my first attempt at a jelly of any sort), Lemon Curd, and Pickled Beets. All homemade, and all delicious!

Two hats that I have made recently. The top one is now on the head of a friend from choir, and the bottom one matches a coat that belongs to my godmother. I have had a lot of fun with hats and have made quite a few. I just don't happen to have pictures yet!

I love the way hats and baskets (another crocheting love of mine) grow so organically from the yarn choices I make. Lately I've been playing with some lovely yarns - wool, alpaca, blends with wool and silk... enough to make me dive into a basket of yarn and stay there!

The animal yarns (alpaca, wool, etc..) are especially fun because I can felt the finished product and change it's character even more. Many of my bowls, baskets, and bags are felted because it also makes the end product stronger and more durable.

Eventually I want to open an Etsy store, but am always looking for people who are interested in having unique custom pieces made for them. Until my store is ready, if you are interested please contact me and I would be happy to work with you on colors and give you a quote on the price.