amidthestars:

Last week I went to an Anglican ordination. I had a friend who was being ordained a deacon, and in the same mass was the ordination of three female priests. I've wanted to write about it ever since, mostly because I'm not sure how else to process the whole thing. This will probably be messy. It's a messy bunch of thoughts. 

Last week was a trip, from start to finish. I worked a bunch of crazy hours, and then a friend from New England drove up on his motorcycle to visit me for a few days before continuing on to see some family in Utah. It was... a lot. Nice, definitely, but strange. My introvert heart trembled for three days straight, terrified that I was a terrible hostess. Because - I can cook. I can make sure there is warm soup waiting when I know you've been biking in the rain. I can introduce you to my favourite people. I can invite them over and make fresh apple crisp and offer you seven different kinds of tea. I can create nice little spaces, make you up a comfortable bed, make sure you have fresh towels and extra blankets and the wifi password, but, you know. I can't talk. 

And of course, we really don't know each other that well. And the one thing we have in common is something that is difficult to talk about, so we mostly talk about other things. Canadianisms. The city. The weather. We do our best. When we do finally talk about monasticism, on the last evening of his stay, I am mostly annoyed. I get an hour of advice I didn't ask for and some not-as-subtle-as-he-thought-they-were hints that I am "too caught up in the world." Thanks.  

The ordination, though. 

Last month I visited a good friend in Toronto - a former professor, who over the years has been an amazingly compassionate mentor to me and my weirdo heart. I hadn't seen her in years. Towards the end of our conversation, I told her about how I've been spending my Sundays with the Anglicans and how I arrived at the decision to do so. (Have I written about that before? It started when I heard a woman preach for the first time.) She immediately leapt to the conclusion that this meant that I wanted to be ordained. She said, "Well, this is perfect. It makes perfect sense. It combines everything that matters to you." And I will admit that she is not wrong about that - that it would, really, combine everything that matters to me. But I am so, so, so far from being in a place where I could even consider something like that, for so many reasons. I am so far from feeling like I might ever even want to.

But.

Over and over again, I come back to the fact that it is just means so. very. much. to experience a church in which men and women are both looked to as leaders - where they are understood to be equally wise, equally capable of guiding their people with love and sensitivity. Where they listen to one another, where their voices are both offered as sources of knowledge and authority. I wish I could articulate how that feels, how profoundly different it is, in ways I could not have expected or imagined. I wish I could explain how much it changes about how I have always understood God, what it is revealing to me about how I've been shaped - in ways I didn't realize - by the absence of this in the tradition in which I was raised. 

And so it was... wild, completely and utterly wild... to hear the Bishop (who is also a woman) examine the three female candidates for the priesthood, to watch her vest them, to hear her say to them, "Receive this Bible and this chalice and paten as signs of the authority given to you to preach the word of God and to administer his holy sacraments. Do not forget the trust committed to you as a priest in the church of God," and to know, for the first time, that regardless of whether I want it or am called to it or any of those things, it is within the realm of actual possibility that those words could someday also be spoken to me.

So, it's almost 11 pm and I am sitting at my desk, in my living room, with a newly-inflated air mattress on the floor behind me, in anticipation of a houseguest who is driving on his motorcycle to visit from Ohio, although I know him from New England, and he is stopping by en route to visit family in Utah, which might not even make sense, but I don't know, and what on earth is my life.

( Every possible thing is under here.  )

Another weekend at my parents' house. It was quiet, kind of strange. My dad has had some pretty major health issues recently, and although he's doing well now, there are still a lot of unknowns. The house was full of a weird energy - a mix of fragility and sadness and anger and avoidance. No one was themselves. 

On Saturday night, I had a long talk with my mom about the Anglican church. I didn't get so far as to tell her about my Sunday morning Cathedral habits, but I suspect she knows. I talked about some of the things I struggle with, the things I feel I can't abide by anymore in the Catholic world. I was pretty open about what I've come to learn about the Anglican church, and I'm sure she's figured out how I learned it. She didn't ask. I couldn't bring myself to say. But I know I should. I will, eventually. 

Before we went to bed, we were sitting in the backyard, next to the fire. It was dark, stars everywhere. We'd been talking about religion for about an hour, each of us with a beer in hand. She asked if there was an Anglican church in the next town over (there certainly is not one in our town). I said yes. She said, "I kind of want to go tomorrow morning. I want to see what it's like." 

So we went. It felt a little bit like someone was reading my diary. I don't think she liked it very much, but she was a very good sport. And I feel like her curiosity was at least halfway a sham. She might have been curious, but I also think she knew I wanted to go.

My dad and I, instead of talking about his health, talked about bookshelves. And by "talked," I mean he was determined to convince me that I did not need any. How does a person not need bookshelves? Especially a person who owns as many books as I do? They are currently all in storage, in my parents' basement, and I want to get them out of there. And I've been trying to make my apartment feel more like home, and that means books. 

My dad insisted, "They'll take up space. They cost money. Think about what you're going to do with them if you ever have to move."

I have no plans to move, and my apartment is borderline cavernous there is so much empty space here, and I have a good job and it's possible to find bookshelves that are not that expensive.

But when he said it, the clouds parted and angels descended from the heavens blaring trumpets and singing, "Thiis is where you geetttt it fromm!"

Because how many times have I stood before just about anything - a loaf of bread, a compact of blush, a respectably-sized frying pan, fabric for curtains - and said those exact words?

On the way home this evening, I stopped and picked up not just one bookshelf, but two.

And now I can't sleep, by which I mean I don't want to try. The weekend was so weird, so heavy in ways I'm not sure how to name and have only a very little bit to do with shelving units. I don't want tomorrow to come yet. I haven't made sense of today. 

I spent the weekend with my family again. Again, it was lovely. On Friday night, my aunt came over. She had come into town to visit my grandmother, and stopped by our house on her way home. I had already gone to bed. I came upstairs for a glass of water and heard her voice in the backyard. It was 10:30. There was a fire blazing, everyone was curled up under blankets sitting on the fancy new lawn furniture my parents bought a few weeks ago. I came outside in my pyjamas, she kissed me on the top of the head, we sat there for another hour, talking. Laughing.

It rained most of the weekend. We only managed to bike once. I was not too disappointed - sometimes it's good to take a break. I read a lot. On Sunday night we went to my other aunt's house, for dinner. All of my mom's sisters were there, and my aunt's oldest daughter, with her husband and 2 kids. And my aunt's 85-year-old mother-in-law, Molly, who is one of my favourite people on earth, and who lived next door to us while we were growing up. When I bent down to hug her, she kissed my cheek and asked, "How's my girl?"

We ate dinner inside. My aunt spread a big, white piece of paper over the dining room table. There were 2 packages of markers waiting, a few packages of stickers. I think it was meant to keep the kids entertained, but it thoroughly entertained all of us. I was sitting on the end, next to Molly. Ben, the 6-year-old, came over and sat next to her, and together they started drawing a picture. It started with clouds, and grass. Then, Ben added a few trees. Molly added some flowers. Ben added a sun with big, spiky rays. Molly drew a bunny under the tree. Eventually there was a garden, full of corn, lettuce, carrots, ladybugs, and worms. Then the clouds began to sprinkle raindrops all over the whole scene, and so Ben added umbrellas. Everybody got an umbrella: the birds, the bees, the little turtle sitting under the tree, every single ladybug. Eventually the picture extended to my corner of the table, and Ben handed me a marker. "Can you draw a buffalo?"

It was a long weekend here. Yesterday it poured rain, and I spent the morning reading. In a somewhat out-of-character move, I recently picked up a giant book on women's health. I'm not totally sure what I'm going to do with it. I've been taking a class this month, on...body awareness? Not so much in a scientific, biological way, but in a somewhat new-agey intuitive way, I guess. This is also pretty out of character, but I feel like it's one of the best decisions I've made in a while. I made it out of utter desperation. I am willing, at this point, to try anything to quiet the absurd storm in my head, and in a few weeks, this class has done more - and more meaningfully - than just about anything else I've tried.

At the end of this week, I hop on a plane to Ontario. My best friend is getting married next weekend. I wish I were not dreading this as much as I am, but I am. It's going to be a short and very complicated trip - a trip I almost decided not to make. I have to do a reading at the wedding, and this weekend I was also given the task of making the toast to the bride, which I have not yet started writing. Of course, I want to be there, and of course, I'm happy to speak. I don't feel like I have a lot to give, most of the time, but I do have words. I can do words. I'm sure the wedding will be beautiful, and I'm sure I'll be glad that I went, but right now I am just really nervous, about everything: the travel, the toast, a reception in which I will know almost no one except the bride and her family.

Also, allow me to swear here and now that if I ever get married, it will be in some secondhand sundress that cost me $10, and I will pick my own flowers from somebody's garden, afterwards we'll have a barbecue and there will be no speeches or chandeliers and everyone can go home early and get a good night's sleep.

It's cloudy this morning. I woke up to the greyest sky, and my whole body heaved in relief. I sat on the floor, in the dim light of a morning without sun, and was deeply, viscerally grateful. I am not, I have discovered, a person who loves summer. I am a person who likes to brood, and it is impossible to brood effectively in brightness.

When I lived in New England, I used to crave winter. Partly, the New England summers were just so uncomfortably humid compared to the prairie summers I was used to. Partly, winter over there was pretty mild, at least at the start. We never had snow at Christmas. It was all just cool air, heavy skies. I could see my breath, but not my footprints. I could walk in the woods for hours and feel at home in myself - instead, I guess, of itching to crawl out of myself.

It's been dark times in my head lately, but not outside - at least until now. Last week was all blue skies and sun. The park across the road was full of families spreading towels on the steps, kids splashing in the fountains. I considered it a feat each day I actually got out of bed. In the evenings, I hardly moved. It isn't the heat. (It's not even that hot.) It's just my brain. But the heat makes things heavy - heavier. Grey skies make me feel like I have some space. Space between my body and my mind, I guess, my body being the far more benevolent of the two.

Approximately three seconds ago, I pressed Send on a submission of 4 poems to a Canadian literary magazine. I don't know what possessed me. I saw their call for submissions and threw some old poems in a document and now here we are. The whole thing took about half an hour and was 110% uncharacteristic of my utterly fearful self and her great need to obsess. I did not obsess even an iota. I barely proofread the poems.

Now that it's over, I would like balloons or fireworks acknowledging the significance of this accomplishment. It feels like that kind of a feat.

After work today, I met my brother and he took me on a bike ride through the river valley. There is a river that divides my city in two, and it turns out there are paved trails all along it, on either side, from one end of the city to the other, and it turns out that those trails are gorgeous. Deep enough in, it seems impossible that you could still be in a city. It's all fields of grass, ice-blue river water, the shadows of tall, sandy cliffs.

I had a moment, biking through this expansive field of wild, gold grasses with my brother next to me, trying to explain how to use my gears, where it seemed absurd that I could ever want anything else. Where the possibility of school, of relocating, seemed unthinkable. Right now, I'm not sure I want anything more than I want to be able to live with myself in peace. I know that. I've known that for a long time. On the trail today, that peace was something I didn't even have to reach for. It found me, and followed me, along the river, next to my brother, under the same sky I've always known.

It was better morning, this morning. It wasn't raining, for one thing. I got up early and wandered around the apartment, trying to stretch out all these bicycle aches. I walked to work, stopped for a coffee on the way. The air was still cool. Summer is not my finest season. I hate the heaviness of too much heat.

Now I'm at my desk and wondering how I can live this day with some grace. I'm worried about the video I'm working on, full of self-doubt. I have a plan, a goal I can reach by the end of the day, and hopefully it will help me feel a little less like I'm failing horrendously. Down the hall, my favourite curmudgeonly professor is swearing at his computer. Somebody is smoking a cigarette outside my open window. I should mind, but I don't. My parents both smoked when I was a kid. To me, cigarettes smell like childhood.

My boss walked into my office this morning holding both hands behind her back. "I have something for you," she said, and I could not imagine what on earth she could be holding. A coffee? I think she sells essential oils, so maybe that? Nope. It was a brand new package of 25 coloured sharpies. "Now you can storyboard in colour," she said, pointing to my wall of post-its and pen doodles while I sat there blinking, stunned. This package contains every colour imaginable: mint green, lavender, peach, four different shades of pink.

This evening, my grand plan is to walk to Lush - which is not too far from my office - to smell delicious things and maybe buy something lovely and unnecessary. It won't be makeup, but it will be a step in that direction, maybe. I keep thinking about face masks. My evenings are so quiet lately. I'd like to use them in a way that feels nice, that feels deliberate. If I can't get rid of my rules, maybe I can try to trade them for better ones. Ones that might regularly involve delicious smelling facial products, or taking some deep breaths at the kitchen counter while the kettle boils, or not yelling at myself so much.

Because if I can yell at myself, I can probably also tell myself I'm nice. If I can say no, I can also say yes. I once knew a nun who often told me that, just like in physics, your energy can't be created or destroyed. It can only be transferred from one form to another. I don't remember choosing this particular form, but maybe I can choose a new one. Maybe it can be up to me.

Yesterday I got new glasses. I haven't had new glasses in about five years. When I went to choose my frames, the technician looked me over and asked, in his thick Russian accent, "You would like an update, yes?" Uh, yes. Definitely yes.

( There's a picture under here somewhere. )

In early January, I started a project. At the time, I needed something to do - I wasn't working, and had just been through some pretty tough things, and needed a place to put my energy that might, if I was lucky, help me process some of the questions I was carrying. Writing felt too overwhelming, and so I turned to photography. I started taking self portraits. I told myself I'd take one a day, for a year.

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I'm back at my parents' house this weekend. I like it out here.

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