A simple plan

 

Ever since my health crisis I have very low tolerance for logistics, that is, organizing complex events.

My husband’s 67^th birthday celebration started as a simple plan to spend Sunday in Chicago: church on the west side in the morning, a matinee performance of Black Pearl Sings in a northern suburb, dinner on the way home. I bought two tickets. I called Jesse to see if he and Linnea could join us for dinner somewhere downtown—they are in the western suburb of Oak Park this year.

Jesse said he had Saturday off from the hospital so why not come then, since it was Vic’s actual birthday? Ok fine. Dinner on Saturday and we could stay overnight in their apartment.

Last week I mentioned the plan to Joanna, who lives across the state in Ann Arbor. That sounds like fun, she said. Can we come too? Okay fine. She, Joseph, and Hazel could stay with Jesse and Linnea and we could ask to lodge at Michael’s house, where Vic stays when he’s working in Chicago.

I call Jesse about the change in plans. That would be great, he says, but he has just learned Linnea’s sister Cynthia and husband and baby will be with them that weekend. Cynthia and Patrick have a long-distance marriage this year and Chicago is a halfway meeting place. Okay fine. Maybe we should go back to the Sunday-only plan. Or . . . Vic could ask Michael if we and the Ann Arbor family could stay there. Michael often has extra room.

I check with Joanna. Do they still want to come? Maybe not, she says. The next day she says, yes, they do. Linnea (still in Iowa with Cynthia) says, come. Okay fine. I say, tell Dad to check with Michael about lodging. Tell Jesse we’re back on for Saturday. Several phone calls later it is decided that the Ann Arbor family will come to our SW Michigan house Friday night and go to the Field Museum on Chicago’s south side Saturday morning. Jesse will make dinner reservations. Lodging at Michael’s works out. Okay fine.

Friday evening Joanna calls en route to say Joseph has decided he needs to go back to Ann Arbor Saturday for a Tai Chi event. He will stay the night at our house and leave early Saturday morning. He will transfer Hazel’s seat to our car. She and Hazel will go with us to Chicago and return home Sunday on Amtrak. Okay fine.

Saturday it snows and we are happy for a little extra time in the woods. We drop Field Museum plans and drive straight to Oak Park, have a bit of time to hang out with everybody before Linnea goes to an all-afternoon printmaking class on the north side. Joanna, Uncle Jesse, Grandpa, and Grandma take Hazel to a children’s museum in Oak Park, a glorified play space. Hazel is highly entertained and entertaining.

Back at the apartment, Vic wants to go out for a walk. I decide to go with him. We put on our coats. Hazel starts pulling on her shoes and saying “bye-bye!” Okay fine. Rather than getting her complicated stroller out of the car, we walk until we have to carry her. She falls asleep in Grandpa’s arms. Back at the apartment, Joanna is asleep. Vic falls asleep.

The time comes to meet Linnea for dinner at the Korean barbeque restaurant on the north side. Okay fine. We wake everybody up. Hazel is not happy. She continues to be unhappy on the one-hour drive across town.

We just beat the crowds at the Korean barbecue. Hazel perks up. Food! Fire! Action! We leave the restaurant stuffed. Hazel is covered with rice. We all make plans to meet the next day for lunch between church and Joanna’s train time. Hazel sings herself to sleep on the drive back across the city and is put to bed, rice and all.

Sunday morning Joanna rechecks her train time and decides she won’t have time for lunch. Okay fine. On the way to church we stop at Whole Foods and she picks up ingredients for a train picnic. We inform Jesse and Linnea through texts and calls. Okay fine. They will meet Vic and me at Santorini in Greektown after we drop Joanna at the station.

At church, Hazel is impressed with the music and the stained glass window and reportedly has a good time in the nursery. On the way to the station she falls asleep in the car. The big stroller is finally put to use, wheeling sleeping Hazel through Union Station. I accompany Joanna, carrying the car seat, until she is in the hands of a helpful porter. Hazel wakes up getting on the train and is not happy. Joanna leaves part of her picnic in the car.

Back in Greektown we relax over ouzo and taramosalata before Jesse and Linnea arrive. After a leisurely lunch Vic and I drive north to Skokie and enjoy the astonishing performance.

It was a fine weekend. It started simple, got a little complicated, and then worked out. I loved all the family time. But I am really ready to resign logistics.

Hazel in tutu with Grandpa. Warning: loud sound effects.

  

Low blood sugar of the soul

Honesty requires that I write about down times as well as up ones. Yesterday, after I wrote that enthusiastic post about Feldenkrais healing, I slid into a funk.

This happens to me often when I am alone, as I am for several days in the middle of every week. Vic is in Chicago. I work from home and communicate only intermittently with my colleagues. And sometimes the work I do is downright draining. I get so tired of fundraising proposals and other forms of persuasive writing.

Yesterday started with an email miscommunication, continued with evidence of the strength of the enemies of the environment, and went downhill from there. Suddenly I felt like I could not do this work any more. Suddenly I felt like I couldn’t do anything any more. At that point my daughter called and soon ran afoul of my mood. “Low blood sugar of the soul?” she guessed.

Exactly. I would have called it “running on empty,” but “LBSS” is more accurate. It comes on suddenly, with no warning. It requires immediate treatment. What was I going to do?

Treatment for LBSS must start with what is possible. Was it possible for me even to move my butt off the rocking chair? Possible or not, everything else seemed to depend on at least getting the body to move. And so here is the treatment that unfolded yesterday for that acute attack of LBSS.

A. Coaxed myself to move.

1.     Folded laundry. This required going upstairs. It was a tiny bit satisfying to see all the clean clothes dried environmentally correctly on the drying racks and then stacked up, socks matched, everything tucked away in the drawers.

2.     Got the mail. The driveway goes downhill to the mailbox and so I could persuade myself to go that direction, and then, of course, come back up again. It did require the effort of putting on my coat.

3.     Since I had my coat on and was in motion I found I could actually exert myself enough to carry in wood, filling the woodbox for the next 24 hours. This brought the satisfaction of promised coziness and was sort of environmentally correct although there is a study that says if we got rid of all the woodburning stoves in the world we would eliminate a lot of soot and greatly reduce global warming as well as save a lot of health problems. They’re talking about Third World cooking fires, aren’t they? Not my woodstove!

B. Pulled out the spiritual props.

1.     Having put my coat on and set myself in motion I could take the short walk into the woods to Sister Tree. You’d think, as powerful as this tree is, I would visit her first thing. But it is hard to do anything at all in a soul-blood-sugar crash. I sat at her base for ten minutes and thought about nothing. When I got up the dark cloud wasn’t hanging right behind my forehead any more. I didn’t feel good yet but I didn’t feel bad any more. Neutral.

2.     Back in the house I swallowed four drops of the latest flower essence blend Joanna had made for me and took my Sanibel dolphin vertebra off the shelf. I sat with the bone over my heart. I felt warmth, embrace. Better and better.

C.  Snacked, just in case my body blood sugar was low.

1.     Red mango tulsi tea in front of the fire.

2.     A handful of Trader Joe’s wasabi snack blend.

3.     One licorice twist. Getting there.

D. Wrote.

Having raised both body and soul blood sugar levels just enough that I could write, I did. I wrote this. And at the end of it I felt restored.

How do you treat LBSS? 

My Feldenkrais healing

Sunday afternoon on the drive home from Ann Arbor, where we had been to visit the little family--Vic went to fix things in the house and I went to get my monthly Hazel fix--I realized that on the previous evening, Saturday, I had experienced a healing. Not a mental or spiritual healing—though that came with it—but an actual physical healing. My body was suddenly in a much better state than it had been before.

I didn’t know that I needed more healing. I thought I was fine. The treatment I had received in the hospital last month had worked. I was fully functional. But my daughter, who is a Feldenkrais practitioner, asked Saturday whether I wanted her to work on me.

I never refuse Joanna’s Functional Integration (FI) treatments. Sometimes, when I have musculoskeletal pain or just feel a little cramped up, I ask Joanna for an FI if we’re together. I was not aware of discomfort on Saturday. Maybe a little pain in my right hip. But a Feldenkrais session is one of those things that can do you good whether you think you need it or not. I always rise from Joanna’s table put together in a different way, body parts more mobile and properly stacked and coordinated. I walk better. I look down and see my chest instead of my belly. I sleep better. I am “functionally integrated.”

But the Saturday session was special. First, it revealed pain, a lot of it. Every muscle that she touched in large sections of my back, chest, side, and legs cried out in pain. I did not know this pain was there. Where did it come from?

With very gentle probing and manipulation, subtle adjustments, a little pushing here and there, matching this point on my sternum with that point on my back, pulling this leg gently and turning that one slightly, and many other mysterious operations—skills she has learned and that she applies intuitively—Joanna proceeded to untie all those knots.

Usually I do not feel the effect of an FI until I rise from the table and walk. This time, however, I felt a progressive release in my body as she worked. My body had been cold, frozen ground. Suddenly it was spring thaw and plowing was going on.

It was so dramatic that it was not altogether pleasant. I suddenly became cold, started shivering violently. She covered me with a blanket and called on her husband and father, both energy healers, to help contain and shift my chi as she finished. At the end I was bundled off to bed under warm quilts, still shivering, where I slept for 10 hours and dreamed of a large Victorian house under repair. It was fixed up on the outside but only partially restored on the inside. It was the first pleasant dream I had had since my health crisis.

It was the dream that clued me in to what had happened. The previous healing, the hospital healing, aided by the energy boost I wrote about in the last post, was only partial. My body still retained, in dozens of muscles, the trauma of a near-death experience. I was not conscious of this. I didn’t even feel this tension and pain. The Feldenkrais technique, skillfully and intuitively wielded by my daughter, both revealed and released the pain. And now I am aware of feeling much better than I did before, much better than I thought possible.

This made me think about the essential complementarity of conventional medicine and all the “alternatives.” Conventional medicine can cure and even heal—but can it heal completely? I wonder. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every patient who came out of the hospital was treated to a series of Functional Integration sessions? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if doctors knew about all the complementary alternatives, routinely prescribed them, and insurance companies routinely paid for them?

We may be getting there. Today's email brings this newsletter from WebMD on acupuncture, one of the alternatives that is going mainstream. But science, medicine, and insurance are slow to accept  practices that fall outside their boxes, even though they may carry far less risk than conventional treatments. I, for one, am willing to experiment.

My energy healing

One thing I didn’t write in December about my health crisis was what happened just before the radiologist performed the procedure to dissolve the horrid clots that were blocking my pulmonary arteries. The procedure carried a high risk of bleeding. I was a candidate for it because I was in otherwise good health but my heart needed help. It was under strain because of those clots. They had to go as quickly as possible.

So what is the other part of the story? There is the medicine and then there are the complements to medicine and it isn’t always easy to talk about them together because they seem so separate. The complement part included prayer—there were lots of people praying for me in many different ways. But there was also the request I made of my husband. I asked him for some chi.

I am convinced that my healing required the medicine, the prayer, and the chi/energy. They fit together. They are not contradictory but complementary. I am even more convinced of that because of what happened to me last night, which I will write about in another entry. I want to tell first about that afternoon session with Vic in the hospital room, just before I went to Interventional Radiology.

My husband, a semi-retired PhD research chemist, has recently discovered that he has a powerful energy gift. His gift was brought to his attention by a Tai Chi/Chi Gong practitioner who is a close friend of our daughter and her husband. Vic “happened” to be visiting and participating in a class with Joanna one day and Sang noticed the effect of the energy coming from Vic’s hands. Since then Vic has tentatively explored this gift. He still doesn’t quite know what to do with it but he will offer it if asked. I do ask now and then and I am finding it more and more powerful as he practices and I become more receptive. It is hard to describe what happens except by giving an example. The hospital experience is the most vivid one so far.

I asked Vic to “chi” my chest before the procedure. I lay on my back. He did what he usually does: held his hands over my body, moving slowly or hovering, not touching. I soon felt warmth and a kind of tingling sensation, very pleasant, relaxing. I descended into a meditative state. Eyes closed, I saw waves and blobs of deep indigo, something like this picture. 

After a while I felt the front of my chest was “done” and I turned over. He began doing the same over my back. But immediately the image behind my closed eyelids changed. The blue disappeared and I saw red and black. At first the images were like red cauliflower against a gray and black background, a little like this (you can find anything on Google images):

And then the images became like waving red coral, like this except the tubes were thinner and you couldn’t see inside them:

These red-and-black images seemed like images of disease—even specifically a disease of lungs and blood vessels. After a while, however, the red and black disappeared, giving way to indigo with light shooting through:

I felt like the needed shift had happened. A few minutes later the nurse came for me and I went into the procedure calm, confident that the healing had already begun. The procedure ended up working beautifully, no bleeding.

I do not say the chi made the procedure work. I believe they were both essential in their own way. But I must say that the half hour with my husband in that darkened room was one of the most beautiful, sacred, intimate experiences we have ever had together.

Sister Tree

When we bought this house in the woods 17 years ago I admired the house more than the woods. Rather, the woods was the lovely setting for the lovely house. But at the closing, the previous owner told me with a smile, “Remember, this house belongs to the woods.”

Over the next months I thought I could see what she meant. Flying squirrels nested in our attic, centipedes seeped into the basement, spiders were omnipresent, raccoons and deer dug up the so-called lawn for grubs. We learned to live with some of our forest co-owners and tightened our boundaries against others.

For a while the woods itself remained unknown territory. We bought the house in the summer when mosquitoes abounded. Winter was for staying indoors by the fire.

But the following spring brought an amazing carpet of wildflowers and I began to venture forth. Over several springs I learned to know every species of wildflower that bloomed here. We carved a walking path through our five acres and sometimes ventured deeper to the surrounding woods.

I usually looked down when I walked. What’s this little flower? Is that an invasive that we need to control? Any morels this year? Is it time to harvest shoots of those yummy woods nettles? Get out the rubber gloves!

After several years of looking down on my woods walks, I began looking up. I began getting to know the main inhabitants of this land, the trees. At first it was a matter of identifying species. Yes indeed, this is a fine example of a Midwestern beech-maple habitat and here are the companion ashes, walnuts, hackberrys, and more. A wild cherry or two.

A few years ago, however, I began to make the acquaintance of individual trees. I can’t say I set out to do this deliberately. Yes, there were landmark trees that marked where the path turned, the slanting trunks the cat liked to climb, the sentinels that marked the spring-blooming hepatica patch. But there was something else. Certain trees began—how can I say this—calling to me.

In particular, there was a circle of trees that stood next to the path on the downslope farthest from the house. One of the trees was dead, several were maples, and two others were common American hackberrys. One day as I was walking the path this circle seemed to invite me in, and so I stepped into it. As soon as I did that, one of the hackberrys showed itself to be the “leader” of the circle. I stepped over to it, placed my hands on it, and felt a strong surge of peace and happiness that went directly to my gut.

I stood this way for a long time, then sat down at the tree’s base. I meditated. I had not been inclined to meditation much before that. I had tried but felt I didn’t know how. In the presence of this tree, however, I slipped effortlessly into meditation.

Now here is the thing. Ever since then, this tree has never failed to do that for me. I may walk into the woods upset, tired, preoccupied, or just bored. If I stop and spend time with this tree I am immediately set right. I may meditate for a time, I may focus a specific prayer, or I may just pause for a greeting but something shifts. Always.

And this shift, this power, this sense of companionship surprises me every time. I dare not expect it or count on it but it happens.

It is so powerful that, although I make daily pilgrimages to the tree during some periods, I usually allow some time to elapse between visits. I had not gone to the tree for several months. I went yesterday, so dulled by the day's work that I could hardly drag myself outdoors. She blew me away again, reviving my battered spirits.

I am blown away, too, by the thought that we may be surrounded by allies in the natural world. We just don’t know how to connect with them. Sometimes, though, if we stand still, or live in one place for a long time, or pay attention to the subtle shifts in our feelings in certain surroundings, we may find a language that flows between us.

Dream adventures

Life is certainly an adventure. What happens in waking life can be surprising enough, but if you add in dreams, the drama heightens. If you find other people’s dreams boring, skip this blog. But if you want to see how dreams can up the adventure ante, read on.

I’ve been having a series of rather distressing dreams related to the work I do in the environmental movement.

Dream 1: I was working on a visionary project with other enviros. I was asking questions that revealed, I suppose, my skepticism, about their grand plans. After the meeting one of the men made it clear that my questions weren’t all that helpful or welcome, that they put a damper on vision and enthusiasm. I cheerfully acknowledged, “I am a middle ground (middle vision?) person.” Meaning: I concentrate on the how, not on the what.  But how hard did I want to fight for my viewpoint in this group? How strongly did I believe in their vision? I knew that I would never be part of the visionary elite.

Dream 2: I was on a group tour, cruise, in the territory of the Greek Islands and perhaps other countries. Everything is planned and arranged. But I somehow wander off from the group, make a purchase with my last dollars and get change in some foreign currency, not Greek. I realize I am lost. I only vaguely remember the name of the hotel we would be staying at—Eco something or Echo something. I am on the seashore. I ask a woman how to get to the town, where the group will be sightseeing. She says in English that the town is to the south. I look at the sun and see which way to go. Meanwhile, she points out a small hill across the bay that is glowing from the inside, as if from molten lava. Or is there a village in the crater? I think I want to go there but it is evening and I know I won’t find the group there. She then asks me where I am staying and I say it is Eco or Echo. She stops a woman and asks her to phone the hotel with her mobile, then she leaves. This second woman does not speak English. I realize I am really stranded—not sure about the hotel, unable to communicate, no money. I wake up in a panic.

In both these dreams I feel alienated from the “eco” groups. In the first they don’t appreciate my work and I’m not sure I appreciate theirs. In the second I inadvertently leave the group because of my own inclinations but feel lost without them. I am intrigued by the glowing lava (a different passion?) but I don’t know how to get there.

And then I have a third dream, after reading a fine interview by Terry Tempest Williams of the activist Tim DeChristopher, who went to jail for bidding up oil and gas leases for wilderness lands in Utah to keep them out of the hands of the energy companies—without having the money, of course, to actually buy them. Tim is a kind young radical, kind of Jesus-like, actually. Here is my dream:

I was driving on a country road where I knew a protester was stationed. As I approached the area some cushions I had in my backseat flew up and blocked my windshield. I saw only a flash of the protester’s wooden cross in the windshield and heard a crunch under my wheels. I couldn’t stop. I rounded the corner and came to a halt where another group was gathered under a tree. The protester came there and I apologized to him, told him what had happened. Was everyone ok? Nobody was hurt but his friends had lost some gear. I told him I would give them money. Vic and I looked at the idyllic scene of more protesters. Children were playing in a large sandbox surrounding the tree but otherwise they were in the sun. I sort of wanted to join them but it was too sunny and not my kind of thing to do.

I interpreted this as another alienation-from-the-movement dream. I respected the protesters but didn’t feel called to imitate them. And I could have hurt them.

Why was I having this strong sense of ins and outs with environmentalists, and of always being among the outs? As if it isn’t quite where I belong. Where do I belong? I decided to ask for a dream about where I belong. And got this one last night:

I was moving among the homeless people in an African country. I felt what it was like to strategize on finding a place to sleep for the night, in perhaps a shop doorway—one that seemed more European than African but still I had the sense this was Africa. I accompanied a woman in African dress and we managed to find shelter in what seemed an abandon building. But a European woman found us and actually offered the woman two blankets. I rejoiced with the homeless woman in this kindness, felt the luxury of it.

Despite the pain of homelessness, this dream felt much more positive to me. And among the homeless I felt much more at home than I had been feeling among the enviros—even though I, myself, was not homeless.

These dreams are telling me something I’m not sure I’m ready to hear. I see the glow of another passion across the bay but I’m not sure I’m ready to leave the group and find my way across that bay. But we’ll see what happens next. I am planning a trip to Congo in May. . . .

Congo stories

I am an editor. The kind of editing I do goes way beyond cleaning up grammar and punctuation. I think of it as making other people’s ideas and stories shine and, insofar as possible, keeping them out of trouble. I smooth out the bumps in their writing, make it flow. If they present facts, the facts must be accurate. If they present opinions, the opinions must be well supported. If they say something that may be controversial, I want to make sure they do this deliberately, keeping in mind their audience, and that the controversy is an appropriate one to raise in the given forum.

I am usually pretty good at walking this fine line. I can immodestly say that I am an excellent editor, among the best in this very peculiar business. It is because, although I have my own strong opinions, I am capable of keeping these in the background when I am editing. Sometimes, however, that presents a challenge.

I am in the middle of a big editing project right now, which I offered to do as a volunteer simply because it interested me. It is a collection of stories of Mennonites in Congo. This year marks the centennial of Mennonites in Congo. Yes! In 1912 the first Mennonite missionaries penetrated the Dark Continent and made their way to King Leopold’s colony. Now the Mennonite Church in Congo has more members than any other country except the USA.

The stories have been gathered and told by a team of Congolese writers as well as one longtime missionary. The book will not be a history of the church per se. Instead, these are the stories of individuals whom people know or remember as cherished or influential or remarkable characters in this saga, of formative events and incidents. It is a memory book with many short chapters and vignettes. Whatever overall story might be told of the Mennonite Church in Congo must be inferred from these snippets. Readers can draw their own conclusions as they read them.

I do have a lot of questions about the overall story. I am ambivalent about the whole missionary enterprise, especially as it was conducted during the first half of the 20^th century. But I took on this assignment because I wanted to learn more about the Congolese Mennonite community. I have begun to reestablish ties with Congo and am meeting Congolese Mennonites for the first time. I will visit some of them in May when I go to Kinshasa with two friends from the Congo Cloth Connection (see here and here). And yes, I am learning a lot as I read and untangle these stories! Although they are often couched in pious terms, they are surprisingly revealing.

There is also the question of the intended audience. The French version, which I am not editing, will be for the Congolese church. I am working on the English version, intended for Mennonites in the USA. I still feel on the fringe of that group. I don’t want to censor these stories to suit what I perceive may be American Mennonite sensibilities. At the same time, I am aware of the taint of racism and paternalism in some of the stories, attitudes that may still linger. I want neither to conceal nor encourage such attitudes. I hope the book will stir discussion on both continents.

Are you intrigued? You should be! The book will come out this fall.

Change

It is time to make sense of the end of that year and the beginning of this one, of how things have changed and how they have stayed the same.

I do not want to stay the same. I associate change with adventure and improvement. Whatever loss may be involved with change can always bring some positive gain, or at least give me something new to think about. I am easily bored, even—especially—with myself. Therefore, my recent health crisis should provide an opportunity for change and further adventure.

It almost goes without saying that a brush with death should change the way you live your life. So far I don’t see that happening, maybe because it came and went so quickly. I was perfectly healthy. I collapsed on December 7 and could have died but didn’t, partly because of where I happened to be at the moment. I was treated effectively and restored to good health. The regimen for the rest of my life is not burdensome—just some daily medication and monitoring.

So it all feels a little unreal. There is no reason for other people to treat me differently; I am not more fragile than I was before. I am not even in a recuperation period. Over the holidays I was less stressed and healthier than most of the younger generation so I ended up doing the usual lion’s share of meal preparation and caretaking. It’s what moms do. Being waited on hand and foot would have seemed silly.

Or perhaps there is no simple way for my beloveds to express the difference between the before and after. Yesterday my brother offered me his comfy armchair when I walked into the room. That, too, seemed silly but I appreciated the gesture. How can I show you that you are cherished? I feel this from my family and friends, and I reciprocate. I am glad I am still with them.

The changes I do see in myself are not all laudable. My niece, who has fought off a virulent cancer, says she doesn’t sweat the small stuff any more. I wish that were true for me. But instead, I find I have even less patience than before with small annoyances. Don’t make me ask twice for you to do something. I want this kitchen clean and I want it clean now. I could easily become more demanding than I was before. I want my own way. I don’t want to follow anyone else’s agenda.

I think this is partly a result of being more certain of what I want. Over the holidays I realized how much I cherished the warmth and beauty of our home and the woods and the time with family. Meals were simple—maybe I was, in that case, letting go of small stuff. After everybody left Vic and I went out for a lively impromptu lunch with our daughter-in-law’s father and his wife (other cultures have terms for this relationship; we need them). Yesterday we went to a New Year’s Eve party for the first time in years. There was lots of laughter, no alcohol needed. All this was perfect.

On the other hand, I found a request to do a tiny bit of work on December 28 extremely annoying. I was annoyed with a book I was reading that didn’t measure up to my expectations. I find the idea of going to church today totally out of the question—though I happily went three times during Christmas week.

Maybe this is something after all: to know what I want on any given day, at any given time.