Philosophy and sore knees

Wow I am tired! I generally wake up very tired and perk up by 11 or so but today I am just a dishrag. Aagh. I tried protein in the form of leftover angel food cake with whipped cream which was yummy but is still not putting me over the edge into humanity. Dan had coffee with me and told me, all concerned, that I look really terrible. So I guess this morning feeling is obvious. It's a very beautiful day and I finished planting my garden this morning which usually would make me feel very chipper (all except the potatoes -that is a huge job and traditionally I do this with the kids and there always seems to be a thunderstorm that appears by the end). I'm not chipper. I'm just exhausted. Yesterday I did in fact go with the Cindy workout (which is pretty grueling) and then I vacuumed and mopped the living room (probably equally grueling). However that really is not generally enough to knock me out this hard. So that means it is probably hormones.

Anyway, writing is always something that cheers me up so here goes. Hmm. So I am still feeling extremely philosophical these days and using my time oh so wisely in trying to puzzle out answers to questions no one to my knowledge has ever actually answered. Why do good people suffer? Why does everyone feel certain that they know God's will and it is always diametrically opposed to the next person over? Why were we made in the first place if it is a human characteristic to screw things up?

I can't seriously contemplate that there is no God. Really that is too much faith for me. If I ever had any doubts at all, my anatomy class put them to rest. The human hand is a thing of wonder. It really is. Seth would feel the same about a frog or a tree.

Anyway, I have spent my entire life feeling close and cared for by an extremely personal God who I have communicated with relatively easily (especially compared to trying to communicate with certain people!). I could list off probably several pages of fairly direct answers to prayer or events that seem to stretch the odds of coincidence very far. I have studied the evidence for the Biblical account of Jesus to some extent and find it solid enough that I don't have any problems reading the gospels as historical fact. I think that the story of redemption through the cross is so simple, elegant, counter-intuitive, and outrageous in its claims that I cannot honestly imagine anyone making that sort of story up. Certainly not dying for it, as it is not a religion that, purely practiced, is calculated to give anyone any sort of personal gain. Quite the opposite. So I believe in God, and furthermore, I believe that He has gone as far as a deity could to communicate with us on our terms by actually becoming human, dying and then returning from the grave to assure us that he is in fact God. There is no other religion that comes close to making that sort of assertion. Or that paints such a complex view of a personality that is God. You just can't please him behaviourally or with magical thinking or by going through hoops. He requires less and more. All of that fits for me with what I would expect if there was a God who had the characteristics of both love and justice - two things that generally seem diametrically opposed.

Where I run into problems is always when I look away from the story of the Bible in its unvarnished and terribly readable form, and start to listen to other people's interpretations and where they go with what they believe. Then I get a headache. A solution to this is of course to keep my eyes down and just not listen to anyone who is claiming to know how to live. But that is also stupid as there are many really good insights that other people have that I will never come up with on my own. That's why we're all so diverse and why the diversity is healthy and beautiful.

Paradox and dichotomy and conundrum. Love and justice. Choice and dignity and evil and chaos. Individual self-determination and the infinite power of God. Nature and nurture, for Pete's sake!

So here's what I know:

not very much.

Here's what I think:

I think we are complex and infinitely interesting and our choices matter and have real consequences for pleasure or pain for an almost unimaginable number of other people because we are made in the image of God and that is the way he is. I think we are constantly horrified by death and our own mortality and the law of entropy because that situation is not natural for the planet - we were thrust into a state of dying and winding down at a certain point because of a collective human choice. I think that that choice is made in many little ways by each one of us and it boils down to saying to the universe, "I am God and you are not." I think that every time we say that we contribute to the wrongness around us because it is a statement that is NOT TRUE. No matter how much we wish it was.

I think that saying to the universe, "You are God and I am not" is the single hardest thing that any human being can say. We are saying it into the void because we can't see or hear or touch or taste or smell anyone out there. Which proves there is no one out there. Except we have other senses that we know very well mean something real and to discount them is to be as idiotic as the generation that truly thought science and education would save the world and which produced the atomic bomb as a result.

I think that all of us spend most of our lives trying to find what we can dimly sense out there in order to control it. We use religion, science, psychology, frenetic housecleaning, working too much, socializing too much, addictions, causes, and saving the world in order to impose some kind of order into what is essentially too big for us. I think that when Jesus came to earth and lived a life as God and man he demonstrated a conscious choice to give up control over his life and die. Which is pretty weird. And hard to emulate on any level.

I think that I myself am a control freak of almost unimaginable proportions. Oldest child alpha female +++. I think that a God who loves me probably would, if all of the above were true, continually challenge my sense of control over my own life. In fact this is happening on a pretty regular basis. I really hate that! At the moment my boys are both injured and unable to participate in sports. And my daughter's 6th goldfish recently died. There is very little that has happened directly to me that is as painful as holding my son while he cries because he won't be able to play capture the flag on a year end school trip because his knee is inexplicably screwed up. I can't help him and I can't deal with that. It seems ridiculous to me that this event would make me question the love of God on a cosmic level, but it does. It's hard to live in a world that is truly dangerous. Not just to me but to my children.

Are we at war? Is there an unseen battle being waged on earth's surface between good and evil, or are we just existing in a mindless struggle for survival - fittest of the species and all that? I want to believe the first and throw the second away as far as I can. I have spent my entire life working to help "the least of these" - children who need help and can give almost nothing back. So any sort of worldview that discounts their essential and intrinsic value is absolutely abhorrent to me. But thinking about a Marvel comics sort of fight going on invisibly around us just makes me raise an eyebrow and go, "really . . . ?" I can't get too far into that imaginary world without losing my ability to suspend my disbelief.

And that's probably where I am on this beautiful last day of May. Stuck between two scenarios that I find equally hard to totally swallow. I guess the best I can say is that I really truly do not know very much. Less every year, in fact. Except that there is a God. And He is God. And I am not. And love exists and we humans certainly did not make it up. So that's a hopeful sign!

Magic hour

I love this time of the day in summer when the sunlight is so horizontal that all the colours looked drenched in some kind of super-yummy syrup. It also helps that my kids are in bed and Dan is off on his motorcycle enjoying all our leather gifts for his birthday and there is this lovely hush. Even the dishwasher just turned off.

This weekend I went on a terrifically lovely horseback ride with one of my great friends from her place to mine - roughly 16 kms. It was funny because I tried very hard to slow down and enjoy the journey, knowing my tendency to go faster and faster when I am on a horse as the adrenaline and endorphins make me happy and that makes me want to accelerate. Apparently I was still a little rushed from her perspective so that is something to continue to work on. Slow. Breathing. Look around. Stop even. Ha ha. We had a great time and hopefully we can do it again a few times this summer and perfect our pacing. I took Chess of course to keep me confident for the first time in even seeing if trails existed, but I really want to start riding Jetta who is a little less of a cement-mixer in terms of feel. Now that the last of the spring birthdays are past I am feeling a bit more optimistic about time with her. She has calmed down considerably even in the 12 or so hours I've put into training her on the ground. I think that she'll do great now that I have a solid program to follow that makes sense to me and obviously to her as well.

Seth was off this w/e to a full-fledged bowyer course "tillering" a longbow. He came back tired and glowing with one more full day to go. I'm so proud of him and his bizarre interests. He's been making his own arrows all week and they actually work.

Levi on the other hand has come up with the interesting and misleading hobby of finding, cleaning, sterilizing and using old cast-off beer bottles. He is constantly on the lookout now and nothing will induce him to actually cash them in. Oh no. This is a collection with a purpose. Unfortunately I have now become so used to rows and rows of empty beer bottles lining horizontal surfaces outside and inside that I fail to remember to get him to clean them up when people come over. So I think our reputation for clean living and sobriety may be taking a steep down turn. Also if you happen to see my kids reading Calvin and Hobbes and sipping occasionally from a brown bottle, that's homemade lemonade they are enjoying. Really. :)

So far Heidi's hobbies continue to be normal, like trampolining with a hula hoop. And painting all our deck chairs, lamps, etc. with chalk drawings.

The garden is half planted now - hooray! I am in the enviable dilemma of trying to decide whether to priorize going bike riding, running, doing weights with Cindy (Crawford), finishing the garden, working with Jetta for a couple hours, or (wait for it) vacuuming the living room. Probably that last one is by far the most necessary but I'm thinking if there is any sun at all it will not happen. Maybe I can do ALL of them! By noon! No, just kidding. I really am learning something. I will definitely only do half of them by supper. Which will be leftovers.

Ah, the magic is fading outside. Now it's almost a sunset but not quite. Gotta go, here comes my biker husband!

The meaning of life!

This is why we live here. May. It is incredible. I have just been sitting outside soaking up heat and colour and life. And because it froze last night - no mosquitos. Even better. Went on a 12 km ride with Chess this morning and thought again, this is why we live here.

The garden is rototilled and the horses are in it trimming around the edges where I can't get. Also the goats just because they like to be where the action is. I still don't think they are pregnant but I keep hoping and checking for some sort of belly. They look incredibly svelte. Shoot.

We also have another set of chickens as our black ones have unfortunately felt it was okay to spend the winter hours pulling feathers off each other. The result is a bit obscene and certainly not appetizing in any way. They are still laying but now they are laying outside in the "chicken yacht" while the newbies, who look like large doves and seem to have similar temperaments, are inside the "chicken condo" and starting to lay tiny little white eggs. I'm thinking the black ones may not last.

This last Saturday (the long weekend) we finally tried canoeing from Crutwell to P.A. This is something we have thought about for at least 15 years and finally got organized. At the last minute we were somewhat dismayed to find out that Seth, in whose honour the trip was being made as he just turned 14, had sustained a fairly serious supraspinatus injury. For all you non-physio types, this is just one of those darn rotator cuff muscles that is really helpful but which no one really thinks about. Anyway, paddling was definitely out for him as it was in the super-acute stage where any type of stress would make it ten times worse. Paddling for 7 hours being a type of stress.

This was crushing for Seth and almost as crushing for me as he was to be my partner so Dan could go with Levi and Heidi. This would have made for somewhat even "teams" as we had two canoes. Anyway, we decided to go ahead. We already had the canoes and the day was nothing short of perfect. Neither of us was certain exactly how far this was and no one we asked could remember even how long it had taken them. We figured 3 hours - 5 at the outside.

Well, it was slightly more than that. I finally downloaded Google Earth after the fact and realized that there was in fact a pretty big bend in the river which the highway distance disguises. I'm thinking it was around 30 kms if not slightly more. That's a long way. We switched up kids pretty frequently and the little ones helped tremendously, although they mostly kept our spirits up with chatter and name-calling to each other and so on. Poor Seth was really good at making the best of it and stayed amazingly cheerful. Around the midpoint he hooked his legs into Dan's canoe so we were effectively "attached" which allowed Dan to give me a much-needed break. A few times the wind came up and even though we were going with the current I needed to row pretty hard to make any headway. However, I must say that despite being privately pretty scared that my old shoulder injuries would resurface, they did not. I was tired and that was it. I wasn't even really sore the next day although I didn't feel like doing anything. Wow. That was amazing given that a few years ago I quit my job over a shoulder tear. So all in all it was a really great day. Poor Heidi was falling asleep on her feet by 7 that night though. She worked so hard. As did Levi.

I have to say that this is the first spring in a long, long time that has felt manageable. My typical spring feelings are a mixture of excitement and crushing disappointment as I see the possibilities in the yard with the beautiful and so short-lived weather, and then have to let them sail by as I have to go back to doing way too much. This year I am enjoying so many moments and still I feel able to look after Dan and the kids with all their birthdays and play dates and track meets and doctor's appointments, and of course, all the eating everyone does. It's very nice and it leaves me wondering how anyone is actually able to do it all. This is coupled with the reality of feeling the loss of my income. It doesn't help for me not to work and yet, it really helps. Such a conundrum.

At this point I generally go off in my head into the "why are we here?" space. Also the difficulty of human suffering and how I can ever truly enjoy so much of my existence when so many others exist in poverty and fear and abuse. Not to mention families with kids with autism, etc. It is so NOT fair and I really wish life were fair. I wish I could actually help somehow without breaking down myself.

In my evangelical upbringing, I don't think I was prepared very well to be a person accepting help or needing help or even being needy, period. I was thoroughly prepared to help others. That's great until it becomes a problem to oneself or one's own family. There is obviously no point in helping others if the people who have been placed next to you suffer as a result. What a dilemma! Here I am, with my husband actively looking after me by taking up the slack and becoming a primary breadwinner, and I cannot figure out how this is okay. It is so hard to accept someone caring for ME. Not that I think it's wrong, I guess, just so unexpected. Where do I put that? Given all the urgent needs in the world, why should I be loved so effectively?

So I go back in my life and think about all the messages I absorbed as a child and young adult. I was given two streams of brainwashing, I think. One from the church and my family, the other from the secular world. However, both agreed in this point: I was capable of much, and much was therefore required of me.

I think probably my generation was one of the first to have women's lib sort of assumed. There was perhaps a bit more emphasis on how we as girls should not be afraid of maths and sciences, and also an enthusiastic pushing of non-traditional careers, but it wasn't militant. And we as girls were not worried about entering any sort of field we cared to. The downside was that the math of time and energy requirements for daily life were sort of glossed over. Of course we could do anything boys could do. That was self-evident. However, in reality, someone needs to look after the kids. And no matter how wonderful one's spouse is, he will definitely require regular maintenance to stay that way. And having other people look after kids during the day, as everyone knows by now, is not the same and does not necessarily lessen the emotional load of children and their real needs for attention, affection, and frequent cleaning.

So a picture was painted by my secular mentors that had my husband and I cheerfully sharing all the roles of homemaking and careers. Which my husband and I have certainly done in every possible combination since we were married. This is a solution but not one that is open to the vast majority of people whose jobs are not so in demand and therefore so flexible. And it fails to allow for much in the way of specialization. Somebody has to priorize their job in order to make ends meet. And it works far better for someone to be on top of what groceries are needed and who should be where when. I think that efficiencies such as these common-sense division of labour solutions have always been in play and in fact were used by the very teachers that were encouraging us to not use them. I think they encouraged us in some sort of hope that maybe because of new gender equalities in society, certain things would be possible for us that have in fact never been possible. Like doing it all.

This was exacerbated in my case by my church upbringing that encouraged me with many terms such as "no compromise," "total surrender," "giving it all," and so on. These were forcefully and emotionally preached to men and women equally and gave the impression that the world needed our full commitment and there was no time to waste. This kind of cause is nothing but appealing to anyone with any ideals whatsoever, but it does not mix well with the day in, day out, very un-cause like needs of little kids. Which are hard to get worked up about but which cause huge problems if they are not met.

So there you go. As I told my parents the other night, I think I grew up in a perfect storm of great messages which added up to a bit of a weird view of life. And now God is inexplicably allowing me time to rest and heal and reflect and just breathe. And you know what? It's a very odd sensation. But I'm thinking that it is helpful in figuring out a normal rate of living as opposed to full out all the time. And no, there is no way this is fair as I think probably every woman in the world needs this and very few get it. And I can't deal with that. But I guess I don't have to. Not being God myself.