Mi casa es Su casa

The Nextdoor app was designed to help build community between neighbors. Through it, neighborhood information gets shared, help and advice are solicited and given, and items no longer needed are shared.

At least in principle and at its best.

Unfortunately, it often dissolves into “the real world” as folks with different views of the world comment, attack, or support each other. As mom would say, “It is what it is…”

Just this morning someone posted about suspicious activity in their neighborhood. Apparently two people were walking in the street in hoodies and one had a backpack on. Should she call the police? You can imagine the posts that followed. I did not comment publicly, but in my head, I thought…

Why not just introduce yourself and get to know them?

I don’t know how God works in you, but for me, whenever my “little holier than thou self” shows up, God always engineers a “moment of growth for me”... which he did in less than an hour this morning.

After reading the post, I headed out for a walk in the chill of fall in the desert. Exhausted from the previous day’s activities, I treasured every step, taking new routes in the neighborhood while making a creative “to do” list in my head. And I would save cleaning the house for last, promising myself a quiet start to my day, free of human connection…just me and the doves and the hummingbirds.

As I rounded the corner near my house, walking towards me in the street was a person in a black hoodie, dark sunglasses, and…you guessed it…a backpack.

Why not just introduce yourself and get to know them?

Apparently it was time for the rubber to meet the road. I walked over to introduce myself and learn something about a fellow walker, whose gender was not apparent as the hoodie was pulled up tightly against the cold. She pulled back her hoodie, revealing a beautiful spiky silver haired “do” and explained she was visiting from Indiana and planning on moving when she retired next June. Walking gave her an opportunity to see areas she might want to live in, and she had wondered what the homes looked like here in my neighborhood.

Ask her into your home.

Wait….what? The sink is full of dishes. Clothes are everywhere. The music equipment is spread all over the house. I can’t ask a total stranger into my home. Why hadn’t I stuck with the plan to always have the home prepared to meet visitors?

Then words escaped from my mouth before I could defend.

If you don’t mind a mess, you are welcome to come see our home to get ideas of what you might want.

She thought that was a lovely idea. I showed her every room trying hard not to apologize for every mess. No stone was left unturned. Yes, the cat box was in the middle of the laundry room. Yes there were unmade beds. And yes, there was underwear on the bathroom counter.

In spite of these crimes against humanity, we had a lovely conversation and bonded over our mutual love of cats. Half an hour later she was saying goodbye, and I had made a new friend.

But I was given a gift far more valuable in this interruption of my well made plans, I think.

It is far easier to declare what righteous behavior should be for others than it is to actually live it myself.

I don’t know what your relationship is with the Creator of the Universe, but I believe that He views me with gentle, sardonic humor. All the time. I excel in letting Him know how things are or how they should be or what my grand plan is for my life and everyone else’s.

And after I have declared this to the world, mostly on my imaginary “when I rule the world“ spreadsheet, I usually feel His kind, gentle, always loving voice in my spirit, as He pats my head, saying,

There, there, child….slow down. I know you. I love you. Just follow me.

So I listened to that voice today instead of my own. My home was a mess, but today I welcomed the stranger in instead of just telling others that’s what they should do. I am a slow learner, and I often get in the way of the Creator’s desires for me, but today I opened the door.

Tomorrow, I may go a step further and offer to make coffee in the messy kitchen and dump the laundry off of the couch and maybe even make a little coffee cake and sit for a more extended chat.

But today it was another small step in the process of aligning my heart with my Creator’s.

And that in itself is a small miracle.

Silencing the “shushers”

My brother and I were each bussed in our 6th grade years to a “gifted” program at another elementary school. We both have reminisced about how it may have been a cover for moving our off-center personalities out of the regular classroom.

Even at a young age, though, I remember having my doubts as I watched fellow “gifted” student, Marvin, crawl around the room on his stomach during class nearly every day making strange animal noises.

Perhaps we were a different kind of “special” than our parents had been led to believe.

Whatever the true story, this placement sent us on a different track after our two years at the mostly Hispanic middle school of our youth. This was Steinbeck territory, mind you, and that middle school was filled with intriguing characters that could have easily populated his novels. We were all the children of braceros, Okies and military parents with all of the baggage that came with the territory of growing up in the Salinas Valley.

For example, a routine lice check at our middle school turned up an actual spider’s nest in a ratted and sprayed updo. Being “called out” to fight was a daily occurrence among the tough skinned girls who sported deadly fingernails as weapons to draw first blood. Marvin’s older sister Patches, who could beat up anybody in school, regaled us with tales of being born with rubber bones and being folded up in a suitcase and shipped from New York.

This was a nutrient rich fodder for a budding creative, and when sent to continue in the honors program at the “upscale” mostly white high school, I could not escape my addiction to stories of the people around me, thus condemning my honors career to swift conclusion.

Because the girl who sat next to me my freshman year in Honors English dated soldiers from the local military base. Her hair was Natalie Wood dark and ratted high with colored bows protruding at odd angles. And she wore tight miniskirts under which black fishnet stockings with rips in them traveled down to her knee high black vinyl go-go boots.

Her ample white thigh flesh often crept out of those tattered tights, and she would lean in to regale me with tantalizing tidbits of her amorous adventures as a thick fragrance emanated from her body and enveloped mine. My removal from the honors program that year had its birth in my fascination with the flesh escaping from those tights. Her stories were so much more engaging than The Iliad.

Needless to say, the shushing of my spirit began in earnest in that freshman year…that critical-spirited, sharp-edged shush that began to populate my experiences in any organized activity where I felt joy. Having been asked to leave choir in elementary school due to my inability to control my exuberance for music, I seemed to be not welcome in a variety of activities where I did not seem to be communicating my “seriousness”.

I had thought that all of that was behind me, since I am seven decades into this life, but in this retirement community in which I now reside, I am once again encountering a shusher. And I have noticed that no matter how many others are experiencing their own kind of hilarity, the laser focus seems to be directed at me.

When targeted, I often think of my nature-loving college friend who once stood naked at the bottom of the Grand Canyon celebrating the sunrise from a private camping spot. He told us that someone from a passing tourist raft yelled, “Put your clothes on.” To which he yelled, “Take yours off!”

Here’s the thing about shushers. Any hint of not taking some activity “seriously enough” and out comes the proverbial finger to the lips. Fun is not allowed. Spontaneity is not allowed. Everything. Is. Serious. Business.

I used to get so sad as a child when someone sat on my spirit. But now my sadness is directed back to the source. How exhausting it must be to be the policeman of the universe, the keeper of proper behavior, the captain of putting people in their rightful place.

I know myself well enough to know that in spite of my many faults, I know how to read a room and be respectful. I know where fun ends and work begins. I am not a saboteur of excellence. I may have an active little kid inside of me, but that little kid appreciates the value of hard work and focus when necessary.

But I also happen to live in a landscape of joy in all circumstance.

Somewhere deep inside the shusher, I think, is a joyless little kid struggling with perfectionism and always feeling like the mark is being missed. Somewhere inside is a kid who had to play by the rules and color in the lines and never have a hair out of place. Somewhere inside is a kid who never got to run in the woods and experience freedom from the tyranny of perfectionism.

And perhaps they are too old to change.

Unfortunately,

so am I.

Complacency and minnows

If we labor under the illusion that we have limitless years ahead, complacency can drive us to put off the most important of experiences. And complacency is something in which I have a master’s degree.

I think about complacency and about the need to get things done “before I go” during my walks in the desert sunrise. Every day is a sea of possibilities and, for me, those possibilities dart in and out of my mind like schools of minnows caught in the currents. Knowing my shelf life is limited, I feel deep pressure to focus on just one of these limitless possibilities.

And, for God’s sake, literally, just finish one thing.

It is a family trait to be incapable of focusing on one thing, though. And set free to explore everything with ample time and few responsibilities, I seem to flounder most days with the decision of which direction to head.

There are novels that need to be finished, and a song that needs a melody, and a menu needs to be planned in case the migrant caravan comes through, and weeds that need to be pulled, and…and…and…and…

The to-list is endless.

In the process of trying to mentally narrow my choices as I walk, a white cotton tail of a bunny flashes in the bushes of the wash, and I stop to have a conversation. A coyote cries in the distance, and I change direction hoping to have a personal encounter. A family of javelina scurry below me through the thick brush of another wash, and I am transfixed by their repulsive beauty.

And so, once again, the list of tasks will remain unfinished as if I had all the time in the world.

Because the world awaits, and I want to be a witness.

I already know that here in this desert I have grown incapable of closing my palms to the promise offered in each sunrise. Now set free to listen to the whispers of my own heart, I am starting to wonder - what if what I have labeled as complacency is, in reality, nothing more than discarding a “to do” list and embracing a “to be” list?

Because as I write these words, the sky is still dark, and it makes my pulse quicken to ponder the awakening sun.

Somewhere, an owl is settling in for the long day ahead in the shelter of a saguaro. Somewhere, javelina are still sleeping under the cover of brush, and the coyote’s cry becomes silent. And over in the corner, my hiking boots await the day’s walk, filling me with restlessness to see what the birth of this day holds..

These morning hours insist on contemplation. I know, I am closer to the end of my life than the beginning, and yet, the knowledge of my impending expiration date does not seem to affect my behavior. The novels are still unfinished, lying dormant in a computer file. The weeds have not been pulled.

But I did not miss the barn owl screeching and hiding almost invisible in the branches above my head yesterday morning. And when the unexpected rain drops fell in the canyon, large and hard, I did not miss how they sounded on the thirsty canyon floor, and I felt alive as I traveled, soaked shirt and skin, to the safety of my car..

So, it is enough, I think, to encounter this day with open palms. It is enough to be a witness to the swish of a dove’s wing in the Palo Verde tree, the winsome cry of the quail in the wash, the gathering of thunderheads in a desert canyon. It is enough to fully embrace all that life holds for me here.

And so I lace up my boots and stride out into the desert morning yet once again to swim with the minnows. Perhaps one will catch my attention and slow down long enough for me to capture it and take it home.

Or perhaps I am destined to be a minnow myself, surrendered to the current of a vast ocean, inconsequential and oblivious,

fully at home in this moment,

and yet hungering for a life beyond the sea.