landscapes and particulars

landscapes @ 2009-01-16T23:51:00

2009-01-17T05:52:05Z

When I was eight or nine I went to summer camp, as usual. I came back with browned skin, unbrushed hair, and a week's worth of dirt layered into my suitcase. My mother sorted through it in the laundry room and laughed. The house smelled so good, and she had cleaned our room, like she sometimes did during the day while we were away at school.

I don't know how to tell this story.

While I was at camp, one afternoon during quiet hour, I had taken out my little spiral notebook and pretended to write a letter to my mother. "Dear Mom," it said, "I miss you and want to tell you how much I love you, except for on Tuesdays." It descended by degrees in each sentence and ended in "All my hate, Kristen." It was some childish version of a writing exercise, a scribble, some way of amusing myself. I can't explain it, and I couldn't explain it when my mom found it, cleaning out my suitcase.

She came to me privately in my room, asked me gently. I dissolved, totally mortified. I felt caught; I felt culpable for something I didn't even mean; I looked at her face and would have died rather than have her believe it. I wasn't really a very softhearted child, and this is one of the only situations where I can recall the feeling of desperately loving my mother independent of the expectation of comfort or support. I burst into tears and babbled about not meaning it and just doing it for a joke, bored and away from home. She believed me. I can't remember if I told her that I loved her, but I know that she told me.

Like so many of my most humiliating moments, it's a little thing. It happened long before I ever had real troubles with my mom - the time I told her I didn't listen to what she said because I didn't respect her, or the ugly things I wrote in my journal when I was fourteen, or when she talked to grandma on the phone about grandma's cancer and I was filled with disgust for the way she looked when she cried. Unlike those other things, though, it was a secret she kept for me, and like the other secrets there were between us, since her death I have had to keep it alone. Shut deep, my memory of myself is dark and disproportioned, but I still have it, and although my memory of my mother is childish and one-sided, I have that, too. What I don't have, and what I want, is her side of the story; her knowledge of me as an adult and as my mother and as the keeper of all these old and quiet secrets.

landscapes @ 2008-05-09T23:56:00

2008-05-10T04:57:08Z

Two years before I was born, the 1986 Expo was held in Vancouver, British Columbia. They built the Skytrain and Canada Place, and my parents went with their Kodak cameras.

Twenty years later I stood on bleachers in damp midmorning beside the track at a high school in Tsawassen, reading a faded and rusted over blue sign that read: THIS TRACK 8 FIELD FACILITY IS A COMMUNITY LEGACY OF THE 1987 B.C. SUMMER GAMES

As a child in Bellingham things were the same way. Our many city and state parks, public sports fields, nature paths, and visitor's signposts all blue aluminum placards in the sun and rain, dripping cedars and fir trees and emperor ferns. Like most of the Pacific Northwest, Bellingham underwent a spurt of energy and revitalization in the 80s that resulted in sudden population growth, and ushered the region into the clean, neutral, new modernity of the West Coast in the 90s. Nearly all human impact I saw around me was only five or ten or twenty years older than my memory. Everything else was clean dirt, vaulting trees.

We had a hospital - that continued to expand - a shopping mall - big enough to lure a steady stream of Canadians from the Lower Mainland, weekends or weekdays, who were forever committing traffic infractions - a strip of shopping centers packed on either side of a long and hazardous multilane street we called "the Guide." It ran north and south, from the Mt Baker Highway in north Bellingham farmland down to the curving bay, the oldest part of Bellingham, where the Roeder family and a handful of others who built the papermills and harnessed Whatcom Creek erected their stately family home in Victorian style - a remnant of Old Whatcom, like the Victorian and Edwardian mansions visible on the hills from a boat in the bay.

In this corner of the world, human history was an afterthought, a matter of mere practicality. We needed public buildings - the new city hall, courthouse, public library, all built in the 60s and 70s - because, like schools, they were necessary for the education and community life of the people. This was a land without churches. We needed cars and minivans to get around in the rain, do grocery shopping, and drive children to soccer practice. We had no false pride in old cathedrals or lines of brick tenements, no indoor gyms, no nightlife. The city built an indoor swimming pool in the early 90s, to the great consternation of many old-time Bellingham residents (local boys and 60s import hippies), who thought the lake and ocean had always been good enough for them.

We considered it natural to do things outside. There was enough lake, woods, river, mountain, and ocean for all of us and more. In the summer, swimming, hiking, boating, walking downtown or in parks, low tides anywhere up and down the coast, biking and waterskiing. In winter, an hour's drive up the mountain brought skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, playing and sledding into the frozen bowl of an alpine lake. In spring and fall and winter and summer, we did it in the rain.

[fall 2006]

landscapes @ 2008-04-26T19:54:00

2008-04-27T00:55:10Z

The summer I learned to drive, dad and I sought out the secrets of two counties and a hundred old roads. One evening in June we drove north, past the bluffs, past the airport, past the Indian Reservation, past the Cabin where we spent holidays, west of the farmland into the wooded sea hills, and parked on a rocky beach.

It was chilly by the water. It was almost sunset. We got out of the car and sat on camp stools and I read a children's book retelling of the legend of Frey and his love for the ice maiden. My dad told me how Spaniards and English came up from the south with their maps and named the dry land; how Point Frances is also an island because of the tide. He took out his scope and saw the birds, the islands, the names of passing ships.

It chanced one day that Freyr had gone to Hlidskjálf, and gazed over all the world; but when he looked over into the northern region, he saw on an estate a house great and fair. And toward this house went a woman; when she raised her hands and opened the door before her, brightness gleamed from her hands, both over sky and sea, and all the worlds were illumined of her.

landscapes @ 2007-08-20T02:53:00

2007-08-20T09:53:43Z

She would say, "Listen to the words," when I complained every week about the music at church. She said, "Grandma cares more about you than about her books; they're just things," when I damaged something of Grandma Wesley's and was afraid to give it back. She would say, "Grandma and Grandpa like to get your thank-you cards; they keep them, so write something nice." She said, "Wash your hair first, then your body, with the washcloth," and "it's easier if you zip the zipper before you try to button your jeans." Every time there were parent-teacher conferences, she and Dad would come back that evening, and Mom would call us to her room individually so she could tell us what they said - and what they said was good. "I'm so proud of you," she would say.

She said, "We dress nicely because we're going to worship in God's house." She said, "What would your teachers say if they could see you right now?" She said, "You're squelching your brother - I don't want you treating him like that." She said, "I'm glad he's still young, and he can yell up the stairs with his little boy voice," and, during her last summer, "In the past year he's lost his baby face: his face is thinner and his jaw is different."

We watched The X-Files and she said, "Too weird!" in the way she always said that, and I ate minute rice and a week later she was dead.

sin boldly

2007-04-30T04:11:20Z

[april 20, 2007]

Yesterday at 5 or so I went to Subway, and on the way back stopped at Fusz for a drink and chips, and then had a picnic on the grass behind the bushes outside. It was wonderful. I listened to Sufjan, watched the rabbits, lay back and looked at the tree branches against the sky. I thought about confession, and felt so calm and ready: All my sins will be forgiven. My own sins, said aloud with embarrassment, will be heard like any other person's sins, and I will be washed free. I've been too jealous of my sins - not scrupulous in not committing sin, but ashamed of confessing it. I ought to "sin boldly," like Luther - not, obviously, in the way that it sounds, but through humility. To sin boldly, to take them out of the deep hidden place where evangelicals trap and muffle our sins, to sin boldly by openly admitting things that I have done, refusing to abstract them from myself, and going to confession because I need it. I need that discipline of humility.

conversion, bluntly

2007-04-30T04:02:04Z

How can I even listen to my music, these "born agains" in their supposedly cold and individualist and wrongheaded world, where without grace they can't even have contrition, but only dark-hearted attrition? How can I go to mass tomorrow where it won't touch me, since I can't get "graces" from the priest's blessing, can't even count myself a brother with his flock? I approach the Church - Christ's Church, my Christ - as a heathen, in the graceless darkness of damnation. I can't even run home and have my father from babyhood, Pastor Bill, dip me back into Lake Whatcom and perform a valid baptism, because I would immediately need to start confessing, or build up a myriad of venial and mortal sins to be confessed when I convert and have First Confession, and I would still be outside.

I feel like I am with God, and in His care. They see my family prayers and rising hymns and Easter dresses and lunches with my Pastor and the Christmas story around the tree and crayon crosses and the faith of martyred missionaries and their children and the Firs chapel tucked in woodland and 200 children in pajamas around a campfire and falling asleep to old songs proclaiming the faith, and say I come from a cold, individualist, ignorant people. I'll say it to them, with their empty silent churches and lonely priests and nuns and worldly, untaught, cynical children.

The tragedy is, I think they are right. And so I'm on the outside, cut off from my Savior, for the first time in my life.

-

Sometimes I can't even find anything attractive about Catholicism, and rampant legalism and discussion about canon law makes sense, of course, and I understand it, but it is ugly and unChristian and at the end of the day I hate it.

Why am I doing this? Sometimes I look at these new people and think about my friends and grandparents and everyone at home and wonder why I'm doing this.

-

I went to Mark Noll's lecture [on how evangelical attitudes changed because of JP2, and an evangelical response to his encyclical "Ecclesia de Eucharistia"] at 7. I'm so glad I went. His talk itself was good, articulate and somewhat technical (as I realized only when everyone I talked to said they couldn't understand a word), but the questions were the really good part.

A man stood up and talked about how he was in Cambridge in 1980 - two years after John Paul II became pope. And Billy Graham was there, and he talked about how JP2 had welcomed him into Krakow, in spite of the protests of most of the other bishops. And he imitated Billy, with his pointing finger and way of talking, and said, "And I was preaching from his pulpit, and three - days - latah, he was made Pope!" The whole crowd laughed.

Earlier, he [Noll] brought us all to a standstill for a moment. While reading JP2's encyclical on the Eucharist and talking about Protestant problems, especially Luther's, he said: "I can only think about how things would be different if a Pope had made this response in 1521, to a renegade monk in Wittenburg. I don't think we would be standing here tonight, divided." It was a weighty feeling, for one of the most prominent evangelical scholars in the world to say that in a room full of Catholics.

Eleanor Stump brought up the subject of evangelical and Catholic unity in the culture war. Someone else asked about reunion and he said that matters of worship and devotion would move more slowly than rational theologies. I thought that was very insightful. He described how nothing is more moving to a man of his upbringing and formation than a service of the Lord's Supper with hymns by Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts. How very true. It was good to hear such an intelligent Protestant - he talked in that particular way that only evangelicals talk (not vulgar, just tinges of that particular *thing*), which was like a breath of air from home.

He did say that 450 years of history is a huge and meaningful thing, that might take another 450 years to undo. He said, "none of us in this room will see full reunification in our lifetime."

Dr Beabout compared the evangelical perspective on JP2's papacy to the traditionalist Catholic perspective, and Mark Noll ended up talking briefly about appreciating the good in Catholicism, like JP2, but still able say as an evangelical, "not my church!" when bad things happen - and made an odd comment about being in favor of women priests. He is a very evangelical man.

Another time, Noll was talking about what Cs and Ps have gained from each other. He said, "I know what evangelicals can learn from Catholics, though of course I can't speak for Catholics. But last semester a Nigerian nun came to speak at Notre Dame, and in the middle of her speech about social justice she stopped to say with fervor, 'Of course, what matters most is your personal relationship with Jesus Christ.' Now, I won't claim that she doesn't have the theology, but she got her terminology from somewhere - !" The crowd laughed hugely. I loved the feeling of togetherness, of everyone knowing the inside jokes about each other. It reminded me how much it is, after all, a family dispute, though a dispute nonetheless.

-

It is still very sensitive for me, thought. I have grown in my convictions about faith, and really understand the beauty and truth of evangelical Christianity, even if I admit that it is not the fullness of truth. But I was formed an evangelical and I am an evangelical, for better or worse. I will accustom myself to finding bits of my beloved faith in the greater structure of the Catholic faith - in other words, allow my own formation (in part particular to me and my imagination and preferences and sympathies, in part shared with my tradition) to be incorporated into Catholic truth, not utterly wiped out, or painted over, or whatever it is cradle Catholics think should be happening.

So yes, I consider my 18 years as a Protestant, as a Christian, as positively and warmly as I can. It was then I was taught to love and fear the Lord. And it is that same love and fear that leads me to first recognize Christ in the Catholic Church and then be compelled to pursue him. All by the grace of God and the Holy Spirit, but what is spiritual formation if not training and molding oneself to respond to Him? Love for Him is the first cause that propels me here, and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and I learned these things as a Protestant. If this grace - and what startling, wonderful amounts of grace! We would never think to grant "heretics and schismatics" this depth of grace, but God is God - if this grace is merely an offshoot of the real channel of grace, the Church, then how much more should we prize and admire it when we find it, and praise the Lord.

-

Surely there is mercy, with the Church such a stumbling block, such a bloody watchman! I am learning a love and awe for the Church, but could it ever measure up to the consequences of its claims? I just feel this enormous, deadly responsibility that grows from what God has given, if God has given it, which I believe. We ought to be flat on our faces in the dust, with deep humility and agony and sorrow, Abraham in protest, pleading to heaven and full of love, dreading the coming night. It kills me to see historical arrogance and even the traditionalist cluster today. The Church in this century may have slipped in many ways, but if it is not a bright beacon, at least it is protected from the greater sin of hubris and puffing-up and coldness. They would die for the Mass in Latin, but not for Protestants or atheists or Jews or Muslims or New Agers, as they are? Christ did not die for our self-satisfaction and our love of earthly glory, no matter how beautiful. He died for our salvation. He died for Sarah Wheatley and my Dad and Billy Graham. We cannot distort the truth, which is God's gift to us and our hope. But we have to want to die for them. We have to be like Paul, who would make himself anathema for his kind, if it were possible.

-

On Saturday I went to town, watched The Journey Home, and remembered: I don't have to be perfect. God knows where I am and this is what the Church is for: my weakness, not my ability to perform and meet standards. The Church is the arms of God. He wants me there and will accept my humility. I actually remembered this on the shuttle to WalMart in the golden-setting sun, and felt it pressed on my heart. Now the way ahead seems clearer.

landscapes @ 2007-04-29T22:14:00

2007-04-30T03:16:00Z

[march 1, 2007]

I slept in this morning (skipped Ethics) and have spent the midmorning on my bed, watching the highway and the rim of the city. St Louis is so dingy, but wears the light well. It feels a certain way that fits with 80s rock and reminds me of something. PBS shows, or Reading Rainbow, or Mr Rogers. I am learning to like it. It is becoming a part of me, but slowly. On good days little things can remind me of home, Seattle, even Vancouver, and it becomes sweeter even as I long for that other something I see through it.

That same mix of freedom, nostalgia, and contentedness came to me yesterday afternoon, when I stood looking out the window, listening to a Celine Dion song I hadn't heard in years that reminded me of the West Coast, Seattle at sunset, and I thought about my mom, feeling young and old at the same time. I am so distant from how I was when she was alive and knew me, and I've changed and grown and am almost nineteen years old. I always grudgingly admit in my mind that, yes, mom would be proud of me, I'm her daughter - but it's seldom I get the clarity and calm that allows me to feel it. I am in college, living on my own and in the position I longed to be in when I was fifteen and lost at home. How things change.

Listening to the Eva Cassidy version of "Time After Time," eyes closed and trying to sleep, takes me right back to the Cabin. In some moments of the familiar tune, I could be thirteen with my headphones on in the dark, holding my plastic Walkman, falling asleep to 103.5 and 104.3 and the dreamlike soft rock songs being replayed again and again. I remember my small space and every color and texture of the furniture - the slope of the ceiling. In the morning I will dress and go downstairs and get ready in the tiny bathroom; will comb my hair back into a ponytail; will eat cinnamon toast while Mom listens to Paul Harvey; will wear my red and white striped rugby shirt or white Stanford sweatshirt and jeans; will fill my backpack with Alyssa DiGregorio's Brenthaven binder, my textbooks, my SSR books, my sack lunch Mom made. It was another world.

The verse about warm nights makes me think of the summer before, at Kelly's house, sleepovers every week of the summer. The laughter and conversations, but also the quiet. The times when we would sit in her upstairs in the evening, listening to a CD and keeping our thoughts to ourselves.

landscapes @ 2007-04-23T23:21:00

2007-04-24T04:22:40Z

After all this, I am still lovesick for them, my "kinsmen according to the flesh." May God look with pity on his faithful servants, who love him with all their heart and all their might, who fear him and sing him songs by night, underneath the stars and hills, under the murmur of towering trees and in the hush of the dark.

I was listening to Lance sing "To God Be the Glory," a recording now probably ten years old, and thinking of Firwood. Centerstage in pajamas, arms around each other, the name of the Lord like honey on our lips. Walking up through the trees to dark cabins, hunting for toothpaste, trekking back down to the light of the showerhouse, a glow of people in the bustle of getting ready for bed, still bound by the last strains of our song, everyone in the quiet calm of the deepening night. The morning might come early, with rain pattering on the rafters and window canvas, but for now we can fall asleep to the wind in the trees, far up, and the clear smell of the lake and woods at night, broken intermittently by a far off yelp of laughter, and finally the hush of sleep.

Before bed we will dig out our flashlights and Bibles, flip through them in the familiar, almost careless, caress that is our way, as our counselor asks us that night's questions and we answer - we theologize - with sleepy ease. We have Bible study every afternoon on the grass or the swim beach, but in the dark we talk more freely, softened and made serious by affection for each other and intimacy with Him.

God does not waste things. Oh God, oh God.