This post is lingering in my drafts for a couple of weeks. I’ve been waiting for something, not quite knowing what. Sr Miriam James made an announcement this morning that I would invite you to pray with and for as she discerns the possibility of founding a new order. Sr Miriam, Michelle and Heather talked about it on a special episode of Abiding Together.
About a week ago I made a decision and ordered from Ascension Press The Liturgy of the Hours Four Volume Set. For right now I’m using the Divine Office website or app depending on where I’m praying. My dedicated prayer place moves around a bit, particularly in the afternoon. Ordering the books reminds me of the desire, a longing for lower tech that engages my being in a more complete way. The feel of a book in my hand, the words engaging my heart (intellect, will, emotions), the words feeding all of this, drawing me out of my self to something, some One greater, into deeper relationship with the God who LOVES me completely. As evidenced by the quote from Psalm 119 below.
I call with all my heart; Lord, hear me,
I will keep your commands;
I call upon you, save me
and I will do your will. – Psalm 119
As I read this I both laughed and said out loud, “this is such a lie.” I don’t keep all the commandments. And yet embodied in that statement, in the heart of my self, the desire to do so lives, this desire asks me to look at what I’m doing or not doing, repent, and make changes accordingly. Ouch, yes. And yet, that ouch leads to deeper intimacy with the Holy Trinity, with myself and with others. I came to deeper knowledge and understanding of this over the last week or so, with a specific experience over the weekend.
Friday my Sweetie brought home no bake lasagna noodles, and I’d been thinking I’d like to actually *make* lasagna, so how cool is this?! Saturday morning I popped over to the HEB to get the things I didn’t have at home to actually make the aforementioned food. While pittering about the store I picked up limeade with jalapeno and lemonade as they had a special sale on them and lemonade is the drink of the summer. I bring all the things home, set them on the counter to begin making lasagna and I pour limeade into the purple forty ounce cup, put the straw in, but did not, I repeat, did not put the lid on. I suspect there is a big clue as to what happened next. As I move my hand over the un-lidded cup, thinking the straw to be much further away than it actually was, my hand and the straw meet and thirty-seven point six ounces of limeade with jalapeno goes everywhere. The counter. The floor. The rug. The vacuum cleaner. And liquid being liquid spreads out in a most unbecoming way. The island has cabinets and some of the limeade makes its way Into the cabinet. Thankfully it wasn’t a lot but oh my goodness, what an incredible Plot Twist to my Saturday plan. Plan: make lasagna, clean up from making lasagna, watch baseball, shower, go to Mass as it’s Called by Name Sunday and I’m on the Vocations Team. My Sweetie, bless him, offers to help. “Nope, please don’t.” I say through gritted teeth. I wasn’t mad at him, I was annoyed with myself.
Just after this happened his work phone rang and he had to go in to take care of something. In a way his needing to leave helped, there are many things we do differently from one another, even after thirty four years of married life, and cleaning is one of them. Also, the thing I needed to do was cook the meat, so in the skillet it went to cook while I got to work first putting all the groceries away because that lasagna wasn’t happening then, that’s for certain. The next three hours were full of sopping up lemonade, wiping down the counter and cabinet doors, throwing the sticky rags into the laundry, vacuuming both the floor and the baseboards (because why not), and mopping. This further turned into cleaning the bathroom and the closet area outside our bedroom. The meat cooked, and put away until Sunday. Dishes done. Showered and ready for Church. Phew. Made it.
In the midst of all of this we developed something of a communications problem. Ooof. These are never fun for so many reasons and, as you can imagine and have experienced, it starts with something small that cascades. While the issue itself resolved, there’s a sense that God is wanting to deal with something with me. Sunday morning there was this:
and wow did Fr Mike’s homily show me something. Not as an accusatory, shame filled thing. No. No. That’s not it. Nope. This is an invitation to seeing where something is rooted and dealing with it. One of the things I’ve come to understand about anger – not all anger – but the daily type of anger that makes me/us bristle, is that it’s often and deeply rooted in fear. There are several responses to fear: fight, flight, freeze, fawn. When fight becomes the go-to response, the analogous emotion is anger. And that’s the “Aha!” moment. Oh. I get where this is and I know it’s time to look at this, work on forgiving what needs forgiving for myself and others and surrender this to the One Who loves me without reservation. This also gives me an opportunity to work on how I respond to people and to me.
All of this has prompted me to give deeper consideration to an on-going and developing understanding of how people think and make connections. First permit me to say that I am not, in any way, placing limits on how people think, this is experiential and observational in my own life, and I suspect far more nuanced. Now back to our regularly scheduled program. Several years ago I had a conversation with a friend regarding a creativity exercise in the magazine I worked on. SarahBeth (not her real name) couldn’t understand how people got from a square with something in it to finished pieces. Here is where learning and understanding commenced for me. Our conversation over the next hour included a number of things including the “how-to” and a commitment on my part to offer a visual tutorial on the website. The thinking on my part is, if one person is struggling then others are struggling and offering a potential way of looking at it will help any one of these quilters begin to see the possibilities. This is both an opportunity to “prime the pump” of their creativity and to see in real time how one quilter approaches the possibilities. Part of the learning/understanding on my part is sequential thinking A leads to A1, A2, A3, leads to B, B1, B2, B3, B4 etc. And then there’s lateral thinking where A leads to 5, 5 leads to purple, purple leads to curly, curly leads to One, wherein we arrive at the quilt design. Through all of this A, 5, purple, curly, One there are connections made. For example A might be the color palate of oranges and purples (do you see how the leap over 5 was made? – hang on!) And for each of the purples and oranges I need five each of tints and tones creating a complete color scale from light to dark with some good mediums in there. Curly or curvy is the shape desired in both the blocks and the quilting leading into One complete quilt. There are other ways of approaching the connections between the A, 5, purple, curly, One. As an aside I like to refer to this as Harold and the Purple Crayon kind of thinking where possibility exist and remain possible until used or discarded as desired.
In a more recent conversation someone asked two questions: one – is this the difference between how men and women think, and two – would I be able to show how this worked? I was delighted to share that this wasn’t the difference between how men and women think as the person in whom I discovered this is a woman. These are complementary ways of thinking and we need both. The answer to his second question was spur of the moment, making the connection between some passage of Scripture and something else, bringing something that seemed wholly unrelated. And that’s when he said, “I can see why you’re pursuing being a Lay Dominican.”
Of late pondering these conversations brings me to this place where the 24-step color wheel (CMYK) exemplifies the sheer beauty of the how these two ways of thinking complement each other and work together for our good as a whole. These are not opposite as opposed to one another they are opposite as complement to one another and how they work together and build one another up is so cool. Sequential thinking shows us where we need to go and the shortest distance to get there. Lateral thinking fills in all the details, remembers to bring lunch and snacks, knows where all of the museums, quilt shops and places to watch the sunset are and how much extra time is built in to visit these places. And with this dear ones I head off to pursue some time in prayer and make an Altar linen delivery.
God bless,
Teri
A Quilter's Heart 