We All Want to Belong

Posted on by Penny Carothers
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Mom has been coming over to my house on Fridays for awhile now. She usually she just sits on the couch and sips her tea and writes inscrutable things in magazines and catalogs while the kids play. Every now and then she’ll pipe up. “I bought Spencer a potty. He’s old enough to use one now.” Or, “The gluten free pasta is really what he needs. I’ll send some.” Sometimes she’ll take a bath or a nap.  And she always empties the bathroom trash.

A few weeks ago the sun was shining, and when that happens in the Pacific Northwest, you get outside, stat. Quinn and Spencer and I were weeding while Mom sat on the couch. Quinn was filling up her watering can and watering the flowers and the weeds both. Spencer had a child-sized rake that he pulled along behind him as he followed me from one garden bed to another. Mom came out the door while we were working on the strawberry patch. First she sat in one of the Adirondack chairs with her eyes closed. Then she got up and walked around the perimeter of the yard. After watching for a few minutes I went back to work, building my pile of those blasted shot-weeds that are trying to conquer everything. Next thing I knew Mom had made her way to the shed, found the aerator, and started working on the lower section of the lawn. After a few rows she took off her sweater, and it was just the family, doing yard work together.

For some reason, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Besides the  professional looking white blouse, she looked like anyone doing yard work in her jeans and the rain boots. Wisps of hair fell out of her ponytail and into her face, and she kept tucking them behind her ear in between the step and pull of the aerator. She was totally devoted to her task and she wasn’t going to stop no matter how many times I told her she didn’t have to do it. She wouldn’t stop because she wanted to help, just like she wants to take out the trash and “buy” us food. She wants to be part of our lives, to make a contribution. To feel valued and part of something bigger than herself. Just like everyone.

As I watched Mom working alongside us, smiling in the sun, I was struck by what a crucial difference these Fridays make in her life.  I though about my decision not to go back to India but to come here and start to rebuild our relationship. For so many years after making the choice to move to Seattle I berated myself for being cowardly, for choosing the “easy” life over the sacrificial life in the slums of Kolkata. Even though I felt guilty about it for years, times like these cement the thought that maybe it wasn’t a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t my fear or selfishness. Maybe it was just the right thing to do, out of many good options. Maybe it’s what I needed. And what Mom needed too.

Under the Leopard Umbrella

Posted on by Penny Carothers
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No one, I’m sure, thinks I could possibly be neutral about the topic of Blue Like Jazz. I’ve had the privilege of being a part of the project from the get-go.

I saw the final cut last Thursday and was so impressed with the way they pulled everything together. With the voice-overs added, the storyline was vastly improved and I came away feeling I could understand, even relate to, Don’s story of rejecting and then embracing his faith. And man, it was funny. Even the second time.

I love the movie, and I love the way Penny is portrayed. I am nowhere near that virtuous, but it was really cool to see a character with so much heart and passion for worthy causes, and for people, too. I feel super honored that Don and Steve and Ben put God’s heart for justice in a character named after me.

I got the chance to see Don for a few minutes before the film began and we even snapped a photo. I was laughing hard at the ridiculousness of it all…I would make a terrible actress. But the picture came out alright. I may just put it on my desk next to the photo of Don and I and two friends protesting the run-up to the war on Iraq. Don and Penny, Ten Year Later.

After the screening Steve Taylor told us that without a great turnout opening weekend it will not make it into more locations the following week. So if you have any inclination to go, buy your tickets for April 13th. You won’t be disappointed. And come back and tell me what you think. I’ll be attending the premiere in Portland, and maybe even tweeting it. We’ll see, I may be starstruck the entire time, incapable of coherent speech, never mind tweets.

Why I Follow Jesus

Posted on by Penny Carothers
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“If the history of Israel teaches us anything, it’s that history is a dialogue between God and free, responsible persons, and that God keeps summoning us again to empower the poor and needy and to nurture justice.”

- Ron SIder (Afterword to The Revolution: A Field Manual for Changing Your World, Heather Zydek, ed.)

Jesus Loves Me? See if I Care.

Posted on by Penny Carothers
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Before I believed them, I saw the words everywhere: on billboards, on bumper stickers, on hand-lettered signs carried by middle-aged men.  Even on the roof of a barn.

Jesus Loves You.  Three simple words.  And I scoffed.

Though they had no tangible meaning for me, I bristled at them.  I don’t need Jesus to love me for my life to have meaning.

When I encountered the person of Jesus all of that changed.  I knew Jesus loved me because I saw how he cared for Lazarus and his sisters, for the woman at the well, and for the people of Jerusalem whom he longed to gather to himself, like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings.  I basked in the glow of this newfound knowledge for several years, until the emotional high of conversion mellowed.  I was high on the chemicals that made me fall in love, and then, suddenly, it was time to learn to stay, to build a relationship, to attach.

That’s when we started to argue.  Or, I argued.

You say you love me, but you weren’t there for me when I was little and had no one else.

 You say you love me, but you never answered my most desperate prayers.

If you loved me, you would have never put me on this godforsaken planet with all of its pain and sorrow.

All of those outraged prayers were uttered in my first moments of disappointment with God (which, I have to admit, lasted awhile). My disappointment that God lets all of this insanity exist, that it’s not over yet. That we’re just a bunch of sitting ducks on this rotating ball, getting our hearts ripped out of our chests all the time. For…something. It didn’t seem worth it. And more than that, it seemed cruel.

It’s around this time that I had my first child. And I began to understand, just the smallest amount, why God bothered in the first place. I loved her completely, for no reason at all except that she existed. I would do anything to keep her safe, and to see that she had a good life. I had a baby girl, and there was no way out.

Now that I know what life is with a child – with two – I wouldn’t go back. I’d endure all of the confusion of my upbringing because I’d get this happy ending. Now, I don’t know what I’ll say if either of them ever gets taken away. Chances are I’ll rail all over again – and that would be the healthy thing to do – but I hope in the end that I am grateful to God that I had the chance to love in the first place. And I hope I’ll keep on the path of discovering who God is and why S/He put us here in the first place.

Review: Reluctant Pilgrim by Enuma Okoro

Posted on by Penny Carothers
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You know those books that help you to feel less alone? I love them…and I’m pretty sure I have lots of company.

Writing one of those books, though, is really hard work. The vulnerability that comes across the page and hits you right in the gut (in the best way) can be excruciating to write. Writers fend off the constant questions as they put pen to paper: What if I really am the only one? What if everyone thinks I’m weird or selfish…or boring?

Thankfully, Enuma Okoro is anything but. She has fought that battle and has a book to show for it. Her memoir, Reluctant Pilgrim, A Moody, Somewhat Self-Indulgent Introvert’s Search for Spiritual Community (she had you at the title, right?), is brave in its subject and above all, approachable…which is saying something, since its overwhelming subjects are death, grief, and healing. Or, at least, those are the themes that stuck out to me. Okoro is honest with her doubts and struggles, and not at all annoying as she celebrates her growth. You come to believe by the end of the book that you, too, could become someone who deeply believes the promises of God, and could talk about them without being cheesy, just like she does. We need more writers who show us this path, more pilgrims who aren’t afraid to ask these kinds of tough questions. Thankfully, more and more of these kinds of books are coming out. And as far as I’m concerned, Okoro’s is one of the better ones.

I Choose You, Mom

Posted on by Penny Carothers
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This morning as I drove home from dropping my daughter off at pre-school I was listening to a program on my local public station.  The topic was “Without Them There’s No This: A Valentine’s Special.”  I heard several callers talk about the most important people in their lives – spouses, children, parents.  A man from Bellingham, a “ne’er do-well artist” who says he pushed his adolescence “as far as it could go” spoke of the neighbor he fell in love with at 41.  He adopted her three children and then they had one of their own. You could tell he was wouldn’t go back to his former life for anything.  There was a mother who daily cares for her non-verbal daughter who lives with a demanding condition.  She spoke with love and gratitude in her voice as she shared how she has learned to be present and to live into every moment.

As I listened to these callers speak of the people they have chosen to love I thought first of Mom.  I have two amazing children, but loving them is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.  It’s a little more work with my husband sometimes, but I am still very much in love with him as we go into our seventh year of marriage.

Mom is a different story.  Loving my mom has changed me.  It’s hard not to love her cute shuffle and absent-minded head scratching. I enjoy hersmile when she looks at one of the kids and her relaxed pose as she sits with a cup of tea.  She’s challenging though, when she is agitated and can’t let an idea go.  Some days she will talk full-tilt, almost manically, from the moment I pick her up until I drop her off.  And then there’s the days where she talks of killing people and blowing up banks, when she says my husband is trying to steal all my money and leave me.  Then I just want to drop her off at the library and drive off.

All the same, like the callers today,  I am grateful that my mom is in my life.  I take the good days with the bad because that’s just life.  I try to be grateful for the fact that we have each other at all – so many people don’t even have their parents anymore – and I am so fortunate that she is not as ill as some schizophrenics I have seen, or gone, either by alcoholism or death, like the parents of some of my friends.

So, Mom, you are my Valentine.  I choose you because I can’t imagine my life without you.  Who do you choose on this silly, but somehow meaningful holiday?  Who has changed you?

Mom Putters Before the Snow

Posted on by Penny Carothers
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Mom putters about the house, finding projects.  Out on the deck, the charcoal needs putting away before the big snow.  From the upstairs window I see her searching around, wondering, what will keep it dry?  A plastic bag?  A slab of wood? Aha…the shed, a few steps beyond the deck, already overflowing.

The trash is taken out and the sink emptied when I come downstairs.  Now she can sit, steaming mug of tea in hand, ankles crossed, shoring up her strength for her next task.  It is the lists that occupy her subsequent hours: the lists of food we will need to have on hand – she’ll have

enough delivered to our door for the next week (because you never know how long the snow could last).  She writes deliberately, with brow furrowed and hunched back, stopping here and there to ask, “Corn chex?  Can Spencer eat corn chex?  What about mac and cheese?”  This task, no less important – no, perhaps more in her eyes – to our well-being.  Like any mother, she will have us fed.  That is her job, even if she doesn’t have a house in which to cook for us.  I tire of these delusions but I am grateful she  feels that she is helping.  And in some ways, she is, just by being here.

In the kitchen, I flit from task to task, from dishwasher to Quinn’s coloring to prepping dinner.  Would that I would pay more attention to her questions, her theories, as she sits and drinks, sits and writes.  I have time, if I could just stop, to sit and talk and snuggle into her plump side.  For today, I do not take it.  Next time, I hope I do.

Occupy…Love?

Posted on by Penny Carothers
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I discovered someone today.  Thank you, Micah Bales, for posting this video on your blog, and for introducing me to Charles Eisenstein.  He believes the Occupy movement displays our need for human connection in a world in which we are increasingly alienated from each other.  It’s a salient message that I’ll be thinking about for a while, but it still doesn’t rid us of the need to organize and ask for the world that we want to live in in real terms.  If the Tea Party can do it, so can we.

Take Me to The Symphony

Posted on by Penny Carothers
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I don’t write poetry, but then I wrote this piece in prose, and it just seemed so much better this way.  Forgive the funky construction, I don’t really read poetry, either.

Whatever I listen to today makes me want to cry.

You were there, and then you weren’t, and usually,

usually,

I forget, and just get on.

But not today.

Today I want to scream.

I am open, laid bare, and everything is discordant, overpowering,

a hard metal band in a crowded bar.

I am standing in the middle of the stage,

between the drums and the bass,

screaming.

My face is red, my throat raw.

But everyone thinks it’s just part of the show.

The louder, the better.

With every pound of the drum my skin buzzes.

I want this energy, this release,

but I want to leave the chaos here.

Take me to the symphony,

I want to sit between the violins and the cello.

And when I feel the waves move through my body,

when all I can do is yell and let the tears stream down my face

I want it to be music, too.